Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

37

An Aggrieved Soul Returns as a Dog

A Pampered Child Goes to Town with His Mother

The two underworld attendants grabbed my arms and dragged me out of the water. “Take me to see Lord Yama, you rotten bastards!” I raged. “I’m going to settle scores with the damned old dog!”

“Heh heh,” Attendant One giggled. “After all these years, you’re still a hothead.”

“As they say, You can’t keep a cat from chasing mice or a dog from eating shit,” Attendant Two mocked.

“Let me go!” I railed. “Do you think I can’t find the damned old dog on my own?”

“Calm down,” Attendant One said, “just calm down. We’re old friends by now. After all these years, we’ve actually missed you.”

“We’ll take you to see the damned old dog,” Attendant Two said.

So they raced down the main street of Ximen Village, dragging me along with them. A cool wind hit me in the face, along with feather-light snowflakes. We left dead leaves fluttering on the road behind us. They stopped when we reached the Ximen family compound, where Attendant One grabbed my left arm and leg, Attendant Two took my right arm and leg, and they lifted me off the ground. After swinging me back and forth like a battering ram slamming into a bell, they let go and I went flying.

“Go on, go see that damned old dog!” they cried out together.

Wham! My head really did feel as if I’d rammed it into a bell, and I blacked out. When I came to, well, you know without my saying so, I was a dog, after landing in the kennel belonging to your mother, Yingchun.

In order to keep me from causing a scene in his hall, that is the underhanded tactic rotten Lord Yama had stooped to: shortening the reincarnation process by sending me straight into the womb of a bitch, where I followed three other puppies out through the birth canal.

The kennel I landed in was unbelievably crude: two rows of brick remnants under the house eaves for walls, wooden planks topped by tarred felt as a roof. It was my mother’s home – what was I supposed to do? I had to call her Mother, since I popped out of her body. My childhood home too. Our bedding? A winnowing basket full of chicken feathers and leaves.

The ground was quickly covered by a heavy snowfall, but the kennel was nice and bright, thanks to an electric light hanging from the eaves. Snowflakes slipping in through cracks in the felt turned the kennel bone-chillingly cold. Along with my brothers and sister I kept from shivering by nuzzling up against our mother’s warm belly. A series of rebirths had taught me one simple truth; when you come to a new place, learn the local customs and follow them. If you land in a pigpen, suck a sow’s teat or starve, and if you’re born into a dog kennel, nuzzle up to a bitch’s belly or freeze to death. Our mother was a big white dog with black tips on her front paws and tail.

She was a mongrel, no doubt about that. But our father was a purebred, a mean German shepherd owned by the Sun brothers. I saw him once: a big animal with a black back and tail and a brown underbelly and paws. He – our father – was kept on a chain in the Suns’ yard. He had blood-streaked yellow eyes, pointy ears, and a perpetual scowl.

Dad was a purebred, Mom a mongrel, which made us mongrels. No matter how different we might look when we were grown, you could hardly tell the difference between any of us when we were first born. Yingchun was probably the only person who knew which of us came when.

When your mother brought out some steaming broth with a soup bone for our mother, snowflakes circled her head like white moths. My eyesight hadn’t sharpened to the point where I could see her face clearly, but I had no trouble picking up her unique odor, that of toon tree leaves rubbed together. Not even the smell of the pork bone could overwhelm it. My mother cautiously lapped up the broth while your mother swept the snow off our roof. That let in plenty of daylight and plenty of cold air. Wanting to do something good for us, she’d actually managed to do just the opposite. Having come from peasant stock, how could she not know that snow is a blanket that keeps wheat sprouts warm? She had rich experience in raising children, but was woefully ignorant about nature. But then when she saw that we were nearly frozen to death, she carried us into the house and laid us down on the heated kang.

“You poor little darlings,” she said.

She even brought our mother inside, where Lan Lian was feeding kindling into the kang opening. His skin was bronze, and golden lights shone off his white hair. Wearing a thickly padded jacket, he was smoking a pipe like a very contented head of household. Now that peasants had been given land, everyone was an independent farmer, just like the old days. So your father and mother once again were eating together and sleeping together.

The kang was so warm it quickly drove the chill from our nearly frozen bodies, and as we started moving around, I could tell by looking at my canine brothers and sister what I must have looked like. The same thing had happened back when I’d been reborn as a pig. We were clumsy, covered with fuzz, and cute as hell – I guess. There were four children on the kang with us, all about three years old. A boy and three girls. We were three males and a female.

“Would you look at that!” your mother exclaimed in happy surprise. “The exact opposite of the children!”

Lan Lian snorted noncommittally as he took the charred remains of a mantis egg capsule from the kang opening. He cracked it open; inside were two steaming mantis eggs that smelled bad. “Who wet the bed?” he asked. “Whoever did it has to eat these.”

“I did!” Two of the boys and the girl answered in unison.

That left one boy who said nothing. He had fleshy ears, big eyes, and a tiny little mouth that made him seem to be pouting. You already know that he was the adopted son of Ximen Jinlong and Huang Huzhu. Word had it that he was the biological son of a pair of high-school students. Jinlong was rich enough to get anything he wanted, and powerful enough to back his wishes up. So a few months before the deal was made, Huzhu began wearing padding around her middle to fake a pregnancy. But the villagers knew. The boy was named Ximen Huan – they called him Huanhuan – and he was the pearl in their palm.

“The guilty party keeps his mouth shut, his innocent brothers and sister can’t confess fast enough!” Yingchun said as she passed the hot mantis eggs from one hand to the other while blowing on them. Finally, she held them out to Ximen Huan. “Here, Huanhuan, eat them.”

Ximen Huan took them from his grandmother and, without even looking at them, flung them to the floor. They landed in front of our mother, who gobbled them down without a second thought.

“That child, I don’t know what to say!” Yingchun said to Lan Lian.

Lan Lian shook his head. “You can always tell where a child comes from.”

All four children looked curiously at us puppies and reached out to touch us.

“One apiece, just right,” Yingchun said.

Four months later, when buds began to appear on the old apricot tree in the front yard, Yingchun said to the four couples – Ximen Jinlong and Huang Huzhu, Ximen Baofeng and Ma Liangcai, Chang Tianhong and Pang Kangmei, and Lan Jiefang and Huang Hezuo:

“It’s time for you to take your children home with you. That’s why I asked you here. First, since we don’t know how to read or write, I’m afraid that keeping them here will slow their development. Second, we’re getting old. Our hair is white, our eyesight dimmed, and our teeth are loose. Life has been hard on us for many years, and I think we deserve a little time for ourselves. Comrades Chang and Pang, it’s been our good fortune to have your child with us, but Uncle Lan and I’ve talked it over, and we feel that Fenghuang ought to start kindergarten in town.”

The moment had arrived with all the solemnity of a formal handover ceremony: four little children were lined up on the eastern edge of the kang, four little puppies on the western edge. Yingchun picked up Ximen Huan, kissed him on the cheek, and handed him to Huzhu, who cradled him. Then Yingchun picked up the oldest puppy, rubbed his head, and put him in the arms of Huanhuan. “This is yours, Huanhuan,” she said.

She then picked up Ma Gaige, planted a kiss on his cheek, and handed him to Baofeng, who cradled him. She picked up the second puppy and put him in Ma Gaige’s arms. “Gaige,” she said, “this is yours.”

Yingchun then picked up Pang Fenghuang and lovingly gazed at her pink little face; with tears in her eyes, she kissed her on both cheeks, then turned and reluctantly handed her to Pang Kangmei.

“Three bald little boys aren’t the equal of one fairy maiden.”

Yingchun picked up the third puppy, patted her on the head, rubbed her mouth, stroked her tail, and put her in Fenghuang’s arms.

“Fenghuang,” she said, “this is yours.”

Finally Yingchun picked up Lan Kaifeng, half of whose face was covered by a blue birthmark, which she rubbed. With a sigh, her face now streaked with tears, she said, “You poor thing… how come you’re also…”

She handed Kaifeng to Hezuo, who held her son close. Because a wild boar had taken a chunk out of her rear end, she now had a hard time keeping her balance and often leaned to one side. You, Lan Jiefang, reached out to take the third generation of blue-faced boy from her, but she refused.

Yingchun picked me, the runt of the litter, up from the kang and put me into Lan Kaifang’s arms.

“Kaifang,” she said, “this one’s yours. He’s the smartest.”

All the while this was happening, Lan Lian rested on his haunches beside the dog kennel, where he covered the bitch’s eyes with a piece of black cloth and rubbed her head to keep her calm.

38

Jinlong Raves about Lofty Ideals

Hezuo Silently Recalls Old Enmities

I just about jumped out of the wicker chair, but managed to hold back. I lit a cigarette and slowly puffed on it to calm down. I stole a glance at the eerie blue eyes of Big-head Lan, and in them I saw the cold, hostile look of the dog that accompanied my former wife and my son for fifteen years. But then I discovered it was similar to the look of my deceased son, Lan Kaifang: just as cold, just as hostile, just as unforgiving toward me.

I’d been assigned as head of the Political Section at the County Supply and Marketing Cooperative, and no matter how you look at it, I was one of those people who amused himself by writing florid little essays for the provincial newspaper.

By that time, Mo Yan had already been sent to help out at the Reports Section of the County Committee Propaganda Department, and even though he held a peasant household registration, his almost fanatical ambition was known throughout the county. He wrote day and night, never combing his hair; his clothes, which reeked of cigarette smoke, were only washed when it rained and he could hang them outside in time. My former wife, Huang Hezuo, was so fond of this slob she never failed to lay out tea and cigarettes when he dropped by, while my dog and my son seemed hostile to him.

Anyway, soon after I was transferred over to the County Supply and Marketing Cooperative, Hezuo was assigned to the restaurant at the co-op’s bus station, where her job was to fry oil fritters. I never said she was a bad woman, and I’d never go public with any of her shortcomings. She cried when I told her I wanted a divorce and asked me: What is it you don’t like about me? And my son asked: Papa, what did Mama ever do to you? My parents were less generous: You’re no big shot, son, so what makes you think you’re too good for her? My inlaws were the bluntest of all: Lan Jiefang, you bastard son of Lan Lian, take a piss and look at yourself in the puddle. Finally, my superior assumed a somber tone when he heard the news: Comrade Jiefang, you could use a little self-awareness! Yes, I admit it, Huang Hezuo did nothing wrong, and she was easily my equal, or better. But I, well, I simply didn’t love her.

The day that Mother returned the children to their parents and handed out the puppies, Pang Kangmei, then deputy head of the County Committee Organization Department, had her driver take a group photo of the four couples, four children, and four puppies under the apricot tree in the family compound. To look at the photo, you’d think we were one happy family, whereas in fact dark schemes rested in all our hearts. Copies of the photo hung in six homes, but probably none of them has survived.

After the picture was taken, Chang Tianhong and Pang Kangmei offered to take us home in their car. While I was trying to make up my mind, Hezuo thanked them but said she wanted to spend the night at Mother’s house. Then, as soon as the car drove off, she picked up our son and the puppy and said she wanted to go; nothing anyone said could change her mind. Just then the puppies’ mother broke free of Father’s grip and ran outside, the blindfold having slipped down around her neck and looking like a black necklace. She went straight for my wife before I could stop her and sank her teeth into Hezuo, who shrieked and was only able to keep from falling by sheer force of will. She insisted we leave immediately, but Baofeng ran inside for her medical kit and tended to Hezuo’s injured buttock. Jinlong took me aside, gave me a cigarette, and lit one for himself. Little clouds of smoke veiled our faces. In a tone of voice that was somewhere between sympathy and ridicule, he said:

“Can’t take it anymore, is that it?”

“No,” I replied coldly. “Everything’s fine.”

“That’s good,” he said. “It’s all a comedy of errors anyway, but you’re a man of standing. And women? Well, they are what they are.” He rubbed his thumb against two fingers, then drew an imaginary official’s cap, and added, “As long as you’ve got those, they’ll come when you call them.”

Hezuo walked toward me, with Baofeng’s help. Our son, who was holding his puppy in one hand and his mother’s shirttail with the other, was looking up at her. Baofeng handed me some anti-rabies medicine and said:

“Put this in the refrigerator as soon as you get home. The instructions are on the box. Follow them exactly, in case…”

“Thank you, Baofeng,” Hezuo said as she gave me an icy glare. “Even dogs can’t stand me.”

Wu Qiuxiang, stick in hand, had taken out after the dog, who ran straight to the kennel, where she snarled at Qiuxiang, her eyes green.

Huang Tong, whose back by then was badly bent, was standing beneath the apricot tree; he railed at my parents:

“You Lan people have so little feelings for family, even your dog bites its own! Strangle the damn thing, or someday I’ll burn down that kennel with her in it.”

My father poked his nearly bald broom in the kennel. The yelps of pain from inside the kennel brought my mother hobbling out the door.

“Kaifang’s mother,” she said apologetically to Hezuo, “don’t be angry. That old dog was just trying to protect her pups, and that’s the only way she knows how.”

No matter how insistently Mother, Baofeng, and Huzhu tried to get her to stay, Hezuo was determined to leave. Jinlong looked at his watch and said:

“It’s too late for the first bus, and the second one won’t leave for a couple of hours. If you don’t think my car is too run-down for you, I’ll drive you home.”

With a sideways glance at him, she took our son by the hand and, without saying good-bye to anyone, limped off in the direction of the village. Still holding the puppy in his arms, Kaifang kept turning to look back.

My father came up beside me. The years had softened the blue birthmark on his face, and the fading sunlight made him look older than ever. With a quick look at my wife and son up ahead, I stopped and said:

“Go on back, Dad.”

He sighed and, obviously crestfallen, said, “If I’d known I’d pass this birthmark on to my descendants I’d have remained a bachelor.”

“Don’t talk like that,” I said. “I don’t consider it a blemish, and if it bothers Kaifang he can get a skin graft when he grows up. There have been lots of medical advances lately.”

“Jinlong and Baofeng belong to somebody else now, so your family is the only real worry I’ve got.”

“We’ll be fine. Just look after yourself.”

“These past three years have been the best of my life,” he said. “We have more than three thousand jin of wheat stored up and several hundred more of other grains. Your mother and I will have food to eat even if we don’t harvest a thing over the next three years.”

Jinlong’s Jeep drove up on the bumpy road. “Dad,” I said, “you go on back. I’ll come see you when I get some free time.”

“Jiefang,” he said sadly, his eyes fixed on the ground in front of him, “your mother says that two people are fated to be together…” He paused. “She wants me to tell you to be faithful to your vows. She says that people in official circles can ruin their future by divorcing their wives. Hers is the voice of experience, so keep that in mind.”

“I understand, Dad.” As I looked into his homely, somber face, my heart was gripped by sadness. “Go back and tell Mom not to worry.”

Jinlong pulled up and stopped next to us. I opened the passenger door and got in.

“Thanks, your eminence,” I said. He turned his head and spit the cigarette in his mouth out the window.

“Eminence be fucked!” he replied, and I laughed with a loud sputter. “Watch what you say when you’re around my son, okay?” He grunted. “Actually, what difference does it make? Males should start thinking about sex when they’re fifteen. If they did, they wouldn’t always complain about women.”

“Then why not begin with Ximen Huan?” I replied. “Maybe you can coach him into becoming a big shot someday.”

“Coaching alone isn’t enough,” he said. “It all depends on what he’s made of.”

We caught up with Hezuo and Kaifang. Jinlong stuck his head out the window.

“Sister-in-law, let me give you and my worthy nephew a ride.”

Limping badly as she walked hand-in-hand with Kaifang, who was holding the puppy in his other arm, she walked right past us, head held high.

“How stubborn can you get!” Jinlong exclaimed as he banged his fist against the steering wheel, producing an urgent honk. He kept his eyes on the road ahead. “Don’t underestimate that woman,” he said. “She’s a handful.”

We caught up with her a second time, and Jinlong stuck his head out the window again, beeping his horn to get her attention.

“You’re not ignoring me because my car’s so run-down, are you, sister-in-law?”

Hezuo kept walking, head high, eyes fixed relentlessly on the road ahead. She was wearing gray pants; the right pant leg was rounded, the left sort of caved in, and there was a blood or an iodine stain on the seat. She had my sympathy, no doubt about that, but I still found her repulsive. Bobbed hair that revealed the pale skin of her neck, emaciated ears with virtually no lobes, a wart on her cheek with two black hairs – one long and one short – and the greasy smell of oil fritters that never washed off, I found them all repulsive.

Jinlong drove up ahead and stopped in the middle of the road, where he opened the door and climbed out. Standing beside the Jeep with his hands on his hips, legs apart, he wore a defiant look. I hesitated for a moment before joining him outside.

The stalemate was set, and I was thinking that if Hezuo had the legendary powers of superheroes, she’d step on me, step on Jinlong, and flatten the Jeep, neither stopping nor walking around us. The late-afternoon sunlight on her face highlighted her dark, bushy eyebrows, which nearly met in the center of her forehead, her thin lips, and a pair of smallish eyes, which were now filled with tears. How could I not sympathize with someone like that? Still, I found her repellent.

The look of displeasure on Jinlong’s face gave way to a mischievous smile.

“Young sister-in-law, I know what a come-down it is for you to ride in a run-down car like this, and I know you’ve always looked down on me, a simple peasant. I also know that you’d walk all the way to the county town before you’d get into my car. Sure, you can keep walking, but Kaifang can’t. So won’t you help me out of this awkward situation, for the sake of my worthy nephew, if nothing else?”

Jinlong walked up to her, bent down, and picked up Kaifang and the puppy. Hezuo put up feeble resistance, but he had already opened the car door and deposited Kaifang and the puppy on the backseat. Kaifang cried out “Mama,” his voice cracking. Puppy Four added a couple of weak barks. I opened the door on the other side, glared at her, and said mockingly:

“Your chariot, your Highness!”

She didn’t move.

“Huanhuan’s aunt,” Jinlong said, smiling broadly, “if your husband weren’t here, I’d pick you up and put you in the car.”

Hezuo blushed. The look in her eyes as she stared at Jinlong was a complex one. I knew what she was thinking at that moment. I’m being truthful when I say that my feelings of repulsion toward her had nothing to do with what had happened between her and Jinlong, just as I wouldn’t be repelled by intimacies between a woman I loved and her husband. To my surprise, she got into the car, but from Jinlong’s side, not mine. I slammed my door shut; Jinlong shut his door.

As we started off down the bumpy road, I glanced into the rearview mirror to see that she had her arms wrapped tightly around her son, whose arms were in turn wrapped tightly around the puppy. That really upset me.

“You’re going too far this time,” I muttered, just as we were negotiating a small, narrow stone bridge. She abruptly opened the door and would have jumped out if not for Jinlong, who kept his left hand on the steering wheel, reached back with his right, and grabbed her by the hair; I spun around and held her by the arm. The boy started crying, the dog started barking. When we reached the far end, Jinlong drove his fist into my chest.

“Stupid bastard!” he growled.

He stopped the car and climbed out; wiping his sweaty forehead with his sleeve, he kicked the door and cursed:

“You’re a stupid bastard too!” he growled at Hezuo “You can die, he can die, and so can I. But what about Kaifang? A three-year-old boy, what’s he done to deserve that?”

Kaifang was still bawling; Puppy Four was yelping like crazy.

With his hands in his pockets, Jinlong turned, walked in circles, and puffed loudly. Then he opened the door, reached in, and wiped Kaifang’s face dry of tears and snot. “Okay, little one, no more tears. The next time you come, your uncle here will pick you up in a fancy VW sedan.” Then he patted Puppy Four on the head.

“What are you yelping about, you little son of a bitch?”

We flew down the road after that, leaving everyone else – horse- and donkey-drawn wagons, tractors of the four- and three-wheeled varieties, and people on bikes and on foot – in our dust. Bouncing around and rattling noisily, we rode along as Jinlong kept his foot on the gas and his fist on the horn. I held on for dear life.

“Is everything bolted down tight on this thing?”

“Don’t worry. I’m a world-class race-car driver.” We began to slow as we passed the donkey market and the road followed the contours of the river. The water sparkled like gold in the sunlight; a little blue-and-white motorboat sped past.

“Worthy nephew Kaifang,” Jinlong said, “your uncle is an ambitious man who plans to turn Northeast Gaomi Township into a land of great joy and make Ximen Village a riverside pearl. That run-down county town you live in will one day be a Ximen Village suburb. What do you think of that?”

There was no response from Kaifang, so I turned around and said, “Your uncle asked you a question!” He was fast asleep, drooling onto the head of Puppy Four, whose eyes were barely open. Probably carsick. Hezuo was looking out the window at the river, showing me the side of her face with the mole. Her lips were pursed in what could only be a scowl.

We spotted Hong Taiyue just before we reached town. He was riding an old bicycle – from our pig-raising days – and straining to keep moving. The back of his shirt was sweat-stained and spotted with mud.

“It’s Hong Taiyue,” I called out.

“I saw him,” Jinlong replied. “He’s probably on his way to the County Committee with another complaint.”

“Against who?”

“Whoever he can.” Jinlong paused, then said with a laugh, “He and my old man are like two sides of the same coin.” He honked as we shot past the bicycle. “Even with all their disputes, Hong Taiyue and Lan Lian are two of a kind!”

I turned in time to see Hong’s bicycle wobble a time or two, but he stayed upright and quickly faded into the distance, but not before his curses reached us on the air:

“Fuck you, Ximen Jinlong! You’re the bastard offspring of a tyrannical landlord!”

“I’ve already committed his curses to memory,” Jinlong laughed. “Actually, I kind of like the old guy.”

We pulled up to our door and stopped. But Jinlong kept the engine running.

“Jiefang, Hezuo, we’re looking back at thirty or forty years, and we must have learned one thing to survive till now, which is, we don’t have to get along with others, but we have to get along with ourselves.”

“That’s the truth,” I said.

“Actually, it’s crap!” he said. “I met a pretty girl last month in Shenzhen, who said to me, ‘You can’t change me!’ What did I say to that? Then I’ll change myself!’”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“If you have to ask, you’ll never understand.” He made a spectacular U-turn, stuck his arm out the window, and made a couple of strange, childish gestures with his white-gloved hand before speeding off.

As we stood in the yard, Hezuo said to the boy and the dog:

“This is our home.”

I took the box of anti-rabies ampoules out of my bag and handed it to her.

“Put this in the refrigerator,” I said coldly “One injection every three days. Don’t forget.”

“Did your sister say that rabies is always fatal?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Wouldn’t that solve all your problems?” She snatched the ampoules from me and walked into the kitchen to put them in the refrigerator.

39

Lan Kaifang Happily Explores His New Home

Puppy Four Misses His Old Kennel

I received the best treatment anyone could ask for my first night in your home. Though I was a dog, I slept indoors. When your son was taken back to Ximen Village to be raised by your mother, he was only a year old, and he hadn’t been back since. Like me, he was curious about this new place. I followed him inside and immediately began running around to familiarize myself with the layout.

It was quite a home, a palace compared to the kennel under the eaves of Lan Lian’s place in Ximen Village. The living room floor was made of marble from Laiyang, so highly waxed I could slide across it, and when your son stepped inside the first time, he was enthralled by its mirrorlike quality. He looked down at his reflection, and so did I. Then he skated across the floor as if it were an ice rink. The walls, with their fine-grained wood baseboards, were painted white, and so was the ceiling, from which hung a light blue chandelier with lights like flower buds. An enlarged photograph of a pair of swans on a pond of green, tulip-bordered water in a wooded area hung on the wall opposite the front door. To the east a long, narrow study with a bookcase that covered one wall but held only a few dozen books. There was a bed in one corner; next to it a desk and a chair. A hallway off to the west of the living room led to one room directly ahead and another to the right, each furnished with a bed and had oak floors. The kitchen was at the rear. That house was all the evidence anyone needed to see that you’d done well for yourself, Lan Jiefang. You weren’t that high up the official ladder, but your talents had made you a man to reckon with.

Now, since I was a dog, I had a canine responsibility to carry out. Which was? I had to mark my new home with my personal scent, in part as a sort of beacon in case I got lost away from home.

I left my first dribble to the right of the front door, the second on the living room baseboard, and the third on Lan Jiefang’s bookcase. The last one earned me a kick from you, which sent the remaining liquid back up inside. Thoughts of that kick stayed with me over the next decade and more. You may have been the head of the household, but I never considered you my master. In fact, I wound up considering you my enemy. My first master – mistress, actually – was that woman with a chunk of her rear end missing. My second master was the boy with the big blue birthmark. You? Shit, in my mind you were nothing!

Your wife placed a basket in the hallway, filled with newspapers. Your son added a little ball, and that was where I was to sleep. It looked okay to me. Since it even came with a toy, I figured I had it made. But the good times didn’t last. In the middle of the first night, you moved my bed out to the coal shed. Why? Because I kept thinking about my kennel back in Ximen Village, or the warm bosom of my mother, or the smell of that kindly old woman, and couldn’t stop whimpering. Even your son, who slept in the arms of your wife, woke up in the middle of the night crying for his grandma. Boy and dog were the same. Your son was three years old, I was three months old and wasn’t permitted to miss my mother. Besides, I didn’t just miss my canine mother, I missed your mother too. But none of that was worth mentioning, since you flung open the door, picked up my basket, and exiled me to the coal shed, where you left me with an angry curse: “Any more noise from you, you little mongrel bastard, and I’ll throttle you!”

You hadn’t even been in bed. No, you were hiding in the study, chain-smoking until the room was yellow with smoke, just so you wouldn’t have to sleep with your wife.

My coal shed was pitch-black, but there was enough light for a dog to distinguish one thing from another. The smell of coal was thick in the air – large, glistening chunks of good coal. Most families couldn’t burn coal that good back then. I jumped out of my bed basket and ran into the yard, where I was drawn to the smell of fresh well water and the aroma of parasol blossoms. I left my mark on four separate parasol trees and at the gate, and everywhere else that was called for. The place was becoming mine. I’d left the bosom of my mother and come to a strange new place; from now on I had no one to rely upon but myself.

I took a turn around the yard to learn the layout. I walked past the front door and, owing to a temporary weakness, rushed up and clawed at it, accompanied by some agonizing yelps. But I quickly got my feelings under control and returned to my basket bed, feeling that I’d grown up in that short time. I looked up at the bright red face of the half moon, like a shy farm girl. Stars filled the sky as far as I could see, and the light purple flowers on the four parasol trees looked like living butterflies in the murky moonlight, about to flit away. In the very early hours of the morning I heard strange, mysterious sounds coming from town and detected a complex mixture of smells. All in all, I felt like I’d wound up in a vast, new world; I was eagerly looking forward to tomorrow.

40

Pang Chunmiao Sheds Pearl-like Tears

Lan Jiefang Enjoys a Taste of Cherry Lips

Over a period of six years, I virtually flew up the official ladder: from director of the County Supply and Marketing Cooperative Political Section to deputy Party secretary of the cooperative, and from there to concurrent head and Party secretary of the cooperative, and then from there to deputy county chief in charge of culture, education, and hygiene. There was plenty of talk regarding my meteoric rise, but my conscience was clear. I had no one to thank but myself: my hard work, my talents, contacts among colleagues that I established, and a support base among the masses that I’d organized. In a higher-sounding vein, let me add that, of course, I was nurtured by the organization and received help from comrades, and I didn’t try to curry favor with Pang Kangmei. She certainly didn’t seem to care much for me, for not long after I’d assumed office, we met by accident in the County Party Committee compound, and when she saw there was no one around to hear her, she said:

“I voted against you, you ugly shit, but you got the promotion anyway.”

That hit me like a fist in the gut, and I couldn’t speak for a moment. I was a balding forty-year-old man with a potbelly. She was the same age, but had a girlish figure and a radiant young face; time seemed not to have left its mark on her. I watched her walk away, my mind a blank. Then the image of her tailored brown skirt, brown medium-height heels, tight calves, and thin waist left my mind in a hopeless tangle.

If not for my affair with Pang Chunmiao, I might well have climbed higher up the official ladder, either as a county chief somewhere, or a Party secretary. At the very least I’d have made it to the National People’s Congress or the People’s Political Consultative Conference and been assigned as someone’s deputy, enjoying life to its fullest into my late years. I wouldn’t have wound up as I did, with a sullied reputation, badly scarred, and trying to get by in this tiny spot I call home. But I have no regrets.

“Looked at from one angle,” Big-head said, “just knowing you have no regrets earns my respect as a man.” He laughed, almost a giggle. The expression of that dog of mine began to emerge on his face, as if developed from the negative of a photograph.

