Life and Death are Wearing Me Out (45 page)

“Not at all. We were afraid that such an honored guest wouldn’t come even if we sent an eight-man sedan chair to bring you here. For Ximen Village, your presence here today—”

“Your gracious presence lends glitter to our humble surroundings,” Mo Yan proclaimed loudly from his seat at the end of the first row, a comment that not only caught the attention of Pang Hu, but of his daughter, Kangmei, as well. Raising her eyebrows in surprise, she fixed Mo Yan with a piercing stare at the same time as the other guests turned to look at him. He grinned complacently, revealing a row of golden yellow teeth. That’s the best I can do to describe the strange sight he presented as he jumped at yet another opportunity to show off.

Pang Hu removed his hand from Hong Taiyue’s grip and, along with the other hand, reached out to Yingchun. The hardened hands of this grenade-throwing war hero had softened over years of a more genteel life, and Yingchun, flustered and moved, but clearly grateful for the gesture, just stood there, her lips quivering, unable to speak. Pang Hu took her hands, shook them warmly, and said, “How happy you must be!”

“Happy, happy, everybody’s happy . . . ,” Yingchun managed to mutter through her tears.

“Happy together, happy together!” Mo Yan interjected.

“Why isn’t Lan Lian here, ma’am?” Pang Hu’s gaze swept past the two rows of tables.

The question tied Yingchun’s tongue in knots and thoroughly embarrassed Hong Taiyue. An ideal opportunity for Mo Yan to speak up again.

“He’s probably taking advantage of the bright moonlight to till his one-point-six acres of land.”

Panther Sun, who was sitting next to Mo Yan, must have stepped on Mo Yan’s foot. “Why’d you do that?” he screamed with patent excess.

“Shut that stinking mouth of yours. No one would mistake you for a mute,” Sun said menacingly, keeping his voice down. He reached down and pinched Mo Yan on the thigh, drawing a loud screech and turning his face white.

“Okay, enough of that,” Pang Hu said to break the awkwardness. He then gave his best wishes to the four newlyweds. Jinlong wore a silly smile, Jiefang seemed to be about to cry, Huzhu and Hezuo displayed indifferent looks. Pang Hu turned to his wife and daughter: “Bring the wedding gifts.”

“I can’t believe this, Secretary Pang,” Hong Taiyue said. “You’ve already lent glitter to our humble surroundings by your gracious presence, and there was no need to go to any additional expense.”

Pang Kangmei held a framed mirror with the dedication in red “Congratulations to Lan Jinlong and Huang Huzhu in becoming a revolutionary couple” in one corner. The mirror was decorated with a drawing of Chairman Mao in a long gown, bundle in hand, as he encouraged miners to rebel in the city of Anyuan. Wang Leyun held up a similar framed mirror with the same dedication, with “Lan Jiefang and Huang Hezuo” replacing the other names, in red in the corner. The inlaid photograph was of Chairman Mao in a woolen overcoat standing on the beach at the resort city of Beidaihe. Jinlong or Jiefang ought to have stood up to receive the gifts, but they sat there as if glued to their seats, making it necessary for Hong Taiyue to urge Huzhu and Hezuo to go up in their stead, since they appeared to be reasonably alert. After taking the mirror, Huang Huzhu bowed deeply to Wang Leyun, and when she looked up there were tears in her eyes. She was wearing a red top over red pants, her thick black braid falling all the way to her knees, bound at the end with a red bow. Wang Leyun reached out and touched the braid with tender affection. “You must hate the idea of cutting it off, I guess,” she said.

At last the opportunity presented itself for Wu Qiuxiang to speak up. “It’s not that, ma’am. My daughter’s hair is different from other girls’. If she cut it, blood would seep from it.”

“How strange,” Wang said. “But now I know why it felt sort of fleshy when I touched it. There must be capillaries running through it.”

Hezuo refrained from bowing when she took the mirror from Pang Kangmei. She merely thanked her modestly. Kangmei offered her hand in friendship. “I wish you every happiness,” she said as Hezuo took the hand, turned her head, and said through her tears, “Thank you.”

