Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

by Mo Yan

  I kept my eyes on Jinlong as I listened to this grandiose speech by Hong Taiyue. Now that I’d undergone several rebirths, our father-son relationship had weakened, until it was little more than a faint memory, a few words inscribed on a family register. Hong Taiyue’s speech acted on Jinlong like a powerful stimulant, setting his mind in motion and his heart pumping; he was itching to get started. Rubbing his hands excitedly, he walked up to Hong, cheeks twitching, big, thin ears quivering, and I readied myself for the familiar prolonged monologue that was forthcoming — but this time I was wrong, there was no monologue; a series of setbacks in life had obviously matured him. He took me from Hong Taiyue and held me so close I could feel his heart pound. He bent down and kissed me on the ear. That kiss would one day become a significant detail in the glorified dossier of model pig farmer Lan Jinlong: “Lan Jinlong performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in a life-saving attempt on a newborn piglet, snatching the piglet with the purple splotches from the jaws of death. The piglet heralded its salvation with piggish squeals. But Lan Jinlong, enervated by the effort, passed out in the pigpen after uttering resolutely:

  “‘Party Secretary Hong, from this day forward, all boars are my father, and all sows are my mother!’”

  “That’s what I like to hear!” Hong said joyfully. “Young people who view our pigs as their mothers and fathers are exactly what we need.”

  22

  Piglet Sixteen Monopolizes the Sow’s Teats

  Bai Xing’er Is Honored with the Title of Pig Feeder

  Despite all the grandiose treatment bestowed upon the pigs by the fanatical people, a pig was still a pig. They could have showered me with all the love they had, but I was dead set on starving myself right out of this pig existence. I wanted another audience with Lord Yama, where I would make a scene, claiming my right to be human and demanding a rebirth I could be proud of.

  By the time they returned me to the pigpen, the old sow was lying on her side, legs stretched out on a bed of hay as a row of piglets squeezed up to her exposed teats. They were sucking greedily and noisily. The unfortunate ones left out were shrieking their displeasure and trying to force their way in among their brothers and sisters. Some made it, forcing others out, while some others climbed up on top of the sow to jump up and down and raise a stink. The old sow lay there grunting, eyes closed, and all I felt were pity and loathing.

  After handing me to Huzhu, Jinlong bent down and pulled one of the sucking piglets away from its teat, but not before it stretched it out like a rubber band. Another little pig filled the vacuum. So Jinlong pulled all those greedy little pigs away and put them outside the pen, where they protested ineffectually. Now only ten remained stuck to the sow’s belly, exposing a pair of usable teats. Both were red, puffy, and disgusting, thanks to the previous users. Picking me up from Huzhu, Jinlong put me down by the sow’s belly. I shut my eyes, which made me disgustingly conscious of the sucking sounds from my repulsive brothers and sisters. I’d have thrown up if I’d had anything in my stomach. You already know I wanted to die, so there was no way I was going to put one of those filthy teats in my mouth. I knew that the day I started sucking nonhuman milk was the day I’d give up half my humanity and sink forever into the abyss of the animal kingdom. The minute I put my mouth around that sow’s teats, I’d be seized by pig-ness. A pig’s temperament, a pig’s interests and concerns, and a pig’s desires would flow with her milk and course through my veins, transforming me into a swine that retained a mere smidgeon of human memories, thus completing a filthy and shameful reincarnation.

  “Go on, drink up!” Jinlong positioned me so my mouth was up against a very plump teat, and when the saliva smeared on the nipple by my siblings touched my lips, I nearly puked. I kept my mouth tightly shut and my teeth clenched to avoid temptation.

  ‘What a stupid pig. It doesn’t have the sense to open its mouth when there’s a teat right in front of it.” Jinlong whacked me on the rump to underscore his comment.

  “Don’t be so rough on him,” Huzhu complained as she pushed Jinlong away and pulled me up to her, where she gently rubbed my belly. I sort of purred, it felt so good, I couldn’t help it, though it was really a pig noise of contentment, but not that hard on the ears. Huzhu murmured, “You precious thing, foolish little piglet sixteen, your mother’s milk is really good, just taste it. You have to eat to grow up.” Thanks to her mutterings, I learned that I was the sixteenth piglet in a litter of sixteen, in other words, the last one out of the old sow’s belly. In spite of my extraordinary experiences in the worlds of light and darkness, that is, life and death, my knowledge of human and animal existences, in the eyes of the people, I was a pig, that’s all. A crushing tragedy; but even greater tragedies lay ahead.

