Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

21

With More Cries of Injustice, a Return to Yama’s Hall

Deceived Again to Be Reborn as a Lowly Pig

After shedding my ox skin, my indomitable spirit hovered above Lan Lian’s one-point-six acres of land. Life as an ox had been a tragic existence. After my incarnation as a donkey, Lord Yama had pronounced judgment that I’d be sent back as a human, but I wound up sliding out through the birth canal of an ox. Anxious to complain he’d made a fool of me, I nonetheless continued to hover above Lan Lian, reluctant to leave. I looked down on the bloody carcass of the ox; and the gray head of Lan Lian as he sprawled across the ox’s head and wailed piteously; and the obtuse expression on the face of my grown son Jinlong; and the young lad with the blue face, born to my concubine Yingchun; and the face of the youngster’s friend Mo Yan, smeared with snot and tears; and the faces of all those other people that seemed so familiar. As my spirit left the body of the ox, the ox memories began to fade, replaced by those of Ximen Nao. I was a good man who hadn’t deserved to die, but had been shot anyway. Lord Yama knows a mistake was made, one that was hard to make good on.

“Yes,” Lord Yama said coldly, “a mistake was made. So what do you think I should do about it? I am not authorized to send you back as Ximen Nao. Having undergone two reincarnations already, you know as well as I that Ximen Nao’s time has ended. His children are grown, his corpse has rotted away in the ground, and nothing but ashes remain from his dossier. Old accounts have been settled. Why can you not put those sad recollections out of your mind and seek happiness instead?”

I knelt on the cold marble floor of Lord Yama’s Hall. “Great Lord,” I said, a note of agony creeping into my voice, “I want more than anything to do that, but I cannot. Those painful memories are like parasites that cling stubbornly to me. When I was reborn as a donkey, I was reminded of Ximen Nao’s grievances, and when I was reborn as an ox, I was reminded of the injustice he suffered. These old memories torment me relentlessly, Great Lord.”

“Do you mean to say that Granny Meng’s amnesia elixir, which is a thousand times more potent than knockout drops, does not work on you?” Lord Yama asked doubtfully. “Did you go straight to Homeward Terrace without drinking it?”

“Great Lord, I tell you the truth, I did not drink the tonic when I was sent back as a donkey. But before I was reborn as an ox, your two attendants pinched my nose shut and poured a bowl of it down my throat. They even gagged me to keep me from throwing it up.”

“Now that is strange.” Lord Yama turned to the judge sitting beside him. “Could Madame Meng have produced a counterfeit tonic?

The judges shook their heads.

“Ximen Nao, I’ve had all I can take from you. If every ghost was as much trouble as you, chaos would reign in this hall. Given your charitable acts as a human and the suffering you underwent as a donkey and an ox, I will bestow a special mercy on you by sending you to be reborn in a distant, stable country whose citizens are rich, a place of natural beauty where it is springtime year-round. Your father to be is thirty-six years old, the country’s youngest mayor. Your mother is a gentle and beautiful professional singer whose voice has won for her many international prizes. You will be their only son, a jewel dropped into their hands. Your father has a brilliant future ahead of him: at forty-eight he will rise to the position of governor. When she reaches middle age, your mother will give up her professional career and go into business as the owner of a famous cosmetic company. Your father drives an Audi, your mother a BMW; you will drive a Mercedes. Fame and fortune beyond your imagining will be yours, and you will be lucky in love – many times. You will be richly compensated for the suffering and injustice you have experienced on the Wheel of Life so far.” Lord Yama tapped the table with his fingertip and paused briefly. He gazed up into the darkness of the hall canopy and said pointedly, “What I have just said should make you very happy.”

But wouldn’t you know it, Lord Yama fooled me yet again.

Prior to this rebirth, they covered my eyes with a black blindfold.

On Homeward Terrace, I was assaulted with a hellishly cold wind and a horrible stench. In a hoarse voice, the old woman cursed me bitterly for laying false accusations. She banged me over the head with a wooden spoon, then grabbed me by the ear and ladled her broth into my mouth. What a strange taste it had, like peppered guano. “I hope you drown, you stupid pig, for saying my broth was faked. I want to submerge your memories, submerge your previous lives, leaving you only with a memory of swill and dung!” The demonic attendants who had brought me there were holding my arms the whole time this evil old woman was torturing me; their gloating laughter filled my ears.

I stumbled down off the platform, still in the grip of the attendants, who ran me so fast I don’t think my feet touched the ground; I felt like I was flying. Finally my feet touched something soft, almost cloudlike. Each time I wanted to ask where I was going, a hairy claw stuffed something foul-smelling in my mouth before I could speak and a sour taste filled my mouth, like the dregs of aged liquor or a fermented bean cake; it was, I knew, the smell of the Ximen Village Production Brigade feeding shed. My god, the ox memory is still with me. Am I still an ox? Was all that other stuff a dream? I put up a fight, struggling as if trying to break free of a nightmare. I squealed and scared myself. So I fixed my eyes on my surroundings, and discovered that there were a dozen or more squirming lumps of flesh all around me. Black ones, white ones, yellow ones, even some black-and-white ones. Lying on the ground in front of all those lumps of flesh was a white sow. I heard the familiar voice of a pleasantly surprised woman say:

“Number sixteen! My god! Our old sow has produced a litter of sixteen piglets!”

I blinked to clear the mucus out of my eyes. I didn’t need to look at myself to know that I’d come back as a pig this time, and that all those squirming, squealing lumps of flesh were my brothers and sisters. I knew what I must look like, and I was furious over how back-stabbing Lord Yama had fooled me again. How I loathed pigs, those filthy beasts. I’d have been fine with coming back as another donkey or an ox, but not a pig, condemned to roll around in the muck and mud. I’ll starve myself, that’s what I’ll do, so I can get back down to the underworld and settle accounts with that damned Lord Yama.

It was a sweltering summer day, by my calculations – the sunflowers beyond the pigpen wall hadn’t yet bloomed, though the leaves were big and plump – sometime during the sixth lunar month. There were flies everywhere and dragonflies circling the air high above me. I felt my legs growing strong and my eyesight improving fast. I saw the two people who had been standing by when the sow had her litter: one was Huang Tong’s older daughter, Huzhu, the other my son, Ximen Jinlong. My skin tightened at the sight of my son’s familiar face, and my head began to ache; it was almost as if a huge human form, or a crazed spirit, were confined in my tiny piglet body. Suffocating, I’m suffocating! Misery, oh, such misery! Let me go, let me spread out, let me slough off this filthy, abominable pig shell, to grow and regain the manly form of Ximen Nao! But of course, none of that was possible. I fought like mad, but still wound up in the palm of Huang Huzhu. She tweaked my ear with her finger and said:

“Jinlong, this one seems to be having convulsions.”

“Who cares? The old sow doesn’t have enough teats as it is, so let’s hope a few die,” he said venomously.

“No, they’re all going to live.” Huzhu put me down and wiped me clean with a soft red cloth. She was so gentle. It felt wonderful. Without meaning to, I squealed, that damned pig sound.

“Did she have her litter? How many?” That voice was outside the pigpen, loud and very familiar. I shut my eyes in total despair. I not only recognized Hong Taiyue’s voice I could even tell he’d regained his official post. Lord Yama, oh, Lord Yama, all those fine words about being reborn as the pampered son of a high official in a foreign country, when all along you meant to fling me into a Ximen Village pigpen. You tricked me, you shameless, backbiting liar! I fought to free myself from Huzhu’s hands and landed on the ground with a thud. A single squeal, and I passed out.

When I came to, I was lying in a bed of leaves, bright sunlight filtering down through the branches of an apricot tree. The smell of iodine was in the air; shiny ampoules were strewn on the ground around me. My ears were sore, so was my rump, and I knew they’d brought me back from the verge of death. All of a sudden, a lovely face materialized in my head, and I knew she was the one who’d given me the shots; yes, it was her, my daughter, Ximen Baofeng. Trained as a people doctor, she often treated sick animals as well. Dressed in a blue-checked, short-sleeved shirt, she seemed worried about something. But she always looked like that. She tweaked my ear with her cold finger and said to the person next to her:

“He’s okay now, you can take him back to the pen to suckle.”

Hong Taiyue rushed up and rubbed my silky skin with his coarse hand.

“Baofeng,” he said, “don’t think that treating a pig is unworthy of your talent!”

“The thought never occurred to me, Party secretary,” Baofeng replied matter-of-factly as she picked up her medical kit. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s no difference between animals and humans.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Hong said. “Chairman Mao has called upon people to raise pigs. Raising pigs is a political act, and by doing a good job at it you’re showing your loyalty to Chairman Mao. Do you understand what I’m saying, Jinlong and Huzhu?”

Huzhu said yes, but Jinlong leaned against the apricot tree, smoking a cheap cigarette.

“I asked you a question, Jinlong,” Hong said, obviously displeased.

Jinlong cocked his head. “I’m listening, aren’t I?” he said. “Would you like me to recite the entirety of Chairman Mao’s supreme directive on raising pigs?”

“Jinlong,” Hong said as he stroked my back, “I know you’re upset, but keep in mind that Li Renshun of Taiping Village wrapped a fish in a newspaper with Chairman Mao’s image, and was sentenced to eight years. He is undergoing labor reform as I speak. Your problem is far worse than his!”

“Mine was unintentional, and that’s the difference.”

“If yours had been intentional, you’d have been shot,” Hong replied, his anger rising. “Do you know why I protected you?” He looked over at Huzhu. “Partly because Huzhu and your mother got down on their knees and begged me. But the main reason was that I know all about you. You come from bad stock, but grew up under the red flag and were the kind of youngster we wanted to foster in the period before the Cultural Revolution. You’re an educated youngster, a middle-school graduate, just what the revolution needs. Don’t think that raising pigs is unworthy of your talents. Under current circumstances, no job is more glorious or more arduous than raising pigs. By assigning you here, the Party is testing your attitude toward Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line!”

Jinlong flipped his cigarette away, stood up straight, and bowed his head to receive Hong Taiyue’s reprimand.

“You two are lucky – but since the proletariat frowns on luck, let’s talk about circumstances.” Hong raised his hand, with me in it, into the air. “Our village sow has produced a litter of sixteen piglets, a rarity anywhere in the province. The county government happens to be looking for a pig-raising model right now.” He lowered his voice and said with a hint of mystery, “A model, know what I’m saying? You know the meaning of the word, don’t you? The rice paddies at Dazhai are a model. The oil fields at Daqing are a model. The fruit orchards at Xiadingjia are a model. Even the dances for old ladies organized at Xujiazhai are a model. So why can’t the pig farms of Ximen Village be a model? Lan Jinlong, you put on a model opera a few years back, didn’t you? You brought Jiefang and your dad’s ox into the commune, didn’t you? Weren’t you trying to create models?”

Jinlong looked up, eyes flashing. How well I knew the temperament of that son of mine, how his sharp mind turned out outstanding ideas that would amount to what today might be seen as absurd, but at the time were enthusiastically praised.

“I’m getting old,” Hong said, “and now that I’ve been given a second chance, all I hope for is to do a decent job with village affairs and be worthy of the trust of the masses and my superiors. But the prospects for you young people are unlimited. So long as you do your best, you’ll get credit for your successes, and if problems arise, I’ll take the responsibility.” Hong pointed at the commune members digging ditches and building walls in the apricot grove. “A month from now there’ll be two hundred garden-style pigpens out there, with a goal of five pigs for every person. The more pigs we raise, the more fertilizer we’ll get and the greater the harvests we’ll bring in. Grain rolls in, worries fade out; ditches deep, grain stores vast. No more hegemony, only support for worldwide revolution. Every pig is a bomb flung into the midst of the imperialists, revisionists, and reactionaries. So this old sow of ours, with her litter of sixteen piglets, has presented us with sixteen bombs. The old sows are aircraft carriers that will launch all-out attacks against the world’s imperialists, revisionists, and reactionaries. By now you two ought to understand the importance of assigning you to this post.”

I kept my eyes on Jinlong as I listened to this grandiose speech by Hong Taiyue. Now that I’d undergone several rebirths, our father-son relationship had weakened, until it was little more than a faint memory, a few words inscribed on a family register. Hong Taiyue’s speech acted on Jinlong like a powerful stimulant, setting his mind in motion and his heart pumping; he was itching to get started. Rubbing his hands excitedly, he walked up to Hong, cheeks twitching, big, thin ears quivering, and I readied myself for the familiar prolonged monologue that was forthcoming – but this time I was wrong, there was no monologue; a series of setbacks in life had obviously matured him. He took me from Hong Taiyue and held me so close I could feel his heart pound. He bent down and kissed me on the ear. That kiss would one day become a significant detail in the glorified dossier of model pig farmer Lan Jinlong: “Lan Jinlong performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in a life-saving attempt on a newborn piglet, snatching the piglet with the purple splotches from the jaws of death. The piglet heralded its salvation with piggish squeals. But Lan Jinlong, enervated by the effort, passed out in the pigpen after uttering resolutely:

“‘Party Secretary Hong, from this day forward, all boars are my father, and all sows are my mother!’”

“That’s what I like to hear!” Hong said joyfully. “Young people who view our pigs as their mothers and fathers are exactly what we need.”

22

Piglet Sixteen Monopolizes the Sow’s Teats

Bai Xing’er Is Honored with the Title of Pig Feeder

Despite all the grandiose treatment bestowed upon the pigs by the fanatical people, a pig was still a pig. They could have showered me with all the love they had, but I was dead set on starving myself right out of this pig existence. I wanted another audience with Lord Yama, where I would make a scene, claiming my right to be human and demanding a rebirth I could be proud of.

By the time they returned me to the pigpen, the old sow was lying on her side, legs stretched out on a bed of hay as a row of piglets squeezed up to her exposed teats. They were sucking greedily and noisily. The unfortunate ones left out were shrieking their displeasure and trying to force their way in among their brothers and sisters. Some made it, forcing others out, while some others climbed up on top of the sow to jump up and down and raise a stink. The old sow lay there grunting, eyes closed, and all I felt were pity and loathing.

After handing me to Huzhu, Jinlong bent down and pulled one of the sucking piglets away from its teat, but not before it stretched it out like a rubber band. Another little pig filled the vacuum. So Jinlong pulled all those greedy little pigs away and put them outside the pen, where they protested ineffectually. Now only ten remained stuck to the sow’s belly, exposing a pair of usable teats. Both were red, puffy, and disgusting, thanks to the previous users. Picking me up from Huzhu, Jinlong put me down by the sow’s belly. I shut my eyes, which made me disgustingly conscious of the sucking sounds from my repulsive brothers and sisters. I’d have thrown up if I’d had anything in my stomach. You already know I wanted to die, so there was no way I was going to put one of those filthy teats in my mouth. I knew that the day I started sucking nonhuman milk was the day I’d give up half my humanity and sink forever into the abyss of the animal kingdom. The minute I put my mouth around that sow’s teats, I’d be seized by pig-ness. A pig’s temperament, a pig’s interests and concerns, and a pig’s desires would flow with her milk and course through my veins, transforming me into a swine that retained a mere smidgeon of human memories, thus completing a filthy and shameful reincarnation.

“Go on, drink up!” Jinlong positioned me so my mouth was up against a very plump teat, and when the saliva smeared on the nipple by my siblings touched my lips, I nearly puked. I kept my mouth tightly shut and my teeth clenched to avoid temptation.

‘What a stupid pig. It doesn’t have the sense to open its mouth when there’s a teat right in front of it.” Jinlong whacked me on the rump to underscore his comment.

“Don’t be so rough on him,” Huzhu complained as she pushed Jinlong away and pulled me up to her, where she gently rubbed my belly. I sort of purred, it felt so good, I couldn’t help it, though it was really a pig noise of contentment, but not that hard on the ears. Huzhu murmured, “You precious thing, foolish little piglet sixteen, your mother’s milk is really good, just taste it. You have to eat to grow up.” Thanks to her mutterings, I learned that I was the sixteenth piglet in a litter of sixteen, in other words, the last one out of the old sow’s belly. In spite of my extraordinary experiences in the worlds of light and darkness, that is, life and death, my knowledge of human and animal existences, in the eyes of the people, I was a pig, that’s all. A crushing tragedy; but even greater tragedies lay ahead.

Huzhu brushed the sow’s teat against my lips and nose, and that tickled my nose. I sneezed. That surprised her, I felt that in the way her hand jerked. Then she laughed. “I’ve never heard a pig sneeze before,” she said. “Sixteen, Piglet Sixteen, since you can sneeze, you ought to be able to eat.” She grabbed hold of the teat and squirted a warm liquid onto my lips. I licked it tentatively. Yow! My god! I never would have believed that a sow’s milk, my mother sow’s milk, could be so delicious, so fragrant, like silk, like love itself, so wonderful it made me forget the humiliation of being reborn as a pig and completely changed my impression of my surroundings, so glorious I couldn’t help feeling that the pig mother lying on the crushed grass supplying milk for a litter of boy and girl piglets was a noble beast, sacred and pure, solemn and beautiful. Without further hesitation, I wrapped my lips around that nipple, nearly taking Huzhu’s finger along with it, and opened the flow of milk into my mouth and down to my stomach. With each minute, each second, I felt myself grow stronger, felt my love for my pig mother increase; I heard Huzhu and Jinlong clap their hands and laugh, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw their youthful faces glow like cockscomb flowers. They were holding hands, and that sent fragments of historical memory flashing through my head, all of which I wanted only to forget. I shut my eyes so I could concentrate on the joys of a baby pig at its mother’s teat.

Over the days that followed, I became the most tyrannical piglet in the litter. My appetite shocked Jinlong and Huzhu; I had a natural gift for eating. I was always able to unerringly find the teat with the most milk, outmaneuvering my dull-witted brothers and sisters, who closed their eyes as soon as they wrapped their lips around a teat, while my eyes were open from start to finish as I sucked madly on the biggest nipple and covered up the ones next to it with my body I vigilantly kept my eyes peeled, waiting for one of my pitiful siblings to come looking for a meal; I’d send him or her flying with a butt to the head. Then as soon as I’d sucked the big teat dry, I’d move to the next one.

Seven days after I was born, Jinlong and Huzhu came and moved eight of my siblings to a neighboring pen, where they fed them millet gruel. A woman was put in charge of their care, but the wall between us was too high for me to get a look at her. Her voice, her lovely voice, sounded familiar, but when I tried to dredge up a memory of who she was and what she looked like, I just got sleepy. The three marks of a good pig are: big eater, deep sleeper, fast grower. I mastered all three. Sometimes the murmuring of the woman on the other side of the wall would be my lullaby. She fed the eight little pigs six times a day, sending the fragrance of corn or millet gruel wafting over the wall, and I could hear my brothers and sisters feasting happily. “My little darlings,” she’d mutter to them, “you little dears,” and I could tell she was a bighearted woman who treated the little pigs like her own children.

After a month, I was more than twice the size of my siblings. My sow mother’s twelve teats were pretty much mine alone. Every once in a while one of the other piglets, crazed from hunger, would attempt the death-defying act of charging one of the nipples. All I had to do was stick my snout under his belly and easily send him rolling to the wall behind our mother, who would moan weakly and say, Sixteen, oh, Sixteen, won’t you let them have a little? I brought you all into this world, and I can’t bear to see any of you go hungry! That sickened me, so I ignored her and sucked so hard her eyes rolled back in her head. Later on, I discovered that I could kick out with my hind legs, like a donkey, which meant I didn’t even have to let loose of a nipple or use my snout to rid the area of a hungry sibling. Whenever I saw one of them approach, red-eyed and squealing, I’d simply arch my back and kick out. Even if two came up at the same time, I could drive them back by landing well-placed kicks on their heads. All they could do then was run in circles and squeal out of jealousy and hatred, cursing me as they foraged for scraps at the base of our mother’s feed trough.

It didn’t take Jinlong and Huzhu long to see what was happening, so they invited Hong Taiyue and Huang Tong to watch from the other side of the wall. I knew they remained silent in hopes that I wouldn’t know they were there. So I pretended I didn’t know and ate with such exaggerated gusto that Mother Sow lay there moaning. I intimidated my brothers and sisters with one-legged kicks and struck fear into them with the two-legged variety, until all they could do was roll around and squeal miserably.

“That’s no pig, it’s a goddamned baby donkey!” Hong Taiyue shouted excitedly

“You’re right,” Huang Tong agreed. “See how it kicks with its hind legs.”

I spat out the now dry teat, stood up, and strutted around the pen. Raising my head, I looked at them and let loose with two loud oinks. That threw them.

“Get those other seven piglets out of there,” Hong Taiyue said. “We’re keeping this one for stud. Let him have all her milk so he’ll grow big and strong.”

Jinlong jumped into the pen and made a noise to call to the other piglets. The old sow raised her head and gave Jinlong a menacing look, but he was so quick he had two of them in his hands before she knew it. She jumped up and charged him; he forced her back with a kick. The two pigs hung in the air, squealing frantically. Huzhu managed to take one of them from Jinlong; Huang Tong took the other. I could tell they both wound up with their eight dull-witted siblings in the pen next to mine, where those eight little assholes took out after the two new little assholes; they’d get no sympathy from me, I was too happy. By the time Hong Taiyue had smoked a cigarette, Jinlong had removed all seven of the little morons. The pen next to mine turned into a battlefield, with the eight early arrivals fighting it out with the seven late arrivals. Me? I was alone, casually taking it in. I looked at the old sow out of the corner of my eye and saw that she was grief-stricken. But she’d also been relieved of a heavy burden. Let’s face it, she was just an ordinary pig, incapable of having her emotions stirred, humanlike. Look, she’s already forgotten the torment of losing her litter. She’s standing at her trough gobbling up the food.

The smell of food came rushing toward me on the wind. Huzhu walked up to the gate with a bucket of feed wearing a white apron with “Ximen Village Production Brigade Apricot Garden Pig Farm” embroidered in big red letters. She also had white protective sleeves covering her arms and a soft white cap on her head. She looked like a baker. Using a metal ladle, she scooped the contents into the feed trough. Mother Sow raised up and buried her front legs right in the middle of it. The slops splashing all over her face looked like yellow shit. It had a sour, rotten smell I found disgusting. It was a product of the minds of the brigade’s two most intelligent members, Lan Jinlong and Huang Huzhu, a fermented feed made of chicken droppings, cow dung, and greens. Jinlong emptied the bucket into the trough. The sow had no choice but to eat it.

“Is that all she gets?” Hong Taiyue asked.

“Up till a few days ago we added some bean cake,” Huzhu said, “but yesterday Jinlong said no more bean cakes.”

Hong stuck his head inside the pen to get a closer look at the sow. “We want to be sure the little porker gets what he needs, so let’s prepare food for her separately.”

“There isn’t enough fodder in the brigade stock room as it is,” Huang Tong said.

“I thought there was a storage shed filled with corn.”

“That’s part of our combat readiness! If you want to tap into that you have to get permission from the Commune Revolutionary Committee.”

“This pig is destined to be part of combat readiness!” Hong said. “If war comes, our People’s Liberation Army soldiers will need to eat meat to win the battles.” Seeing that Huang Tong was still hesitant, he said firmly, “Open up the shed. I’ll take the responsibility. I’ll report to the commune this afternoon. Feeding pigs takes precedence over other political tasks, so I don’t expect any opposition. What’s most important,” he said, sounding somewhat mysterious, “is to expand our pig farm and increase the numbers of animals. There’ll come a day when all the grain in the county stockrooms will be ours.”

Knowing smiles spread across Huang Tong and Jinlong’s faces as the agreeable smell of millet gruel approached them and stopped at the next pen over.

“Ximen Bai,” Hong called out, “starting tomorrow you’re to feed this sow too.”

“Yes, Secretary Hong.”

“Dump half the bucket you’re carrying into the sow’s trough.”

“Yes, Secretary Hong.”

Ximen Bai – that had a familiar ring to it. Ximen Bai. I tried to recall what that name meant to me. Then a kindly but weary face appeared in front of my pen, and I was racked by spasms, as if I’d been given an electric shock. At the same time, the gate to my memory was flung open and the past came flooding in. “Xing’er,” I shouted, “you’re still alive!” But what emerged from my throat was a long, shrill pig noise. It not only scared the people outside the pen, it scared me. Tragically, I had no choice but to return to reality, to the present, no longer Ximen Nao but a little pig, the son of the white sow I shared this pen with.

I tried to calculate her age, but the fragrance of sunflowers confused me. Yet even though no number emerged, I knew she was over fifty, because the hair at her temples had turned white, there were fine wrinkles around her eyes, and her once beautiful white teeth had begun to yellow and wear out.

Slowly she scooped the millet into the trough with a wooden ladle.

“You heard what I said, didn’t you?” Hong Taiyue asked harshly.

“You needn’t worry, Secretary Hong,” Ximen Bai said in a soft but firm voice. “I have no children of my own, so these pigs will be my sons and daughters.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Hong said, satisfied with her response. “What we need is more women who are willing to raise our pigs as their own sons and daughters.”

23

Piglet Sixteen Is Moved to a Cozy Nest

Diao Xiaosan Mistakenly Eats an Alcohol-laced Bun

Brother, or should I say, Uncle, you seem upset. Your eyes are hooded by puffy lids, and you seem to be snoring, Big-head Lan Qiansui said harshly. If you’re not interested in the lives of pigs, let me tell you about dogs.

No, no, no, I’m interested, I really am. You know, I assume, that I wasn’t always at your side during those years you were a pig. At first I worked in the pig farm, but my job was not to feed you. Then, later, Huang Hezuo and I were sent to work in the cotton mill, and most of what we learned about your illustrious accomplishments came to us as hearsay. I really want to hear you talk about your experiences, down to the last detail. Don’t give another thought to my puffy eyelids, because when my eyes are hooded, that means I’m concentrating.

The events that followed were varied and very complex. I can only touch on the highlights and the more spectacular incidents, Big-head Lan Qiansui said.

Even though Ximen Bai painstakingly fed my sow mother, I went on suckling like a crazed piglet – what you might call extraction – which led to the paralysis of the rear half of her body. Her hind legs were like dried-out loofahs, so she had to drag herself around the pen by her front legs. By this time I was nearly as big as she was. My hair was so glossy it looked waxed; my skin was a healthy red color with a wonderful odor. My poor mother’s skin was filthy, the foul-smelling rear half covered in shit. She howled every time I took one of her teats in my mouth, and tears spilled out of her tiny eyes. She dragged herself along the ground, trying to get away from me and pleading: Son, my good son, show your mother some mercy. You’re sucking the marrow out of my bones. Can’t you see the miserable shape I’m in? You’re a full-grown pig, so you should be eating solid food like me. I turned a deaf ear to her pleading, nudged her onto her side with my snout, and wrapped my lips around two teats at the same time. As my ears filled with her shrill cries of agony, I couldn’t help feeling that the teats that had once secreted that sweet-tasting milk had turned rubbery and tasteless and produced no more than a tiny amount of rank, salty, sticky liquid that was closer to poison than milk. In disgust, I rolled her over with my snout. I could hear the pain in her voice as she cursed me: Oh, Sixteen, you are a beast with no conscience, a demon. You were sired by a wolf, not a pig…

Ximen Bai was reprimanded by Hong Taiyue over my sow mother’s paralysis. “Secretary,” she said tearfully, “her son’s willfulness caused that, not negligence on my part. If you’d seen the way he eats, like a wolf or a tiger, you’d agree that even a cow would have wound up paralyzed with him at her teat…”

Hong looked into the pen; on an impulse I stood up on my hind legs, unaware that the only other pigs that could do that were trained circus performers. For me it seemed perfectly natural. With my front legs propped up on the wall, my head was right under Hong Taiyue’s chin. He backed up, obviously shocked, and looked around. Seeing they were alone, he said to Ximen Bai softly:

“It wasn’t your fault. I’ll isolate this king of pigs and assign someone to feed him.”

“That’s what I suggested to Chairman Huang, but he said he wanted to wait for you to return…”

“Any moron should be able to decide something as minor as this,” he grumbled.

“It’s the respect everyone has for you,” Ximen Bai said, glancing at him before lowering her head and murmuring, “You’re a veteran revolutionary who has great concern for the people and deals with them fairly-”

“That’s enough of that talk,” Hong said with a wave of his hand as he looked into Ximen Bai’s reddening face. “Do you still live in that cemetery hut? I think you’d better move over to the feeding shed. You can move in with Huang Huzhu and them.”

“No,” Ximen Bai said. “My background is no good, I’m old and I’m dirty, and I don’t want to displease the youngsters-”

Hong looked into Ximen Bai’s face, then turned and stared at the lush sunflowers. “Ximen Bai,” he said softly, “if only you hadn’t been a landlord…”

I grunted. I had to do something to give voice to my mixed feelings. To be honest, I wasn’t really jealous, but the relationship between Hong Taiyue and Ximen Bai, getting more intriguing every day, instinctively made me unhappy. There was no end in sight, and you know how tragically it ended, but I’ll fill in the details anyway.

They moved me into a large, newly built, single-occupant pen in a row of them about a hundred yards from the two hundred regular pens. The canopy of an apricot tree at the rear shaded half my pen. I lived in a shed that was open in the front, where the eaves were short, and the rear, where the eaves were long, so there was nothing to keep the sunlight from streaming in. The floor was laid with bricks, and there was a hole in one wall, covered by an iron grate that made it easy for me to relieve myself without dirtying my quarters. A pile of golden wheat stalks against my bedroom wall made the room smell fresh. I strolled around my new quarters, taking in the smell of new bricks, new earth, fresh parasol wood, and fresh sorghum stalks, and I was pleased. Compared to the squat, filthy quarters I’d shared with the old sow, my new digs were a mansion. They were airy, sunny, and constructed of environmentally appropriate materials that gave off no noxious fumes. Just look at that parasol wood beam, so newly hewn that puckery sap still oozed from the white interior of the cut ends. The sorghum stalks in the wall surrounding my quarters were also fresh, the fluid secretions still wet, still fragrant, and, I bet, still tasty. But these were my living quarters, and I wasn’t about to tear them down just to satisfy my appetite. That’s not to say I couldn’t take a bite just to see how it tasted. I could stand on my hind legs and walk like humans, but I wanted to keep that a secret as long as possible.

What thrilled me was that my new home was supplied with electricity. A lamp with a hundred-watt bulb hung from the beam. I later learned that all two hundred of the new pens had electricity, but they were lit with twenty-five-watt bulbs. The on-off pull string hung down alongside one of the walls, and all I had to do was reach up, catch the string in my cloven hoof, and tug lightly to make the light go on. That was great. The spring breeze of modernization had blown into Ximen Village along with the east wind of the Cultural Revolution. Quick, turn it off, don’t let them know I know how to do that.

I moved into my new quarters in the fall, when the sunlight was more red than white, and the red sun dyed the leaves of the apricot tree red. Each evening or early morning, when the sun was sinking or rising, breakfast and dinnertime for the pig farmers, the pens were unusually quiet. That’s when I stood up on my hind legs and, with my front legs curled in front of me, began eating apricot leaves right from the tree. Slightly bitter, but loaded with fiber, they helped lower my blood pressure and keep my teeth clean.

One day, when the apricot leaves were bright red, around the tenth day of the tenth lunar month – yes, that was the day, my memory’s still sharp – early on the tenth, just after the sun, big and red and gentle, had climbed into the sky, Lan Jinlong, whom I hadn’t seen in a very long time, returned. He was accompanied by the four Sun brothers, who attended to his every need and desire, and the brigade accountant, Zhu Hongxin, who had bought 1,057 pigs for the astonishingly low cost of 5,000 yuan, or less than 5 yuan apiece. I was performing my morning exercises when I heard the roar of motors. I looked outside in time to see three vehicles with trailers coming my way from beyond the apricot grove. They were so dusty they looked like they’d come straight from the desert, the hoods so dirty it was impossible to see what color they were. They bumped and rattled their way through the grove behind the new pigpens and into a clearing littered with broken bricks and tiles and mud-covered wheat stalks. Looking like long-tailed monsters, they took their time coming to a complete stop, after which I saw Lan Jinlong, his hair a mess and his face covered with grime, climb out of the first cab. Then Zhu Hongxin and Dragon Sun climbed out of the second vehicle, and finally, the remaining three Sun brothers and Mo Yan climbed out of the last one. All four faces in this last group were coated with dust, looking like the terracotta warriors of the First Emperor. Then I heard the oink-oinks of pigs in the three trailers, getting steadily louder, until it was a shrill chorus. Was I excited! I knew the day of the pigs had arrived. I couldn’t see these newcomers; I could only hear them and smell the strange odor of their droppings. I was ready to bet they were an ugly lot.

Hong Taiyue rode up like the wind on his brand-new Golden Deer; bicycles were a rarity at the time, and only the branch secretaries were permitted to buy them. Hong parked his bike at the edge of the clearing, up against an apricot tree, half of whose top had been cut off. He didn’t lock it, which shows how fired up he was. He greeted Jinlong with open arms, a conquering hero. Now don’t think he was about to give Jinlong a hug – that’s for foreigners, something Chinese didn’t practice during the pig-raising era. So when Hong reached the spot where Jinlong was standing, he dropped his arms, then reached out and patted Jinlong on the shoulder.

“I see you bought them.”

“One thousand fifty-seven altogether, exceeding the assigned quota!” Jinlong said as he started to sway and, before Hong could catch him, crumpled to the ground.

Almost immediately the four Sun brothers and Zhu Hongxin, who was clutching a Naugahyde briefcase, started to sway as well. Only Mo Yan was full of energy. He raised his arms and shouted:

“We fought our way back! We were victorious!”

The red sun shining down made it a somewhat solemn and tragic scene. Hong Taiyue summoned the brigade’s cadres and militiamen to carry these pig buyers who had performed such meritorious service, and the three drivers, over to the buildings housing the animal keepers.

“Huzhu, Hezuo, go find some women to make noodles and eggs for these men in recognition of their services,” he shouted. “Then get people to unload the trailers.”

I got my first look at the ghastly animals as soon as the tailgates came down. Those aren’t pigs! How could anybody call them pigs? Some big, some small, different colors, and every one filthy, covered with their own shit, and stinking to high heaven! I shoved a couple of apricot leaves up my nose. I thought they’d be bringing over some pretty little pigs to keep me company and supply the future king of pigs with a harem. Who came up with the idea of bringing a bunch of freakish offspring of wolves and pigs? I didn’t have the heart to look any longer, but their funny accents piqued my curiosity. Old Lan, I might have the spirit of a man somewhere inside me, but I’m still a pig, and I’d advise you not to expect too much from me. If humans are curious animals, then what do you expect from a pig?

I rested my front hooves and chin in the crotch of the tree to lessen the pressure on my hind legs. The branches sagged and shook. A woodpecker on one of the limbs cocked his head and stared down at me, his beady, black eyes filled with curiosity. Not knowing bird talk, I couldn’t speak to him, but I could tell I was freaking him out. I watched through the leaves of my tree as the newcomers were unloaded. They were all semiconscious, barely able to stand, a pitiful bunch. A sow with a cylindrical snout and pointy ears, apparently too old and weak to travel long distances, passed out as soon as she hit the ground. Some of the rest tilted to one side, others were sprawled on the ground, and some were scratching themselves against the bark of apricot trees – scrape scrape. My god, what thick hides! Yes, they had fleas and they had scabies, and I had to be sure to keep my distance. One black male caught my attention. He was scrawny, but looked to be clever and bright. Here’s what he looked like: long snout, tail dragging on the ground, dense, hard bristles, broad shoulders, pointy ass, thick limbs, tiny, keen eyes, two yellow front teeth that stuck out between his lips. In short, the next thing to a wild boar. So while all the others looked wretched from the long trip, this one sauntered around taking in the sights, like a whistling hoodlum walking around with his arms crossed. A few days later, Jinlong gave this one a name: Diao Xiaosan. That was the name of a bad character in the model revolutionary opera Shajiabang. Yes, he was the bad guy who snatched a girl’s bundle and wanted to take advantage of her. Diao Xiaosan and I would have some interesting times together, but I’ll get to that later. I watched the commune members, under Hong Taiyue’s direction, herd the pigs into the two hundred pens. It was chaos. The animals, with their low IQs, were used to running wild and oblivious to the reality that once inside the pens, they could live in ease and comfort. They thought they were being rounded up for the slaughterhouse, so they squealed and bawled and ran for their lives and crashed into each other, fighting like cornered beasts. Hu Bin, who’d done all those bad things during my ox years, was put flat on his back by a crazed white pig that butted him in the belly He struggled to sit up, ashen-faced and bathed in a cold sweat, holding his belly with his hands and moaning. This luckless bumpkin who harbored dark thoughts and had too high an opinion of himself wanted to be a part of damned near everything, and he always got the worst of things. So while he was despicable, he was also to be pitied. You probably remember how I got even with him on the sandbar by the Grain Barge River, don’t you? Well, in the years since, he’d gotten old and even had trouble speaking, now that his teeth had fallen out. And here I was, a pig not even a year old, young and sprightly, enjoying life. Being reborn over and over may wear a guy out, but it has its advantages.

Another animal, an angry castrated male with half an ear missing and a ring in its nose, bit Chen Dafu on the finger. This rotten individual, who’d once had illicit dealings with Qiuxiang, screamed so loud you’d have thought the pig had taken off his whole hand. In contrast to these useless men, the slow-moving middle-aged women – Yingchun, Qiuxiang, Bai Lian, and Zhao Lan – bent at the waist, stretched out their arms, made gentle sounds with their tongues, and, with friendly smiles, got close to some of the pigs that had been forced into a corner. Despite the filth covering the animals, there were no looks of disgust on the faces of these women, just genuine smiles. The pigs oinked but didn’t run away, so the women reached out, disregarding the filth on their bodies, and scratched their hides. Pigs never pass up a good scratching, and people love to be flattered. The animals’ fighting will evaporated; shutting their eyes blissfully, they swayed a moment or two and then slumped to the ground. The only thing left was for the women to pick up their velvet prisoners and, still scratching them between their legs, carry them over to the pens.

Hong Taiyue praised the women and scorned the rough-and-tumble men.

Amid an earsplitting clamor, all but three of the 1,057 pigs from the Mount Yimeng area were caught and put into pens. One, a dirty yellow female, died, and so did a young black-and-white. The third one was the black boar Diao Xiaosan, who slipped under one of the vehicles and refused to come out. Wang Chen, a core member of the militia, emerged from the feeding shed with a plane tree pole and tried to poke the pig out with it. Diao Xiaosan bit it in two after a tug-of-war, and though I couldn’t see Diao under the vehicle, I could picture what he looked like down there. When he bit the pole in two, the bristles on his back stood straight up and scary green lights flashed in his eyes. He was no pig, he was a wild beast, one that would teach me lots of things over the months to come. He started out as my enemy and wound up as my adviser. As I said earlier, the story of Diao Xiaosan and me will unfold in the pages to come, all dyed in bold colors.

