Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

left hand on my neck and put the grass in her right hand up to my mouth, stroking me gently as she shielded my eyes with her bosom. The sensation of her soft, warm breasts was all the stimulation Ximen Nao’s memories needed to flood into my head, and tears spurted from my eyes. She whispered in my ear, and the hot breath of this hot-blooded woman made me lightheaded. My legs shook; I fell to my knees.
    “Little black donkey,” I heard her say, “my little black donkey, I know you’ve grown up and that you’re looking for a mate. A man thinks of marriage, a woman wants a mate, a donkey wants to sire its young. I don’t blame you for that, it’s perfectly normal. Well, you found your mate and you’ve planted your seed, so now you can come home with me. . . .”
    The other people quickly put my halter on and affixed the reins, adding a rusty-smelling chain, which they put in my mouth. Someone pulled the chain tight around my lower lip. The pain was so intense I had to flare my nostrils and gasp for air. But Yingchun reached out and hit the hand that was tightening the bit,
    “Let that go,” she said. “Can’t you see he’s injured?”
    They tried to get me to stand. That’s exactly what I wanted. Cows and sheep and pigs and dogs can lie down, but not donkeys, not unless they’re dying. I struggled to get to my feet, but my body weighed me down. Was I going to die at the tender age of three? For a donkey, that was not good news under any circumstances, but the idea of dying like this really got to me. There in front of me was a broad road, divided into many little paths, each leading to a scene worth viewing. Swept away by intense curiosity, I had to go on living. As I rose up on shaky legs, Lan Lian told the Fang brothers to stick their long club under my belly, one on each side, while he went around behind me to hold up my tail. With Yingchun holding me around the neck, the Fang brothers gripped their ends of the pole and shouted, “Lift!” With their help, I stood up, still wobbly, my head drooping heavily. But I struggled to stay upright; I mustn’t fall down again. I did it, I was standing straight.
    The people walked around me, amazed and puzzled by the bloody injuries on my rear legs and my chest. How could the act of mating produce injuries like that? they wondered. I also heard members of the Han family discussing similar injuries on their female donkey. Is it possible, I heard the older Fang brother ask, that the two animals spent the whole night fighting one another? His brother shook his head. Impossible. A man who’d come to help the Han family retrieve his donkey downriver, pointed to something in the river, and yelled:
    “Come over here and tell me what this is!”
    One of the dead wolves was rolling slowly in the water; the other was pinned underwater by a rock.
    The crowd rushed over to see what he was pointing at, and I knew that it was wolf fur on top of the water and blood on the rocks — wolf blood and donkey blood — still filling the air around the spot with its stench. The signs of a fierce battle were obvious from prints on the rocks from wolf claws and donkey hooves and from the blood-streaked injuries to my and Huahua’s bodies.
    Two men rolled up their pant legs, took off their shoes and socks, and waded into the water to bring the two wolf carcasses up onto the bank. I sensed people turning to me with looks of respect, and I knew that Huahua was being honored by the same looks. Yingchun threw both arms around me and lovingly stroked my face; I felt moist pearls fall from her eyes onto my ears.
    “Damn you all!” Lan Lian said proudly. “The next person who says anything bad about my donkey will answer to me! Everyone says that donkeys are cowards, that they turn tail and run if they see a wolf. But not my donkey. He killed two ferocious wolves all by himself!”
    “Not by himself,” stonemason Han corrected him indignantly. “Our donkey deserves credit too.”
    “Yes, you’re right,” Lan Lian said with a smile. “She does. And she’s my donkey’s wife.”
    “With such severe injuries, I doubt that this marriage was ever consummated,” someone volunteered lightheartedly.
    Fang Tianbao bent down to examine my genitals, then ran over to check underneath the Han family’s female. He lifted up her tail and took a good look.
    “Yes, it was,” he announced authoritatively. “Take my word for it. You Hans are going to have a new donkey.”
    “Old Han,