Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

jealous. That was one of the reasons you knocked me out of my tree with your whip and why you dealt so cruelly with Diao Xiaosan. Now that we can look back, don’t you think the feelings that tormented you at the time were pretty insignificant compared to what happened later? Besides, the world is unpredictable, and conjugal bliss is dictated by heaven. The person you are to marry has already been determined. Isn’t that so, since Huang Huzhu eventually shared your bed?

During that winter, pigs that had frozen to death were dragged out of their pens every day, and every night I was awakened by the wails of grief-stricken Yimeng pigs whose pen-mates had died from the cold. Every morning I looked out through the metal slats of my gate and saw Lan Jiefang or somebody else dragging a pig carcass in the direction of the five-room building. The dead animals were skin and bones, their legs stiff as boards. Hot-tempered Howling Wolf died, so did the slutty Rape Flower. At first they died at the rate of three or four a day, but by the latter days of the twelfth month, as many as six or seven were dying each day. On the twenty-third of that month, sixteen dead pigs were dragged out of their pens. I did a quick calculation and came up with the figure of more than two hundred pigs that had departed for the Western Heaven by the end of the year. I had no way of knowing if their souls had gone down to hell or up to heaven, but their earthly remains were piled up in dark corners at the rear of the building, where they were cooked and eaten by Ximen Jinlong and the other humans. That is a memory that sticks with me even now.

People sitting under lamplight around a blazing stove watching the meat of butchered pigs cooking is something Mo Yan wrote about in great detail in his “Tales of Pig-Raising.” He described the fragrance of the burning apricot branches, he described the stench of the meat cooking in the pot, he even described how the starving people bit off big chunks of it, a scene that would disgust people nowadays.

I can add one thing to Mo Yan’s descriptions, and that is: As the day approached when all the pigs in the Apricot Garden Pig Farm would die of starvation, on the last day of the year, when firecrackers were noisily seeing out the old and welcoming in the new, Jinlong abruptly smacked himself on the forehead and announced:

“That’s it! I know how to save the farm.”

It wouldn’t be hard to eat pork from dead pigs like that once, but the smell would make me puke the second time. Jinlong ordered people to convert the dead pigs into food for living pigs. At first I noticed that my feed tasted different somehow, so late at night I sneaked out of my pen to see what was going on in the building where our food was prepared, and that’s when I learned their secret. I have to admit that for animals as stupid as pigs, cannibalism is not a significant taboo, nothing to get excited about. But to an extraordinary soul like me, it gives rise to a whole bunch of painful associations. Yet the will to live is more powerful than spiritual torment. Actually, I was worrying myself needlessly. If I was a man, eating pork was perfectly natural. And if I were a pig, as long as the other pigs were okay with eating their dead brothers and sisters, who was I to complain? Go ahead, eat. Close your eyes and eat it. After I’d learned how to sound air-raid warnings, I got the same food the other pigs got. I knew they weren’t doing this to punish us, but because it was the only thing they had for us to eat. The fat started falling off my body, I was constipated, and my urine was reddish yellow. I was a little better off than the others, only because I could get out and walk around at night, picking up rotten vegetables here and there, however infrequently. What I’m saying is, if we hadn’t eaten the unique feed Jinlong prepared for us, none of us would have survived the winter and been greeted by the warmth of spring.

Jinlong mixed the meat from dead animals with some horse and cow dung, and chopped up sweet potato vines to make his unique pig feed. It saved the lives of a lot of pigs, and that included me and Diao Xiaosan.

A new batch of traditional pig feed was sent down to us in the spring of 1973, bringing new life to the Apricot Garden Pig Farm. But before this occurred, more than six hundred pigs from Mount Yimeng had been converted into protein, vitamins, and plenty of other things needed to sustain life, thereby extending the lives of some four hundred others. So we howled for three full minutes to salute these self-sacrificing heroes, and as we howled, apricot flowers bloomed, the moon bathed the farm in its watery beams, and a floral perfume tickled our noses. The curtain was lifted on the year’s romantic season.