The muscular militiaman and Diao Xiaosan were perfectly matched, and the pole had made only meager inroads. A crowd that had gathered looked on, spellbound. Hong Taiyue leaned over to look under the vehicle; other people did the same, and I tried to conjure up an image of that stubborn, stalwart scalawag. Finally, some of the gawkers decided to come help Wang Chen, but I scorned them all. A fair fight is one-on-one. A bunch of men can’t take pride from ganging up on one pig! I was worried that sooner or later the pole would force him out from under the vehicle, like digging a big turnip out of the ground, but then I heard a crack, and the men holding the pole fell backward in a heap, bringing half the pole with them, teeth marks on the truncated end.

A roar of approval went up from the crowd. Everybody’s like that: they hate the little wrongdoings and minor eccentricities, but revere the big sins and the grotesque. Diao Xiaosan’s behavior hadn’t reached the level of big sin or grotesque, but it had moved well beyond little wrongdoing and eccentricity. Someone brought out another pole and probed around with it. A crack from under the vehicle, and the man threw down his pole and ran away in fear. The ideas came fast and furious after that: some suggested shooting him, others recommended stabbing him with a spear, and some recommended smoking him out. Hong Taiyue shot down all those cruel suggestions. “Those ideas stink worse than shit!” he said sternly. “We’re supposed to be ‘raising’ pigs, not ‘braising’ pigs.” So then someone recommended having one of the bolder women crawl under the vehicle and start scratching him. Even the wildest boar will respect the fairer sex, won’t it? Not even the meanest pig can stay wild if a woman is scratching it, can it? A good idea, but who to send was the obvious question. Huang Tong, still supposed vice chairman of the Revolutionary Committee, but wielding no real authority, supplied an answer: “When great rewards are offered, brave women will respond! Whoever crawls under the vehicle and subdues that wild boar gets a bonus of three days’ work points!” With a sneer, Hong Taiyue said, “That sounds like a good job for your wife!” Wu Qiuxiang quickly moved to the back of the crowd. “You and your big mouth,” she berated Huang Tong. “It gets you into trouble every time! I wouldn’t go under there for three hundred work points!” Her words still hung in the air when Ximen Jinlong emerged from the pig feed preparation room of the pig-tenders dormitory, at the far end of the apricot grove, between the lovely Huang daughters. He pushed them away, but they came together and followed him, like a pair of comely bodyguards. Bringing up the rear of this procession were Ximen Baofeng, medical kit on her back, Lan Jiefang, Bai Xing’er, Mo Yan, and others. Except for Ximen Jinlong, whose face was grimy, they were all carrying buckets of pig feed. I could smell the fragrance even with apricot leaves stuffed up my nose: it was a mash made of cottonseed cake, sweet potatoes, black bean paste, and sweet potato leaves. Milky white steam rose from the sunlit wooden buckets, spreading the fragrance around. Great clouds of steam poured from the buckets. It was a motley procession, yet there was a certain solemnity about it, sort of like mess cooks taking food to frontline soldiers, and I knew that the half starved Mount Yimeng pigs would be chomping and chewing in no time; their days of ease and comfort were under way.

“Here he is,” the crowd roared, “he’ll save the day.”

“Jinlong,” Hong Taiyue said, “be careful. That’s a crazed animal down there. I don’t want to see it injured, and I certainly don’t want you to be hurt. You’re both too valuable to the Ximen Village Brigade.”

Jinlong bent down and looked under the vehicle, then picked up a piece of broken tile and threw it in. In my mind’s eye I could see Diao Xiaosan crunch the tile into pieces, an angry, bone-chilling glare spewing from his tiny eyes. Jinlong stood up, the hint of a smile on his cheeks. It was a look I knew well, one that meant he had a plan, and it was almost always an intriguing plan. He whispered something to Hong Taiyue, as if keeping a secret from Diao Xiaosan. There was no need for that, since, as far as I knew, no pig in the world, except me, understood human language.

Hong smiled, thumped Jinlong on the shoulder, and said: “Only you could come up with something like that!” After about as long as it takes to smoke half a cigarette, Ximen Baofeng came running over with a couple of snow-white steamed buns that had been soaked in liquid, the redolence of liquor heavy in the air, and I knew what Jinlong had in mind. He’d get Diao Xiaosan drunk. If I’d been Diao, I wouldn’t have fallen for it. But he was, after all, a pig, and he lacked the intelligence to match his wildness. Jinlong tossed the liquor-soaked buns under the vehicle. Don’t eat those, brother, I muttered to myself. You’ll fall into human hands if you do. He ate them. How did I know? By the triumphant grins on Jinlong and Hong Taiyue’s faces.

Jinlong crawled under the vehicle and dragged the loopy Diao Xiaosan out with ease. He dumped the grunting drunk into a new pen separated from mine by a wall. Our pens were reserved for single occupants, specifically stud animals; obviously, Diao Xiaosan would be expected to sire litters of new pigs, which seemed absurd to me. I was a husky, long-bodied animal with a nice pink hide, a short snout, and fat ears – in other words, a handsome pig. Selecting me for stud purposes made perfect sense. But you’ve already been informed of Diao Xiaosan’s appearance and lack of grace. What kind of progeny could an inferior animal like that produce? Years later I came to realize that Jinlong and Hong Taiyue’s decision had been the right one. Back in the 1970s, when everything was in short supply, pork was hard to come by, and the people longed for meat that would melt in their mouths. But now, with the standard of living so high, the jaded people had lost their taste for domesticated ones. Diao Xiaosan’s offspring could be sold as game animals. But we’ll come to that later.

Needless to say, as a pig with extraordinary intelligence, my first concern was self-protection. So when I saw them carrying Diao Xiaosan my way, I knew what they had in mind. I quickly and quietly sprawled atop a pile of dry grass and leaves in a corner of the wall to pretend I was asleep. I heard the racket in the pen next to mine, including Diao Xiaosan’s snores and praise for me from Hong Taiyue and Jinlong. I watched them by opening my eyes just a crack. The sun was high in the sky, lighting up their faces with a golden sheen.

24

Brigade Members Light a Bonfire to Celebrate Good News

Pig King Steals Knowledge and Listens to Fine Words

Uncle, or should I say, Brother, Big-head Lan Qiansui said to me in the accent of a Beijing hoodlum, from here on let’s recall together that glorious late autumn, and the most glorious day in that glorious late autumn. The leaves in the apricot grove were red as cinnabar under a cloudless sky, as, for the first and last time in the history of Gaomi County, in support of the pig-raising program, an on-site conference was held at the Ximen Village Apricot Garden Pig Farm. It was heralded as an event of great creativity, a report to which the provincial newspaper devoted considerable space. County and commune cadres associated with this on-site conference were promoted in its wake, and in the area’s historical chronicles it constituted a glorious page for Ximen Village.

In planning for the on-site conference, members of the production brigade, under the leadership of Hong Taiyue, the direction of Jinlong, and the guidance of Guo Baohu, vice chairman of the Commune Revolutionary Committee, worked day and night for a week. Happily, it was a slack time in the fields, with no crops in the ground, so there was no interference with village farm work; but it wouldn’t have mattered even had it occurred during the busiest time of the season, since politics came first, production second. Raising pigs was a political enterprise, and politics was everything; all else had to give way to it.

News of the impending gathering lent a holiday mood to the village. Party secretary Hong Taiyue made the announcement over the loudspeaker, the excitement in his voice bringing villagers out of their houses, even though it was after nine at night, and the “Internationale” had already been played over that same loudspeaker. Normally, at this time, commune members would be in bed, including the newlyweds of the Wang family who lived at the western edge of the village, and who would be having sex about then. But the good news fired up the villagers and introduced a change in their lives. Now why haven’t you asked me how a pig living in a pen in the depths of an apricot grove would know what was going on in the village? Well, I’ll admit that by then I was in the habit of jumping over the wall at night to check out the other pigpens and flirt with the young sows from Mount Yimeng, and then take a risky stroll through the village, so I was privy to all its secrets.

The commune members paraded up and down the streets with torches in their hands and smiles on their faces. Why were they so happy? Because the village would derive great benefits from becoming a model. The procession ended in the brigade compound, where the people awaited the arrival of the Party secretary and other dignitaries. Hong Taiyue, a jacket draped over his shoulders, stood in the light of the gas lantern and said: Comrade commune members, holding a countywide pig-raising on-site conference in our village demonstrates the Party’s affection for us and, at the same time, is a test of our abilities. We must make every effort in planning for this gathering and take advantage of the east wind it creates to elevate our pig-raising to new heights. We now have only a thousand head, but we must increase that to five thousand, to ten thousand, and then when we reach twenty thousand pigs, we will travel to the capital to report to Chairman Mao!

The people were in no mood to leave after the Party secretary had spoken, especially young men and women, who were always looking for a way to release their bottled-up energy. They were fired up, ready to climb trees and go down in wells, to commit murder and arson, to fight the imperialists, revisionists, and reactionaries to the death; this was no night for sleeping! The four Sun brothers burst into the office without the Party secretary’s permission and took the cymbals and drums from the desk, where they had gathered dust for a very long time. Mo Yan, who always wanted to be a part of everything and was a real pain most of the time, someone who was not easily shamed and could not care less, led the way by putting the drum on his back; after that the other youngsters furnished themselves with Cultural Revolution banners, and the whole bunch of them formed a loud, colorful procession that wound its way from east to west, then turned and wound its way back from west to east, throwing such a scare into perching crows that they flew off with loud caws. The procession ended in the center of the pig farm. Slightly west of my pen and north of the two hundred pens holding the Mount Yimeng pigs, on the very spot where the wild boar Diao Xiaosan had gotten drunk, Mo Yan recklessly, if boldly, lit a bonfire of limbs and branches of apricot trees left over from construction of the pens. With flames licking upward and creating a sound like gale winds, the unique aroma of burning fruit trees spread throughout the compound. Hong Taiyue was of a mind to chastise Mo Yan until he saw the excitement on the faces of youngsters who danced around the fire and sang at the top of their lungs, so he changed his mind and joined in. The people celebrated boisterously; the pigs were frightened witless. As Mo Yan fed the fire, the flames cast a blinding glow onto his face, giving him the appearance of a freshly painted temple demon. Now, though I hadn’t formally been anointed Pig King, my authority among the pigs was well established. So I rushed up to the rows of pens.

“Don’t be frightened,” I announced at the first pen in each row. “The good times are on their way!

“A conference in conjunction with the pig-raising program will be held in our village, which means the good times for us are on their way,” I shouted before returning to my pen. I didn’t want people to be aware of my night roaming until I was anointed Pig King, though even if they’d known, there’d have been no way to stop me. I’d no sooner leaped over the wall than I heard a shrill cry as my hooves landed on something soft and springy. What I saw enraged me. My next-door neighbor, Diao Xiaosan, had made good use of my absence by coming into my home and sleeping on my bed. My skin began to itch and my eyes nearly popped out of my head when I looked down at that ugly, filthy body sleeping in my luxury quarters. Those poor golden wheat stalks! Those poor red and redolent apricot leaves! The bastard had soiled my bed, and I was sure it wasn’t the first time. Anger boiled up in me, my strength rose to my head, and I heard the gnashing of my own teeth. And damned if he didn’t look up with a smile, nod, and run over to the apricot tree to take a piss. As a cultured creature who valued hygiene, I always relieved myself out next to the southwest wall, where there was a hole. I made sure my stream went out through the hole, not leaving a drop inside my pen. The apricot tree, on the other hand, was where I did my daily exercise, since the ground there was smooth and clean, as if paved with marble. When I did my pull-up exercises, my hooves clicked on the ground when I landed. But now my beautiful spot was polluted by this bastard’s piss.

Concentrating all my strength up front, like a Qigong master who breaks rocks with his head, I took aim at the bastard’s rump – to be accurate, I took aim at the big pair of balls that hung just below there – and charged. I hit him and bounced backward; my hind legs crumpled and I wound up sitting on the ground. When I looked up, there he stood, rump high in the air, spilling a load of you-know-what just before he went headfirst into the wall, like a cannonball, and bounced right back. All that happened in a split second, and to me it seemed half real and half illusion. The reality part was seeing that bastard lying at the base of the wall like a dead pig, right where I had my bowel movements, just the spot for a smelly bag of shit like him to sleep in. The bastard was twitching, balling up, his back arched like a threatening cat, and all I could see of his eyes were the whites; the best comparison I can think of is the look of contempt a working man gives to a bourgeois intellectual. I felt a little dizzy, my nose hurt, and I had tears in my eyes.

The son of a bitch had to be dead, which, to be honest, was not what I wanted. I kind of liked his primitive wildness. So I tapped his belly. He twitched and he grunted. At least he wasn’t dead. That was good news. I tapped him again, and again he grunted, but this time his eyes began to return to normal, though his body remained motionless.

I’d read in Reference News that a virgin male animal’s urine had life-giving properties. The ancient physician Li Shizhen mentioned this in his classic compendium Materia Medica, but with few details. In the days I’m referring to, Reference News was the only newspaper in the country that printed a bit of the truth; only lies and hollow words found their way into the other media. For that reason I was so obsessed with Reference News that, if you want to know the truth, one of the reasons I went out walking at night was to sneak over to the brigade HQ to listen to Mo Yan read from Reference News, his favorite newspaper. At the time, his hair was dry and brittle, his ears covered with chilblains. He wore a tattered lined coat and a pair of beat-up straw sandals. When you add in his squinty eyes, you can see what an ugly sight he presented. But this strange apparition was a devoted patriot and a keen internationalist. He volunteered for the post of late-night HQ watchman in order to gain the privilege of reading Reference News.

I poured some of my urine into Diao Xiaosan’s mouth, and when I saw his blackened teeth, I thought, You bastard, I’m cleaning your damned teeth for you. Some of the urine splashed into his eyes, though I tried to control my aim. You bastard, I’m giving you eyedrops. He swallowed what for him was top-quality medicine and began to grunt. His eyes opened all the way; my magical tonic had brought him back from the dead. Shortly after I finished pissing, he stood up, took a few tentative steps; his hindquarters wobbled a bit, like the tail of a fish struggling in shallow water. He leaned up against the wall, shook his head, and came to, like waking from a dream.

“Ximen Pig,” he cursed, “fuck you!

The bastard knew who I was! That was a surprise. After several rebirths, I don’t mind admitting that I’d pretty much stopped linking myself with that poor bastard Ximen Nao of many years before. And one thing’s for certain, not a single villager knew a thing about my past. So you can imagine how puzzled I was that this Mount Yimeng bastard had called me Ximen Pig. But one of my greatest attributes was the ability to put anything that stumped me out of my mind. Ximen Pig was Ximen Pig, the victor, and you, Diao Xiaosan, the loser.

“Diao Xiaosan,” I said, “I opened your eyes today. There’s no reason to feel humiliated by drinking my urine. In fact, you should be grateful. Without it, you wouldn’t be breathing now, and if you weren’t breathing, you’d miss tomorrow’s festivities. And if you missed tomorrow’s festivities, you’d have lived a pig’s life for nothing.”

“You and I aren’t finished,” Diao said through clenched teeth. “One of these days you’ll feel the might of a Mount Yimeng pig. I’ll teach you that a tiger does not survive by eating corn cakes, and that the Earth God’s pecker is made of stone.”

I laughed off his threats and told him I accepted his challenge, that I’d be waiting: There can only be one tiger on a mountain, and two donkeys cannot be tethered to the same trough. The Earth God’s pecker may be made of stone, but his female counterpart does not have a clay receptacle. A pig farm can have but one pig king, and the day will come when you and I will fight to the death. Today’s run-in doesn’t count. It was just one louse pitted against another, pig against pig. But the next time it’ll be out in the open. In the interest of fairness and transparency, just so there’ll be no doubt as to the outcome, we can select several fair-minded, ethical old pigs who are familiar with the rules of competition and widely knowledgeable as judges. Now I ask only that the gentleman leave my quarters. I raised a front leg and saluted him, my hoof looking as if it were carved from fine jade in the light of the bonfire.

I’d expected the wild bastard to leave in spectacular fashion, but he disappointed me. He merely made himself as thin as possible and squeezed through the metal slats of the gate. His head was the hardest to get through, and required lots of bumping and clanging, but once that was through, the rest of his body followed easily. I didn’t have to see to know that was how he’d reenter his own pen. Crawling through openings to get into something is the way dogs and cats do it; no proper pig would ever lower himself to that sort of behavior. If you’re going to be a pig, then your schedule should be: eat and sleep, sleep and eat; fatten up for your owner, get good and meaty for your owner, then be taken by your owner to the slaughterhouse. Otherwise, be like me: Have a good time doing something that shocks them when they finally see it. And so, after seeing that mangy dog of a pig, Diao Xiaosan, slink his way through the slats of my gate, his stock plummeted in my eyes.

25

A High Official Speaks Grandly at an On-site conference

An Outlandish Pig Puts on a Show beneath an Apricot Tree

Sorry I’m only now getting around to talking about the glories surrounding the pig-raising local on-site conference. The entire commune was caught up in preparations for the gathering for a whole week, and I devoted an entire chapter to it.

Let me begin with the pig farm walls, which were newly whitewashed – to sterilize them, we were told – then covered with slogans in red, all pig-related, but also tied to world revolution. Who wrote them? Who else but Ximen Jinlong! The two most talented youngsters in Ximen Village were Ximen Jinlong and Mo Yan. Here’s how Hong Taiyue evaluated the two of them: Ximen Jinlong had upright talents, Mo Yan had deviant talents. Mo Yan was seven years younger than Jinlong, and when Jinlong was in the spotlight, Mo Yan was building up strength, like a fat bamboo shoot still in the ground. At the time, no one paid the kid any attention. He was almost unbelievably ugly and carried on in the most peculiar ways. Given to saying crazy things that had people scratching their heads, he was to some an annoyance and to others a pariah. Even members of his family called him a moron. “Mom,” his sister often asked their mother, “is he really your son? Couldn’t Father have found him abandoned in a mulberry grove when he was out collecting dung?” Mo Yan’s elder brothers and sisters were tall and good looking, easily the equals of Jinlong, Baofeng, Huzhu, and Hezuo. Mother would sigh and say, “The night he was born, your father dreamed that an imp dragging a big writing brush behind him came into our house, and when your father asked him where he’d come from, he said the Halls of Hell, where he’d been Lord Yama’s personal secretary. Your father was puzzling over the dream when he heard the loud wails of a baby in the next room, after which the midwife came out and announced: “Congratulations, sir, your wife has given you a son.” I suspect that Mo Yan’s mother made up most of this tale to give her son some respectability in the village, since stories like that have been a part of China’s popular tradition for a long time. If you go to Ximen Village today – the village has been turned into the Phoenix Open Economic Region, and the farmlands of those days have been supplanted by towering structures that look neither Chinese nor Western – people still talk – more than ever, actually – about Mo Yan, Lord Yama’s personal secretary.

The 1970s were Ximen Jinlong’s era; Mo Yan would have to wait a decade for his talents to be on display. For now, what I saw was Ximen Jinlong about to plaster slogans over all the walls in preparation for the pig-raising on-site conference. Wearing blue sleeve covers and white gloves, he was assisted by Huang Huzhu, who held a bucket of red paint, and Hezuo, who had yellow paint. The smell of paint was heavy in the air. Before that day, the slogans had all been written in chalk. The funds allocated for the gathering made it possible to buy paint. With his customary mastery of the written word, Jinlong painted the headings in red with a big brush, then outlined them in yellow with a small one. The effect was astonishingly eyecatching, like a woman made beautiful with red lipstick and blue eyeliner. The crowd watching him work was loud in its praise. The sixth wife of old Ma, who was a bigger flirt even than Wu Qiuxiang, said with all the charm she could manage:

“Brother Jinlong, if I were twenty years younger, I’d be your wife no matter how many women I had to fight off. And if not your wife, then your mistress!”

“You’d be last in line for anybody choosing a mistress!” someone commented.

Ma’s sixth wife batted her eyes at Huzhu and Hezuo.

“You’re right,” she said. “If these two fairies were in that line, I’d be last for sure. Shouldn’t you be plucking these two flowers, young man? You’d better move fast before somebody else tastes their freshness first!”

The Huang sisters blushed bright red; Jinlong was noticeably embarrassed too. “Shut up, you slut,” he said, raising his brush threateningly, “or I’ll paint your mouth shut!”

I know how the mere mention of the Huang sisters affects you, Jiefang, but I can’t omit them when I’m turning back the pages of history. Besides, even if I left them out of my narration, Mo Yan would be bound to write about them sooner or later. Every resident of Ximen Village will find himself in one of Mo Yan’s notorious books. So, as I was saying, the slogans were written and the trunks of apricot trees whose bark hadn’t been scraped clean were lime-washed; school kids, who climbed like monkeys, had decorated the limbs and branches with strips of colored paper.

Any campaign that lacks the participation of students lacks life. Add students, and things start to happen. Even if your stomach is grumbling, there’s a festive holiday spirit. Under the leadership of Ma Liangcai and the young teacher who wore her hair in a braid and spoke Mandarin, more than a hundred of Ximen Village’s elementary students scurried in all directions amid the trees, like an assembly of squirrels. About fifty yards due south of my pigpen there were two apricot trees roughly five yards apart at the base but whose canopies seemed to have grown together. Several excited, raucous boys took off their tattered coats and went naked from the waist, wearing only tattered pants, with moldy cotton leaking out of the crotches, like the dirty tails of Tibetan yaks, swinging from tough but pliable limbs like a bunch of monkeys until they were moving fast and far enough to let go and sail from one tree to the other.

Now, then, let’s continue with the gathering. The trees, as we’ve seen, had been decorated to look like old witches, and red banners had been planted every five yards on both sides of the north-south path down the middle of the pig farm. A platform had been raised in the clearing, with rush mats, covered by red cloth, on each side. A banner had been hung horizontally in the center, with writing on it, of course. The words? Given the occasion, any Chinese knows the answer to that, so there’s no need for me to go into it here.

What I want to relate is that in honor of the gathering Huang Tong drove a double-axle donkey cart to the sundries section of the commune supply and marketing co-op and returned with two large Boshan vats, three hundred Tangshan ceramic bowls, ten metal ladles, ten jin of brown sugar, and ten jin of refined sugar. What for? So people could help themselves to a free bowlful of sugar water any time they wanted while the on-site conference was in progress. I knew that Huang had pocketed some of the money he’d been given to make these purchases. How did I know that? By the way he fidgeted when he handed the receipts to the accountant and the person in charge of brigade finances. I’m also sure he sampled the sugar on the way over, though he blamed the shortage on the people at the co-op. The way he hid behind an apricot tree to puke proved that a lot of the sugar had found its way into his stomach.

Next I want to talk about one of Ximen Jinlong’s bold ideas. Since this was a gathering on raising pigs, the pigs played the leading role. In other words, the meeting would succeed or fail based upon the appearance of the pigs. Here’s the way Jinlong put it to Hong Taiyue: You can say that the Apricot Garden Pig Farm is as pretty as a fresh flower if you want to, but if the pigs are ugly, you won’t fool the masses. And since the high point of the on-site conference will be reached when the masses and visiting VIPs tour the pens, if the pigs they see there are unattractive, the on-site conference will be a failure, and the dream of Ximen Village to become a model for the county, the province, even the whole country, will go up in smoke. Upon his return to service, Hong Taiyue was clearly grooming Jinlong as his successor, and after Jinlong’s successful purchase of the pigs from Mount Yimeng, his words gained weight. Secretary Hong gave Jinlong his full support.

His recommendation? Wash the pigs three times in salt water, then remove their bristles with barber’s shears. This time Huang Tong was sent to the co-op in the company of the man in charge of finances to purchase five big cook pots, two hundred Jin of table salt, fifty barber kits, and a hundred bars of the most expensive and most fragrant toilet soap. But carrying out the plan proved to be more difficult than Jinlong had imagined. About the only way they could have bathed and trimmed a bunch of crafty pigs from Mount Yimeng was to stab them to death first. The plan was put into effect three days before the meeting began, but by noon on the first day they still hadn’t cleaned up a single pig, and the man in charge had had a bite taken out of his rear end by one of the animals.

It pained Jinlong to see his plan failing. Then, two days before the meeting opened, he smacked himself on the forehead, like a man who’d snapped out of a dream. “How could I have been so stupid?” he said. Reminded of the liquor-soaked bun he’d used to trick Diao Xiaosan not long before, he immediately went to report to Hong Taiyue, who also saw the light. Back to the co-op, this time to buy liquor. Seeing no need to buy good stuff just to get pigs drunk, they settled on potato liquor that sold for half a yuan per jin. Everyone was sent home to steam the buns, but that order was quickly countermanded. Pigs, after all, will eat rocks if you let them, so why waste the flour? Hard corn bread would work just as well. For that matter, who needs corn? They could simply soak the pigs’ bran meal with the liquor in the trough. So they placed a big vat of liquor beside the stove, poured three ladles’ full into each bucket of bran, mixed it, and cooked it; then you, Jiefang, and the others carried the mixture over to the pigpens and dumped it into their troughs. The smell of alcohol lay so heavy over the pens that pigs with the smallest capacity for liquor got drunk just by breathing in the air.

Now I was a stud pig who would soon take up a special job assignment, one that required a body in perfect condition. The head of the farm, Ximen Jinlong, knew this better than anyone, and he made sure I was well fed, meat included, and no cottonseed filler, from the very beginning. Cottonseed filler had something in it that could kill male sperm cells. My feed contained bean cake, dried yams, and a small amount of fine leaves. It had a wonderful fragrance, was highly nutritious, and was good enough for people to eat, let alone pigs. As time passed and concepts changed, people began to recognize the fact that what I was given was true health food. Its nutritional value and safety were a considerable improvement over the poultry, fish, and meat humans normally eat.

Well, they put a ladle full of alcohol into my feed as well. In all fairness, I had a respectable capacity for alcohol, not unlimited, but a stiff drink or two had no effect on my thinking, my awareness, or my movements. I was nothing like my neighbor, that clown Diao Xiaosan, who’d fallen into a drunken stupor after eating a couple of liquor-soaked buns. But a ladleful of the stuff in my feed hit me hard within minutes.

Shit! I was dizzy, my legs were like cotton, and I felt like I was floating on a cloud. My home started to spin, the apricot tree began to sway, and the unpleasant squeals and grunts of the Mount Yimeng pigs suddenly filled my ears like lovely folk songs. It was the alcohol, I knew it. When Diao Xiaosan got drunk, his eyes rolled back into his head and he was out like a light, snoring and farting loudly. But I was different: I wanted to dance and sing. As the king of pigs, I retained my poise and graceful demeanor even when drunk. Except that I forgot to keep my special skills secret. All eyes were on me as I leaped into the air, like an earthling jumping to the moon, all the way up into the apricot tree, where I landed perfectly on two adjacent limbs. If it had been a poplar or willow, I’d have broken the limbs for sure, but apricot limbs have lots of give, and for me it was like riding a wave. I saw Lan Jiefang and the others as they crisscrossed Apricot Garden with food for the pigs; I saw pink smoke rising from the makeshift stove the pens; and finally I saw my neighbor Diao Xiaosan lying on his back, feet in the air, so drunk you could have slit his belly open and he wouldn’t have murmured a complaint. Then I saw the lovely Huang twins and Mo Yan’s elder sister in their clean white work smocks with red “Apricot Garden Pig Farm” lettering on the breast, watching Master Lin, the barber sent over from the commune HQ, as he showed them how to use the scissors in their hands. Master Lin, whose hair was as coarse as pig bristles, had a thin, gaunt face and big, bony knuckles. He had such a heavy southern accent the girls could hardly understand a word he said. I watched the pigtailed Mandarin-speaking teacher patiently teach the youngsters how to dance and sing. We quickly learned that the skit was called “The Little Pig Red Girl Goes to Beijing,” a popular skit that borrowed music from the folk tradition. Playing the part of Red Girl was the prettiest girl in the village; the other parts were for boys, all of them wearing pig masks with foolish expressions. As I watched the children dance and listened to them sing, my artistic cells got the itch, and I started to move, which made the limbs I was standing on creak. I opened my mouth to sing, and surprised – no, frightened – myself by the loud oinks that emerged. All along I’d thought I’d be able to sing like humans, but what did I get? Oinks! How depressing! But I reminded myself that mynah birds can imitate human speech, and I have heard that dogs and cats can too, and by thinking hard, I recalled how, both as a donkey and an ox, at critical moments, I was able to squeeze human sounds out of my coarse throat that could rouse the deaf and awaken the unhearing.

My “speech” drew the attention of the girls who were learning how to give pig haircuts. Mo Yan’s sister was the first to react: “Look, there’s a pig in the tree!” Mo Yan, who’d tried everything to be assigned a job at the pig farm, only to be denied the opportunity by Hong Taiyue, squinted and shouted: “If the Americans can make it to the moon, why get excited about a pig in a tree?” His words, unfortunately, were drowned out by the girls’ screams; no one heard him. Then he said, “There’s a wild boar in the South American rain forest that builds its nest in the crotch of a tree. They’re mammals that have feathers and lay eggs that hatch in seven days!” Once again his words were drowned out by the girls’ screams, and no one heard him. All of a sudden I found myself wanting to become friends with this guy. “Pal,” I wanted to say, “as long as you understand me, when I have the time one day, I’ll treat you to a few drinks.” But that was drowned out by the girls’ screams too.

The thoroughly delighted girls came running toward me, led by Ximen Jinlong. I waved with my left hoof. “How do you do?” I said. They didn’t understand me, of course, but they knew it was a friendly gesture. But then they doubled up laughing. “What’s so funny? Behave yourselves!” I know, I know, those giggling girls still didn’t understand me. Crinkling his brow, Jinlong said, “This one’s got a trick or two up his sleeve. I hope he’ll climb that tree again at tomorrow’s gathering.” He opened the gate to my pen and said to the girls behind him, “Come on, girls, we’ll start with this one.” He walked up to the tree and scratched my belly with an experienced hand. It felt so good I could have died right then and there. “Pig Sixteen,” he said, “we’re going to give you a bath and a haircut. When we’re finished, you’ll be the handsomest pig in the world. I hope you’ll cooperate and set a good example for the rest of them.” He turned and gave the high-sign to four militiamen behind him who ran up and – you guessed it – each grabbed one of my legs. They were strong and, since they were used to treating people roughly, hurt me as they pulled me down out of the tree. “You pricks!” I cursed angrily. “Instead of lighting incense in the temple, you’re destroying the idol!” My curses went in one ear and out the other as they dragged me on my back up to the cook pot filled with salt water and tossed me in! Some deep-seated fear gave me strength I didn’t know I had, and the liquor I’d consumed turned to cold sweat. A thought hit me like a hammer: I recalled that before the new butcher law took effect, pork was eaten with the skin still on, and pigs scheduled for slaughter were tossed into just this sort of pot to soften up their bristles, which were shaved away before their heads and feet were cut off, their bellies slit open, and they were hung on a rack to be sold. The second my feet hit the bottom of the pot, I jumped out so fast I scared them all. Just my bad luck to jump out of one pot and into another, and this time the warm water swallowed me right up. I can’t tell you how good that felt. It broke my will. I didn’t have the strength to jump out this time. The girls surrounded the pot and started scrubbing me with coarse brushes under Ximen Jinlong’s direction. I moaned, my eyelids drooped, and I just about fell asleep. When they were finished, the militiamen lifted me out of the pot, and when the cool air hit my body, I was sluggish and light as a feather. So the girls started in with their scissors, trimming the hair on my head and then brushing the bristles on my back. Ximen Jinlong thought it would be nice to cut the hair on both sides in the shape of plum blossoms, but they wound up shaving it all off. There was nothing Jinlong could do about that except add slogans with red paint: “Mate for the revolution” on the left side, “Bring benefits to the people” on the right. Then he dressed up the slogans by adding plum blossoms and sunflowers with red and yellow paint, turning me into a sort of bulletin board. When he was finished, he stepped back to admire his handiwork, wearing a mischievous smile that couldn’t cover up the look of self-satisfaction. Everyone was shouting and calling me a great-looking pig.

If they could have beautified all the pigs on the farm the way they did me, then every one of them would have been a work of art. That would have been hard. Merely bathing them in salt water was out of the question, especially since the day of the on-site conference was rapidly approaching. Absent any obvious solution, Jinlong had to adjust his plans. What he came up with was to draw some simple but artistic samples of facial makeup, which he gave to twenty clever and skillful young men and women, along with a bucket of paint and two brushes, with instructions to paint the pigs’ faces while they were still under the influence: red paint for the white pigs, white for the blacks, and yellow for all the others. For a while, the youngsters threw themselves into their work, but slapdash results soon became the norm. Even though the late-autumn skies were clear and the air was fresh, a horrible stink hung over the pigpens, not the sort of atmosphere that fostered a good work ethic. The young women dedicated themselves to the task at hand from the start and refused to do sloppy work no matter how unhappy they might be. The young men would have none of that. They just slapped paint on the pigs’ bodies. White pigs wound up with red spots all over, as if they’d been hit by a shotgun blast with red pellets; black pigs were given white faces that made them look like sly old scoundrels or treacherous court officials. One of the youths, Mo Yan, to be precise, painted large-framed white spectacles on four black animals and red legs on four white sows.

Finally, the pig-raising convention got under way, and since I’d already given away my tree-climbing secret trick, there was no reason to hold back. In an attempt to keep the pigs from acting up and to impress the visiting VIPs, the quality of feed was raised and the quantity of liquor doubled. The pigs were blind drunk by the time the gathering was called to order. The smell of alcohol in the air was unmistakable, but Jinlong brazenly announced that what they smelled was a newly perfected fermented feed. He told everyone that the new feed required very little high-quality ingredients, but the nutritional value was surprisingly high and kept the animals from acting up or running around. They ate, they slept, and they put on weight. In recent years a lack of nutritional food, which had adversely influenced the birth rate of pigs, had become a matter of great concern. The creation of this new fermented feed solved that problem and paved the way for the commune to actively develop its pig-raising enterprise.

“Esteemed leaders, comrades, I am pleased to announce that our new fermented feed is an international breakthrough. We make it out of leaves, grass, and grain stalks. In other words, we’ve turned cast-off items into high-quality pork, which in turn produces a more nutritious food for our citizens and digs a grave for the imperialists, revisionists, and reactionaries.”

A cool breeze brushed my belly as I lay cradled up in the apricot tree. A cluster of audacious sparrows that had landed on my head were pecking away at crumbs from the corners of my mouth all the way back to my ears. Their pointy beaks had a numbing, even slightly painful effect on my ultrasensitive ears, with their tight web of capillaries and nerves, sort of like an acupuncture treatment. Such contentment, I could barely keep my eyes open. I knew Jinlong would have liked nothing more than for me to be fast asleep up there. That way he could put that oily mouth of his to use – he could talk a dead pig back to life – saying anything he wanted. But I didn’t want to sleep. In the long history of humankind, this was surely the first such meeting focused on pigs, and who could say if there would ever be a second? If I slept through such a momentous meeting, the remorse would last for three thousand years! Since I was a pampered pig, I could sleep pretty much whenever I wanted. Now was not one of those moments. I flapped my ears as a means of slapping my cheeks and letting everyone know I had standard ears, not the kind that adorned the heads of the Yimeng pigs, which stood straight up like dog ears. I realize, of course, that these days there are lots of urban dogs whose ears hang down like worn-out socks. Modern people have too much time on their hands, so they bring all sorts of unrelated animals together to mate and produce bizarre offspring, a true blasphemy to God, who will punish them one day. After flapping my ears vigorously to shoo some sparrows away, I picked a blood-red leaf from the apricot tree, put it in my mouth, and began to chew, its bitter, puckery taste working like tobacco to keep me wide awake. So then, from my commanding position, I began observing the goings-on around me to get a thorough grasp of what transpired at the pig-raising convention, taking comprehensive mental notes in a way that surpassed the most technologically advanced machines of today, since they are limited to recording sounds and images, while I could include overall flavors and my feelings.

Don’t argue with me. Pang Hu’s daughter messed up your mind so much that even though you’re only in your early fifties, your eyes are glazed over and your reactions are dulled, both warning signs of dementia. So I advise you not to stick stubbornly to your opinions or think you can debate me. I can confidently tell you that when the pig-raising convention was held in Ximen Village, the village was not equipped with electricity. That’s right, you yourself said it, people were burying concrete poles in the fields just outside the village at the time, but those were for high-voltage wires for the state-run farm, which belonged to the Jinan Military District and was designated an independent production and construction corps. Its leading cadres were military men on active duty, its laboring force made up of rusticated high-school graduates from Qingdao and Jinan. It goes without saying that an operation like that required electricity; we would have to wait a decade for electrification to reach Ximen Village. What that meant at the time was when night fell during the convention, except for the pig farm, blackness settled over the entire Ximen Village Production Brigade.

That’s right, my pen was lit up by a hundred-watt bulb, which I taught myself how to turn on and off. The electricity was supplied by the Apricot Garden Pig Farm. In those days we called it “self-generated power.” A twelve-horsepower diesel motor generated the power. It was Jinlong’s idea. Go ask Mo Yan if you don’t believe me. He came up with a wild idea that ended up very badly. I’ll get to that in a minute.

