splashing skyward. Your son put down his game and gazed out the window, a look of envy crossing his face.
“Kaifang,” your wife said, “your cousin Huanhuan is one of those boys.”
I tried to recall what Huanhuan and Gaige looked like. Huanhuan’s face had always been sort of gaunt, and clean, Gaige’s was pale and pudgy, and always decorated with a line of snot down to his lips. I still recalled their unique smells, and that triggered an upsurge, like a raging river, of all the thousands of odors associated with the Ximen Village of eight years before.
“Wow, standing there naked at his age,” he muttered. I couldn’t tell if that was a scornful or an envious comment.
“Don’t forget, when we get home, say sweet things, be polite,” your wife reminded him. “We want your grandparents to be happy and our relatives to admire you.”
“Then smear some honey on my lips!”
“You love to upset me, don’t you?” your wife said. “But those jars of honey are for your grandparents. Say you bought them.”
“Where was I supposed to have gotten the money?” he said with a pout. “They won’t believe me.”
By now the car was driving down the village’s main street, lined with rows of 1980s barracks-style houses, all with the word
The car pulled up to the gate of the old-fashioned Ximen family compound. The driver honked the horn, bringing a swarm of people out of the yard. I detected their individual odors at the same time that I saw their faces. Signs of age appeared in both their odors and their looks. All the faces were older, looser, and furrowed: Lan Lian’s blue face, Yingchun’s swarthy face, Huang Tong’s yellow face, Qiuxiang’s pale face, and Huzhu’s red face.
Your wife wouldn’t step out of the car until your driver opened the door for her. Then she scooped up the hem of her dress, climbed out, and, because she wasn’t used to wearing heels, nearly fell. I watched as she struggled to keep her balance and not call attention to her gimpy hip.
“Ah, my darling daughter!” Qiuxiang cried out happily as she ran up to Hezuo and seemed about to throw her arms around her. She didn’t, stopping just before she reached her daughter. The once willowy woman whose cheeks were now slack, her belly quite pronounced, had a loving and fawning look in her eyes as she reached out to touch the sequins on your wife’s dress. “My goodness,” she said in a tone that suited her perfectly, “can this really be my own daughter? I thought for a moment a fairy had come down from the heavens!”
Your mother, Yingchun, walked up, aided by a cane, since one side of her body was not functioning. She raised her arm weakly and said to your wife:
“Where’s my darling grandson, Kaifang?”
Your driver opened the other door to bring out the gifts. I jumped out.
“Is that Puppy Four?” Yingchun gasped. “My heavens, he’s big as an ox!”
Your son emerged, I think, reluctantly.
“Kaifang,” Yingchun cried out. “Let Grandma look at you. You’re a head taller, and it’s only been a few months.”
“Hi, Grandma,” he said. Then he said, “Hi, Grandpa,” to your father, who had come up and patted him on the head. Two faces with blue birthmarks, one coarse and old, the other fresh and supple, presented an interesting contrast. Your son said hello to all his grandparents. Then your father turned to your wife. “Where’s his father? Why didn’t he come with you?”
“He’s at a conference in the provincial capital,” she replied.
“Gome inside,” your mother said, thumping the ground with her cane, “come inside, all of you.” She spoke with the authority of the head of the household.
Your wife said to your driver, “You can go back now, but be here at three to pick us up. Don’t be late.”
The people swept your wife and son into the yard, all carrying colorful packages in their arms. You assume I was left out of all the merriment, right? Well, you’re wrong. While the people were enjoying themselves, a black- and-white dog came out of the house. The smell of a sibling filled my nostrils, a surge of memories filled my mind. “Dog One! Elder brother!” I greeted him excitedly. “Dog Four, little brother!” he replied, as excited as I was. Our loud vocalizations startled Yingchun, who turned to look at us.
“You two brothers, how many years has it been? Let’s see…” She counted on her fingers. “One, two, three years… my goodness, it’s been eight years. For a dog that’s half a lifetime!”