Not until the day Mo Yan brought her to my office did the full meaning of “time flies” hit me. I’d always thought I was close to the Pang family and that I saw them often. But as I thought back, the impression of her that I’d come away with was of a girl doing a handstand in the entrance to the Cotton Processing Plant Number Five.

“You… you’re all grown up,” I said as I looked her over, like an old uncle. “That day, your legs… straight up in the air…”

The fair skin of her face reddened; a drop of sweat dotted the tip of her nose. That was Sunday, the first of July 1990. It was a hot day, so I’d left the window of my third-floor office open. Cicadas in the lush canopy of the French parasol tree outside my window were chirping like falling rain. She was wearing a red dress with a modestly plunging neckline and lacy piping. She had a thin neck above prominent collarbones, highlighted by a tiny green piece of jewelry, maybe jade, attached to a red string. She had big eyes and a small mouth with full lips; she wore no makeup. Her front teeth, ivory white, seemed slightly pressed together. Like an old-fashioned girl, she wore her hair in a braid, which caused a stirring in my heart.

“Please, have a seat,” I said as I poured tea. “Time really does fly, Chunmiao. You’ve grown into a lovely young woman.”

“Please don’t bother, Uncle Lan. I ran into Mr. Mo Yan on the street, and he treated me to a soft drink.” She sat demurely on the edge of the sofa.

“Don’t call him uncle,” Mo Yan said. “Chief Lan and your elder sister were born in the same year. And his mother was your sister’s nominal mother.”

“Nonsense!” I tossed a pack of China brand cigarettes on the table in front of Mo Yan. “Nominal mother, normal mother, those vulgar views of relationships never played a role in our family” I placed a cup of Dragon Well tea in front of her. “Call me whatever you like. Don’t listen to this guy. I understand you work in the New China Bookstore.”

“County Chief Lan, always the bureaucrat,” Mo Yan said as he put the pack of cigarettes in his pocket and took a cigarette out of the box on my desk. “Miss Pang is a clerk in the children’s section of the bookstore, but in her spare time she’s an artist. She plays the accordion, she performs the peacock dance beautifully, she can sing sentimental songs, and her essays have been published in the county newspaper literary supplement.”

“Is that so!” I remarked. “I’d say your talents are wasted in that bookstore.”

“You said it!” Mo Yan remarked. “‘Let’s go see County Chief Lan,’ I said to her. ‘He can get you a job in a TV station.’”

Her face was redder than ever now. “That’s not what I meant, Mr. Mo.”

“By my calculation, you’re twenty,” I said. “So why don’t you take the college entrance exam? You could be an art major.”

“I don’t have that kind of talent…” She hung her head. “I just do those things for fun. Besides, I wouldn’t pass the entrance exam. I get flustered the minute I enter an exam hall. I actually faint…”

“Who needs college?” Mo Yan said. “True artists don’t come out of higher education. Take me, for example.”

“You’re shameless, and getting worse,” I said. “Braggarts like you never amount to anything.”

“All right, enough about me,” Mo Yan said. “And since there are no outsiders here, I’ll call you Big Brother Lan and urge you to do what you can for our young sister here.”

“Of course,” I said. “But what can I do that Party Secretary Pang can’t do better?”

“That’s what makes young Chunmiao so special,” Mo Yan said. “She’s never asked a favor of her sister.”

“Okay, tell us, writer of the future, what have you been working on lately?”

At that point Mo Yan began telling us about the novel he was writing, and though I tried to look as though I was listening, I was actually recalling all my dealings with the Pang family. I swear I didn’t think of her as a woman that day or for a long time afterward. It felt good just looking at her.

But two months later, everything changed. Also on a Sunday afternoon.

I’d spoken to her about working in television. I could have made it happen if that’s what she’d wanted. One well-placed comment was all it would have taken. Not because my word carried much weight, but because she was Pang Kangmei’s sister. She rushed to defend herself. “Don’t listen to Mo Yan. That really isn’t what I had in mind.” She said she didn’t want to go anywhere, that she was content selling children’s books.

She’d come to see me six times over those two months. This was her seventh visit. The first few times she’d sat in the same place on the sofa as on the day we’d met. She’d also worn the same red dress and sat as demurely as ever, all very proper. At first, Mo Yan had accompanied her, but then she’d started coming alone. When Mo Yan was present, he never shut up. Now he wasn’t, and an awkward silence hung in the air. To break the ice on one of the previous occasions, I’d taken a book from my bookcase and said she could borrow it. After flipping through it she said she’d already read it. I handed her another. She’d read that one too. So I told her she could look for one she hadn’t read. She pulled out a book entitled How to Treat a Sick Domestic Animal. It was one she hadn’t read. I couldn’t keep from laughing. “Girl,” I said, “you’re a riot! Okay, if that’s the one you want, read on.” I picked up a stack of documents and started reading, occasionally glancing at her out of the corner of my eye. She sat back in the sofa, legs together, resting the book on her knees, absorbed in what she was reading, softly mouthing the words.

But the seventh time she came, her face was ghostly white; she sat with a bewildered look. “What’s the matter?” I asked. She looked at me, her lips quivered, and – Wah!-she burst out crying. Since someone was working overtime in the building that day, I ran over and opened the door. The sounds of her crying soared up and down the corridor like birds on the wing. I ran back over and shut the door. For me, this was a new, and extremely troubling, experience. Wringing my hands nervously, I paced the room, like a monkey that’s been thrown into a cage, and said over and over, “Chunmiao Chunmiao Chunmiao, don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry…” It did no good – she cried with abandon, louder and louder. I thought about opening the door again, but quickly realized that was a bad idea. So I sat down beside her and grabbed her ice-cold hand with my sweaty one and put my other arm around her; I patted her shoulder. “Don’t cry,” I said, “please don’t cry Tell me what’s wrong. I want to know who had the nerve to make our little Chunmiao so sad. Tell me who it was, and I’ll go twist his head till he’s looking behind him…” But she kept crying, eyes shut, mouth open, like a little girl, pearl-like teardrops streaming down her cheeks. I jumped to my feet, but sat back down. A young woman crying in the office of a deputy county chief on a Sunday afternoon was nothing to joke about. If only, I thought, I could be like one of those kidnappers you read about, I’d have wadded up a sock and stuffed it in her mouth to keep her quiet. What I actually did might be seen by some as the epitome of foolishness and by others as the height of intelligence. I held one of her hands, pulled her close by the shoulders, and covered her mouth with mine.

She had a very small mouth; I had a very big one. Mine covered hers completely. Her cries rattled around inside my mouth and produced a loud hum in my inner ears. Soon the cries turned to sobs, and then the crying stopped. At that moment I was overcome by a strange, powerful, unprecedented emotion.

Now I was a married man with a child of his own, and you might think I’m lying when I tell you that in fourteen years of marriage we’d had sex (that’s the only way to describe contact in which love played no role) a total of nineteen times. Kiss? Once, and that wasn’t a real one. It was after we’d seen a foreign movie, and I was affected by the passionate love scenes. I wrapped my arms around her and puckered up. She turned her face this way and that to avoid contact, but eventually our mouths touched, barely, and all I felt was teeth; not only that, her breath smelled like spoiled meat. It made my head swim. I let her go and never again entertained a similar thought. On each of those rare sexual encounters I put as much distance between me and her mouth as possible. I tried to get her to have her teeth looked at, but she gave me an icy stare and said, “Why should I? My teeth are fine.” When I told her I thought she might have halitosis, she replied angrily, “Your mouth is full of shit.”

Later on I told Mo Yan that that afternoon’s kiss was a first for me, and it rocked my soul. All I wanted to do was suck on her full lips, almost as if I wanted to swallow her whole. Now I knew why Mo Yan was forever using that particular phrase when he had his male characters falling head-over-heels in love in his novels. The moment my mouth was on hers, she stiffened and her skin turned cold. But just for a moment; when she relaxed, her body seemed to grow and to soften; then came the heat, like an oven. At first my eyes were open, but not for long. Her lips swelled, and the smell of fresh scallops filled my mouth. I began to explore with my tongue, something I’d never done before, and as soon as our tongues met, they frolicked together. I could feel her heart beating against my chest as she wrapped her arms around my neck. My mind was wiped clean of everything but her lips, her tongue, her smell, her warmth, and her soft moans. I don’t know how long we stayed like that, until a ringing telephone intruded into our world. We separated as I went to answer the phone, but I immediately fell to my knees. I felt light as a feather, all because of a single kiss. I didn’t answer the phone, after all. I pulled the plug and stopped the ringing. She was lying on the sofa, faceup, so pale and her lips so red and swollen a person might have thought she’d died there. Naturally, I knew she hadn’t, and not just because tears were rolling down her cheeks. I dried them with a tissue. She opened her eyes and wrapped her arms around my neck. “I feel dizzy,” she murmured. I stood up and brought her up with me. She rested her head on my shoulder, tickling my ear with her hair, as the voice of the office clerk suddenly filled the corridor, and I quickly came to my senses. I gently pushed her away, opened the door a crack, and, rather hypocritically, I think, said, “Forgive me, Chunmiao, I don’t know what came over me.” Still teary-eyed, she said, “Does that mean you don’t like me?” “Oh, no,” I sputtered, “I like you very much…” She came up to me again, but I took her hand and said, “Dear Chunmiao, the janitor will be coming in to clean in a minute. You go now. I have so much to say to you, but it will have to wait a few days.” She walked out of my office, and I collapsed in my leather swivel chair, listening to her footsteps until they died out at the end of the hallway.

41

Lan Jiefang Feigns Affection for His Wife

Dog Four Watches over a Student

If you want to know the truth, when you came home that evening you had a new smell, one that could make man and dog happy. It was nothing like the one you brought home after shaking a woman’s hand or sharing a meal or dancing with a woman. It wasn’t even the way you smelled after sex. Nothing got past that nose of mine. Big-head Lan Qiansui’s eyes lit up when he said this.

His expression and the look in his eyes made me realize that at that moment it wasn’t Pang Fenghuang’s exceptional child, with whom I had such an unbelievably complicated relationship, talking to me; no, it was my long-dead dog. Nothing got past that nose of mine, he’d said.

That fresh, new smell merged with your personal odor and changed the way you smelled altogether. That told me that a deep and abiding love had developed between you and that woman. It seeped into your blood and your bones, and no power on earth could separate the two of you after that.

The show you put on that night was, in truth, wasted effort. After dinner you went into the kitchen and washed the dishes, then you asked your son what he’d learned in school that day – both things you almost never did. Your wife was so touched she went in and made you a cup of tea. You had sex that night. By your count it was the twentieth time; it would also be the last time. From the strength of the odor I could tell that the sex wasn’t bad, even though it held no real meaning. In the midst of your sense of moral obligation, guilt feelings temporarily overwhelmed the physical revulsion you normally felt for your wife. Meanwhile, the smell of that other woman was beginning to germinate, like a seed in the ground, and when its buds burst to the surface, no power in the world could drag you back into the arms of your wife. My nose told me that you’d experienced a rebirth, one that portended the death of this family.

Seven years had passed from the day I arrived at your house up to the day of your and Pang Chunmiao’s first kiss, during which time I’d grown from a little puppy into a large, powerful dog. Your son had grown from a little baby into a fourth-grade student. Everything that happened over that period was enough to fill a novel, or it could be written off with a single stroke of the pen.

Now I think it’s time to talk about your son.

He was a filial boy, no doubt about that. When he started school, your wife took him there and picked him up on her bicycle. But the school schedule interfered with her work schedule, which put a strain on her. And whenever something put a strain on your wife, she started to complain; and when she started to complain, curses flew at you; and whenever curses flew at you, your son frowned. So you see, he really did love you. “Ma,” he said, “you don’t have to take me to school or pick me up. I can go by myself.” She’d have none of it. “What if you got hit by a car or were bitten by a dog or got picked on by bullies or got taken off by a slap-lady or were kidnapped for ransom?” Five ugly scenarios in a row, without taking a breath. Public safety was a big problem in the early 1990s. People knew there were some women from the south – known on the street as slap-ladies – who traded in children. Pretending to be selling flowers or candy or shuttlecocks made with colorful chicken feathers, they hid a spellbinding drug in their clothes, and when they saw a good-looking child, they slapped him or her on the head, and the child walked off with them. Well, your son slapped his own face, right on the birthmark, and said, “Slap-ladies only deal in good-looking children. If someone looking like me volunteered to walk off with them, they’d shoo me away. And what could you, a woman, do if someone tried to kidnap me? You can’t run away-” He looked at your injured hip, which made your wife so sad her eyes reddened and she began to sob. “Son,” she said, “you’re not ugly, your mother’s the ugly one, with half her buttocks missing…” Well, he threw his arms around her waist. “You’re not ugly, Mother, you’re the most beautiful mother anywhere. Really, you don’t have to take me to school. I’ll take Little Four with me.” They turned to look at me, and I rewarded them with a couple of authoritative barks as a way of saying: I’ll do it. No problem, leave everything to me!

“Little Four,” your son said as he wrapped his arms around my neck, “you’ll take me to school, won’t you?”

Arf! Arf! Arf! I barked so loud, the leaves on the parasol tree rustled and scared the wits out of a pair of ostriches our neighbor was raising. My meaning was clear: No-prob-lem!

Your wife rubbed my head. I wagged my tail for her.

“Everybody’s afraid of our Little Four, isn’t that right, son?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“Little Four, Kaifang will be your responsibility You’re both from Ximen Village and grew up together, so you’re like brothers. Isn’t that right?” Arf arf! That’s right. She rubbed my head again, looking sort of melancholy, before removing my chain-link collar and signaling for me to follow her. When we reached the front gate, she stopped and said, “Little Four, listen carefully. I have to be at work early in the morning to fry oil fritters. I’ll have your breakfast ready for you. At six thirty get Kaifang up. At seven thirty, after you’ve had breakfast, start out for school. Don’t take shortcuts. Stay to the main streets. It’s okay if it’s a bit farther, since safety is the most important. Walk on the right side of the streets, look both ways before you cross the street and then to the left when you’re halfway across, looking out for motorbikes, and especially, motorcycles with riders in black leather jackets, since they’re all members of gangs and act like they can’t tell the difference between red and green lights. After you’ve left Kaifang at the school gate, head east, cross the street, then go north straight to the bus station restaurant. You’ll find me out front frying oil fritters. Come up and bark twice, and I’ll know everything’s fine. Then go back home. This time you can take a shortcut. The door will be locked, so you’ll have to wait at the gate till I get there. If it’s a hot day, you can cross the lane and lie beneath the pagoda pine on the other side of the wall. You can doze off in the shade, but don’t fall asleep. With all the thieves around, you need to keep an eye on our place. They carry master keys, and if they find an empty house – they first knock at the door as if they were normal visitors – they walk in and take what they want. You know all our relatives by sight, so if you see a stranger going into our house, don’t hesitate, run over and bite them. I’ll be home by eleven thirty, so you can come in and have some water before taking the shortcut back to school to bring Kaifang home for lunch. Then back you go in the afternoon, but this time, after you’ve reported to me, run home to make sure everything’s okay, then run to school, since there are only two classes in the afternoon. Come back home with him and watch while he does his homework. Don’t let him play till he’s finished. Do you understand all that, Little Four?”

Arf arf arf, Un-der-stand.

Before your wife went to work in the morning, she always put the alarm clock on the windowsill and smiled at me. A mistress’s smile – a pretty thing. I’d watch her walk out the door. Arf arf, Bye-bye, arf arf, Don’t worry. Then I’d make my rounds in the yard, feeling like the master of the house. When the alarm sounded, I’d run into the boy’s room, where the smell of youth was strong. Not wanting to startle him awake by barking, I’d go over and lick him on the face, feeling the tickle of his peach fuzz. He’d open his eyes and ask, “Time to get up, Little Four?” Bow-wow, I’d answer him softly, It’s time. Then he’d get dressed, give his teeth a quick brushing, wash his face like a kitten, and sit down for breakfast. Most of the time it was soybean milk and oil fritters, or regular milk and oil fritters. Sometimes I ate with him, sometimes I didn’t.

The first day we followed your wife’s instructions to the letter, partly because her smell followed us most of the way; she was watching us. Perfectly understandable – she was a mother, after all. I walked a yard or so behind your son, keeping my ears and eyes open, especially when crossing the street. A car was coming our way, driving normally, still two hundred yards away, plenty of time to cross. Your son wanted to, but I grabbed his shirt with my teeth and wouldn’t let him. “What’s wrong with you, Little Four?” your son said. “Don’t be chicken.” But I wouldn’t let go. It was my job to keep my mistress from worrying. Once the car had passed, I let go of him, but remained on my guard, prepared to protect your son with my life, if necessary, as we crossed the street. I could tell by the smell that your wife’s mind was at ease. She followed us all the way to school. I watched her ride off on her bike and then trotted after her, keeping a distance of a hundred yards or so between us. I waited till she put her bike away, changed into her work clothes, and started her day before running up and barking softly to let her know everything was all right. A look of gratification came over her, and the smell of love was strong.

We started taking shortcuts on the third day, after letting your son sleep till seven o’clock. We could make it to the school gate in twenty-five minutes if we took our time and fifteen if we ran. After you were kicked out of the house you often stood at your office window with Russian binoculars to watch us as we passed down a nearby lane.

In the afternoons we were in no hurry to get home. “Little Four, where’s Mama now?” he’d ask me. I’d sniff the air to pick up her scent. I’d only need a minute to fix her location. If she was at work, I’d face north and bark; if she was home, I’d face south and bark. When she was home, that’s where we headed, no matter what. But if she was at work, we could have a little fun.

Your son was a good boy. He never followed the example of those unruly kids who left school with their backpacks and went to one roadside stall or department store after another. The only thing he liked to do was go to the New China Bookstore and borrow children’s books for a fee. Once in a while he’d buy one, but most of the time he just paid to borrow them. The person in charge of selling and lending children’s books? Your lover, that’s who. But she wasn’t your lover then. She was nice to your son; I could smell the good feelings, and not just because we were regular customers. I didn’t pay much attention to how she looked, since her scent was intoxicating enough. I could distinguish a couple of hundred thousand scents floating around in the city by then, from plants to animals, from mining ores to chemicals, and from food to cosmetics. But none of them pleased me like Pang Chunmiao’s scent. To be perfectly honest, there were in the neighborhood of forty local beauties who emitted a lovely scent. But they all had impurities. All but Chunmiao. Hers was like a mountain spring or the wind in a forest of pine trees, fresh, uncomplicated, and never-changing. How I yearned for her touch – not the sort of yearning associated with family pets, but… damn it, even a great dog can experience a momentary weakness. As a rule, dogs weren’t allowed inside the bookstore, but Pang Chunmiao made an exception for me. You couldn’t find another shop in town that was as deserted as the New China Bookstore, which employed three female clerks, two middle-aged women, and Pang Chunmiao. The other two women did their best to butter up Chunmiao, for obvious reasons. Mo Yan, who was one of the bookstore’s rare customers, once saw Lan Kaifang sitting in a corner absorbed in a book, so he went over and tugged on the boy’s ear. Then he introduced him to Pang Chunmiao, telling her he was the son of Director Lan of the County Supply and Marketing Cooperative. She said that’s who she thought he was. Just then I barked to remind Kaifang that his mother had gotten off work and that her scent had traveled to the hardware store, and if we didn’t leave now, we wouldn’t get home before she did. “Lan Kaifang,” Chunmiao said, “you’d better be getting home now. Listen to your dog.” Then she said to Mo Yan, “That’s a very intelligent dog. Sometimes Kaifang gets so wrapped up in a book he forgets everything. When that happens, the dog runs in from outside, grabs his clothes in his teeth, and drags the boy out of the shop.”

42

Lan Jiefang Makes Love In His Office

Huang Hezuo Winnows Beans at Home

After that first kiss, I wanted to back off, wanted to run away. Sure, I was happy, but I was also afraid and, of course, suffering from guilt feelings. That twentieth and last time I had sex with my wife had been a product of the internal conflict I was feeling that night. I tried my best to be a decent lover, but I finished much too soon.

Over the six days that followed, off in the countryside or at a meeting, cutting a ribbon at an opening ceremony or as a guest at a banquet, in the car or on a stool, standing or walking, awake or asleep, Pang Chunmiao was constantly on my mind, and I was trapped in intoxicating feelings from which I simply could not extricate myself in spite of the inner voice that kept saying: Stop here, go no further. It was a reminder that grew progressively weaker.

At noon on the following Sunday I was a guest at a luncheon for a visiting official from the provincial government. I ran into Pang Kangmei at the county guesthouse. She was wearing a dark blue dress and a string of pearls. Her face was lightly powdered. The guest of honor was a man I’d come to know during a three-month course at a Party school, and though the banquet was hosted by the organization department, he asked that I be invited. I sat through the meal as if needles were poking up out of my chair. The way I sputtered and stammered, I must have sounded like an idiot. As hostess, Pang Kangmei toasted the guest and invited him to eat and drink, witty remarks falling like pearls until he was tongue-tied and enchanted. During the meal, she cast three chilled looks my way, each boring right through me. When the meal was over, she saw our official to his room, smiling all the way and making small talk with all the other luncheon guests. Since her car was the first to arrive, we shook hands to say good-bye. The mere touch of her skin was repulsive, but she said in a tone that sounded filled with concern, “You don’t look well, Deputy Chief Lan. If you’re sick, you should go see a doctor.”

As I rode off I pondered Kangmei’s comment and shuddered. Over and over I warned myself: Lan Jiefang, if you don’t want to wind up broken physically and saddled with a ruined reputation, you must keep from plunging over the cliff. But when I stood at my office window and looked down at the weather-beaten New China Bookstore signboard, my fears and worries dried up and flew away, leaving only thoughts of her behind, thoughts etched deeply in my mind. In forty years on this earth I’d never felt anything like that. After adjusting the pair of Soviet Red Army binoculars a friend had brought back from Manzhouli, I focused my gaze on the bookstore entrance. The double doors, with their rusty metal handles, were unlocked; from time to time someone walked out, and my heart raced. Each time I was hoping to see her slender figure emerge, then gracefully cross the street and walk elegantly up to me. But it was never her, always book buyers, young or old, male or female. When their faces were pulled into the lenses of my binoculars, their expressions were very much alike – mysterious and bleak. I’d start thinking crazy thoughts. Had something bad happened in the store? Had something happened to her? More than once I entertained the thought of going to see for myself, pretending to be a customer, but with what little reason remained, I managed to hold back. I gazed up at the clock; it was only one thirty, still an hour and a half to go before the time we’d agreed upon to meet. I thought about taking a nap on the army cot I kept behind the screen, but I was too worked up to sleep. I brushed my teeth and washed my face. I shaved and trimmed my nose hairs. Then I studied my reflection in the mirror, half red, half blue – truly ugly. I gently tapped the blue side and cursed: Ugly shit! My self-confidence was on the verge of crumbling. Several times I heard light footsteps coming my way, and I rushed to open the door to greet her. But the hall was always empty. So I sat where she always sat and waited impatiently, flipping through the book I’d handed to her; I could almost see her sitting there reading. Her smell was on that book, her fingerprints were all over it…

Finally, I heard a knock at the door and felt cold all over. I was shivering, my teeth were chattering. I rushed over and opened the door. The smile on her face found its way into my soul. I forgot everything, the words I’d planned to say to her, Pang Kangmei’s veiled warning, all my fears. I took her in my arms and kissed her; she kissed me back.

Between kisses we looked into each other’s eyes. There were tears on her cheeks; I licked them dry – salty and fresh. “Why, dearest Chumiao? Is this a dream? Why?” “Dearest Lan, everything I have is yours, you want me, don’t you…” I struggled. We kissed again, desperately, and what followed was inevitable.

We lay on the cot in each other’s arms; somehow it didn’t seem so narrow now. “Dearest Ghunmiao, I’m twenty years older than you, I’m ugly as sin, and I’m so afraid I’ll bring calamities down on you. I don’t deserve to live…” I was nearly incoherent. She stroked my chin and my face. With her mouth pressed against my ear, she said, “I love you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll be responsible for what happens.”

“I don’t want you to be responsible. I’m a willing partner. I won’t leave you until we’ve been together a hundred times.”

I was like a starving cow that has suddenly spotted a patch of fresh new grass.

A hundred times came and went in a hurry, but we still found it impossible to part.

On the hundredth time, we wished it would never end. She touched my face and said tearfully, “Take a good look at me. Don’t forget me.”

“Chunmiao, I want to marry you.”

“No.”

“I’ve made up my mind,” I said. “What awaits us is probably an abyss. But I have no choice.”

“Then we’ll jump in together,” she said.

That night I went home to lay my cards on the table. My wife was in the side room, winnowing mung beans – a tricky job, but one she was good at. As her hands moved up and down and sideways, the beans fairly flew and the husks soared out.

“What’s up?” I asked for lack of anything better to say.

“His granddad sent over some mung beans.” She reached down and picked out some gravel. “They came from his garden. I don’t care if other things go bad, but not these. I’ll have some bean sprouts for Kaifang.”

She went back to work.

“Hezuo”-I hardened my heart-“I want a divorce.”

Her hands stopped in midair and she stared blankly at me, as if she didn’t comprehend what I was saying.

“I’m sorry, Hezuo, but I think that’s best.”

The winnowing basket tipped slowly forward, sending a few, then a dozen or so, then a hundred or more beans spilling out onto the cement floor, like a green waterfall.

The basket fell out of her hand and she began listing to the side, losing her sense of balance. I thought about reaching out to steady her, but she leaned up against a chopping board on which some onions and dry oil fritters lay. She covered her mouth with her hand and began to sob. Tears gushed from her eyes.

“I really am sorry, but please do this for me.”

She flung her hand away from her mouth and wiped the tears from her eyes with her fingers. Clenching her jaw, she said:

“Over my dead body.”

43

Angered, Huang Hezuo Bakes Flat Bread

Drunk, Dog Four Displays Melancholy

While you were laying your cards on the table with your wife, still covered with the heavy scent of passionate lovemaking with Pang Chunlai, I was outside crouching under the eaves, gazing at the moon, deep in thought. There was a deranged quality to the wonderful moonbeams. Since it was a full moon, all the dogs in the county were scheduled to meet in Tianhua Square. The first item on the agenda was a memorial for the Tibetan mastiff who could not adapt to life below sea level, causing his internal organs to fail, which led to internal bleeding and death. Next was to arrange a celebration for my third sister, who had married the Norwegian husky belonging to the county Political Consultative Conference chairman four months earlier, and had just had a litter of three white-faced, yellow-eyed bastard pups a month ago.

Lan Jiefang, you rushed out of the house and gave me a meaningful glance as you passed by I saw you off with a series of barks: Old friend, I think the happy times are coming to an end for you. I felt mildly hostile toward you; the smell of Pang Chunmiao you carried with you worked to diminish the hostility I’d otherwise have felt.

My nose told me you headed north, on foot, the same route I used when taking your son to school. A lot of noise from your wife came from inside the house, thanks to the open door, through which I saw her raise her cleaver and, with loud thuds, shred the onions and oil fritters on the chopping board. The pungent smell of chopped onions and rancid odor of oil fritters spread vigorously through the room. By now your scent placed you at the Tianhua Bridge, where it merged with the putrid smell of foul water running below. With each blow from her cleaver, her left leg wobbled a bit, accompanied by a single clipped word: “Hate! Hate!”

Your son came running out of the main house to see what was going on in the side room. “Mama!” he shouted in alarm. “What are you doing?” Two more violent chops finally vented the hatred she was feeling; she put down her cleaver, turned her back to him to dry her tears, and said, “Why aren’t you in bed? Don’t you have school tomorrow?” He walked up in front of her. “You’re crying, Mama!” he cried out shrilly. “What do you mean, crying? What’s there to cry about? It’s the onions.” “Why are you chopping onions in the middle of the night?” “Go to bed. If you’re late for school tomorrow, I’ll show you what it means to cry.” The anger in her voice was unmistakable. She picked up the cleaver, throwing a fright into your son, who backed up and started muttering to himself. “Come back here!” she said, rubbing his head with one hand and gripping the cleaver in her other. “I want you to study hard and bring credit to yourself. I’ll make some onion-stuffed flat bread for you.” “I don’t want any, Mama,” he said. “You’re tired, you work so hard…” But she pushed him out the door. “I’m not tired. Now be a good boy and go to bed.” He took a few steps, then stopped and turned back. “Papa came home, didn’t he?” She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then: “Yes, but he left, he had to work overtime tonight.” “How come he always has to work overtime?”

