the Venus de Milo had stood before someone walked off with it. As I rested there to catch my breath, from a distance I must have looked like a memorial to a brave canine. My apologies, but I’m not a statue. I’m a living, breathing, powerful dog who carries the genes of the local big white dog and a German shepherd, in short, Gaomi County’s dog king. I gathered my thoughts for a couple of seconds before beginning my address. In that first second my sense of smell was still focused on your wife; the heavy aroma of onions coming from your home told me that everything was normal. In the final second I switched to you, sprawled at the window in your smoky office, gazing dreamily at the moon. That too was perfectly normal. I looked out into the flashing eyes and shiny fur of all those animals arrayed before me and announced in a loud voice:
“Brothers, sisters, I call this eighteenth full-moon meeting to order!”
A roar rose from the crowd.
I raised my right paw to quiet them down.
“During this past month our brother the Tibetan mastiff passed away, so let’s send his soul off to the plateau with three loud cheers!”
The chorus of cheers from several hundred dogs rocked the town. My eyes were moist: sadness over the passing of our brother and gratitude over the expressions of friendship.
I then invited the dogs to sing and dance and chat and eat and drink in celebration of the one-month birthday of my third elder sister’s litter of three.
Whoops and hollers.
She passed her male pup up to me. I kissed him on the cheek and raised him over my head for all to see. The crowd roared. I passed him down, and she passed up a female. I kissed her and raised her over my head, and the crowd roared again. Then she handed up the third pup, another female. I brushed her cheek with my lips, raised her over my head, the crowd roared for the third time, and I passed her down. The crowd roared.
I jumped down off the platform. My sister came up to me and said to her pups, “Say, Hello, Uncle. He’s your mother’s brother.”
Hello Uncle, Hello Uncle, Hello Uncle.
“I hear they’ve all been sold, is that right?” I asked her icily.
“You heard right,” she said proudly. “They’d barely been born before people were beating down our door. My mistress sold them to Party Secretary Ke from Donkey County, Industry and Commerce Department Chief Hu, and Health Department Chief Tu. They paid eighty thousand.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t a hundred thousand?” I asked, again icily.
“They brought a hundred, but our master would only accept eighty. My master isn’t a money-grubber.”
“Shit,” I said, “that’s not selling dogs, it’s selling-”
She cut me off with a shrill rebuke: “Uncle!”
“Okay, I won’t say it,” I promised in a soft voice. Then I announced to the crowd, “Come on, dance! Sing! Start drinking!”
A pointy-eared, slender German dachshund with a hairless tail came up to me with two bottles of beer. When he popped them open with his teeth, foam spilled over the sides and released the delightful aroma.
“Have one, Mr. Chairman.” So I took one of the bottles and clinked it against the one he held for himself.
“Bottoms up!” I said. So did he.
With two paws on the bottles, we tipped them up and slugged down the contents. More and more dogs came up to drink with me, and I didn’t send any of them away A pile of empties formed behind me. A little white Pekinese, her hair in pigtails and a ribbon tied around her neck, came rolling up to me like a little ball, with some locally produced sausage in her mouth. She was wearing Chanel No. 5 perfume, and her coat glistened like silver.
“Chairman… Mr. Chairman…” She stammered a little. “This sausage is for you.”
She undid the wrapping with her tiny teeth and with two paws carried the sausage up to my mouth. I accepted her gift and took a small bite, then chewed it slowly as a sign of respect. Vice chairman Ma walked up with a bottle of beer then, and clinked it against mine.
“How was the sausage?”
“Not bad.”
“Damn it. I told them to bring over one case, but they brought twenty cases of the stuff. Old Wei, over at the warehouse, is going to be in deep shit tomorrow.” There was a noticeable degree of pride in his voice.
I spotted a mongrel crouching off to the side with three bottles of beer lined up in front of him, along with three chunks of sausage and some cloves of garlic. He took a swig of beer, then a bite of sausage, and flipped a clove of garlic into his mouth. He smacked his lips as he chewed, as if he was the only dog around. He was enjoying himself immensely. The other local mutts were drunk by then. Some were howling at the moon, others were belching loudly, and some were spouting incomprehensible rubbish. I wasn’t happy about that, of course, but I didn’t do anything about it.
I looked up at the moon and could see that the night was coming to an end. During the summer months, the days are long, the nights are short, and in an hour, no more, birds would be chirping; people would be out airing their caged birds and others would practice tai chi with their swords. I tapped Vice Chairman Ma on the shoulder.
“Adjourn the meeting,” I said.
Ma threw down the beer bottle he was holding, stretched out his neck, and released a shrill cry toward the moon. All the canine participants tossed away their beer bottles and, drunk and sober alike, gave me their undivided attention. I jumped up onto the platform.
“Tonight’s meeting is hereby adjourned. All of you must vacate the square within the next three minutes. The date of our next meeting will be announced later. Adjourn!”
He released another shrill cry, and the dogs began heading home as fast as their bloated bellies would allow. Those who had drunk too much reeled from side to side, frequently losing their footing in their haste to clear the square. My third sister and her Norwegian husky husband piled their three pups into a fancy Japanese import stroller and left quickly, one pushing, the other pulling. The pups stood up with their paws on the outer edge and yelped excitedly. Three minutes later the clamorous square was deserted, littered with empty beer bottles and odorous chunks of leftover sausage, and befouled by countless puddles of dog piss. I nodded with a sense of satisfaction, slapped paws with Vice Chairman Ma, and left.
After quietly making it back home, I looked into the eastern side room, where your wife was still making flat breads, labor that seemed to bring her peace and happiness. An enigmatic smile graced her face. A sparrow on the plane tree chirped, and within ten or fifteen minutes the whole town was blanketed by birdcalls. The moonlight weakened as dawn was about to break.
44
Jinlong Plans to Build a Resort Village
Jiefang Sends Emotions Through Binoculars
I thought I was reading a document submitted by Jinlong, who wanted to turn Ximen Village into a resort with a Cultural Revolution theme. In his feasibility report, he wrote dialectically: While the Cultural Revolution was destroying culture, it also created a new culture. He wanted to paint new slogans on walls where they had been removed, reinstall loudspeakers, build another lookout perch in the apricot tree, and erect a new Apricot Garden Pig Farm on the site where the old one had been ruined in a rainstorm. Beyond that, he wanted to build a golf course on five thousand acres of land east of the village. As for the farmers who would lose their cropland, he proposed that they act out the village tasks they’d had during the Cultural Revolution, such as: organizing criticism sessions, parading capitalist-roaders in the streets, performing in Revolutionary Model Operas and loyalty dances. He wrote that Cultural Revolution artifacts could be turned out in large quantities: armbands, spears, Chairman Mao badges, handbills, big character posters… Tourists would be permitted to participate in Recalling Bitterness meetings, watch Recalling Bitterness plays, eat Recalling Bitterness meals, and listen to elderly poor peasants relate tales of the old society… And he wrote: The Ximen family compound will be converted into an Independent Farming Museum, with
