Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

by Mo Yan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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