I found the whole episode depressing. Among dogs I could be totally unfeeling. But in a family of humans, emotions came at me from all directions.

As promised, your wife set to work making onion-stuffed flat bread. She kneaded the dough, so much that she wound up with a pile half the size of a pillow. What was she thinking, that she’d treat your son’s whole class to freshly baked flat breads? Her bony shoulders rose and fell as she worked, sweat darkened the back of her jacket. Intermittent spells of crying spoke to her anger, to her sorrow, and to so many of her memories. Some of the tears fell on her jacket front, some fell on the backs of her hands, and some fell into the dough, which was getting softer and softer and producing a slightly sweet aroma. Adding some flour, she continued to knead the dough. She sobbed from time to time, but quickly stopped and dried her tears with her sleeves. Soon her face was dotted with white flour, a comical yet pitiful appearance. She occasionally stopped working, let her hands fall to her sides, and walked around the room, as if looking for something. On one of those occasions, she slipped on some scattered mung beans and fell to the floor, where she sat for a moment, looking straight ahead, as if staring at a gecko on the wall. Then she banged her hands against the floor and wailed, but just for a moment, before getting to her feet and going back to work.

Once the dough was ready, she set her pan on top of the stove, turned on the gas, and lit a fire. After carefully pouring in a bit of oil, she laid in the first prepared flat bread, which sizzled and sent bursts of fragrance into the kitchen air and from there to the yard outside and the street beyond; once it had spread through town I was able to relax a bit, after being so fidgety. I looked up into the western sky, where the moon now hung, and listened to what was happening at Tianhua Bridge. The scent told me that our regular meeting was ready to begin, and that they were all waiting for me.

The hundreds of mongrels seated around the central fountain stood up when I made my entrance at Tianhua Square and welcomed me boisterously.

Deputy chairmen Ma and Lü escorted me to the chairman’s podium, a marble foundation on which a replica of the Venus de Milo had stood before someone walked off with it. As I rested there to catch my breath, from a distance I must have looked like a memorial to a brave canine. My apologies, but I’m not a statue. I’m a living, breathing, powerful dog who carries the genes of the local big white dog and a German shepherd, in short, Gaomi County’s dog king. I gathered my thoughts for a couple of seconds before beginning my address. In that first second my sense of smell was still focused on your wife; the heavy aroma of onions coming from your home told me that everything was normal. In the final second I switched to you, sprawled at the window in your smoky office, gazing dreamily at the moon. That too was perfectly normal. I looked out into the flashing eyes and shiny fur of all those animals arrayed before me and announced in a loud voice:

“Brothers, sisters, I call this eighteenth full-moon meeting to order!”

A roar rose from the crowd.

I raised my right paw to quiet them down.

“During this past month our brother the Tibetan mastiff passed away, so let’s send his soul off to the plateau with three loud cheers!”

The chorus of cheers from several hundred dogs rocked the town. My eyes were moist: sadness over the passing of our brother and gratitude over the expressions of friendship.

I then invited the dogs to sing and dance and chat and eat and drink in celebration of the one-month birthday of my third elder sister’s litter of three.

Whoops and hollers.

She passed her male pup up to me. I kissed him on the cheek and raised him over my head for all to see. The crowd roared. I passed him down, and she passed up a female. I kissed her and raised her over my head, and the crowd roared again. Then she handed up the third pup, another female. I brushed her cheek with my lips, raised her over my head, the crowd roared for the third time, and I passed her down. The crowd roared.

I jumped down off the platform. My sister came up to me and said to her pups, “Say, Hello, Uncle. He’s your mother’s brother.”

Hello Uncle, Hello Uncle, Hello Uncle.

“I hear they’ve all been sold, is that right?” I asked her icily.

“You heard right,” she said proudly. “They’d barely been born before people were beating down our door. My mistress sold them to Party Secretary Ke from Donkey County, Industry and Commerce Department Chief Hu, and Health Department Chief Tu. They paid eighty thousand.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t a hundred thousand?” I asked, again icily.

“They brought a hundred, but our master would only accept eighty. My master isn’t a money-grubber.”

“Shit,” I said, “that’s not selling dogs, it’s selling-”

She cut me off with a shrill rebuke: “Uncle!”

“Okay, I won’t say it,” I promised in a soft voice. Then I announced to the crowd, “Come on, dance! Sing! Start drinking!”

A pointy-eared, slender German dachshund with a hairless tail came up to me with two bottles of beer. When he popped them open with his teeth, foam spilled over the sides and released the delightful aroma.

“Have one, Mr. Chairman.” So I took one of the bottles and clinked it against the one he held for himself.

“Bottoms up!” I said. So did he.

With two paws on the bottles, we tipped them up and slugged down the contents. More and more dogs came up to drink with me, and I didn’t send any of them away A pile of empties formed behind me. A little white Pekinese, her hair in pigtails and a ribbon tied around her neck, came rolling up to me like a little ball, with some locally produced sausage in her mouth. She was wearing Chanel No. 5 perfume, and her coat glistened like silver.

“Chairman… Mr. Chairman…” She stammered a little. “This sausage is for you.”

She undid the wrapping with her tiny teeth and with two paws carried the sausage up to my mouth. I accepted her gift and took a small bite, then chewed it slowly as a sign of respect. Vice chairman Ma walked up with a bottle of beer then, and clinked it against mine.

“How was the sausage?”

“Not bad.”

“Damn it. I told them to bring over one case, but they brought twenty cases of the stuff. Old Wei, over at the warehouse, is going to be in deep shit tomorrow.” There was a noticeable degree of pride in his voice.

I spotted a mongrel crouching off to the side with three bottles of beer lined up in front of him, along with three chunks of sausage and some cloves of garlic. He took a swig of beer, then a bite of sausage, and flipped a clove of garlic into his mouth. He smacked his lips as he chewed, as if he was the only dog around. He was enjoying himself immensely. The other local mutts were drunk by then. Some were howling at the moon, others were belching loudly, and some were spouting incomprehensible rubbish. I wasn’t happy about that, of course, but I didn’t do anything about it.

I looked up at the moon and could see that the night was coming to an end. During the summer months, the days are long, the nights are short, and in an hour, no more, birds would be chirping; people would be out airing their caged birds and others would practice tai chi with their swords. I tapped Vice Chairman Ma on the shoulder.

“Adjourn the meeting,” I said.

Ma threw down the beer bottle he was holding, stretched out his neck, and released a shrill cry toward the moon. All the canine participants tossed away their beer bottles and, drunk and sober alike, gave me their undivided attention. I jumped up onto the platform.

“Tonight’s meeting is hereby adjourned. All of you must vacate the square within the next three minutes. The date of our next meeting will be announced later. Adjourn!”

He released another shrill cry, and the dogs began heading home as fast as their bloated bellies would allow. Those who had drunk too much reeled from side to side, frequently losing their footing in their haste to clear the square. My third sister and her Norwegian husky husband piled their three pups into a fancy Japanese import stroller and left quickly, one pushing, the other pulling. The pups stood up with their paws on the outer edge and yelped excitedly. Three minutes later the clamorous square was deserted, littered with empty beer bottles and odorous chunks of leftover sausage, and befouled by countless puddles of dog piss. I nodded with a sense of satisfaction, slapped paws with Vice Chairman Ma, and left.

After quietly making it back home, I looked into the eastern side room, where your wife was still making flat breads, labor that seemed to bring her peace and happiness. An enigmatic smile graced her face. A sparrow on the plane tree chirped, and within ten or fifteen minutes the whole town was blanketed by birdcalls. The moonlight weakened as dawn was about to break.

44

Jinlong Plans to Build a Resort Village

Jiefang Sends Emotions Through Binoculars

I thought I was reading a document submitted by Jinlong, who wanted to turn Ximen Village into a resort with a Cultural Revolution theme. In his feasibility report, he wrote dialectically: While the Cultural Revolution was destroying culture, it also created a new culture. He wanted to paint new slogans on walls where they had been removed, reinstall loudspeakers, build another lookout perch in the apricot tree, and erect a new Apricot Garden Pig Farm on the site where the old one had been ruined in a rainstorm. Beyond that, he wanted to build a golf course on five thousand acres of land east of the village. As for the farmers who would lose their cropland, he proposed that they act out the village tasks they’d had during the Cultural Revolution, such as: organizing criticism sessions, parading capitalist-roaders in the streets, performing in Revolutionary Model Operas and loyalty dances. He wrote that Cultural Revolution artifacts could be turned out in large quantities: armbands, spears, Chairman Mao badges, handbills, big character posters… Tourists would be permitted to participate in Recalling Bitterness meetings, watch Recalling Bitterness plays, eat Recalling Bitterness meals, and listen to elderly poor peasants relate tales of the old society… And he wrote: The Ximen family compound will be converted into an Independent Farming Museum, with wax statues of Lan Lian, his donkey with the prosthetic foot, and his ox with the missing horn. He wrote that the piece of land farmed by the independent farmer Lan Lian would be covered by an enormous clear plastic canopy to protect a sculpture garden that included pieces of statuary showing the independent farm at each historical juncture, employing the tools he’d used to plant and harvest crops. All these postmodern activities, Jinlong said, would greatly appeal to urbanites and foreigners, which would lead them to generously open their pocketbooks. They’d spend, we’d earn. Once they’d toured our Cultural Revolution village, he wrote, they’d be taken to a glitzy modern-day adult entertainment complex. With obsessive ambition, he planned to gobble up all the land from Ximen Village east to the Wu Family Sandy Mouth and turn it into the finest golf course anywhere in the world, plus a massive amusement park that left nothing to be desired. Then on the sandbar at Wu Family Sandspit he wanted to build a public bath fashioned after ancient Rome’s bathhouses, a gambling casino to rival Las Vegas, and yet another sculpture garden, the theme of this one being the stirring battle between men and pigs that had occurred on this spot more than a decade earlier. The theme park would be primarily intended to get people thinking about environmental protection and underscore the concept that all sentient beings are endowed with a form of intelligence. The incident in which a pig sacrificed himself by diving into icy water to save a child was one that needed to be played up. Also included in the document was the author’s intent to build a convention center in which annual international meetings of family pets would be convened, bringing both foreign visitors and foreign exchange to the nation…

As I read the feasibility report he’d sent to all pertinent county offices, plus the approving comments by big shots on the Party committee and in the county government, I could only shake my head and sigh. In essence I’m a man who is most comfortable with the old ways. I love the land and the smell of manure; I’d be content to live the life of a farmer; and I have enormous respect for old-school peasants like my father, who live for the land. But someone like that is too far behind the times to survive in today’s society. I actually went and fell so madly in love with a woman that I asked my wife for a divorce, and it doesn’t get much more old-school than that; again, out of step with the times. There was no way I could state my personal views in regard to the report, so I merely drew a circle, signifying approval, near my name. But something was bothering me. Who had actually been responsible for drafting such an outlandish report? Just then, Mo Yan’s head, a wicked smile on his face, appeared at my window. Now how in the world was that possible, since my third-floor window was maybe fifteen yards from the ground?

Suddenly some noise erupted out in the hallway, so I opened the door to see what it was. It was Huang Hezuo, a cleaver in one hand and a long rope in the other. Her hair was a fright and there was blood at the corners of her mouth. She was limping toward me, a vacant stare in her eyes. My son, schoolbag on his back, was right behind her, carrying a handful of steaming, greasy oil fritters, no discernible expression on his face. Behind him came that brute of a dog, my son’s cartoon-decorated plastic water bottle hanging around his neck and, since it was so long, banging into his knees as it swung back and forth with each step.

I screamed, and woke myself up. I’d fallen asleep in my clothes on the sofa. My forehead was covered with cold sweat, my heart was racing. My head felt numbed, thanks to the sleeping pill I’d taken, and the sunlight streaming in the window stung my eyes. I managed somehow to get up and splash water on my face. The clock on the wall said 6:30. The phone rang. I picked it up. Silence. I didn’t dare say anything. I just stood there waiting. “It’s me,” she said, her voice cracking. “I didn’t sleep all night…” “Don’t worry, I’m fine.” “I’ll bring you something to eat.” “No, don’t come over,” I said. “It’s not that I’m afraid, I’d be willing to stand on a rooftop and announce to the world that I love you, but I shudder to think what it might lead to…” “I understand.” “I think we should see a bit less of one another for a while. I don’t want to give her an opportunity to-” “I understand. I’ve done a terrible thing to her…” “Don’t ever think that. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. Besides, didn’t Engels say that a loveless marriage is a sin against morality? Truth is, we’ve done nothing wrong.” “I’ll go buy some stuffed buns and leave them for you in the receptionist’s office-” “No,” I said, “I don’t want you to come, Chief. Don’t worry, if an earthworm won’t starve neither will I. I can’t say how things will be later on, but for now I’m still a deputy county head, so I’ll go get something to eat at the guesthouse, where there’s plenty of food.” “I miss you-” “Me too. When you go to work, stand in the bookstore entrance and look toward my window. That way I’ll be able to see you.” “But I won’t be able to see you-” “You’ll know I’m up here. Okay, my dear…”

But I didn’t go to the guesthouse to get something to eat. Since the day we first touched, I felt like a frog in love, no appetite, nothing but unbridled passion. But appetite or not, I had to eat, so I forced myself to eat some snacks she’d brought me, though I tasted none of them. Still, they provided life-giving calories and nutrition.

I leaned against the window with my binoculars, prepared for my daily ritual. The clock in my head was remarkably accurate. Since in those days the town had no tall buildings, nothing blocked my view. If I’d wanted to I could have brought the faces of the old folks doing their morning exercises in Tianhua Square right into my eyes. First I aimed my binoculars at the entrance to Tianhua Lane. One Tianhua Lane was my house. The gate was closed. My son’s enemies had drawn a picture and written slogans in chalk on the gate: a fanged little boy, half of whose face was filled in with chalk, the other not. He was holding his sticklike hands in the air, a sign of surrender. Down between his sticklike legs hung an enormous penis from which a single line ran all the way down to the bottom of the gate.

I lowered my binoculars, which spat out Tianhua Square and Tianhua Lane. My heart skipped a beat. There was Huang Hezuo, straining to walk her bicycle down the three steps outside the gate. She spotted the graffiti when she turned to lock the gate, so she parked her bike, looked around, and crossed the street, where she broke off a branch of the pine tree there and used it to wipe off as much of the chalk as possible. I couldn’t see her face, but I knew she’d be grumbling. After the chalk was smeared beyond recognition, she got on her bike and headed north for a dozen yards or so before disappearing behind a row of houses. How had she managed to get through the night? Had she lain awake or had she slept like a baby? No way to know. Though there’d never been a time during all these years that I’d actually loved her, she was, after all, the mother of my son, and our lives had been closely bound up together. She reappeared on the road leading to the square in front of the station. Even when she was riding a bicycle she wobbled, and now more than ever, since she looked to be in a tearing hurry. Now I could see her face, which seemed covered by a smoky veil. She was wearing a black top with a yellow phoenix design. I knew she had plenty of clothes; on a business trip once, probably driven by deep-seated guilt feelings, I’d bought her a dozen skirts, all of which she’d immediately put away at the bottom of a trunk and never wore. I thought she might glance over at my window when she passed by the government office building, but she didn’t. She looked straight ahead, and I heaved a sigh. I knew that this woman was not about to give me my freedom, not without a fight. But since the battle had begun, it would have to be a fight to the finish.

Once again I trained my binoculars on the door of my house on Tianhua Lane, which was actually a wide boulevard, the preferred route by parents taking their children to the Phoenix Elementary School in the southern district. It was teeming with parents and children at this early morning hour.

My son and his dog walked out the gate, dog first, followed by the boy, who opened one side a crack and slipped through. Clever boy. If he’d opened both sides, he’d have had to turn around and close them both, a waste of time and energy. After locking up, he jumped from the top step to the sidewalk and headed north. I saw him wave to a boy riding by on a bike; the dog barked at the boy. They walked past the Tianhua Barbershop, which was directly opposite a shop that made home aquariums and sold tropical fish. The south-facing door showed up bright in the morning sunlight. The shopkeeper, a retired bookkeeper who’d worked at a cotton storage and transportation station, was a dignified old man who displayed his fish in aquariums out on the sidewalk. My son and his dog stopped to watch the ungraceful movements of big-bellied goldfish. The shopkeeper appeared to say something to my son, whose head was too low for me to see his mouth. He might have answered, he might not have.

They were back on the road, heading north, and when they reached the Tianhua Bridge, my son appeared to want to go down to the water, but the dog grabbed his clothes in his teeth to stop him. A good, loyal companion. My son struggled to get free, but was no match for the dog. Finally, he picked up a piece of brick and threw it into the water; it landed with a splash. A yellow dog greeted our dog with a bark and a wagging tail. The green plastic awning over the farmer’s market sparkled in the bright sunlight. My son stopped at just about every shop along the way, but the dog invariably grabbed his clothes or nudged him behind the knee to keep him going. When they reached Tianhua Lane, they sped up; that was when my binoculars began sweeping the area in front of the New China Bookstore, which was on Tianhua Lane.

My son took a slingshot out of his pocket and aimed at a bird in the pear tree in front of the home of my colleague, another deputy county head by the name of Chen. Pang Chunmiao appeared in front of the bookstore as if she’d fallen out of the sky. Son, dog, I’ve got no more time for you today.

Dressed in a spotless white dress, she was a vision of loveliness. Her freshly washed face was free of makeup, and I could almost smell the sandalwood fragrance of her facial soap and the natural fragrance of her body, which intoxicated and nearly transported me into another world. She was smiling. Her eyes sparkled; morning light reflected off what I could see of her teeth. She was looking up at me and knew that I was looking down at her. It was rush hour; the street was clogged with cars; the pedestrian lanes were alive with motorbikes spewing black smoke; bicycles weaved in and out of cars and motorbikes coming at them, inviting a chorus of honking from exasperated drivers. On any other day I’d have found this all quite repellent, but today it was a glorious sight.

She stood out there until her coworker opened the door for her; just before she walked inside, she put her fingers to her lips and tossed me a kiss. Like a butterfly, that kiss flew across the street, hovered briefly in the air just beyond my window, and then landed on my mouth. What a wonderful girl. I’d have died for her without hesitation.

My secretary came in to tell me I was to attend a meeting that afternoon in the County Committee conference room to discuss the Ximen Village Resort development plans. Attendees would include the county Party secretary, his deputy, the county chief, the Party Committee, all county government department heads, and leading bankers. Jinlong, I knew, was going for broke this time, and down the line what awaited him, as well as me, would not be garlands of flowers and smooth sailing. I had a hunch that a cruel fate was in store for my brother and me. But we would both forge ahead, and in this regard, we were truly brothers, for good or ill.

Before clearing my desk to leave for the meeting, I picked up my binoculars and took my customary position at the window, where I spotted my son’s dog leading my wife across the street and up to the door of the New China Bookstore. I’ve read several of Mo Yan’s stories in which he writes about dogs; they always seem more clever than humans, and that always gave me a laugh – such nonsense, I thought. But now, all of a sudden, I became a believer.

45

Dog Four Follows a Scent to Chunmiao

Huang Hezuo Writes a Message in Blood

A silver Crown Victoria pulled up and parked in front of the school gate when I dropped your son off. A nicely dressed girl stepped out of the car, and your son waved to her, like any American boy might, and said, “Hi, Fenghuang!” She waved back. “Hi, Jiefang!” They walked in through the gate together.

I crossed the street, turned east, then headed north, walking slowly toward the train station. Your wife had tossed me four onion rolls that morning and, so as not to appear ungrateful, I ate them all. Now they lay heavily in my stomach. When the Hungarian wolfhound who lived behind a restaurant smelled me out, he barked a friendly greeting. I didn’t feel like responding. I wasn’t a happy dog that morning. I had a hunch that before the day was over, bad things would happen to man and dog alike. Sure enough, I met your wife on the way before reaching her work site. I greeted her with dog sounds to let her know her son was safely in school. She jumped down off her bicycle and said:

“Little Four, you saw it with your own eyes, he doesn’t want us anymore.”

With a sympathetic look, I walked up to her and wagged my tail to try to make her feel better. Just because I didn’t care for the greasy odor that clung to her body didn’t alter the fact that she was my mistress. She walked her bike over to the curb and signaled for me to come to her, which I did. The roadside was littered with white blossoms from roadside Chinese scholar trees. A foul smell from a nearby panda-shaped trash can hung in the air. Farm tractors pulling trailers with vegetables and spurting black smoke from their exhaust pipes rumbled down the street until they were stopped by a traffic cop in the intersection. A couple of dogs had met their end the day before thanks to chaotic traffic conditions. Your wife touched my nose.

“He’s got another woman, Little Four,” she said. “I could smell it on him. You have a better nose than I do, so you must have known too.” She lifted her black leather purse, parts of which had turned white from use, out of her bicycle rack, took out a sheet of paper, and unfolded it. In it were two long strands of hair. She held it up to my nose. “This is her,” she said. “They were on his clothes. I want you to help me find her.” Her eyes were moist, but I saw flames in them.

I didn’t hesitate. This was my job. Truth is, I didn’t have to sniff at those strands of hair to know who I should go looking for. Well, I trotted along seeking out a smell like mung-bean noodles, your wife following me on her bike. Because of her injury, she kept her balance better riding fast than riding slow.

I did hesitate when we reached the New China Bookstore, since the scent from Pang Chunmiao’s body gave me a good feeling. But when I looked back and saw your wife limping toward me, I made up my mind to go through with it. I was, after all, a dog, and dogs are supposed to be loyal to their masters. I barked twice at the entrance, and your wife pushed open the door to let me go in first. I barked twice at Pang Chunmiao, who was wiping down a counter with a damp cloth, then I lowered my head. I simply couldn’t look Pang Chunmiao in the eye.

“How could it be her?” your wife said. Keeping my head down, I whined. Your wife looked up into Pang Chunmiao’s red face. “How could it be you?” she said uncertainly, her voice betraying feelings of agony and forlornness. “Why is it you?”

The two middle-aged clerks gave the newcomer and her dog suspicious looks. The red-faced one, whose breath reeked of pickled tofu and leeks, shouted angrily:

“Whose dog is that? Get him out of here!”

The other clerk, whose rear end smelled of hemorrhoid ointment, said softly:

“Isn’t that County Chief Lan’s dog? Then that must be his wife…”

Your wife turned and glared hatefully at them. They lowered their heads. Then in a loud voice your wife confronted Pang Chunmiao.

“Come outside,” she said. “My son’s class monitor sent me to talk to you.”

After your wife opened the door to let me out, she went through the door sideways and, without looking behind her, walked over to her bicycle, unlocked it, and pushed it down the street, heading east. I was right behind her. I heard the door of the New China Bookstore open and close, and I didn’t need to look to know that Pang Chunmiao had come outside. Her smell was stronger than ever, a case of nerves.

In front of a chili sauce shop your wife stopped and grasped a French plane tree with both hands; her legs were trembling. Chunmiao walked up with obvious hesitation and stopped three yards before she reached us. Your wife was staring straight ahead at the tree trunk. I kept an eye on each of the two women.

“You were only six years old when we started at the cotton processing plant,” your wife said. “We’re twenty years older than you, different generations.

“He must have tricked you,” she continued. “He’s a married man, you’re a young maiden. That’s completely irresponsible of him, he’s a brute and he’s hurt you.” Your wife turned around, rested her back against the tree, and glared at Pang Chunmiao. “With that blue birthmark he looks three parts human, seven parts demon. For you to be with him is like planting a fresh flower on a pile of cow shit!”

A pair of speeding squad cars, sirens blaring, drew curious looks from people out on the street.

“I’ve already told him the only way he’ll get his freedom is over my dead body,” your wife said emotionally. “You know what’s what. Your father, your mother, and your sister are all public figures. If word of your affair were to get out, the shame they’d feel would be overwhelming; they’d have no place to hide their faces. As for me, what do I care? Half my bottom is missing, and I have no reputation worth saving, so I have nothing to lose.”

Children from the kindergarten were just then crossing the street, with one nanny in front, another at the rear, and two more running up and down to keep the children in line, shouting the whole time. Cars in both directions were stopped at the crosswalk.

“I advise you to leave him and find someone else to fall in love with. Get married, have a child, and you’ve got my word I’ll never tell anyone about this. Huang Hezuo may be ugly and someone to be pitied, but she means what she says.” Then your wife wiped her eyes with the back of her hand before sticking the first finger of her right hand in her mouth. I saw her jaw muscles tense. She pulled her finger out of her mouth, and I smelled blood. The tip of her finger was bleeding, and I watched as she wrote two words in blood on the glossy trunk of the French plane tree:

LEAVE HIM

With a moan, Pang Chunmiao covered her mouth with her hand, spun around, and stumbled off down the street, running a few steps, then walking, running and walking, running and walking, the way we dogs move. She kept her hand over her mouth the whole time. The sight saddened me. Instead of going back to New China, she turned and disappeared down a lane. I looked over at your wife’s ashen face and felt chilled. It was clear that Pang Chunmiao, a silly little girl, was no match for your wife, the victim in all this; her tears refused to leave the safety of her eyes. It was time, I thought, for her to take me home; but she didn’t. Her finger was still bleeding, too much to waste, so she filled in missing strokes and reapplied the fuzzy parts. There was still blood, so she added an exclamation mark to the words. Then another, and another…

LEAVE HIM!!!

A perfectly good slogan, though she seemed to want to write more. But why gild the lily? So she shook her finger and stuck it in her mouth, then reached under her collar with her left hand and pulled a medicinal plaster off her shoulder to wrap her injured finger. She’d put it on just that morning.

After stepping back to admire the slogan, written in blood to goad Chunmiao into action and as a warning to her, she smiled contentedly before pushing her bike down the street, with me some three or four yards behind her. She stopped to look back at the tree a time or two, as if afraid someone would come along and rub the words out.

At an intersection we waited for the green light, though we crossed with our hearts in our throats, thanks to all the black-jacketed motorcyclists for whom a red light was a mere suggestion and the drivers of cars who paid little attention to traffic lights. In recent days a bunch of teenagers had formed what they called a “Honda Speed Demons Gang,” whose purpose was to run their Honda motorcycles over as many dogs as possible. Whenever they hit one, they ran over it over and over, until its guts were spread all over the street. Then with a loud whistle it was off to the next one. Just why they hated dogs so much was something I never could figure out.

46

Huang Hezuo Vows to Shock Her Foolish Husband

Hong Taiyue Organizes a Government Protest

The meeting to discuss Jinlong’s idiotic proposal went on till noon. The elderly Party secretary, Jin Bian – the onetime blacksmith who had fitted my dad’s donkey for shoes – had been promoted to vice chairman of the Municipal People’s Congress, and it was a foregone conclusion that Pang Kangmei was next in line for the Party position. She was the daughter of a national hero and a college graduate with rich experience at the grassroots level. Barely forty years old and still attractive, she had the enthusiastic backing of her superiors and the support of those beneath her. In other words, she had everything she needed for success. The meeting was highly contentious, with neither side willing to back off its position. So Pang Kangmei simply pounded her gavel and announced: “We’ll do it! For the initial phase we’ll need 300 million yuan. We’ll leave it up to the banks to come up with that amount. We’ll form a Merchants Investment Group to attract investment capital from both domestic and overseas sources.”

I was distracted throughout the discussion, using visits to the toilet as an excuse to make phone calls to the New China Bookstore. Pang Kangmei’s gaze followed me like a laser. I could only smile apologetically and point to my stomach.

I phoned the bookstore three times. Finally, on the third try, the clerk with the husky voice said heatedly:

“You again. Stop calling. She was led outside by the crippled wife of Deputy County Chief Lan, and she still hasn’t returned.”

I called home. No answer.

My seat felt like a heated grill, and I know how bad I must have looked as I sat through the meeting, one scary image after another racing through my mind. The most tragic image was of my wife murdering Chunmiao in an out-of-the-way village or remote spot, then killing herself. A crowd of rubberneckers had gathered around the bodies and police cars, sirens blaring, were speeding to the scene. I sneaked a look at Kangmei, who was volubly describing aspects of Jinlong’s blueprints with a pointer, and all my benumbed brain could think about was how, in the next minute, the next second, anytime now, this huge scandal would land in the midst of this meeting like a suicide bomb, sending fragments of steel and flesh flying…

The meeting was adjourned amid applause that carried complex implications. I rushed out of the conference room, followed by a malicious comment by one of the attendees: “County Chief must have a crotch-full by now.”

I ran to the car, catching my driver by surprise. But before he could scamper around to open the door for me, I’d already climbed into the backseat.

