Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

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 little? I