Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

his hind legs and, partly for warmth and partly to vent his spleen, had begun tearing sorghum stalks out of the canopy over his pen. Unfortunately, some came from my side.
    I rose up on my hind legs and stuck my head over the wall. “Stop that,” I protested.
    With a stalk of sorghum clenched between his teeth, he tugged and tugged until he brought it down, then chewed it into pieces. “Shit,” he said, “who gives a damn! If I’m going to die, then I’m taking others with me! The ways of the world aren’t fair, so the little demons will tear down the temple.” He rose up on his hind legs, a sorghum stalk in his mouth, and came down as hard as he could, the concussion sending one of the red tiles crashing to the ground and opening a hole in the canopy, through which snow fell in on his head. With a shake of that big head, the green lights in his eyes crashed into the wall and shattered like glass. Obviously, the guy was nuts. I nervously looked up at the canopy above me and started pacing, on the verge of jumping over the wall to stop that nonsense. But taking on a madman only ensures that both sides will suffer, and in my anxiety I let out a shriek that sounded like an air-raid warning. I’ve tried to imitate the revolutionary style of singing, pinching my vocal cords, but it never worked. Now, in my high state of anxiety, my howl was actually closer to an air-raid warning than anything. That came as a memory of my youth, when there were countywide air-raid drills to put us on guard against attacks by imperialists, reactionaries, and counterrevolutionaries. In every village and hamlet in the county, loudspeakers first blared a low, rumbling sound. That’s what enemy bombers sound like, a baby’s voice announced. That was followed by an ear-splitting shriek. That’s what enemy planes sound like when they come in for strafing attacks. . . . Finally, demonic howls emerged. All county revolutionary cadres and all poor and lower-middle peasants, listen carefully to the differences. These are international air-raid warnings, and when you hear one of them, drop what you’re doing and take refuge in an air-raid shelter. If there isn’t one nearby, cover your head with both arms and hunker down.... I was like a student of opera who finally finds his voice and is overjoyed. I paced the confines of my pen and howled, and in order to send my warning as far as possible, I shot up an apricot tree. Snow on the branches, like flour or cotton wadding, fell to the ground, drizzling here and fluttering there, spongy in some places and heavy in others, and everywhere purple twigs peeked out from the white snow, glossy and brittle, like legendary ocean coral. From one limb to the next I climbed all the way to the top of the tree, where I could see not only all of Apricot Garden Pig Farm, but the whole village. I saw chimney smoke lazing into the sky, I saw thousands of trees whose canopies were like giant steamed buns, and I saw crowds of people running out of buildings that seemed about to collapse from the weight of rooftop snow. The snow was white, the people black. Traveling through knee-high drifts was closer to staggering than walking. It was my air-raid alert that had brought them out of their houses, and the first to emerge — from their heated five-room compound — were Jinlong and Jiefang. They walked around a bit and then looked into the sky — I knew they were searching for imperialist, revisionist, or counterrevolutionary bombers — and finally fell to the ground, where they wrapped their arms around their heads, as a flock of loudly cawing crows flew right over them. The birds had built their nests in a grove of trees east of the Grain Barge River, but with so much snow on the ground, finding food was especially hard, so they came every day to the Apricot Garden Pig Farm to forage. After a while Jinlong and Jiefang stood up and looked into the sky — which had cleared up after the snowstorm — again; following that, they looked down and eventually discovered the source of the air-raid warning.
    Lan Jiefang, now I have to talk about you. You raised your bamboo whip and charged me bravely, although you slipped and fell twice because of the ice-covered bits of pig food on the path through the trees: once you fell forward and sprawled on the ground like a dog fighting over shit; the other time you fell backward and landed like a turtle sunning its underbelly. The gentle sun’s rays and the snowy landscape