Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

still scratching them between their legs, carry them over to the pens.
    Hong Taiyue praised the women and scorned the rough-and-tumble men.
    Amid an earsplitting clamor, all but three of the 1,057 pigs from the Mount Yimeng area were caught and put into pens. One, a dirty yellow female, died, and so did a young black-and-white. The third one was the black boar Diao Xiaosan, who slipped under one of the vehicles and refused to come out. Wang Chen, a core member of the militia, emerged from the feeding shed with a plane tree pole and tried to poke the pig out with it. Diao Xiaosan bit it in two after a tug-of-war, and though I couldn’t see Diao under the vehicle, I could picture what he looked like down there. When he bit the pole in two, the bristles on his back stood straight up and scary green lights flashed in his eyes. He was no pig, he was a wild beast, one that would teach me lots of things over the months to come. He started out as my enemy and wound up as my adviser. As I said earlier, the story of Diao Xiaosan and me will unfold in the pages to come, all dyed in bold colors.
    The muscular militiaman and Diao Xiaosan were perfectly matched, and the pole had made only meager inroads. A crowd that had gathered looked on, spellbound. Hong Taiyue leaned over to look under the vehicle; other people did the same, and I tried to conjure up an image of that stubborn, stalwart scalawag. Finally, some of the gawkers decided to come help Wang Chen, but I scorned them all. A fair fight is one-on-one. A bunch of men can’t take pride from ganging up on one pig! I was worried that sooner or later the pole would force him out from under the vehicle, like digging a big turnip out of the ground, but then I heard a crack, and the men holding the pole fell backward in a heap, bringing half the pole with them, teeth marks on the truncated end.
    A roar of approval went up from the crowd. Everybody’s like that: they hate the little wrongdoings and minor eccentricities, but revere the big sins and the grotesque. Diao Xiaosan’s behavior hadn’t reached the level of big sin or grotesque, but it had moved well beyond little wrongdoing and eccentricity. Someone brought out another pole and probed around with it. A crack from under the vehicle, and the man threw down his pole and ran away in fear. The ideas came fast and furious after that: some suggested shooting him, others recommended stabbing him with a spear, and some recommended smoking him out. Hong Taiyue shot down all those cruel suggestions. “Those ideas stink worse than shit!” he said sternly. “We’re supposed to be ‘raising’ pigs, not ‘braising’ pigs.” So then someone recommended having one of the bolder women crawl under the vehicle and start scratching him. Even the wildest boar will respect the fairer sex, won’t it? Not even the meanest pig can stay wild if a woman is scratching it, can it? A good idea, but who to send was the obvious question. Huang Tong, still supposed vice chairman of the Revolutionary Committee, but wielding no real authority, supplied an answer: “When great rewards are offered, brave women will respond! Whoever crawls under the vehicle and subdues that wild boar gets a bonus of three days’ work points!” With a sneer, Hong Taiyue said, “That sounds like a good job for your wife!” Wu Qiuxiang quickly moved to the back of the crowd. “You and your big mouth,” she berated Huang Tong. “It gets you into trouble every time! I wouldn’t go under there for three hundred work points!” Her words still hung in the air when Ximen Jinlong emerged from the pig feed preparation room of the pig-tenders dormitory, at the far end of the apricot grove, between the lovely Huang daughters. He pushed them away, but they came together and followed him, like a pair of comely bodyguards. Bringing up the rear of this procession were Ximen Baofeng, medical kit on her back, Lan Jiefang, Bai Xing’er, Mo Yan, and others. Except for Ximen Jinlong, whose face was grimy, they were all carrying buckets of pig feed. I could smell the fragrance even with apricot leaves stuffed up my nose: it was a mash made of cottonseed cake, sweet potatoes, black bean paste, and sweet potato leaves. Milky white steam rose from the sunlit wooden buckets, spreading the fragrance around. Great clouds of steam poured from the buckets. It was a motley procession, yet there was a certain solemnity about it, sort of like mess cooks taking food to frontline