“Let’s go!” I said impatiently.

“We can’t,” he said helplessly.

He was right, we couldn’t. The administrative section had lined up the cars by seniority. Pang Kangmei’s silver Crown Victoria sedan was at the head of the line in front of the building. Next in line was the county chief’s Nissan, then the People’s Consultative Conference chairman’s black Audi, the National People’s Congress municipal director’s white Audi… My VW Santana was twentieth. They were all idling. Like me, some of the attendees were already in their cars, while others were standing near the gate, engaged in hushed conversations. Everyone was waiting for Pang Kangmei, whose laughter preceded her out of the building. She was wearing a high-collared sapphire blue business suit with a glittering pin on her lapel. She told everyone that she owned only costume jewelry, which, according to her sister, could fill a bucket. Chunmiao, where are you, my love? I was on the verge of climbing out of my car and running out onto the street when Kangmei finally got into her car and drove off, followed by a procession of automobiles leaving the compound. Sentries stood at attention on both sides of the gate, right arms raised in salutes. The cars all turned right.

“Where is everybody going, Little Hu?” I asked anxiously.

“To Ximen Jinlong’s banquet.” He handed me a large red, gilded invitation.

I had a vague recollection of someone whispering during the meeting, “Why all this discussion? The celebration banquet’s there waiting for us.”

“Turn the car around,” I said anxiously.

“Where are we going?”

“Back to the office.”

He was not happy about that. I knew that not only were the drivers treated to some good food at these events, but they were also given gifts. Not only that, Chairman of the Board Ximen Jinlong had a reputation of being especially generous in this regard. To try to console Little Hu, and to cover myself for my behavior, I said:

“You should be aware of my relationship with Ximen Jinlong.”

Without responding, he made a U-turn and headed back toward my office building. Just my luck to run up against market day at Nanguan. Hordes of people on bicycles and tractors, in donkey wagons and on foot, crowded into People’s Avenue. Despite a liberal use of his horn, Little Hu was forced to go slowly with the flow of traffic.

“The goddamn traffic cops are all off drinking someplace!” he grumbled.

I ignored him. What did I care if the cops were off drinking? Finally, we made it to the office, where my car was immediately surrounded by a crowd of people that seemed to have risen out of the ground.

Some old women in rags sat down in front of my car, slapping their hands on the ground and filling the air with tearless wails. Like magicians on a stage, several middle-aged men unfurled banners with slogans: “Give us back our land,” “Down with corrupt officials,” things like that. A dozen men were kneeling behind the wailing old women and holding up sheets of white cloth with writing on them. Then there were people behind the car passing out handbills in the practiced manner of Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution or professional mourners scattering spirit money during rural funerals. People swarmed around us, penning us in with no way out. Fellow villagers, you’ve surrounded the person who least deserves it. I spotted Hong Taiyue’s white hair; supported by a couple of young men, he was walking toward me from the pagoda pine east of the main gate. He stopped just in front of the farmers and behind the seated old women, a space that had obviously been saved for him. This was an organized, disciplined crowd of petitioners, led, of course, by Hong Taiyue. He desperately missed the collective spirit of the people’s commune and the stubborn perseverance of Lan Lian, the independent farmer. The two eccentrics of Northeast Gaomi Township had been like a pair of oversize lightbulbs, spreading their light in all directions, like two flying banners, one red, the other black. He reached behind him and took out his ox hip bone, now yellowed with age, but retaining all nine copper coins around the edge; he raised it in the air, then lowered it, over and over, faster and faster, creating a hua-la-la hua-la-la rhythmic sound. That bone was an important memento from his glorious history, like the sword used by a warrior against his enemy. Shaking it was Hong’s special skill. So was clapper talk:

Hua-lang-lang, hua-lang-lang, the hip bone sings and I begin my theme. What is my story today? Ximen Jinlong’s restoration scheme.

More people crowded up, filling the compound with noise, but quieting down almost at once.

Now there’s a Ximen Village in Northeast Gaomi Township, scenic as a dream,

Where once was a famous Apricot Garden where pigs wer each to a team.

Grain grew high, animals thrived, Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line was like the sun!

At this point, Hong flung the bone into the air, spun around, and, so all could see, caught it before it hit the ground. While it was in the air, it sang out its unique sound, almost like a living being. Amazing! The crowd roared. Scattered applause. The expression on Hong’s face underwent a dramatic change. He continued:

The village’s tyrannical landlord, Ximen Nao, left behind a bastard white-eyed wolf.

The fellow’s name is Jinlong, from childhood a smooth-talking phony do-gooder

Who wormed his way into the Youth League and the Communist Party.

By usurping authority he became Party secretary to settle old scores likea madman.

He parceled out land for independent farming and stole People’s Commune property

He restored landlords, rehabilitated the bad, making ox-demons and snake-spirits happy.

My heart breaks when I say these things, tears and snivel run down my face…

He flung the bone into the air and caught it with his right hand as he dried his eyes with his left. The next time he caught it with his left hand and dried his eyes with his right. That bone was like a white weasel jumping from one hand to the other. The applause was deafening, almost but not quite drowning out the sound of police sirens.

With increased passion, Hong continued:

Then in 1991, the little rogue came up with another evil plot,

He wants to drive us out of the village and turn it into a tourist resort.

To destroy good farmland for a golf course, a gambling casino, a brothel, a public bath, and turn socialist Ximen Village into an imperialist pleasure dome.

Comrades, villagers, beat your chests and think, is it time for class struggle?

Should Ximen Jinlong be killed? Even with his money, his prestige, his support; even if his brother, Jiefang, is deputy county chief. United we are strong. Let us sweep away the reactionaries, sweep them away, sweep them all away…

The crowd responded with a roar. People cursed and swore, they laughed, they stomped their feet, and they jumped in anger. Chaos reigned at the gate. I was just looking for an opportunity to climb out of the car and, as a fellow villager, get them to leave. But Hong Taiyue’s clapper talk had by then implied that I was Jinlong’s backer, and I shuddered to think what might happen if I confronted this fired-up crowd. All I could do was put on my shades to hide my face and lean back in the seat until the police came and broke up the demonstration.

I watched as a dozen cops standing on the perimeter of the demonstration brandished their clubs – no, now they’re in the midst of the surging crowd, surrounded.

I adjusted my shades, put on a blue cap, did my best to cover my blue birthmark, and opened the car door.

“Don’t go out there, Chief,” my driver said, clearly alarmed.

But I did, and I forged ahead at a crouch, until I tripped over an extended leg and found myself sprawled on the ground. The earpiece of my glasses had broken off, my cap had flown off my head, and my face was lying on the noon-baked concrete. My nose and my lips hurt. Suddenly I was in the grip of incapacitating despair; dying there would have been the easy way out. I might even have been given a hero’s funeral. But then I thought of Pang Chunmiao; I couldn’t die without seeing her one more time, even if my last glimpse of her was in her coffin. Just as I managed to get back on my feet, a chorus of shouts thundered all around me:

“It’s Lan Jiefang, it’s Blue Face! He’s Ximen Jinlong’s backer!”

“Grab him, don’t let him get away!”

Everything went black, then a blinding light, and the faces around me were all twisted, like horseshoes dunked in water after emerging from the forge, emitting steel blue rays of light. My arms were twisted roughly behind my back. My nose was hot and itchy, and it felt as if a pair of worms had wriggled onto my upper lip. Someone kneed me in the buttocks, someone else kicked me in the calf, and someone else slugged me in the back. I saw my blood drip onto the concrete, where it immediately turned to black steam.

“Is that you, Jiefang?” The familiar voice came from somewhere up ahead, and I quickly composed myself, forced the cobwebs out of my head so I could think, and focused my eyes as best I could. There in front of me was Hong Taiyue’s face, the picture of suffering and hatred. For some strange reason, my nose began to ache, my eyes seemed hot, and tears spilled out, the very thing that happens if you spot a friend when you’re in danger. “Good uncle,” I sobbed, “tell them to let me go…”

“Let him go, all of you, let him go…” I heard his shouts and saw him wave his ox bone like a conductor’s baton. “No violence, this is a peaceful demonstration!”

“Jiefang, you’re the deputy county chief, the people’s official, so you have to stand up for us villagers and stop Ximen Jinlong from carrying out his crazy scheme,” Hong said. “Your father was going to come and petition on our behalf, but your mother fell ill, so he couldn’t come.”

“Uncle Hong, Jinlong and I may have been born to the same mother, but we’ve never gotten along, not even as children. You know that as well as I.” I wiped my bloody nose. “I’m as opposed to his plan as you are, so let me go.”

“Did you all hear that?” Hong waved his ox bone. “Deputy County Chief Lan is on our side!”

“I’ll forward your complaints up the line. But for now, you have to leave.” I pushed aside the people in front of me and, as sternly as I could manage, said, “You’re breaking the law!”

“Don’t let him go until he signs a pledge!”

That made me so mad I reached out and snatched the ox bone out of Hong’s hand and brandished it over my head like a sword, driving the crowd back, all but one person who got hit on the shoulder and another who took it on the head. “The deputy county chief is assaulting people!” That was fine with me, right or wrong. Right or wrong, county chief or not, you people had better get out of my way – I opened a path with the ox bone, broke through the crowd, and made my way into the building, where I took the stairs three steps at a time all the way up to my office. I looked out the window at all those shiny heads beyond the gate, then heard some dull thuds and saw a cloud of pink smoke rise into the air, and I knew that the police had finally resorted to tear gas. Bedlam broke out. I threw down the ox bone and shut the window, ending for the moment my dealings with the world outside. I was not a very good government cadre, because I was more concerned about my problems than the people’s suffering. In fact, I was glad to see those poor people petitioning the government, since it would be up to Pang Kangmei and her ilk to clean up the mess. I picked up the phone and dialed the bookstore number. No answer. I phoned home. My son answered, which took the edge off my anger.

“Kaifang,” I said as calmly as I could, “let me talk to your mother.”

“What’s going on with you and Mom?” he asked unhappily.

“Nothing,” I said. “Let me talk to her.”

“She’s not here, and the dog didn’t come to school to pick me up,” he said. “She didn’t make lunch for me, and all she left was a note.”

“What’s the note say?”

“I’ll read it to you,” he said. “‘Kaifang, make yourself something to eat. If Dad calls, tell him I’m at the Chili Sauce Shop on People’s Avenue.’ What does that mean?”

I didn’t explain it to him. “Son, I can’t tell you, not now.” I hung up and looked around the office. The ox bone lay on my desk, and I had the vague notion that I ought to take something with me, but I couldn’t for the life of me think what that was. I rushed downstairs. The area around the gate was chaotic, with the people crowding together to get away from the nose-pricking, eye-burning smoke. Coughing, cursing, screaming, the sounds all merged in the air. The clamor seemed to be coming to an end near the building, but only beginning out by the gate. Holding my nose, I ran around the building and slipped out through the rear gate, immediately heading east. I ran past the movie theater into Leatherwork Lane, then turned south and headed for People’s Avenue. The distracted shoe repairmen in shops lining both sides of the lane obviously linked the fleeing deputy county chief to the commotion at the county office building. County residents might not recognize Pang Kangmei if they saw her out on the street, but every one of them recognized me.

I spotted her on People’s Avenue, her and the dog beside her, the son of a bitch. Crowds were running all over the place, disregarding traffic laws, as cars and people came together; horns blared. I crossed the street like a kid playing hopscotch. Some people noticed me, most didn’t. I ran up to her, breathless; she just stared at the tree. But you, you son of a bitch, you stared at me, a look of desolation in your eyes.

“What have you done with her?” I demanded.

Her cheeks twitched, and her mouth twisted into something close to a sneer. But her gaze stayed fixed on the tree.

At first all I saw were some black, oily smudges on the trunk, but a closer look revealed clusters of disgusting bluebottle flies. So I looked even harder, and now I saw the two words and three exclamation signs. I smelled blood. My eyes glazed over and I nearly blacked out. What I’d feared more than anything, it seemed, had occurred. She’d killed her and written on the tree with her blood. Still, I forced myself to ask:

“What did you do to her?”

“I didn’t do anything to her.” She kicked the tree, which sent the flies flitting away with a gut-wrenching buzz. She showed me her plaster-wrapped finger. “It’s my blood. I wrote those words with my blood to get her to leave you.”

Like a man who has been relieved of a crushing burden, I was overcome by exhaustion. I sank into a crouch, and though my fingers were cramped, twisted like claws, I managed to fish a pack of cigarettes out of my pocket, lit one, and took a deep drag. The smoke seemed to snake its way up into my brain, where it swirled amid all the valleys and canals to create a sense of well-being. When the flies were flitting away from the tree, the filthy words had leaped tragically into my eyes. But the flies quickly swarmed back and covered them up, making them virtually invisible.

“I told her,” my wife said in a monotone, without looking at me, “that if she leaves you, I won’t say a word. She can go fall in love, get married, have a child, and enjoy a decent life. But if she won’t leave you, then she and I will go down together!” She turned abruptly and pointed her injured, wrapped index finger at me. Her eyes were blazing as, in a shrill voice that reminded me of a cornered dog, she said, “I’ll bite this finger again and expose this scandal of yours by writing it in blood on the gates of the county office building, the Party Committee building, the Political Consultative Conference building, the local People’s Congress building, the police station, the courthouse, the procurator office, the theater, the movie house, the hospital, and every tree and wall I can… until I run out of blood!”

47

Posing as a Hero, a Spoiled Son Smashes a Famous Watch

Saving the Situation, a Jilted Wife Returns to Her Hometown

Your wife, in a floor-length magenta dress, was sitting in the passenger seat of a VW Santana, smelling of mothballs. The neckline, front and back, were decorated with shiny sequins. My thoughts at that moment? If tossed into a river, she’d turn into a scaly fish. She had mousse in her hair and makeup that turned her face so white it looked like limestone and contrasted starkly with her dark neck; it was as if she was wearing a mask. She had on a gold necklace and a pair of gold rings, intended to give her a regal appearance. Your driver pulled a long face until your wife gave him a carton of cigarettes, which turned his face back to oval.

Your son and I were in the backseat, which was stacked high with packages: liquor, tea, pastries, and fabrics. This was my first trip back to Ximen Village since I’d ridden to the county town in Ximen Jinlong’s Jeep. I’d been a three-month-old puppy then; now I was an adult dog with a full range of experiences. Emotionally, I watched the scenery go by on both sides of the broad, tree-lined highway. There were few cars on the highway, so my driver drove at speeds that seemed close to flying.

My excitement was not shared by your son, who sat quietly, absorbed in the Tetris game he was playing on his electronic toy. His intensity was visible in the way he was biting his lower lip, his thumbs dancing on the buttons. He stomped his foot and puffed angrily each time he missed.

This was the first time your wife, who in the past always took the bus or rode her bicycle back to the village, had ridden in the official car in your name. And it was the first time she’d returned looking like the wife of an official instead of wearing her stained work clothes and not bothering about her hair or face. It was the first time she’d brought expensive gifts with her instead of homemade oil fritters. And it was the first time she’d brought me along rather than locking me in the yard to keep an eye on the house. Her attitude toward me had taken a positive turn after I’d snooped out your lover, Pang Chunmiao; more accurately, I suppose, my importance had, in her eyes, increased considerably She often talked to me about what was on her mind, like a garbage pail for her throwaway comments and complaints. And I was not just her confessor figure, I was, it seemed, a sort of adviser:

“What do you think I ought to do, Dog?”

“Do you think she’ll leave him, Dog?”

“Do you think she’ll go see him at his conference in Jinan, Dog, or will he take her someplace else for a little tryst?”

“Do you think there really are women who can’t get by without a man, Dog?”

I dealt with these interminable questions the only way I could: with silence. I gazed up at her, my thoughts leaping up and down in concert with her questions; sometimes flying to heaven, sometimes plummeting to hell.

“Tell me honestly, Dog, who’s right, him or me?” She was sitting on a kitchen stool, leaning up against the butcher block as she sharpened a rusty knife, the edge of the spatula, and a pair of scissors. Apparently, she’d decided to utilize our chat time to put a shiny edge on all the sharp objects in the house. “She’s younger than me, and prettier, but I was young and pretty once. Isn’t that right? Besides, I may not be young and good looking now, but neither is he. He never was good looking, not with that blue birthmark across half his face. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, and the sight of his face makes me shudder. Dog, if Ximen Jinlong hadn’t ruined my reputation as a girl, do you think I’d have stooped to marrying this one? Dog, my life was ruined, all thanks to those two brothers…” When her complaints reached this stage, tears would moisten the front of her clothes. “Now I’m an ugly old woman, while he’s a prominent official, so it’s time to get rid of the old lady, like throwing away a pair of worn socks. Does that make sense to you, Dog? Is that a sign of conscience?” She sharpened the knife with determination. “I have to stand up for myself. I’m going to hone my body till it shines like this knife.” She touched the edge of the blade to her finger. It left a white mark; sharp enough. “We’re going back to the village tomorrow, Dog, and you’re coming along. We’ll go in his car. In all these years I’ve never once sat in his car, keeping public and private separate to protect his good name. I can take credit for half of the prestige he enjoys with the public. Dog, people take advantage of good people, just like people ride good horses. But no more. Now we’re going to be like those other wives of officials, doing whatever we have to do to show people that Lan Jiefang has a wife, and that she is to be reckoned with…”

The car drove across the newly built Bridge of Wealth and into Ximen Village. The squat old stone bridge stood unused nearby, except for a bunch of bare-assed boys taking turns diving into the river below and sending water splashing skyward. Your son put down his game and gazed out the window, a look of envy crossing his face.

“Kaifang,” your wife said, “your cousin Huanhuan is one of those boys.”

I tried to recall what Huanhuan and Gaige looked like. Huanhuan’s face had always been sort of gaunt, and clean, Gaige’s was pale and pudgy, and always decorated with a line of snot down to his lips. I still recalled their unique smells, and that triggered an upsurge, like a raging river, of all the thousands of odors associated with the Ximen Village of eight years before.

“Wow, standing there naked at his age,” he muttered. I couldn’t tell if that was a scornful or an envious comment.

“Don’t forget, when we get home, say sweet things, be polite,” your wife reminded him. “We want your grandparents to be happy and our relatives to admire you.”

“Then smear some honey on my lips!”

“You love to upset me, don’t you?” your wife said. “But those jars of honey are for your grandparents. Say you bought them.”

“Where was I supposed to have gotten the money?” he said with a pout. “They won’t believe me.”

By now the car was driving down the village’s main street, lined with rows of 1980s barracks-style houses, all with the word Demolish on the brick walls. A pair of cranes with their enormous orange arms stood ready to begin rebuilding Ximen Village.

The car pulled up to the gate of the old-fashioned Ximen family compound. The driver honked the horn, bringing a swarm of people out of the yard. I detected their individual odors at the same time that I saw their faces. Signs of age appeared in both their odors and their looks. All the faces were older, looser, and furrowed: Lan Lian’s blue face, Yingchun’s swarthy face, Huang Tong’s yellow face, Qiuxiang’s pale face, and Huzhu’s red face.

Your wife wouldn’t step out of the car until your driver opened the door for her. Then she scooped up the hem of her dress, climbed out, and, because she wasn’t used to wearing heels, nearly fell. I watched as she struggled to keep her balance and not call attention to her gimpy hip.

“Ah, my darling daughter!” Qiuxiang cried out happily as she ran up to Hezuo and seemed about to throw her arms around her. She didn’t, stopping just before she reached her daughter. The once willowy woman whose cheeks were now slack, her belly quite pronounced, had a loving and fawning look in her eyes as she reached out to touch the sequins on your wife’s dress. “My goodness,” she said in a tone that suited her perfectly, “can this really be my own daughter? I thought for a moment a fairy had come down from the heavens!”

Your mother, Yingchun, walked up, aided by a cane, since one side of her body was not functioning. She raised her arm weakly and said to your wife:

“Where’s my darling grandson, Kaifang?”

Your driver opened the other door to bring out the gifts. I jumped out.

“Is that Puppy Four?” Yingchun gasped. “My heavens, he’s big as an ox!”

Your son emerged, I think, reluctantly.

“Kaifang,” Yingchun cried out. “Let Grandma look at you. You’re a head taller, and it’s only been a few months.”

“Hi, Grandma,” he said. Then he said, “Hi, Grandpa,” to your father, who had come up and patted him on the head. Two faces with blue birthmarks, one coarse and old, the other fresh and supple, presented an interesting contrast. Your son said hello to all his grandparents. Then your father turned to your wife. “Where’s his father? Why didn’t he come with you?”

“He’s at a conference in the provincial capital,” she replied.

“Gome inside,” your mother said, thumping the ground with her cane, “come inside, all of you.” She spoke with the authority of the head of the household.

Your wife said to your driver, “You can go back now, but be here at three to pick us up. Don’t be late.”

The people swept your wife and son into the yard, all carrying colorful packages in their arms. You assume I was left out of all the merriment, right? Well, you’re wrong. While the people were enjoying themselves, a black-and-white dog came out of the house. The smell of a sibling filled my nostrils, a surge of memories filled my mind. “Dog One! Elder brother!” I greeted him excitedly. “Dog Four, little brother!” he replied, as excited as I was. Our loud vocalizations startled Yingchun, who turned to look at us.

“You two brothers, how many years has it been? Let’s see…” She counted on her fingers. “One, two, three years… my goodness, it’s been eight years. For a dog that’s half a lifetime!”

We touched noses and licked each other’s face. We were very happy.

Just then my second brother came toward me from the west, along with his mistress, Baofeng. A skinny boy was right behind Baofeng, and the smell told me it was Gaige. I was amazed by how tall he’d gotten.

“Number Two, look who’s here!” Our elder brother cried out. “Dog Two!” I shouted as I ran over to greet him. He was a black dog who’d gotten our father’s genes. We looked a lot alike, but I was much bigger. We three brothers kept nudging and rubbing up against one another, happy to be together again after so long. After a while they asked me about our sister, and I told them she was doing well, that she’d had a litter of three pups, all of whom had been sold, earning a lot of money for her family. But when I asked after our mother, I was met by gloomy looks. With tears in their eyes they told me she’d died, though no one knew she was sick. Fortunately, Lan Lian had made a coffin and buried her in that plot of land that meant so much to him. For a dog it was a fine tribute.

While we three brothers were getting the most out of our reunion, Baofeng looked over at us and seemed shocked when she saw me. “Is that really Dog Four? How’d you get so big? You were the runt of the litter.”

I looked her over while she was looking me over. After three reincarnations, Ximen Nao’s memories still hung on, although buried under a host of incidents over a period of many years.

On a page of history in the distant past, I was her father, she was my daughter. But now I was just a dog, whereas she was my dog-brother’s mistress and the half sister of my master. She had little color in her face, and her hair, though it hadn’t turned gray, looked dry and brittle, like grass growing atop a wall after a frost. She was dressed all in black, except for patches of white on her cloth slippers. She was mourning the loss of her husband, Ma Liangcai. The gloomy smell of death clung to her. But, thinking back, she’d always had a gloomy, melancholy smell. She seldom smiled, and when she did, it was like reflected light on snow – dreary and cold, a look that was hard to forget. The boy behind her, Ma Gaige, was as skinny as his father. A onetime pudgy-faced little boy had grown into a gaunt teenager with ears that stuck out prominently; surprisingly, he had several gray hairs. He was wearing blue shorts, a short-sleeved white shirt – the Ximen Elementary School uniform – and a pair of white sneakers. He was carrying a plastic bowl filled with cherries in both hands.

As for me, I followed my two dog brothers in a look around Ximen Village. I’d left home as a puppy and had virtually no impressions of the place outside of the Ximen family home, but this was the village where I was born; in the words of Mo Yan in one of his essays, “hometowns are tied to a person by blood.” So as we strolled down the streets and scoped out the village in general, I was deeply moved. I saw some familiar faces and detected many unfamiliar smells. There were also a lot of familiar smells that were somehow absent – no trace at all of the strongest smells of the village back then, of oxen and donkeys. Many of the new smells were of rusted metal emanating from yards we passed, and I knew that the mechanization dream of the People’s Communes had not been realized until land reform and independent farming were once again the backbone of agricultural policy. My nose told me that the village was awash in feelings of excitement and anxiety on the eve of major changes. People all wore peculiar expressions, as if they thought that something very big was about to happen.

We returned to the Ximen house, followed by Ximen Jinlong’s son, Ximen Huan, who was one of the last to arrive. I had no trouble spotting him by his smell, even though he reeked of fish and mud. He was naked but for a pair of nylon bathing trunks and a brand-name T-shirt thrown over his shoulder. He was carrying a line of silver-scaled little fish. An expensive watch glittered on his wrist. He spotted me first, dropped what he was carrying, and ran up to me. Obviously, he saw me as a ride, but no self-respecting dog was about to let something like that happen. I moved out of the way.

His mother, Huzhu, came running out of the house.

“Huanhuan!” she shouted. “Where have you been? And why are you so late? I told you your aunt and cousin Kaifang were coming.”

“I was fishing.” He picked up the line of fish to show her. “How could I not greet such honored guest without fish?” he said in a tone of voice that belied his young years.

Huzhu scooped up the shirt he’d tossed to the ground and said, “Who do you think you’re greeting with guppies like this?” She reached up and brushed the mud and scales out of her son’s hair. “Huanhuan,” she blurted out, “where are your shoes?”

He smiled. “I won’t lie to you, dear mother, I traded them for these fish.”

“What? You’re going to be the ruination of this family if you keep this up! Your father had someone bring those shoes from Shanghai. They were Nikes, a thousand yuan a pair. And these few guppies are what you got for them?”

“There are more than a few, Mama,” Ximen Huan said earnestly, counting the fish for all to see. “There are nine here. How can you say there are only a few?”

“See, everybody, what a foolish son I’m raising?” Huzhu took the line of fish from her son and held them high. “He went down to the river early this morning,” she said to the people crowding into the main house, “saying he was going to catch some fish for our guests. This is what he brought back after all that time. And he had to swap a pair of brand-new Nike sneakers to get them. Wouldn’t you say foolish is a good description?” In a blustery move, Huzhu smacked his shoulder with the line of fish and said, “Who’d you give the shoes to? I want you to go get them back.”

“Mama,” he said, looking at her out of the corner of his slightly crossed eye, “you don’t expect anyone worthy of respect to go back on his word, do you? It’s just a pair of sneakers. Why not just buy another pair? Dad’s got plenty of money!”

“Shut up, you little imp!” she said. “Who says your father has plenty of money?”

“If he doesn’t, then no one does,” he said with a sideward glance. “My father is a rich man, one of the richest anywhere!”

“Now you’re showing off, and showing how foolish you are,” his mother said. “I hope your father raises welts on your bottom when he gets home!”

“What’s going on?” Ximen Jinlong asked as he stepped out of his Cadillac. The car glided ahead silently. He was dressed for leisure. His head was shaved as clean as his cheeks, and he had a bit of a potbelly. Cell phone in hand, he was the prototypical big-time businessman. After hearing what Huzhu had to say, he patted his son on the head and said, “In economic terms, trading a pair of thousand-yuan Nikes for nine little guppies makes no sense. But from a moral perspective, willingly sacrificing a thousand-yuan pair of sneakers for some fish to greet visitors is unquestionably the right thing to do. So, based solely on this incident, I’ll neither praise nor punish you. But what I will praise you for”-at this point, Jinlong thumped his son on the shoulder -“is your adherence to the principle of ‘my word, once spoken, even a team of four horses cannot bring it back.’ Once the trade was made, you could not go back on your word.”

“What do you think of that?” Ximen Huan said to his mother, pleased with himself. He picked up the fish. “Grandma,” he said loudly, “take these and make some fish broth for our honored guests!”

“The way you’re spoiling him,” Huzhu said to Jinlong under her breath, “I hate to think how he’ll turn out.” She spun around and grabbed her son by the arm. “Go inside, little ancestor, and change your clothes. How can you think of greeting guests looking like this?”

“What a fine animal!” Ximen Jinlong remarked with a thumbs-up as soon as he saw me. Then he said hello to all the people who had walked outside to greet him. He sang your son’s praises: “Worthy nephew Kaifang, I can see you’ve got talent. You’re no ordinary young man. Your father is a deputy county chief, but you’ll be a provincial governor when you grow up!” Then he consoled Ma Gaige: “Stand up straight and proud, young man, there’s nothing for you to fear or worry about. You’ll never go hungry as long as your uncle has food on his table.” Then he turned to Baofeng. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. Don’t forget, no one can bring back the dead. You’re sad, well, so am I. Losing him was like losing my right arm.” He turned and nodded to the two elderly couples. Finally, he said to your wife, “I’d like to drink to my sister-in-law. At noon the other day, when I gave a celebratory banquet for the passage of our reconstruction plans, Jiefang was the one who suffered. That old scalawag Hong Taiyue may be stubborn, but you have to love him, and I hope a little jail time will teach him a lesson.”

