Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

by Mo Yan

  My brother smacked the rump of the Mongol ox hard, and she lurched forward, still quaking. The rope grew taut, pulling the nose ring with it. Oh, no, Ximen Ox! Jinlong, you monster, let my ox go! I fought to break free, but the people holding me seemed to have turned to stone. Ximen Ox’s nose was pulled out of shape, like a piece of rubber. But the Mongol Ox, the heartless beast, charged ahead with all her strength every time my brother hit her, jerking Ximen Ox’s head up off the ground. Yet the rest of him stayed put. It seemed to me that his front legs bent inward, but I was just seeing things. You had no intention of getting to your feet. Sounds like a bawling infant emerged from your nostrils. It was heartbreaking. Oh, Ximen Ox, a crisp sound, a pop, marked the splitting of your nose, followed by the thud of your raised head hitting the ground again. The female ox’s front legs gave out on her, but she immediately stood up again.

  Ximen Jinlong, now you can stop. But he didn’t. He was a madman. Howling like an injured wolf, he ran over to a furrow, scooped up a handful of cornstalks, and piled them behind you. Was that evil bastard planning to set the ox on fire? Yes, that’s exactly what he had in mind. He lit the stalks, and white smoke carrying a subtle fragrance rose into the air, the unique smell of cornstalks. Everyone held their breath and stared wide-eyed, but not one of them tried to put an end to my brother’s brutal behavior. Oh, no, Ximen Ox, oh, no, Ximen Ox, who would rather die than stand up and pull a plow for the People’s Commune. I saw my dad throw down his hoe and sprawl on the ground, facedown, as he dug his hands deep into the soil. He was quaking like a malaria sufferer, and I knew that he was sharing the ox’s agonies.

  The ox’s hide was burning, giving off a foul, nauseating odor. No one threw up, but everyone felt like it. Ximen Ox, your face was burrowing into the ground, your back was like a trapped snake, writhing and popping from the heat. The leather halter caught fire. Belonging to the collective, it mustn’t be lost. Someone ran up, released the catch, and flung it to the ground, then stomped out the flames that were consuming the rope, releasing a stench that even drove away birds in the sky. Oh, no, Ximen Ox, the charred rear half of your body was too horrible to look at.

  “Burn, damn you . . . ,” Jinlong was screaming. He ran over to a pile of cornstalks, and no one made a move to stop him. They wanted to see how perversely evil he could be. Even Hong Taiyue, whose job it was to teach people to cherish property belonging to the collective, looked on dispassionately.

  Jinlong came back with an armload of cornstalks, stumbling as he walked. My half brother was out of his mind. Jinlong, how would you have felt if you’d known that the ox was actually the reincarnation of your real father? And you, Ximen Ox, how did you feel knowing that it was your son who punished you so savagely? Countless forms of gratitude and resentment, of love and enmity, exist among people all over the world, but something occurred at that moment that stupefied everyone who witnessed it. Ximen Ox, you stood up on shaky legs, minus your harness, your nose ring, and your tether, a free ox, totally liberated from all human control. You began to walk, how hard that must have been, weak in the legs, swaying uncontrollably from side to side; dark blood dripped from your torn nose, slid down to your belly, and from there dripped to the ground like tar. The people gaped silently, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Step by agonizing step, you walked toward my dad, leaving the land belonging to the People’s Commune and entering the one-point-six acres of land belonging to the last independent farmer in the nation, Lan Lian; once there, you collapsed in a heap.

  Ximen Ox died on my dad’s land. What he did went a long way toward clearing the minds of people who had become confused and disoriented during the Cultural Revolution. Ah, Ximen Ox, you became the stuff of legend, a mythical being. After your death, there were those who wanted to butcher and eat you, but when they ran up with their knives and saw the bloody tears mixed with mud on my dad’s face, they turned and went away quietly.

  Dad buried you in the middle of his land, under a prominent grave mound, known today as Righteous Ox Tomb, one of Northeast Gaomi Township’s noted sights.

  As an ox, you will likely gain immortality.

  Book Three

  Pig Frolics

  21

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

  Deceived Again to Be Reborn as a Lowly Pig

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

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

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

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

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

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

  The judges shook their heads.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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