A pair of loudspeakers hanging from the sides of the stage amplified the words of Ximen Jinlong a good five hundred times, and I figured all of Northeast Gaomi Township was within range of his boastful speech. Six tables taken from the elementary school were lined up at the rear of the stage and covered with red cloth. County government and commune VIPs, in their blue or gray uniforms, were seated on six benches, also taken from the school. Fifth from the left, a man whose army uniform was nearly white from many launderings was a recently retired regimental commander who’d taken charge of the production division of the County Revolutionary Committee. Ximen Village Brigade Party Secretary Hong Taiyue sat to his right. He was freshly shaved and had just had his hair trimmed; the bald spot on top was covered by a gray army-style cap. His ruddy face looked like an oilpaper lantern shining through the darkness of night. My guess was that he was dreaming of moving up the promotional ladder. If the State Council established a “Pig-Raising” Command Post, he might possibly be tapped as commander. There were fat officials and thin ones, and they all faced the east, looked into the Red Sun, so their faces were always ruddy, their eyes in a perpetual squint. One of them, a dark, fat man, was wearing a pair of sunglasses, something rarely seen in those times. With a cigarette dangling from his mouth, he looked like the leader of a gang of thieves. Jinlong was sitting at a desk also draped with red cloth in front of the stage, speaking into a microphone wrapped in red satin. In those days, that was awesome high-tech equipment. Mo Yan, as always filled with curiosity, had sneaked up to the microphone and tested it out with a couple of dog barks. The magnified barking of dogs rocked the apricot grove and traveled out into the fields with astonishing effect. Mo Yan later wrote about this incident in an essay. This all goes to show that the power for the amplified microphone at the pig-raising convention was not supplied by high-voltage wires strung by the government, but by our own Apricot Garden Pig Farm diesel motor. A five-yard-long, twenty-centimeter-wide leather belt linked the turbine to a generator; when the motor was running, so was the generator, and electric power was the result, something that seemed nearly miraculous. It wasn’t only the more dull-witted residents of Ximen Village who were virtually dumbstruck by what they were witnessing; even I, a very smart pig, had no explanation for what was right in front of my eyes. That’s right, what in the world is this invisible thing called electricity? Where does it come from, and where does it disappear to? After a bonfire burns out, ashes are left behind; digested food becomes feces. But electricity? What does it turn into? This leads me back to when Ximen Jinlong set up the machinery in the two red-brick rooms close to a tall apricot tree in the southeastern corner of the Apricot Garden Pig Farm. After working all day, he did extra duty at night with the aid of a lantern, work that was so mysterious it attracted hordes of curious villagers, including just about all the people I mentioned earlier, with that disgusting Mo Yan elbowing his way all the way up front. Not content to just watch, he talked nonstop, to Jinlong’s great annoyance. Several times Huang Tong grabbed Mo Yan by the ear and dragged him outside, only to have him reappear up front in less than half an hour, leaning up so close his slobber nearly fell on the back of Jinlong’s greasy hands.

I didn’t dare press up to get a look, and I couldn’t climb that particular apricot tree, since the goddamned trunk was too slippery and the lower branches were too high. It looked like one of those white poplars up north, where the branches are all up high, giving it the shape of a torch. But heaven smiled down on me. Behind the rooms where this was all going on was a large grave mound where a dog that had died saving a child was buried. The dog, a black male, had jumped into the roiling waters of Grain Barge River to save the life of a girl who’d fallen in, but the effort had been too much for it, and it had died.

By standing on the grave mound, I could look in through a hole in the wall where a window was supposed to go, and see everything that went on inside. The gas lantern lit the place up like daytime, while outside the sky was pitch-black. It was like they said about class warfare: The enemy is in the light, we’re in the dark. We see what we want to see; we can see them, but they can’t see us. I watched as Jinlong turned the pages of the grimy handbook and wrote things between the lines of a newspaper. Hong Taiyue took out a cigarette, lit it, and took a deep drag, then stuck it in Jinlong’s mouth. Revering intelligence and talent, Hong was one of the rare enlightened cadres of the time. Then there were the Huang twins, who kept Jinlong’s brow dry with their handkerchiefs. I saw you were unmoved when Huang Hezuo dried his sweaty brow, but noticed the look of jealousy on your face when Huang Huzhu did the same thing. You overrate your own appeal, and later events proved that the blue birthmark on your face not only did not keep you from attracting women, it actually was what drew them to you.

I bring this up not to make fun of you. I respect you too much to do that. You must be the only deputy county chief in the country who’s willing to leave his lover without saying good-bye and make a living by the sweat of his brow.

But enough small talk. After the motor was set up, they tested it and found it did in fact produce electric power. And Jinlong became the second most powerful person in Ximen Village. Now I know all about your prejudice against your stepbrother, but you benefited from that relationship. If not for him, would you have been put in charge of the livestock unit? Or would you have been fortunate enough to be assigned as a contract worker at the cotton processing plant in the fall of the second year? And without that experience, would you still have made it into the ranks of officials? You have only yourself to blame for the mess you’ve gotten yourself in now. It’s your fault you couldn’t be master of your own pecker. Ah, what good does all this talk do? Let Mo Yan write about this stuff in his stories.

The meeting went forward without a hitch. After Jinlong outlined their advanced experience, he turned the microphone over to the uniformed production official to sum up. The man strode purposefully up to the table, where he spoke without a prepared speech, with eloquence and authority, although no one could hear him. A man who looked like his secretary ran up to the table at a crouch and bent the microphone straight up, but still not high enough to reach the official’s mouth. The secretary knew what to do intuitively: he placed the bench on top of the table and set the microphone on top of that. A decade later this quick-witted individual would be given the post of county revolutionary committee office manager, in part on the basis of this one incident. The immediate effect was to blare the powerful voice of the onetime regimental commander far and wide.

“Every pig born is a cannon shell fired into the stronghold of the imperialists, revisionists, and reactionaries…” He waved his fist as he shouted his incendiary message to the crowd. That shout and gesture reminded this wise and experienced pig of a movie scene and had me wondering whether being shot from a cannon would be a dizzying and shuddering experience. And what would happen if a fat pig suddenly fell into the stronghold of the imperialists, revisionists, and reactionaries? They’d probably die of sheer joy.

It was, by this time, ten in the morning, and there was no sign that the speech would end anytime soon. I looked over at a pair of green Jeeps at the edge of the clearing, where the white-gloved drivers were leaning against the cabs, one having a leisurely smoke, the other, clearly bored, checking his wristwatch every few seconds. Back then, a Jeep commanded greater respect than a Mercedes or BMW does today, and a watch was far more estimable than a diamond ring now. That watch sparkled in the bright sunlight and caught the eye of several youngsters. Hundreds of bicycles stood in neat rows behind the Jeeps, the means of transportation for all the grassroots attendees from the county, the commune, and the village. A dozen or so armed militiamen formed a protective semicircle around all this material wealth, a clear symbol of the status of the owners.

“We must ride the mighty east wind of the Cultural Revolution to carry out the pig-raising program outlined in the supreme directive of our great leader Chairman Mao, to study the advanced experience of the Ximen Village Production Brigade, and to elevate the raising of pigs to the level of politics…” The official spoke fervently, accentuating his speech with forceful gestures. Shiny saliva bubbles gathered at the corners of his mouth, like a crab trussed up with rice straw.

“What’s going on?” Diao Xiaosan asked as he stood up in his urine-soaked quarters. He had a vacant look in his bloodshot eyes, showing the effects of the alcohol he’d drunk. I had no desire to engage the moron in conversation, but he rose up and rested his chin on the top of his wall to see what was happening outside. He was so hung over he couldn’t keep his balance, and he’d barely gotten his front legs off the ground when his hind legs gave out and deposited him in his own filthy leavings. The almost ridiculously unhygienic pig had piss and shit piled in every corner of his living quarters; just my bad luck to live next door to someone like that. There was white paint on his face and his protruding front teeth were yellow, like a couple of gold inlays favored by rich upstarts.

I saw a dark figure slip out of the audience – the meeting was well attended, anywhere from three to five thousand – and head for the big ceramic vat beneath the apricot tree, where the person bent over and looked inside. I knew what he wanted – sugar water. That was long gone. The people ahead of him had drunk deeply, not because they were thirsty, but for the sugar, one of the sparest commodities of the day, something you got only with a ration card. A mouthful of sugar back then was probably more satisfying than sex is today. For the sake of image, countywide, the leaders of the Ximen Village Production Brigade had called a meeting of commune members to go over all aspects of the on-site conference. One of the items was to forbid any commune member, adult or child, to help himself to sugar water; anyone who had the audacity to disobey would lose a hundred work points. The ugly looks on the faces of people from outlying villages as they fought over the drink was shameful, and I was proud of the Ximen villagers for their high degree of consciousness, or, should I say, their degree of self-control. I noticed the perplexed looks in their eyes as they watched the outsiders drink the sugar water, and though I knew those looks represented complex feelings, I admired the people nonetheless. Holding back like could not have been easy.

But there was one person for whom holding back was simply too difficult. I don’t have to name names for you to know who that person was. He leaned into the vat like a horse drinking water, trying to lick up the last few drops at the bottom. But his neck was too short, the vat too deep, so he found a ladle, strained to tip the vat over, then dipped the ladle into the pooled water. When he let go of his hand, the vat tipped back straight, and I could tell by how carefully he held the ladle that his effort had not been in vain. He either brought the ladle up to his mouth or brought his mouth down to the ladle, I’m not sure which. From the look on his face, I knew he was enjoying a brief taste of the good life. He scraped the last bit of sweetness from the vat with the ladle, making a sound that set my teeth on edge. It was worse than the blaring of loudspeakers and made me tense and uncomfortable. I wished someone would stop him from embarrassing all of Ximen Village; I was afraid I’d fall out of my tree if he kept it up much longer, and I could hear the other pigs stirring. “Stop that scraping,” they shouted through an inebriated haze. “You’re killing us!” Well, he tipped over both vats and crawled into one, probably to lick the bottom. It’s a true marvel to have such a greedy mouth. He reemerged after a while, his clothes shiny; he reeked of something sweet. If it had been springtime, he’d have been swarmed over by bees or butterflies, but it was wintertime – no bees, no butterflies. There were, however, ten or fifteen big, fat flies buzzing around him, two of which landed on his filthy, kinky hair.

“… and we must employ ten times the passion and put forth a hundred times the effort to expand Ximen Village’s advanced experience. Every member of the commune and production brigade must personally take charge. The workers, youth, women, and mass organizations must strive to work together. We must draw tight the class struggle bowstring and reinforce the control and surveillance of all landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, bad elements, and rightists, and be on guard against sabotage by concealed class enemies…”

Mo Yan, smiling happily and whistling, caught my attention by strutting over to the generator room, so I followed him with my eyes, watching him go inside, where the diesel motor was humming along.

“The storekeepers of each brigade must rigorously protect against the theft of pesticides and their introduction into pig feed by class enemies…”

Jiao Er, the duty watchman for the generator, was leaning up against the wall, sound asleep in the warmth of the sun, which gave Mo Yan the opportunity to work his mischief. He undid his belt, dropped his pants, grabbed his pecker with both hands – up till this moment I had no idea what he was planning to do – and took aim at the fan belt, wetting it with a clear stream of piss. A strange sound preceded the slippage of the belt, which hit the ground like a dead boa. The loudspeaker went silent as the generator squealed, its motor spinning uselessly. The clearing and the thousands of people in it were, it seemed, submerged underwater, for the speaker’s voice was suddenly weak and drab, like the dull pops of fish bubbles as they reached the surface. The desired atmosphere was in a shambles. I saw Hong Taiyue stand up, followed by Ximen Jinlong, who got to his feet and strode toward the generator room. At that moment I knew that Mo Yan had done something terrible and that bitter fruit awaited him.

Too dumb to know what trouble he was in, Mo Yan stood in front of the slipped fan belt looking puzzled, wondering how the little bit of water he’d made had caused the belt to come off like that. The first thing Ximen Jinlong did when he burst into the room was slap Mo Yan on the head. The second thing he did was kick Mo Yan in the ass, and the third thing he did was bend down, pick up the fan belt, and replace it on the turbine. But as soon as he let go, off it came again. He tried again, this time using a metal pole, and managed to make it stay. He then coated the belt with a layer of wax, and it held.

“Who told you to do this?” he yelled at Mo Yan.

“Nobody…”

“Then why’d you do it?”

“To cool the belt off.”

The interruption caused by the loudspeaker failure had dealt such a blow to the production HQ VIP that he brought an abrupt end to his speech. After a brief flurry of confusion, the pretty elementary teacher Jin Meili mounted the stage to announce the program. In not-terribly-standard-but-pleasant-sounding Mandarin, she announced to the masses in the clearing and, more important, to the officials who had by then taken seats on both sides of the stage: “The Ximen Village Elementary School Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Team theatrical performance will now begin!” By this time the electricity had been restored to the loudspeakers, from which shrill screeches blasted into the air like darts aimed at birds overhead. Teacher Jin had cut off her braid for the performance and combed her hair in a style made fashionable by Ke Xiang, heroine of the Cultural Revolution drama The Red Lantern; that made her more valiant-looking and, at the same time, prettier and more competent than ever. I was watching people seated on the sides of the stage; all eyes were on her. Some of the men were gazing at her face, others were staring at her waist; the eyes of the first secretary of the Milky Way Commune, Cheng Zhengnan, were glued to her nicely rounded bottom. Ten years later, after a decade of hard times, Jin Meili wound up married to Cheng, now Party secretary of the County Politics and Law Committee. There was a twenty-six-year difference in their ages, which didn’t sit well with people then. Nowadays, who’d even notice?

When she’d finished, Teacher Jin moved off to the side, where an accordion had been placed on a chair, its enamel buttons glittering in the sunlight. Ma Liangcai stood beside her with a bamboo flute, looking somber. After strapping on the accordion, Teacher Jin sat down and began playing beautifully; she was quickly joined by Ma, who produced a sound that could pierce clouds and shatter rocks. As they played a little introductory tune, a group of pudgy revolutionary piglet boys wearing red stomachers with the word loyalty embroidered on their breasts set their stumpy legs in motion and rolled and climbed their way onto the stage. They were such empty-headed, noisy, unthinking little pigs they needed a leader, which came in the person of a young female in red shoes, Little Red, who somersaulted onto the stage. Her mother was a rusticated, artistic woman from Qingdao, so she was blessed with good genes and a remarkable capacity for learning. Little Red’s entrance drew enthusiastic applause, whereas that of the little boy pigs drew only snickers. But they made me happy. Never in the history of the world had a pig performed on a stage for humans; it was a breakthrough that made us real pigs extremely proud. From where I sat in my tree, I raised a hoof and sent a revolutionary salute to Jin Meili, the teacher who had choreographed the performance. I wanted also to salute Ma Liangcai, who’d played the flute fairly well, and to Little Red’s mother, who deserved my respect for her ability as the wife of a peasant to produce such fine progeny. Passing on a talent for dance was worthy of respect, but even more worthy of respect was the way she remained backstage and provided the singing for her daughter’s dance. She had a strong yet mellow alto voice – in one of his later stories, Mo Yan would write that she had a low voice, which earned him derision from people who knew a thing or two about music – and when the notes emerged from her throat, they danced in the air like strips of satin. “We are revolutionary red pigs who have come to Tiananmen from Gaomi”-those lyrics would not be appropriate today, but they were right for their time, and history cannot be changed on a whim – the little boy pigs were walking on their hands, their red shoes lifted into the air and clapping. The applause was loud, long, and celebratory…

When the dance ended – successfully, I might add – it was my turn. Since being reborn as a pig, honesty compels me to say that Jinlong treated me well, and since we’d once enjoyed a special father-son relationship, I wanted to put on a show for the VIPs and make him look good in their eyes.

I tried limbering up, but I was still dizzy, my vision was blurred, and there was a ringing in my ears. Some ten years or so later, I invited a bunch of my canine friends – hounds and bitches – to a party where we drank Sichuan Wuliangye liquor, Maotai from Guizhou, French brandy, and Scotch whisky, and it finally dawned on me why, that day at the pig-raising on-site conference, my head ached, my eyes were dazed, and my ears rang. It wasn’t my capacity for alcohol, but the rotgut sweet-potato liquor I drank. Of course here I must admit that while public morality was a sometime thing back then, at least people weren’t so immoral as to substitute industrial alcohol for fermented liquor. Some time later, when I was reborn as a dog, a friend of mine, an experienced, knowledgeable, and wise German shepherd assigned to guard a city government guesthouse, concluded: People in the 1950s were innocent, in the 1960s they were fanatics, in the 1970s they were afraid of their own shadows, in the 1980s they carefully weighed people’s words and actions, and in the 1990s they were simply evil. I’m sorry, I keep getting ahead of myself. It’s a trick Mo Yan uses all the time, and I foolishly let it affect the way I talk.

Knowing he’d done something terrible, Mo Yan remained in the generator room meekly waiting for Jinlong to come punish him. When Jiao Er returned after his nap and found Mo Yan standing there, he lambasted him: “What are you standing here for, you little prick? Planning more bad tricks?” “Brother Jinlong told me to stand here!” Mo Yan replied, as if that were all that was needed. “So what!” Jiao Er said pompously. “Your ‘Brother Jinlong’ isn’t worth what’s hanging between my legs!” “Okay,” Mo Yan said as he started to walk off, “I’ll just go tell him.” “Stay right where you are!” Jiao Er said, grabbing Mo Yan’s collar and pulling him back, in the process sending the last three buttons of Mo Yan’s worn jacket flying; the jacket opened up to reveal his belly. “You tell him what I said and you’re a dead man!” He held his fist under Mo Yan’s nose. “You’ll have to kill me to stop me from talking,” Mo Yan replied, refusing to back down.

Jiao Er and Mo Yan were two of Ximen Village’s worst citizens, so let’s forget about them. They can do what they want there in the generator room. Meanwhile, Jinlong led the throngs of attendees up to my pen, where I won over the crowd without a word of introduction. They’d seen plenty of pigs sprawled in the mud, but never one up a tree; they’d also seen lots of slogans painted in red on walls, but never on the sides of a pig. The county and commune VIPs laughed until it hurt; the production brigade officials laughed like little fools. The uniformed head of the production command stood there staring at me.

“Did he climb up there by himself?” he asked Jinlong.

“Yes, he did.”

“Can he show us?” the commander asked. “What I mean is, can you have him come down from there and then get him to climb up again?”

“I’ll try, but it won’t be easy,” Jinlong said. “He’s smarter than other pigs, and has powerful legs. But he can be stubborn and he likes to do things his own way. He doesn’t take orders well.”

So Jinlong tapped me on the head with a switch and said in a voice that seemed to beg co-operation and promise lenience. “Wake up, Pig Sixteen, come down and relieve yourself.” Anyone could see he wanted me to perform for the VIPs. Relieve myself, what a joke! That made me unhappy, though I understood why he was doing it. I wouldn’t disappoint him, but I wouldn’t be docile in the process either; I wasn’t about to do what he wanted just because he wanted me to. If I did, instead of being a pig with an attitude, I’d be a lapdog performing tricks to please my master. I smacked my lips, yawned, rolled my eyes, and stretched. That was met with laughter and an interesting comment: “That’s no pig, it can do anything a man can do.” The idiots thought I didn’t understand what they were saying. For their information, I understood people from Gaomi, Mount Yimeng, and Qingdao. Not only that, I picked up a dozen Spanish phrases from a rusticated youngster from Qingdao who dreamed of studying abroad one day. So I shouted something in Spanish, and those morons froze on the spot. Then they burst out laughing. Go ahead, laugh, laugh yourself into your graves and save the country some rice! You want me to take a leak, is that it? Well, I don’t need to climb down for that. Stand tall, pee far. Just so I could have some fun with them, I let fly from where I was, alternating between fast and slow, spurting and dribbling. The morons couldn’t stop laughing. I glared at them. “What are you laughing at?” I said. I meant business. “Have you forgotten that I’m a cannon shell fired into the stronghold of the imperialists, revisionists, and reactionaries? If a cannon shell takes a leak, that means the powder got wet, so what are you laughing at?” The morons must have understood me, because they laughed until snot ran from their noses. The hint of a smile even appeared on the permanent scowl of an official who always wore an old army coat, as if his face were suddenly covered by a layer of golden bran flakes. He pointed to me.

“What a wonderful pig!” he said. “He deserves a gold medal!” Now I was someone who had little interest in fame and fortune, but hearing such praise from the mouth of a high official turned my head. I wanted to learn how to walk on my hands from Little Red. Doing that up in a tree would be especially hard, but when I eventually mastered the technique, everyone would sit up and take notice. So I planted my front hooves in the crotch of the tree and raised my hind legs, head down until it was resting in a space between branches. But I’d eaten too much that morning, and my strength was affected by my heavy gut. I pressed down on the branch with all my might, causing it to shake and sway. Yes! I said. Okay, I can see the ground. All my weight was now on my front legs, and the blood rushed to my head. My eyes were getting sore, ready to pop out of their sockets. Hold on, hold on for ten seconds and you’ve done it! I heard applause. I’d done it. Unfortunately, my left front hoof slipped, I lost my balance, everything went dark, and I felt my head bang into something hard. Thud! I passed out.

Damn it! That rotgut liquor really messed me up.

26

A Jealous Diao Xiaosan Destroys a Pigpen

Lan Jinlong Cleverly Gets Through a Bitter Winter

The winter of 1972 was a test of survival for the Apricot Garden pigs. In the wake of the pig-raising on-site conference, the county government rewarded the Ximen Village Production Brigade with 20,000 jin of pig feed, but that was just a number. The actual delivery of the feed was entrusted to a man named Jin, a granary official whose nickname – Golden Rat – spoke to his fondness for rat meat. Well, this granary rat actually sent us some moldy dry-yam-and-sorghum mix that had lain in a corner for years, and far less than 20,000 jin of it. There was probably a ton of rat shit mixed in with the feed, which was why a peculiar cloud of rank air hung over the farm all winter. Yes, around the time of the pig-raising on-site conference, we were given tasty food and strong drinks, enjoying the decadent life of the landlord class. But after the conference, the brigade granary was critically low and cold weather was on its way, and it looked as if the snow, despite its romantic image, would bring us bone-chilling days. Hunger and cold were to be our constant companions.

The snowfalls that year were abnormally heavy, and that’s no exaggeration. You can check the records of the county weather bureau, the county gazetteer, even Mo Yan’s story “Tales of Pig-Raising.”

Mo Yan, always ready to deceive people with heresy, is in the habit of mixing fact and fantasy in his stories; you can’t reject the contents out of hand, but you mustn’t fall into the trap of believing everything he writes. The times and places in “Tales of Pig-Raising” are accurate, as are the parts dealing with the winter weather; but the head count of pigs and their origins have been altered. Everyone knows they were from Mount Yimeng, but in the story they’re from Mount Wulian. And there were 1,057 of them, though he gives the number at something over 900. But since we’re talking about fiction here, the details should not concern us.

Now even though I was contemptuous of that gang of Mount Yimeng pigs, being a pig myself was a source of shame; when all was said and done, we belonged to the same species. “When the rabbit dies, the fox grieves, for his turn will come.” The Mount Yimeng pigs were dying off in twos and threes, and a tragic pall hung above Apricot Garden Pig Farm. To keep up my strength and lessen the dissipation of body heat, I cut back on the number of night rounds. I pushed the shredded leaves and powdered grass I’d used for such a long time into a corner of the wall, leaving a line of hoofprints that looked like a designed pattern. I lay down on this bed of leaves and grass, holding my head in my hands to gaze at the snowy landscape and smell the cold, fresh air that is so common to snowfalls. I was overcome by melancholy. To tell the truth, I wasn’t a pig normally given to sadness or emotionalism. Most of the time I was euphoric, either that or defiant. You’d be hard put to associate me with the petty bourgeois affinity for sentimentality.

Wind from the north whistled, river ice splintered with ear-shattering crack crack crack crack, as if Fate had come rapping on a door in the middle of the night. A snow drift in front of the pen seemed to merge with sagging, snow-laden apricot branches. Throughout the grove, explosions of sound announced the snapping of branches unable to bear up under the weight of wet snow, while dull thuds gave voice to accumulations of snow falling to the ground. On that dark night, all I could see was an expanse of white. The generator, thanks to a scarcity of diesel fuel, had long since stopped producing electricity. A dark night like that, covered by a blanket of white, ought to have created the ideal atmosphere for fairy tales, should have been a source of dreams, but cold and hunger shattered both fairy tales and dreams. I have to be honest with you and tell you that when the quantity of pig feed had dwindled to a dangerous low and the Mount Yimeng pigs were reduced to eating moldy leaves and cast-off seedpods from the cotton processing plant to survive, Ximen Jinlong continued to ensure that a fourth of what I was given to eat was nutritious food. While it was only dried moldy yams, it was certainly better than bean-plant leaves and cotton seedpods.

So I lay there suffering through the long night, alternating between dream-filled sleep and wakeful reality. Stars peeked out through the darkness from time to time, sparkling like a diamond pendant on a woman’s bosom. The restless sounds of pigs struggling to stay alive made peaceful sleep impossible, and a palpable sense of bleakness settled around me. Tears filled my eyes as I revisited the past, and when they spilled out onto my hairy cheeks, they froze into ice crystals. My neighbor, Diao Xiaosan, was in torment, and was now eating his own bitter – and unhygienic – fruit. There wasn’t a dry spot in his pen, which was littered with frozen turds and iced urine. My ears were assailed by wolfish howls that echoed those in the wild, as he ran around cursing the unfairness of life in this world. At mealtimes he railed at everyone in sight: Hong Taiyue, Ximen Jinlong, Lan Jiefang, even Bai Xing’er, the widow of the long-dead Ximen Nao, whose job it was to deliver his food. She came each day with two buckets of feed on a carrying pole, slowly making her way through the snow on tiny, once-bound feet, her tattered coat shifting back and forth as she walked. She wore a kerchief tied around her head; I could see her breath and the frost that had formed on her brows and her hair. Her hands were rough and cracked, the fingers like wood that has survived a fire. As she made her way through the farm, she kept from falling by using her long-handled ladle as a crutch. Little steam rose from the buckets, but the odor was strong enough to identify the quality of the food inside. The contents of the bucket in front were for me; those of the bucket in back were for Diao Xiaosan. After putting down her load, she scraped the thick layer of snow off the wall, then reached over to clean out my trough with her ladle. Finally she lifted up the bucket and dumped in the black contents. Even before she’d finished, I’d be in such a hurry to get to the food that some of the sticky stuff would fall on my head and in my ears; she’d clean it off with her ladle. What I was given was pretty disagreeable, and not meant for slow chewing, since that kept the unpleasant taste in my mouth longer than it needed to be there. I gobbled it up so noisily she invariably said with an emotional sigh:

“Pig Sixteen, you’re such a good little pig, you eat whatever I give you.”

Bai Xing’er always fed me before Diao Xiaosan; watching me eat seemed to make her happy. If he hadn’t raised such a stink, I believe she might have forgotten all about him. I’ll never forget the look of tenderness in her eyes as she bent down to watch me, and I’m certainly aware of how well she treated me. But I don’t want to dwell on that, since it was years ago and we went our separate ways – one human, the other animal.

I heard Diao Xiaosan clamp his teeth around the wooden ladle and looked up to see his hideous face as he stood with his feet on the top of the wall – sharp, uneven teeth and, oh, those bloodshot eyes. Bai Xing’er rapped him on the snout with her ladle. Then, after dumping his food into the trough, she said:

“You filthy pig, eating and relieving yourself in the same spot. I don’t know why you haven’t frozen to death yet!”

Diao Xiaosan had barely taken a mouthful of food before he cursed her back:

“You old witch, I know you like him better than me. You give Sixteen all the good food and save the rotten leaves for me! Well, fuck you and the whore that brought you into this world!”

The curses quickly turned to self-pitying sobs, but Bai Xing’er ignored him and his foul language. She picked up her buckets, hung the ladle from one of them, and walked off, swaying from side to side.

Once she was gone, Diao turned to me and started in with the complaints, spraying my pen with his foul spittle. I pretended I didn’t see the hatred in his eyes and went back to my food.

“Pig Sixteen,” he said, “what kind of world are we living in? We’re both pigs, so how come people don’t treat us the same? Because I’m dark and you’re light? Or because you’re local and I’m not? Or is it because you’re good looking and I’m ugly? Which isn’t to say that you’re all that good looking.”

What could I say to a moron like that? The world has never been fair. Just because an officer rides a horse doesn’t mean his soldiers ought to as well, does it? A generalissimo in the Soviet Red Army rode a horse, and so did his troops. But his mount was a magnificent steed, theirs were nags. Differential treatment.

“I’ll sink my teeth into all of them one of these days, then I’ll rip open their bellies and pull their guts out…” With his front feet resting on the wall between our pens, he ground his teeth and said, “Where there’s oppression there’s resistance. Do you believe that? You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but I do.”

“You’re right,” I said. No need to offend him. “I believe you’ve got guts and certain abilities,” I added, “and I’m waiting for the day when you do something spectacular.”

“Well, then,” he said, starting to drool, “how about sharing some of that food she gave you?”

I had a low opinion of him to begin with, but that fell even lower when I saw the greedy look in his eyes and the filth around his mouth. I was reluctant to let that disgusting mouth pollute my feed trough. Considering his petty request, I knew it would be hard to turn it down out of hand, so I stammered:

“Old Diao, I tell you the truth, there’s no real difference between what you and I got… You’re being childish, assuming that somebody else’s cake is bigger than yours.”

“How fucking stupid do you think I am?” he said angrily “My eyes might fall for that, but not my nose! Hell, my eyes won’t fall for that either.” He bent down, scooped some feed out of his trough, and flung it down in front of mine. Anyone could see the difference. “Look at that and tell me what you’re eating and then what I’m eating. Shit, we’re both boars, so how come we get different treatment? You’re going to ‘serve the revolution by mating,’ well, am I serving the counterrevolution then? If people divide themselves into revolutionary and counterrevolutionary, does that mean there are classes of pigs too? It’s all because of favoritism and crazy thoughts. I saw the way Bai Xing’er was looking at you. That was the look a woman gives her husband! Maybe she wants to mate with you, what do you think? If you do, then next spring, she’ll have a litter of piglets with human heads, or monsters with pig heads. Won’t they be beautiful?” he said hatefully, then flashed an evil grin, showing that his slanderous outburst had driven the gloom from his mind.

I scooped up the clump of feed he’d tossed over and flung it far over the wall. “I was seriously considering doing you a favor,” I said contemptuously, “but after what you just said, sorry, brother Diao, but I’ll dump the rest of the food on a pile of shit before I’ll give it to you.” I reached down, scooped up what was left in my trough, and tossed it on the ground, where I relieved myself. Then I went back and lay down on my straw bed. “If you’re still hungry, sir,” I said, “be my guest.”

Diao Xiaosan’s eyes flashed green; his teeth ground noisily. “Pig Sixteen,” he said, “the old saying goes, ‘You don’t know your legs are muddy till you step out of the water.’ The river flows east for thirty years and west for thirty years! The sun’s rays are on the move. They won’t always shine down on your nest!” Now that he’d had his say, his hideous face disappeared from view. But I could hear him pacing anxiously on the other side of the wall and, from time to time, banging his head against the gate or scraping the wall with his hooves. That went on for a while until I heard a strange noise from his side. It took a number of guesses before I figured out that he had stood up on his hind legs and, partly for warmth and partly to vent his spleen, had begun tearing sorghum stalks out of the canopy over his pen. Unfortunately, some came from my side.

I rose up on my hind legs and stuck my head over the wall. “Stop that,” I protested.

With a stalk of sorghum clenched between his teeth, he tugged and tugged until he brought it down, then chewed it into pieces. “Shit,” he said, “who gives a damn! If I’m going to die, then I’m taking others with me! The ways of the world aren’t fair, so the little demons will tear down the temple.” He rose up on his hind legs, a sorghum stalk in his mouth, and came down as hard as he could, the concussion sending one of the red tiles crashing to the ground and opening a hole in the canopy, through which snow fell in on his head. With a shake of that big head, the green lights in his eyes crashed into the wall and shattered like glass. Obviously, the guy was nuts. I nervously looked up at the canopy above me and started pacing, on the verge of jumping over the wall to stop that nonsense. But taking on a madman only ensures that both sides will suffer, and in my anxiety I let out a shriek that sounded like an air-raid warning. I’ve tried to imitate the revolutionary style of singing, pinching my vocal cords, but it never worked. Now, in my high state of anxiety, my howl was actually closer to an air-raid warning than anything. That came as a memory of my youth, when there were countywide air-raid drills to put us on guard against attacks by imperialists, reactionaries, and counterrevolutionaries. In every village and hamlet in the county, loudspeakers first blared a low, rumbling sound. That’s what enemy bombers sound like, a baby’s voice announced. That was followed by an ear-splitting shriek. That’s what enemy planes sound like when they come in for strafing attacks… Finally, demonic howls emerged. All county revolutionary cadres and all poor and lower-middle peasants, listen carefully to the differences. These are international air-raid warnings, and when you hear one of them, drop what you’re doing and take refuge in an air-raid shelter. If there isn’t one nearby, cover your head with both arms and hunker down… I was like a student of opera who finally finds his voice and is overjoyed. I paced the confines of my pen and howled, and in order to send my warning as far as possible, I shot up an apricot tree. Snow on the branches, like flour or cotton wadding, fell to the ground, drizzling here and fluttering there, spongy in some places and heavy in others, and everywhere purple twigs peeked out from the white snow, glossy and brittle, like legendary ocean coral. From one limb to the next I climbed all the way to the top of the tree, where I could see not only all of Apricot Garden Pig Farm, but the whole village. I saw chimney smoke lazing into the sky, I saw thousands of trees whose canopies were like giant steamed buns, and I saw crowds of people running out of buildings that seemed about to collapse from the weight of rooftop snow. The snow was white, the people black. Traveling through knee-high drifts was closer to staggering than walking. It was my air-raid alert that had brought them out of their houses, and the first to emerge – from their heated five-room compound – were Jinlong and Jiefang. They walked around a bit and then looked into the sky – I knew they were searching for imperialist, revisionist, or counterrevolutionary bombers – and finally fell to the ground, where they wrapped their arms around their heads, as a flock of loudly cawing crows flew right over them. The birds had built their nests in a grove of trees east of the Grain Barge River, but with so much snow on the ground, finding food was especially hard, so they came every day to the Apricot Garden Pig Farm to forage. After a while Jinlong and Jiefang stood up and looked into the sky – which had cleared up after the snowstorm – again; following that, they looked down and eventually discovered the source of the air-raid warning.

Lan Jiefang, now I have to talk about you. You raised your bamboo whip and charged me bravely, although you slipped and fell twice because of the ice-covered bits of pig food on the path through the trees: once you fell forward and sprawled on the ground like a dog fighting over shit; the other time you fell backward and landed like a turtle sunning its underbelly. The gentle sun’s rays and the snowy landscape made for a beautiful setting; the crows’ wings seemed gilded. The blue half of your face glowed. You were never considered one of the major personalities in Ximen Village; in fact, except for Mo Yan, who you often chewed the fat with, just about everybody ignored you; even me, a pig at the time, never gave you much thought, even though you were a so-called feed boss. But at this moment, with that whip trailing you as you came at me, I discovered to my surprise that you’d grown into a slender young man. Sometime later I counted on my hooves and discovered that you were already twenty-two. Yes, you’d grown up.

With my arms wrapped around a limb and sunbeams filtering through the red clouds, I opened my mouth and released a swirling air-raid alert. People who had gathered at the base of the tree were steaming, the embarrassed looks on their faces somewhere between laughter and crying. An old man named Wang intoned sadly:

“A demon emerges, the nation submerges!”

But Jinlong cut him off:

“Watch your tongue, Gramps Wang!”

Knowing he’d said something he shouldn’t have, Gramps Wang slapped himself. “Who told you to rant like that?” he cursed himself. “Secretary Lan, a great man overlooks a small man’s mistakes. Forgive this old man’s crime!”

At the time Jinlong was a newly minted member of the Party and was already a member of the Branch Party Committee, as well as Party secretary of the Ximen Village Communist Youth League. He was more than proud, he was haughty. With a wave of his hand to the old man, he said:

“I know you’ve read heretical books like Warring Kingdoms and that they’ve found their way into your heart, so you like to show off. If not for that, that one sentence alone would be enough to label you a counterrevolutionary.”

Jinlong’s comment had a chilling effect on the atmosphere, and that gave him the opportunity to deliver a sermon; he remarked that inclement weather presents an opportunity for imperialists, revisionists, and counterrevolutionaries to attack; it also creates ideal conditions for hidden class enemies in the village to carry out sabotage. He then turned his attention to me, declaring me to be an enlightened pig. “He may be a pig, but he’s achieved a higher degree of awareness than many people.”

Dizzy with pride, I forgot why I was sounding air-raid warnings in the first place. Like a pop singer responding to an admiring audience with a rousing encore, I cleared my throat for another burst of sound, but before it left my throat, I saw Lan Jiefang twirl his whip at the base of the tree, and before I saw it coming, the tip flicked against my ear. Boy, did that hurt! But the worst thing was, my head suddenly felt heavier than the rest of my body, and I fell out of the tree into the snow.

When I managed to get to my feet, I saw blood on the snow – my blood. The whip had opened up an inch-long gash in my right ear, one that would accompany me through the second, and most glorious, half of my life. It was also the reason I bore a grudge against you from then on, though I later understood why you resorted to such cruelty. I forgave you in theory, but could never quite let it go emotionally.

Although I was on the receiving end of a whip that day and scarred for life, my neighbor Diao Xiaosan suffered a much crueler fate. There was a certain charm to my climbing a tree and sounding air-raid alerts, but there was no redeeming feature in his foul-mouthed attacks on society and the destruction of property. Some people criticized Lan Jiefang for using his whip on me, but when he whipped Diao Xiaosan bloody, he was universally praised. Shouts of “Beat him, beat the bastard to death!” were on everyone’s lips. At first, Diao hopped around so violently he broke two steel rods in the gate to his pen. But his strength gradually gave out, and people rushed in, grabbed his hind legs, and dragged him out into the snow. Jiefang’s hatred hadn’t abated; he stood with his legs bent like wickets, each snap of his whip opening a new gash on Diao’s body. His gaunt blue face was twitching; knots protruded on his cheeks from clenching his teeth. “You scumbag, you whore!” he shouted with each lashing of his whip, switching back and forth as each hand tired. That, of course, was no mean feat. At first, Diao Xiaosan rolled around on the ground, but after a few dozen lashes, he laid out flat, like a hunk of dead meat. Jiefang still wasn’t satisfied. Everyone knew he was taking out his frustrations on the pig, but no one tried to stop him, even though they could see that the pig might well not survive the beating. Finally Jinlong stepped up and grabbed Jiefang’s arm. “Enough,” he said coldly. Diao Xiaosan’s blood stained the snowy ground. My blood was red, his was black. Mine was sacred, his was foul. In order to punish him for his wrongs, the people pierced his nose and put in a pair of rings. They also chained his front legs. In the days that followed, that chain rattled as he paced his pen, and every time the famous aria by Li Yuhe from the model revolutionary opera The Red Lantern-“These chains may shackle my hands and feet, but they cannot keep my aspirations and ideals from soaring into the heavens!”-blasted from the loudspeaker, for some reason I felt a tinge of respect for this mortal enemy, almost as if he’d become a hero, and I was the one who had sold him out.

