Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

rounds. I pushed the shredded leaves and powdered grass I’d used for such a long time into a corner of the wall, leaving a line of hoofprints that looked like a designed pattern. I lay down on this bed of leaves and grass, holding my head in my hands to gaze at the snowy landscape and smell the cold, fresh air that is so common to snowfalls. I was overcome by melancholy. To tell the truth, I wasn’t a pig normally given to sadness or emotionalism. Most of the time I was euphoric, either that or defiant. You’d be hard put to associate me with the petty bourgeois affinity for sentimentality.

Wind from the north whistled, river ice splintered with ear-shattering crack crack crack crack, as if Fate had come rapping on a door in the middle of the night. A snow drift in front of the pen seemed to merge with sagging, snow-laden apricot branches. Throughout the grove, explosions of sound announced the snapping of branches unable to bear up under the weight of wet snow, while dull thuds gave voice to accumulations of snow falling to the ground. On that dark night, all I could see was an expanse of white. The generator, thanks to a scarcity of diesel fuel, had long since stopped producing electricity. A dark night like that, covered by a blanket of white, ought to have created the ideal atmosphere for fairy tales, should have been a source of dreams, but cold and hunger shattered both fairy tales and dreams. I have to be honest with you and tell you that when the quantity of pig feed had dwindled to a dangerous low and the Mount Yimeng pigs were reduced to eating moldy leaves and cast-off seedpods from the cotton processing plant to survive, Ximen Jinlong continued to ensure that a fourth of what I was given to eat was nutritious food. While it was only dried moldy yams, it was certainly better than bean-plant leaves and cotton seedpods.

So I lay there suffering through the long night, alternating between dream-filled sleep and wakeful reality. Stars peeked out through the darkness from time to time, sparkling like a diamond pendant on a woman’s bosom. The restless sounds of pigs struggling to stay alive made peaceful sleep impossible, and a palpable sense of bleakness settled around me. Tears filled my eyes as I revisited the past, and when they spilled out onto my hairy cheeks, they froze into ice crystals. My neighbor, Diao Xiaosan, was in torment, and was now eating his own bitter – and unhygienic – fruit. There wasn’t a dry spot in his pen, which was littered with frozen turds and iced urine. My ears were assailed by wolfish howls that echoed those in the wild, as he ran around cursing the unfairness of life in this world. At mealtimes he railed at everyone in sight: Hong Taiyue, Ximen Jinlong, Lan Jiefang, even Bai Xing’er, the widow of the long-dead Ximen Nao, whose job it was to deliver his food. She came each day with two buckets of feed on a carrying pole, slowly making her way through the snow on tiny, once-bound feet, her tattered coat shifting back and forth as she walked. She wore a kerchief tied around her head; I could see her breath and the frost that had formed on her brows and her hair. Her hands were rough and cracked, the fingers like wood that has survived a fire. As she made her way through the farm, she kept from falling by using her long-handled ladle as a crutch. Little steam rose from the buckets, but the odor was strong enough to identify the quality of the food inside. The contents of the bucket in front were for me; those of the bucket in back were for Diao Xiaosan. After putting down her load, she scraped the thick layer of snow off the wall, then reached over to clean out my trough with her ladle. Finally she lifted up the bucket and dumped in the black contents. Even before she’d finished, I’d be in such a hurry to get to the food that some of the sticky stuff would fall on my head and in my ears; she’d clean it off with her ladle. What I was given was pretty disagreeable, and not meant for slow chewing, since that kept the unpleasant taste in my mouth longer than it needed to be there. I gobbled it up so noisily she invariably said with an emotional sigh:

“Pig Sixteen, you’re such a good little pig, you eat whatever I give you.”

Bai Xing’er always fed me before Diao Xiaosan; watching me eat seemed to make her happy. If he hadn’t raised such a stink, I believe she might have forgotten all about him. I’ll never forget the look of tenderness in her eyes as she bent down to watch me, and I’m certainly aware of how well she treated me. But I don’t want to dwell on that, since it was years ago and we went our separate ways – one human, the other animal.

I heard Diao Xiaosan clamp his teeth around the wooden ladle and looked up to see his hideous face as he stood with his feet on the top of the wall – sharp, uneven teeth and, oh, those bloodshot eyes. Bai Xing’er rapped him on the snout with her ladle. Then, after dumping his food into the trough, she said:

“You filthy pig, eating and relieving yourself in the same spot. I don’t know why you haven’t frozen to death yet!”