27

A Sea of Jealousy Rages as Brothers Go Crazy

Fast-talking, Glib Mo Yan Encounters Envy

The moon that night rose eagerly into the sky even before the sun had set. In the rosy sunset, the atmosphere in the Apricot Garden Pig Farm was warm and congenial. I had a premonition that something important was going to happen that night. I stood up and rested my front hooves on the apricot tree, whose blossoms sent out a wonderful aroma. I looked up and, through the gaps in the tree, saw the moon – big, round, and silvery, as if cut out of a piece of tin – rise into the sky. At first I could hardly believe it was really the moon, but the brilliant beams that showered down soon convinced me.

At the time I was still an immature, impressionable pig who became excited over anything new and strange and wanted to share it with the other pigs. Mo Yan was a lot like that. In an essay entitled “Brilliant Apricot Blossoms” he wrote about how he discovered Ximen Jinlong and Huang Huzhu one day at noon; they had climbed an apricot tree filled with blossoms and were moving so hot and heavy they sent flower petals falling to the ground like snow. Eager to share his discovery with as many people as possible, Mo Yan ran over to the feed preparation shed and shook the sleeping Lan Jiefang awake. He wrote:

Lan Jiefang sat up abruptly, rubbed his bloodshot eyes, and asked: “What’s up?” The grass mat on the kang had created patterns on his face. “Come with me,” I said mysteriously. I led him around the two individual pens reserved for the boars and deep into the apricot grove. Typical lazy weather for late spring, and the pigs were all sound asleep in their pens, including the boar who was always acting strange. Hordes of bees were buzzing tirelessly around the flowers for their nectar; bright, pretty thrushes flitted around in the trees’ high branches, frequently signaling their presence with crisp, mournful cries. “Damn,” Lan Jiefang cursed unhappily. “What is it you want to show me?” I put my finger to my lips to shush him. “Squat down and follow me,” I said softly as we squatted down and inched forward. A pair of ocher rabbits were chasing each other among the trees; a beautiful, bright-colored pheasant clucked as it dragged its tail feathers along the ground and flapped its wings, quickly flying off into the brush behind a deserted graveyard. After skirting the two buildings that had once housed the generator, we reached a dense grove with dozens of apricot trees so big around it took two people to circle it with their arms. The canopies formed a virtually seamless cover high above us. There were red flowers, pink ones, and white ones, and from a distance they took on the appearance of clouds. Owing to the complex root systems of these enormous trees and the villagers’ reverence for big trees, this grove had been spared during the 1958 iron-smelting campaign and the pig-raising disaster of 1972. I’d personally seen Ximen Jinlong and Huang Huzhu choose an old tree whose trunk leaned slightly to one side and climb it like a couple of squirrels. But now there was no sign of them. A breeze rose up and set the upper branches in motion. The petals of fragile flowers rained down on the ground like snowflakes, forming a layer of what looked like fine jade. “I asked you what you want to show me,” Lan Jiefang repeated, this time much louder, as he balled up his fists. In Ximen Village, in fact, throughout Northeast Gaomi Township, the blue-faced father and son were famed for their stubbornness and bad temper, so I had to be careful not to provoke this youngster. “With my own eyes I saw them climb the tree-” “Saw who?” “Jinlong and Huzhu!” Jiefang thrust out his neck, the way he might if an invisible fist had landed on his chest, right above the heart. Then his ears twitched and the sun’s rays danced on the blue half of his face, lighting it up like jade. He seemed hesitant for some reason, struggling to make up his mind, but in the end a devilish force propelled him in the direction of the tree… he looked up… half his face like blue jade… he let loose with a loud wail and threw himself down on the ground… flower petals rained down as if to bury him… Ximen Village apricot blossoms are renowned far and wide; in the 1990s city folk arrived by car every spring, children in tow, just to admire the apricot blossoms.

At the end of the essay, Mo Yan wrote:

I never imagined this incident would cause Lan Jiefang such anguish. People came out to pick him up and carry him back to his kang. They pried open his teeth with a chopstick and poured some ginger water into his mouth to revive him. What in the world did he see up there in the tree, they asked me, that could put a spell on him like this? I said that the boar had taken the little sow called Butterfly Lover up the tree with romance