Yes, as Mo Yan wrote in his story “Revenge,” the Apricot Garden Pig Farm entered a period of crisis as the Lunar New Year approached. The pig food had all been eaten, so had the piles of rotten beans and leaves. There was nothing left but moldy cottonseed mixed with snow Desperate times. A time, as it turned out, when Hong Taiyue fell gravely ill; his heavy responsibilities now rested on the shoulders of Jinlong, just when he was experiencing emotional torment. The person he loved ought to have been Huang Huzhu, a relationship that began when she repaired a uniform for him. Their bonds had early on been consummated, when Huang Hezuo made her move, and they sported among the clouds and rain. As they all grew older, the Huang twins both clamored to marry Jinlong. Who knew these secrets? In addition to me, a pig that pretty much knew everything, only Lan Jiefang. I remained above it all, but you, whose love for Huang Huzhu was not reciprocated, were tormented and horribly jealous. That was one of the reasons you knocked me out of my tree with your whip and why you dealt so cruelly with Diao Xiaosan. Now that we can look back, don’t you think the feelings that tormented you at the time were pretty insignificant compared to what happened later? Besides, the world is unpredictable, and conjugal bliss is dictated by heaven. The person you are to marry has already been determined. Isn’t that so, since Huang Huzhu eventually shared your bed?

During that winter, pigs that had frozen to death were dragged out of their pens every day, and every night I was awakened by the wails of grief-stricken Yimeng pigs whose pen-mates had died from the cold. Every morning I looked out through the metal slats of my gate and saw Lan Jiefang or somebody else dragging a pig carcass in the direction of the five-room building. The dead animals were skin and bones, their legs stiff as boards. Hot-tempered Howling Wolf died, so did the slutty Rape Flower. At first they died at the rate of three or four a day, but by the latter days of the twelfth month, as many as six or seven were dying each day. On the twenty-third of that month, sixteen dead pigs were dragged out of their pens. I did a quick calculation and came up with the figure of more than two hundred pigs that had departed for the Western Heaven by the end of the year. I had no way of knowing if their souls had gone down to hell or up to heaven, but their earthly remains were piled up in dark corners at the rear of the building, where they were cooked and eaten by Ximen Jinlong and the other humans. That is a memory that sticks with me even now.

People sitting under lamplight around a blazing stove watching the meat of butchered pigs cooking is something Mo Yan wrote about in great detail in his “Tales of Pig-Raising.” He described the fragrance of the burning apricot branches, he described the stench of the meat cooking in the pot, he even described how the starving people bit off big chunks of it, a scene that would disgust people nowadays.

I can add one thing to Mo Yan’s descriptions, and that is: As the day approached when all the pigs in the Apricot Garden Pig Farm would die of starvation, on the last day of the year, when firecrackers were noisily seeing out the old and welcoming in the new, Jinlong abruptly smacked himself on the forehead and announced:

“That’s it! I know how to save the farm.”

It wouldn’t be hard to eat pork from dead pigs like that once, but the smell would make me puke the second time. Jinlong ordered people to convert the dead pigs into food for living pigs. At first I noticed that my feed tasted different somehow, so late at night I sneaked out of my pen to see what was going on in the building where our food was prepared, and that’s when I learned their secret. I have to admit that for animals as stupid as pigs, cannibalism is not a significant taboo, nothing to get excited about. But to an extraordinary soul like me, it gives rise to a whole bunch of painful associations. Yet the will to live is more powerful than spiritual torment. Actually, I was worrying myself needlessly. If I was a man, eating pork was perfectly natural. And if I were a pig, as long as the other pigs were okay with eating their dead brothers and sisters, who was I to complain? Go ahead, eat. Close your eyes and eat it. After I’d learned how to sound air-raid warnings, I got the same food the other pigs got. I knew they weren’t doing this to punish us, but because it was the only thing they had for us to eat. The fat started falling off my body, I was constipated, and my urine was reddish yellow. I was a little better off than the others, only because I could get out and walk around at night, picking up rotten vegetables here and there, however infrequently. What I’m saying is, if we hadn’t eaten the unique feed Jinlong prepared for us, none of us would have survived the winter and been greeted by the warmth of spring.

Jinlong mixed the meat from dead animals with some horse and cow dung, and chopped up sweet potato vines to make his unique pig feed. It saved the lives of a lot of pigs, and that included me and Diao Xiaosan.

A new batch of traditional pig feed was sent down to us in the spring of 1973, bringing new life to the Apricot Garden Pig Farm. But before this occurred, more than six hundred pigs from Mount Yimeng had been converted into protein, vitamins, and plenty of other things needed to sustain life, thereby extending the lives of some four hundred others. So we howled for three full minutes to salute these self-sacrificing heroes, and as we howled, apricot flowers bloomed, the moon bathed the farm in its watery beams, and a floral perfume tickled our noses. The curtain was lifted on the year’s romantic season.

27

A Sea of Jealousy Rages as Brothers Go Crazy

Fast-talking, Glib Mo Yan Encounters Envy

The moon that night rose eagerly into the sky even before the sun had set. In the rosy sunset, the atmosphere in the Apricot Garden Pig Farm was warm and congenial. I had a premonition that something important was going to happen that night. I stood up and rested my front hooves on the apricot tree, whose blossoms sent out a wonderful aroma. I looked up and, through the gaps in the tree, saw the moon – big, round, and silvery, as if cut out of a piece of tin – rise into the sky. At first I could hardly believe it was really the moon, but the brilliant beams that showered down soon convinced me.

At the time I was still an immature, impressionable pig who became excited over anything new and strange and wanted to share it with the other pigs. Mo Yan was a lot like that. In an essay entitled “Brilliant Apricot Blossoms” he wrote about how he discovered Ximen Jinlong and Huang Huzhu one day at noon; they had climbed an apricot tree filled with blossoms and were moving so hot and heavy they sent flower petals falling to the ground like snow. Eager to share his discovery with as many people as possible, Mo Yan ran over to the feed preparation shed and shook the sleeping Lan Jiefang awake. He wrote:

Lan Jiefang sat up abruptly, rubbed his bloodshot eyes, and asked: “What’s up?” The grass mat on the kang had created patterns on his face. “Come with me,” I said mysteriously. I led him around the two individual pens reserved for the boars and deep into the apricot grove. Typical lazy weather for late spring, and the pigs were all sound asleep in their pens, including the boar who was always acting strange. Hordes of bees were buzzing tirelessly around the flowers for their nectar; bright, pretty thrushes flitted around in the trees’ high branches, frequently signaling their presence with crisp, mournful cries. “Damn,” Lan Jiefang cursed unhappily. “What is it you want to show me?” I put my finger to my lips to shush him. “Squat down and follow me,” I said softly as we squatted down and inched forward. A pair of ocher rabbits were chasing each other among the trees; a beautiful, bright-colored pheasant clucked as it dragged its tail feathers along the ground and flapped its wings, quickly flying off into the brush behind a deserted graveyard. After skirting the two buildings that had once housed the generator, we reached a dense grove with dozens of apricot trees so big around it took two people to circle it with their arms. The canopies formed a virtually seamless cover high above us. There were red flowers, pink ones, and white ones, and from a distance they took on the appearance of clouds. Owing to the complex root systems of these enormous trees and the villagers’ reverence for big trees, this grove had been spared during the 1958 iron-smelting campaign and the pig-raising disaster of 1972. I’d personally seen Ximen Jinlong and Huang Huzhu choose an old tree whose trunk leaned slightly to one side and climb it like a couple of squirrels. But now there was no sign of them. A breeze rose up and set the upper branches in motion. The petals of fragile flowers rained down on the ground like snowflakes, forming a layer of what looked like fine jade. “I asked you what you want to show me,” Lan Jiefang repeated, this time much louder, as he balled up his fists. In Ximen Village, in fact, throughout Northeast Gaomi Township, the blue-faced father and son were famed for their stubbornness and bad temper, so I had to be careful not to provoke this youngster. “With my own eyes I saw them climb the tree-” “Saw who?” “Jinlong and Huzhu!” Jiefang thrust out his neck, the way he might if an invisible fist had landed on his chest, right above the heart. Then his ears twitched and the sun’s rays danced on the blue half of his face, lighting it up like jade. He seemed hesitant for some reason, struggling to make up his mind, but in the end a devilish force propelled him in the direction of the tree… he looked up… half his face like blue jade… he let loose with a loud wail and threw himself down on the ground… flower petals rained down as if to bury him… Ximen Village apricot blossoms are renowned far and wide; in the 1990s city folk arrived by car every spring, children in tow, just to admire the apricot blossoms.

At the end of the essay, Mo Yan wrote:

I never imagined this incident would cause Lan Jiefang such anguish. People came out to pick him up and carry him back to his kang. They pried open his teeth with a chopstick and poured some ginger water into his mouth to revive him. What in the world did he see up there in the tree, they asked me, that could put a spell on him like this? I said that the boar had taken the little sow called Butterfly Lover up the tree with romance on his mind… That can’t be, they said doubtfully. When Lan Jiefang came to, he rolled around on the kang like a young donkey. His wails sounded like the boar imitating an air-raid alarm. He pounded his chest, pulled his hair, clawed at his eyes, and scratched his cheeks… Some kind-hearted people had no choice but to tie his arms to keep him from doing serious injury to himself.

I couldn’t wait to tell people all about the celestial beauty of the sun and the moon, as they vied to outshine each other, but was stopped from doing so by Lan Jiefang, who, having lost his mind, threw the pig farm into sheer chaos. Party Secretary Hong, who had just gotten out of a sickbed, came as soon as he heard. He walked with a cane, his pallor, sunken eyes, and chin stubble showing the effects of an illness serious enough to turn a hard-as-nails member of the Communist Party into an old man. He stood at the head of the kang and banged on the floor with his cane, as if hoping to strike water. The harsh light made him look even more sickly and turned the face of Lan Jiefang, who was lying on the kang wailing, piteously hideous.

“Where’s Jinlong?” Hong asked, the tone showing his frustration.

The people in the room exchanged glances, apparently unaware of what had happened to him. Finally it was left to Mo Yan to answer timorously:

“Probably in the generator room.”

The comment reminded everyone that this was the first time they’d had electricity since the generator had been shut down the previous winter, and they were puzzled over what Jinlong was up to.

“Go get him.”

Mo Yan slipped out of the room like a slippery mouse.

At about that time I heard the sad sounds of a woman crying out on the street. My heart nearly stopped, and my brain froze. What happened next came like a raging torrent. I squatted down in front of a tall pile of apricot leaves, roots, and branches in the feed preparation room to think about the past, veiled in mist, and examine the present. Bones of the Mount Yimeng pigs that had died the year before had been placed in large baskets outside the room, where they showed up white in the moonlight, with specks of green glittering here and there. They gave off an unpleasant odor. I gazed out to see what appeared to be a dancing figure walking toward the moon, which by now looked like a ball of quicksilver, and turn on to the path to the Apricot Garden Pig Farm. She looked up, and I saw her face, which looked like a used water ladle, a sort of burnished yellow; owing to the fact that she was wailing, her open mouth was like a black mouse hole. She held her arms close to her chest, her legs were so bowed a dog could have run between them, and her feet pointed outward as she walked. The range of her rocking from side to side appeared almost greater than her movement forward. That’s how bad she looked as she “ran” along. She had changed drastically since my days as an ox, but I knew who she was as soon as I laid eyes on her. I tried to recall how old Yingchun would be, but my pig consciousness overwhelmed my human consciousness, and as they merged they created mixed feelings: excitement and sorrow.

“Oh, my son, what’s happened?” By looking through the gaps in the window, I saw her throw herself on the kang, weeping as she nudged Lan Jiefang.

The way his upper body was trussed up, he could hardly move, so he kept kicking the wall, which, not all that sturdy to begin with, seemed in danger of coming down; gray peelings like noodle dough floated to the ground. Chaos reigned in the room, until Hong Taiyue commanded:

“Get a rope and tie his legs!”

An old man named Lü Biantou, who also worked on the pig farm, dragged a length of rope up and climbed clumsily onto the kang. Lan Jiefang’s legs were kicking out like the hooves of a wild horse, making it impossible for Lü to get the job done.

“I said tie them!” Hong bellowed.

So Lü pressed Jiefang’s legs down with his body, but Yingchun immediately began tearing at his clothes and wailing, Let go of my son- Get up there, somebody, and help him! Hong shouted. You sons of bitches! Jiefang cried out. You’re a bunch of pig sons of bitches- Pass the rope underneath! The third son of the Sun family burst into the room. Get up on that kang and give him a hand! The rope was wrapped around Jiefang’s legs, but also around Lü Biantou’s arms, and then tightened. Loosen the rope, and let me get my arms back! Jiefang kicked the rope loose; it twisted like a crazed snake. Ow, Mother… Lü Biantou reeled backward and banged into Hong on his way to the floor. The Sun boy, with the strength of youth, sat down on Jiefang’s belly and, ignoring Yingchun’s clawing and cursing, quickly tightened the rope and eliminated the possibility of Jiefang mounting any resistance. On the floor, Lü Biantou was holding his nose, dark blood oozing out between his fingers.

Son, I know you don’t want to acknowledge any of this, but every word of what I’ve said is the unvarnished truth. When people are driven nearly mad, they are imbued with superhuman strength and are capable of almost supernatural deeds. That old apricot tree still has several egg-sized scars from injuries it sustained when you banged your head against it in a fit of rage. Under normal conditions, in any battle between a tree and a human head, the tree will win. But when they go a bit crazy, people’s heads get harder. So when your head and the tree met, it wobbled and sent snowflakes fluttering to the ground. You, meanwhile, recoiled backward and landed on your backside. A knot swelled up on your forehead, but the poor tree lost a chunk of bark, exposing the whiteness underneath.

Bound hand and foot, you writhed and twisted in a mighty attempt to get free. So Baofeng gave you a sedative and you slowly relaxed, your eyes open but unfocused, sounds of sleep leaving your mouth and nose. The tension in the room dissolved. I breathed a sigh of relief. Now, Lan Jiefang, you’re not my son, so whether you lived or died, whether you were crazy or just stupid, should have meant nothing to me. But I really did, I breathed a sigh of relief. After all, I concluded, you’d emerged from Yingchun’s womb, and in a previous life, that womb had been my – that is, Ximen Nao’s – property. The one I should have been concerned about was Ximen Jinlong, who was my son. With this thought in my head, I rushed over to the generator room, light blue moonlight on my shoulders. Apricot petals drifted to the ground like moonbeams. The whole grove of apricot trees trembled from the frenzied roar of the diesel motor. I heard the revitalized Yimeng pigs: some were talking in their sleep, others were whispering back and forth.

In the blindingly bright light of the naked two-hundred-watt bulb that lit up the generator I saw Ximen Jinlong on the brick floor, leaning against the wall with his legs stretched out in front of him, his feet pointing upward, drops of oil from the generator spraying onto his toenails and the backs of his feet, looking like sticky dog’s blood. His shirt was open to expose a purple vest. His hair was uncombed, his eyes bloodshot, like a madman, yet sort of cool. He probably wanted to drink himself to death, because I saw an empty liquor bottle lying next to his leg and a half-empty bottle in his hand… and if the youngster didn’t drink himself to death he’d surely drink himself stupid.

Mo Yan was standing beside him, squinting. “You’ve had enough, brother Jinlong,” he said. “Secretary Hong is waiting to give you hell.”

“Secretary Hong?” Jinlong looked up out of the corner of his eye. “Secretary Hong’s a prick! I’ll give him hell!”

“Brother,” Mo Yan said wickedly, “Jiefang saw what you and Huzhu were doing up in the apricot tree and went nuts. A dozen strong young men tried but failed to restrain him. He actually bit through a thick steel rod. You should go see him. After all, he’s your blood brother.”

“My blood brother? Who are you talking about? You’re the one who’s his blood brother!”

“Whether you go see him or not is your business, Jinlong,” Mo Yan said. “I’ve done my job by telling you.”

But Mo Yan seemed in no hurry to leave. He kicked the bottle on the ground, then bent down and picked it up. He squinted and looked inside; seeing some green contents, he tipped his head back and drained it, then licked his lips noisily. “Good stuff,” he said, “worthy of its name.”

Jinlong raised the bottle in his hand and drank deeply. The room filled with the aroma of strong liquor as he flung the bottle at Mo Yan, who raised his bottle. When bottle met bottle, shards of exploding glass rained down to the ground. Now the aroma was stronger than ever. “Get lost!” Jinlong bellowed. “Get the hell out of here!” As Mo Yan backed up, Jinlong picked up a shoe, a screwdriver, and some other stuff, and threw them at him, one after the other. “You goddamn spy, you little prick, get out of my sight!” “You’re crazy!” Mo Yan muttered as he dodged the missiles. “You’ve gone nuts before he even comes out of it!”

Jinlong stood up shakily and wobbled back and forth, like one of those tip-over dolls. The moment Mo Yan stepped out the door, the moonlight lit up his shaved head and turned it into a honeydew melon. I was watching the two weirdoes from my hiding place behind the tree, worried sick that Jinlong might fall onto the generator belt and be crushed. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. Instead, he stepped over it, then stepped back. “Crazy!” he screamed. “Crazy! Everybody’s gone goddamned crazy-” He picked up a broom from the corner and threw it out, then followed that with a tin bucket used for diesel oil, the smell of which spread beneath the moonlight and merged with the aroma of apricot blossoms. Jinlong stumbled over to the generator and bent down as if to engage the turbine in a conversation. Be careful, son! I shouted inwardly as my muscles tightened and I prepared to run over and rescue him if necessary. He was bent so low his nose was nearly touching the belt. Be careful, son! Another inch and you’ll have no nose. But that tragedy didn’t happen either. He put his hand on the throttle and pressed it all the way down. The generator screeched like a man when you squeeze his balls. The machine shuddered and sent oil flying in all directions. Black smoke poured out of the exhaust, while the bolts securing the generator to its wooden base began to shudder and seemed in danger of pulling loose altogether. At the same time, the needle on the power gauge shot past the danger mark and the high-wattage bulb above them lit up before it popped and sent slivers of glass flying into the wall and up to the rafters. I didn’t know till later that when the bulb in the generator room blew, so did all the lights in the pig farm. The next thing I heard was the loud slap the belt made when it hit the wall, followed by Jinlong’s terrified screams. My heart sank. That’s it, I figured; my son, Ximen Jinlong was probably a goner.

Slowly the darkness gave way to the light of the moon and I saw Mo Yan, down on his hands and knees, rear end sticking up in the air, just like an ostrich; scared stiff, he slowly got to his feet. Curious but cowardly, virtually useless yet pigheaded, stupid and cunning at the same time, he was incapable of doing anything worthwhile and unwilling to do anything spectacularly bad; in other words, someone who was always causing trouble and forever complaining about his lot. I knew about all the scandals he’d been involved in and could pretty much read his mind. He slipped cautiously back into the moonlit generator room, where Ximen Jinlong was sprawled on the floor, striped by moonlight filtering in through the slats in the window. One of the moonbeams fell on his head, including his hair, of course, from which threads of blue-tinted blood seeped down across his face, like a millipede. Mo Yan bent down, mouth agape, and touched the wet, sticky blood with two fingers that were black as a pig’s tail. First he examined it with his eyes, then with his nose, and finally with his mouth. What the hell was he doing? Whatever it was, it was strange, to say the least, so bizarre that even an intelligent pig like me couldn’t figure it out. He couldn’t tell if Ximen Jinlong was dead or alive just by looking at, smelling, or tasting his blood, could he? Or maybe this was his involved way of determining whether the blood on his fingers was real or fake. So there I was, trying to decipher his strange behavior, when, like someone who’s just emerged from a nightmare, he screeched, then jumped high in the air and ran out of the generator room.

“Come over here, everybody! Ximen Jinlong’s dead!” he shouted in a voice that sounded joyful.

Maybe he saw me hiding behind an apricot tree, maybe not. The moonlit trees and mottled leaves had a dizzying effect on people’s eyes. The sudden death of Jinlong was probably the first and most noteworthy news he’d ever had the opportunity to spread. He had no interest in talking to the apricot trees as he ran, shouting at the top of his lungs. I started following him after he’d tripped on a pile of pig shit and fallen headfirst to the ground.

People emerged from the buildings, their faces taking on a pale hue in the moonlight. The absence of screams inside the room proved that the sedatives had taken effect on Jiefang. Baofeng was holding an alcohol-soaked pad of cotton to her cheek, which had been cut by flying glass when the lightbulb exploded. A faint scar would be left after the wound healed, living testimony to the unbelievable chaos of that night.

People came running, some stumbling along, some nearly falling, and all of them horribly flustered. In a word, a disorderly crowd ran toward the generator room, following Mo Yan, who kept turning sideways to describe with showy exaggeration what he’d seen. I had the feeling that whoever it was, whether Ximen Jinlong’s kin or those with no familial ties to him, felt disgust toward the gabby youngster. Shut your filthy mouth! I took several quick steps and hid behind a tree, where I picked a piece of tile up out of the mud with my mouth – it was bigger than I wanted, so I bit it in two – grasped it in the cleft of my right front hoof, stood up humanlike on my hind legs, took aim at Mo Yan’s shiny scalp, and flung the tile as I landed on my front legs. I miscalculated the distance, and instead of hitting Mo Yan, the missile struck Yingchun in the forehead. The loud crack froze my heart and awoke slumbering memories. Oh, Yingchun, my virtuous wife, tonight you are the unluckiest person on earth! Two sons, one of them mad, the other dead, a daughter with an injured face, and now I’ve nearly killed you!

Heartbroken, I let out a long oink and buried my snout in the ground, remorse driving me to chew the remaining half of the tile into powder. Like a scene from one of those high-speed movie cameras, I saw Yingchun’s mouth open to release a scream like a silver snake dancing in the moonlight as she fell backward like a figurine. Don’t think for a minute that just because I’m a pig I don’t know what a high-speed camera is. Hell, these days anyone can be a film director! All you need is a light-filtering lens and a high-speed camera that you use to get a full shot or a closeup. The tile broke into pieces when it hit Yingchun’s forehead and flew in all directions, followed immediately by drops of blood. Onlookers looked on in jaw-dropping astonishment… Yingchun lay on the ground. Mom! Ximen Baofeng was shouting. She kneeled by her mother and laid her medical kit on the ground. With her right arm around Yingchun’s neck, she studied the wound on her forehead. What happened, Mom?… Who did this? Hong Taiyue bellowed as he ran over to the spot where the tile had been launched. I didn’t even try to hide, knowing I could disappear any time I wanted to. I had really messed up this time, no matter how good my intentions were, and I deserved to be punished. Hong Taiyue was the first to go looking for the rotten individual who had injured one of the villagers with a piece of tile, but he wasn’t the one who discovered me standing behind the apricot tree. Getting on in years, he wasn’t as sprightly as he’d once been. No, the first to come around the tree and find me was Mo Yan, whose stealthy movements perfectly matched his almost pathological curiosity. Here’s who did it! he gleefully announced to the swarm of people behind him. I sat there stiffly, a low guttural sound in my throat declaring my remorse and my readiness to receive the punishment I deserved. The puzzled looks on the people’s faces showed up clear in the moonlight. He’s the one, I guarantee it! Mo Yan said to the crowd. With my own eyes I once saw him write on the ground with a twig. Hong Taiyue thumped him on the shoulder.

“Old man,” he mocked Mo Yan, “have you also seen him take a knife in his hoof and carve a seal for your dad, using the plum-blossom style of calligraphy?”

As someone who didn’t know what was good for him, Mo Yan continued shooting off his mouth, so the third brother of the Sun family ran up and, like the bully he was, grabbed Mo Yan by the ear and kneed him in the rear end.

“Buddy,” he said as he dragged him away from the scene, “keep that beak of yours shut!”

“Who let this boar out of its pen?” Hong Taiyue asked angrily. “Who’s responsible for taking care of the pigs? Somebody has a terrible work ethic and ought to be docked some work points!”

Moving as fast as possible on her tiny, bound feet, Ximen Bai tottered up from the roadway, which was paved in moonlight, scattering apricot blossoms that looked like snowflakes as she came. Memories that had lain deep in the sediment of my mind were once again stirred up, like mud on a riverbed, and began squeezing my heart.

“Get that pig back in his pen!” Hong Taiyue growled. “This is ridiculous! Totally ridiculous!” With a phlegmatic cough he walked over to the generator room.

I think it must have been concern for her son that made it possible for Yingchun to come around so quickly; she struggled to stand. “Mom…,” Baofeng cried out as she put her arm under Yingchun’s neck and opened her medical kit. Huang Huzhu, a look of detachment on her face, knew what to do: she picked up an alcohol-soaked cotton ball with a pair of tweezers and handed it to Baofeng. “My Jinlong…” Yingchun pushed Baofeng’s arm away and propped herself up. Her movements were jerky, her balance precarious; clearly she was still lightheaded. But she stood and, with an agonizing cry on her lips, staggered off toward the generator room.

She was not the first to enter the room, nor was Hong Taiyue. Huang Huzhu beat them both. Next in was neither Yingchun nor Hong; it was Mo Yan, who had already been badly treated by Sun Three and mocked by Hong Taiyue. None of that appeared to bother him, for after breaking free from Sun’s grip, he slipped back into the generator room, no more than a step behind Huang Huzhu, who threw herself on Jinlong’s body, like a mother protecting her offspring, the moment she spotted him lying there, bathed in moonlight, his forehead bloodied. Powerful feelings and sadness at what had befallen him drove all thoughts of modesty and decorum out of her mind.

At about the same time, Ximen Bai staggered up to me. As I looked into her sweaty face, I heard her gasp:

“Pig Sixteen, how did you get out of your pen?”

She patted me on the head. “Be good now and come back with me. Secretary Hong blamed me for letting you loose. You know I was a landlord’s wife, not a good thing to be these days, and Secretary Hong has done me a favor by letting me tend to you. You mustn’t act up, that will only bring me trouble!”

What a tangle of thoughts ran through my mind as tears welled up in my eyes and dripped to the ground.

“Are you crying, Pig Sixteen?” Surprised? Yes, she was. But also saddened. Stroking my ears, she looked up at the moon. “My husband,” she said, “with Jinlong dead, the Ximen family has truly come to its end…”

Jinlong, of course, was not dead. If he’d died, the curtain would have fallen on this drama. Baofeng’s medical skills brought him back from certain death, only to have him rant and rave, leaping and jumping, eyes bloodshot, wanting nothing to do with friends or family. “I don’t want to live!” he shouted. “No more for me…” He clutched his chest. “I feel terrible, I can’t stand it, I want to die, Mother…” Hong Taiyue stepped up, grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “Jinlong!” he roared. “What do you think you’re doing? You call yourself a member of the Communist Party? The branch secretary of the Youth League? You disappoint me. You embarrass me!” Yingchun rushed up and pulled Hong’s arms away, then stood between them. “I won’t let you treat my son like that!” she threatened. Then she turned and threw her arms around Jinlong, who was a head taller than she, rubbed his face, and murmured, “Good boy, don’t be afraid, Mother’s here, she won’t let them hurt you…”

Jinlong pushed her away and forced the others, who tried to block his way, to back off; lowering his shoulder, he ran out. The moonlight settled on his arms like a blue curtain of gauze that gently laid him down on the ground, where he rolled around like an overworked donkey. “Mother, I can’t stand it, I want to die. Bring me two more bottles of liquor, two more bottles, two more…” “Is he crazy or is he drunk?” Hong asked Baofeng sternly. Her mouth twitched. “Drunk, I expect,” she said with a sneer. With a look at Yingchun, Huang Tong, Qiuxiang, Hezuo, and Huzhu, Hong Taiyue could only shake his head, like a powerless father. He sighed. “You people have really let me down.” He turned and walked off, swaying slightly, but instead of heading toward the village, he went into the apricot grove, leaving light blue footprints in the carpet of apricot petals.

Meanwhile, Jinlong was still donkey-rolling on the ground. “Go get some vinegar, Hezuo,” Qiuxiang chirped, “and pour it down his throat. Do you hear me, Hezuo? Go home and get it.” But Hezuo had her arms wrapped around an apricot tree and her face pressed up against the bark, until she nearly looked like an outgrowth of the tree itself. “Huzhu, you go then.” But the girl’s silhouette had blended with the distant moonbeams. Once Hong Taiyue had left, the crowd began to disperse. Even Baofeng, medical kit over her back, walked off. “Baofeng!” Yingchun cried out to her, “give your brother an injection of something. All that alcohol will rot his insides…”

“Here’s the vinegar,” Mo Yan called out, holding a bottle in his hand. “I’ve got it.” He was fast, really fast, and an eager helper. He was one of those youngsters who feels the rain as soon as he hears the wind. “I got the snack shop to open,” he announced proudly, “and when the clerk asked me for money I said this was Secretary Hong’s vinegar, so put it on his bill. He gave it to me without a word of protest.”

It took some doing, but Sun Three finally managed to pin donkey-rolling Jinlong to the ground, though not without a struggle – teeth, feet, everything. Qiuxiang put the vinegar bottle up to his lips and began to pour. A peculiar sound tore from his throat, sort of like a rooster that has carelessly swallowed a poisonous bug. His eyes had rolled back in his head – unmistakably all white in the moonlight. “You heartless brat, you’ve killed my son!” Yingchun cried out as Huang Tong thumped Jinlong on the back, driving streams of sour, rank liquid out of his mouth and nose…

28

Hezuo Marries Jiefang against Her Will

Huzhu Is Happily Mated to Jinlong

Two months passed, and neither of the brothers, Lan Jiefang and Ximen Jinlong, was on the road to recovery. Something was wrong with the mental state of the Huang sisters as well. If Mo Yan’s story is to be believed, Lan Jiefang’s madness was real, Ximen Jinlong’s was feigned. Feigning madness is like a red veil that masks shame; when worn, it effectively covers up all scandals. Once madness appears, what else is there to say? By then, the Ximen Village pig farm enjoyed a far-flung reputation. Taking advantage of the short break before the harvest began, the county administration organized another round of activities to observe and learn from the Ximen Village pig-raising experience. Residents from other counties would also be participating. At this critical moment in local history, Jinlong and Jiefang’s madness effectively cut off both of Hong Taiyue’s arms at the shoulder.

A telephone call from the Commune Revolutionary Committee informed him that a delegation from the Military District Logistics Department, accompanied by local and county officials, was on its way to observe and study. So Hong Taiyue called together the best minds of the village to devise ways of dealing with the situation. In Mo Yan’s story, Hong suffered from fever blisters around the mouth and had eyes that were bloodshot day and night. He also wrote that you, Lan Jiefang, lay on your kang staring into space like a crocodile with severed nerves and frequently weeping, muddy tears falling like condensation from the rim of a pig-feed wok. Meanwhile, Jinlong sat in the next room, looking transfixed, like a chicken that’s barely survived poisoning. He looked up each time someone entered the room and giggled like an idiot.

According to Mo Yan, as the leaders of the Ximen Village Production Brigade were bemoaning their anticipated fate, feeling utterly helpless, he entered the scene with a plan. But it would be a mistake to take him at his word, since his stories are filled with foggy details and speculation, and should be used for reference only.

Mo Yan wrote that when he walked into the room where the meeting was being held, Huang Tong tried to bum-rush him back outside. But rather than leave, he jumped into the air and landed on the edge of the conference table in a seated position, his stumpy legs swinging back and forth like loofah gourds on a trellis. Panther Sun, who by then had been promoted to captain of the local militia and head of security, jumped to his feet and grabbed Mo Yan by the ear. Hong Taiyue waved Sun off.

“Have you gone mad too, young man?” Hong mocked Mo Yan. “I wonder what kind of feng shui this village has to produce a great citizen like you.”

“I am not crazy,” Mo Yan wrote in his infamous “Tales of Pig-Raising.” “My nerves are as thick and tough as gourd vines, which won’t break even when supporting a dozen gourds that swing back and forth in the wind. The rest of the world can go mad, and I’ll keep my sanity” He added humorously: “But your two esteemed members have lost their sanity, and I know that’s what’s got you all scratching your heads, like a bunch of monkeys trapped in a well.”

“That’s exactly what has us concerned,” Mo Yan wrote. “Hong Taiyue said, ‘We’re worse off even than monkeys. We’re like a bunch of donkeys stuck in the mud. What can you do to help us, Mr. Mo Yan?’ “Mo Yan’s story continued:

With his hands clasped in front of his chest, Hong Taiyue bowed like an enlightened lord showing respect to a smart man, though his intention was to ridicule me, to mock me. The best way to deal with ridicule and mockery is to feign ignorance and turn the so-called wit into a matter of playing a zither to an ox or singing to a pig. So I pointed a finger at the bulging pocket in the tunic Hong had worn for at least five winters and six summers without coming in contact with soap and water. “What?” Hong asked as he looked down at his pocket. “Cigarettes,” I said. “You’ve got a pack of cigarettes in your pocket. Amber brand.” In those days Amber cigarettes cost as much as the renowned Front Gates, thirty-nine cents a pack, and even a commune Party secretary smoked them sparingly. Thanks to me, Secretary Hong was forced to pass them around. “Don’t tell me you have X-ray vision, young fellow. Your talents are undervalued here in Ximen Village.” I smoked one of his cigarettes, just like a longtime smoker, blowing three smoke rings and linking them with a smoke pillar. “I know you all think I’m beneath contempt,” he said, “seeing me as no smarter than a dog fart. Well, I’m eighteen years old, an adult, and while I’m small and have a baby face, no one in Ximen Village is as smart as me.”

“Is that so?” Hong said with a smile as he glanced around the table. “I didn’t know you had reached the age of eighteen, and certainly didn’t know of your superior intelligence.” That was met by laughter all around.

Mo Yan continued:

So I kept smoking and said, with impeccable logic, that Jinlong and Jiefang’s unbalanced state came as a result of emotional disturbances. No medicine can cure that. Only ancient exorcisms will work. You must arrange marriages between Jinlong and Huzhu and Jiefang and Hezuo, what people call a ‘health and happiness’ wedding, but more accurately a ‘health through happiness’ wedding to drive away evil spirits.

I see no need to debate whether or not it was Mo Yan who made the weddings between you brothers and the Huang sisters possible, but there’s no disputing that they occurred on the same day, and I personally witnessed them both from start to finish. Sure, they were hastily arranged, but Hong Taiyue assumed the responsibility of seeing that everything ran smoothly, and that what was normally considered a private affair became public. By mobilizing the talents of the village women, he ensured that it would be both a festive and a solemn event.

The weddings took place on the sixteenth day of the fourth lunar month that year, under a full moon that was unusually bright and hung low in the sky, seemingly reluctant to leave the apricot grove, almost as if it had shown up in honor of the weddings.

When the moon was at its height it looked down on me with cool detachment. I blew it a kiss and hightailed it to the row of eighteen buildings on the northern edge of the pig farm, near the main village road. That was where the pig tenders lived and where the animal feed was mixed, cooked, and stored; the buildings also housed the farm offices and the farm honor room. The three westernmost rooms were reserved for the two sets of newlyweds, the middle room to be used jointly, the outer rooms for their private use. In his short story Mo Yan wrote:

“Wash basins filled with cucumbers with oil fritters and oil fritters with radishes had been placed on the ten tables set up in the spacious room. A lantern hanging from a rafter lit the room up bright as snow…”

More trumped-up nonsense. The room was no more than twelve by fifteen, so how could they have fit ten tables in it? Nowhere in Northeast Gaomi Township, let alone Ximen Village, was there a hall that could accommodate ten tables set for a hundred dinner guests.

The truth is, the wedding dinner was held in the narrow strip of open land in front of that row of buildings. Rotting limbs and branches and moldy grass and weeds were piled up at the far end of the strip of land, where weasels and hedgehogs had set up housekeeping. The reception required one table, the rosewood table with carved edges that normally sat in the brigade office; that’s where the wind-up telephone rested, along with two bottles of dried-up ink and a kerosene lamp with its glass shade. Later on, the table was taken over by Ximen Jinlong during his heyday – something that Hong Taiyue characterized as the tyrannical act of a landlord’s son to settle old scores with the lower and middle poor peasants – and wound up in his bright office to become a family heirloom. Hey! That son of mine, I don’t know if I ought to pat him on the back or kick him in the pants – Okay, okay, I’ll leave that for later.

They carried out twenty black-topped double-student tables with yellow legs from the elementary school. The tabletops were covered with red and blue ink stains and dirty words cut in with knives. Also moved out of the school building were forty benches painted red. The tables were laid out in two rows, the benches in four, turning the strip of land into what looked like a site for an outdoor classroom. There were no gas lanterns or electric lights, just a single tinplate hurricane lantern in the center of Ximen Nao’s rosewood desk, which put out a murky yellow light, attracting hordes of moths that threw themselves noisily into the shade. Truth is, there was no need for the lantern, since the moon was so close to earth that night, its light bright enough for women to do embroidery.

Roughly a hundred people – men, women, old, and young – sat on opposite sides in four rows of tables weighted down with good food and fine liquor, the looks on their faces a mixture of excitement and anxiety. They couldn’t eat, not yet, because Hong Taiyue was holding forth from behind the tables. Some of the younger – and hungrier – children sneaked bits of oil fritters when no one was looking.

“Comrade Commune Members, tonight we are celebrating the marriages of Lan Jinlong and Huang Huzhu and Lan Jiefang and Huang Hezuo, outstanding youth of the Ximen Village Production Brigade who made great contributions to the construction of our pig farm. They are model revolutionary workers and models for our program of late marriages, so let’s congratulate them with a round of applause…”

I was hiding behind the pile of rotting wood, quietly watching the ceremony. Jinlong and Huzhu sat on benches to the left of the tables, Jiefang and Hezuo to the right. Huang Tong and Qiuxiang sat at the end closest to me, so all I could see were their backs. The place of honor, at the far end, was where Hong Taiyue, the speaker, stood. Yingchun sat with her head down, making it impossible to tell if she was happy or sad. Seeing her with mixed emotions at this moment struck me as perfectly reasonable, and that was when it dawned on me that one very important individual was missing at the head table. Who? Why, Northeast Gaomi Township’s celebrated independent farmer, of course, Lan Lian. He was, after all, your biological father, Jiefang, and Jinlong’s nominal father. Jinlong’s formal surname was Lan, after your father. How could a father not be present when both his sons are to be married?

