Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

37

An Aggrieved Soul Returns as a Dog

A Pampered Child Goes to Town with His Mother

The two underworld attendants grabbed my arms and dragged me out of the water. “Take me to see Lord Yama, you rotten bastards!” I raged. “I’m going to settle scores with the damned old dog!”

“Heh heh,” Attendant One giggled. “After all these years, you’re still a hothead.”

“As they say, You can’t keep a cat from chasing mice or a dog from eating shit,” Attendant Two mocked.

“Let me go!” I railed. “Do you think I can’t find the damned old dog on my own?”

“Calm down,” Attendant One said, “just calm down. We’re old friends by now. After all these years, we’ve actually missed you.”

“We’ll take you to see the damned old dog,” Attendant Two said.

So they raced down the main street of Ximen Village, dragging me along with them. A cool wind hit me in the face, along with feather-light snowflakes. We left dead leaves fluttering on the road behind us. They stopped when we reached the Ximen family compound, where Attendant One grabbed my left arm and leg, Attendant Two took my right arm and leg, and they lifted me off the ground. After swinging me back and forth like a battering ram slamming into a bell, they let go and I went flying.

“Go on, go see that damned old dog!” they cried out together.

Wham! My head really did feel as if I’d rammed it into a bell, and I blacked out. When I came to, well, you know without my saying so, I was a dog, after landing in the kennel belonging to your mother, Yingchun.

In order to keep me from causing a scene in his hall, that is the underhanded tactic rotten Lord Yama had stooped to: shortening the reincarnation process by sending me straight into the womb of a bitch, where I followed three other puppies out through the birth canal.

The kennel I landed in was unbelievably crude: two rows of brick remnants under the house eaves for walls, wooden planks topped by tarred felt as a roof. It was my mother’s home – what was I supposed to do? I had to call her Mother, since I popped out of her body. My childhood home too. Our bedding? A winnowing basket full of chicken feathers and leaves.

The ground was quickly covered by a heavy snowfall, but the kennel was nice and bright, thanks to an electric light hanging from the eaves. Snowflakes slipping in through cracks in the felt turned the kennel bone-chillingly cold. Along with my brothers and sister I kept from shivering by nuzzling up against our mother’s warm belly. A series of rebirths had taught me one simple truth; when you come to a new place, learn the local customs and follow them. If you land in a pigpen, suck a sow’s teat or starve, and if you’re born into a dog kennel, nuzzle up to a bitch’s belly or freeze to death. Our mother was a big white dog with black tips on her front paws and tail.

She was a mongrel, no doubt about that. But our father was a purebred, a mean German shepherd owned by the Sun brothers. I saw him once: a big animal with a black back and tail and a brown underbelly and paws. He – our father – was kept on a chain in the Suns’ yard. He had blood-streaked yellow eyes, pointy ears, and a perpetual scowl.

Dad was a purebred, Mom a mongrel, which made us mongrels. No matter how different we might look when we were grown, you could hardly tell the difference between any of us when we were first born. Yingchun was probably the only person who knew which of us came when.

When your mother brought out some steaming broth with a soup bone for our mother, snowflakes circled her head like white moths. My eyesight hadn’t sharpened to the point where I could see her face clearly, but I had no trouble picking up her unique odor, that of toon tree leaves rubbed together. Not even the smell of the pork bone could overwhelm it. My mother cautiously lapped up the broth while your mother swept the snow off our roof. That let in plenty of daylight and plenty of cold air. Wanting to do something good for us, she’d actually managed to do just the opposite. Having come from peasant stock, how could she not know that snow is a blanket that keeps wheat sprouts warm? She had rich experience in raising children, but was woefully ignorant about nature. But then when she saw that we were nearly frozen to death, she carried us into the house and laid us down on the heated kang.

“You poor little darlings,” she said.

She even brought our mother inside, where Lan Lian was feeding kindling into the kang opening. His skin was bronze, and golden lights shone off his white hair. Wearing a thickly padded jacket, he was smoking a pipe like a very contented head of household. Now that peasants had been given land, everyone was an independent farmer, just like the old days. So your father and mother once again were eating together and sleeping together.

The kang was so warm it quickly drove the chill from our nearly frozen bodies, and as we started moving around, I could tell by looking at my canine brothers and sister what I must have looked like. The same thing had happened back when I’d been reborn as a pig. We were clumsy, covered with fuzz, and cute as hell – I guess. There were four children on the kang with us, all about three years old. A boy and three girls. We were three males and a female.

“Would you look at that!” your mother exclaimed in happy surprise. “The exact opposite of the children!”

Lan Lian snorted noncommittally as he took the charred remains of a mantis egg capsule from the kang opening. He cracked it open; inside were two steaming mantis eggs that smelled bad. “Who wet the bed?” he asked. “Whoever did it has to eat these.”

“I did!” Two of the boys and the girl answered in unison.

That left one boy who said nothing. He had fleshy ears, big eyes, and a tiny little mouth that made him seem to be pouting. You already know that he was the adopted son of Ximen Jinlong and Huang Huzhu. Word had it that he was the biological son of a pair of high-school students. Jinlong was rich enough to get anything he wanted, and powerful enough to back his wishes up. So a few months before the deal was made, Huzhu began wearing padding around her middle to fake a pregnancy. But the villagers knew. The boy was named Ximen Huan – they called him Huanhuan – and he was the pearl in their palm.

“The guilty party keeps his mouth shut, his innocent brothers and sister can’t confess fast enough!” Yingchun said as she passed the hot mantis eggs from one hand to the other while blowing on them. Finally, she held them out to Ximen Huan. “Here, Huanhuan, eat them.”

Ximen Huan took them from his grandmother and, without even looking at them, flung them to the floor. They landed in front of our mother, who gobbled them down without a second thought.

“That child, I don’t know what to say!” Yingchun said to Lan Lian.

Lan Lian shook his head. “You can always tell where a child comes from.”

All four children looked curiously at us puppies and reached out to touch us.

“One apiece, just right,” Yingchun said.

Four months later, when buds began to appear on the old apricot tree in the front yard, Yingchun said to the four couples – Ximen Jinlong and Huang Huzhu, Ximen Baofeng and Ma Liangcai, Chang Tianhong and Pang Kangmei, and Lan Jiefang and Huang Hezuo:

“It’s time for you to take your children home with you. That’s why I asked you here. First, since we don’t know how to read or write, I’m afraid that keeping them here will slow their development. Second, we’re getting old. Our hair is white, our eyesight dimmed, and our teeth are loose. Life has been hard on us for many years, and I think we deserve a little time for ourselves. Comrades Chang and Pang, it’s been our good fortune to have your child with us, but Uncle Lan and I’ve talked it over, and we feel that Fenghuang ought to start kindergarten in town.”

The moment had arrived with all the solemnity of a formal handover ceremony: four little children were lined up on the eastern edge of the kang, four little puppies on the western edge. Yingchun picked up Ximen Huan, kissed him on the cheek, and handed him to Huzhu, who cradled him. Then Yingchun picked up the oldest puppy, rubbed his head, and put him in the arms of Huanhuan. “This is yours, Huanhuan,” she said.

She then picked up Ma Gaige, planted a kiss on his cheek, and handed him to Baofeng, who cradled him. She picked up the second puppy and put him in Ma Gaige’s arms. “Gaige,” she said, “this is yours.”

Yingchun then picked up Pang Fenghuang and lovingly gazed at her pink little face; with tears in her eyes, she