Life and Death are Wearing Me Out (44 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mo Yan continued:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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