During my days as a donkey and an ox, I was in almost daily contact with Lan Lian. But after I returned as a pig, my old friend and I were estranged. Thoughts of the past flooded my mind, and the desire to see Lan Lian again began to sprout. As Hong Taiyue was nearing the end of his speech, three riders rode up to the banquet on their bicycles, preceded by the ringing of bells. Who were these people? One had once been in charge of the Supply and Marketing Co-op, but was now director and Party secretary of Cotton Processing Plant Number Five, Pang Hu. Accompanying him was his wife, Wang Leyun, someone I hadn’t seen in years. She had gotten so fat, all the curves had disappeared. Her face was ruddy, the skin glossy, testimony to the good life. The third rider, a young tall, svelte young woman, I recognized immediately as Pang Kangmei, a character in one of Mo Yan’s stories, the girl who nearly came into the world in some roadside weeds. Wearing her hair in two short braids, she had on a red-checked shirt on which was pinned a white badge with “Farm Academy” in red letters. Pang Kangmei was a student specializing in animal husbandry at the “Farm Academy” attached to the Workers, Peasants, and Soldiers University. Standing straight as a poplar tree, she was half a head taller than her father and a whole head taller than her mother. She wore a reserved smile. She had every reason to look reserved: any young woman born into a family of such envious social status was as unattainable as the Lady in the Moon. As Mo Yan’s dream girl, she appeared in much of his fiction, a long-legged beauty whose name changed from story to story. All three members of the family had made a special trip to attend your wedding.

“Congratulations! Congratulations!” Pang Hu and Wang Leyun said with broad smiles, offering their best wishes to all.

“Oh, my, oh, my.” Hong Taiyue interrupted his speech and jumped down off of the bench he was standing on. He ran up and enthusiastically shook Pang Hu’s hand. “Director Pang,” he blurted out emotionally, “no, what I mean is, Secretary Pang, Manager Pang, you honor us with your presence! We heard you’d assumed factory leadership and we didn’t wish to disturb you.”

“Old Hong, I thought we were friends,” Pang Hu said with a laugh. “Holding a momentous wedding in the village without letting us know. You weren’t afraid I’d come and drink up all the wedding liquor, were you?”

“Not at all. We were afraid that such an honored guest wouldn’t come even if we sent an eight-man sedan chair to bring you here. For Ximen Village, your presence here today-”

“Your gracious presence lends glitter to our humble surroundings,” Mo Yan proclaimed loudly from his seat at the end of the first row, a comment that not only caught the attention of Pang Hu, but of his daughter, Kangmei, as well. Raising her eyebrows in surprise, she fixed Mo Yan with a piercing stare at the same time as the other guests turned to look at him. He grinned complacently, revealing a row of golden yellow teeth. That’s the best I can do to describe the strange sight he presented as he jumped at yet another opportunity to show off.

Pang Hu removed his hand from Hong Taiyue’s grip and, along with the other hand, reached out to Yingchun. The hardened hands of this grenade-throwing war hero had softened over years of a more genteel life, and Yingchun, flustered and moved, but clearly grateful for the gesture, just stood there, her lips quivering, unable to speak. Pang Hu took her hands, shook them warmly, and said, “How happy you must be!”

“Happy, happy, everybody’s happy…,” Yingchun managed to mutter through her tears.

“Happy together, happy together!” Mo Yan interjected.

“Why isn’t Lan Lian here, ma’am?” Pang Hu’s gaze swept past the two rows of tables.

The question tied Yingchun’s tongue in knots and thoroughly embarrassed Hong Taiyue. An ideal opportunity for Mo Yan to speak up again.

“He’s probably taking advantage of the bright moonlight to till his one-point-six acres of land.”

Panther Sun, who was sitting next to Mo Yan, must have stepped on Mo Yan’s foot. “Why’d you do that?” he screamed with patent excess.

“Shut that stinking mouth of yours. No one would mistake you for a mute,” Sun said menacingly, keeping his voice down. He reached down and pinched Mo Yan on the thigh, drawing a loud screech and turning his face white.

“Okay, enough of that,” Pang Hu said to break the awkwardness. He then gave his best wishes to the four newlyweds. Jinlong wore a silly smile, Jiefang seemed to be about to cry, Huzhu and Hezuo displayed indifferent looks. Pang Hu turned to his wife and daughter: “Bring the wedding gifts.”

“I can’t believe this, Secretary Pang,” Hong Taiyue said. “You’ve already lent glitter to our humble surroundings by your gracious presence, and there was no need to go to any additional expense.”

Pang Kangmei held a framed mirror with the dedication in red “Congratulations to Lan Jinlong and Huang Huzhu in becoming a revolutionary couple” in one corner. The mirror was decorated with a drawing of Chairman Mao in a long gown, bundle in hand, as he encouraged miners to rebel in the city of Anyuan. Wang Leyun held up a similar framed mirror with the same dedication, with “Lan Jiefang and Huang Hezuo” replacing the other names, in red in the corner. The inlaid photograph was of Chairman Mao in a woolen overcoat standing on the beach at the resort city of Beidaihe. Jinlong or Jiefang ought to have stood up to receive the gifts, but they sat there as if glued to their seats, making it necessary for Hong Taiyue to urge Huzhu and Hezuo to go up in their stead, since they appeared to be reasonably alert. After taking the mirror, Huang Huzhu bowed deeply to Wang Leyun, and when she looked up there were tears in her eyes. She was wearing a red top over red pants, her thick black braid falling all the way to her knees, bound at the end with a red bow. Wang Leyun reached out and touched the braid with tender affection. “You must hate the idea of cutting it off, I guess,” she said.

At last the opportunity presented itself for Wu Qiuxiang to speak up. “It’s not that, ma’am. My daughter’s hair is different from other girls’. If she cut it, blood would seep from it.”

“How strange,” Wang said. “But now I know why it felt sort of fleshy when I touched it. There must be capillaries running through it.”

Hezuo refrained from bowing when she took the mirror from Pang Kangmei. She merely thanked her modestly. Kangmei offered her hand in friendship. “I wish you every happiness,” she said as Hezuo took the hand, turned her head, and said through her tears, “Thank you.”

In my view, her fashionable hairstyle, her slim waist, and her dark skin made Hezuo prettier than Huzhu, and with her you got better than you deserved, Jiefang. She’s the one who ought to feel cheated, not you. With that blue birthmark, you could be the best person in the world and you’d still scare the hell out of anyone who saw you. Where you belong is down in the bowels of hell as one of Lord Yama’s attendants, not here on earth as an official. But you made it, you became an official, and you felt that Hezuo was beneath you. Everything about this world befuddles me, I’ll tell you that.

Once that was behind them, Hong Taiyue made room at the table for Pang Hu and his family. “You,” he said sternly, pointing to where Mo Yan was sitting, “scoot over and free up some space for our guests.” A bit of chaos ensued, punctuated with complaints from the dislodged guests.

Once the new arrivals were seated, the wedding guests, eager to start eating, jumped to their feet and noisily raised their glasses in a toast. Then they sat down, some quicker than others, picked up their chopsticks, and took aim on the morsels of food they’d had their eyes on all along. Compared to cucumbers and turnips, the oil sticks were considered gourmet food, which led inevitably to momentous clashes of chopsticks above the tables. Mo Yan’s greedy mouth had a well-deserved reputation, but his behavior that night was uncharacteristically subdued and genteel. Why? We needn’t look beyond Pang Kangmei. Though he’d been banished to the far end of the table, his heart remained stuck on the head table. He kept looking that way, now that the college student Pang Kangmei had snared his soul, as he wrote in one of his stupid essays:

From the moment I laid eyes on Pang Kangmei my heart grew. The ones I’d always thought were fairylike beauties – Huzhu, Hezuo, and Baofeng – in that instant became unimaginably common. Only by leaving Northeast Gaomi Township was it possible to find girls like Pang Kangmei, tall and slender, with beautiful features, nice white teeth, lovely voices, and bodies that gave off a subtle perfume…

Well, Mo Yan wound up getting drunk – one glass did it – so Panther Sun picked him up by the scruff of the neck and deposited him in the pile of grass and weeds, not far from where the pig bones had been dumped. Back at the head table, Jinlong guzzled half a glassful, and life returned to his eyes. Out of motherly concern, Yingchun muttered, “You shouldn’t drink so much, son.” And then there was Hong Taiyue, who, having thought things out carefully, said, “Jinlong, it’s time to put a period to all that’s happened in the past. Your new life begins today, and I expect you to sing well for me in all the shows to come.” To which Jinlong replied, “Over the past two months, I’ve experienced mental blockage that has blurred my thinking. But I’ve come to my senses, and the blockage has disappeared.” He offered his glass in a toast to Pang Hu and his wife: “Secretary Pang, Aunty Wang, thank you for coming to my wedding and for a gift we’ll treasure.” Then he turned to Pang Kangmei. “Comrade Kangmei, you are a college student, an advanced intellectual. We welcome your views of our work here on the pig farm. Please don’t hold anything back. As someone who studies animal husbandry, if you don’t know something, no one on earth does.” Jinlong’s feigned madness and crazy actions had run their course. The same would be true of Jiefang’s madness in short order. Now that Jinlong had recovered the ability to control events, he went around toasting all the people he ought to have toasted, thanked all those who deserved it, and, finally and perhaps unnecessarily, held out his glass to Hezuo and Jiefang, wishing them happiness and a long life together. Hezuo thrust the mirror with the inlaid drawing of Chairman Mao into Jiefang’s lap, stood up, and held out her glass with both hands. The moon abruptly rose high in the sky, shrinking in size as it cast quicksilver beams that put everything below in stark relief. Weasels’ heads emerged from the weeds as they marveled over the unusual light; bold hedgehogs scurried among the legs under the tables in their search for food. What occurred next happened in less time than it takes to tell about it. Hezuo flung the contents of her glass into Jinlong’s face and then threw the empty glass down on the table. Shock registered on everyone’s face over this unforeseen turn of events. The moon jumped even higher in the sky, blanketing the ground with quicksilver beams. Hezuo covered her face and burst into tears.

Huang Tong: “That girl…?”

Qiuxiang: “Hezuo, what was that all about?”

Yingchun: “Oh, you foolish youngsters.”

Hong Taiyue: “Secretary Pang, to your health.” He raised his glass. “A little disagreement, that’s all. I hear you’re looking for contract workers at the processing plant. I can speak up for Hezuo and Jiefang. A change of scenery would do them good. They’re both outstanding youngsters who deserve the chance to toughen up a bit-”

Huzhu picked up the glass in front of her and flung the contents at her sister. “What did you think you were doing?”

I’d never seen Huang Huzhu so angry, had never even imagined she knew how to be angry. She took out a handkerchief to dry Jinlong’s face. He pushed her hand away, but she brought it up to him again. I tell you, I was a smart pig, but the girls of Ximen Village turned my brain to mush that day. Meanwhile, Mo Yan had crawled out of the weeds and, like a boy with springs tied to the soles of his feet, bounced unsteadily up to the table, where he picked up a glass, held it high over his head, and, like a poet – maybe Li Bai and maybe Qu Yuan – shouted crisply:

“Moon, Moon, I salute you!”

Mo Yan splashed the liquor in his glass in the direction of the moon; it spread out in the air like a green curtain and the moon abruptly dropped low in the sky, then floated gently upward to its normal height, where, like a silver plate, it cast indifferent rays down on the world.

Down below, now that the festivities had ended, the people began drifting away. There was still plenty to do that night; no time to waste. Me? I felt like going to see my old friend Lan Lian, who, I knew, was in the habit of working his land on moonlit nights. I thought back to my days as an ox and what he once said to me: Ox, the sun is theirs, the moon is ours, and I can find my land from the surrounding commune land with my eyes closed. The one-point-six acres of land are a reef, a strip of private land that will never sink in the vast ocean. Lan Lian had gained a provincewide reputation as a negative model, and I felt honored to have served him as a donkey and an ox, glory to the reactionary. “Only claiming the land as one’s own allows us to be masters of the land.”

Before going out to see Lan Lian, I passed stealthily by my pen, making no noise at all. A pair of militiamen were sitting under an apricot tree smoking and eating apricots, and to avoid them I hopped from one patch of shade to another, feeling light as a swallow, and exited the grove after only about a dozen hops, where my way was blocked by an irrigation ditch roughly five yards across and filled with clear water, the surface as smooth as glass. I was being observed by the moon’s reflection. Now I’d never tried to swim, not since the day I was born, but instinct told me that I knew how. But not wanting to frighten the moon, I decided to leap across the ditch. I stepped back ten yards or so, took several deep breaths to fill my lungs, and took off running, heading at full speed toward a ridge that showed up white, an ideal launching pad. The moment my front hooves touched the hard-packed earth, I sprang forward with my rear legs and lifted off, as if shot out of a cannon. My belly was cooled by a breeze that hugged the surface of the water; the moon winked as I passed overhead, just before landing on the opposite bank.

I saw him. He was wearing a jacket made of local fabric with a button-down front, a white cloth sash around his waist, and a conical hat woven of sorghum stalks that hid most of his face from view, but not the luminous blue half or the intensely sad yet unyielding light in his eyes. He was waving a long bamboo pole with a piece of red cloth tied to the end, like the swishing tail of an ox, driving the egg-laying tussock moths away from his wheat stalks and onto the cotton plants or cornstalks belonging to the production brigade. Reduced to using this clumsy primitive method to protect his crops, it appeared as if he was doing battle with destructive insects, when in fact the real foe was the People’s Commune. Old friend, back when I was a donkey and then when I was an ox, I shared your comforts and your hardships; but now I’m a People’s Commune stud boar, and I can’t help you. I thought about relieving myself in your field to supply you with some organic fertilizer, but what if you stepped in it? Wouldn’t that turn a good deed into a bad one? I could bite through the People’s Commune cornstalks or uproot all their cotton plants, but that won’t do you any good, since they aren’t your enemy either. Old friend, keep at it, don’t waver. You are China’s sole independent farmer, so don’t forget, perseverance is victory. I looked up at the moon; the moon nodded at me and then leaped into the western sky. It was getting late, time for me to head back. But I’d no sooner started out through the wheat field than I spotted Yingchun hurrying my way with a rattan basket. The wheat tassels rustled when they brushed her hips as she passed by. The look on her face was that of a wife who is late delivering food to her husband as he labors in the field. Though they lived apart, they hadn’t divorced. And though they hadn’t divorced, the joys of the bedroom were denied them. Deep down I felt good about that. As a pig, I shouldn’t have given a damn one way or the other where human sex was concerned, but after all, I’d been her husband when I walked the earth as Ximen Nao. The distinct aroma of liquor emanating from her hung in the chilled farmland air. She stopped when she was no more than a couple of yards from Lan Lian to look at his slightly hunched back as, with great agility, he fanned away the moths with his bamboo pole. Back and forth it waved, whistling in the wind. Their wings weighted down by dew, their bellies heavy with eggs, the moths flew awkwardly. I’m sure he knew he was being watched, and probably guessed it was Yingchun, but instead of stopping, he merely slowed down the pace of his waving.

“Children’s father…” Finally she spoke.

The pole stopped in midair after a couple more swings. Like a scarecrow, he just stood there without moving.

“The children are married. We needn’t worry any longer,” Ying-chun said. Then she sighed. “I’ve brought you a bottle of liquor. Whatever else he may be, he’s still your son.”

Lan Lian made a grunting sound and swung the pole back and forth twice.

“Director Pang brought his wife and daughter to the banquet and presented both couples with framed mirrors inlaid with images of Chairman Mao.” Raising her voice slightly, she said emotionally, “Director Pang has been promoted to head of a cotton processing plant, and he’s agreed to give jobs to Jiefang and Hezuo. It was Secretary Hong’s idea. Jinlong, Baofeng, and Jiefang have been treated well by Secretary Hong, who is a good man. Don’t you think we should comply with his wishes?”

The pole waved violently in the air, snagging some flying moths in the red cloth; with loud chirps they crashed to the ground.

“Okay, I shouldn’t have said anything. Don’t be angry. Do as you wish. By now everyone’s used to what you’re doing. This is, after all, our sons’ wedding day, and I’ve come out here in the middle of the night so you can drink some of the wedding liquor. I’ll leave after that.”

Yingchun took a bottle out of her basket; it sparkled in the moonlight. After removing the cork, she walked up and handed it to him from behind.

The pole stopped again. He stood frozen to the spot. I saw tears glisten in his eyes as he rested the pole on his shoulder and tipped back his hat to gaze at the moon, which, naturally, looked down sadly at him. He took the bottle, but didn’t turn his head.

“Maybe you’re right, all of you, maybe I’m the only one who’s wrong. But I made a vow, and if I’m wrong, then that’s how I’ll end up.”

“After Baofeng is married,” Yingchun said, “I’ll leave the commune and stay with you.”

“No, independent farming means doing it alone. I don’t need anybody else. I have nothing against the Communist Party and I definitely have nothing against Chairman Mao. I’m not opposed to the People’s Commune or to collectivization. I just want to be left alone to work for myself. Crows everywhere in the world are black. Why can’t there be at least one white one? That’s me, a white crow!” He splashed some of the liquor up toward the moon and, in a voice as rousing, as stirring, and as desolate as I’ve ever heard, cried out, “Moon, you’ve accompanied me in my labors all these years, you’re a lantern sent to me by the Old Man in the Sky. I’ve tilled the soil by your light, I’ve sown seeds by your light, and I’ve brought in harvests by your light… You say nothing, you are never angry or resentful, and I’m forever in your debt. So tonight permit me to drink to you as an expression of my gratitude. Moon, I’ve troubled you for so long!”

The colorless liquor dispersed in the air like pearls tinged with blue. The moon trembled slightly and winked at Lan Lian. I can’t remember being so moved by anything. In an age when throngs of people sang the praises of the sun, it was unheard of for someone to hold such deep feelings for the moon. Lan Lian poured the last few drops of the liquor into his mouth, then held the bottle up over his shoulder.

“Okay,” he said, “you can go now.”

With a wave of his pole, he started walking. Yingchun got down on her knees, brought her hands together, and raised them to the moon, which shone down gently on her dancing tears, her graying hair, and her quivering lips…

In the face of this mutual love, I stood up in total disregard of the possible consequences, for I believed they would know in their hearts who I was and would not take me as some sort of monster. Supporting my front hooves on the springy tops of wheat stalks, I walked up to them along one of the field ridges. Clasping my hooves together, I bowed to them and made a pig noise to greet them. They gaped at me, blank looks that held shock and puzzlement. I am Ximen Nao, I said. I distinctly heard human sounds emerge from my throat, but there was no reaction from them. After what seemed like a long time, Yingchun shrieked, while Lan Lian pointed his pole at me and said:

“Pig demon, kill me if that’s what you want, but I beg you, please don’t trample my crops.”

Crippling sadness suddenly filled my heart. Humans and beasts walk down separate roads that virtually never intersect. Lowering myself down on all fours, I fled through the wheat field, crestfallen. But my mood improved the closer I came to Apricot Garden. All creatures on earth follow their own nature. Birth, old age, sickness, and death; joys and sorrows, partings and reunions, are dictated by irreversible objective laws. I was a boar at the time, so I had to carry out my boar responsibilities. Lan Lian stuck by his obstinacy to remain apart from the masses, so it was necessary for me, Pig Sixteen, to use my great intelligence, extreme courage, and extraordinary physical abilities to accomplish something that would stun the world, and crowd my piggish way into human history.

After entering Apricot Garden, I pretty much put Lan Lian and Yingchun out of my mind. Why? Because I saw that Diao Xiaosan had already seduced Butterfly Lover and had her hot to trot. Of the other twenty-nine sows, fourteen had already escaped from their pens, while the remaining fifteen were either banging their heads against the gates or crying to the moon. A grand prologue to mating was slowly opening. Before the major player had made his appearance, his understudy was already onstage. Damn him! I wouldn’t allow it.

29

Pig Sixteen Battles Diao Xiaosan

The Straw Hat Song Accompanies a Loyalty Dance

Diao Xiaosan sat with his back against the renowned apricot tree, holding an upturned straw hat filled with yellow apricots. One after another, he picked them up with his right hoof and tossed them into his mouth, smacking his lips as he ate the fruit and then spit out the pits, which landed several yards away. Resting under a skinny apricot tree separated some four or five yards from Diao Xiaosan, Butterfly Lover held a broken plastic comb in one hand and a hand mirror in the other, putting on flirtatious, coquettish airs. Ah, dear sow, your weakness is coveting petty gains. A tiny mirror and a broken comb, and you would take any boar to bed. Every so often Diao threw one of his apricots over to where the dozen or so sows that had escaped from their pens were glancing longingly in his direction and oinking suggestively They fought over every one. Little Brother, don’t hanker only after Butterfly Lover, we love you too and we’d be happy to help you carry on your line. The sows teased him with the most suggestive language they knew The thought of obtaining a wife and a harem made him deliriously happy, as if floating on air. After shaking his legs, he began to hum a little tune and, hat in hand, danced a jig. The sows joined in, some twirling in place and others rolling on the ground. The wretched quality of their dancing aroused feelings of contempt in me. Butterfly Lover laid her mirror and comb down at the base of the tree and began wiggling her bottom, setting her tail in motion as she sidled over to Diao Xiaosan. As soon as she was near enough, she dropped her head and raised her hindquarters. With that in sight, I leaped into the air like an antelope out on the Serengeti and landed in the space between Butterfly Lover and Diao Xiaosan. Now they could only dream about the joy they nearly made a reality.

My appearance on the scene threw cold water on Butterfly Lover’s burning desire. She turned and retreated back to the skinny apricot tree, where she put her purple tongue to work picking up wormy red apricot leaves that had fallen to the ground and curling them into her mouth. She chewed the fruit with gusto. Fickleness and a tendency to change their mind whenever they saw something new was part of the sows’ nature, so they could hardly be blamed for doing what came naturally. That in itself guaranteed that supplying sperm with the finest genes to merge with their eggs in the womb was the way to produce superior offspring. That logic is so simple even pigs understand it, so how could a boar with the intelligence of Diao Xiaosan not? He flung his straw hat at me along with the remaining apricots.

“You spoiled my fun, you son of a bitch!” he cursed angrily.

I jumped out of the way and, with a good eye and quick hoof, snatched up the hat by its brim, and reared back until I was standing up straight. Holding my free hoof up in the air, I spun around and, with the gathered momentum, flung the hat and its apricot contents like a discus thrower. The golden yellow hat curved in a beautiful arc on its way to the moon. Suddenly, the strains of a moving straw hat song filled the air above us: La-la-la- La-ya la-la-ya-la- Mama’s straw hat is flying la – Mama’s straw hat is flying to the moon – La-ya la-la-ya-la – The sows under the tree were joined in song by hundreds of pigs in the farm; some jumped out of their pens, while those that lacked the ability stood up with their hooves on the walls, and all of them gazed up at the moon. I settled back down on all fours and said calmly, yet decisively:

“Old Diao, I did what I did to ensure that the generations of pigs to come are produced by the finest genes, not to spoil your fun.”

Once again I raised up on my hind legs and charged him; he reacted by charging me, and we crashed into each other – snout to snout – five or six feet above the ground. I not only got a firsthand sensation of how hard his snout was, but also got a whiff of the sickly sweet odor in his mouth. My snout ached and a song was echoing in my ears as I hit the ground. I was on my feet after a quick somersault. I rubbed my nose with a hoof, which came away stained with drops of blue blood.

“You motherfucker!” I cursed under my breath.

Diao Xiaosan also somersaulted himself back onto his feet and rubbed his nose. His hoof also came away stained with drops of blue blood. “You motherfucker!” he cursed under his breath.

La-la-la – La-ya la-la-ya-la – I’ve lost the straw hat Mama gave me- The straw-hat song swirled in the air, the moon rolled back toward me and stopped directly overhead, where it rose and fell like a flying boat being tossed about by wind currents. The straw hat circled it gracefully, like a satellite to the moon. La-ya-la – La-ya la-la-ya-la- Mama’s straw hat is lost- Some of the pigs smacked their front hooves together, some stomped their rear hooves on the ground, rhythmically, as they sang the straw hat song.

I picked up an apricot leaf, chewed it, then spit it out into my hoof and stuffed it up my bloody nose. Now I was ready for the next assault. I saw that Diao was bleeding from both nostrils, blue blood that dripped to the ground, where each drop shone like a will-o’-the-wisp. Deep down I was happy. The first round had produced no victor and no vanquished, although I knew I held the advantage, since only one of my nostrils was bleeding, not both. Diao’s eyes rolled furtively, almost as if he were searching for an apricot leaf. I guess you’d like to stuff leaves up your nose, too, pal, is that it? Well, I’m not giving you the chance. With a loud battle oink, I flashed him a piercing glare and flexed every muscle in my body, concentrating all my power into one mighty leap.

This time, instead of leaping into the air, the sly devil slithered along the ground, and I just sailed through the air, all the way to the canopy of the crooked apricot tree. I immediately heard a series of loud cracks, just before I crashed to the ground, headfirst, carrying a thick forked limb down with me. A quick somersault and I was back on my feet again, but dizzy as can be and my mouth full of mud. La-la-la – La-ya la-la-ya-la – The sows clapped their hooves and sang. They were not my fans. Too easily swayed, they were ready to raise their bottoms to accept whoever came out on top. Conquest makes you the king. Diao Xiaosan, extremely pleased with himself, stood up on his hind legs and bowed in the direction of the huddled sows. He blew them a kiss. Despite the fact that dirty blood was still dripping from his nose and despite the fact that the blood had badly soiled his chest, the sows raised a chorus of cheers. That made him even more pleased with himself. Taking large, confident strides, he walked up next to me, grabbed the broken, fruit-laden limb with his teeth, and pulled it out from under my hindquarters. The insolent bastard! But I was still dizzy. La-la-la – La-ya la-la-ya-la – I just let my eyes follow him as he dragged the fruit-laden limb out from under me and backed away. He rested a few seconds before continuing on his way. The limb made a scraping noise as it scratched the surface of the ground. La-la-la – La-ya la-la-ya-la – Little Brother, aren’t you something!- I was furious and itched to charge him again, but I was still too dizzy to do anything. Diao Xiaosan dragged the limb up to Butterfly Lover and stood up on his hind legs. He then took a step backward with his right leg, bent over at the waist, and held out his right front hoof, like a white-gloved gentleman. With a half-circle sweep of the hoof, he said, For you, young lady… La-ya la-la-ya-la – Turning to the dozen sows and the castrated boars farther off, he waved them over. With a chorus of joyful oinks, they converged on the limb, quickly tearing it apart. A couple of the bolder males made an attempt to sidle up to the apricot tree, and so I stood up. I saw a sow strutting proudly away with a heavily laden branch she’d managed to get away with, her big, floppy ears slapping her cheeks. Diao Xiaosan walked around blowing kisses until a sinister-looking castrato stuck his front hooves in his mouth and sent a loud whistle knifing through the air. The pigs all quieted down.

I fought to compose myself, knowing that in a contest of raw courage I’d suffer a humiliating defeat. That I could live with, somehow, but not the loss of a wife and harem to Diao Xiaosan, because in another five months, the farm would be increased by several hundred new pigs – long-nosed, pointy-eared little monsters. I made my tail twitch and shook out my limbs; I spit out the mud in my mouth and, while I was at it, scooped up some apricots that blanketed the ground, nearly all of which had fallen to the ground when I hit the tree – ripe, sweet, honeyed. La-ya-la- La-ya la-la-yala- Mama’s straw hat is flying around the moon, changing from a golden color to a silvery one – Chewing and swallowing several apricots calmed me down and soothed my mouth and throat. And so, seeing no need for anxiety, I slowly ate my fill. I watched as Diao picked up an apricot with his hoof and put it up next to Butterfly Lover’s mouth. With little-girl coyness, she refused to eat it. My mother told me I wasn’t supposed to eat just anything from a boar, she said with sweet affectation. Your mother doesn’t know what she’s talking about, Diao said as he shoved the apricot into her mouth, enough of a distraction for him to plant a noisy kiss on her ear. Kiss! the pigs all called out. Kiss! La-ya-la – La-ya la-la-yala – They’d forgotten all about me, I figured. They must have thought the outcome was clear, and I had no choice but to admit defeat. Most had come from Mount Yimeng with Diao Xiaosan, and they favored him. God-fucking-dammit! The time had come. I mustered all my strength and charged Diao Xiaosan again, soaring in the air and inspiring Diao to repeat his previous tactic of slipping under me as I passed overhead. Well, my friend, that’s exactly what I wanted you to do. I landed solidly at the foot of the skinny apricot tree, right beside Butterfly Lover. In other words, Diao and I changed places. And the first thing I did was lift a front hoof and slap Butterfly Lover across the face, then I pushed her to the ground, drawing a shriek from her. There was no doubt in my mind that Diao would turn around and come at me, and at that moment, my two enormous balls, the most vulnerable and treasured part of my body, were hanging out there in his line of sight. If he butted his head into them or took a bite out of them, that’d be the end of that. It was a dangerous game of chess, like cutting off all avenues of escape. So I looked behind me out of the corner of both eyes, knowing I had to seize the moment, and saw the blood that was spurting from the savage beast’s wide-open mouth and the ominous glare in his eyes. La-ya-la – La-ya la-la-ya-la – My life was hanging by a thread, so I rested my front hooves on Butterfly Lover’s body and raised my rear legs, a sort of handstand, if you will, and when Diao came at me like a shot, he slipped under my belly, and all I had to do was settle back and I was astride him. He was totally defenseless. I stuck my hooves in his eyes – no more glare. La-ya-la- La-ya la-la-ya-la- Mama’s straw hat has flown up to the moon – Taking my loves and my ideals with it – Sure, the tactic was on the cruel side, but this was such an important moment that I couldn’t concern myself with sermons of hypocrisy.

Diao Xiaosan careened around frantically until he finally managed to throw me from his back. Blue-tinged blood oozed from his eye sockets. Covering his eyes with his hooves, he cried out in agony as he rolled on the ground:

“I can’t see… I’m blind…”

La-ya-la- La-ya-la- All the pigs were quiet, looking very solemn. The moon flew high up into the sky, the straw hat fell to earth, bringing an end to the straw hat song; now the only sounds swirling around the air of Apricot Garden were the agonizing shrieks of Diao Xiaosan. The castrated boars headed back to their pens, their tails between their legs, whereas the sows, under Butterfly Lover’s leadership, circled me and turned their heads outward, offering up their backsides to me. Master, they muttered, beloved master, we are yours, all of us, for you are the king, and we are lowly concubines fully prepared to become the mothers of your offspring… La-ya-la – La-ya la-la-ya-la – The straw hat that had fallen out of the sky was crushed beneath Diao Xiaosan’s body as he rolled on the ground. My mind was a blank, except for soft strains of the straw hat song, and those soft strains were, in the end, like pearls sinking to the bottom of a lake. Everything had returned to normal; the watery rays of the moon were chilled, causing me to shiver and raising goose bumps on my skin. Is this how territory was won? Is this how you gained dominance? I couldn’t possibly handle all that many sows, could I? To be perfectly honest, by then I’d lost interest in mating with any of them. But all those nice rear ends raised in my direction were like an indestructible wall penning me in, with no way out. How I wished I could escape on the wind, but a voice from on high made my position clear: King of Pigs, you have no right to escape, just as Diao Xiaosan has no right to mate with them. Mating with them is your sacred obligation! La-ya-la – La-ya la-la-ya-la – The straw hat song rose slowly to the surface like pearls. Yes, a monarch has no domestic affairs; politics rest on a monarch’s sex organ. It was necessary for me to faithfully discharge my duties by mating with those sows. I absolutely had to fulfill my obligation to deposit my seed in their wombs. It made no difference whether they were pretty or ugly, whether they were white or black, whether they were virgins or had already mated with other boars. The real problem that presented itself was selection. They were all equally demanding, equally passionate, so who was I to choose? Or, to put it differently, who was going to be honored by an imperial visit? With all my heart, I wished I could be aided in my selection by one of the castrated boars, but there was no time for that now. The moon, close to fulfilling its nightly obligation, had retreated to the western edge of the sky, until only half of its red face was still visible above the treetops. A shark’s-belly silver-gray sky had already appeared on the eastern horizon; dawn was breaking, the morning stars sparkled. I nudged Butterfly Lover’s rear end with my hard snout as notice that I had selected her for the first imperial visit. She moaned coquettishly. Ah, Great King, your slave’s body has long awaited this moment…

For the moment, I put aside all thoughts of past lives and gave no thought to what would follow my present life. I was a pig, through and through, so I rose up and mounted Butterfly Lover… La-ya-la – La-ya la-la-ya-la- The straw hat song rose triumphantly. As the background music swelled, a sonorous tenor voice rose into the sky: Mama’s straw hat has flown up to the moon – Taking my loves and ideals with it – All the other sows, free of jealousy, took the tail of the pigs in front in their mouths and began a circle dance around Butterfly Lover and me to the rhythms of the straw hat song. With Apricot Garden birds singing and a morning glow lighting up the sky, my first mating went off without a hitch.

As I lowered myself from Butterfly Lover’s back, I spotted Ximen Bai walking unsteadily, aided by a homemade cane, baskets of food over her shoulder. Calling upon what energy remained, I leaped over the wall and into my pen to await Ximen Bai’s food delivery. The scent of black beans and bran made me drool. I was famished. Ximen Bai’s face, burnished red by the morning glow, appeared above the wall of my pen. There were tears in her eyes. Nearly overcome by emotion, she said:

“Sixteen, Jinlong and Jiefang are now married, and so are you. You are all grown-ups…”

30

Miraculous Hair Brings Xiaosan Back to Life

The Red Death Wipes Out the Swine Horde

The weather during the eighth month of that year was sweltering, with so much rain it was as if the heavens had sprung a leak. The canal running alongside the pig farm swelled with floodwaters, the saturated ground rising like dough in the oven. Several pathetic old apricot trees, unable to withstand the watery onslaught, shed their leaves and waited for death to claim them. Branches of poplars and willows that served as roof beams above the pigpens sprouted fresh appendages, while fences made of sorghum stalks were covered with gray spots of mildew. Pig waste that had begun to leaven filled the air with a moldy smell. Frogs that ought to have gone dormant instead began mating, interrupting the nightly stillness with croaks that kept the pigs from their sleep. And then a powerful earthquake struck the city of Tangshan, its shock waves collapsing more than a dozen pens with weak foundations and causing my roof beams to creak and sway. That was followed by a meteorite shower, with meteors streaking across the sky, accompanied by great explosive rumblings and blinding lights in the black curtain of night; the earth shook. All this occurred as my harem of twenty or more pregnant pigs awaited the impending birth of their litters, teats swelling with milk.

Diao Xiaosan was still my neighbor. Our violent struggles left him with one totally blind eye and one with seriously impeded vision. That constituted his great misfortune and my deep remorse. During that spring, two of the sows failed to get pregnant even after several couplings, and I thought about inviting him to try his luck with them as an expression of my regret over what had happened. Imagine my surprise when he responded somberly:

“Pig Sixteen, I say, Pig Sixteen, you can kill a warrior but you mustn’t humiliate him. You beat me, Diao Xiaosan, fair and square, and all I ask is a measure of dignity. Do not disgrace me with such an offer.”

Deeply moved, I was forced to view this onetime bitter foe with renewed respect. I tell you, in the wake of our fight, Diao Xiaosan became a very somber pig, one whose gluttony and talkativeness ended abruptly. But, as they say, calamities never come alone: a far greater tragedy was about to befall him. Seen from one angle, what happened involved me; seen from another angle, it did not. Pig farm personnel wanted Diao to mate with the two sows I was unable to impregnate, but he merely sat behind them, quietly, not aroused, like a cold stone carving, which led those people to assume that he had become impotent. In an attempt to improve the quality of meat of retired boars, castration was called for, a shameful human invention. Diao Xiaosan was fated to suffer that cruelty. For an immature male pig, castration is a simple procedure accomplished in a few minutes. But for a grown pig like Diao Xiaosan, who must have enjoyed hot, passionate romance back in Mount Yimeng, it was the sort of operation that could leave his life hanging by a thread. A squad of ten or more militiamen held him down beneath the crooked apricot tree and encountered resistance the likes of which they hadn’t seen before. At least three of the men suffered disfiguring bites on their hands. In the end, one man grabbed each of his legs and flipped him onto his back, while two others pressed his neck down with a stick, and one of the others crammed a stone into his mouth, one too large either to spit out or swallow. The man wielding the knife was an old-timer with a shiny bald head surrounded on the sides and back with a few scraggly gray hairs. I harbored a natural loathing for that man; the mere mention of his name – Xu Bao – called to mind a previous life, when he’d been my mortal enemy. He’d gotten very old and had a severe case of asthma that had him gasping for air from the slightest exertion. He stood off to the side looking as the others immobilized Diao Xiaosan. Once that was accomplished, he walked up, the light of occupational excitement flashing in his eyes. The old reprobate, who had lived longer than he had any right to, nimbly sliced off Diao Xiaosan’s scrotum, scooped a handful of lime out of a sack at his hip, and spread it over the wound before walking off with his prize – a pair of large purple ovals.

“Uncle Bao,” I heard Jinlong call out, “should we sew this up?”

“What the fuck for?” was the wheezy reply.

With a shout, the men jumped back away from Diao Xiaosan, who slowly got to his feet and spit out the stone, quaking from excruciating waves of pain. The spiky hairs on his back stood up straight, and blood flowed freely from the open wound between his legs. Not a single moan escaped from Diao’s mouth, no tears fell from his eyes. He just clenched his jaw and ground his teeth with a loud scraping sound. Xu Bao stood beneath the apricot tree holding Diao Xiaosan’s testicles in the palm of his bloody hand and looking them over, unconcealed glee oozing from the deep wrinkles in his face. I knew how much the cruel old man liked to eat animals’ testicles, as I recalled the day he sneakily removed one of my three donkey balls and ate it with hot peppers. How many times I felt like leaping across the wall of my pen and biting off that bastard’s testicles to avenge Diao Xiaosan, to wreak some vengeance of my own, and to gain retribution for all the stallions, male donkeys, bulls, and boars who had suffered at his hand. I never knew what it meant to be afraid of a human being, but I must admit in all honesty that that son of a bitch – a malignancy in the lives of all male animals – scared the hell out of me. What his body gave off was neither an odor nor heat, but a bloodcurdling message.

Poor old Diao Xiaosan walked laboriously over to the apricot tree and, with one side of his belly up against the trunk, lay down wearily. Blood was now spurting from the wound, staining his legs and the ground behind them. He was shivering despite the heat. He’d lost his vision, so his eyes gave away nothing of what he was feeling. La-ya-la- La-ya-la-la-ya-la- Notes from the straw hat song rose slowly in the air, but the lyrics had undergone a major change: Mama – My testicles are gone – The testicles you gave me are gone – Tears welled up in my eyes and, for the first time in my life, I understood the torment implicit in the saying “all beings grieve for their own kind.” I also regretted the underhanded tactics I’d used in my fight with him. I heard Jinlong curse Xu Bao:

“What the hell have you done, Xu? You must have severed one of his arteries.”

