Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

made for a beautiful setting; the crows’ wings seemed gilded. The blue half of your face glowed. You were never considered one of the major personalities in Ximen Village; in fact, except for Mo Yan, who you often chewed the fat with, just about everybody ignored you; even me, a pig at the time, never gave you much thought, even though you were a so-called feed boss. But at this moment, with that whip trailing you as you came at me, I discovered to my surprise that you’d grown into a slender young man. Sometime later I counted on my hooves and discovered that you were already twenty-two. Yes, you’d grown up.
    With my arms wrapped around a limb and sunbeams filtering through the red clouds, I opened my mouth and released a swirling air-raid alert. People who had gathered at the base of the tree were steaming, the embarrassed looks on their faces somewhere between laughter and crying. An old man named Wang intoned sadly:
    “A demon emerges, the nation submerges!”
    But Jinlong cut him off:
    “Watch your tongue, Gramps Wang!”
    Knowing he’d said something he shouldn’t have, Gramps Wang slapped himself. “Who told you to rant like that?” he cursed himself. “Secretary Lan, a great man overlooks a small man’s mistakes. Forgive this old man’s crime!”
    At the time Jinlong was a newly minted member of the Party and was already a member of the Branch Party Committee, as well as Party secretary of the Ximen Village Communist Youth League. He was more than proud, he was haughty. With a wave of his hand to the old man, he said:
    “I know you’ve read heretical books like Warring Kingdoms and that they’ve found their way into your heart, so you like to show off. If not for that, that one sentence alone would be enough to label you a counterrevolutionary.”
    Jinlong’s comment had a chilling effect on the atmosphere, and that gave him the opportunity to deliver a sermon; he remarked that inclement weather presents an opportunity for imperialists, revisionists, and counterrevolutionaries to attack; it also creates ideal conditions for hidden class enemies in the village to carry out sabotage. He then turned his attention to me, declaring me to be an enlightened pig. “He may be a pig, but he’s achieved a higher degree of awareness than many people.”
    Dizzy with pride, I forgot why I was sounding air-raid warnings in the first place. Like a pop singer responding to an admiring audience with a rousing encore, I cleared my throat for another burst of sound, but before it left my throat, I saw Lan Jiefang twirl his whip at the base of the tree, and before I saw it coming, the tip flicked against my ear. Boy, did that hurt! But the worst thing was, my head suddenly felt heavier than the rest of my body, and I fell out of the tree into the snow.
    When I managed to get to my feet, I saw blood on the snow — my blood. The whip had opened up an inch-long gash in my right ear, one that would accompany me through the second, and most glorious, half of my life. It was also the reason I bore a grudge against you from then on, though I later understood why you resorted to such cruelty. I forgave you in theory, but could never quite let it go emotionally.
    Although I was on the receiving end of a whip that day and scarred for life, my neighbor Diao Xiaosan suffered a much crueler fate. There was a certain charm to my climbing a tree and sounding air-raid alerts, but there was no redeeming feature in his foul-mouthed attacks on society and the destruction of property. Some people criticized Lan Jiefang for using his whip on me, but when he whipped Diao Xiaosan bloody, he was universally praised. Shouts of “Beat him, beat the bastard to death!” were on everyone’s lips. At first, Diao hopped around so violently he broke two steel rods in the gate to his pen. But his strength gradually gave out, and people rushed in, grabbed his hind legs, and dragged him out into the snow. Jiefang’s hatred hadn’t abated; he stood with his legs bent like wickets, each snap of his whip opening a new gash on Diao’s body. His gaunt blue face was twitching; knots protruded on his cheeks from clenching his teeth. “You scumbag, you whore!” he shouted with each lashing of his whip, switching back and forth as each hand tired. That, of course, was no mean feat. At first, Diao Xiaosan rolled around on the ground, but after a few dozen lashes, he laid out flat, like a hunk of dead meat. Jiefang still wasn’t satisfied.