  Huzhu brushed the sow’s teat against my lips and nose, and that tickled my nose. I sneezed. That surprised her, I felt that in the way her hand jerked. Then she laughed. “I’ve never heard a pig sneeze before,” she said. “Sixteen, Piglet Sixteen, since you can sneeze, you ought to be able to eat.” She grabbed hold of the teat and squirted a warm liquid onto my lips. I licked it tentatively. Yow! My god! I never would have believed that a sow’s milk, my mother sow’s milk, could be so delicious, so fragrant, like silk, like love itself, so wonderful it made me forget the humiliation of being reborn as a pig and completely changed my impression of my surroundings, so glorious I couldn’t help feeling that the pig mother lying on the crushed grass supplying milk for a litter of boy and girl piglets was a noble beast, sacred and pure, solemn and beautiful. Without further hesitation, I wrapped my lips around that nipple, nearly taking Huzhu’s finger along with it, and opened the flow of milk into my mouth and down to my stomach. With each minute, each second, I felt myself grow stronger, felt my love for my pig mother increase; I heard Huzhu and Jinlong clap their hands and laugh, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw their youthful faces glow like cockscomb flowers. They were holding hands, and that sent fragments of historical memory flashing through my head, all of which I wanted only to forget. I shut my eyes so I could concentrate on the joys of a baby pig at its mother’s teat.

  Over the days that followed, I became the most tyrannical piglet in the litter. My appetite shocked Jinlong and Huzhu; I had a natural gift for eating. I was always able to unerringly find the teat with the most milk, outmaneuvering my dull-witted brothers and sisters, who closed their eyes as soon as they wrapped their lips around a teat, while my eyes were open from start to finish as I sucked madly on the biggest nipple and covered up the ones next to it with my body I vigilantly kept my eyes peeled, waiting for one of my pitiful siblings to come looking for a meal; I’d send him or her flying with a butt to the head. Then as soon as I’d sucked the big teat dry, I’d move to the next one.

  Seven days after I was born, Jinlong and Huzhu came and moved eight of my siblings to a neighboring pen, where they fed them millet gruel. A woman was put in charge of their care, but the wall between us was too high for me to get a look at her. Her voice, her lovely voice, sounded familiar, but when I tried to dredge up a memory of who she was and what she looked like, I just got sleepy. The three marks of a good pig are: big eater, deep sleeper, fast grower. I mastered all three. Sometimes the murmuring of the woman on the other side of the wall would be my lullaby. She fed the eight little pigs six times a day, sending the fragrance of corn or millet gruel wafting over the wall, and I could hear my brothers and sisters feasting happily. “My little darlings,” she’d mutter to them, “you little dears,” and I could tell she was a bighearted woman who treated the little pigs like her own children.

  After a month, I was more than twice the size of my siblings. My sow mother’s twelve teats were pretty much mine alone. Every once in a while one of the other piglets, crazed from hunger, would attempt the death-defying act of charging one of the nipples. All I had to do was stick my snout under his belly and easily send him rolling to the wall behind our mother, who would moan weakly and say, Sixteen, oh, Sixteen, won’t you let them have a l
ittle? I brought you all into this world, and I can’t bear to see any of you go hungry! That sickened me, so I ignored her and sucked so hard her eyes rolled back in her head. Later on, I discovered that I could kick out with my hind legs, like a donkey, which meant I didn’t even have to let loose of a nipple or use my snout to rid the area of a hungry sibling. Whenever I saw one of them approach, red-eyed and squealing, I’d simply arch my back and kick out. Even if two came up at the same time, I could drive them back by landing well-placed kicks on their heads. All they could do then was run in circles and squeal out of jealousy and hatred, cursing me as they foraged for scraps at the base of our mother’s feed trough.