“There’s no need for you to seem so shocked, pal,” Xu replied coldly. “All boars like him are that way.”

“I want you to take care of him. He’ll die if he keeps bleeding like that,” Jinlong said with mounting anxiety.

“Die, you say? Isn’t that a good thing?” Xu Bao said with a false smile. “This one’s got plenty of fat on him, a couple of hundred Jin at least. The meat from a boar might be on the tough side, but it’s a far sight better than bean curd.”

Diao Xiaosan did not die, though I’m sure there were moments when he wished he had. Any boar who has that punishment inflicted on him suffers not only physically but, to a far greater extent, psychologically There is no greater humiliation. Diao Xiaosan bled and bled and bled, at least enough to fill two basins, and all the blood was absorbed by the tree; the fruit produced by that tree the following year was yellow with streaks of red blood. He grew withered, sort of dried up, from the loss of all that blood. I jumped the wall between our two pens and stood by him hoping, but failing, to find words to comfort and console him. So I picked a plump pumpkin from the roof of the abandoned generator room and laid it on the ground in front of him.

“Eat something, old Diao, it’ll make you feel better.”

Raising his head off the ground, he looked up at me out of his good eye and managed to say through clenched teeth: “Pig Sixteen, what I am today is what you’ll become tomorrow… it’s the fate of all boars…”

His head dropped back to the ground, and all his bones seemed to come unglued.

“You can’t die, old Diao,” I cried out, “you can’t! Old Diao…”

This time he didn’t respond, and tears finally came to my eyes, tears of remorse. As I pondered what had just happened, I could see that while it may have seemed that Diao Xiaosan’s death came at the hands of Xu Bao, in fact I was the cause of his death. La-ya-la – La-ya-la-la la-ya-la – Old Diao, my good brother, go in peace. I hope your soul will soon find its way to the underworld, where Lord Yama will arrange a good rebirth for you, maybe even as a human being, at least I hope so. You can leave this world worry-free. I’ll avenge you by giving Xu Bao a taste of his own medicine…

As these thoughts raced through my mind, Baofeng came running up behind Huzhu, her medicine bag over her shoulder. By that time, Jinlong might well have been sitting in the rickety old armchair at Xu Bao’s house sharing a bottle with Xu Bao as they enjoyed Xu’s favorite dish – boar’s eggs. In the end, women are more kindhearted than men. Just look there at Huzhu, sweat beading her forehead, tears clouding her vision, as if Diao Xiaosan were her blood relative, not a scary-looking boar. By then it was the sixth lunar month, nearly two months after your wedding. You and Huang Hezuo had already been working in Pang Hu’s cotton processing plant for a month. The cotton was just then blooming; in three months it would be on the market.

During those days, I – Lan Jiefang – along with the head of the cotton inspection office and a bunch of girls, was sent over from a number of villages and the county town to weed the enormous compound and prepare the surface for the cotton sale. The Cotton Processing Plant Number Five occupied a thousand acres of land and was ringed by a brick wall. The bricks had been taken from the graveyard as a cost-cutting measure initiated by Pang Hu himself. New bricks sold for ten fen; old bricks from the graves cost only three. For the longest time, none of the other workers knew that Huang Hezuo and I were man and wife, since I stayed in the men’s dorm and she stayed in the women’s. A place like the cotton processing plant, where employees worked on a seasonal basis, could not afford to supply married housing. But even if there had been quarters for us to share, we wouldn’t have wanted to, since our marriage was like a child’s game; at least it felt that way to me. It was a sham, almost like being told upon awakening: From today on this is your wife. You are now her husband. How could anyone accept something that absurd? I had feelings for Huzhu, not for Hezuo, and this was the root of a lifetime of agony. On my first morning at the cotton processing plant I laid eyes on Pang Ghunmiao, a lovely six-year-old girl with pretty white teeth and red lips, eyes like stars and lustrous skin, a crystalline beauty. She was practicing handstands in the plant doorway. Her hair was tied with a piece of red satin, she was wearing a navy blue skirt, a white short-sleeved shirt, white socks, and red plastic sandals. Urged on by the people around her, she bent over, put both hands on the ground, and lifted her feet up in the air, until her body was arced at the right angle to begin walking on her hands to shouts and applause. But her mother, Wang Leyun, ran up and turned her right side up. Don’t be silly, my angel, she said. But I can keep doing it, her daughter said reluctantly.

I can see this as if it had happened yesterday, not nearly thirty years ago. Even great seers like Zhuge Liang and Liu Bowen could not predict that many years into the future. I gave up everything for love. By running off with that little girl, I created a huge scandal throughout Northeast Gaomi Township. But I was confident that what began as a scandal would one day be seen as a true love story. At least that’s what my good friend Mo Yan predicted when we were at the end of our rope…

– Hey! Big-head Lan Qiansui pounded the table like a judge with his gavel and snapped me back to reality. Don’t start woolgathering, listen to me. You’ll have plenty of time to daydream about and ponder, even complain about that ridiculous affair of yours, but for now I want you to listen and listen carefully to my glorious history as a pig. So where was I? Oh, right, your sister, Baofeng, and your sister-in-law – there’s no other way to describe her – Huzhu rushed up to Diao Xiaosan, who was barely alive after a botched operation, as he lay beneath the crooked apricot tree bleeding to death. There was a time when the mere mention of that crooked romantic tree would have had you foaming at the mouth until you passed out. But now, we could put you on the ground right under it and you, like a battle-scarred veteran, would sigh emotionally on a visit to an ancient – for you – battleground. In the face of life’s great healer, time, no matter how deep the torment, all wounds will one day heal. Hell, I was a damned pig then, so what’s with the somber attitude?

Anyway, as I was saying, Baofeng and Huzhu arrived on the scene to come to Diao Xiaosan’s aid. I stood off to the side, crying my eyes out like a dear old friend. At first, like me, they thought he had died, then they found that he had a heartbeat, but just barely. Baofeng took over immediately, taking a syringe out of her medical kit and giving Diao three consecutive injections: a stimulant, a blood thickener, and glucose, all intended for use on humans. But what I want to call your attention to is how she stitched up his open wound. Lacking both surgical needle and thread, she turned to Huzhu, who cleverly took a pin from her blouse – you know how married women carry pins on their clothing or in their hair. But what would they use for thread? As her face reddened, Huzhu said:

“How about a strand of my hair, would that work?”

“Your hair?” Baofeng asked, slightly incredulous.

“Yes. My hair has capillaries in it.”

“Sister-in-law,” Baofeng said with undisguised emotion, “your hair ought to be reserved for the likes of Golden Boy and Jade Girl, not a pig.”

“Listen to you, sister,” Huzhu said with growing agitation. “My hair is worth no more than that of an ox or a horse. If not for my peculiarity, I’d have cut it all off long ago. But while it can’t be cut, it can be pulled out.”

“Are you sure, sister-in-law?”

Baofeng had her doubts, but Huzhu went ahead and pulled out two strands of the most mysterious and most valuable hair anywhere in the world, each roughly five feet in length, a dark golden color – at the time, hair that color was considered especially ugly, whereas now it’s considered by some a sign of elegant beauty – and so much coarser than normal hair that it appeared to the naked eye to have considerable heft. Huzhu threaded one of the strands and handed the needle to Baofeng, who cleansed the wound with iodine, held the needle with a pair of tweezers, and stitched up Diao Xiaosan’s wound with Huzhu’s miraculous hair.

When that was done, both Huzhu and Baofeng spotted me, with my tear-streaked face, and were deeply moved by my deep concern and loyalty. Since only one of the strands was used to stitch up Diao’s wound, Huzhu threw the second strand away. Baofeng retrieved it, wrapped it in gauze, and placed it in her medical kit. The women waited; whether Diao would live or die was now up to him. We’ve done our best, they said as they walked off together.

I couldn’t say if it was a result of the injections or if it was Huzhu’s hair, but Diao’s wound stopped bleeding and his heartbeat regained its strength and rhythm. Ximen Bai brought over a basin half filled with rice gruel and placed it in front of him. He got up on his knees and slowly lapped it up. It was a miracle he didn’t die that time. Huzhu told Jinlong that Baofeng’s skills deserved all the credit, but I couldn’t help feeling that Huzhu’s miraculous hair played a major role in the pig’s recovery.

Postoperative Diao Xiaosan disappointed those who hoped he’d do little but eat and drink and gain lots of weight in a hurry. Fattening up after castration leads straight to the slaughterhouse. Knowing that, he ate in moderation; not only that, as I became aware, he did pushups every night in his pen, not stopping until every bristle on his body was wet with sweat. My respect for him increased daily, as did my sense of dread. Just what this victim of the ultimate humiliation, who had been brought back to life from certain death and who appeared to meditate during the daytime and work out at night, was up to escaped me. One thing was certain, however: he was a hero who was only temporarily lodged in a pigsty. At first he’d been an embryonic hero only. But after Xu Bao wielded that knife, a flash of understanding had sped up the process. I knew he’d be incapable of seeking a life of ease, content to grow old in a pigpen. A grand plan was surely taking form in his breast, with escape from the pig farm at its core… But what could a nearly blind castrated boar do once he’d gotten free? I guess that’s a question for another time. Let’s continue the tale of events from August of that year.

Shortly before the sows I impregnated were about to come to term, that is, on or about the twentieth of August 1967, following several unusual occurrences, a devastating epidemic struck the pig farm.

The first signs occurred when a castrated boar named Butting Crazy developed a chronic cough, accompanied by a high fever and a loss of appetite. The disease spread to four of his sty mates in short order. All this went unnoticed, since Butting Crazy and his friends were thorns in the side of farm personnel, a bunch of pigs who refused to grow. From a distance, they looked like normal little piglets of three to five months, but up close they shocked the observer with their scraggly bristles, coarse skin, and hideous faces. They’d experienced pretty much everything the world had thrown at them, and showed it. Back at Mount Yimeng, they’d been sold off every couple of months, since their voracious appetites had no effect on weight gain. They were menacing eating machines, seemingly lacking normal small intestines. Whatever they ate, regardless of quality, it went from their throats to their stomachs and straight to their large intestines, where, in less than an hour, it emerged in horribly foul form. They squealed when they were hungry, which was all the time, and if they weren’t fed, their eyes turned red and they ran headfirst into a wall or a gate, more crazed by the minute, until they foamed at the mouth and passed out. But as soon as they regained consciousness, it was back to the head butting. Anyone who bought them and raised them for a month or so could see they hadn’t gained an ounce, so it was back to the marketplace, where they were sold for whatever their owners could get. People sometimes asked the obvious question: Why not just kill and eat them? Well, you’ve seen them, so I don’t need to tell you, but if the people who asked that question took one look at Butting Crazy, you wouldn’t hear any more talk about killing and eating those pigs, whose meat was more disgusting than that of toads in a latrine. And that was how those little pigs got to enjoy considerable longevity. After being sold and resold on Mount Yimeng, they were bought for almost nothing and brought over by Jinlong. And you couldn’t say that Butting Crazy wasn’t a pig. He and his friends contributed to the pig population.

Who would pay any attention to pigs like that just because they were coughing, ran a fever, and had lost their appetite? The person responsible for feeding them and cleaning out their pen was someone who has appeared and reappeared up to now and will continue to do so down the line, our old friend Mr. Mo Yan. By kissing up to any and everybody at the farm, he eventually realized his goal of becoming a pig tender. His “Tales of Pig-Raising” had gained him quite a reputation, since it was a work that was clearly related to his experience and position at Apricot Garden Pig Farm. There was talk that the renowned film director Ingmar Bergman thought about bringing “Tales of Pig-Raising” to the silver screen, but where was he going to find that many pigs? I’ve seen plenty of today’s pigs. Like chickens and ducks these days, they’re nothing but empty-headed animals, thanks to chemical feed and all sorts of additives, which have made them feebleminded. You won’t find any pigs as classy as we were these days. Some of us had strong, healthy legs, some had extraordinary intelligence, some were crafty old scoundrels, and others had the gift of gab. In a word, we were good-looking animals with strong personalities, the sort you won’t find again on this earth. Nowadays, you get moronic porkers that weigh three hundred jin at five months and couldn’t qualify as extras in any film. And that is why, to my way of thinking, Bergman’s planned filming will never take place. Yes, yes, yes, you don’t have to tell me, I know Hollywood, and I know all about digital special effects. But those are expensive and tricky. But most of all, I’ll never believe that any digital pig could come close to matching the style and substance of Pig Sixteen. Or for that matter, Diao Xiaosan, Butterfly Lover, even Butting Crazy.

Now Mo Yan was never much of a farmer. His body may have been on the farm, but his mind was in the city. Lowborn, he dreamed of becoming rich and famous; ugly as sin, he sought the company of pretty girls; generally ill-informed, he passed himself off as a knowledgeable academic. And with all that, he managed to establish himself as a writer, someone who dined on tasty pot stickers in Beijing every day, while I, the classy Ximen Pig… ah, the ways of the world are so incomprehensible it does no good to talk about them. Mo Yan wasn’t much of a pig raiser either, and it was my good luck that he was not assigned to take care of me. Fortunately, that assignment was given to Ximen Bai. I don’t care how fine a pig you have, let Mo Yan look after it for a month or so, and you’ll wind up with a crazed animal; so, as I saw it, it was a good thing Butting Crazy and the others had survived a sea of troubles in their lives, or they never would have survived being looked after by Mo Yan.

To be sure, seen from a different angle, Mo Yan’s motive for joining the pig-raising enterprise was a good one. He was curious by nature and given to daydreaming. At first, he wasn’t terribly put off by Butting Crazy and his friends, believing that they were incapable of putting on weight no matter how much they ate because the ingested food spent so little time in their intestines, and all that was needed was for that passage to be slowed down enough for the nutrients to be absorbed into their bodies. This idea went to the heart of the matter, so he began to experiment. His rudimentary solution was to install a valve in the pigs’ anus, to be opened and closed by farm personnel. Obviously, this proved to be impractical, so he next turned his attention to food additives. Both Chinese and Western antidiarrhea remedies were available, but they were too expensive and hard to obtain if you didn’t know someone. So he tried mixing grass and tree ash into the feed, which drew a chorus of curses from the crazy pigs, not to mention a frenzy of head butting. But Mo Yan refused to relent, and eventually the crazies had no choice but to eat what was put in front of them. I recall hearing him pound on the feed bucket and say to Butting Crazy and his friends, Come on, eat up. Ash is good for your eyes and your heart and will make your intestines healthier than they’ve ever been. But when ash proved ineffective, Mo Yan tried adding dry cement to the feed. Now this did the trick, but nearly killed Butting Crazy and his friends in the process. They rolled around on the ground in agony and only escaped death when they were able to pass what looked like a bellyful of pebbles.

Butting Crazy and his friends carried loathing for Mo Yan in their bones. He felt nothing but disgust for the incorrigible animals. At the time, you and Hezuo were off working in the cotton processing plant, so he was feeling somewhat out of sorts. He dumped feed into the pigs’ trough and said to the hacking, feverish, whining Butting Crazy and his friends, What’s up with you little devils? Is this a hunger strike? Mass suicide? Fine with me, go ahead and kill yourselves. You’re not pigs anyway. You’re unworthy of the name. You’re nothing but a bunch of counterrevolutionaries who are wasting the commune’s valuable food.

The “Butting Crazies” lay dead the next day, their skin dotted with purple splotches the size of bronze coins, their eyes open, as if they’d died with unresolved grievances. As we’ve seen, it was a rainy month, hot and humid, ideal weather for swarms of flies and mosquitoes, so by the time the commune veterinarian had rafted across the rain-swollen river to the Apricot Garden Pig Farm, the pigs’ carcasses were bloated and foul-smelling. The old veterinarian wore a rain slicker and rubber rain boots. With a gauze mask over his nose and mouth as he stood outside the pen, he looked over the wall and said, “They died of what we call the Red Death. Cremate and bury them immediately!”

The pig farm personnel – including, of course, Mo Yan – dragged the five contaminated carcasses out of the pen, under the veterinarian’s supervision, all the way to the southeast corner of the farm, where they dug a hole. They hadn’t gone down more than a couple of feet before water began gurgling to the surface. So they flung the pigs in, doused them with kerosene, and tossed in a match. Since there were strong southeast winds, foul-smelling smoke was carried to the pig farm and beyond, to the village itself – the stupid bastards couldn’t have chosen a worse location for the cremation – and I was forced to bury my nose in the dirt to blot out what must be the worst stench in the world. I later learned that Diao Xiaosan had escaped from the farm the night before the carcasses were burned; he swam across the canal and headed east into the wilds, which meant that the noxious air of latent death had no effect on his health.

You weren’t witness to what happened after that, though I’m sure you heard all about it. An epidemic spread quickly through the farm and infected more than eight hundred pigs, including the twenty-eight pregnant sows. I was a rare survivor, thanks to my highly developed immune system and to the quantity of garlic Ximen Bai added to my feed. Sixteen, she said repeatedly, it’s peppery, but go ahead and eat it. Garlic protects against all kinds of poisons. Now I knew this was no common sickness, and eating some garlic was a cheap price to pay to avoid it. During those days it would have been more accurate to say I survived on garlic than on pig feed. Each peppery meal was accompanied by tears and sweat, and raised hell with my mouth and stomach. But the garlic did the trick – I survived.

After the Red Death decimated the pig population, several more veterinarians crossed the river to our farm. One of them was a brawny, hardy woman with a bad case of acne whom everyone called Station Chief Yu. She had a firm hand and dealt with things decisively. When she placed a phone call to the county from the farm office, you could hear her a mile away. Under her supervision, the veterinarians gave the sows shots and drew blood from them. I heard that around sunset, a motorboat came up the river with badly needed medicines. But none of that kept the majority of pigs alive, and that spelled the doom for the Apricot Garden Pig Farm. Carcasses were piled so high there was no way they could be cremated, so a burial ditch was dug; but once again, water rose to the surface a couple of feet down, so that was out. Driven to desperation, farm personnel had no choice but to wait until the veterinarians left and, in the fading light of dusk, load the carcasses onto a flatbed wagon and haul them down to the river, where they were tossed into the water to float downstream – out of sight and out of mind.

The disposal of pig carcasses wasn’t wrapped up until the early days of September, following a series of heavy rainfalls that eroded the shabbily constructed hog house foundations. Most of the buildings collapsed in a single night. I heard the loud laments of Jinlong in the northern row of buildings. Obsessively ambitious, he had hoped to move up the promotion ladder by displaying his talents during activities scheduled for the delegation from the Military Region Logistics Command, whose arrival had been delayed by the rainstorms. But now that would never happen. The pigs were dead, the farm was in ruins, and I was heartsick as I reflected on the glorious days now a thing of the past.

31

A Fawning Mo Yan Rides on Commander Chang’s Coattails

A Resentful Lan Lian Weeps for Chairman Mao

On the ninth day of September, an event occurred that was as cataclysmic as a mountain collapsing or the earth opening up. Despite all attempts to save him, your Chairman Mao passed away. I could, of course, have said our Chairman Mao, but I was a pig at the time, and that would have sounded disrespectful. The river behind the village had overflowed its banks and sent floodwaters that toppled a utility pole and snapped the phone line, turning the village phone into a mere decoration and muting the loudspeaker. So word of Chairman Mao’s passing came to us from Jinlong, who’d heard the news on the radio. That radio had been a gift from his good friend Chang Tianhong, who’d been taken into custody by the Military Control Commission for the crime of hooliganism, only to be released owing to a lack of evidence. He was in and out of trouble until finally being appointed assistant troupe leader of the county Cat’s Meow Drama Troupe. As a music academy graduate, he was an ideal choice for the position. He plunged enthusiastically into the work: not only did he adapt the eight model revolutionary operas for the Cat’s Meow stage, but he followed current trends by writing and directing a production of Tales of Pig-Raising based upon events at our Apricot Garden Pig Farm – in a postscript to his story “Tales of Pig-Raising” Mo Yan referred to this development, even claiming that he had been a coauthor, but I’m pretty sure that’s a bunch of bull. It’s true that Chang Tianhong came to our pig farm to get a feel for life here, and it’s true that Mo Yan tagged along behind him like a parasite. But coauthor? No way. Chang let his imagination soar for this contemporary Cat’s Meow production, giving the pigs speaking parts and separating them into two cliques, one of which advocated extreme eating and shitting to get fat in the name of revolution; the remaining pigs were hidden class enemies, represented by Diao Xiaosan, with Butting Crazy and his friends, who ate without putting on weight, as accomplices. On the farm it wasn’t just humans pitted against humans; pigs were also pitted against pigs, and these swine struggles comprised the production’s central conflict, with humans as the supporting cast. Chang had studied Western music in college, with a concentration on Western opera. His contributions to the Cat’s Meow production were not limited to innovations in content; he also introduced drastic changes to traditional Cat’s Meow melodies, including an aria for the major positive male role of Whitey, a truly wonderful movement. I always assumed that Whitey was a dramatic version of me, but in “Tales of Pig-Raising” Mo Yan wrote that Whitey symbolized a vital and upward-moving, healthy and progressive, freedom-and-happiness-seeking force. Man, could he stretch the truth, what nerve! I knew how much effort Chang put into creating this production, integrating local and Western traditions, brilliantly merging romanticism and realism, creating a model of serious ideological contents and moving artistic form that brought out the best in each. If Chairman Mao had died a few years later, there might well have been a ninth model opera: the Gaomi Cat’s Meow version of Tales of Pig-Raising.

I recall one moonlit night when Chang Tianhong stood beneath the crooked apricot tree holding a libretto of Tales of Pig-Raising, with its squiggly musical notations, as he sang Whitey’s aria for the benefit of the youthful Jinlong, Huzhu, Baofeng, and Ma Liangcai (who was then principal of the Ximen Village Elementary School). Mo Yan was there too, with a water bottle in a holder of woven red and green plastic threads. Steeping in the bottle were a pair of medicinal fruit seeds, and Mo Yan was ready to hand the bottle to Chang if and when he needed it. In his other hand he held a black oilpaper fan with which he was fanning Chang’s back – I found his fawning behavior thoroughly disgusting. But that’s how he participated in the creation of the Cat’s Meow version of Tales of Pig-Raising.

Everyone recalls how the villagers had once given Chang Tianhong the insulting nickname of Braying Jackass. Well, after the passage of more than ten years, the villagers’ outlook had gradually broadened, and a new understanding of Chang’s singing artistry had emerged. The Chang Tianhong who returned this time to get a feel for life in the village and create a new drama was a changed man. The superficiality and haughtiness people had found so off-putting was gone. There was a sense of melancholy in his eyes, his face had an ashen quality, stubble decorated his chin, and his temples had turned gray; he looked a lot like one of those Russian Decembrists. The people viewed him with reverence as they waited for him to sing, and with one front hoof on the quivering apricot branch and my chin resting on the other hoof, I settled in to enjoy an enchanting evening performance by the lovely youth. Laying her left hand on Huzhu’s left shoulder and resting her chin on her sister-in-law’s right shoulder, Baofeng gazed at Chang’s thin, moonlit face and naturally curly hair. Although her face was in the shadows, the moonlight revealed the sad helplessness in that look. On the farm even we pigs knew that Chang and Pang Hu’s daughter, Pang Kangmei, who’d been assigned out of college to the county production headquarters, were romantically involved and, we heard, to be married on October 1, National Day. She’d come to see him twice while he was on the farm. Endowed with a lovely figure and bright eyes, and refusing to put on airs as an urban intellectual, she made a fine impression on both the people and us pigs. Each time she came she inspected our production station – after all, she worked with livestock at the production headquarters – and looked in on all the farm animals, mules, horses, donkeys, oxen. I was pretty sure Baofeng knew that Kangmei was slated to marry Chang, whom she had fallen for, and Kangmei seemed aware of Baofeng’s feelings. Around dusk one day, I saw them talking under the crooked apricot tree, and watched as Baofeng laid her head on Kangmei’s shoulder and wept. Kangmei, who also had tears in her eyes, stroked Baofeng’s head consolingly.

None of this, of course, has anything to do with the story I’m telling. What I really want to talk about is that radio, a Red Lantern transistor radio made in Qingdao, which Chang Tianhong had given to Jinlong. No one said it was a wedding present, but that’s what it was. And while Chang gave him the gift, originally, Pang Kangmei had brought it back with her when she was sent on temporary assignment to Qingdao; and though Jinlong was the recipient, in fact Pang Kangmei personally gave it to Huang Huzhu and told her how to install batteries, how to turn it on and off, and how to find radio stations. Given my penchant for roaming, I saw it on the night of Jinlong’s wedding. For the wedding banquet, Jinlong had placed it on a table with a lit lantern. It was tuned to the loudest and clearest station he could find. Farm personnel – boys and girls, men and women – gathered round to listen excitedly Everyone felt like touching the obviously expensive object, but no one could get up the nerve to do it. What if they broke it? After Jinlong wiped the sides with a piece of red satin, the people crowded round to listen to a thin-voiced woman sing. What she sang did not concern them. They were too busy trying to figure out how she’d gotten into that little box. I wasn’t that stupid, since I was somewhat familiar with electronics. I not only knew that there were many radios in use in the world, but that there was something even more advanced – television. I also knew that an American had landed on the moon, that the Soviet Union had launched spaceships, and that the first animal to go into space was a pig. By “they” I was referring to the regular pig farm personnel. That did not include Mo Yan, who had learned many things by reading Reference News. There was, of course, another “them,” the critters that hid in or behind our haystacks. They too were mesmerized by the sounds emerging from the strange box.

Here’s a rough summary of what happened at two o’clock that afternoon: We’ll start with the sky, which was, for the most part, clear, though there were some dark clouds. Gale-force winds blew from the southeast and served as a key to open up the sky, as northern peasants all know. As the clouds were blown across the sky, moving shadows skittered past Apricot Garden. Then there was the steaming ground, over which large toads were crawling. Finally, there were the people. A dozen or so farm personnel were spraying liquid lime over the still standing pigpens. Hardly any pigs were left alive, and the scene of desolation had thrown the people into a deep depression. They scrubbed the top of my wall with the liquid lime and did the same to the low-hanging apricot branches over my quarters. Was that going to kill off agents of the Red Death? Hell no! What a joke. From their conversation I discovered that, including me, only seventy pigs or so had survived. I’d pretty much stayed put while the epidemic was raging, so I was curious to learn as much as possible about the seventy other pigs that survived. What type were they, and were any of them my siblings? Were there any wild boars like Diao Xiaosan? Well, just as I was exercising my brain over such thoughts; and just as the farm personnel were trying to figure out what the future held; and just as the abdomen of a pig that had been buried burst under the blazing sun; and just as a bird with a brightly colored tail, one that even I, with all my knowledge and experience, had never seen before, flew in low and landed on the crooked, waterlogged apricot tree, which had lost all its leaves; and just as Ximen Bai spotted the bird, whose colorful tail hung down nearly to the ground, and shouted excitedly, her lips quivering, “Phoenix!” Jinlong stumbled out of his wedding chamber, clutching the radio to his chest. His face had lost its color and he looked like someone whose soul had left him. Staring wide-eyed, he announced hoarsely:

“Chairman Mao is dead!”

Chairman Mao is dead. Are you joking? Spreading a rumor? Launching a vicious attack? Saying that Chairman Mao is dead is like signing your own death warrant! How could Chairman Mao be dead? Doesn’t everyone say that he could live at least 158 years? Doubts and questions swirled in the people’s minds when the news broke. Even me, a pig, was puzzled beyond measure, finding it hard to believe. But the tears in Jinlong’s eyes and the solemn look on his face told us that the news was true. The mellow voice from Central People’s Broadcasting Station had a slightly nasal quality as it solemnly informed the Party, the military, and people of all ethnic groups in the country of the death of Chairman Mao. I looked up at the sky, where dark clouds were roiling, and then at the trees, with their bare branches, and finally at the clutter of collapsed pigpens, and I listened to the incongruous croaking of frogs out in the fields and the occasional explosion of another ruptured pig’s belly from a shallow grave; my nostrils filled with a variety of foul smells as I saw images of all the strange things that had happened over the course of several months, including the sudden disappearance of Diao Xiaosan and all the mysterious things he’d said, and I knew conclusively that Chairman Mao was dead.

What followed was this: Holding the radio in his hands like a filial son carrying his father’s ashes, Jinlong walked solemnly toward the village. Pig farm personnel dropped what they were doing and fell in behind him, somber, respectful looks on their faces. The death of Chairman Mao was a loss not only for humans but for us pigs as well. With no Chairman Mao there could be no New China, and with no New China there could be no Ximen Village Production Brigade Apricot Garden Pig Farm, and with no Ximen Village Production Brigade Apricot Garden Pig Farm there could be no Pig Sixteen! That is why I followed Jinlong and the others out onto the street.

Radio stations throughout China were of one voice those days, aided by the finest equipment, so naturally, Jinlong turned the volume on his radio all the way up, and whenever he met someone along the way he announced in a manner and style we’d gotten used to, “Chairman Mao is dead!” This announcement was invariably met with stupefied looks. The faces of some contorted in agony; other people merely shook their heads, and others beat their chests and stomped their feet. All fell meekly in line behind Jinlong, and by the time we reached the village a long line stretched out behind me.

Hong Taiyue emerged from brigade headquarters, but before he could ask what was going on, Jinlong announced, “Chairman Mao is dead!” Hong reacted by doubling up his fist to punch Jinlong in the face. But his fist stopped in mid flight when he realized that virtually the entire village had turned out and saw how the radio in Jinlong’s hands was so loud it vibrated. He pulled his fist back and pounded his own chest, as a shriek of desolation tore from his throat: “Ah, Chairman Mao… you have left us… how will we get through the days to come?”

A dirge began to play over the radio, and the slow, solemn strains had Huang Tong’s wife, Wu Qiuxiang, and all the village women wailing piteously Overcome by grief, they sat down in the mud, many of them pounding the ground with their fists and sending water splashing in all directions. Some covered their mouths with hankies and gazed heavenward, others covered their eyes and released grief-stricken cries. As the wails mounted, words followed:

“We are the earth, Chairman Mao the sky – Now Chairman Mao has died, the sky has fallen-”

As for the men, lamentations came from some, silent tears from others. When they heard the news, even the landlords, rich peasants, and counterrevolutionaries came running to stand off a short distance and weep silently.

As a member of the beastly kingdom, who was nonetheless influenced by my surroundings, I was saddened by the news, but maintained my emotional equilibrium. I walked among the crowd, watching and thinking. The death of no other man in recent Chinese history had the effect on people that the passing of Mao Zedong did. Those who didn’t shed a tear even when their own mothers died wept over Mao Zedong until their eyes were red. As always, there were exceptions. Among the thousand or more residents of Ximen Village, when even landlords and rich peasants, who should have held a grudge against Chairman Mao, wept openly over his death, and all who heard the news laid down their work, two individuals neither wailed nor wept silently but kept right on with what they were doing. One was Xu Bao, the other was Lan Lian.

Xu Bao mixed stealthily among the crowd, following behind me. At first I wasn’t aware of his presence, but it didn’t take long to spot that greedy, malignant look of his, and as soon as I realized that his eyes were fixed on my substantial testicles, I felt greater shock and anger than I’d ever known before. At a time like this, all Xu Bao had on his mind was getting his hands on my testicles. Obviously, he was not saddened by Chairman Mao’s death, and if I could have found a way to inform the people what he was thinking, he might well have died at the hands of the mourners. Too bad I was still incapable of human speech, and too bad the people were so caught up in their grief they paid no attention to Xu Bao. Fine, then, I thought. I admit I was once afraid of you, Xu Bao, and I’m still leery of that quick hand of yours. But since even a man like Chairman Mao cannot live forever, I might as well not worry about whether I live or die. I’m here waiting for you, Xu Bao, you bastard. Tonight the fish dies or the net breaks.

The other person who shed no tears for Mao Zedong was Lan Lian. While everyone else was at the Ximen family compound keening over Chairman Mao, he sat alone on the doorstep of his room to the west, honing his rusty scythe with a whetstone. The scraping sound set people’s teeth on edge and chilled their hearts. It certainly didn’t suit the occasion, and it hinted at something dark. Jinlong, unable to stand it a moment longer, handed the radio to his wife and, with the entire village looking on, ran up to Lan Lian, bent down, grabbed the whetstone out of his hand, and flung it to the ground. It broke in two.

“Are you human or aren’t you?” Jinlong cursed between his teeth.

Lan Lian narrowed his eyes to size up Jinlong, who was shaking in anger. He stood up slowly, still holding his scythe.

“He’s dead,” he said, “but I have to keep on living. There’s millet that needs harvesting.”

Jinlong picked up a metal bucket with a rusted bottom next to the ox pen and threw it at Lan Lian, who let it hit him in the chest without even trying to get out of the way. It fell at his feet.

Jinlong’s eyes were red. Picking up a carrying pole, he raised it high and was about to hit Lan Lian in the head when, fortunately, Hong Taiyue stopped him.

“What kind of a man are you, old Lan?” Hong said unhappily.

Tears began to flow from Lan Lian’s eyes as he got down on his knees.

“I loved Chairman Mao more than any of you imposters,” he said indignantly.

Everyone just stared terrified, at a loss for words.

Lan Lian pounded the ground with his fists and keened:

“Chairman Mao – I’m one of your people too – I received my plot of land from you – you gave me the right to be an independent farmer-”

Yingchun, still weeping, walked over and bent down to help him up. But his knees seemed to have taken root. Yingchun fell to her knees in front of him.

A yellow butterfly flitted down from the apricot tree and settled like a dead leaf on a white chrysanthemum she wore in her hair.

Wearing a white chrysanthemum in the hair to mourn a loved one was a village custom. Other women rushed over to Yingehun’s door to pick white mums, hoping that the butterfly would flit over to their heads; but after landing on Yingehun’s head, it tucked in its wings and stayed put.

32

Old Xu Bao’s Greed Costs Him His Life

Pig Sixteen Chases the Moon and Becomes King

I quietly walked away from the compound, left the perplexed crowd around Lan Lian. I saw the evil eyes of Xu Bao half hidden amid the crowd and guessed that the old thief didn’t dare make his move quite yet, leaving me time to ready myself to fight him head-on.

Not a single person remained at the farm, and as night began to fall – mealtime for us seventy or so survivors – the sounds of hunger rose. I’d have opened the pens and freed all the pigs, if not for the possibility that they’d pepper me with questions. Go ahead, pals, make as big a scene as you want. I don’t have time to worry about you, since I see the slippery figure of Xu Bao behind the crooked apricot tree. Actually, it’s more a case of sensing the murderous aura emanating from that cruel man’s body. My mind was spinning as I worked on strategies from my hiding spot in the pen. I backed into a corner, figuring that was the best way to keep my jewels out of harm’s way. I hunkered down, feigning ignorance; but I had a plan: observe, wait, and employ passive resistance. Come on, Xu Bao. You think you’re going to get your hands on my jewels to go with your liquor. Well, I’ll bite yours off and avenge all the animals you mutilated.

The evening sky darkened, and steam rose from the wet ground. The pigs were so hungry they stopped clamoring. The only sounds were the croaks of frogs. The murderous aura seemed to be drawing nearer, and I knew he was about to strike. His dry little face appeared, like a greasy walnut. No eyebrows, no eyelashes, no chin stubble. The guy actually smiled, and I nearly wet myself. But, goddamn it, I don’t care how much you smile! He opened the gate and stood in the opening, where he waved to me and uttered a greeting: “Soo-ee.” He wanted to trick me into leaving my pen, I saw that immediately. He’d leap into action as I walked out the gate and make off with my jewels. Well, you little bastard, nice try, but old Pig Sixteen isn’t about to fall for your tricks today. The pen could collapse but I won’t budge, and you can give me gourmet food but I won’t eat. Xu Bao tossed a corn cake into my pen. Pick it up and eat it yourself, you little bastard. Xu Bao played every trick he knew, but I stayed hunkered down in my corner.

“That’s one demonic damned pig!” he cursed angrily.

If Xu Bao had quit at that moment, would I have had the guts to run up and take him on? Hard to say. The son of a bitch was so addicted to eating animals’ testicles that he didn’t leave; he was so attracted by those objects hanging between my hind legs that he got down on his hands and knees in the mud and crawled into my pen.

A mixture of anger and fear, like blue and yellow flames, flared up in my mind. The hour for revenge had arrived. Clenching my teeth and keeping still, I forced myself to stay calm. Okay, here I am. Come closer, a little closer. Wait till the enemy is in your house before you strike. Close combat, night combat, I’m ready. He wavered when he was a yard or so away and made faces to tempt me to come out to meet him. Forget that, you little bastard. Come on, here I am, just a dumb pig, no danger to you. Probably thinking he’d overestimated my intelligence, Xu Bao let his guard down and approached slowly, with hopes of scaring me into moving. He bent down a yard in front of me, and I felt my muscles tense, like a bow pulled taut. The arrow was on the string. I knew if I attacked then, he could hop like a flea and still not get away.

It was no longer a case of will commanding body; it attacked on its own, driving itself right into Xu Bao’s belly and lifting him off the ground. His head hit the wall, and he thudded to the ground right where I normally relieved myself. His scream hung in the air well after he landed. His fighting capacity was gone. He lay in my refuse like a cadaver. I decided to carry out my complete plan in order to avenge my mutilated friends. I’d use the man’s own strategy against him. I was feeling slightly disgusted and hesitant, but since I’d put my idea into play, I had to see it through to the end. I bit down between his legs. I came up empty! Nothing but pants material. I pulled back and ripped the material off his crotch, and what I saw terrified me. Xu Bao, it turned out, was a natural-born eunuch. I was stupefied, but now I knew what he was all about, I understood why he had such loathing for testes in other males, why he’d honed his special skill, and why he’d developed such a taste for that delicacy. Gome to think of it, he was a luckless creature. Maybe he believed in the idea that you are what you eat, which is on the order of believing you can get blood out of a turnip or that a dead tree can sprout new leaves. In the heavy darkness I saw two lines of green blood snake out of his nostrils. How could he be so fragile that one head butt did him in? I stuck a hoof under his nose. I could feel no air coming out. Damn, the little bastard really was dead. I’d overheard someone from the country hospital tell villagers about GPR, and I’d personally seen Baofeng bring a drowning victim back to life. So I laid the guy out straight and pressed down on his chest with both hooves. Once, twice… Pushing with all my might, I could hear his rib cage creak, and I saw more blood come out of his mouth and nose…

As I stood in the gateway of my pen I made the most important decision of my life: Chairman Mao had died, which meant great changes were unavoidable in the human world. As for me, I’d become a homicidal pig, and if I stuck around, all I could look forward to was the butcher’s knife and a pot of boiling water. At that moment I thought I heard a voice summoning me from the distance:

“Rebel, brothers!”