In my view, her fashionable hairstyle, her slim waist, and her dark skin made Hezuo prettier than Huzhu, and with her you got better than you deserved, Jiefang. She’s the one who ought to feel cheated, not you. With that blue birthmark, you could be the best person in the world and you’d still scare the hell out of anyone who saw you. Where you belong is down in the bowels of hell as one of Lord Yama’s attendants, not here on earth as an official. But you made it, you became an official, and you felt that Hezuo was beneath you. Everything about this world befuddles me, I’ll tell you that.

Once that was behind them, Hong Taiyue made room at the table for Pang Hu and his family. “You,” he said sternly, pointing to where Mo Yan was sitting, “scoot over and free up some space for our guests.” A bit of chaos ensued, punctuated with complaints from the dislodged guests.

Once the new arrivals were seated, the wedding guests, eager to start eating, jumped to their feet and noisily raised their glasses in a toast. Then they sat down, some quicker than others, picked up their chopsticks, and took aim on the morsels of food they’d had their eyes on all along. Compared to cucumbers and turnips, the oil sticks were considered gourmet food, which led inevitably to momentous clashes of chopsticks above the tables. Mo Yan’s greedy mouth had a well-deserved reputation, but his behavior that night was uncharacteristically subdued and genteel. Why? We needn’t look beyond Pang Kangmei. Though he’d been banished to the far end of the table, his heart remained stuck on the head table. He kept looking that way, now that the college student Pang Kangmei had snared his soul, as he wrote in one of his stupid essays:

Well, Mo Yan wound up getting drunk — one glass did it — so Panther Sun picked him up by the scruff of the neck and deposited him in the pile of grass and weeds, not far from where the pig bones had been dumped. Back at the head table, Jinlong guzzled half a glassful, and life returned to his eyes. Out of motherly concern, Yingchun muttered, “You shouldn’t drink so much, son.” And then there was Hong Taiyue, who, having thought things out carefully, said, “Jinlong, it’s time to put a period to all that’s happened in the past. Your new life begins today, and I expect you to sing well for me in all the shows to come.” To which Jinlong replied, “Over the past two months, I’ve experienced mental blockage that has blurred my thinking. But I’ve come to my senses, and the blockage has disappeared.” He offered his glass in a toast to Pang Hu and his wife: “Secretary Pang, Aunty Wang, thank you for coming to my wedding and for a gift we’ll treasure.” Then he turned to Pang Kangmei. “Comrade Kangmei, you are a college student, an advanced intellectual. We welcome your views of our work here on the pig farm. Please don’t hold anything back. As someone who studies animal husbandry, if you don’t know something, no one on earth does.” Jinlong’s feigned madness and crazy actions had run their course. The same would be true of Jiefang’s madness in short order. Now that Jinlong had recovered the ability to control events, he went around toasting all the people he ought to have toasted, thanked all those who deserved it, and, finally and perhaps unnecessarily, held out his glass to Hezuo and Jiefang, wishing them happiness and a long life together. Hezuo thrust the mirror with the inlaid drawing of Chairman Mao into Jiefang’s lap, stood up, and held out her glass with both hands. The moon abruptly rose high in the sky, shrinking in size as it cast quicksilver beams that put everything below in stark relief. Weasels’ heads emerged from the weeds as they marveled over the unusual light; bold hedgehogs scurried among the legs under the tables in their search for food. What occurred next happened in less time than it takes to tell about it. Hezuo flung the contents of her glass into Jinlong’s face and then threw the empty glass down on the table. Shock registered on everyone’s face over this unforeseen turn of events. The moon jumped even higher in the sky, blanketing the ground with quicksilver beams. Hezuo covered her face and burst into tears.

Huang Tong: “That girl . . . ?”

Qiuxiang: “Hezuo, what was that all about?”

Yingchun: “Oh, you foolish youngsters.”

Hong Taiyue: “Secretary Pang, to your health.” He raised his glass. “A little disagreement, that’s all. I hear you’re looking for contract workers at the processing plant. I can speak up for Hezuo and Jiefang. A change of scenery would do them good. They’re both outstanding youngsters who deserve the chance to toughen up a bit—”

Huzhu picked up the glass in front of her and flung the contents at her sister. “What did you think you were doing?”

I’d never seen Huang Huzhu so angry, had never even imagined she knew how to be angry. She took out a handkerchief to dry Jinlong’s face. He pushed her hand away, but she brought it up to him again. I tell you, I was a smart pig, but the girls of Ximen Village turned my brain to mush that day. Meanwhile, Mo Yan had crawled out of the weeds and, like a boy with springs tied to the soles of his feet, bounced unsteadily up to the table, where he picked up a glass, held it high over his head, and, like a poet — maybe Li Bai and maybe Qu Yuan — shouted crisply:

“Moon, Moon, I salute you!”