  It didn’t take Jinlong and Huzhu long to see what was happening, so they invited Hong Taiyue and Huang Tong to watch from the other side of the wall. I knew they remained silent in hopes that I wouldn’t know they were there. So I pretended I didn’t know and ate with such exaggerated gusto that Mother Sow lay there moaning. I intimidated my brothers and sisters with one-legged kicks and struck fear into them with the two-legged variety, until all they could do was roll around and squeal miserably.

  “That’s no pig, it’s a goddamned baby donkey!” Hong Taiyue shouted excitedly

  “You’re right,” Huang Tong agreed. “See how it kicks with its hind legs.”

  I spat out the now dry teat, stood up, and strutted around the pen. Raising my head, I looked at them and let loose with two loud oinks. That threw them.

  “Get those other seven piglets out of there,” Hong Taiyue said. “We’re keeping this one for stud. Let him have all her milk so he’ll grow big and strong.”

  Jinlong jumped into the pen and made a noise to call to the other piglets. The old sow raised her head and gave Jinlong a menacing look, but he was so quick he had two of them in his hands before she knew it. She jumped up and charged him; he forced her back with a kick. The two pigs hung in the air, squealing frantically. Huzhu managed to take one of them from Jinlong; Huang Tong took the other. I could tell they both wound up with their eight dull-witted siblings in the pen next to mine, where those eight little assholes took out after the two new little assholes; they’d get no sympathy from me, I was too happy. By the time Hong Taiyue had smoked a cigarette, Jinlong had removed all seven of the little morons. The pen next to mine turned into a battlefield, with the eight early arrivals fighting it out with the seven late arrivals. Me? I was alone, casually taking it in. I looked at the old sow out of the corner of my eye and saw that she was grief-stricken. But she’d also been relieved of a heavy burden. Let’s face it, she was just an ordinary pig, incapable of having her emotions stirred, humanlike. Look, she’s already forgotten the torment of losing her litter. She’s standing at her trough gobbling up the food.

  The smell of food came rushing toward me on the wind. Huzhu walked up to the gate with a bucket of feed wearing a white apron with “Ximen Village Production Brigade Apricot Garden Pig Farm” embroidered in big red letters. She also had white protective sleeves covering her arms and a soft white cap on her head. She looked like a baker. Using a metal ladle, she scooped the contents into the feed trough. Mother Sow raised up and buried her front legs right in the middle of it. The slops splashing all over her face looked like yellow shit. It had a sour, rotten smell I found disgusting. It was a product of the minds of the brigade’s two most intelligent members, Lan Jinlong and Huang Huzhu, a fermented feed made of chicken droppings, cow dung, and greens. Jinlong emptied the bucket into the trough. The sow had no choice but to eat it.

  “Is that all she gets?” Hong Taiyue asked.

  “Up till a few days ago we added some bean cake,” Huzhu said, “but yesterday Jinlong said no more bean cakes.”

  Hong stuck his head inside the pen to get a closer look at the sow. “We want to be sure the little porker gets what he needs, so let’s prepare food for her separately.”

  “There isn’t enough fodder in the brigade stock room as it is,” Huang Tong said.

  “I thought there was a storage shed filled with corn.”

  “That’s part of our combat readiness! If you want to tap into that you have to get permission from the Commune Revolutionary Committee.”

  “This pig is destined to be part of combat readiness!” Hong said. “If war comes, our People’s Liberation Army soldiers will need to eat meat to win the battles.” Seeing that Huang Tong was still hesitant, he said firmly, “Open up the shed. I’ll take the responsibility. I’ll report to the commune this afternoon. Feeding pigs takes precedence over other political tasks, so I don’t expect any opposition. What’s most important,” he said, sounding somewhat mysterious, “is to expand our pig farm and increase the numbers of animals. There’ll come a day when all the grain in the county stockrooms will be ours.”

  Knowing smiles spread across Huang Tong and Jinlong’s faces as the agreeable smell of millet gruel approached them and stopped at the next pen over.

  “Ximen Bai,” Hong called out, “starting tomorrow you’re to feed this sow too.”

  “Yes, Secretary Hong.”

  “Dump half the bucket you’re carrying into the sow’s trough.”

  “Yes, Secretary Hong.”