Diao Xiaosan had barely taken a mouthful of food before he cursed her back:

“You old witch, I know you like him better than me. You give Sixteen all the good food and save the rotten leaves for me! Well, fuck you and the whore that brought you into this world!”

The curses quickly turned to self-pitying sobs, but Bai Xing’er ignored him and his foul language. She picked up her buckets, hung the ladle from one of them, and walked off, swaying from side to side.

Once she was gone, Diao turned to me and started in with the complaints, spraying my pen with his foul spittle. I pretended I didn’t see the hatred in his eyes and went back to my food.

“Pig Sixteen,” he said, “what kind of world are we living in? We’re both pigs, so how come people don’t treat us the same? Because I’m dark and you’re light? Or because you’re local and I’m not? Or is it because you’re good looking and I’m ugly? Which isn’t to say that you’re all that good looking.”

What could I say to a moron like that? The world has never been fair. Just because an officer rides a horse doesn’t mean his soldiers ought to as well, does it? A generalissimo in the Soviet Red Army rode a horse, and so did his troops. But his mount was a magnificent steed, theirs were nags. Differential treatment.

“I’ll sink my teeth into all of them one of these days, then I’ll rip open their bellies and pull their guts out…” With his front feet resting on the wall between our pens, he ground his teeth and said, “Where there’s oppression there’s resistance. Do you believe that? You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but I do.”

“You’re right,” I said. No need to offend him. “I believe you’ve got guts and certain abilities,” I added, “and I’m waiting for the day when you do something spectacular.”

“Well, then,” he said, starting to drool, “how about sharing some of that food she gave you?”

I had a low opinion of him to begin with, but that fell even lower when I saw the greedy look in his eyes and the filth around his mouth. I was reluctant to let that disgusting mouth pollute my feed trough. Considering his petty request, I knew it would be hard to turn it down out of hand, so I stammered:

“Old Diao, I tell you the truth, there’s no real difference between what you and I got… You’re being childish, assuming that somebody else’s cake is bigger than yours.”

“How fucking stupid do you think I am?” he said angrily “My eyes might fall for that, but not my nose! Hell, my eyes won’t fall for that either.” He bent down, scooped some feed out of his trough, and flung it down in front of mine. Anyone could see the difference. “Look at that and tell me what you’re eating and then what I’m eating. Shit, we’re both boars, so how come we get different treatment? You’re going to ‘serve the revolution by mating,’ well, am I serving the counterrevolution then? If people divide themselves into revolutionary and counterrevolutionary, does that mean there are classes of pigs too? It’s all because of favoritism and crazy thoughts. I saw the way Bai Xing’er was looking at you. That was the look a woman gives her husband! Maybe she wants to mate with you, what do you think? If you do, then next spring, she’ll have a litter of piglets with human heads, or monsters with pig heads. Won’t they be beautiful?” he said hatefully, then flashed an evil grin, showing that his slanderous outburst had driven the gloom from his mind.

I scooped up the clump of feed he’d tossed over and flung it far over the wall. “I was seriously considering doing you a favor,” I said contemptuously, “but after what you just said, sorry, brother Diao, but I’ll dump the rest of the food on a pile of shit before I’ll give it to you.” I reached down, scooped up what was left in my trough, and tossed it on the ground, where I relieved myself. Then I went back and lay down on my straw bed. “If you’re still hungry, sir,” I said, “be my guest.”

Diao Xiaosan’s eyes flashed green; his teeth ground noisily. “Pig Sixteen,” he said, “the old saying goes, ‘You don’t know your legs are muddy till you step out of the water.’ The river flows east for thirty years and west for thirty years! The sun’s rays are on the move. They won’t always shine down on your nest!” Now that he’d had his say, his hideous face disappeared from view. But I could hear him pacing anxiously on the other side of the wall and, from time to time, banging his head against the gate or scraping the wall with his hooves. That went on for a while until I heard a strange noise from his side. It took a number of guesses before I figured out that he had stood up on his hind legs and, partly for warmth and partly to vent his spleen, had begun tearing sorghum stalks out of the canopy over his pen. Unfortunately, some came from my side.

I rose up on my hind legs and stuck my head over the wall. “Stop that,” I protested.

With a stalk of sorghum clenched between his teeth, he tugged and tugged until he brought it down, then chewed it into pieces. “Shit,” he said, “who gives a damn! If I’m going to die, then I’m taking others with me! The ways of the world aren’t fair, so the little demons will tear down the temple.” He rose up on his hind legs, a