At supper that afternoon your wife maintained the proper attitude – not too cold and not too hot – of a deputy county chiefs wife. As enthusiastic host, Jinlong made it clear who was the head of this family. But Ximen Huan was the liveliest person at the table, and the way he dealt with banquet etiquette showed what a sharp-witted boy he was. Since disciplining his son was not a concern of Jinlong’s, Ximen Huan remained out of control. He poured himself a glass of the liquor and then another for Kaifang. “Here, Cousin Kaifang,” he said with a stiff tongue, “drink this. I want to talk to you about something-”

Your son looked over at your wife.

“Don’t look at her – we boys make up our own minds at times like this. Here, to you, a toast!”

“That’s enough, Huanhuan,” Huzhu said.

“Go ahead and touch it with your lips,” your wife said to your son.

So the two boys clinked glasses. Huanhuan tipped his head back and drained his glass, then held the empty glass out to Kaifang, and said:

“Drink out of… out of respect.”

So Kaifang touched his lips to the liquor and set down his glass.

“You… that’s not how a pal does things-”

“That’s enough,” Jinlong announced as he tapped his son on the head. “Stop there. Don’t try to force people to do something they don’t want to do. Trying to get somebody to drink doesn’t make you a man!”

“Okay, Papa… I’ll do as you say.” Huanhuan set down his glass, took off his wristwatch, and set it down in front of Kaifang. “This is Swiss-made, a Longines,” he said. “I swapped my slingshot to a Korean businessman for it, now I’d like to trade it for that dog of yours.”

“No way!” your son said staunchly.

Huanhuan was unhappy, of course, but he didn’t make a scene.

“I’m willing to bet,” he said just as staunchly, “that you’ll make the trade one day.”

“No more of that, son,” Huzhu said. “You’ll be going to town in a few months to start middle school, and you can see the dog when you visit your aunt.”

And so the topic of conversation around the table turned to me. “I find it hard to believe,” your mother said, “that a litter of puppies could all be so different.”

“My son and I are lucky to have this dog,” your wife said. “His dad is wrapped up in his work day and night, and I have my job, so it’s up to the dog to watch the house. He also takes Kaifang to school and picks him up in the afternoon.”

“He really is an awesome animal,” Jinlong said as he picked up a braised pig’s foot and threw it to me. “Dog Four,” he said, “don’t be a stranger just because you’re part of a well-to-do family.”

The smell of that pig’s foot was enticing, and I heard my stomach rumble. But then I looked over at my brother dogs and let it lie there.

“They really are different,” Jinlong said emotionally. “Huan-huan, you can learn some things from that dog.” He picked up two more pig’s feet with his chopsticks and tossed them to Dog One and Dog Two. “To be a real man you have to behave like a great one.”

My brothers tore into the meat they’d been given, gobbling it up so fast their throats made funny sounds. But I let mine lie there as I fixed my eyes on your wife. When she gestured it was all right to eat, I took a tentative bite and chewed it, slowly and noiselessly. Someone had to preserve a dog’s dignity.

“You’re right, Papa,” Huanhuan said as he retrieved his wrist-watch. “I want to act like someone from a great family.” He got up and went into his room. He came out again with a hunting rifle.

“Huanhuan,” Huzhu shouted in alarm, “what are you doing?” She stood up.

Ximen Jinlong just sat there unflappably, a smile on his face. “I’d like to see what my son’s made of. Is he going to shoot his uncle’s dog? That’s no way to be a virtuous man. Or will he shoot our and his aunt’s dogs? That’d be even worse!”

“You underestimate me, Papa,” Huanhuan said angrily. He shouldered the rifle, and though he could barely support it, the move showed he’d had practice, was a bit of a prodigy. Then he hung his expensive watch on the apricot tree, backed off ten paces, and expertly slammed a cartridge into the chamber. An adult sneer settled on his face. The wristwatch glittered in the bright noonday sun. I heard Huzhu’s fearful screams retreat into the distance, while the sound of the watch had a profoundly affecting quality Time and space seemed to freeze into a blinding beam of light, as the ticking sound created the image of an enormous pair of black scissors cutting the beam of light into sections. Huanhuan’s first shot went wide of the mark, leaving a white scar in the tree trunk. His second shot hit the target. As the bullet smashed the watch into a thousand pieces -

The numbers crumbled. Time was shattered.

48

Public Anger Brings on a Group Trial

Personal Feelings Turn Brothers into Enemies

Jinlong phoned to tell me that our mother was desperately ill. But the minute I stepped in the door, I realized he’d tricked me.

Mother was ill, all right, but not seriously. Aided by her prickly-ash cane, she made it over to a bench in the western corner of the living room. Her head, now totally gray, quaked continuously, and murky tears slid down her cheeks. Father was sitting to her right, but far enough away that a third person could sit between them. When he saw me walk in the door, he took off one of his shoes, jumped to his feet, and, with a muffled roar, slapped me across the face with its sole. My ears rang, I saw stars, and my cheek stung like crazy I couldn’t help but notice that when he jumped to his feet, his end of the bench flew up and Mother fell first to the floor and then backward. Her cane swung out straight, like a rifle aimed at my chest. I remember calling out “Mother!” and wanting to run over and help her up, but I stumbled backward instead, all the way to the door, where I sat down on the lintel. Just when I felt a pain shoot up from my tailbone, I fell backward, and just when it felt like my head was cracked on the concrete step, I wound up lying on my back, head down, feet up, half in and half out of the room.

No one offered to help, so I got up on my own. My ears were still ringing and there was a metallic taste in my mouth. I could see that Father had put so much into the slap he was reeling. But once he’d regained his balance, he charged me again with the shoe. Half his face was blue, half was purple; green sparks seemed to shoot from his eyes. He’d experienced plenty of anger over a lifetime of hardships, and I was very familiar with how he looked when he was angry. But there were lots of new emotions mixed into his anger this time: extreme sadness and immense shame, to mention just two. He hadn’t slapped me with his shoe just for show. No, he’d put everything he had into it. If I hadn’t been in the prime of my life, with good, hard bones, that slap could have changed the shape of my face. As it was, it rattled my brain, and when I got to my feet, I was not only dizzy, I even forgot for a moment where I was. The figures in front of me seemed weightless, like will-o’-the-wisps, ghostly floating images.

I think it was Jinlong who stopped the blue-faced old man from hitting me a second time. But even with a pair of arms around him, my father kept jumping up and down and squirming like a fish yanked out of the water. Then he threw the heavy black shoe at me. I didn’t try to get out of the way; my brain had fallen asleep on the job and forgot to tell my body what to do. I could only watch as the ugly thing flew at me like monster, but as if it were actually flying toward some other body It hit me in the chest and stayed there for a split second before falling clumsily to the floor. I probably thought of looking down at that strange, shoelike object, but the cobwebs in my head and the veil over my eyes kept me from doing such an inappropriate, meaningless thing. My left nostril felt hot and wet for a moment before a worm began wriggling above my upper lip. I reached up and touched it, and when I pulled my hand away, though I was still in a fog, I saw some green, oily stuff that gave off a dull glow on my finger. I heard a soft voice – was it Pang Ghunmiao?-whisper in my ear: Your nose is bleeding. As the blood flowed, a crack opened up through the fog in my brain, letting in a cool breeze that spread its coolness throughout, until I was finally able to emerge from my idiocy. My brain went back to work, my nervous system returned to normal. This was my second bloody nose within two weeks. The first was when I’d been tripped by one of Hong Taiyue’s volunteer activists in front of the county government office building, and I’d sprawled on the hard ground like a hungry dog going after a pile of shit. Ah, now I remember. I saw Baofeng help Mother to her feet. Slobber was running down her chin on the twisted half of her face.

“My son,” she said in a barely intelligible voice. “Don’t you dare hit my son-”

Mother’s prickly-ash cane lay on the floor like a dead snake. She was struggling with such astonishing strength that Baofeng couldn’t hold her without help. By the look of it, she wanted to go pick up her dead-snake cane, and when that became clear to Baofeng, she reached out her foot, without letting go of Mother, and dragged the cane closer, then quickly bent down, picked it up, and put it in Mother’s hand. The first thing she did was point the cane at Father, who was still wrapped up in Jinlong’s arms, but her arm lacked the strength to control it, and it fell to the floor again. So she abandoned violence and railed at Father, her words muffled but understandable:

“Don’t you dare hit my son, you mean…”

The unpleasantness continued for a while longer before peace was reestablished. The cobwebs disappeared. Father was crouching against the wall, holding his head in his hands. I couldn’t see his face, just his quill-like hair. Someone had put the bench back the way it was, and Baofeng was sitting on it, her arms still around Mother. Jinlong picked up the shoe and laid it on the floor in front of Father.

“At first I didn’t want to get involved in a scandal like this,” he said to me icily. “But when they asked me to, as a son I had no choice.” His arm described an arc from one parent to the other, and I saw that they’d done whatever they’d been moved to do, that now they were consumed with sadness and helplessness. That was when I spotted Pang Hu and Wang Leyun, who were sitting behind a table near the center of the room. The sight of them brought me crippling shame. Then I turned and saw Huang Tong and Wu Qiuxiang, sitting side by side on a bench against the eastern wall, and Huang Huzhu, who was standing behind her mother and drying her tears with her sleeve. Even in the midst of all that tension, I couldn’t help notice her captivatingly glossy, lush, thick, and mysterious hair.

“Everyone knows you want a divorce from Hezuo,” Jinlong said. “We also know all about you and Chunmiao.”

“You little blue face, you have no conscience,” Wu Qiuxiang said sobbingly as she made an attempt to come at me; Jinlong blocked her way, and Huzhu helped her sit back down. “What did my daughter ever do to you?” she asked. “And what makes you think she’s unworthy of you? Lan Jiefang, aren’t you afraid the heavens will strike you dead if you go through with this?”

“You think you can get married when you want and divorced when you want, is that it?” Huang Tong said angrily. “You were nothing when Hezuo married you, and now that you’ve had a bit of success, you want nothing more to do with us. Well, you’re not getting off that easy. We’ll take this up with the local Party Committee or the Provincial Party Committee, all the way up to the Central Committee if necessary!”

“Young brother, divorce or not, that’s your business. By law not even your own parents have the last word in that. But this whole affair touches many lives, and if word got out, there’d be hell to pay. I want you to hear what Uncle and Aunty Pang have to say.”

I tell you from the bottom of my heart that I did not put much stock in what my parents or the Huangs had to say, but in the face of the Pangs, I felt like finding a hole and crawling into it.

“I shouldn’t be calling you Jiefang anymore, I ought to be calling you Deputy Chief Lan,” Pang Hu said sarcastically. He coughed a couple of times and then turned to his wife, who had grown quite heavy. “Which year was it they came into the cotton processing plant?” Without waiting for his wife to answer, he said, “It was 1976, when you, Lan Jiefang, were just a crazy, know-nothing kid. But I took you in and taught you how to evaluate cotton, a light but highly respectable job. Lots of youngsters who were smarter, better looking, and had a better background than you carried bundles of cotton weighing a couple of hundred jin apiece eight hours a day, sometimes nine. They were on their feet the whole time. You should know what kind of job that was. You were a seasonal worker who should have gone back to your village home after three months, but when I thought about how good your parents had been to us, I kept you on. Then, later on, when the county commune was looking for people, I argued your case until they agreed to take you. Know what the county commune leaders said to me at the time? They said, ‘Old Pang, how come you want to send a blue-faced demonic-looking youngster to us?’ Know what I said to them? I said, ‘He’s an ugly kid, I’ll give you that, but he’s honest and trustworthy, and he can write.’ Granted, you did a good job for them and kept getting promotions, which made me happy and proud. But you have to know that without my recommendation to the county commune and Kangmei’s behind-the-scene support, you wouldn’t be where you are today. You’re well off, so you want to exchange one wife for another. That’s nothing new, and if putting your conscience aside and subjecting yourself to the taunts and curses of everyone around you don’t mean a thing to you, then go ahead, get your divorce. What difference can that make to the Pang family? But, goddamn it, you’ve gone and taken our Chunmiao… do you know how old she is, Lan Jiefang? She’s exactly twenty years younger than you, still a child. If you go ahead with this, then you’re lower than a beast! How will you be able to face your parents if you do this? Or your in-laws? Or your wife and son? Or us?”

By this time both Pang and his wife were crying. She reached over to dry his tears; he pushed her hand away and said with a mixture of sorrow and anger, “You can destroy yourself, Deputy Chief, there’s nothing I can do about that. But you cannot take my daughter with you!”

I did not apologize to any of them. Their words, especially those of Pang Hu, had bored powerfully into my heart, and even though I had a thousand reasons to tell them all I was sorry, I didn’t. I had ten thousand excuses, and I knew that I ought to break it off with Pang Chunmiao and go back to my wife, but I also knew that was something I could never do.

When Hezuo had written that message in blood, I actually considered ending the affair then, but as time passed, my longing for Chunmiao increased, until I felt as if my soul had left me. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, and I couldn’t get a thing done at the office. Hell, I didn’t feel like getting anything done. The first thing I did after returning from the provincial capital was go to the bookstore to see Chunmiao, only to find an unfamiliar ruddy-faced woman standing where she usually stood. In a tone of cold indifference she told me that Pang Chunmiao had requested sick leave. The other two clerks were sneaking looks at me. Go ahead, look! Say bad things about me! I don’t care. Next I went to the bookstore’s singles dormitory. Her door was locked. From there I managed to find the home of Pang Hu and Wang Leyun, fronted by a village-style yard. The gate was padlocked. I shouted, but only managed to get neighborhood dogs barking. Despite knowing that Chunmiao would not run to the home of her sister, Kangmei, I nonetheless summoned up the courage to knock at her door. She lived in top-of-the-line County Committee housing, a two-story building protected by a high wall to keep visitors out. My deputy county chief ID card got me past the gate guard, and, as I said, I knocked at her door. Dogs in the compound set up a chorus of barking. I could see there was a camera above the door, so if anyone was home, they’d see it was me. No one came to the door. The gate guard came running up when he heard the noise, a look of panic on his face. He didn’t tell me to leave, he begged me to leave. I left and walked out to the busy street, barely able to keep from shouting: Where are you, Chunmiao? I can’t live another day without you! I’d rather die than lose you! I don’t give a damn about my reputation, my position, my family, riches… I just want you. At least let me see you one more time. If you say you want to leave me, then I’ll die, and you can…

I didn’t apologize to them and I didn’t say what I was going to do. I got down on my knees in front of my father and mother and kowtowed. Then I turned and did the same to the Huangs, who were, after all, my in-laws. Then I faced north and, with all the respect and solemnity I could manage, kowtowed to Pang Hu and his wife. I was grateful for their support and even more grateful for bringing Chunmiao into this world. Then I stood up and backed over to the door, where I bowed deeply, straightened up, turned around, and, without a word, walked out of the house and down the road, heading west.

I could tell by my driver’s attitude that my days as an official had come to an end. I’d no sooner returned from the provincial capital than he complained to me that my wife had made him drive her and my son somewhere, and not on official business. He hadn’t come to pick me up, claiming that the car was experiencing electrical problems. I’d had to hitch a ride with the Agricultural Bureau bus home. Now I was walking toward the county town. But did I really want to go back there? To do what? I should be going to wherever Chunmiao was. But where was she?

Jinlong drove up in his Cadillac and stopped alongside me. He opened the door.

“Get in.”

“That’s okay.”

“I said get in!” Clearly he would brook no disobedience. “I want to talk to you.”

I climbed into his luxurious car.

Next I was in his luxurious office.

He sat slouched in a burgundy leather armchair, leisurely smoking a cigarette and staring up at the chandelier.

“Would you say that life is like a dream?” he asked light-heartedly.

I silently waited for him to go on.

“Do you remember how we used to tend our ox on the riverbank?” he said. “In order to get you to join the commune I slugged you once every day. At the time, who could have imagined that twenty years later the People’s Commune would be like a house built on sand, washed away in front of our eyes? I’d never have believed back then that one day you would rise to the position of deputy county chief and I’d be the CEO of a corporation. So many of the sacred things we’d have lost our heads over aren’t worth a dog’s fart today.”

I held my tongue, knowing that this wasn’t what he wanted to talk about.

He sat up straight, stubbed out the cigarette he’d just lit, and gazed intently at me.

“There are plenty of pretty girls in town, so why jeopardize everything to chase after that skinny monkey? Why didn’t you come to me if you wanted some fun? Black, white, fat, skinny, I could easily get you what you wanted. You want to try a change of diet? Those Russian girls only charge a thousand a night!”

“If this is what you dragged me over here to talk about,” I said as I got to my feet, “I’m not sticking around.”

“Stay where you are!” he shouted angrily, slamming his fist on the desk and sending the ashes in his ashtray flying. “You’re a bastard, through and through. A rabbit doesn’t eat the grass around its burrow, and in this case, it’s not even very good grass.” He lit another cigarette, took a deep drag, and coughed. “What do you know about my relationship with Pang Kangmei?” he asked as he stubbed out the cigarette. “She’s my mistress! The planned Ximen Village resort, if you want to know, is our venture, our bright future, a future you’re screwing up with your dick!”

“I’m not interested in what you’re doing,” I said. “My only interest is Chunmiao.”

“I take it that means you’re not giving up,” he said. “Do you really want to marry the girl?”

I nodded forcefully.

“Well, it’s not going to happen, no way!” He stood up and paced the floor of his spacious office before walking up and thumping me in the chest. “Break this off at once,” he said unambiguously. “Anything else you want to do, just leave it to me. After a while you’ll realize that women are what they are, and nothing more.”

“You’ll excuse me,” I said, “but that’s disgusting. You have no right to interfere in my life, and I certainly don’t need you to help me arrange it.”

I turned to leave, but he grabbed my arm and said in a milder tone:

“Okay, maybe there is such a thing as love, damn it. So what do you say we work out a compromise? Get your emotions under control and knock off this talk about divorce. Stop seeing Ghunmiao for a while, and I’ll arrange a transfer to another county, maybe even farther, one of the metropolitan areas or a provincial capital, at the same level you are now. You put in a little time, and I’ll see that you get a promotion. Then if you still want to divorce Hezuo, leave everything to me. All it’ll take is money, three hundred thousand, half a million, a million, whatever it takes. There isn’t a goddamn woman alive who’d pass up money like that. Then you send for Pang Ghunmiao, and the two of you live like a couple of lovebirds. Truth is,”-he paused-“this isn’t the way we wanted to do it, since it’s a lot of trouble. But I am your brother, and she is her sister.”

“Thank you,” I said, “for your wise counsel. But I don’t need it, I really don’t.” I walked to the door, took a few steps back toward him, and said, “Like you say, you are my brother, and they are sisters, so I advise you not to let your appetites grow too big. The gods have long arms. I, Lan Jiefang, am having an affair, but, after all, that’s a problem of morality. But one day, if you two aren’t careful…”

“Who are you to be lecturing me?” He sneered. “Don’t blame me for what happens! Now get the hell out of here!”

“What have you done with Ghunmiao?” I asked him dispassionately.

“Get out!” His angry shout was absorbed by the leather padding on the door.

I was back on Ximen Village streets, this time with tears in my eyes.

I didn’t even turn my head when I walked past the Ximen family home. I knew I was an unfilial son, that both my parents would be gone before long, but I didn’t flinch.

Hong Taiyue stopped me at the bridgehead. He was drunk. He grabbed my lapel and said loudly:

“Lan Jiefang, you son of a bitch, you locked me up, an old revolutionary! One of Chairman Mao’s loyal warriors! A fighter against corruption! Well, you can lock me up, but you can’t lock up the truth! A true materialist fears nothing! And I’m sure not afraid of you people!”

Some men came out of the public house from which Hong had been ejected to pull him away from me. The tears in my eyes kept me from seeing who they were.

I crossed the bridge. The bright, golden sunlight made the river look like a great highway. Hong Taiyue’s shouts followed me:

“Give me back my ox bone, you son of a bitch!”

49

Hezuo Cleans a Toilet In a Rainstorm

Jiefang Makes a Decision After a Beating

A category-nine typhoon brought an almost unprecedented rainfall at night. I was always listless during spells of wet weather, wanting nothing more than to lie down and sleep. But that night, sleep was the furthest thing from my mind; both my hearing and smell were at their peak of sensitivity; my eyesight, owing to the constant streaks of powerful blue-white light, was dimmed, though not enough to affect my ability to discern each blade of grass and drop of water in every corner of the yard. Nor did it affect my ability to spot the cowering cicadas among the leaves of the parasol tree.

The rain fell nonstop from seven until nine o’clock that night. Streaks of lightning made it possible for me to see rain flying down from the eaves of the main building like a wide cataract. The rain came out of the plastic tubing on the side rooms like watery pillars that arced downward onto the cement ground. The ditch beside the path was stopped up by all sorts of things, forcing the water up over the sides, where it swamped the path and the steps in front of the gate. A family of hedgehogs living in a woodpile by the wall was driven out by the rising water; their lives were clearly in danger.

I was about to sound a warning to your wife, but before the bark emerged, a lantern was lit beneath the eaves, lighting up the entire yard. Out she stepped, shielded from the rain by a conical straw hat and a plastic rain cape. Her thin calves were exposed below her shorts; she was wearing plastic sandals with broken straps. Water cascading off the eaves knocked her rain hat to one side, where the wind blew it off her head altogether. Her hair was drenched in seconds. She ran to the west-side room, picked up a shovel from the pile of coal behind me, and ran back into the rain. Pooling rainwater swallowed up her calves as she ran; a bolt of lightning smothered the light from the lamp and turned her face, to which strands of wet hair clung, ghostly white. It was a frightening sight.

She carried the shovel into the alley through the south gate. Crashing sounds came from inside almost at once. It was the dirtiest and messiest part of the yard, with decaying leaves, plastic bags blown in on the wind, and cat droppings. The sound of splashing water emerged; the level of standing water in the yard was lowering, and the drainage ditches were spiriting water away. But your wife remained inside, where the sounds of a shovel on bricks and tiles, as well as on the surface of water, came on the air. Her smell permeated the area; she was a hardworking, resilient woman.

Finally, she came out through the drainage ditch. The plastic rain cape was still tied around her neck, but she was soaked to the skin. Streaks of lightning made her face show up whiter than ever, her calves thinner. She was dragging the shovel behind her and walking hunched over, looking a bit like the way female demons are described in stories. She wore a contented look. She picked up her straw hat and shook it several times, but instead of putting it on her head, she hung it from a nail on the side room wall. Then she propped up a Chinese rosebush, apparently pricking her finger in the process. She stuck her finger in her mouth, and as the rain lessened a bit, she looked up into the sky and let the rain hit her squarely in the face. Harder, harder, come down harder! She untied the rain cape to expose her rail-thin body to the rain and stumbled toward the toilet in the southeast corner of the yard, where she removed a cement cover.

Your son came running out with an umbrella and held it over her head.

“Come inside, Mama, you’re wet from head to toe.” He was crying.

“What are you so worried about? You should be happy it’s raining hard.” She pushed the umbrella over your son’s head. “We haven’t had rain like this for a long time, not once since we moved into town. It’s wonderful. Our yard has never been this clean. And not just ours, but every family’s. If not for this rain, the town would stink.”

I barked twice to approve her attitude.

“Hear that?” she said. “I’m not the only one who’s happy with this rain. So is he.”

But eventually she did go inside, where, my nose told me, she dried her hair and body. Then I heard her open her wardrobe, and I got a strong whiff of dry, mothballed clothes. I breathed a sigh of relief. “Crawl into bed, Mistress. Get a good night’s sleep.”

Not long after the clock struck midnight, a familiar smell came on the air from Limin Avenue, followed by the smell of a Jeep that was losing oil, accompanied by the roar of the engine. Both the smell and the sound were coming my way. It pulled to a stop in front of your gate. My gate, too, of course.

I started barking ferociously before whoever it was even knocked at the gate, and raced over there, my paws barely touching the ground, sending the dozen or so bats living in the gateway arch flying into the blackness of night. Yours was the only one of the several odors I knew. The pounding at the gate created hollow, scary sounds.

The light beneath the eaves came on, and your wife, a coat over her shoulders, walked out into the yard. “Who is it?” she shouted. The response was more pounding. Resting my front paws on the gate, I stood up and barked at the people on the other side. Your smell was strong, but what made me bark anxiously were the evil smells that surrounded you, like a pack of wolves with a captive sheep. Your wife buttoned up her coat and stepped into the gateway, where she switched on the electric light. A bunch of fat geckos were resting on the gateway wall; bats that hadn’t flown away were hanging from the overhead. “Who is it?” she asked a second time. “Open the door,” came a muffled voice from the other side. “You’ll know who it is when you open up.” “How am I supposed to know who comes knocking at my door in the middle of the night?” Speaking softly, the person on the other side said, “Deputy County Chief has been beaten up. We’ve brought him home.” After a moment’s hesitation, your wife unlocked the gate and opened it a crack. Your face, hideously disfigured, and matted hair appeared in front of her. With a scream, your wife opened the gate wide. Two men flung you like a dead pig into the yard, where you knocked her to the ground and wound up crushing her beneath you. They jumped down off the steps, and I ran, lightning quick, after one of them. I dug my claws into his back. All three men were wearing black rubber raincoats and dark glasses. The two made for a waiting Jeep, where the third man was sitting in the driver’s seat. Since he’d left it idling, the smells of gasoline and oil came crashing at me through the rain. The raincoat was so slick the man slipped out of my grasp as he jumped into the middle of the street and ran up to the Jeep, leaving me in the rain, a predator without his prey. The water, which was up to my belly, slowed me down, but I pushed myself to go after the other man, who was climbing into the car. Since his raincoat protected his rear end, I sank my teeth into his calf. He screeched as he shut the door, catching the hem of his raincoat; my nose banged into the shut door. Meanwhile, the first man jumped in on the other side and the Jeep lurched forward, spraying water behind it. I took out after it, but was stopped by all the filthy water splashing in my face.

When I made it back through the dirty water, I saw your wife with her head under your left armpit, your left arm draped loosely over her chest like an old gourd. Her right arm was around your waist, and your head was leaning against hers. She struggled to move you forward. You were wobbly, but you could still move, which not only told her you were alive but that your mind was relatively clear.

After helping her close the gate I walked around the yard to get my emotions under control. Your son came running outside dressed only in his underwear. “Papa!” he shouted, starting to sob. He ran up to your other side to help your mother support you, and the three of you walked the remaining thirty or so paces from the yard to your wife’s bed. The tortuous trek seemed to take an eternity.

I forgot that I was a mud-streaked dog and felt that my fate was tied up with yours. I followed behind you, whining sadly, all the way up to your wife’s bed. You were covered with mud and blood and your clothes were ripped; you looked like a man who’d been whipped. The smell of urine in your pants was strong; obviously you’d peed your pants when they were beating you. Even though your wife valued cleanliness above almost everything, she didn’t hesitate to lay you down on her bed, a sign of affection.

Not only didn’t she care how dirty you were when she laid you down on the bed, she even let me, dirty as I was, stay in the room with you. Your son knelt by the bed, crying.

“What happened, Papa? Who did this to you?”

You opened your eyes, reached out, and rubbed his head. There were tears in your eyes.

Your wife brought in a basin of hot water and laid it on the bedside table. My nose told me she’d added some salt. After tossing a towel into the water, she began taking off your clothes. You fought to sit up. “No,” you sputtered, but she pushed your arms back, knelt beside the bed, and unbuttoned your shirt. It was obvious you didn’t want your wife’s help, but you were too weak to resist. Your son helped her take off your shirt, and so you lay there, naked from the waist up, on your wife’s bed as she wiped your body down with the salty water, some of her tears, also salty, dripping onto your chest. Your son’s eyes were wet, and so were yours, tears slipping out and down the sides of your face.

Your wife didn’t ask a single question during all this time, and you didn’t say a word to her. But every few minutes, your son asked you:

“Who did this to you, Papa? I’ll go avenge you!” You did not answer, and your wife said nothing, as if by secret agreement. Seeing no alternative, your son turned to me.

“Who beat my father, Little Four? Take me to find them so I can avenge him!”

I barked softly, apologetically, since the typhoon winds had scattered the smells.