Before fleeing into the wild, I opened the gates on the pens of the pigs who had survived the Red Death and let them out.

“Brothers,” I said to them from a high spot of ground, “rebel!”

They just stared at me blankly, having no idea what I was saying, all but one skinny immature sow – an unspoiled body with a black-and-white belly – who emerged from the crowd and said, “I’ll follow you, my king.” The rest of them just rooted around in their pens looking for something to eat. A few walked back inside to lie down lazily and wait to be fed by the humans.

So with the little sow behind me, I headed southeast on ground so soft our legs sank in up to the knees. We left a clear trail. When we reached the bank of the deep, water-filled canal, I asked her:

“What’s your name?”

“They call me Little Flower, my king.”

“Why do they call you that?”

“Because there are two little floral patterns on my belly, my king.”

“Did you come here from Mount Yimeng, Little Flower?”

“No, my king.”

“Then where did you come from?”

“I don’t know, my king.”

“You’re the only one who came with me. Why?”

“I worship you, my king.”

As I looked this simple little animal over, naive Little Flower, I was both moved and saddened. I nudged her belly with my snout as a sign of friendship.

“All right, Little Flower,” I said, “humans no longer have any control over us, just like our ancestors. We’re free. But starting today, we’ll dine on the wind and drink the dew. It will be a hard life, and it’s not too late for you to change your mind.”

“I’m not going to change my mind, my king,” she said decisively.

“That’s wonderful news, Little Flower. Can you swim?”

“Yes, my king, I can.”

“Great!” I patted her on the rump and jumped into the water.

The water was warm and gentle, and it felt wonderful to be immersed in it. I’d originally planned to swim to the opposite bank and walk from there, but I changed my mind. At first the surface of the water looked frozen in place, but once we were in it I realized that it flowed northward, toward the great canal once used by the Manchu government to transport grain, at a speed of at least five yards a minute. The speed of flow and our buoyancy would make our passage an effortless one. By barely kicking with my front legs, I sailed through the water like a shark, and when I turned to look, there was Little Flower, right behind me, all four legs churning in the water, head high, eyes flashing; she was breathing through her nose.

“How’re you doing, Little Flower?”

“I’m doing fine, my king.” But with that brief bit of conversation her nose dipped beneath the surface, which led to snorts and a spurt of frantic leg kicks.

I lifted her up until she was nearly out of the water. “You’ll be fine,” I said. “We pigs are born swimmers. The key is not to panic. I’ve decided to stay off the roads and travel by water. That way we won’t leave a trail for those disgusting humans. Can you hold out?”

“Yes…” She was gasping slightly.

“Good. Here, why don’t you climb onto my back?” She refused, preferring to tough it out. So I dove underwater, and when I floated up to the surface I had her perched on my back. “Hold tight,” I said. “Don’t let go no matter what.”

With Little Flower on my back, I floated down the canal past the Apricot Garden Pig Farm and on to the grand canal, heading east amid billowing waves. A fiery sunset put on a beautiful show in the western sky with mutating cloud formations – a green dragon, a white tiger, a lion, a wild dog – with rays of sunlight filling the gaps between clouds and lighting up the surface of the water.

Waves chased us; we chased waves; waves chased one another. Great canal, where did you get such power? You carry with you mud, corn, sorghum, potato vines, even uprooted trees, on your eastward journey You also deposit dead pigs in your tree-lined shallows, where they swell up, rot, and give off foul odors. When I saw them I was more convinced than ever that by drifting downstream with Little Flower I’d transcended the life of pigs, transcended the Red Death, even transcended the now-ended Mao Zedong era.

I know that in his “Tales of Pig-Raising,” Mo Yan had this to say about the pig carcasses that had been thrown into the river: “A thousand dead pigs from the Apricot Garden Pig Farm formed a corps of floating dead. Their carcasses swelled up, began to rot, exploded, were eaten by maggots, were torn apart by fish, all the while drifting downstream until they disappeared into the roiling waters of the Eastern Sea, where what was left of them was swallowed up, dismembered, and turned into all sorts of materials to join the transforming cycle of material objects.” I’m not going to say the guy can’t write, only that he missed a wonderful opportunity, for if he’d seen me, Pig Sixteen, with Little Flower on my back, riding waves in the golden waters of the river, instead of writing about death, he’d have praised life, praised us, praised me! I am the power of life, I am passion, freedom, and love, the most beautiful spectacle the world has to offer.

We drifted with the flow toward that moon of the lunar eighth month, sixteenth day, a much different moon than the one under which you were married. The moon that night had fallen from the sky, but this night it rose out of the river, just as big and round as the other one, red at first, like an innocent child sent to earth from some hidden spot in the universe, bawling and bleeding and turning the water red. Your moon, sweet and melancholic, came down for your wedding. My moon, solemn and bleak, rose up for Mao Zedong. We saw him sitting on the moon – his bulk pressing down and altering its shape into an oval. He wore a red flag like a cape, held a cigarette in his fingers, and raised his heavy head slightly. A pensive look was frozen on his face.

With Little Flower on my back, I drifted eastward, chasing the moon and chasing Mao Zedong. We wanted to get closer to the moon so we could see Mao Zedong’s face with even greater clarity. But the moon moved with us, the distance remaining constant no matter how hard I paddled, even as I moved through the water like a torpedo. Little Flower dug her hooves into my ribs and shouted “Faster! Faster!” as if I were her horse.

Where Northeast Gaomi Township and Pingdu County met, a sandbar called the Wu Family Sandy Mouth divided the river, sending one stream northeast, the other southeast; the two streams merging again near Two County Hamlet. Now picture this scene. A fast-moving river suddenly divides into two, and at this juncture, schools of red carp, white eels, black-capped soft-shelled turtles, fly up to the moon, an expression of romanticism; but before they reach their goal, the pull of gravity brings them back in a bright and lovely, but ultimately tragic arc, for when most of them land on the surface of the water, scales fly, fins snap off, and gills shatter, turning the returned water creatures into meals for waiting foxes and wild boars. A small number manage to return to the safety of the water by virtue of their strength or by pure luck, and continue swimming to the southeast or the northeast.

Now, given my body weight and the fact that I was carrying Little Flower on my back, although I too went skyward at that juncture, I started falling back before I was ten feet out of the water, and it was only the springy nature of the scrub brush that kept either of us from injury. We were, of course, too large for the foxes to consider eating; and to the wild boars, with their well-developed front halves and tapered rear ends, we had to be considered relatives; they would never eat their own kin. We landed safely on the sandbar.

Food came easily to those foxes and wild boars, good, nutritious food, and they were all much rounder than they should have been. All foxes eat fish, that’s a rule of nature. But when we saw a dozen or so wild boars dining on fish, we could hardly believe our eyes. They’d grown so picky, their mouths so pampered, that they ate only the brains and the roe; the fat, rich meat held no attraction for them.

Astounded to find us there, the wild boars slowly gathered round, mean looks in their eyes, moonlight glinting off their terrifying white fangs. Little Flower wrapped her legs around me even tighter, and I could feel that she was quaking. I started backing up, backing up, not giving these brutes the chance to fan out and surround us. I counted them, there were nine altogether, male and female, all weighing at least two hundred jin. They had long, hard, stupid-looking snouts, pointed wolflike ears, and spiky bristles; their oily black skin showed how well-fed they all were, and the smell they emitted spoke to their raw, wild power. At the time I weighed five hundred jin and was as big as a rowboat. Having come from and through the human, donkey, and ox realms, I was both smart and strong, and none of them would have been a match for me, one-on-one. But in a fight with nine at the same time, I stood no chance. All I could think at the moment was back up, keep backing up, all the way to the water’s edge, where I could let Little Flower swim safely away. Then I’d turn and fight with all the wit and courage I possessed. After dining on an exclusive diet of fish brains and roe, these animals’ intelligence was nearly on a par with foxes, so they were probably not going to be fooled by my strategy. I spotted two of the boars move around behind me so they could surround me before I reached the water. I realized that retreat was a dead-end street, that it was time to go on the offensive, to feint to the east and attack to the west in order to break through the encirclement and flee to the expansive center of the river sandbar. I needed to adapt Mao Zedong’s guerrilla tactic of forcing changes in their formation and attack their weaknesses. I signaled Little Flower to let her know what I was planning.

“My king,” she said softly, “go on, don’t worry about me.” “I can’t do that,” I said. “We’re in this together, like brother and sister. Where I am is where you’ll be.”

I charged the male that was launching a frontal attack. He wobbled and started to back up, but I abruptly changed directly and headed toward a nearby female. When our heads hit, it sounded like the crash of broken pottery, and I was treated to the view of her body tumbling backward at least ten feet. Now the circle had been rent, but I could hear the snorts from their noses behind me. With a swinish yell, I ran like the wind toward the southeast. But when I realized that Little Flower was not behind me, I put on the brakes and spun around to wait for her to catch up. But poor Little Flower, dear Little Flower, the only one willing to escape with me, loyal Little Flower, had been bitten on the rump by a savage male wild boar; her screams of pain and terror blanched the moon. “Let her go!” I roared as I charged the offending boar.

“My king,” she yelled, “go on, don’t worry about me.”

You’ve listened to me this far, and I’d be surprised if you weren’t deeply moved or if you didn’t see our actions – pigs or not – as noble. Well, that boar held on and continued his savage attack. Her cries nearly drove me crazy. Nearly? Hell, I was crazy. But a pair of males ran up and blocked my way, keeping me from rescuing Little Flower. Abandoning all battle strategies and tactics, I charged one of them, who didn’t get out of the way fast enough to avoid getting bitten in the neck. I felt my teeth bite through his thick skin and sink all the way down to bone. He rolled over and got away, leaving me with a mouth filled with rank-tasting blood and spiky bristles. Meanwhile, the second boar ran up and bit my hind leg. I kicked out like a mule – a trick I’d learned as a donkey – and connected on his cheek. Then I spun around and went at him. He ran off screeching. My leg hurt like crazy; it was gushing blood, but I had no time to worry about that, with Little Flower being ravaged by that other bastard. I jumped up with a loud war whoop and charged. When I hit the bastard I felt his innards rip and tear, and he was dead before he hit the ground. Little Flower was still alive, but barely. As I picked her up, her innards tumbled out of the wound in her belly I didn’t know what to do about all that steamy, slippery, foul-smelling stuff. I was helpless, helpless and heartbroken.

“Little Flower, my darling Little Flower, I failed you…”

She struggled to open her eyes. A blue and white, and very bleak, gaze emerged.

“My king,” she managed to say as saliva and blood seeped from her mouth, “would it be all right… if I call you Big Brother instead?”

“Yes, of course,” I replied through my tears. “My little sister, the closest person in the world to me…”

“I’m so lucky… Big Brother… so very lucky…” She stopped breathing and her legs stiffened, like four little clubs.

“Little Sister!” I was weeping as I stood up and walked straight toward the remaining boars, determined to fight them to the death – my death.

They formed up and, fearful but disciplined, began backing off. When I charged, they spread out to surround me. Abandoning tactics altogether, I butted here, bit there, and fought like a mad pig, wounding them all and getting my share of wounds in the process. When the shifting battle lines brought us to the middle of the river sandbar, to the edge of a row of abandoned military structures, with roof tiles and crumbling walls, I saw a familiar figure seated beside a stone feeding trough half buried in mud.

“Old Diao, is that you?” I shouted in amazement.

“I knew you’d come one day, my brother,” Diao Xiaosan said before turning to the approaching wild boars. “I cannot be your king. This is your true king!”

After a momentary hesitation, they fell to their knees and, with their snouts in the dirt, announced in unison:

“Long live the great king!”

I was about to say something, but with this latest development, what could I say? So, in a state of utter bewilderment, I became king of the sandbar wild boars and received their fealty. As for the human king, the one sitting on the moon, he had already flown off millions of miles from earth, and the gargantuan moon had shrunk down to the size of a silver platter, so small and far away that I could no longer have seen the human king, even with a high-powered telescope.

33

Pig Sixteen Has Thoughts of Home

A Drunk Hong Taiyue Raises Hell in a Public House

“Time flies.” Before I knew it, I was entering my fifth year as king of the boars on this desolate and virtually uninhabited sandbar.

At first, I’d planned to implement a system of monogamous relationships, as practiced in civilized human society, and had assumed that this reform measure would be greeted with cheers of approval. Imagine my surprise when, instead, it was met with strong opposition, not only by the females but also by the males, who grumbled their dissatisfaction, even though they would have been the primary beneficiaries. Not knowing how to resolve the issue, I took my problem to Diao Xiaosan, who was sprawled in the straw shed we’d provided to protect him from the elements.

“You can abdicate if you want,” he said coldly. “But if you plan to stay on as king, you’ll have to respect local customs.”

My hooves were tied. I had no choice but to let stand this cruel jungle practice. So I shut my eyes and fantasized images of Little Flower, of Butterfly Lover, and, less clearly, of a female donkey, even the hazy outline of some women, as I mated almost recklessly with all those female wild boars. I avoided it whenever possible and cut corners when avoidance was out of the question, but as the years passed, the sandbar population was increased by dozens of wildly colorful little bastards. Some had golden yellow bristles, others had black, and some were spotted like those dalmatians you see in TV ads. Most of them retained their wild boar physical characteristics, but they were clearly smarter than their mothers.

In 1981, during the fourth lunar month, when the apricot trees were blooming and the female wild boars were in heat, I swam over to the south bank of the river. The water was warm on the surface, but icy cold below, and at the point where the warm and cold water met, I encountered schools of fish swimming upstream against the current. I was deeply moved by their indomitable desire to return to their spawning grounds, whatever the difficulty, however great the sacrifice. Moving over to shallow water, I became lost in my own thoughts as I stood and watched them struggling heroically ahead, their fins flapping.

Suddenly I was struck by an outlandish thought – actually it was more like an urgent internal desire, to travel back to Ximen Village, as if I had an appointment made years before, one virtually impossible to reschedule.

It had already been four years since I’d paired up with Little Flower and fled from the pig farm, but I could have found the way back there blindfolded, in part because the fragrance of apricot blossoms came to me on winds from the west but mainly because it was my home. So I struck out, walking along the narrow but comfortably smooth bank of the river, heading west. Uncultivated fields stretched out south of me, nothing but scrubland to the north.

When I reached the one-point-six-acre plot belonging to Lan Lian, I planted my hooves in the ground, having chased the moon westward to my destination. I looked off to the south, where Ximen Village Production Brigade land surrounding Lan Lian’s tiny strip was blanketed with mulberry trees, under whose lush foliage women were picking mulberries in the moonlight, and the sight stirred my emotions. I could see there were changes in farming villages following the death of Mao Zedong. Lan Lian was still planting an old variety of wheat, but the mulberry trees all around him were sapping the soil of nutrients, having an obvious effect on at least four rows of his cultivated land, with anemic stalks and tassels as tiny as houseflies. Maybe this was another scheme Hong Taiyue had dreamed up to punish Lan Lian: Let’s see how an independent farmer deals with this. By the light of the moon I saw the bare back of someone digging a ditch beside the mulberry trees, waging a battle against the People’s Commune. He was digging a deep, narrow ditch on the land between his and the mulberry plots belonging to the production brigade and chopping off the yellow mulberry roots that crossed that line with his hoe. That could have been a problem; on your own land you could dig as you wanted. But cutting the roots of brigade trees was considered destruction of property belonging to the collective. My mind was a blank as I gazed at old Lan Lian, bent over like a black bear clumsily digging away. Once the mulberries on both sides were tall, mature trees, the independent farmer would be the owner of a tract of barren land. But I soon learned how wrong I was. By this time, the production brigade had broken up and the People’s Commune existed in name only. Agricultural reform had entered the land-parceling phase, and the land surrounding Lan Lian’s plot had been distributed to individual farmers, who could decide on their own whether to plant mulberries or wheat.

My legs carried me to the Apricot Garden Pig Farm. The apricot tree was still there, but the pigpens weren’t. The spot where I had once sprawled lazily to daydream was now planted with peanuts. I rose up on my hind legs and rested my front hooves on branches of the tree I’d practiced on every day as a young pig. It was immediately clear that I was a lot heavier and clumsier than I’d been back then, and I was obviously out of practice where standing upright was concerned. In sum, as I roamed the ground of the onetime pig farm, I couldn’t help feeling nostalgic, which in itself was a sure sign that I was well ensconced in middle age. Yes, I’d experienced a great deal of what the world had to offer a pig.

I discovered that the two rows of buildings that had served as dormitories and workplaces for personnel who prepared our food had been converted to the task of raising silkworms. The sight of all those bright lights told me that Ximen Village had been added to the national electricity grid. And there, in front of a wide array of silkworm racks, stood Ximen Bai, her hair white as snow. She was bent over, the willow basket in her hands nearly filled with mulberry leaves, which she was spreading over the white silkworm beds. Crunching noises rose into the air. Your wedding suite, I noted, had also been converted to silkworm raising, which meant that you’d been given new quarters.

I stepped onto the road that ran through the center of the village; only now it was paved and probably twice as wide as before. The squat rammed-earth walls on either side had been taken down and had given way to rows of identical buildings with red-tile roofs. North of the road stood a two-story building fronted by an open square in which a hundred or more people – mostly old women and children – were watching an episode of a TV drama on a twenty-one-inch Matsushita Japanese television set.

I observed the crowd of TV watchers for about ten minutes before continuing on, heading west. You know where I was going. But now I needed to stay off the road. Causing the death of Xu Bao had made me a household name throughout Northeast Gaomi Township, and there’d be hell to pay if they spotted me. I wasn’t worried that I couldn’t hold my own if it came to that, but I wanted to avoid anything that might involve innocent bystanders. In other words, I was afraid, not of them, but of causing trouble. By staying in the shadows of the buildings south of the road, I was able to make it unobserved to the Ximen family compound.

The gate was open; the old apricot stood there as always, its branches covered with fresh blossoms that filled the air with their fragrance. I stayed in the shadows and gazed in at eight tables with plastic tablecloths. A light that had been strung outside and hung from a branch of the apricot tree lit the compound up like daytime. I knew the people who were sitting at the tables. A bad lot, all of them. The onetime puppet security chief Yu Wufu, the turncoat Zhang Dazhuang, Tian Gui the landlord, and the rich peasant Wu Yuan were seated at one table. Seated at one of the other tables were the onetime chief of security Yang Qi and two of the Sun brothers, Dragon and Tiger. The tables were littered with the leavings of a banquet; the guests were already good and drunk. I later learned that Yang Qi was in the business of selling bamboo poles – he’d never been much of a farmer – which he purchased in Jinggangshan and transported to Gaomi by train and from there to Ximen Village by truck. He sold his entire first load to Ma Liangcai, who used the poles to build a new school. Almost overnight Yang Qi became a wealthy man. Sitting there as the village’s richest man, he was dressed in a gray suit with a bright red tie. By rolling up his sleeves, he was able to show off his digital wristwatch. He took out a pack of American cigarettes and tossed one to Dragon Sun, who was gnawing on a braised pig’s foot, and another to Tiger Sun, who was wiping his mouth with a napkin. He crumpled the empty pack, turned, and shouted toward the east-side room:

“Boss lady!”

The boss lady came running outside. What do you know, it was her, Wu Qiuxiang! Would you believe it, Boss Lady? That was when I noticed that the wall just east of the compound gate had been whitewashed to accommodate a sign in red: Qiuxiang Tavern. Wu Qiuxiang, the proprietress of Qiuxiang Tavern, ran up to where Yang Qi was sitting. Her smiling face was heavily powdered; she had a towel over one shoulder and a blue apron around her waist – obviously a shrewd, competent, enthusiastic, professional innkeeper. This was a different world – reforms and openings to the outside world had brought profound changes to Ximen Village. Qiuxiang was all smiles as she asked Yang Qi:

“What can I do for you, Boss Yang?”

“Don’t call me that,” Yang said with a glare. “I’m just a peddler of bamboo poles, not the boss of anything.”

“Don’t be modest, Boss Yang. At ten yuan apiece, the sale of ten thousand makes you a wealthy man. If you’re not a boss, then there can’t be a soul in Northeast Gaomi Township worthy of the title.” Matching her exaggerated compliment with a touch on Yang’s shoulder, Qiuxiang continued. “Just look at how you’re dressed. What you’re wearing had to cost at least a thousand.”

“You women, open your bloody mouths and out comes the flattery At this rate, you’ll won’t be happy until I explode like one of those bloated dead pigs back on the pig farm.”

“Okay, Boss Yang, you’re not worth a thing, a pauper, does that sound better to you? You close the door on me before I have a chance to ask for a loan. Now then,” Qiuxiang said with a pout, “what can I get for you?”

“Huh? Are you mad at me? Don’t pout like that, it gives me a hard-on.”

“To hell with you!” Qiuxiang fired back, slapping Yang Qi on the head with her greasy towel. “Now tell me, what do you want?”

“A pack of cigarettes. Good Friends.”

“That’s all? What about liquor?” With a quick glance at the red faces of Tiger and Dragon Sun, she said, “These brothers look to be in dire need of a drink.”

“Boss Yang is buying today,” thick-tongued Dragon said, “so we ought to drink less.”

“Is that an insult directed my way?” Yang Qi exclaimed as he banged his fist on the table. “I may not be rich,” he said with feigned anger, “but I won’t go broke buying a few drinks for you two.” He reached out and pinched Qiuxiang on the rear and said, “Okay, two bottles of Black Vat.”

“Black Vat? Too low-class. For friends like this, the least you can do is treat them to some Little Tiger.”

“Damn, Qiuxiang, you sure know how to take a hint and run with it,” Yang Qi said with a note of resignation. “All right, make it Little Tiger.”

Lan Jiefang, I’m painting a detailed picture of what was going on in the Ximen family compound, describing what I heard and saw as a pig at the gate, in order to bring the conversation around to a very important individual, Hong Taiyue. After a new office building was built for the production brigade, the original headquarters – the five rooms belonging to Ximen Nao – were taken over by Jinlong and Huzhu as their living quarters. And there’s more. Immediately after announcing the rehabilitation of the bad elements in the village, Jinlong announced that he was changing his name from Lan to Ximen. All this held considerable meaning, and the loyal old revolutionary Hong Taiyue was greatly puzzled.

Following his retirement, Hong began acting more and more like Lan Lian, cooped up at home during the day, and out the door as soon as the moon climbed into the sky. Lan Lian worked his land under moonlight; Hong roamed the village like an old-time night watchman, up and down all the streets and byways. Jinlong said: The old branch secretary’s level of consciousness is high as always – he’s out there every night protecting us. That, of course, wasn’t what Hong intended. He had a heavy heart over the changes that had occurred in the village and didn’t know what to do about it. So he walked and he drank out of a canteen people said had belonged to the Eighth Route Army. He wore an old army jacket over his shoulders, a wide leather belt around his waist, and straw sandals on his feet, topped by army leggings. The only thing that kept him from total resemblance to an Eighth Route soldier was the absence of a repeater rifle slung over his back. He’d take a couple of steps, then a swig from his canteen, and finally utter a loud curse. By the time the canteen was empty, the moon would be low in the western sky and he’d be falling-down drunk. On some nights he made it back to his bed to sleep it off; on other nights he’d simply bed down by a haystack or on an abandoned millstone and sleep till sunrise. He was spotted sleeping by a haystack by early-morning market goers, his brows and beard coated with frost, his face nice and ruddy, with no sign of feeling the cold. He’d be snoring away so peacefully no one wanted to wake him from whatever he was dreaming. Sometimes he’d head out to the fields on a whim and start a conversation with Lan Lian, but not by stepping on Lan Lian’s plot of land. No, he’d stand on somebody else’s property and engage the independent farm in a verbal battle. But since Lan Lian was busy working, he had little time for idle chatter, so he just let the old man talk, which he was only too happy to do. When Lan Lian did open his mouth, though, a pointed comment as hard as a rock or as sharp as a knife emerged and shut the old man up on the spot, so enraging him he could hardly stand. During the “Contract Responsibility System” phase, for instance, Hong Taiyue said to Lan Lian:

“Isn’t this the same as bringing back capitalism? Wouldn’t you say it was a system of material incentives?”

In a low, muffled voice, Lan Lian replied: “The best is yet to come, just you wait and see!”

Then when that led to the phase of a system of “household responsibility for production,” Hong stood alongside Lan Lian’s plot of land and jumped up and down, cursing:

“Shit, are they really giving up on the People’s Commune, ownership at the three levels of commune, brigade, and production team levels, with the production team as the base, from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs, all that?”

“Sooner or later, we’ll all be independent farmers,” Lan Lian said coldly.

“Dream on,” Hong said.

“You just wait and see.”

Then when the subsistence system went into effect, Hong got roaring drunk and came up to Lan Lian’s land, wailing and cursing angrily, as if Lan Lian himself were the person responsible for all the earth-shaking reforms:

“Lan Lian, you motherfucker, it’s just like you said, you bastard. This subsistence system is nothing but independent farming, isn’t it? After thirty hard, demanding years, we’re right back to the days before Liberation. Well, not for me. I’m going to Beijing, right up to Tiananmen Square, and I’ll go to Chairman Mao’s Memorial Hall and weep to his spirit. I’ll tell Chairman Mao I’m going to file a complaint against all of you. Our land, the land we fought for and turned red, and now they want a new color…”

Grief and anger drove Hong out of his mind, and as he rolled on the ground, he lost sight of boundaries. He rolled onto Lan Lian’s land just as Lan was cutting down beans. Hong Taiyue, rolling on the ground like a donkey, rolled into the bean lattice, crushing the pods and sending beans popping and flying all over the place. Lan pressed Hong to the ground with his sickle and said unsparingly:

“You’re on my land! We struck a deal many years ago, and now it is my right to sever your Achilles tendon. But I’m in a good mood today, so I’m going to let you off.”

Hong rolled right off of Lan Lian’s land and, by holding on to a scrawny mulberry tree, got to his feet.

“I refuse to accept it. Old Lan, after thirty years of struggle, you still wind up the victor, while those of us of unquestionable loyalty and hard, bitter work spend thirty years of blood and sweat, only to wind up the losers. You’re right and we’re wrong…”

“In the land distribution, you got yours, didn’t you?” Lan asked in a less confrontational tone. “I’ll bet you got every inch you had coming. They wouldn’t dare shortchange you. And you still receive your six-hundred-yuan cadre-level pension, don’t you? And will they take away your monthly army supplement of thirty yuan? Not hardly. You have nothing to complain about. The Communist Party is paying you for everything you did, good or bad, every month like clockwork.”

“These are two different matters,” Hong replied, “and what I won’t accept is that you, Lan Lian, are one of history’s obstacles, a man who was left behind, and here you are, part of the vanguard. You must be proud of yourself. All Northeast Gaomi Township, all Gaomi County, is praising you as a man of foresight!”

“I’m not the sage. That would be Mao Zedong, or Deng Xiaoping,” Lan Lian said, suddenly agitated. “A sage can change heaven and earth. What can I do? I just stick to one firm principle, and that is, even brothers will divide up a family’s wealth. So how will it work to throw a bunch of people with different names together? Well, as it turns out, to my surprise, my principle stood the test of time. Old Hong,” Lan Lian said tearfully, “you sank your teeth in me like a mad dog for half my life, but you can’t do that anymore. Like an old toad used to hold up a table, I struggled to bear the weight for thirty years, but now, at last, I can stand up straight. Give me that canteen of yours.”

“What, you’re going to take a drink?”

Lan Lian stepped over the boundary of his land, took the liquor-filled canteen out of Hong Taiyue’s hand, tipped his head back, and drank every last drop. Then he flung away the canteen, got down on his knees, and said with a mixture of sadness and joy:

“You can see, my friend, I held out long enough, and now I can work my land in the light of day…”

I didn’t personally see any of this, so it has to be considered hearsay. But since a novelist by the name of Mo Yan came from there, fact and fiction have gotten so jumbled up, figuring out what’s true and what’s not is just about impossible. I should be telling you only stuff from my personal experience or things I saw or heard, but, I’m sorry to say, Mo Yan’s fiction has a way of wriggling in through the cracks and taking my tale to places it shouldn’t go.

So, as I was saying, I hid in the shadows outside the gate of the Ximen family compound and watched as Yang Qi, who by then was pretty drunk, picked up his glass and, wobbling back and forth and swaying from side to side, made his way over to the table where the bad people from earlier days were sitting. Since they had gathered for a special occasion, everyone at the table was in an agitated mood as they recalled the wretched times they had survived, approaching a point where they could easily be intoxicated without the aid of alcohol. So they were shocked to see Yang Qi, the onetime head of public security, who, as representative of the dictatorship of the proletariat, had used a switch on them, shocked and angry, as he braced himself with a hand on the table and raised his glass with the other.

“Worthy brothers,” he said, his thick tongue blurring the words a bit, “gentlemen, I, Yang Qi, offended all of you in the past, and today I come to offer my apologies.”

He tipped his head back and poured the contents in the direction of his mouth, most making it only as far as his neck, where it soaked his necktie. He reached up to loosen his tie, but wound up making it tighter, and tighter, until his face began turning dark. It was almost as if the only way he could rid himself of the torment he was experiencing was to commit suicide this way and expatiate his guilt.

The onetime turncoat Zhang Dazhuang, at heart a good man, stood up to rescue Yang by removing his tie and hanging it from a branch of the tree. Yang’s neck was red, his eyes bulging.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “the West German chancellor got down on his knees in the snow before a memorial to the murdered Jews and asked forgiveness for the deeds of Hitler. Now I, Yang Qi, the onetime head of public security, kneel before you to ask your forgiveness.”

The bright light from the lantern lit up his face, which had grown pale, as he knelt on the ground beneath the necktie that hung over his head like a bloody sword. How symbolic. I was deeply moved by the scene, even if it was slightly comical. This coarse, disagreeable man, Yang Qi, not only knew that the West German chancellor had gone down on his knees to ask forgiveness, but his conscience had told him he had to apologize to men he had mistreated in the past. I couldn’t help looking at him with new eyes, giving him a bit of grudging respect. Vaguely I recalled hearing Mo Yan say something about the West German chancellor, another piece of information he’d gleaned from Reference News.

The leader of this band of onetime bad characters, Wu Yuan, ran over to help Yang Qi to his feet, but Yang wrapped his arms around a table leg and refused to stand.

“I’m guilty of terrible things,” he wailed. “Lord Yama has sent his attendants to flay me with their lashes… ow… that hurts… it’s killing me…”

“Old Yang,” Wu Yuan said, “that’s all in the past. Why hold on to those memories when we’ve already forgotten? Besides, society forced you to do what you did, and if you hadn’t beaten us, somebody else would’ve. So get up, get up now. We’ve come through it and have been rehabilitated. And you? You’ve gotten rich. And if your conscience still bothers you, donate the money you made to the cause of rebuilding a temple.”

Racked by sobs, Yang roared: “I won’t donate money I worked so hard to put aside. How dare you even suggest that!… What I want is for you to come beat me the way I beat you years ago. I don’t owe any of you a thing. You owe me…”

Just then I saw Hong Taiyue walk up on unsteady legs. He passed right by me, reeking of alcohol. In all the years I’d been on the run, this was the first time I’d been able to closely observe the onetime supreme leader of the Ximen Village Production Brigade. His hair, which had turned white, still stuck up in the air like spikes. His face was puffy and he was missing several teeth, which gave him a somewhat dull-witted look. The moment he stepped through the gate, the clamor stopped abruptly, surefire evidence that the men in the compound had not lost their fear of the man who had ruled Ximen Village for many years.

Wu Qiuxiang rushed up to greet him, and the onetime bad individuals jumped to their feet as a sort of conditioned reflex. “Ah, Party secretary!” she called out with enthusiasm and familiarity as she took Hong Taiyue by the arm, something he was not at all accustomed to. He jerked his arm free, nearly falling over in the process. Qiuxiang reached out and steadied him; this time he let her hold his arm as she led him to a clean table, where he sat down. Since it was a bench, Hong was in constant danger of falling backward; sharp-eyed Huzhu reacted by quickly moving over a chair for him. Resting one arm on the table, he turned sideways to stare at the people under the tree, his eyes bleary and unfocused. After wiping the table in front of Hong in a practiced move, Qiuxiang asked genially:

“What can I get for the Party secretary?”

“Let’s see, what’ll I have…” He blinked, his heavy eyelids moving slowly up and down. Then he banged his fist on the table, sending the dented old revolutionary canteen bouncing into the air. “What can you get?” he shouted in anger. “Liquor, that’s what! That and two ounces of gunpowder!”

“Party Secretary,” Qiuxiang said with a smile, “I think you’ve had enough for one day. For now, I’ll have Huzhu make you a bowl of fish broth. Drink it hot and then go home and get some sleep. What do you say?”

“Fish broth? Are you implying I’m drunk?” He glared at her, crusted material in the corners of his puffy eyes. “I’m not drunk!” he bellowed unhappily. “My bones and my flesh might be affected by alcohol, but my mind is as clear and bright as the moon or a shiny mirror. Don’t think you can put something over on me, no ma’am! Liquor, where’s the liquor? You small-time capitalists, you petty entrepreneurs, are like winter leeks. The roots may be withered and the outer skin dry, but the spark of life persists until the weather turns good and you start sprouting buds. Money is the only language you people speak. Well, I’ve got money, so bring me some liquor!”

Qiuxiang winked at Huzhu, who carried a white bowl over to Hong.

“Party Secretary, try this first.”

Hong Taiyue took a sip and spit it out. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and said in a loud voice that sounded both dreary and tragic:

“I never thought you’d gang up on me, too, Huzhu. I ask you for liquor, and you give me vinegar. My heart has been steeping in vinegar for so long that my spit is sour, and you give me vinegar. Where’s Jinlong? Call him over here so I can ask him if Ximen Village is still part of the Communist Party realm.”

From the moment Hong walked into the compound, he was the focus of attention. All the while he was entertaining the crowd with witty remarks, everyone – including Yang Qi, who was kneeling on the ground – was enthralled, watching him with open mouths, not to snap out of it until Hong was drinking again.

“All of you, come over here and beat me, give me back everything I gave you…,” Yang Qi implored. “If you don’t, you have no right to call yourselves human, and if you aren’t human, then you must be the offspring of horses, mule spawn, sprung from the eggs of chickens, little bastards covered with fuzz…”

“Yang Qi,” Wu Yuan, leader of the onetime bad elements, said, unable to hold back any longer, “Elder Yang, we give up, how’s that? When you were beating us you did so as a representative of the government to teach us a lesson. If you hadn’t done that, how could we ever have reformed ourselves? It was your rattan switch that made it possible for us to cast off our old selves and be transformed into new people, so get up, please get up.” Wu Yuan called the others over. “Come, let’s drink a toast to Yang Qi to thank him for educating us.” The onetime bad elements raised their glasses and offered a toast to Yang; he refused to accept it. “Stop that!” he insisted as he wiped the beer foam from his face. “That’s not going to work. I’m not getting up until you do as I ask. Murder demands the death penalty, and borrowed money has to be repaid. You owe me.”

Wu Yuan looked around and, seeing no way out, said, “Elder Yang, since you’re going to be stubborn, it looks like hitting you is the only way this will be settled. So on behalf of all bad elements, I’ll slap you across the face and the account will be settled.”

“No way will one slap settle accounts. I gave you people no fewer than three thousand lashes, so you owe me three thousand slaps, not one less.”

“Yang Qi, you son of a bitch,” Wu Yuan said as he walked up close to Yang, “you’re going to drive me out of my mind. A bunch of us who suffered for decades are here to enjoy ourselves, but you’ve made that impossible. You call this an apology? This is just another way for you to bully us… Well, I’m not going to take it any longer. I’m slapping you today, no matter who you are.” And that’s exactly what he did, right across Yang Qi’s pear-shaped face.

With the sound reverberating in the air, Yang wobbled on his knees, but managed to stay upright. “More!” he cried out fiercely. “That was one. You’ve just started. You’re not men if you don’t give me 2,999 more.”

His shout hadn’t even died out when Hong Taiyue slammed his canteen down on the table and got to his feet, however unsteadily He pointed to the table where the onetime bad elements were sitting, his right index finger straight as the cannon on a sailing ship being tossed on the waves.

“You’re rebellingYou bunch of landlords, rich peasants, traitors, spies, and historical counterrevolutionaries, enemies of the proletariat, every one of you, how dare you sit there like normal people drinking and enjoying yourselves! Stand up!”

Hong had been relieved of his position of authority for years, but he was still a man to be listened to. He was used to ordering people around, and had the voice for it. The recently rehabilitated bad elements jumped up as if they were shot out of their seats, sweat dripping from their faces.

“And you -” Hong pointed at Yang Qi, ratcheting up his anger a notch or two. “You damned turncoat, you lily-livered scumbag who kneels before class enemies, you stand up too!”

Yang tried, but when his head bumped up against the wet necktie hanging from a low branch, his legs buckled and he sat down hard, his back resting against the apricot tree.

“You, you… you people-” Like a man standing on the deck of a wave-tossed boat, he tried but failed to point steadily at any of the men standing at their open-air tables. “You people,” he said, launching into a tirade, “think you’re home free. Well, look around and you’ll see that this spot under the sky -” He pointed skyward and nearly fell over. “This spot still belongs to the Communist Party, even though there are dark clouds in the sky I’m telling you, here and now, that your dunce caps have only been removed temporarily, and before long there’ll be new ones for you to wear, this time made of iron or steel or brass. We’ll weld them to your scalps, and you’ll wear them to your death, into your coffin. That is the answer you get from this proud member of the Communist Party!” He pointed to Yang Qi, who was snoring away under the apricot tree. “You’re not only a turncoat who kneels before class enemies, you’re a profiteer who has dug holes at the base of the wall that is our collective economy.” He then turned to Wu Qiuxiang. “And you, Wu Qiuxiang, I took pity on you and spared you from having to put on a dunce cap. But it’s in your blood to exploit the masses, and you were just biding your time till the weather turned so you could sink roots and began to flower. Listen to me, all of you. Our Communist Party, we members of Mao Zedong’s party who have survived countless intraparty struggles over the proper line, we tempered Communists who have weathered the storms of class struggle, we Bolsheviks, will not knuckle under, we will never surrender! Land distribution? I’ll tell you what that is. It’s a scheme to make the broad masses of middle and lower poor peasants suffer a second time, be beaten down all over again.” Raising his fists in the air, Hong shouted, “We will keep the struggle alive, we will bring Lan Lian to his knees, we’ll lop the top off this black flag! That is the mission of enlightened Communists of the Ximen Village Production Brigade and all middle and lower poor peasants! The cold, dark night will come to an end -”

The sound of an engine and a pair of blinding lights coming from the east brought Hong’s tirade to an end. I flattened up against the wall to keep from being discovered. The engine was shut down, the lights turned off, and out from the cab of the ancient Jeep emerged Jinlong, Panther Sun, and others. Vehicles like that are considered trash these days, but for a rural village in the early 1980s, it had a domineering presence. Obviously, Jinlong, a village branch secretary of the Communist Party, was somebody to reckon with. This signaled the beginnings of his progress up the ladder.

