Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

buried his father and the dog, they entertained the thought of living out their days working Father’s plot of land in Ximen Village; unfortunately, a highly respected guest arrived at the Ximen family compound. It was a man named Sha Wujing, who had attended the provincial Party school with Jiefang and was now Party secretary of the Gaomi County Party Committee. Deeply moved by Jiefang’s life experience and the decrepit condition of the once illustrious Ximen family compound, he said generously to Jiefang:
    “You’ll never regain your position as deputy county chief, my friend, and restoring your membership in the Party is unlikely. But I think we can find you a government job to keep you going.”
    “I’m grateful for the thoughtful consideration of our leaders, but there’s no need for that,” Jiefang replied. “I’m the son of a Ximen Village peasant, and this is where I want to live out my days.”
    “Remember the old Party secretary Jin Bian?” Sha asked. “Well, here’s what he had in mind. He and your father-in-law Pang Hu are good friends, and if you two were to move into town, you could look after your father-in-law. The Standing Committee has approved your assignment as assistant director of the Cultural Exhibition Center. As for Comrade Chunmiao, she can return to the New China Bookstore if she’s willing. If not, we can find something else for her.”
    Dear reader, returning to town was not something Jiefang and Chunmiao ought to have considered; but the opportunity to be working for the government and to look after her aging father was too good to pass up. Keep in mind that those two friends of mine were ordinary people not blessed with the ability to look into the future. They returned to town without delay. Since it was ordained by Fate, they could not have done otherwise.
    At first they moved into Pang Hu’s house. Although he had once publicly, even heroically, disowned Chunmiao, he was, after all, a loving father, an old and ailing man, like a candle guttering in the wind, so he grew teary and his heart softened, especially after learning how difficult life had been for his daughter and the man who was now her legal husband. He put the ill will of the past aside, threw open his door, and welcomed them into his house.
    Early each morning Jiefang rode his bicycle to the Cultural Exhibition Center. Given the cheerless, shabby layout of the center, assistant director was a title, not a job. There was nothing for him to “direct,” and all he did all day long was sit at his three-drawer desk, drinking weak tea, smoking cheap cigarettes, and reading the newspaper.
    Chunmiao decided to return to the children’s section of the New China Bookstore, where she dealt with a new generation of boys and girls. By then the clerks she’d worked with before had retired, their places taken by young women in their twenties. Chunmiao also rode a bicycle to work; in the afternoon she’d swing by Theater Street to buy chicken gizzards or sheep’s head meat to take home for her father to enjoy with the little bit of liquor he and Jiefang, neither of whom could handle much alcohol, drank before dinner. They’d talk about little things, like brothers.
    Chunmiao discovered she was pregnant around lunar New Year’s. Jiefang, who was in his fifties, was overjoyed. The news also brought tears to the eyes of Pang Hu, who was approaching eighty. Both men envisioned the joy of life with three generations living under one roof. But that image would quickly fade in the face of a looming disaster.
    Chunmiao had bought some stewed donkey meat on Theater Street and was on her way home, singing happily to herself as she turned into Liquan Boulevard, where a Red Flag sedan coming from the opposite direction ran into her. The bicycle was turned into junk, the meat splattered on the ground, and she flew over to the side of the road, where she hit her head on the curb. She died before Jiefang arrived on the scene. The car that had hit her belonged to Du Luwen, onetime secretary of the Lüdian Township Party Committee, now deputy head of the county People’s Congress; it was driven by the son of one of Ximen Jinlong’s youthful pals, Young Tiger Sun.
    I simply do not know how to describe what Jiefang felt when he saw her lying there; great novelists have set too high a standard in dealing with such traumatic moments.
    Jiefang buried Chunmiao’s ashes in his father’s notorious plot of land, near Hezuo’s grave