  Ximen Bai — that had a familiar ring to it. Ximen Bai. I tried to recall what that name meant to me. Then a kindly but weary face appeared in front of my pen, and I was racked by spasms, as if I’d been given an electric shock. At the same time, the gate to my memory was flung open and the past came flooding in. “Xing’er,” I shouted, “you’re still alive!” But what emerged from my throat was a long, shrill pig noise. It not only scared the people outside the pen, it scared me. Tragically, I had no choice but to return to reality, to the present, no longer Ximen Nao but a little pig, the son of the white sow I shared this pen with.

  I tried to calculate her age, but the fragrance of sunflowers confused me. Yet even though no number emerged, I knew she was over fifty, because the hair at her temples had turned white, there were fine wrinkles around her eyes, and her once beautiful white teeth had begun to yellow and wear out.

  Slowly she scooped the millet into the trough with a wooden ladle.

  “You heard what I said, didn’t you?” Hong Taiyue asked harshly.

  “You needn’t worry, Secretary Hong,” Ximen Bai said in a soft but firm voice. “I have no children of my own, so these pigs will be my sons and daughters.”

  “That’s what I like to hear,” Hong said, satisfied with her response. “What we need is more women who are willing to raise our pigs as their own sons and daughters.”

  23

  Piglet Sixteen Is Moved to a Cozy Nest

  Diao Xiaosan Mistakenly Eats an Alcohol-laced Bun

  Brother, or should I say, Uncle, you seem upset. Your eyes are hooded by puffy lids, and you seem to be snoring, Big-head Lan Qiansui said harshly. If you’re not interested in the lives of pigs, let me tell you about dogs.

  No, no, no, I’m interested, I really am. You know, I assume, that I wasn’t always at your side during those years you were a pig. At first I worked in the pig farm, but my job was not to feed you. Then, later, Huang Hezuo and I were sent to work in the cotton mill, and most of what we learned about your illustrious accomplishments came to us as hearsay. I really want to hear you talk about your experiences, down to the last detail. Don’t give another thought to my puffy eyelids, because when my eyes are hooded, that means I’m concentrating.

  The events that followed were varied and very complex. I can only touch on the highlights and the more spectacular incidents, Big-head Lan Qiansui said.

  Even though Ximen Bai painstakingly fed my sow mother, I went on suckling like a crazed piglet — what you might call extraction — which led to the paralysis of the rear half of her body. Her hind legs were like dried-out loofahs, so she had to drag herself around the pen by her front legs. By this time I was nearly as big as she was. My hair was so glossy it looked waxed; my skin was a healthy red color with a wonderful odor. My poor mother’s skin was filthy, the
foul-smelling rear half covered in shit. She howled every time I took one of her teats in my mouth, and tears spilled out of her tiny eyes. She dragged herself along the ground, trying to get away from me and pleading: Son, my good son, show your mother some mercy. You’re sucking the marrow out of my bones. Can’t you see the miserable shape I’m in? You’re a full-grown pig, so you should be eating solid food like me. I turned a deaf ear to her pleading, nudged her onto her side with my snout, and wrapped my lips around two teats at the same time. As my ears filled with her shrill cries of agony, I couldn’t help feeling that the teats that had once secreted that sweet-tasting milk had turned rubbery and tasteless and produced no more than a tiny amount of rank, salty, sticky liquid that was closer to poison than milk. In disgust, I rolled her over with my snout. I could hear the pain in her voice as she cursed me: Oh, Sixteen, you are a beast with no conscience, a demon. You were sired by a wolf, not a pig. . . .

  Ximen Bai was reprimanded by Hong Taiyue over my sow mother’s paralysis. “Secretary,” she said tearfully, “her son’s willfulness caused that, not negligence on my part. If you’d seen the way he eats, like a wolf or a tiger, you’d agree that even a cow would have wound up paralyzed with him at her teat. . . .”

  Hong looked into the pen; on an impulse I stood up on my hind legs, unaware that the only other pigs that could do that were trained circus performers. For me it seemed perfectly natural. With my front legs propped up on the wall, my head was right under Hong Taiyue’s chin. He backed up, obviously shocked, and looked around. Seeing they were alone, he said to Ximen Bai softly:

  “It wasn’t your fault. I’ll isolate this king of pigs and assign someone to feed him.”

  “That’s what I suggested to Chairman Huang, but he said he wanted to wait for you to return. ...”