Jinlong strode confidently in through the gate, followed by his companions. All eyes were on the current top leader of Ximen Village. Hong Taiyue pointed to Jinlong and cursed:

“Ximen Jinlong, I must be blind. I thought you were born and grew up under the red flag, that you were one of us. I had no idea that the polluted blood of the tyrannical landlord Ximen Nao ran in your veins. Ximen Jinlong, you’re been a fraud for the last thirty years, and I fell for it…”

Jinlong signaled Panther Sun and the others with his eyes. They ran up and grabbed Hong Taiyue by the arms. He fought, he cursed:

“You’re a bunch of loyal sons and grandsons of counterrevolutionaries and members of the landlord class, running dogs and spitting cats, and I’ll never knuckle under to you!”

“That’s enough, Uncle Hong. This play is finished.” Jinlong hung the battered canteen around Hong Taiyue’s neck. “Go home and get some sleep,” he said. “I’ve spoken to Aunt Bai. We’ll pick a good date for the wedding. That way you can wallow in the muck with the landlord class.”

Jinlong’s companions spirited Hong away, his feet dragging along the ground like a couple of gourds. He turned his head, refusing to yield.

“Don’t think I’m giving up. Chairman Mao came to me in a dream and said there are revisionists in Party Central.”

Jinlong turned to the crowd and said with a smile, “You folks should go home now.”

“Party Secretary Jinlong, we bad elements would like to drink a toast to you.”

“Jinlong, you must be tired,” Qiuxiang said affectionately to her son-in-law. “I’ll have Huzhu make you a bowl of thin noodles.”

Huzhu was standing in her doorway, head down, her miraculous hair stacked up high, her hairstyle and facial expression reminiscent of a neglected palace girl.

Jinlong frowned. “I want you to close down this restaurant and put the compound back the way it was. And everybody has to move out.”

“We can’t do that, Jinlong,” Qiuxiang said anxiously. “Business is too good.”

“How good can it be in a little village like ours? If you’re looking for good business, open up in the township or the county town.”

Just then, Yingchun, a child in her arms, came out of the northern rooms. Who was that child? It was Lan Kaifang, the son born to you and Hezuo. You say you had no feelings for Hezuo. Then where did that child come from? Don’t tell me that they had test-tube babies back then. You’re such a hypocrite!

Yingchun turned to Qiuxiang. “Please keep your door shut. Arguing late at night, smoking and drinking, I don’t know how your grandson ever gets any sleep.”

All the players had shown up, including Lan Lian, who walked in the gate with a bundle of mulberry roots. Without so much as a glance at anyone else, he walked straight up to Wu Qiuxiang and said:

“Roots of the mulberry trees on your land crept into mine. I chopped them off. Here they are.”

“I’ve never seen a more stubborn man in my life,” Yingchun said. “What else are you incapable of doing?”

Huang Tong, who had been sleeping in a reclining chair, got up, yawned, and walked over.

“If you’re not afraid of tiring yourself out, go dig up all those trees. These days only the dumb pigs make a living off the land!”

“Everybody out!” Jinlong shouted with a frown before turning and walking into the main building of the Ximen family home.

The people left the compound in silence.

The Ximen compound gate closed with a thud. The village was shrouded in silence. Only the moon, with no place to go, accompanied me as I strolled around the area. The moon’s rays seemed to be made up of cold grains of sand falling on my body.

34

Hong Taiyue Loses His Male Organ In Anger

Torn Ear Turns Chaos Into the King’s Throne

In “Tales of Pig-Raising,” Mo Yan wrote in detail about how I bit off Hong Taiyue’s testicles and turned him into a cripple. He wrote that I waited until Hong was squatting beneath the crooked apricot tree doing his business and attacked him from behind. He made a great show of reporting truthfully by describing the moonlight, the fragrance of the apricot tree, the honeybees buzzing around the apricot blossoms as they gathered nectar, and ended it all with what appeared to be a sentence of great beauty: “Bathed in moonbeams, the road curved like a stream for washing water buffalo.” I came off looking like an abnormal pig strangely addicted to eating human testicles. Me, Pig Sixteen, a true hero for half my life, since when would I launch a sneak attack on someone taking a shit? His mind was in the gutter when he wrote that, and I was disgusted when I read it. He also wrote that during that spring I ran around Northeast Gaomi Township doing despicable things and that I bit to death sixteen head of cattle belonging to a peasant. He said I waited till they were doing their business and then ran up, sank my teeth into their anuses, and pulled out their twisted gray-white intestines. “The frenzied animals ran in excruciating pain, dragging their guts in the mud behind them until they fell dead.” The rat drew upon his evil imagination to make me look like some kind of monster. You know who really butchered those animals? A demented old wolf that came down from Mount Ghangbai, that’s who. He was so sneaky he left no tracks, so everybody pinned it on me. Later on that wolf slipped back to Wu Family Sandy Mouth and my savage sons and grandsons, without my even having to show my face, stomped him flat and tore him to pieces.

Here’s what really happened: I spent that night in the company of the lonesome moon wandering the streets and lanes of Ximen Village. When we made our back to Apricot Garden, I spotted Hong Taiyue under the crooked apricot tree taking a piss. His flattened canteen hung around his neck, resting on his chest. He reeked of alcohol. A man once known for his capacity for liquor, by now he was a drunk, plain and simple. As he was buttoning up his pants, he cursed:

“Let me go, you bunch of mongrels… you think you can keep me down by tying my hands and feet and putting a gag in my mouth. Not a chance! You can chop me up into little pieces, but you’ll never still the heart of a true Communist. Believe me, you little bastards. Who cares. All that counts is that I believe.,..”

The moon and I, attracted by his rants, fell in behind him, moving from one apricot tree to another, and whenever one of the trees bumped into him, he raised his fist and glared at it:

“I’ll be damned, even you come after me. Well, here’s a taste of a Communist’s steel fist…”

He wandered over to the silkworm shed, where he pounded on the door with his fist. The door was opened from the inside, lamplight spilling out into the night to merge with the moonbeams. I saw Ximen Bai’s bright face; she had opened the door while holding a basket of mulberry leaves. The crisp fragrance of the leaves and the sound of silkworms chewing their leaves, like the pitter-patter of an autumn rainfall, spilled out through the door with the light. I could see in her eyes that she was taken by surprise.

“Party Secretary… what are you doing here?”

“Who did you think it was?” Hong was obviously having trouble keeping his balance, his shoulders bumping into the racks of silkworm cocoons. “I heard you shed your landlord dunce cap,” he said in a strange voice, “and I’m here to congratulate you.”

“I have you to thank for that,” Ximen Bai replied as she set down her basket and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “If not for your support all those years, they’d have beaten me to death long ago…”

“Nonsense!” He was clearly angry. “We Communists have never ceased treating you with revolutionary humanitarianism!”

“I understand, Secretary Hong, in my heart I understand everything.” Somewhat incoherently, she continued, “I thought about talking to you back then, but the dunce cap was still on my head, and I didn’t dare approach you, but now, no more dunce cap, I’m a co-op member…”

“What is it you want to say?”

“Jinlong sent someone to tell me I should look after you…” She blushed. “I said if Secretary Hong has no objections, I’d be happy to look after him from now on…”

“Bai Xing, oh, Bai Xing, why were you a landlord?” Hong muttered softly.

“I no longer wear that cap,” she said. “I’m a citizen now, a member of the co-op. There are no more classes…”

“Nonsense!” Hong was now agitated. He walked up closer to her. “No cap doesn’t mean you’re not a landlord, it’s in your blood, poison running through your veins!”

Bai Xing backed up, all the way to the silkworm rack. The hurtful words emerging from Hong’s mouth belied the depth of feeling apparent in his eyes. “You will always be our enemy,” he roared. But a liquid light flashed in his eyes as he reached out and grabbed hold of Bai Xing’s breast.

With a defiant moan, she said, “Secretary Hong, don’t let the poison in my veins contaminate you-”

“You’re still the target of the dictatorship. I tell you, just because you’ve shed your cap, you’re still a landlord!” He wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed his reeking, stubble-covered mouth against her face; the two bodies crashed into the sorghum-woven silkworm racks and knocked them over. Bai Xing’s silkworms wriggled and squirmed beneath the bodies; those that weren’t squashed flat just kept chewing their mulberry leaves.

Suddenly a cloud floated in front of the moon, and in the haze all sorts of reminiscences of the Ximen Nao era – sweet, sour, bitter, hot – surged into my head. As a pig, my mind was clear, but as a human, there was only confusion. Yes, I knew that no matter how I’d died all those years ago, justly or not, fairly or not, Ximen Bai had every right to be intimate with another man, but I could not endure seeing Hong Taiyue do it to her while he was cursing her. What an insult, both to Ximen Bai and to Ximen Nao. To me it felt like dozens of fireflies were flitting around in my head. Then they came together to form a ball of fire that burned its way into my eyes and caused everything I saw to resemble a will-o’-the-wisp. The silkworms were a phosphorescent green; so were the people. I charged, initially intending only to knock him off her body. But his testes came in contact with my mouth, and I honestly could find no reason not to bite them off…

Yeah, a moment of rage had incalculable consequences. Ximen Bai hanged herself from a beam in the silkworm shed that night; Hong Taiyue was sent to the county medical center, hanging on to life by a thread. He lived, but as some sort of freak with a monstrous temper. Me, I was labeled a fearful murderer with the savagery of a tiger, the cruelty of a wolf, the craftiness of a fox, and the wildness of a boar.

Mo Yan wrote that after biting Hong Taiyue, I went on a rampage in Northeast Gaomi Township, wreaking destruction on the peasants’ field oxen, and even wrote that for the longest time the locals were afraid to relieve themselves out in the woods, afraid of having their guts pulled out through their anuses. As I indicated before, that’s bullshit! Here’s what really happened. After I had, in a moment of confusion, taken that mortal bite out of Hong Taiyue, I rushed back to Wu Family Sandy Mouth. A bunch of sows sashayed up next to me, but I shoved them away. I knew this was far from over, so I went looking for Diao Xiaosan to come up with a strategy to deal with the situation.

I gave him a quick rundown on what had happened. He sighed and said:

“Brother Sixteen, as I see it, love’s a hard thing to forget. I knew right off that you and Ximen Bai had something special. Now, what’s done is done, and there’s no use in trying to figure out what’s right and what’s wrong. Let us go raise some hell, what do you say?”

Mo Yan’s accuracy improved with events that followed. Diao Xiaosan got me to call all the young studs together on the sandbar, where, like a well-tested commander, he intoned the glorious history of their ancestors in struggles against humans and predatory animals. Then he related the strategies those ancestors had conceived:

“Tell these youngsters, Great King, how to cover themselves with pine tar, then go roll in the dirt, and repeat this procedure over and over…”

A month later, our bodies were covered with a natural golden armor no knife could penetrate and sounded like a rock or tree hit it when you bumped into it. At first, it slowed us down, but we quickly got used to lugging it around with us. Diao also taught us some battle techniques: how to set an ambush, how to launch a surprise attack, how to lay siege, how to retreat, etc. He spoke with the authority of someone with battle experience. We sighed with admiration. We told Old Diao he must have been a military man in his previous incarnation. He released an enigmatic snigger. Then that iniquitous old wolf foolishly swam over to the shoal. At first he probably thought we were no match for him, but after trying to take a bite out of our virtually impenetrable hide, which kept us safe from injury, his savagery left him. My sons and grandsons, as I said earlier, stomped him flat and tore him to pieces.

August was the rainy season, which raised the water level in the river to flood stage. On moonlit nights, great numbers of fish, drawn to the surface by the moon’s reflection, wound up beached on the shoal. This was the season when we fattened up on watery delicacies. More and more wild animals congregated on the shoal, which led to more violent fights over food. A fierce territorial battle erupted between the pigs and the foxes and ended when the armored cadre drove the foxes off the shoal’s golden hunting grounds and monopolized the triangular protuberance in the middle of the river. But not without a cost: many of my descendants received serious, even crippling, injuries in the battle with the foxes. Why? Because it was impossible to protect our eyes and ears with the armor that covered our bodies, leaving them vulnerable to attacks by the foxes, whose last-ditch tactic was to release noxious gases from their anuses. They proved lethal when they entered the eyes and nose. The stronger pigs managed to survive the attacks; the others slumped to the ground and were immediately set upon by foxes who bit down on their ears and gouged out their eyes with their claws. Afterward, under Diao Xiaosan’s command, we split up into two groups, one to launch an attack, the other to lay in wait. When the foxes released their gases, courageous warriors with mugwort stuck up their noses counterattacked. Our commander, Diao Xiaosan, knew that the foxes could not sustain the level of toxicity, that while the first gassing was lethal, those that followed were only mildly noxious. On top of that, pigs that had survived the first poisonous cloud fought courageously, wanting to latch on to their enemies, even if that meant their eyes might be gouged out and their ears bitten off. One assault followed another until at least half the foxes lay dead or injured; their corpses and broken bodies lay strewn across the shoal; bushy fox tails hung from the tips of red willows here and there. Sated flies darkened the willow branches and weighted them down, like heavy fruit, until they nearly touched the ground. The battle with the foxes turned the pig troops into a veteran fighting force. Serving as a training exercise for the pigs, it was a prelude for a war with humans.

Old Diao and I were prepared for an attack by hunters from Northeast Gaomi Township; but two weeks after the Mid-Autumn Festival, we were still waiting, so Old Diao sent a few of the cleverest pigs across the river as scouts. They never came back, and I figured they had fallen into some sort of trap, to be skinned, gutted, and chopped into filling for human consumption. By that time, the human’s standard of living was on the rise, and people, having grown weary of eating domestic fare, were on the lookout for wild, edible game. As autumn deepened, that development ushered in a campaign to “eradicate the wild boar scourge,” while in fact the goal was to put wild meat on the people’s tables.

Like so many major events in their infancy, the six-month-long pig hunt began in an atmosphere of fun. It all started on the first afternoon of the National Day holiday, a sunshiny early winter day when the shoal was bathed in the fragrance of wild chrysanthemums mixed with the aroma of pine tar and the pleasant medicinal odor of mug-wort. Naturally, there were less pleasant smells as well. The prolonged period of peace had taken the edge off our tension.

So on one lovely day, when a dozen or more boats sailed up the river, red flags at the mast and a steel drum on the lead boat loudly announcing their arrival, none of us believed that a pig slaughter was about to commence. We thought it was just members of a delegation of Communist Youth Leaguers on an autumn outing.

Diao Xiaosan and I stood on a rise watching the boats draw up our shoal and seeing the passengers come ashore. In a soft voice I reported to Old Diao what I was seeing. He cocked his head and pricked up his ears to hear exactly what was going on. There must be a hundred of them, I said. Tourists, it appears. A series of whistles has them forming up on the shore, I said, as if someone has called a meeting. The whistles and bits of conversation came to us on the wind. Someone is having them line up, he said to me, repeating what he heard. Close together, like a net, and don’t fire your guns. We’ll drive them into the water. What? They’re got guns? I said, shocked by the news. They’re coming for us, Old Diao said. Give the signal. Muster the troops. Diao Xiaosan took three deep breaths, raised his head, and, with his mouth half open, released a shrill sound from deep in his throat, like an air-raid alarm. Tree branches shook, wild grass waved, as wild boars – big, little, young, and old – appeared beside us on the rise from all directions. Foxes were startled, so were badgers and wild hares; some fled in fright, some hid in burrows, and some just ran in circles.

Our pine-tar, yellow-sand armor made us look as if we were all dressed in brown uniforms. Heads raised, mouths open, fangs bared, and eyes blazing, those two hundred pigs were my army – most of them my relatives. They were biding their time, they were excited, they were jittery, and they were ready to go, grinding their teeth and stomping their feet.

“My children,” I said to them, “the war has come to us. They’re armed with guns, so our strategy will be to exploit our advantage by being evasive. Do not let them drive you to the east. Circle around behind them if you can.”

One of the more excitable young males jumped up and shouted:

“I oppose that strategy! We need to close up ranks and attack them straight on. Drive them into the river!”

This particular boar, whose real name was unknown, was called Split Ear. Weighing in at about 350 jin, he had a large head that was covered in pine tar armor and an ear that was nearly chewed off in his heroic confrontation with a fox. My most powerful warrior, he was one of the few animals who was not related to me. This leader of shoal forces was too young to have fought me way back then, but now he was all grown up, and though I’d made it clear that King of the Pigs was not a role I had sought, I was reluctant to pass it on to this particularly cruel specimen.

“Do what the king tells you to do!” Diao Xiaosan said to underscore my authority.

“So if the king says surrender, that’s what we do?” Split Ear grumbled.

His grumblings were echoed by several of his boar brethren, a development that was particularly troubling; I could see that this force would not be easy to lead, and I needed to overpower Split Ear or it could split into two factions. But with the enemy massing in front of us, there was no time to deal with internal squabbles.

“Carry out my orders!” I commanded. “Break ranks!”

As ordered, most of the boars immediately took positions amid the trees and in clumps of grass. But forty or more, Split Ear’s loyalists, went out to meet the humans under his leadership.

The human force formed a straight line from east to west and began their advance. Some wore straw hats, others had on canvas caps; others wore sunglasses, others had on reading glasses; some were in jackets, others were wearing suits; some had on leather shoes, others were in sneakers; some were beating gongs, others had firecrackers stuffed in their pockets; some were beating down the tall grass with clubs, others were armed with rifles and shouted as they moved forward. Not all were young and full of vigor; some were gray-haired, sharp-eyed, stoop-shouldered old-timers. A dozen or so young women filled out the mostly male ranks, a sort of rear eschelon.

Pow – pow! Double-kick firecrackers created clouds of yellow smoke when they exploded. Bong! A cracked gong rang out.

“Come out, come out now, or we’ll open fire!” someone carrying a club cried out.

This ragged force looked nothing like a team of hunters; instead they were reenacting the 1958 campaign against sparrows, wanting to shock us into submission. I saw there were workers from the Cotton Processing Plant Number Five among the advancing force. Know how? Because I spotted you, Lan Jiefang. By that time you were a full-time employee of the plant, in charge of quality control. Your wife, Huang Hezuo, was also kept on full-time as kitchen help. With your sleeves rolled up, I could see you were wearing a shiny wristwatch. Your wife was there that day too, probably planning on transporting some pork back to the plant to upgrade the workers’ standard of living. Besides you, there were people from the commune, from the coop, and from every village in Northeast Gaomi Township. The man in charge wore a whistle around his neck. Who was he? Ximen Jinlong. A case could be made for saying he was my son, which meant that this looming battle would be pitting father against son.

Birds nesting in the willows were frightened off by the shouts from the invaders; foxes driven out of their dens scampered into the tall grass. The cocky invaders advanced a thousand yards, closing the distance. Someone cried “Pig King!” The scattered troops closed up ranks, until no more than fifty yards separated them from the suicide squad, lined up like an old-time battle formation. Split Ear crouched at the head of his two dozen savage warriors. Ximen Jinlong stood before his human troops, a shotgun in one hand, a gray-green field glass that hung from his neck beside the whistle in the other. I knew that Split Ear’s hideous face, captured in the lens of his field glass, threw a shock into him. “Beat the gong!” I heard him shout. “Call to battle!” He planned to use the swallow tactic to frighten his enemy and send them fleeing, so he could drive them into the river.

The gong sounded, shouts rose into the air, but it was all bluster. No one dared attack. No humans, that is. With a battle cry, Split Ear led the charge against the humans. Jinlong was the only man who fired his weapon; the buckshot hit one of the willow trees, destroying a bird nest and wounding a pitiful bird inside. Not a single pellet struck a boar. All the others human invaders turned tail and ran. Huang Hezuo’s screams were shriller than all the others as she tripped and fell; Split Ear took a bite out of her rear end, turning her into a half-assed cripple for the rest of her life. The boars were on the offensive, and though they did not escape being struck by an assortment of weapons, nothing could penetrate their armor-protected hides. You showed your mettle by taking Hezuo out of harm’s way, earning you a reputation for bravery and a measure of my esteem.

The maverick Split Ear and his troops had to be considered the victors of this battle, to which the scattered shoes, hats, and abandoned weapons on the field of battle bore clear witness. They became the spoils of war, and that made him more arrogant than ever.

“Now what, Old Diao,” I asked him one moonlit night after sneaking into his cave following the battle. “Should I abdicate and let Split Ear be the new king?”

With his chin resting on his front hooves, faint light emanating from his blind eyes, he was sprawled in the cave, the sounds of running water and rustling trees coming from outside.

“What do you think, Old Diao? I’ll do whatever you say.”

He exhaled loudly, the faint light in his eyes now gone. I nudged him. His body was soft; there was no reaction. “Old Diao!” I shouted out of a sense of alarm. “Are you okay? You can’t die on me!”

But he did. Tears sprang from my eyes. I was grief-stricken.

I emerged from the cave and was met by a line of glinting green eyes. A savage glare shot from the eyes of Split Ear, who was crouched in front of the others. I wasn’t afraid. I actually felt totally at ease. With a look of indifference in my eyes, I walked up to him.

“My dear friend Diao Xiaosan is dead,” I said. “I feel just terrible, and I’m willing to abdicate as king.”

That was probably the last thing Split Ear expected to hear, since he had backed up, thinking I was coming for him.

“Of course if you will only be happy by fighting me for it, I’ll happily oblige,” I said.

He just stared at me, trying to figure out what he should do. I weighed over five hundred jin and had a hard head and fearsome teeth. From his point of view, the outcome of a fight with me was anything but certain.

“We’ll do it your way,” he said finally. “But you must leave the shoal immediately and never return.”

I nodded in agreement, waved my hoof at the crowd behind him, turned, and walked off. When I reached the southern edge of the shoal, I stepped into the water, knowing that fifty or more pairs of pig eyes were watching my departure, eyes filled with tears. But I didn’t look back. I started to swim, closing my eyes to let the river wash away my own tears.

35

Flamethrowers Take the Life of Split Ear

Soaring onto a Boat, Pig Sixteen Wreaks Vengeance

About half a month later, the boars living on the shoal were massacred. Mo Yan wrote about the incident in detail in “Tales of Pig-Raising”:

On the third day of January, 1982, a squad of ten men under the command of Zhao Yonggang, an ex-soldier who had distinguished himself in the War with Vietnam, and the highly experienced hunter Qiao Feipeng as an adviser, sailed to the shoal in motorboats. Most hunters stalk their prey by moving stealthily in order to take them by surprise. But not this group; they marched in with clear intentions armed with automatic rifles and armor-piercing bullets that could easily penetrate the hide of a wild boar, armored or not. But the most powerful weapons in their arsenal were three flame throwers, which looked like converted pesticide sprayers once used by farmers on commune fields. They were operated by three battle-tested ex-soldiers in asbestos suits.

Mo Yan continued:

The landing by this squad of hunters was immediately noted by boar scouts. The eyes of Split Ear, newly crowned king, who was eager to go to war with humans to establish his authority, turned red when the report reached him. He immediately called his troops together, two hundred and more of them.

Mo Yan continued with a grisly account of the battle, which was almost more than I, a pig myself, could bear to read:… The battle progressed much like the early encounter, with Split Ear crouching at the head of his force, an echelon of a hundred boars lined up behind him; two additional groups of fifty boars raced to the two flanks to complete the encirclement, with the river as the fourth side. Victory was assured. And yet the humans seemed not to sense the danger they faced. Three of them stood in front, facing east, directly opposite the boar forces and their king, Split Ear. Two men stood to the side, facing south; two more stood on the other side, facing north, opposite the flanking forces. The three men with flamethrowers stood behind the front row, sweeping the area with their eyes, showing no signs of concern. With light-hearted banter they began moving eastward as the boars closed their encirclement. When the humans drew to within fifty yards of Split Ear, Zhao Yonggang ordered his troops to open fire. Assault rifles began shooting at the enemy on three sides. The automatic fire was the sort of military might the boars could never have imagined. At least 140 bullets left seven rifle muzzles within five seconds, felling thirty or more boar warriors, most from head shots, where there was no armor. Split Ear ducked when the first shots were fired, but not in time to keep his good ear from taking a direct hit. Screaming in agony, he charged the hunters straight on, just as the experienced fighters with flamethrowers took three steps forward, sprawled on the ground, and fired, releasing red hot flames and a noise like a hundred geese shitting at the same time. The sticky tips of the flames wrapped around Split Ear and shot ten feet into the air. The king disappeared. The boars to the north and south suffered the same end, thanks in part to the flammabil-ity of the thick layer of pine tar in their armor. Most of the inflamed boars took off running, screaming in agony. Only a few of the smarter ones immediately rolled on the ground instead of running. The remaining boar warriors, those that had escaped both bullets and flames, were paralyzed by fear. Like a swarm of headless flies, they banged and bumped into each other, allowing the hunters to take aim and pick them off one at a time, sending them all down to meet Lord Yama…

Then Mo Yan wrote:

Viewed from the perspective of environmental protection, the slaughter was excessive. The cruelty with which the boars were dispatched cannot be condoned. In 2005, I traveled to Korea and was taken to the Demilitarized Zone, where I saw wild boars frolicking, birds nesting, and egrets soaring above the treetops. I thought back to the massacre at the shoal and experienced deep remorse, even though the boars had been guilty of all sorts of evil. The use of flamethrowers started a fire that consumed all the pine and willow trees on the shoal, not to mention the ground cover. As for the other creatures on the shoal, those with wings flew away, while those confined to the ground escaped either by crawling into burrows or jumping into the river; most, however, burned along with the trees…

I was there among the red willows on the southern bank of the Grain Barge River that day. I heard the pops of rifle fire and the terrifying screams of the wild boars, and, of course, smelled the suffocating fumes that came on winds from the northwest. I knew that if I hadn’t abdicated as king I’d have suffered the same fate as all the other boars, but, strange as it may seem, I was not in a mood to rejoice over my good fortune. I’d rather have died with the boars than live an ignoble life.

After the massacre had ended, I swam back to the shoal, a scene of burned-out trees, incinerated boars, and, along the banks of the river, the bloated carcasses of various critters. My mood vacillated between outrage and grief, with the two emotions gradually coming together, like a two-headed snake attacking my heart from two sides.

I had no thoughts of revenge as overwhelming grief burned inside me, making me as restless as a mentally disturbed soldier on the eve of battle. I swam parallel to the riverbank, following a scent of diesel fuel and the burned hides of wild boars, with the occasional pungent odors of tobacco smoke and cheap liquor mixed in. After a day of tracking the scents, the image of a boat drenched with evil took shape in my head, like a scene emerging from dense fog.

The boat was a dozen yards in length and constructed of steel plates crudely welded together. It was a ponderous, ugly steel monster that was carrying the remnants of a team of ten hunters upriver. The six ex-soldiers who had jobs to return to, having accomplished what they’d come for, had taken a bus back to town. That left the leader, Zhao Yonggang, and the hunters Qiao Feipeng, Liu Yong, and Lü Xiaopo. Thanks to such factors as a population explosion, land scarcity deforestation, and industrial pollution, small game animals had virtually disappeared, and most professional hunters had taken up new trades. These three were the exceptions. They enjoyed an excellent reputation, thanks to their appropriation of the two wolves actually killed by the donkey. The wild boar massacre would add to their prestige and turn them into media darlings. With Diao Xiaosan’s carcass as a trophy, they were steaming upriver to the county town, some hundred or more li away; given the speed of their motorized craft, they could be there that evening. But they chose instead to turn the trip into a victory tour, stopping at every village along the way to give the locals a chance to lay eyes on the body of the Pig King, which they would carry ashore and lay out on the ground for villagers to see. Families of means, those that owned cameras, would invite friends and relatives to have their pictures taken with the dead boar. The tour was followed by print and television journalists sent out from the county town.

On the last night of the tour, with a chill in the air, pale light from the nearly full moon settled on the stagnating river; ice that was forming on the shallow water near the banks gave off a fearsome glint. I was crouching in a grove of red willows, observing the activity around the simple, log-built pier through the naked branches of the trees. I watched as the steel hull of the boat drew up to the pier. The town, the largest in Gaomi County, was called Donkey Inn, since it had served as a gathering place for donkey merchants a hundred years earlier. The modest three-story government building was brightly lit; deep red tiles had been fastened onto the outside of the walls, looking almost as if they had been painted with pigs’ blood. A gala reception for the hunter heroes was underway in one the spacious reception inside; the clink of glasses as toasts were given seeped out through the windows. The square in front of the building – Ximen Village had one of those, so how could a county town be without one?-was also brightly lit, and was the scene of a loud commotion. I knew without looking that the citizenry was oohing and ahing over Diao Xiaosan’s carcass and that constables with police batons were standing guard over it. The people had heard that toothbrushes made from boar bristles could turn black teeth white, and young folks whose teeth were black were salivating over the prospect of getting hold of bristles from the Pig King.

At around eleven o’clock that night, my patience paid off. First, a dozen or so strapping young men put Diao Xiaosan’s body onto a wooden door and walked with it toward the pier, chanting as they walked, led by a pair of pretty young women in red who were lighting the way with a red lantern. A white-haired old man bringing up the rear of the procession called out a monotonous cadence in a funereal voice:

“Oh, Pig King – to the boat – Oh, Pig King – to the boat -”

Diao Xiaosan’s body had begun to stink and was stiff as the door it lay on; the freezing air was all that kept it from decomposing altogether. When they laid his body on the deck, the boat settled more deeply in the water. I was thinking that among the three of us – me, Pig Sixteen, Split Ear, and Diao Xiaosan – Old Diao was the true king. Even lying on the boat’s deck he had a commanding presence, which was further enhanced by the pale moonlight. It almost seemed that he could, whenever he wanted, get up and jump into the river or leap onto the bank.

Finally the four hunters emerged, so drunk they had to be supported by local officials, and staggered toward the pier. They too were led by young women in red carrying a red lantern. By that time I had stealthily made my way to a spot no more than ten yards from the pier, where the liquor-and-tobacco stench from the hunters’ mouths fouled the air. I was actually quite calm, calm as could be, as if totally divorced from the scene in front of me. I watched them board the boat.

Now safely aboard, they thanked their hosts with mouthfuls of hypocrisy, and received the same in return from the people seeing them off. Once they were seated, Liu Yong pulled the rope ignition to start the diesel motor, but it appeared to have frozen up in the icy air. He decided to warm it up with a torch he made by soaking some cotton in the diesel oil. The yellow flames drove the moonbeams away and lit up Qiao Feipeng’s sallow face and sunken mouth; they lit up Lü Xiaopo’s puffy face and bulbous red nose; and they lit up Zhao Yonggang’s face, stamped with a sneer. When it lit up Diao Xiaosan’s mouth, with its missing fangs, I grew even calmer, like an old monk standing before a sacred idol.

In the end, the motor took hold, and its horrible sound on the river assaulted the night air and the moon. The boat moved slowly out into the river. By stepping on the ice at the river’s edge with a swagger, I made my way to the pier, looking like a domestic pig that had stepped out from the crowd of people seeing the hunters off. The red lanterns waved back and forth like balls of fire, creating just the right atmosphere for my leap through the air.

I wasn’t thinking anything, I just acted, just moved.

The boat lurched to one side and Diao Xiaosan seemed about to stand up. Liu Yong, who was bent over starting the motor, went flying into the river, raising blue-white shards of water into the air. The motor sputtered, emitting black smoke and weak complaints. My ears seemed waterlogged. Lü Xiaopo teetered, his open mouth reeking of alcohol, as he fell backward, his body half in the boat and half in the water for a moment, his waist fulcrumed on the steel plate railing, until he tipped headfirst into the river, he too raising blue-white, silent shards of water into the air. I started jumping up and down, five hundred jin of pig making the boat lurch from side to side. Qiao Feipeng, the hunters’ adviser, who years before had had dealings with me, fell weakly to his knees and kowtowed. How funny was that! Without a thought running through my head, I picked him up and threw him out of the boat. More silent shards of water. That left only Zhao Yonggang, the only one who looked like a worthy opponent. He swung a club and hit me in the head. The sound of it breaking in two went from my skull to my ears; one half of the club flew into the water, the other half was still in his hand. I didn’t have time to consider the pain in my head. My eyes were fixed on what remained of his club as it came straight toward my mouth; I grabbed it in my teeth and held on. He put all his considerable strength in trying to pull it out until his face turned as red as a lantern trying to outshine the moon. I let go, and he flew backward into the water; you might think I planned it like that, but I really didn’t. At that moment all sound, all color, all smells rushed toward me.

I jumped into the river, sending a column of water several yards into the air. The water was cold and felt sticky, like liquor that had aged for years. I saw all four of them floating on the surface. Liu Yong and Lü Xiaopo were so drunk they could neither function nor think clearly, so there was no need for me to hasten their departure from the world. Zhao Yonggang was the only real man among them, and if he could make it to dry land, then I’d let him live. Qiao Feipeng was the nearest to me; he struggled to keep his purple nose above water. Disgusted by the way he was gasping for air, I conked him on the head with my hoof. He didn’t move after that, except for his rear end, which floated to the surface.

I let the current take me downriver. Water and moonbeams formed a silvery liquid, like donkey milk about to freeze. Behind me, the boat’s motor was making crazy noises, while from the riverbank came a chorus of shouts. The only one I could distinguish was:

“Shoot him! Shoot!”

The six ex-soldiers had taken the assault rifles with them back to town. Since it was peacetime, the planners of the massacre were punished for using such advanced weapons to hunt wild animals.

I dove to the bottom, leaving all sound above and behind me, just like a certain first-rate novelist.

36

Thoughts Throng the Mind as the Past Is Recalled

Disregarding Personal Safety, Pig Saves a Child

Three months later, I was dead.

It all happened one afternoon when the sun was hidden. A bunch of kids were playing on the gray ice covering the river behind Ximen Village. They ranged in age from three and four up to seven and eight. Some were sledding across the ice, others were playing with tops, and I was watching this next generation of Ximen Village residents from the woods. I heard the welcoming call from the other side of the river:

“Kaifeng Geming Fenghuang Huanhuan – all you kids, come home.”

I saw the weathered face of the woman, the blue kerchief over her head waving in the wind, and I recognized her. It was Yingchun. I would be dead an hour later, but for now I was so caught up in turbulent memories of the past ten years or so I forgot all about my pig body. I knew that Kaifeng was the son of Lan Jiefang and Huang Hezuo, that Geming was the son of Ximen Baofeng and Ma Liangcai, that Huanhuan was the adopted son of Ximen Jinlong and Huang Huzhu. Fenghuang was the daughter of Pang Kangmei and Chang Tianhong, and I knew that her biological father was Ximen Jinlong, conceived beneath the renowned lover’s tree in Apricot Garden.

The children were having too much fun to climb up the bank, so Yingchun walked gingerly down the slope, just as the ice broke and the children fell into the icy water.

At the moment I was a human, not a pig; by no stretch of the imagination was I a born hero, but I was basically good and willing to do anything for a just cause. I jumped into the water while Yingchun scrambled back up the bank and shouted for help from the village. Thank you, Yingchun, my beloved. To me the water felt warm, not cold, and as the blood coursed through my veins I swam like a champion. I was not intent on saving the three children who were carrying on my line; I just swam for the nearest ones. I bit down on the pants of one of the boys and flung him back onto the ice. One after the other I tossed the children back onto the ice. They quickly crawled to safety. I took the foot of the fattest of the children in my mouth and brought him up out of the water; icy bubbles shot from his mouth as he hit the surface, just like a fish. The boy landed on the ice, which cracked under the weight, so this time I rammed my snout into his soft belly, moved all four of my legs as fast as I could – even with four legs treading water, I was still human – and flung him far off onto the ice. This time it held, thank goodness. The inertia from the effort drove me under the surface; water rushed up my nose, and I choked. When I made it back to the surface I coughed and gasped for air. I saw a crowd of people racing down the slope. Stay where you are, you stupid people! I put my head back under the water and dragged another child, a chubby little boy whose face was coated with ice, like syrup, when he broke the surface. The other kids I’d saved were still crawling along the ice, some of them crying, proof they were still alive. Go on, cry, all of you. In my mind’s eye I could see a bunch of girls, one after the other, crawling along the ground in the Ximen family compound and then climbing up the big apricot tree. The first girl in line passed gas. That was met by laughter. They all slid back down to the ground and dissolved into giggles. I saw their laughing faces. Baofeng’s laughing face, Huzhu’s laughing face, Hezuo’s laughing face. Back underwater I went, this time swimming after a boy who had been carried downriver. I caught him and raced for the surface, where the ice was thick and hard. I was running out of air; my chest felt as though it was about to explode. I rammed my head into the ice. Nothing. I did it a second time. Still nothing. So I turned and swam against the current. When I finally surfaced I saw red. Was it the setting sun? I flung the nearly drowned boy onto the ice. Through the red haze I saw Jinlong, Huzhu, Hezuo, Lan Lian, and many more… they all seemed made of blood, so red, poles and ropes and hoes in their hands as they crawled out onto the ice to rescue the children… how smart and how good they were. I had nothing but good feelings for all of them, was grateful even to the ones who had made my life as a pig so difficult. My thoughts were of a mysterious play being performed on a stage seemingly thrown up at the edge of a cloud as I hid among a copse of rare trees with golden limbs and jadeite leaves; music curled into the air above the stage, a song sung by a female opera performer dressed in a costume made of lotus petals. I was deeply moved, though I couldn’t say why. I felt hot all over; the water around me was getting warmer. It felt so good as I sank slowly to the bottom, where I was met by a pair of smiling blue-faced demons who looked very familiar.

“Well, old pal, you’re back!”