Mo Yan splashed the liquor in his glass in the direction of the moon; it spread out in the air like a green curtain and the moon abruptly dropped low in the sky, then floated gently upward to its normal height, where, like a silver plate, it cast indifferent rays down on the world.

Down below, now that the festivities had ended, the people began drifting away. There was still plenty to do that night; no time to waste. Me? I felt like going to see my old friend Lan Lian, who, I knew, was in the habit of working his land on moonlit nights. I thought back to my days as an ox and what he once said to me: Ox, the sun is theirs, the moon is ours, and I can find my land from the surrounding commune land with my eyes closed. The one-point-six acres of land are a reef, a strip of private land that will never sink in the vast ocean. Lan Lian had gained a provincewide reputation as a negative model, and I felt honored to have served him as a donkey and an ox, glory to the reactionary. “Only claiming the land as one’s own allows us to be masters of the land.”

Before going out to see Lan Lian, I passed stealthily by my pen, making no noise at all. A pair of militiamen were sitting under an apricot tree smoking and eating apricots, and to avoid them I hopped from one patch of shade to another, feeling light as a swallow, and exited the grove after only about a dozen hops, where my way was blocked by an irrigation ditch roughly five yards across and filled with clear water, the surface as smooth as glass. I was being observed by the moon’s reflection. Now I’d never tried to swim, not since the day I was born, but instinct told me that I knew how. But not wanting to frighten the moon, I decided to leap across the ditch. I stepped back ten yards or so, took several deep breaths to fill my lungs, and took off running, heading at full speed toward a ridge that showed up white, an ideal launching pad. The moment my front hooves touched the hard-packed earth, I sprang forward with my rear legs and lifted off, as if shot out of a cannon. My belly was cooled by a breeze that hugged the surface of the water; the moon winked as I passed overhead, just before landing on the opposite bank.

I saw him. He was wearing a jacket made of local fabric with a button-down front, a white cloth sash around his waist, and a conical hat woven of sorghum stalks that hid most of his face from view, but not the luminous blue half or the intensely sad yet unyielding light in his eyes. He was waving a long bamboo pole with a piece of red cloth tied to the end, like the swishing tail of an ox, driving the egg-laying tussock moths away from his wheat stalks and onto the cotton plants or cornstalks belonging to the production brigade. Reduced to using this clumsy primitive method to protect his crops, it appeared as if he was doing battle with destructive insects, when in fact the real foe was the People’s Commune. Old friend, back when I was a donkey and then when I was an ox, I shared your comforts and your hardships; but now I’m a People’s Commune stud boar, and I can’t help you. I thought about relieving myself in your field to supply you with some organic fertilizer, but what if you stepped in it? Wouldn’t that turn a good deed into a bad one? I could bite through the People’s Commune cornstalks or uproot all their cotton plants, but that won’t do you any good, since they aren’t your enemy either. Old friend, keep at it, don’t waver. You are China’s sole independent farmer, so don’t forget, perseverance is victory. I looked up at the moon; the moon nodded at me and then leaped into the western sky. It was getting late, time for me to head back. But I’d no sooner started out through the wheat field than I spotted Yingchun hurrying my way with a rattan basket. The wheat tassels rustled when they brushed her hips as she passed by. The look on her face was that of a wife who is late delivering food to her husband as he labors in the field. Though they lived apart, they hadn’t divorced. And though they hadn’t divorced, the joys of the bedroom were denied them. Deep down I felt good about that. As a pig, I shouldn’t have given a damn one way or the other where human sex was concerned, but after all, I’d been her husband when I walked the earth as Ximen Nao. The distinct aroma of liquor emanating from her hung in the chilled farmland air. She stopped when she was no more than a couple of yards from Lan Lian to look at his slightly hunched back as, with great agility, he fanned away the moths with his bamboo pole. Back and forth it waved, whistling in the wind. Their wings weighted down by dew, their bellies heavy with eggs, the moths flew awkwardly. I’m sure he knew he was being watched, and probably guessed it was Yingchun, but instead of stopping, he merely slowed down the pace of his waving.