With the help of your son, your wife managed to get you into dry clothes, a pair of white silk pajamas, very loose and very comfortable; but the contrast made your face appear darker, the birthmark bluer. After tossing your dirty clothes into the basin and mopping the floor dry, she said to your son:

“Go to bed, Kaifang, it’ll soon be light outside. You have school tomorrow.”

She picked up the basin, took your son’s hand, and left the room. I followed.

After washing the dirty clothes, she went over to the east-side room, where she turned on the light and sat on the stool, her back to the chopping board; with her hands on her knees, she rested her head on her hands and stared straight ahead, apparently absorbed in her thoughts.

She was in the light, I was in the dark, so I saw her face clearly, her purple lips and glassy eyes. What was she thinking? No way I could know. But she sat there until dawn broke.

It was time to cook breakfast. It looked to me like she was making noodles. Yes, that’s what she was doing. The smell of flour overwhelmed all the putrid smells around me. I heard snores coming from the bedroom. Well, you’d finally managed to get some sleep. Your son woke up, his eyes heavy with sleep, and ran to the toilet; as I listened to the sound of him relieving himself, the smell of Pang Ghunmiao penetrated all the sticky, murky odors in the air and rapidly drew near, straight to our gate, without a moment’s hesitation. I barked once and then lowered my head, overcome by weighty emotions, a mixture of sadness and dejection, as if a giant hand were clamped around my throat.

Ghunmiao rapped at the gate, a loud, determined, almost angry sound. Your wife ran out to open the gate, and the two women stood there staring at each other. You’d have thought there was no end to what they wanted to say, but not a word was uttered. Chunmiao stepped – dashed is more like it – into the yard. Your wife limped behind her and reached out as if to grab her from behind. Your son dashed out onto the walkway and ran around in circles, his face taut, looking like a boy who simply didn’t know what to do. In the end, he ran over and shut the gate.

By looking through the window I was able to watch Chunmiao rush down the hallway and into your wife’s bedroom. Loud wails emerged almost at once. Your wife was next into the room, where her wails supplanted Chunmiao’s with their intensity. Your son was crouching alongside the well, crying and splashing water on his face.

Once the women’s crying stopped, difficult negotiations began. I couldn’t make out everything that was said, owing to the sobs and sniveling, but picked up most of it.

“How could you be so cruel as to beat him that badly?” Chunmiao said that.

“Chunmiao, there’s no reason for you and me to be enemies. With all the eligible bachelors out there, why are you dead set on destroying this family?”

“I know how unfair this is to you, and I wish I could leave him, but I can’t. Like it or not, this is my fate…”

“You choose, Jiefang,” your wife said.

After a moment of silence, I heard you say:

“I’m sorry, Hezuo, but I want to be with her.”

I saw Chunmiao help you to your feet and watched as you two walked down the hall, out the door, and into the yard, where your son was holding a basin of water. He emptied it on the ground at your feet, fell to his knees, and said tearfully:

“Don’t leave my mother, Papa… Aunty Chunmiao, you can stay… your grandmothers were both married to my grandfather, weren’t they?”

“That was the old society, son,” you said sorrowfully. “Take good care of your mother, Kaifang. She’s done nothing wrong, it’s my doing, and though I’m leaving, I’ll do everything in my power to see you’re both taken care of.”

“Lan Jiefang, you can leave if you want,” your wife said from the doorway. “But don’t you forget that the only way you’ll get a divorce is over my dead body.” There was a sneer on her face, but tears in her eyes. She fell as she tried to walk down the steps, but she scrambled to her feet, made a wide sweep around you two, and pulled your son to his feet. “Get up!” she growled. “No boy gets down on his knees, not even if there’s gold at his feet!” Then she and the boy stood on the rain-washed concrete beside the walkway to make way for you to leave.

In much the same way that your wife had helped you walk from the gateway to her bedroom, Chunmiao tucked her left arm under yours, which hung loosely in front of her chest, and put her right arm around your waist, so the two of you could hobble out the gate. Given her slight figure, she seemed in constant danger of being knocked off balance by the sheer weight of your body. But she held herself straight and exerted strength that even I, a dog, found remarkable.

A strange, inexplicable emotion led me up to the gate after you’d left. I stood on the steps and watched you go. You stepped in one mud puddle after another on Tianhua Avenue, and your white silk pajamas were mud-spattered in no time; so were Chunmiao’s clothes, a red skirt that was especially eye-catching in the haze. A light rain fell at a slant; some of the people out on the street were wearing raincoats, others were holding umbrellas, and all of them cast curious glances as you passed.

Filled with emotion, I went back into the yard and straight to my kennel, where I sprawled on the ground and looked over at the east-side room. Your son was sitting on a stool, weeping; your wife placed a bowl of steaming hot noodles on the table in front of him.

“Eat!” she said.

50

Lan Kaifang Flings Mud at His Father

Pang Fenghuang Hurls Paint at Her Aunt

Finally, Chunmiao and I were together. A healthy man could make the walk from my house to the New China Bookstore in fifteen minutes. It took us nearly two hours. In the words of Mo Yan: It was a romantic stroll and it was a tortuous trek; it was a shameful passage and it was a noble action; it was a retreat and an attack; it was surrender and resistance; it was weakness and strength; it was a challenge and a compromise. He wrote more contradictory stuff like that, some of it on target, some just trying to be mystifying. What I think is, leaving home, supported by Chunmiao, was neither noble nor glorious; it just showed we had courage and honesty.

When I think back on that day, I see all those colorful umbrellas and raincoats, all the mud puddles on the street, and the dying fish and croaking frogs in some of the standing water. That torrential rainfall of the early 1990s exposed much of the corruption masked by the false prosperity of the age.

Chunmiao’s dormitory room behind the New China Bookstore served as our temporary love nest. I’d fallen so low I no longer had anything to hide, I said to Big-head, who could see almost everything. Our relationship was not built solely on sex, but that’s the first thing we did after moving into her dormitory, even though I was weak and badly hurt. We swallowed one another’s tears, our bodies trembled, and our souls intertwined. I didn’t ask how she’d gotten through the days, and she didn’t ask who had beaten me. We just held each other, kissed, and stroked each other’s body. We put everything else out of our minds.

Forced by your wife, your son ate half a bowl of noodles, mixed with his tears. She, on the other hand, had a huge appetite. She finished her bowl, along with three large garlic cloves, then peeled a couple more cloves and finished off your son’s noodles. The peppery garlic turned her face red and dotted her forehead and nose with beads of sweat. She wiped her son’s face with a towel.

“Sit up straight, son,” she said firmly. “Eat well, study well, and grow up to be a man I can be proud of. They’d like nothing better than to see us die. They want us to make fools of ourselves, well, they can dream on!”

It was time for me to take your son to school, so your wife saw us to the door, where he turned and wrapped his arms around his mother. She patted him on the back and said:

“Look, you’re almost as tall as me, big boy.”

“Mama, don’t you dare-”

“That’s a laugh,” she said with a smile. “Do you really think I’d hang myself or jump down a well or take poison over scum like them? You go on, and don’t worry. I’ll be going to work in a little while. The people need their oil fritters, which means the people need your mama.”

We took the short route, as always, and when some bright red dragonflies swooped by, your son jumped up and neatly caught one in his hand. Then he jumped even higher and caught another one. He held his hand out.

“Hungry, Dog? Want these?”

I shook my head.

So he pinched off their tails, plucked a straw, and strung them together. Then he flung them high in the air. “Fly,” he said, but they just tumbled in the air and landed in a mud puddle.

The storm had knocked down the Fenghuang Elementary School buildings, and children were already jumping and climbing on broken bricks and shattered tiles. They weren’t unhappy; they were delighted. A dozen mud-spattered luxury sedans were parked at the school entrance. Pang Kangmei, in knee-length pink rain boots, had rolled her pant legs up to her knees. Her white calves were spattered with mud. Wearing blue denim work clothes and dark sunglasses, she was speaking through a battery-powered bullhorn.

“Teachers, students,” she said hoarsely, “the category nine typhoon has brought terrible destruction to the county and to our school. I know how bad you all must feel, but I bring sympathy and good wishes from the County Committee and the county government. Over the next three days there will be no classes while we clean up the mess and restore the classrooms. In sum, even if I, Pang Kangmei, Party secretary of the County Committee, have to work while sitting in a mud puddle, you children will have bright, airy, safe classrooms to learn in.”

Pang Kangmei’s comments were met with enthusiastic applause; some of the teachers had tears in their eyes. Pang Kangmei continued:

“At this critical moment, in the midst of our emergency, all county cadres will be here, demonstrating their loyalty and enthusiasm, performing great service. If any of them dare shirk their duty or slack off, they will be severely punished.”

In the midst of this emergency, even though I was the deputy county chief in charge of education and hygiene, I was hiding in our little room, my body entwined with my lover’s. Without question, this was unimaginably shameful behavior. Even though I was badly beaten and had no idea what had happened to the school and was a man in love, I could put none of these on the table as an acceptable reason. So, a few days later, when I sent in my letters of resignation and withdrawal from the Party to the County Committee’s Organization Department, Deputy Director Lü said with a sneer:

“Old man, you no longer have the right to resign your position or withdraw from the Party. What you can look forward to is being fired from your job and kicked out of the Party, plus a ban on all public employment.”

We stayed in bed into the afternoon, alternating between exhaustion and passion. The room was hot and muggy, and our sheets were soaked from sweat that also saturated our hair. I was captivated by the smell of her body and the lights in her eyes.

“I could die today, Chunmiao, with no regrets…”

As I lay there making love and loving her, I was no longer in the grip of the hate I’d felt toward the goons who had blindfolded me, dragged me into a dark room, and beaten me bloody. Except for a badly bruised bone in one leg, they had left me with only flesh wounds. They knew their business. I also no longer harbored any hatred toward the people who had ordered the beating. I deserved the beating. It was the price I had to pay for the abiding love I received.

The students whooped with delight when a three-day holiday was announced. The natural disaster, which exposed so many serious problems, meant a strange good time for the children. A thousand Fenghuang Elementary School students hit the road and spread out, wreaking havoc on the already chaotic traffic.

Without knowing where we were going, I followed your son to the doorway of the New China Bookstore. A whole group of kids went inside, but not your son. His blue birthmark showed up cold and hard, like a piece of tile. Pang Kangmei’s daughter, Fenghuang, was there, in an orange raincoat and rubber galoshes, looking like a brilliant flame. A young, muscular woman stayed close behind her – obviously, her bodyguard. Coming up behind her was my third sister, her coat neat and clean. She tried her best to avoid the mud puddles, but inescapably dirtied her paws. When your son and Fenghuang spotted each other, she spat on the ground at your son’s feet. “Hooligan!” she cursed. His head drooped to his chest as if he’d taken a sword swipe against the nape of his neck. Dog Three snarled at me. She wore the most mysterious expression.

I bit down on your son’s sleeve and showed him it was time to go home. But he took no more than a dozen steps before stopping, his birthmark the color of jasper and tears in his eyes.

“Dog,” he said emotionally, “we’re not going home. Take me where they are.”

Taking a break in our lovemaking, we fell into a half sleep, brought on by exhaustion. While she slept she muttered things like: “It’s your blue face that I love. I fell for you the first time I saw you. I wanted to make love with you that first time Mo Yan took me to your office.” For us to be doing what we were doing and saying things like that was shamefully inappropriate when all the county’s cadres were dealing with the results of a devastating natural disaster. But I won’t hold anything back from you, Big-head.

We heard our door and window rattle, then we heard you bark. We’d promised not to open the door even if God came knocking. But your barks were like an order that must be obeyed. I jumped out of bed, knowing full well that my son would be with you. Lovemaking had helped heal my injuries, so I dressed quickly and easily, though my legs were rubbery and I was still lightheaded. At least I didn’t fall. Then I helped Chunmiao, whose body seemed to have no bones to support her, get dressed; I straightened her hair a little.

I opened the door and was blinded by wet, hot rays of sunlight. Almost immediately a handful of loose black mud came hurtling toward my face, like a slimy toad. I didn’t try to get out of the way; my subconscious wouldn’t let me. It smacked me square in the face.

I wiped the mud from my face. Some had gotten into my left eye, which stung badly, but I could still see out of my right eye. It was my son, seething with anger, and his dog, which looked at me with indifference. The door and window were spattered with mud, scooped out of a mud hole in front of the steps. My son stood there with his schoolbag over his back. His hands were coated with mud, and there was plenty more on his face and his clothes. What I should have seen was a look of rage, but what I did see were the tears spilling from his eyes. My tears quickly followed. There was so much I wanted to say to him, but all that came out was a pain-filled:

“Go ahead, son, throw it…”

I took a step outside, grabbing the door frame to keep from falling, and shut my eyes to await the next handful of mud. I could hear him breathing hard as handful after handful of hot, stinking mud sailed through the air toward me. Some of it hit me in the nose, some on the forehead, and some on my chest and belly. One handful was harder than the others; clearly doctored with a piece of brick or tile, it hit me right in the crotch; I groaned as I bent over in pain, fell into a crouch, and finally sat down.

I opened my eyes, washed by tears; I could now see out of both of them. My son’s face was twisted like a shoe sole in a fiery oven. The mud in his hand fell to the ground as he burst out crying, covered his face with his hands, and ran away. After a few parting barks, the dog turned and followed him.

All the time I was standing there letting my son vent his anger by flinging mud in my face, Pang Chunmiao, my lover, was standing beside me. I was the object of the attacks, but unavoidably, she received some of the wayward hits. After helping me to my feet, she said softly:

“We have to accept this, elder brother… I’m happy… it feels to me like our sins have been lessened…”

Dozens of people were standing in the second-story hallway of the New China Bookstore building. I could see they were bookstore cadres and clerks. One of them, a young fellow named Yu, who had once asked Mo Yan to see if I’d help him get a promotion to assistant manager, was chronicling my troubles from a variety of angles and distances with a heavy, expensive camera. Mo Yan later showed me a bunch of the pictures the man had taken, and I was shocked by how good they were.

Two of the observers came downstairs and walked timidly up to us. We knew who they were at once: one was the bookstore’s Party secretary, the other was the chief of security. They spoke without looking at us.

“Old Lan,” the Party secretary said awkwardly, “I’m sorry, but our hands are tied… we’re going to have to ask you to move out… I want you to know we’re just carrying a Party Committee decision-”

“You don’t have to explain,” I said. “I understand. We’ll move out right away.”

“There’s… more.” The security chief hemmed and hawed. “Pang Chunmiao, you have been suspended pending an investigation, and you’re to move into the second-story security section office. A bed has been placed there for you.”

“You can suspend me,” Chunmiao said, “but you can forget about an investigation. The only way you’ll get me to leave his side is to kill me!”

“As long as we understand each other,” the security chief said. “We’ve said what we were supposed to say.”

Arm in arm – to hold each other up – we walked over to a water faucet in the middle of the yard.

“I’m sorry,” I said to the Party secretary and security chief, “but we need to use a little of your water to wash the mud off our faces. If you have any objections-”

“How can you say that, Old Lan?” the Party secretary blurted out. “What do you take us for?” He cast a guarded look around him. “Whether or not you move out is none of our business, if you want the truth, but my advice would be to leave as soon as possible. The person in charge is boiling mad.”

We washed the mud off our face and bodies and then, under the watchful gaze of the people at the windows, went back into Chunmiao’s cramped, muggy, moldy dorm room, where we embraced and kissed.

“Chunmiao…”

“Don’t say anything.” She stopped me. “I don’t care if it’s climbing a mountain of knives or swimming a sea of fire,” she said calmly, “I’ll be there with you.”

On the morning of the first day back to school, your son and Pang Fenghuang met at the school entrance. He looked away, but she strode up and tapped him on the shoulder, indicating she wanted him to follow her. When they reached a French parasol tree east of the school gate, she stopped and said excitedly, her eyes shining:

“You did great, Lan Kaifang!”

“What did I do?” he muttered. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Don’t be so modest,” Fenghuang said. “I was listening when they reported to my mother. She ground her teeth when she said, ‘Those two have no shame, and it’s time they got what they deserved!’”

Your son turned to walk away, but she grabbed his shirt and kicked him in the calf.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she spat out angrily. “I’ve got more to say to you.”

She was a delicate little witch, pretty as a perfectly sculpted statue. With tiny breasts like budding flowers, she had a young maiden’s beauty that was impossible to resist. Your son’s face said anger, but in his heart he’d already completely surrendered. I could only sigh. While the father’s romantic drama was playing out, the son’s romantic history was just beginning.

“You hate your father, I hate my aunt,” Fenghuang said. “She must have been adopted by my maternal grandparents, because she wasn’t close to us at all. My mother and her parents locked her in a room and took turns trying to talk sense into her and get her to leave your father. My grandmother even got down on her knees and begged, but she wouldn’t listen. Then she jumped the wall and ran off to her depraved life with your father.” Fenghuang clenched her teeth. “You punished your father, and I want to punish my aunt!”

“I don’t want anything more to do with them,” your son said. “They’re a couple of horny dogs.”

“Right, that’s what they are!” Fenghuang said. “They’re a couple of horny dogs. That’s exactly what my mother called them.”

“I don’t like your mother,” your son said.

“How dare you not like my mother!” She punched him. “My mother is the County Committee Party secretary,” she grumbled. “She sat in our schoolyard and directed the rescue operations there with an IV bottle hanging from her arm! Don’t you have a TV set? You didn’t see her cough up blood on TV?”

“Our TV is broken, but I don’t like the way she does things. What are you going to do about it?”

“You’re just jealous, you and your blue face, you ugly shit!”

He grabbed her schoolbag strap and jerked her toward him. Then he pushed her back so hard she bumped into the tree behind her.

“You hurt me,” she said. “All right, I won’t call you Blue Face again. I’ll call you Lan Kaifang. We spent our childhood together, which means we’re old friends, doesn’t it? So you have to help me carry out my plan to punish my aunt.”

He walked away, but she ran up and blocked his way. She glared at him.

“Did you hear what I said?”

The idea of moving somewhere far away never crossed our minds. All we wanted was to find a quiet spot somewhere to stay out of the limelight and resolve my marital status through legal means.

Lüdian Township’s new Party secretary Du Luwen, who had once succeeded me as political director of the Supply and Marketing Cooperative, was an old friend, so I phoned him from a bus station and asked him to help me find a quiet place somewhere. He hesitated at first, but in the end he agreed. Instead of taking the bus, we sneaked over to a little place by the Grain Transport River called Yutong Village, southeast of the county town, where we hired a boat at the pier to take us downriver. The owner was a middle-aged woman with a gaunt face and large, deerlike eyes. She had a year-old child in the cabin, tied to her leg by a length of red cloth to keep him falling into the water.

Du Luwen met us at the Lüdian Township pier in his car and drove us to the cooperative, where we moved into a three-room apartment in the rear compound. After taking a pounding by independent entrepreneurs, the cooperative was on the verge of closing for good. Most of the employees had moved on to new ventures, leaving behind only a few old-timers to keep watch over the buildings. A former cooperative Party secretary who had once lived in our apartment had subsequently retired and moved into the county capital. Completely furnished, the place came equipped with a bag of flour, another of rice, some cooking oil, sausage, and canned goods.

“You can hide out here. Give me a call if you need anything, and don’t go outside unless you absolutely have to. This is Party Secretary Pang territory, and she often makes unannounced inspections.”

And so we began our dizzying days of happiness. We cooked, we ate, and we made love.

Your son could not resist Pang Fenghuang’s charm, and so, in order to help her carry out her plan to punish her aunt, he told your wife a lie.

I pursued the fused smells, like a braided rope, of you and Pang Chunmiao, with them right behind me; I unerringly followed your trail to the pier at Yutong Village, where we boarded the same boat.

“Where are you two young students going?” the friendly boat owner asked from the rear of the boat, her hand on the rudder.

“Where are we going, Dog?” Pang Fenghuang asked me.

I turned to look downriver and barked.

“Downriver,” your son said.

“Where downriver?”

“Just take us downriver. The dog will let us know when we get to where we’re going,” he said confidently.

The woman laughed as she pushed out into the middle of the river and headed downriver like a flying fish. Fenghuang took off her shoes and socks and sat on the boat’s edge to dip her feet in the water.

Before we went ashore at Lüdian Township, Fenghuang generously gave the woman more than she expected, which made her nervous.

We had no trouble finding where you were living, and when we knocked at your door, we were greeted by looks of shame and shock. You glared angrily at me; I barked twice out of embarrassment. What I wanted to convey was: Please forgive me, Lan Jiefang, but since you left home, you’re no longer my master. That role has been taken over by your son, and it’s my duty to do as he says.

Fenghuang took the lid off a little metal bucket and splashed the contents – paint – all over Chunmiao.

“You’re a whore, Aunty,” Fenghuang said to Chunmiao, who stood there dumbstruck. Then she turned to your son and, like a commanding officer, waved her hand in the air and said: “Let’s go!”

I accompanied Fenghuang and your son over to the township Party office, where she located Du Luwen and said – ordered is more like it:

“I am Pang Kangmei’s daughter. I want you to call for a car to take us back to the county town.”

– Du Luwen came over to our paint-spattered Eden and stammered:

“In my humble opinion, I think you two should get as far away from here as possible.”

He gave us some clean clothes and an envelope containing a thousand yuan.

“This is a loan, so don’t say no.”

Chunmiao just looked at me, wide-eyed and helpless.

“Give me ten minutes to think this over,” I said to Du as I offered him a cigarette. We sat down to smoke, but my cigarette had barely burned down halfway when I stood up and said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d pick us up at seven o’clock tonight and drive us to the Jiao County train station.”

That night we boarded the Qingdao-Xi’an train. It was 9:30 when we reached the Gaomi station. Pressing our faces up against the grimy windows, we gazed out at all the waiting passengers, most carrying their heavy belongings on their backs, and a smattering of station personnel with blank expressions on their faces. Lights in the distant city sparkled, while in the square in front of the station, drivers waited by their illegal taxis amid the shouts of food vendors. Gaomi, will we ever be able to return as proper citizens?

In Xi’an we went to see Mo Yan, who had taken a job as a journalist for a local newspaper after graduating from a special writer’s workshop. He set us up in the run-down room he rented in the Henan Villa, saying he could bed down in his office. With a wicked grin, he handed us a box of Japanese extra-thin condoms and said:

“I’m afraid this is all I have, but it’s a gift from the heart. Please take it.”

Over the summer holidays your son and Fenghuang again ordered me to follow you, so I led them to the train station and barked in the direction of a train heading west: the scent, like those railroad tracks, stretched far off in the distance, too far for my nose to be of any use.

51

Ximen Huan Tyrannizes the County Town

Lan Kaifang Cuts His Finger to Test Hair

By the summer of 1996, you’d been on the run for five years. During that time, Mo Yan, who had risen to the position of editorial director of the local newspaper, gave you a job as an editor and found work for Pang Chunmiao in the dining hall. Your wife and son were aware of these developments, but had, it seemed, forgotten all about you. She was still frying oil fritters, her taste for which was as strong as ever; your son was a studious first-year student in the local high school. Pang Fenghuang and Ximen Huan were in the same grade as he. Neither of them had grades that could compare with your son’s, but one of them was the daughter of the highest-ranking official in the county, the other the son of the man who created the Jinlong Scholarship Fund with half a million yuan of his own money; the school gate would have been open to them if they had scored zero on their exams.

Ximen Huan had been sent to the county seat for his first year in middle school, and his mother, Huzhu, came along to look after him. They lived with you, instilling some life into a cheerless, long-deserted house – a little too much life, some would say.

Ximen Huan was not student material; he’d caused more trouble and created more mischief during those five years than anyone could count. The first year he was relatively well behaved, but then he took up with three young hooligans, and in time they became known by the police as the “Four Little Hoods.” Beyond being involved in all the antisocial behaviors one normally associated with his age, he was guilty of a good many adult crimes. But to look at him you’d never believe he was a bad boy. His clothes – name brands only – were neat and clean, and there was always a good smell about him. He kept his hair cut short and his face clean; he sported a thin, dark mustache to show he was past childhood, and even his boyhood cross-eyed look had vanished. He was friendly to people and kind to animals, his speech was replete with fine words and honeyed phrases, and he was especially polite in his dealings with your wife, as if she were his favorite relative. So when your son said, “Ma, send Huanhuan away, he’s a bad kid,” she spoke up for him:

“He seems like a good boy to me. He has a way of taking care of things and dealing with people, and he’s well-spoken. I admit he doesn’t do well in school, but he’s just not gifted that way In the future he’ll probably do better than you. You’re just like your father, always moping around as if the world owes you something.”

“You don’t know him, Ma. What you see is all an act.”

“Kaifang,” she said, “even if he is a bad kid, as you say, if he gets into trouble, his dad can bail him out. Besides, his mother and I are sisters, twins in fact, so how could I tell him to leave? You’ll just have to put up with him for a few more years. Once you’re out of high school, you’ll go your own ways, and even if we wanted him to stay with us then, he probably wouldn’t want to. Your uncle is so rich he can build a mansion for him in town without missing the money at all. The only reason he’s staying with us is so we can all look after one another. That’s how your grandparents want it.”

Nothing your son could say could win out over your wife’s practical arguments.

Huanhuan may have been able to get away with his shenanigans with your wife and his mother, but my nose knew better. By then I was a thirteen-year-old dog, and though my sense of smell was feeling the effects of age, I had no trouble differentiating the smells of people around me and the traces they left elsewhere. I might as well tell you that I’d already given up my chairmanship of the County Dog Association. My successor was a German shepherd named Blackie, owing to the color of fur on his back. In the county canine realm, German shepherds enjoyed undisputed leadership roles. After stepping down, I seldom attended the gatherings in Tianhua Square, since the few times I did go they had little to offer. My generation had celebrated the gatherings with singing, dancing, drinking, eating, and mating. But the new breed of youngsters were engaged in unusual and, to me, inexplicable behaviors. Here, I’ll give you an example: Blackie once urged me to go so I could be part of, according to him, the most exciting, most mysterious, most romantic event imaginable. So I showed up in time to see hundreds of dogs converge from all directions. No shouts or greetings, no flirting or teasing, almost as if they were all strangers. After crowding around the newly replaced statue of Venus de Milo, they raised their heads and barked together, three times. Then they spun around and ran off, including their chairman, Blackie. They’d appeared like lightning and immediately disappeared as if swept away on the wind. There I was, alone in the moon-washed square. I gazed up at Venus, whose sculpted body gave off a soft blue glow, and wondered if I was dreaming. Later on, I learned that they’d been playing a game of Flash, which was all the rage, very cool, at the time. They called themselves a “Flash mob.” I was told they did all sorts of other goofy things, but I refused to join in. I couldn’t help feeling that Dog Four’s party days were over, just as a new age dawned, one characterized by unfettered excitement and wild imagination. That’s how it was with dogs, and for the most part, with humans as well. Pang Kangmei still held her county position, and word had it that she would soon be appointed to a high position in the provincial government. But before that happened, she’d be accused by the Disciplinary Committee of the Party of “double offenses,” and would subsequently be tried by the Procuratorate and condemned to death, with a two-year reprieve.

After your son tested into high school, I stopped accompanying him. I could have stayed home and slept or occupied myself with thoughts of the past, but that had no appeal to me. It could only speed up the aging process, body and mind, and your son wouldn’t have needed me anymore. So I began tagging along behind your wife when she went to work in the square. While I was there watching her fry and sell oil fritters, I picked up the scent of Ximen Huan in notorious hair salons, backstreet inns, and bars. In the mornings he’d walk out of the house with his schoolbag on his back, but as soon as he was out of sight, he’d jump on the back of a motor scooter taxi waiting for him at the intersection and head for the train station square. His “driver,” a big, strapping fellow with a full beard, was happy to chauffeur a high school boy around town, especially Huanhuan, who always made it worth his while. The square was Four Little Hoods territory, a place for them to eat, drink, whore, and gamble. The relationship among them was like June weather, always changing. Some of the time they were like four loving brothers, drinking and gambling together in bars, dallying with wild “chicks” in hair salons, and playing mah-jongg and smoking, arms around each other, in the public square, like four crabs strung together. But then at other times they’d split into two hostile groups and fight like gamecocks. There were also times when three of them ganged up on the fourth. Eventually they each formed their own gangs, which sometimes hung out together and sometimes fought. The one constant was that they fouled the atmosphere of the public square.

