Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

feelings. And if that weren’t enough, I’d been exposed to all sorts of misinformation about sex by Hu Bin when we were grazing animals together. Things like: “Ten drops of sweat equal one drop of blood, and ten drops of blood equal one drop of semen.” Or: “After the first ejaculation, a boy stops growing.” These cockeyed concepts had me in their grip, and the future looked bleak. Looking at Jinlong’s finely developed body, then at my own scrawny frame, and finally at Huzhu’s voluptuous figure, all I could feel was despair. I even contemplated suicide. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be an empty-headed bull? I thought. Now, of course, I know you were anything but empty-headed, that in fact there were all kinds of thoughts running through your mind, and not limited to affairs of the mortal world, but included concerns of the netherworld, past, present, and future.
    My brother was on the mend. He was pale as a ghost, but he struggled out to lead the revolution. While he lay unconscious for several days, my mother had thrown his clothes into boiling water, drowning all the fleas, but his handsome Dacron military tunic came out so badly wrinkled it looked like something a cow had chewed and spit out. His imitation army cap came out faded and wrinkled, resembling nothing so much as the scrotum of a castrated bull. The sight of his badly transformed tunic and cap put him in panic mode. He flew into a rage; dark blood spewed from his nostrils. Mother, he said, why didn’t you just kill me? Stung by feelings of remorse, she didn’t know what to say. As my brother’s anger subsided, sadness welled up inside him and tears streamed down his face. He climbed up onto the kang, covered his head with the quilt, and for the next two days wouldn’t eat or drink a thing and responded to nothing anyone said. Poor Mother came into the room and went back out, over and over, the cold sores at the corners of her mouth, a sign of her anxiety. Ai, how stupid could I be? she muttered. What a stupid old woman! Finally, my sister could stand it no longer. She pulled the bedding back to reveal a haggard, stubbly young man with sunken eyes. It’s just an old tunic! she said, clearly rankled. Is that worth nearly driving Mother to suicide? He sat up, his eyes glazed, and sighed. His tears began to flow even before he spoke. You don’t know what that tunic meant to me. You know the saying, “Humans need nice clothes, horses require a fine saddle.” It was that tunic that made it possible for me to issue commands and intimidate the bad elements. Well, there’s nothing you can do about it now, my sister said. Do you expect your tunic to recapture its original shape because you lie in bed like a dead man? My brother thought that over. All right, I’ll get up. I’m hungry. Those last two words sent Mother scurrying into the kitchen, where she set to work preparing noodles and frying some eggs, the fragrance quickly saturating the compound.
    Huang Huzhu walked into the house bashfully while my brother was wolfing down the food. Well, young lady, my mother commented with notable interest. We all share a single compound, but this is the first time you’ve been in our house in a decade. Mother looked her over with unmistakable affection. Huzhu didn’t look at my brother, she didn’t look at my sister, and she didn’t look at my mother. She just stared at the wrinkled bundle that was my brother’s tunic. Aunty, she said, you made a mess of Jinlong’s tunic when you washed it, but I know something about fabric, and I know how to sew. Would you be willing to let me work on it? Like they say, “treating a dead horse as if it were alive”? Maybe I can restore it to its original shape. Young lady, my mother said, eyes bright as she took Huzhu’s hands in hers, you really are quite the young lady. If you can restore Brother Jinlong’s tunic to its original shape, I’ll get down on my knees and kowtow three times to you!
    Huzhu took only the tunic with her. She kicked the imitation army cap into the corner where the mouse hole was. Huzhu left, and hope was on its way. Mother wanted to see what sort of magic Huzhu would use on the tunic, but she got no farther than the apricot tree before her courage left her. Huang Tong was standing in his doorway chopping up elm roots with an ax. Wood chips flew like bullets. Scarier still was the enigmatic look on his tiny little face. As a class-two capitalist-roader, he had been attacked by