We touched noses and licked each other’s face. We were very happy.
Just then my second brother came toward me from the west, along with his mistress, Baofeng. A skinny boy was right behind Baofeng, and the smell told me it was Gaige. I was amazed by how tall he’d gotten.
“Number Two, look who’s here!” Our elder brother cried out. “Dog Two!” I shouted as I ran over to greet him. He was a black dog who’d gotten our father’s genes. We looked a lot alike, but I was much bigger. We three brothers kept nudging and rubbing up against one another, happy to be together again after so long. After a while they asked me about our sister, and I told them she was doing well, that she’d had a litter of three pups, all of whom had been sold, earning a lot of money for her family. But when I asked after our mother, I was met by gloomy looks. With tears in their eyes they told me she’d died, though no one knew she was sick. Fortunately, Lan Lian had made a coffin and buried her in that plot of land that meant so much to him. For a dog it was a fine tribute.
While we three brothers were getting the most out of our reunion, Baofeng looked over at us and seemed shocked when she saw me. “Is that really Dog Four? How’d you get so big? You were the runt of the litter.”
I looked her over while she was looking me over. After three reincarnations, Ximen Nao’s memories still hung on, although buried under a host of incidents over a period of many years.
On a page of history in the distant past, I was her father, she was my daughter. But now I was just a dog, whereas she was my dog-brother’s mistress and the half sister of my master. She had little color in her face, and her hair, though it hadn’t turned gray, looked dry and brittle, like grass growing atop a wall after a frost. She was dressed all in black, except for patches of white on her cloth slippers. She was mourning the loss of her husband, Ma Liangcai. The gloomy smell of death clung to her. But, thinking back, she’d always had a gloomy, melancholy smell. She seldom smiled, and when she did, it was like reflected light on snow – dreary and cold, a look that was hard to forget. The boy behind her, Ma Gaige, was as skinny as his father. A onetime pudgy-faced little boy had grown into a gaunt teenager with ears that stuck out prominently; surprisingly, he had several gray hairs. He was wearing blue shorts, a short-sleeved white shirt – the Ximen Elementary School uniform – and a pair of white sneakers. He was carrying a plastic bowl filled with cherries in both hands.
As for me, I followed my two dog brothers in a look around Ximen Village. I’d left home as a puppy and had virtually no impressions of the place outside of the Ximen family home, but this was the village where I was born; in the words of Mo Yan in one of his essays, “hometowns are tied to a person by blood.” So as we strolled down the streets and scoped out the village in general, I was deeply moved. I saw some familiar faces and detected many unfamiliar smells. There were also a lot of familiar smells that were somehow absent – no trace at all of the strongest smells of the village back then, of oxen and donkeys. Many of the new smells were of rusted metal emanating from yards we passed, and I knew that the mechanization dream of the People’s Communes had not been realized until land reform and independent farming were once again the backbone of agricultural policy. My nose told me that the village was awash in feelings of excitement and anxiety on the eve of major changes. People all wore peculiar expressions, as if they thought that something very big was about to happen.
We returned to the Ximen house, followed by Ximen Jinlong’s son, Ximen Huan, who was one of the last to arrive. I had no trouble spotting him by his smell, even though he reeked of fish and mud. He was naked but for a pair of nylon bathing trunks and a brand-name T-shirt thrown over his shoulder. He was carrying a line of silver- scaled little fish. An expensive watch glittered on his wrist. He spotted me first, dropped what he was carrying, and ran up to me. Obviously, he saw me as a ride, but no self-respecting dog was about to let something like that happen. I moved out of the way.
His mother, Huzhu, came running out of the house.
“Huanhuan!” she shouted. “Where have you been? And why are you so late? I told you your aunt and cousin Kaifang were coming.”
“I was fishing.” He picked up the line of fish to show her. “How could I not greet such honored guest without fish?” he said in a tone of voice that belied his young years.
Huzhu scooped up the shirt he’d tossed to the ground and said, “Who do you think you’re greeting with guppies