Your wife and I witnessed one of their armed battles, though she wasn’t aware that Ximen Huan, the good kid, was the instigator. It happened on a sunny day around noon, in broad daylight, as they say. It started with an argument in a bar called Come Back Inn on the southern edge of the square, but before long, four boys with bloody heads were chased out the door by seven other boys with clubs, one of them dragging a mop behind him. The injured boys ran around the square, showing no fear or any effects of the beating they’d sustained. And there was no anger on the faces of the boys chasing them. Several of them, in fact, were laughing. At first the battle looked more like a staged play than the real thing. The four boys being chased stopped suddenly and launched a counterattack, with one of them taking out a knife to show he was that the leader of that gang. The other three whipped off their belts and twirled them over their heads. With loud shouts they took out after their pursuers, and in no time clubs were hitting heads, belts were lashing cheeks, and the square was thrown into an uproar with shouts and agonizing screams. Bystanders were by then fleeing the square; the police were on their way I saw the gang leader plunge his knife into the belly of the kid with the mop, who screamed as he fell to the ground. When they saw what had happened to their buddy, the other pursuers turned and ran. The gang leader wiped the blood from his knife on the injured boy’s clothes and, with a loud whoop, led his gang down the western edge of the square; they ran off to the south.

While the fight was going on outside, I spotted Ximen Huan, in dark sunglasses, sitting at a window inside the Immortal, a bar next to Come Back Inn, casually smoking a cigarette. Your wife, who watched the fight with her heart in her mouth, never did see him, but even if she had, she’d never have believed that her fair-skinned boy could have been the instigator. He reached into his pocket and took out one of the latest cell phones, flipped it open, punched in some numbers, and raised it to his mouth. A few words were all he spoke before sitting back and continuing to enjoy his cigarette, with grace and expertise, like the gangster bosses in movies from Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Now let me relate another incident involving Ximen Huan, this one occurring in your yard after he’d spent three days in the local police station over a fight he was involved in.

Huang Huzhu was so enraged she tore at his clothes and shook him.

“Huanhuan,” she said through tears of anguish, “my Huanhuan, you don’t know how you disappoint me. I’ve done everything I could and sacrificed so much to be here and take care of you. Your father has spared no expense to give you everything you need to go to school, but you pay us back by…”

As his mother stood there crying, Ximen Huan coolly patted her on the shoulder and said nonchalantly:

“Don’t cry, Mother, dry your eyes. It’s not what you think. I didn’t do anything wrong. I wasn’t to blame, no matter what they said. Look at me, do I look like a bad kid? I’m not, Mother, I’m a good kid.”

Well, this good kid went out and danced and sang like a paragon of innocence. And it worked. Huzhu’s tears were quickly replaced by smiles. Me? I was disgusted.

When Ximen Jinlong heard the news, he came running, fit to be tied. But his son’s honeyed words quickly had him smiling too. I hadn’t seen Ximen Jinlong in a long time. Time had not been kind to him – rich or poor, everyone ages. His hair was much thinner, his eyesight much dimmer, his paunch much bigger.

“Don’t worry about me, Father. You have more important things to worry about,” Ximen Huan said with a fetching smile. “No one knows a son better than his father, as they say. You know me well. I have my faults: I’m a little too much of a smooth talker, I like to eat, I’m sort of lazy, and pretty girls drive me crazy. But how does that make me any different from you?”

“You might be able to fool your mother, son, but not me. If I couldn’t see though this little act of yours, I wouldn’t be able to get anything done in this society. Over the past few years, you’ve done all the bad things you’re capable of. Doing something bad is easy. What’s hard is spending your life doing only bad things. So I think it’s time for you to start doing good things.”

“What a great way to put it, Father. From now on I’ll turn bad things into good ones.” He nestled up to Jinlong and adroitly slipped his father’s expensive watch off his wrist. “This is a knockoff, Father. I can’t have my dad wearing something like that. So I’ll wear it and suffer the loss of face for you.”

“Don’t give me that. It’s a genuine Rolex.”

Several days later, the local TV station broadcast the following newsworthy item: “Local high-school student Ximen Huan found a large sum of money, but instead of pocketing the ten thousand yuan, he turned it over to his school.” The shiny, genuine Rolex watch never again adorned his wrist.

One day Ximen Huan, the good kid, brought another good kid, Pang Fenghuang, over to the house. By then she’d become a fashionable young woman with a nice figure, a languid look in her eyes, and a wet look to her hair. We all thought she was a mess. Huzhu and Hezuo, definitely of the old school, could not stand the way she looked, but Ximen Huan whispered to them:

“Mama, Aunty, you’re behind the times. That’s the fashionable look these days.”

Now I know it’s not Ximen Huan or Pang Fenghuang you’re concerned about. It’s your son, Lan Kaifang. Well, he’s about to make an appearance.

It was a splendid autumn afternoon when your wife and Huzhu were both out. The youngsters had asked them to leave so they could hold a meeting. They sat at a table stacked with fresh fruit, including a sliced watermelon, which had been set up under the parasol tree in the northeast corner of the yard. Ximen Huan and Pang Fenghuang were dressed in the latest fashions, and their faces glowed. Your son was wearing passe clothes, and his face was, as always, ugly.

There wasn’t a boy alive who could fail to be attracted to a pretty, sexy girl like Pang Fenghuang; your son was no exception. Think back to that day when he flung mud in your face, and then think back to the day I followed your scent to Lüdian Township. Now you see what I mean. Even at that early age, he was Fenghuang’s little slave, someone to do her bidding. The seeds of the tragedy that would occur later were planted way back then.

“No one else is coming, are they?” Fenghuang asked lazily as she leaned back in her chair.

“Today the yard belongs to us three,” Ximen Huan said.

“Don’t forget him!” She pointed her delicate finger at the sleeping figure at the base of the wall – me. “That old dog.” She sat up straight. “Our dog is his sister.”

“He also has a couple of brothers,” your son said, obviously in low spirits. “They’re in Ximen Village, one at his house”-he pointed at Ximen Huan-“and one at my aunt’s house.”

“Our dog died,” Fenghuang said. “She died having pups. All I remember about her is that she was constantly having pups, one litter after another.” She raised her voice. “The world is unfair. After the male dog finishes his business, he takes off and leaves her behind to suffer.”

“That’s why we all sing our mothers’ praises,” your son said in a fit of pique.

“Did you hear that, Ximen Huan?” Fenghuang said with a laugh. “Neither you nor I could ever say something that profound. Only Old Lan here could.”

“There’s no need to mock me,” your son said, embarrassed.

“Nobody’s mocking you,” she said. “That was intended as a compliment!” She reached into her white handbag and took out a pack of Marlboros and a solid gold lighter with diamond chips. “With the old stick-in-the-muds out of the way, we can take it easy and enjoy ourselves.”

A single cigarette popped up when she tapped the pack with a dainty finger tipped with a painted nail and wound up between painted lips. She flicked the lighter, which sent a blue flame into the air, then tossed it and the pack onto the table and took a deep drag on her cigarette. Leaning back until her neck was resting on the back of the chair, faceup, lips puckered, she gazed into the deep blue sky and blew the smoke out like an actress in a TV soap who doesn’t know how to smoke.

Ximen Huan took a cigarette from the pack and tossed it to your son, who shook his head. A good boy, no doubt about it. But Fenghuang snorted and said derisively:

“Don’t put on that good-little-boy act. Go ahead, smoke it! The younger you are when you start, the easier it is for your body to adapt to the nicotine. England’s prime minister Churchill started smoking his granddad’s pipe when he was eight, and he died in his nineties. So you see, starting late is worse than starting early.”

Your son picked up the cigarette and hesitated; but in the end he put it in his mouth, and Ximen Huan lit it. His first cigarette. He couldn’t stop coughing, and his face turned black. But he’d become a chain smoker in no time.

Ximen Huan turned Fenghuang’s gold cigarette lighter over in his hand.

“Damn, this is top-of-the-line stuff!” he said.

“Like it?” Fenghuang asked with disdainful indifference. “Keep it. It was a gift from one of those assholes who want to get an official position or a building contract.”

“But your mother-”

“My mother’s an asshole too!” she said, holding her cigarette daintily with three fingers. With her other hand she pointed to Ximen Huan. “Your dad’s an even bigger asshole! And your dad”-the finger was now pointed at your son-“is an asshole too!” She laughed. “Those assholes are all a bunch of phonies, always putting on an act, giving us so-called guidance and telling us not to do one thing or another. But what about them? They’re always doing one thing and another!”

“So that’s what we’ll do!” Ximen Huan said enthusiastically.

“Right,” Fenghuang agreed. “They want us to be good little boys and girls, not bad ones. Well, what makes someone a good kid and what makes someone a bad one? We’re good kids. The best, better than anyone!” She flipped her cigarette butt toward the parasol tree, but it landed on one of the eave tiles, where it smoldered.

“Call my dad an asshole if you want,” your son said, “but he’s no phony and he doesn’t put on an act. He wouldn’t be in so much trouble if he had.”

“Still protecting him, are you?” Fenghuang said. “He abandoned you and your mother and ran off to play around with another woman – oh, right, I forgot, that aunt of mine is an asshole too!”

“I admire my second uncle,” Ximen Huan said. “It took guts to give up his job as deputy county chief, leave his wife and son, and go off with his lover on a romantic adventure. How cool!”

“In the words of our county’s crafty writer Mo Yan, your dad is the world’s bravest guy, biggest asshole, hardest drinker, and best lover! Plug up your ears, both of you. I don’t want you to hear what I say next.” They did as she said. “Dog Four, have you heard that Lan Jiefang and my aunt make love ten times a day for an hour each time?”

Ximen Huan snorted and giggled. Fenghuang kicked him in the leg.

“You were listening, you punk,” she complained.

Your son didn’t say a word, but his face had darkened.

“The next time you two go back to Ximen Village, take me along. I hear your father has turned the place into a capitalist paradise.”

“Nonsense,” Ximen Huan replied. “You can’t have a capitalist paradise in a socialist country. My dad’s a reformer, a hero of his time.”

“Bullshit!” Fenghuang said. “He’s a bastard. The real heroes of their time are your uncle and my aunt.”

“Don’t talk about my dad,” your son said.

“When he stole off with my aunt, he nearly killed my grandma and made my grandpa sick, so why can’t I talk about him? One day I’ll get really mad and drag them back from Xi’an so they can be paraded in the street.”

“Hey, why don’t we go pay them a visit?” Ximen Huan suggested.

“Good idea,” Fenghuang said. “I’ll take another bucket of paint with me, and when I see my aunt, I’ll say, ‘Here, Aunty, I’ve come to paint you.’”

That made Ximen Huan laugh. Your son lowered his head and said nothing.

Fenghuang kicked him in the leg.

“Lighten up, Old Lan. We’ll go together, what do you say?”

“Not me.”

“You’re no fun,” she said. “I’ve had enough of you two. I’m getting out of here.”

“Don’t go yet,” Ximen Huan said. “The program hasn’t started.”

“What program?”

“Miraculous hair, my mother’s miraculous hair.”

“Hell, I forgot all about that,” Fenghuang said. “What was it you said? You could cut off a dog’s head and sew it back on with a strand of your mom’s hair, and that dog could still eat and drink, is that it?”

“We don’t need that complicated an experiment,” Ximen Huan said. “You can cut yourself, and then burn a strand of her hair and sprinkle the ashes on the cut. You’ll be good as new in ten minutes and no scar.”

“They say you can’t cut her hair or it’ll bleed.”

“That’s right.”

“Everybody says she has such a kind heart that if one of the villagers is injured, she’ll pull out a strand of her hair for them.”

“That’s right.”

“Then how come she’s not bald?”

“It keeps growing back.”

“Then you’ll never go hungry,” Fenghuang said admiringly. “If your father loses his job one day and turns into a useless pauper, your mother can keep the family fed and housed just by selling her hair.”

“I’d go out begging before I’d let her do that,” Ximen Huan said emphatically. “Although she’s not my real mother.”

“What do you mean?” Fenghuang asked. “If she’s not your real mother, who is?”

“They tell me it was a high school student.”

“The bastard son of a high school student,” Pang said. “How cool is that!”

“Then why don’t you go have a baby?” Ximen Huan said.

“Because I’m a good girl.”

“Does having a baby make you a bad kid?”

“Good kid, bad kid. We’re all good kids!” she said. “Let’s perform the experiment. Shall we cut off Dog Four’s head?”

I barked angrily. My meaning? Try it, you little bastard, and I’ll bite your head off!

“Nobody touches my dog,” your son said.

“So then what?” Fenghuang said. “You’re wasting my time with your phony tricks. I’m leaving.”

“Wait,” your son said. “Don’t go.”

He stood up and went into the kitchen.

“What are you doing, Old Lan?” Fenghuang shouted after him.

He walked out of the kitchen holding the middle finger of his left hand in his right hand. Blood seeped through his fingers.

“Are you crazy, Old Lan?” Fenghuang cried out.

“He’s my uncle’s son, all right,” Ximen Huan said. “You can count on him when the chips are down.”

“Quit spouting nonsense, bastard son,” Fenghuang said anxiously. “Go inside and get some of your mom’s miraculous hair, and hurry!”

Ximen Huan ran inside and quickly emerged with seven strands of thick hair. He laid them on the table and let them burn, quickly turning them to ashes.

“Let’s see that finger, Old Lan,” Fenghuang said as she grabbed the hand with the bleeding finger.

It was a deep cut. I saw Fenghuang go pale. Her mouth was open, her brow creased, as if she was the one in pain.

Ximen Huan scooped up the ashes with a crisp new bill and sprinkled them over your son’s injured finger.

“Does it hurt?” Fenghuang asked.

“No.”

“Let go of his wrist,” Ximen Huan said.

“The blood will wash the ashes away,” Fenghuang said.

“No problem, don’t worry.”

“If that doesn’t stop the bleeding,” she said threateningly, “I’ll chop those dog paws of yours off!”

“I said don’t worry.”

Slowly Fenghuang loosened her grip on your son’s wrist.

“Well?” Ximen Huan said proudly.

“It worked!”

52

Jiefang and Chunmiao Turn the Fake into the Real

Taiyue and Jinlong Depart this World Together

Lan Jiefang, you gave up your future and your reputation all for love; abandoning your family was something upright people would not countenance, yet writers like Mo Yan sang your praises. But not returning for your mother’s funeral was such an unfilial act I’m afraid even Mo Yan, who has a reputation for twisting logic, would find it hard to come to your defense.

I never received word of my mother’s death. I was living anonymously in Xi’an like a criminal in hiding. I knew that no court would grant me a divorce as long as Pang Kangmei was in a position of power. Denied a divorce but living with Chunmiao, my only option was to reside quietly far from home.

At first we both worked in a factory established through foreign investment. They manufactured fuzzy dolls. The manager was a so-called overseas Chinese, a bald man with a big belly and yellow teeth, a lover of poetry who was friendly with Mo Yan. He was sympathetic to our plight, actually got a kick out of our experience, and was willing to find office work for me and take Chunmiao on as a bookkeeper in the workshop. The air there was pretty foul, and her nose was constantly being tickled by loose fuzz. Most of the factory workers were girls brought in from the countryside, some as young as thirteen or fourteen, by all appearances. Then one day the factory burned down, claiming many lives and leaving most of the survivors with horrible disfigurements. Chunmiao was spared only because she happened to be home sick that day. For the longest time after that, the tragic fate of those factory girls kept us awake at night. Eventually, Mo Yan found openings for us at his local newspaper.

On many occasions I spotted familiar faces out on the streets of Xi’an and was tempted to call out to whoever it was. But instead I lowered my head and hid my face. Sometimes, when we were in our little apartment, thoughts of home and family had us both weeping miserably Our love was why we’d left our homes, and that love made it impossible to return. Time and again we picked up the telephone, only to put it right back down, and time and again we dropped letters into the mailbox, only to find an excuse to ask for them back when the postman came to collect outgoing mail. Whatever news of home we received came from Mo Yan, who passed on good news and withheld the bad. His greatest fear was not having something to talk about, and we figured he saw us as valuable material for his novels. And so, the crueler our fate, the more convoluted our story became, and the more dramatically our circumstances developed, the more it interested him. Although I was kept from going home for my mother’s funeral, during those days I actually played the role of filial son due to a combination of strange circumstances.

One of Mo Yan’s classmates from his writers workshop days was directing a TV drama about the bandit annihilation campaign by the People’s Liberation Army. One of the characters was nicknamed Lan Lian, or Blue Face, a bandit who cut down humans as if they were blades of grass but was a devoted, filial son to his mother. Mo Yan introduced me to his friend as a means for me to earn a bit of extra money The director had a full beard, a pate as bald as Shakespeare’s, and a nose as crooked as Dante’s. As soon as he saw me, he slapped his thigh and said, I’ll be damned! We won’t have to worry about makeup!

We were picked up by Ximen Jinlong’s Cadillac to be driven back to Ximen Village. The red-faced driver refused to let me get in, so your son scowled at him and said:

“You think this is a dog, is that it? Well, he’s an apostle who loved my grandmother more than any member of the family!”

We’d barely left the county town when snow began to fall, tiny flakes like salt crystals. The ground was blanketed with white by the time we reached the village, and we heard a distant relative who’d come to mourn Grandma’s passing shout tearfully:

“Heaven and earth are weeping for you, Great-Aunt. Your goodness has moved the world!”

Like a soloist in a choir, his wails were contagious; I could hear Ximen Baofeng’s hoarse crying, Ximen Jinlong’s majestic wailing, and Wu Qiuxiang’s melodic weeping.

As soon as they stepped out of the car, Huzhu and Hezuo buried their faces in their hands and began to cry. Your son and Ximen Huan held their mothers up by their arms. In anguish I walked along behind them. My eldest dog brother had died by then, but doddering old Dog Two, who was lying at the base of the wall, greeted me with a low whimper; I was too upset to return the greeting. Streams of cold air seemed to crawl up my legs and into my body, where they turned my innards into ice, I was trembling, my limbs were stiff as boards, and my reactions were hopelessly dulled. I knew I’d gotten very old.

Your mother was already in her coffin; the lid lay off to the side. Her purple funeral clothes were made of satin with dark gold longevity characters sewn in. Jinlong and Baofeng were kneeling at opposite ends of the coffin. Her hair was uncombed. His eyes were red and puffy; the front of his shirt was tear-stained. Huzhu and Hezuo threw themselves onto the coffin, pounded the sides, and cried bitterly.

“Mother, oh, Mother, why did you have to leave before we came home? Mother, it was you who held us up, now we have nothing! How can any of us go on living?” Your wife’s lament.

“Mother, oh, Mother, you suffered all your life, how could you leave just when you could finally enjoy life?” Huzhu’s lament.

Their tears wetted your mother’s funeral clothes and the yellow paper covering her face. It almost seemed as if the paper had been wetted by tears from the dead.

Your son and Ximen Huan knelt by their mothers’ sides; one’s face was dark as iron, the other’s white as snow.

Xu Xuerong and his wife were in charge of the funeral arrangements. With a shriek of alarm, Mrs. Xu pulled Huzhu and Hezuo’s faces away from the coffin.

“Oh, no, all you mourners, you mustn’t shed tears on her body. If she carries tears from the living, she may be stuck in a life and death cycle…”

Master Xu took a look around.

“Are all the close relatives here?”

No response.

“I ask you, are all the close relatives here?”

The distant relatives exchanged glances, but no one responded.

A distant cousin pointed to the west-side room and said softly:

“Go ask the old gentleman.”

I followed Master Xu over to the west-side room, where your father was sitting against the wall weaving a pot cover with dry sorghum stalks and hemp. A kerosene lamp hanging from the wall lit up that little section of the room. His face was a blur, except for his eyes, from which two bright lights shone. He was sitting on a stool, holding a nearly completed pot lid between his knees. A rustling sound emerged as he wove the hemp around the sorghum stalks.

“Sir,” Master Xu said, “did you send a letter to Jiefang? If he can get here in the next little while, I think-”

“Close the coffin!” your father said. “Raising a dog is better than raising a son!”

When she heard I was going to be in a TV show, Chunmiao said she wanted to be in it too. So we went to Mo Yan, who went to the director, who, when he saw Chunmiao, said she could play the part of Blue Face’s younger sister. The series was planned for thirty episodes, with ten stand-alone stories, each dealing with a bandit annihilation campaign. The director gave us a summary of what we’d be doing: After the gang led by the bandit Blue Face has been dispersed, he flees into the mountains alone. Knowing his reputation as a filial son, the PLA convinces his sister and mother to fake the mother’s death and sends his sister into the mountains to pass on the news. Blue Face comes down from the mountains in his mourning garments and goes straight to his mother’s bier, where PLA soldiers, who are staked out among the mourners, rush up and pin him to the floor. At that moment, his mother sits up in her coffin and says, Son, the PLA always treats its prisoners humanely, so please surrender to them… “Got it?” the director asked us. “Got it,” we said.

Before sealing the coffin, Mistress Xu lifted the yellow paper covering your mother’s face and said:

“Filial mourners, take one last look. But please control yourselves and do not let tears fall on her face.”

Your mother’s face was puffy and jaundiced-looking, almost as if a thin layer of gold powder had been applied. Her eyes were open a crack, enough to release a pair of cold gleams, as if to scold everyone who looked upon her dead face.

“Mother, why have you left me to live as an orphan?…” Ximen Jinlong was wailing so bitterly a pair of cousins had to come up and pull him back from the coffin.

“Mother, my dear mother, take me with you…” Baofeng banged her head against the side of the coffin, producing dull thuds. People dragged her away. Ma Gaige, his hair prematurely gray, wrapped his arm around his mother to keep her from throwing herself on the coffin.

Your wife gripped the edge of the coffin and wept, open-mouthed, until her eyes rolled back in her head and she fell backward. Several of the mourners rushed up and dragged her off to the side, where some of them rubbed the skin between her thumb and forefinger and others pinched the spot beneath her nose to revive her. Slowly she regained consciousness.

Master Xu signaled for the carpenters to come inside with their tools. They carefully picked up the lid and placed it over the body of a woman who had died with her eyes still slightly open. As the nails were pounded in, the chorus of wails reached another crescendo.

Over the next two days, Jinlong, Baofeng, Huzhu, and Hezuo sat on grass mats watching over the coffin from opposite ends, day and night. Lan Kaifang and Ximen Huan sat on stools at the head of the coffin facing each other and burning spirit money in an earthenware platter; at the other end, two thick red candles burned in front of your mother’s spirit tablet, the smoke merging solemnly with paper ash floating in the air.

A steady stream of mourners passed by Master Xu, who meticulously recorded every gift of spirit money, which quickly piled up beneath the apricot tree. It was such a cold day that he had to blow on the tip of his pen to keep the ink flowing. A layer of frost covered his beard; ice formed on the branches of the tree, turning it silver.

Under the director’s guidance, we assumed the moods of our characters. I had to keep reminding myself that I was not Lan Jiefang, but the ruthless bandit Blue Face, a man who had planted a bomb in his stove to explode in his wife’s face when she lit the stove to cook breakfast, and who had cut the tongue out of a boy who had called him by my nickname, Blue Face. I was grief-stricken over the death of my mother, but had to control my tears and bury my sorrow in my heart. My tears were too precious to let them flow like water from a tap. But at the sight of Chunmiao in mourning attire, her face dirtied, my personal grief overwhelmed the part I was playing; my emotions supplanted his. So I tried again, but the director still was not satisfied. Mo Yan was on the set that day, and the director went over and said something to him. I heard Mo Yan reply, “You’re taking this too seriously, Baldy He. If you don’t help me here, you and I are no longer friends.” Then Mo Yan took us aside and said, “What’s wrong with you? Do you have overactive tear glands or what? Chunmiao can cry if she wants, but all you need to do is shed a few tears. It’s not your mother who’s died, it’s the bandit’s. Three episodes, at three thousand RMB apiece for you and two thousand for Chunmiao. That’s enough for you two to live on nicely. Here’s the trick: do not mix this woman in the coffin up with your own mother, who’s back home wearing silks and satins and eating fine food. All you have to do is imagine the coffin filled with fifteen thousand RMB!”

Forty sedans drove into Ximen Village on the day of the interment, even though the road was covered with snow, which their exhaust pipes turned black. They parked across from the Ximen family compound, where the third son of the Sun family, a red armband over his sleeve, directed traffic. The drivers stayed in their cars and kept their engines running, creating a blanket of white mist.

All the late-arriving mourners were people of means and power, most of them officials in the county; a few were Ximen Jinlong’s friends from other counties. Villagers braved the cold to stand outside the gate waiting for the clamor that would accompany the emergence of the coffin. Over those several days everyone seemed to forget about me, so I just hung around with Dog Two, strolling here and there. Your son fed me twice: once he tossed me a steamed bun, the other time he tossed me some frozen chicken wings. I ate the bun, but not the wings. Sad events from the past as Ximen Nao kept rising up from deep in my memory. Forgetting sometimes that I was in my fourth reincarnation, I felt myself to be the head of this household, a man whose wife had just died; at other times I understood that the yin and the yang were different worlds, and that the affairs of the human world were unrelated to me, a dog.

Most of the people out to watch the procession were elderly, or were snot-nosed little children; the younger men and women were working in town. The oldsters told the children all about how Ximen Nao had seen his own mother off in a four-inch-thick cypress coffin carried by twenty-four strong men. The funeral streamers and wreaths had stood in an unbroken line on both sides of the street, and every fifty paces a tent had been thrown up to accommodate roadside sacrifices of whole pigs, watermelons, oversize steamed buns… I didn’t stick around to hear any more. Those were memories too painful to recall. I was now a dog only, one who did not have many more years in him. The officials who had decided to attend the interment were all wearing black overcoats with black scarves. Some – the bald or balding – were sporting black marten caps. Those without caps had full heads of hair. The snow covering their heads beautifully matched the white paper flowers in their lapels.

At noon a Red Flag sedan, followed by a black Audi, drove up to the Ximen compound. Ximen Jinlong, in mourning attire, rushed out to greet the new arrival. The driver opened the door, and out stepped Pang Kangmei in a black wool overcoat. Her face looked even fairer than usual, owing to the contrast with her coat. Deep wrinkles at the corners of her mouth and eyes were new since the last time I’d seen her. A man, probably her secretary, pinned a white funeral flower to her coat. Though she cut an imposing figure, a look of deep sadness filled her eyes, undetectable by most people. She held out her hand, encased in a black glove, and greeted Jinlong, who took her hand in his. Her comment was pregnant with hidden meaning:

“Keep your grief under control, be calm, don’t lose your cool!”

Jinlong, looking equally solemn, nodded.

The good girl Pang Fenghuang followed Kangmei out of the car. Already taller than her mother, she was not only beautiful but fashionable, with a white down jacket over blue jeans and a pair of white lambskin loafers. She wore a white wool-knit cap on her head and no makeup – she didn’t need to.

“This is your uncle Ximen,” Kangmei said to her daughter.

“How do you do, Uncle?” Fenghuang said reluctantly.

“I want you to go up to Grandma’s coffin and kowtow,” Kangmei said with deep emotion. “She helped raise you.”

I imagined that there were fifteen thousand RMB in the coffin, spread all around, not tied in bundles, ready to fly out when the lid was removed. It worked. I strode into the yard, holding Chunmiao by the arm; I could feel her stumbling along behind me, like a child being dragged along against her will. I burst into the room, where I was immediately confronted by a mahogany coffin whose lid was standing against the wall, waiting to be placed on top – after my arrival. A dozen or so people were standing around the coffin, some in mourning attire, some in street clothes. I knew that most of them were PLA in disguise, and that in a moment they were going to pin me to the floor. I saw Blue Face’s mother lying in the coffin, her face covered by a sheet of yellow paper. Her purple funeral clothes were made of satin with dark gold longevity characters sewn in. I fell to my knees in front of the coffin.

