by Mo Yan
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 Comme
rce 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 regar
d 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. . . .”
