Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

moon wandering the streets and lanes of Ximen Village. When we made our back to Apricot Garden, I spotted Hong Taiyue under the crooked apricot tree taking a piss. His flattened canteen hung around his neck, resting on his chest. He reeked of alcohol. A man once known for his capacity for liquor, by now he was a drunk, plain and simple. As he was buttoning up his pants, he cursed:
    “Let me go, you bunch of mongrels . . . you think you can keep me down by tying my hands and feet and putting a gag in my mouth. Not a chance! You can chop me up into little pieces, but you’ll never still the heart of a true Communist. Believe me, you little bastards. Who cares. All that counts is that I believe. , . .”
    The moon and I, attracted by his rants, fell in behind him, moving from one apricot tree to another, and whenever one of the trees bumped into him, he raised his fist and glared at it:
    “I’ll be damned, even you come after me. Well, here’s a taste of a Communist’s steel fist. . . .”
    He wandered over to the silkworm shed, where he pounded on the door with his fist. The door was opened from the inside, lamplight spilling out into the night to merge with the moonbeams. I saw Ximen Bai’s bright face; she had opened the door while holding a basket of mulberry leaves. The crisp fragrance of the leaves and the sound of silkworms chewing their leaves, like the pitter-patter of an autumn rainfall, spilled out through the door with the light. I could see in her eyes that she was taken by surprise.
    “Party Secretary . . . what are you doing here?”
    “Who did you think it was?” Hong was obviously having trouble keeping his balance, his shoulders bumping into the racks of silkworm cocoons. “I heard you shed your landlord dunce cap,” he said in a strange voice, “and I’m here to congratulate you.”
    “I have you to thank for that,” Ximen Bai replied as she set down her basket and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “If not for your support all those years, they’d have beaten me to death long ago. . . .”
    “Nonsense!” He was clearly angry. “We Communists have never ceased treating you with revolutionary humanitarianism!”
    “I understand, Secretary Hong, in my heart I understand everything.” Somewhat incoherently, she continued, “I thought about talking to you back then, but the dunce cap was still on my head, and I didn’t dare approach you, but now, no more dunce cap, I’m a co-op member. . . .”
    “What is it you want to say?”
    “Jinlong sent someone to tell me I should look after you. . . .” She blushed. “I said if Secretary Hong has no objections, I’d be happy to look after him from now on. . . .”
    “Bai Xing, oh, Bai Xing, why were you a landlord?” Hong muttered softly.
    “I no longer wear that cap,” she said. “I’m a citizen now, a member of the co-op. There are no more classes. . . .”
    “Nonsense!” Hong was now agitated. He walked up closer to her. “No cap doesn’t mean you’re not a landlord, it’s in your blood, poison running through your veins!”
    Bai Xing backed up, all the way to the silkworm rack. The hurtful words emerging from Hong’s mouth belied the depth of feeling apparent in his eyes. “You will always be our enemy,” he roared. But a liquid light flashed in his eyes as he reached out and grabbed hold of Bai Xing’s breast.
    With a defiant moan, she said, “Secretary Hong, don’t let the poison in my veins contaminate you—”
    “You’re still the target of the dictatorship. I tell you, just because you’ve shed your cap, you’re still a landlord!” He wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed his reeking, stubble-covered mouth against her face; the two bodies crashed into the sorghum-woven silkworm racks and knocked them over. Bai Xing’s silkworms wriggled and squirmed beneath the bodies; those that weren’t squashed flat just kept chewing their mulberry leaves.
    Suddenly a cloud floated in front of the moon, and in the haze all sorts of reminiscences of the Ximen Nao era — sweet, sour, bitter, hot — surged into my head. As a pig, my mind was clear, but as a human, there was only confusion. Yes, I knew that no matter how I’d died all those years ago, justly or not, fairly or not, Ximen Bai had every right to be intimate with another man, but I could not endure seeing Hong Taiyue do it to her while he was cursing her. What an insult, both to Ximen Bai and to Ximen Nao. To me it felt like dozens of fireflies