“Mother,” I wailed, “your unfilial son has come too late…”

Your mother’s coffin finally emerged through the gateway, accompanied by the mournful wails of those who survived her and funeral music provided by a renowned peasant musician’s troupe. Excitement spread among the bystanders, who had waited a long time for this moment. The musicians were preceded by two men carrying long bamboo poles to clear the way ahead. White mourning cloth hung from the ends of the poles, like antisparrow poles. They were followed by ten or fifteen boys carrying funeral banners, for which they would be richly rewarded, reason enough for them to beam happily. Behind this youthful honor guard came two men who covered the procession route with spirit money Next came a four-man purple canopy protecting your mother’s spirit tablet, on which, in ancient script, was written: “Wife of Ximen Nao, Surnamed Bai, called Yingchun.” Everyone who saw this tablet knew that Ximen Jinlong had established his mother’s lineage as the deceased spouse not of Lan Lian but of his biological father, Ximen Nao, and not as concubine but as legal wife. This, of course, was highly unconventional, for a remarried woman was normally not entitled to interment near her original husband’s family graves. But Jinlong broke with this tradition. Then came your mother’s mahogany casket, followed by the direct descendants of the deceased, all walking with willow lamentation canes. Your son, Ximen Huan, and Ma Gaige had simply thrown a white funeral sackcloth over their street clothes and wrapped their heads in white fabric. Each supported his grieving mother, all shedding silent tears. Jinlong trailed his lamentation cane behind him, stopping frequently to go down on his knees and wail, shedding red tears. Baofeng’s voice was raspy, all but inaudible. Her eyes were glassy and her mouth hung open, but there were no tears or sounds. Your son, with his lean frame, had to support the entire weight of your wife, requiring the assistance of some of the other mourners. She wasn’t walking to the cemetery, she was being carried along. Huzhu’s loose black hair caught everyone’s attention. Normally worn in a braid and encased in a black net, now, in accordance with funeral protocol, she let it fall loosely around her shoulders, like a black cataract spreading out on the ground, muddying the tips. A distant niece of the deceased, who had her wits about her, trotted ahead, scooped up Huzhu’s hair, and laid it across her bent elbow. Many of the bystanders were whispering comments regarding Huzhu’s miraculous hair. Someone said, Ximen Jinlong lives amid a cloud of beautiful women, but he won’t ask his wife for a divorce. Why? Because the life he lives has been bestowed upon him by his wife. It is her miraculous hair that has brought him wealth and prosperity.

Pang Kangmei walked hand in hand with Pang Fenghuang with the group of dignitaries, behind the direct descendants. She was but three months away from being tried for a double offense. Her term of office had ended, but she had not yet been reassigned, which was a sure sign that trouble was brewing for her. Why, then, had she chosen to participate in a funeral that would later become a major expose by the news media? Now, I was a dog who had experienced many of life’s vicissitudes, but this was too complicated a problem for me to figure out. Nonetheless, I think the answer lay not in anything involving Kangmei herself, but must have been tied to Pang Fenghuang, a charming but rebellious girl who was, after all your mother’s granddaughter.

“Mother, your unfilial son has come too late…” After I shouted my line, all of Mo Yan’s instructions disappeared without a trace, as did my awareness that I was acting the part of Blue Face in a TV series. I had a hallucination – no, it wasn’t a hallucination, it was a real-life feeling that the person lying in the coffin in funeral clothes with a sheet of yellow paper covering her face was, in fact, my mother. Images of the last time I’d seen her, six years earlier, flashed before my eyes, and one side of my face swelled up and felt hot. There’d been a ringing in my ears after my father had slapped me with the sole of his shoe. What my eyes took in here – my mother’s white hair; her face, awash in murky tears; her sunken, toothless mouth; her age-spotted, veiny, nearly useless hands; her prickly-ash cane, which lay on the floor; her anguished cry as she tried to protect me – all this appeared before me, and tears gushed from my eyes. Mother, I’ve come too late. Mother, how did you manage to get through the days with an unfilial son who was cursed and spat on for what he did? And yet your son’s filial feelings toward you have never wavered. Now I’ve brought Chunmiao to see you, Mother, so please accept her as your daughter-in-law…

Your mother’s grave was located at the southern end of Lan Lian’s notorious plot of land. Ximen Jinlong was not daring enough to open the tomb in which Ximen Nao and Ximen Bai were buried together, and that served to save a bit of face for his adoptive father and mother-in-law. Instead he built a splendid tomb to the left of his biological parents’ tomb. The stone doors seemed to open onto a deep, dark passage. The tomb was surrounded by an impenetrable wall of excited bystanders. I looked at the donkey’s grave, and at the ox’s grave, and the pig’s grave, and at a dog’s grave, and I looked at the ground, trampled into a rock-hard surface. A succession of thoughts crowded my mind. I could smell the sizzling spray of urine on Ximen Nao and Ximen Bai’s markers from years back, and my heart was struck by apocalyptic feelings of doom. I walked slowly over to the pig’s burial site and sprayed it. Then I lay down beside it, and as my eyes swelled with tears, I reflected: descendants of the Ximen family and those associated closely with it, I hope you will be able to discern my wishes and bury the dog-body of this incarnation in the spot I have chosen.

I nearly swooned from crying. I could hear someone shouting behind me, but could not tell what they were saying. Oh, Mother, let me see you one more time… I reached over and removed the paper covering Mother’s face; a woman who looked nothing like my mother sat up and said with extraordinary seriousness: Son, the PLA always treats its prisoners humanely, so please turn in your weapons and surrender to them! I sat down hard, my mind a blank, as the people standing around the bier swarmed up and pinned me to the ground. Cold hands reached down and pulled a pair of pistols from my waistband.

Just as your mother’s coffin was being placed in the tomb, a man in a heavy padded coat stepped out from the surrounding crowd. He staggered a bit and reeked of alcohol. As he trotted unsteadily ahead, he peeled off his padded coat and flung it behind him; it hit the ground like a dead lamb. Using both hands and feet, he climbed up onto your mother’s tomb, where he started tipping to one side and seemed in danger of slipping off altogether. But he didn’t. He stood up. Hong Taiyue! It was Hong Taiyue! He was standing, steadily now, on top of your mother’s tomb, dressed in rags: a brownish yellow army uniform, with a red detonating cap hanging from his belt. He raised a hand high in the air and shouted:

“Comrades, proletarian brothers, foot soldiers for Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Mao Zedong, the time to declare war on the descendant of the landlord class, the enemy of the worldwide proletarian movement, and a despoiler of the earth, Ximen Jinlong, has arrived!”

The crowd was stunned. For a moment everything stood still before some of the people turned and ran, others hit the ground, flat on their bellies, and some simply didn’t know what to do. Pang Kangmei pulled her daughter around behind her, looking frantic, but quickly regained her composure. She took several steps forward and said, looking unusually harsh, “Hong Taiyue, I am Pang Kangmei, secretary of the Gaomi County Communist Party Committee, and I order you to stop this idiotic behavior at once!”

“Pang Kangmei, don’t put on those stinking airs with me! Communist Party secretary, like hell! You and Ximen Jinlong are links in the same chain, in cahoots with one another in your attempt to bring capitalism back to Northeast Gaomi Township, turning a red township into a black one. You are traitors to the proletariat, enemies of the people!”

Ximen Jinlong stood up and pushed his funeral cap back on his head; it fell to the ground. As if trying to calm an angry bull, he slowly approached the tomb.

“Don’t come any closer!” Hong Taiyue shouted as he reached for the detonator fuse.

“Uncle, good uncle,” Jinlong said with a kindly smile. “You nurtured me like a son. I remember every lesson you gave me. Our society has developed along with the changing times, and everything I’ve done has befitted those changes. Tell me the truth, Uncle, over the past decade have the people’s lives gotten better or haven’t they?…”

“I don’t want to hear any more fine words from you!”

“Come down, Uncle,” Jinlong said. “If you say I’ve made a mess of things, I’ll resign and let someone more capable take over. Or, if you prefer, you can be the one holding the Ximen Village official seal.”

While this exchange between Jinlong and Hong Taiyue was playing out, the policemen who had driven Pang Kangmei and others to the funeral were crawling toward the tomb. Just as they jumped to their feet, Hong Taiyue leaped off of the tomb and wrapped his arms around Jinlong.

A muffled explosion sent smoke and the stench of blood flying into the air.

After what seemed like an eternity, the stunned crowd quickly converged on the spot and pulled the two mangled bodies apart. Jinlong had been killed instantly, but Hong was still breathing, and no one knew what to do with the mortally wounded old man. They just stood there gawping at him. His face was waxen.

“This is,” he stammered in a soft, barely audible voice as blood oozed from his mouth, “the last battle… unite for tomorrow… Internationale… has to…”

Blood spurted from his mouth, a foot-high red fountain, and splattered on the ground around him. His eyes lit up, like burning chicken feathers, once, twice, and then darkened, the fires extinguished for all time.

53

As Death Nears, Charity and Enmity Vanish

A Dog Dies, but the Wheel of Life Rolls on

I was carrying an old floor-model electric fan given to us by a colleague at the newspaper who had been promoted and was moving into new quarters. Chunmiao was carrying an old microwave oven, also a gift from that colleague. We’d just alighted from a crowded bus and were sweating profusely. It was hot and we were tired, but delighted to have these new – to us – items without having to spend a cent. It was a three-li walk from the bus stop to where we lived, but we weren’t willing to part with our limited funds to hire a pedicab, so we hoofed it, stopping frequently to rest.

Dusk was deepening when we reached our kennel-like apartment, where our fat landlady was cursing at two other tenants for using tap water to cool the street in front of the building. Those two young tenants, our next-door neighbors, were gleefully throwing curses right back at her. A tall, thin man was standing in our doorway, the blue birthmark that covered half his face looking bronzed in the twilight. I set the fan down on the ground, hard, as I was racked by a chill throughout my body.

“What is it?” Chunmiao asked.

“It’s Kaifang,” I said. “Maybe you should make yourself scarce.” “What for? It’s time to deal with the situation.” We made ourselves as presentable as possible and, trying hard to look relaxed, walked up to my son carrying our new possessions.

He was quite thin, but taller than me, and slightly stooped. Despite the heat, he was wearing a black long-sleeved shirt-jacket, black trousers, and a pair of sneakers of an indefinable color. His body gave off a sour smell; his clothes were sweat-stained. His luggage consisted solely of a transparent plastic bag. Saddened by the sight of a son who looked so much older than his years, I was on the verge of tears. I ran up to him, but the off-putting look on his face kept me from embracing him. I let my arms drop heavily to my sides.

“Kaifang…”

He looked me over without a trace of warmth, disgusted even by the tears that were now washing my face. He frowned, imprinting creases on his forehead above a nearly unbroken line of eyebrows, like his mother’s. He sneered.

“Not bad, you two, making it to a place like this.”

I was too tongue-tied to say anything.

Chunmiao opened the door and carried in our fan and microwave. Turning on the twenty-five-watt overhead light, she said:

“Since you’re here, Kaifang, you’d better come in. We can talk in here.”

“I have nothing to say to you,” he said with a quick glance inside, “and I’m not going inside your house!”

“No matter what, Kaifang, I’m still your father,” I said. “You’ve come a long way, and Aunt Chunmiao and I would like to take you to dinner.”

“You two go, I’ll stay here,” Chunmiao said. “Treat him to something good.”

“I’m not going to eat anything you give me,” he said as he swung the bag in his hand. “I brought my own food.”

“Kaifang…” More tears. “Can’t you give your father a little face?”

“Okay, that’s enough,” he said with obvious repulsion. “Don’t think I hate you two, because I don’t, not a bit. It was my mother’s idea to come looking for you, not mine.”

“She… how is she?” I said hesitantly.

“She has cancer.” His voice was low. There was silence for a moment before he continued. “She doesn’t have long to live, and would like to see you both. She says she has many things she wants to say to you.”

“How could she have cancer?” said Chunmiao, now crying openly.

My son looked at Chunmiao and just shook his head noncom-mittally.

“Well, I’ve delivered the message,” he said. “Whether you go back or not is up to you.”

He turned and walked off.

“Kaifang…” I grabbed his arm. “We can go together. We’ll leave tomorrow.”

He wrested his arm from my grip.

“I’m not traveling with you. I have a return ticket for tonight.”

“Then we’ll go with you.”

“I said I’m not traveling with you.”

“Then we’ll walk you to the station,” Chunmiao said.

“No,” my son said with steely determination. “There’s no need.”

After your wife learned she had cancer, she insisted on going back to Ximen Village. Your son, who hadn’t graduated from high school, was bent on quitting school and becoming a policeman. His application was accepted by your old friend Du Luwen, once the Lüdian Township Party secretary, and now county police commissioner, either as a result of your relationship or of your son’s excellent qualifications. He was assigned to the criminal division.

Following the death of your mother, your father moved back into the southern end of the little room in the western addition, where he resumed the solitary, eccentric lifestyle of his independent farming days. No one ever saw him out in the compound during the day, nor did they often see smoke from his chimney, though he prepared his own meals. He wouldn’t eat the food Huzhu or Baofeng brought to him, preferring to let it go bad on the counter by the stove or on his table. Late at night he’d get down off his sleeping platform, the kang, and come back to life. He’d boil a pot of water on the stove and make some soupy rice, which he’d eat before it was fully cooked. Either that or he’d simply eat raw, crunchy grain and wash it down with cold water. Then he’d be right back on the kang.

When your wife returned to the village, she moved into the northern end of the western addition, previously occupied by your mother. Her twin sister, Huzhu, took care of her. Sick as she was, I never heard a single moan from her. She just lay quietly in bed, eyes closed as she tried to get some sleep, or open as she stared at the ceiling. Huzhu and Baofeng tried all sorts of home remedies, such as cooking a toad in soupy rice or preparing pig’s lung with a special grass or snakeskin with stir-fried eggs or gecko in liquor. She refused to try any of these remedies. Her room was separated by your father’s only by a thin wall of sorghum stalks and mud, so they could hear each other’s coughs and sighs; but they never exchanged a word.

In your father’s room there were a vat of raw wheat, another of mung beans, and two strings of corn ears hanging from the rafters. After Dog Two died, I found myself with nothing to do and no mood to try anything new, so I either slept the day away in my kennel or wandered through the compound. After the death of Jinlong, Ximen Huan hung out with a bad crowd in town, returning infrequently, and only to get money from his mother. After Pang Kangmei was arrested, Jinlong’s company was taken over by county officials, as was the Ximen Village Party secretary position. By then his company existed on paper only, and all the millions in bank loans were gone. He left nothing for Huzhu or Ximen Huan. So after her son used up all of Huzhu’s personal savings, he stopped showing up altogether.

Huzhu was living in the main house; every time I entered the house she was seated at her square table, cutting paper figures. Everything she made – plants and flowers, insects and fish, birds and beasts – was remarkably lifelike. She mounted the figures between sheets of white paper and, when she’d finished a hundred of them, took them into town to sell next to shops that carried all sorts of mementos; from that she maintained a simple life. I occasionally saw her comb her hair, standing on a bench to let it fall all the way to the floor. Watching the way she had to bend her neck to run the comb through it made me very sad.

Someone else I made sure to see each day was your father-in-law. Huang Tong was laid up with liver disease and probably didn’t have long to live either. Your mother-in-law, Wu Qiuxiang, looked to be in good health, though her hair had turned white and her eyesight had dimmed. No trace of her youthful flirtatiousness remained.

But most of all I went to your father’s room, where I sprawled on the floor next to the kang, and the old man and I would just look at each other, communicating with our eyes and not our mouths. There were times when I assumed he knew exactly who I was; he’d start jabbering, as if talking in his sleep:

“Old Master, you shouldn’t have died the way you did, but the world has changed over the last ten years or more, and lots of people died who shouldn’t have…”

I whined softly, which earned an immediate response from him:

“What are you whining about, old dog? Did I say something wrong?”

Rats shamelessly nibbled the corn hanging from the rafters. It was seed corn, something a farmer values almost as much as life itself. But not your father. He was unmoved. “Go ahead, eat up. There’s more food in the vats. Gome help me finish it off so I can leave…”

On nights when there was a bright moon he would walk out with a hoe over his shoulder and work in the moonlight, the same as he’d done for years, as everyone in Northeast Gaomi Township knew.

And every time he did that, I tagged along, no matter how tired I was. He never wound up anywhere but on his one-point-six-acre sliver of land, a plot that, over a period of fifty years, had nearly evolved into a graveyard. Ximen Nao and Ximen Bai were there, your mother was buried there, as were the donkey, the ox, the pig, my dog-mother, and Ximen Jinlong. Weeds covered the spots where there were no graves, the first time that had ever happened there.

One night, by jogging my deteriorating memory, I located the spot I’d chosen. I lay down and whimpered pathetically.

“No need to cry, old dog,” your father said. “I know what you’re thinking. If you die before me, I’ll bury you right there. If I go first, I’ll tell them to bury you there, if I have to do it with my last breath.”

Your father dug up some dirt behind your mother’s grave.

“This spot is for Hezuo.”

The moon was a melancholy object in the sky, its beams translucent and chilled. I followed your father as he prowled the area. He startled a pair of partridges, which flew off to someone else’s land. The rends they made in the moonlight were quickly swallowed up. Your father stood about ten yards north of the Ximen family graveyard and looked all around. He stamped his foot on the ground.

“This is my place,” he said.

He then started to dig, and didn’t stop until he’d carved out a hole roughly three feet by six and two feet deep. He lay down in it and stared up at the moon for about half an hour.

“Old dog,” he said after climbing out, “you and the moon are my witnesses that I’ve slept in this spot. It’s mine, and no one can take it from me.”

Then he went over to where I had lain down, measured my body, and dug a hole for me. I knew what he had in mind, so I jumped in. After lying there for a while, I got out.

“That’s your spot, old dog. The moon and I are your witnesses.”

In the company of the melancholy moon, we headed home along the riverbank, reaching the Ximen compound just before the roosters crowed. Dozens of dogs, having been influenced by dogs in town, were holding a meeting in the square across from the Ximen family gate. They were sitting in a circle around a female with a red silk kerchief around her neck; she was singing to the moon. Needless to say, to humans her song sounded like a bunch of crazed barks. But to me it was clear and musical, with a wonderfully moving melody and poetic lyrics. Here is the gist of what she was singing:

“Moon, ah, moon, you make me so sad… girl, ah, girl, you make me go mad…”

That night your father and your wife spoke through the wall for the first time. He rapped on the thin wall and said:

“Kaifang’s mother.”

“I can hear you, Father, go ahead.”

“I’ve selected your spot. It’s ten paces behind your mother’s grave.”

“Then I can be at peace, Father. I was born a Lan and will be a Lan ghost after I die.”

We knew she wouldn’t eat anything we brought, but we bought as much nutritious food as we could. Kaifang, in his oversize policeman’s uniform, rode us over to Ximen Village in an official sidecar motorcycle. Chunmiao was in the sidecar, with all the cans and bags we’d brought in her arms and packed around her. I sat behind my son, gripping a steel bar with both hands. He wore a somber look; the glare in his eyes was chilling. He looked impressive in his uniform, even if it was too big for him. His blue birthmark beautifully matched his blue uniform. Son, you’ve chosen the right profession. These blue birthmarks of ours are perfect symbols for the incorruptible face of the law.

Gingko trees lining the road were as big around as an average bowl. The stems of wisteria planted in the center divider were bent low by the profusion of white and dark red flowers. The village had undergone dramatic changes in the years I’d been away. And I was thinking, anyone who says that Ximen Jinlong and Pang Kangmei were responsible for nothing good did not see the whole picture.

My son pulled up in front of the family compound gate and led us inside.

“Are you going to see Grandpa first or my mother?” he asked frigidly.

I wavered for a moment.

“Tradition demands that I see Grandpa first.”

Father’s door was shut tight. Kaifang stepped up and knocked. No sound emerged from inside, so he walked over to the tiny window and rapped on it.

“It’s Kaifang, Grandpa. Your son is here.”

A sad, heavy sigh eventually broke the silence.

“Dad, your unfilial son has come home.” I fell to my knees in front of the window. Chunmiao knelt beside me. Weeping and sniveling, I said, “Please open the door, Dad, and let me see you…”

“I don’t have the face to see you,” he said, “but there are some things I want to say to you. Are you listening?”

“I’m listening, Dad…”

“Kaifang’s mother’s gravesite is ten paces behind your mother’s. I’ve piled up some dirt to mark the site. The old dog’s grave is just west of the pig’s; I’ve already framed it out. Mine is thirty paces north of your mother’s; I’ve framed it too. When I die I don’t want a coffin, and no musicians. Don’t notify any friends or relatives. Just get a rush mat, roll me up in it, and quietly put me in. Then take the grain from the vat in my room and dump it in the hole to cover my face and body. It all came from my plot of land, so that’s where it should return to. No one is to cry over my death; there’s nothing to cry about. As for Kaifang’s mother, you make whatever arrangements for her you want, I don’t care. If there’s still a filial bone in your body, you’ll do exactly as I ask.”

“I will, Dad, I won’t forget. But please open the door and let me see you.”

“Go see your wife, she only has a few days left. I should have another year or so. I won’t die anytime soon.”

So Chunmiao and I stood beside Hezuo’s kang. Kaifang called to her and then stepped outside. Knowing we’d come, Hezuo was ready for us. She was wearing a blue jacket with side openings that had belonged to my mother – her hair was neatly combed and her face washed. She was sitting up on the kang. But she was almost inhumanly thin; her face was bones covered by a layer of yellow skin. With tears in her eyes, Chunmiao called out Big Sister and laid the cans and bags on the kang.

“You’ve thrown your money away on all that,” Hezuo said. “Take it back with you and get your money back.”

“Hezuo…” Tears were streaming down my face. “I treated you terribly.”

“At this point, talk like that is meaningless,” she said. “You two have suffered over the years too.” She turned to Chunmiao. “You’ve gotten old yourself.” Then she turned to me. “Not many black hairs on your head anymore…” She coughed, turning her face red. I could smell blood. But then the jaundiced look returned.

“Why don’t you lie back, Big Sister?” Chunmiao said. “I won’t leave, I’ll stay here and take care of you.”

“I can’t ask that of you,” Hezuo said with a wave of her hand. “I had Kaifang ask you to come so I could tell you I only have a few days left, and there’s no reason for you to hide yourselves far away. I was foolish. I don’t know why I didn’t agree to what you wanted back then…”

“Big Sister…” Chunmiao was weeping bitterly. “It’s all my fault.”

“It’s nobody’s fault,” Hezuo said. “Everything is determined by fate, and there’s no way anyone can escape it.”

“Don’t give up, Hezuo,” I said. “We’ll get you to a hospital and find a good doctor.”

She managed a sad smile.

“Jiefang, you and I were husband and wife, and after I die, I want you to take good care of her… she’s a good person. Women who stay with you are not blessed with good fortune… all I ask is that you look after Kaifang. He’s suffered a lot because of us…”

I heard Kaifang blow his nose out in the yard.

Hezuo died three days later.

After the funeral my son wrapped his arms around the old dog’s neck and sat in front of his mother’s grave from noon to sunset, without crying and without moving.

Like my father, Huang Tong and his wife refused to see me. I got down on my knees at their door and kowtowed three times, banging my head loudly enough for them to hear.

Two months later Huang Tong was dead.

On the night of his death, Wu Qiuxiang hanged herself from a dead branch on the apricot tree in the middle of the yard.

Once the funerals for my father-in-law and mother-in-law were over, Chunmiao and I moved into the Ximen family compound. The two rooms Mother and Hezuo had occupied now became our living quarters, separated from Father only by that thin wall. As before, he never went out in the daytime, but if we looked out our window at night we sometimes saw his crooked back along with the old dog, who never left his side.

In accordance with Qiuxiang’s wishes, we buried her to the right of Ximen Nao and Ximen Bai. Ximen Nao and his women were now all united in the ground. Huang Tong? We buried him in the Ximen Village public cemetery, no more than two yards from where Hong Taiyue lay.

On October 5, 1998, the fifteenth day of the eight month by the lunar calendar, the Mid-Autumn Festival, there was a reunion of all who had lived in the Ximen family compound. Kaifang returned on his motorcycle from the county town, his sidecar filled with two boxes of moon cakes and a watermelon. Baofeng and Ma Gaige were there. Gaige, who had worked for a private cottonseed-processing factory, had lost his left arm in a cutting machine; his sleeve hung empty at his side. You wanted to express your condolences to this nephew of yours, it seemed, but no words emerged when your lips moved. That was also the day that you, Lan Jiefang, and Pang Chunmiao received formal permission to marry. After years of hardship, your lover finally became your wife, and even an old dog like me was happy for you. You kneeled outside your father’s window. In a supplicating tone, you said:

“Dad… we’re married, we are a legally married couple, and will no longer bring you shame… Dad… open your door and let your son and your daughter-in-law pay their respects to you…”

Finally your father’s dilapidated door swung open, and you went up to it on your knees; there you held the marriage certificate high over your head. “Father,” you said.

“Father…,” Chunmiao greeted him.

He rested his hand on the door frame. His blue face twitched, his blue beard quivered, blue tears fell from his blue eyes. The Mid-Autumn moon sent down blue rays of light.

“Get up,” your father said in a voice that trembled. “At last you’ve put yourselves in the proper roles… my heart is free of concerns.”

The Mid-Autumn banquet was held under the apricot tree, with moon cakes, watermelon, and a variety of fine dishes arrayed on the table. Your father sat at the north end, with me crouched beside him. You and Chunmiao sat to the east, opposite Baofeng and Gaige. Kaifang and Huzhu sat to the south. The moon, perfectly round, sent its rays down on the Ximen family compound. The old tree had all but died years earlier, but in lunar August, a few new leaves appeared on some of the branches. Your father flung a glassful of liquor up toward the moon, which shuddered; the beams suddenly darkened, as if a layer of mist had shrouded the face of the moon. But only for a moment; the new light was brighter, warmer, and cleaner than before. Everything in the compound – the buildings, the trees, the people, and the dog – seemed to be steeped in a bath of light blue ink.

Your father splashed the second glassful on the ground. He poured the third glassful down my mouth. It was a dry red wine that Mo Yan had asked a German master winemaker friend to make. Deep red in color, with a wonderful bouquet and a slightly bitter taste, when it touched my throat it brought a host of memories.

It was Chunmiao’s and my first night as husband and wife, and our hearts were so full of emotions sleep would not come. We were bathed by moonlight streaming in through the cracks. We lay naked on the kang my mother and Hezuo had both slept on, staring at each other’s face and body as if for the first time. “Mother, Hezuo,” I said in silent benediction, “I know you are watching us. You sacrificed yourselves to bring happiness to us.

“Chunmiao,” I called out softly, “let’s make love. When Mother and Hezuo see that we are in perfect harmony, they will be able to move on, knowing all is well…”

We wrapped our arms around each other and began to move in the moonlight like fish tumbling in the water. We made love with tears of gratitude in our eyes. Our bodies seemed to float up and out the window, all the way to the moon, with countless lamps and the purple ground far below. There we saw: Mother, Hezuo, Huang Tong, Qiuxiang, Chunmiao’s mother, Ximen Jinlong, Hong Taiyue, Ximen Bai… They were all sitting astride white birds, flying into a void we could not see. Even Ma Gaige’s lost arm, dark as an eel, was following in their wake.

Late that night your father led me out of the compound. By this time there was no doubt that he knew who I was. On our way out we stood in the gateway and, feeling intense nostalgia, yet seemingly with no wistfulness at all, took a long look inside. Then we headed out to the plot of land, where the moon hung low waiting for us.

When we reached the one-point-six-acre plot of land, which seemed to us to have been carved out of gold, the moon began to change color, first to a light eggplant purple, and then, slowly, into an azure hue. At that moment, everything around us took on an ocean blue that merged perfectly with the vast sky; we were two tiny creatures at the bottom of that ocean.

Your father lay down in the hole he had dug. Softly, he said:

“You can go, too, Master.”

I walked over to my plot and jumped in. I fell, down and down, all the way to the hall where blue lights flashed. The underworld attendants were whispering back and forth. The face of Lord Yama, seated in the main hall, was unfamiliar to me. But before I could open my mouth, he said:

“Ximen Nao, I know everything about you. Does hatred still reside in your heart?”

I hesitated momentarily before shaking my head.

“There are too many, far too many, people in the world in whose hearts hatred resides,” Lord Yama said sorrowfully. “We are unwilling to allow spirits who harbor hatred to be reborn as humans. Unavoidably, some do slip through the net.”

“My hatred is all gone, Great Lord!”

“No, I can see in your eyes that traces of it remain,” Lord Yama said, “so I will send you back once more as a member of the animal kingdom. This time, however, you will be reborn as a higher species, one closer to man, a monkey, if you must know, and only for a short time – two years. I hope that during those two years you will be able to purge your heart of hatred. When you do that, you will have earned the right to return to the realm of humans.”

In accordance with Father’s wishes, we spread the wheat and beans in his room, as well as the corn hanging from the rafters, into his grave, covering his face and body with those precious grains. We spread some of it into the dog’s grave as well, though that was not spelled out in Father’s last wishes. We wrestled with one item for a while, but ultimately decided to part with Father’s wishes by erecting a marker over his grave. The words were written by Mo Yan and cut into stone by the stone mason from my donkey era, Han Shan:

Everything that comes from the earth shall return to it.