Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

site; no marker was placed at the head of either grave. After weeds grew around Chunmiao’s grave, you could not tell them apart. Pang Hu died not long after his daughter was buried. Jiefang took the urns containing both his and Wang Leyun’s ashes back to Ximen Village and buried them next to his father, Lan Lian.
    A few days later, Pang Kangmei, who was serving a prison term, went slightly mad and stabbed herself in the heart with a sharpened toothbrush. Chang Tianhong retrieved her ashes and went to see Lan Jiefang. “She was, after all, a member of your family,” he said, and Jiefang understood what he was trying to say. He took the ashes back to Ximen Village and buried them behind the graves of her parents.

55

Lovemaking Positions
    Lan Kaifang rode his father, my friend Jiefang, over to the house on Tianhua Lane on his motorcycle. The sidecar was filled with his daily necessities. This time, instead of holding on to the metal bar, Jiefang wrapped his arms around his son’s waist. Kaifang was still very thin, but straight and strong as an unbending tree branch. My friend wept all the way from the Pang house to 1 Tianhua Lane; his tears wetted the back of his son’s police uniform.
    He was understandably emotional as he stepped in through the gate for the first time since the day he’d left it supported by Chunmiao. The limbs of the parasol tree in the yard had reached the wall, with branches reaching over to the other side. As the old saying goes, “If trees can change, why can’t people?” But my friend had no time to ponder such thoughts, for he’d no sooner stepped into the yard than he saw through the gauzy covering of an open window in the east-side room, which had once been his study, a familiar figure. It was Huzhu, sitting there making paper cutouts, oblivious to all around her.
    No question about it, this had been Kaifang’s doing, and my friend realized how lucky he was to have such a kind and considerate son. Not only did he bring his aunt and his father together, he also took Chang Tianhong, who had fallen into a depression, back to Ximen Village on his motorcycle to meet Baofeng, who’d been a widow for many years. He had once, long ago, been the man of her dreams, and he’d always had feelings for her. Her son, Gaige, was not a man with great ambitions; rather he was an honest, upright, hardworking peasant. He was happy to approve the marriage of his mother to Chang Tianhong, so they could live out their lives as a contented couple.
    My friend Jiefang’s first love had been Huang Huzhu — to be fair, it was her hair he’d fallen in love with, and now, after lives marked by sadness and pain, the two of them were able to walk through life together. Kaifang spent most of his nights in a dormitory room and seldom came home to the house on Tianhua Lane, not even on weekends, owing to the demands of his job. That left only Jiefang and Huzhu in the house; they slept in their own rooms but ate their meals together. Huzhu, who’d never had much to say, spoke even less now, and when Jiefang asked her something, she replied only with a weak smile. For six months or so that is how things went, and then everything changed.
    After dinner one spring evening, as a light rain fell outside, their hands touched while they were clearing the table. Something happened to their mood; their eyes met. Huzhu sighed. My friend did too. In a soft voice, Huzhu said:
    “Why don’t you come in and comb my hair. . . .”
    He followed her into her room, where she handed him her comb and carefully removed her heavy hairnet. Her miraculous hair fell like waves all the way to the floor. For the first time in his life my friend was able to touch hair that he had admired from afar since his youth. A delicate citronella fragrance filled his nostrils and reached deep down into his soul.
    Huzhu took several steps forward in order to let her hair out all the way, and when her knees touched the bed, my friend scooped up her hair in one arm and with great care and great tenderness began to comb. In fact, her hair did not need to be combed; thick and heavy and slippery, it never had split ends; it would be accurate to say that he was stroking it, fondling it, sensing it. His tears fell on her hair like drops of water splashing on the feathers of Mandarin ducks, and rolled off onto the floor.
    With an emotional sigh, Huzhu began taking off her clothes, while my friend stood back several feet, holding her hair like a child