Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

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    Dear reader, I’d rather not continue with my story, but since I’ve given you a beginning, I need to give you an ending. So here it comes in all its cruelty.
    Kaifang returned to 1 Tianhua Lane, his face still swathed in bandages, which threw a scare into Lan Jiefang and Huang Huzhu, who had had all the surprises they could take. Kaifang ignored their questions about his face and said passionately, in obvious high spirits:
    “Papa, Aunty, I’m going to marry Fenghuang!”
    With a pained furrowing of his brow, my friend Jiefang said decisively:
    “No, you’re not!”
    “Why?”
    “Because I say so!”
    “You don’t believe all those scurrilous rumors, do you? You have my word, she’s absolutely chaste ... a virgin. . . .”
    “My god!” my friend exclaimed plaintively. “You can’t do it, son. . . .”
    “Where love and marriage are concerned, Papa,” Kaifang said, his anger rising, “it’s my life and you have nothing to say about it.”
    “Maybe I don’t, son, but listen to what your aunt has to say” Jiefang went into his room and shut the door.
    “Kaifang, poor Kaifang,” Huang Huzhu said to him tearfully. “Fenghuang is your uncle’s daughter. You and she have the same grandmother.”
    At that point Kaifang reached up and ripped the bandages off of his face, taking the new skin off with it and leaving a bloody wound. He ran out of the house and jumped on his motorcycle, speeding away in such a hurry that his wheel banged against the door of a beauty salon, scaring the wits out of the people inside. He lifted the front wheel and sped like a crazed horse straight to the train station square. He never heard the words of the beautician whose shop was next door to the house:
    “Everyone in that family is mad!”
    Kaifang staggered down the steps of the hotel and crashed through the door. Fenghuang was in bed waiting for him. The monkey attacked him, but this time he forgot all about police procedures, forgot just about everything. He drew his pistol and shot the monkey dead, bringing an end to the reincarnation cycle for a soul that had spun on the wheel of life for half a century.
    Fenghuang was struck dumb by what he’d done. He raised his pistol and pointed it at her. Don’t do it, my young friend — he gazed at Fenghuang’s beautiful face, like a precious jade carving — the prettiest face in the world — the pistol drooped of its own weight. He raised it again and ran out the door to the steps leading upstairs — like a ladder leading from hell up to heaven — our young friend’s legs turned rubbery and he fell to his knees. Then he pressed the muzzle of his pistol up against a heart that was already broken — Don’t do it, don’t be foolish — he pulled the trigger. A muffled explosion sent our Kaifang sprawling on the steps, dead.

58

Millennium Boy
    Dear reader, our tale is drawing to a close. Bear with me a while longer, that’s all, just a while longer.
    Lan Jiefang and Huang Huzhu took Kaifang’s ashes back to the plot of land that was now dotted with graves and buried them alongside Huang Hezuo. While they were cremating and burying their son, Fenghuang followed them, carrying the body of her monkey and weeping uncontrollably She was so haggard everyone who saw her took pity on her. As sensible people, now that Kaifang was dead, Jiefang and Huzhu spoke no more of what had brought them to that point. Since the monkey was beginning to smell, Fenghuang took their advice to let him go, but asked that he be buried along with the people there. My friend unhesitatingly said yes. And so, now there was a monkey lying alongside a donkey, an ox, a pig, and a dog. Stuck for how to console Fenghuang, my friend brought together the surviving members of the two families. Chang Tianhong had nothing to offer, nor did Huang Huzhu. In the end it was Baofeng:
    “Gaige, ask her to come here and we’ll see what she plans to do. She started life here on our kang, and we have a duty to give her what she wants, whatever it takes.”
    Gaige returned with news that she was gone.
    Like a river, time flows on and on. We are now in the waning days of the year 2000. Gaomi County was celebrating the dawning of the new millennium with lights and streamers in front of every house in the city. Towering count-down clocks had been erected in the train station square and Tianhua Square, where pyrotechnic specialists waited to have their fireworks light up the sky at the stroke of