Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

deserve the chance to toughen up a bit—”
    Huzhu picked up the glass in front of her and flung the contents at her sister. “What did you think you were doing?”
    I’d never seen Huang Huzhu so angry, had never even imagined she knew how to be angry. She took out a handkerchief to dry Jinlong’s face. He pushed her hand away, but she brought it up to him again. I tell you, I was a smart pig, but the girls of Ximen Village turned my brain to mush that day. Meanwhile, Mo Yan had crawled out of the weeds and, like a boy with springs tied to the soles of his feet, bounced unsteadily up to the table, where he picked up a glass, held it high over his head, and, like a poet — maybe Li Bai and maybe Qu Yuan — shouted crisply:
    “Moon, Moon, I salute you!”
    Mo Yan splashed the liquor in his glass in the direction of the moon; it spread out in the air like a green curtain and the moon abruptly dropped low in the sky, then floated gently upward to its normal height, where, like a silver plate, it cast indifferent rays down on the world.
    Down below, now that the festivities had ended, the people began drifting away. There was still plenty to do that night; no time to waste. Me? I felt like going to see my old friend Lan Lian, who, I knew, was in the habit of working his land on moonlit nights. I thought back to my days as an ox and what he once said to me: Ox, the sun is theirs, the moon is ours, and I can find my land from the surrounding commune land with my eyes closed. The one-point-six acres of land are a reef, a strip of private land that will never sink in the vast ocean. Lan Lian had gained a provincewide reputation as a negative model, and I felt honored to have served him as a donkey and an ox, glory to the reactionary. “Only claiming the land as one’s own allows us to be masters of the land.”
    Before going out to see Lan Lian, I passed stealthily by my pen, making no noise at all. A pair of militiamen were sitting under an apricot tree smoking and eating apricots, and to avoid them I hopped from one patch of shade to another, feeling light as a swallow, and exited the grove after only about a dozen hops, where my way was blocked by an irrigation ditch roughly five yards across and filled with clear water, the surface as smooth as glass. I was being observed by the moon’s reflection. Now I’d never tried to swim, not since the day I was born, but instinct told me that I knew how. But not wanting to frighten the moon, I decided to leap across the ditch. I stepped back ten yards or so, took several deep breaths to fill my lungs, and took off running, heading at full speed toward a ridge that showed up white, an ideal launching pad. The moment my front hooves touched the hard-packed earth, I sprang forward with my rear legs and lifted off, as if shot out of a cannon. My belly was cooled by a breeze that hugged the surface of the water; the moon winked as I passed overhead, just before landing on the opposite bank.
    I saw him. He was wearing a jacket made of local fabric with a button-down front, a white cloth sash around his waist, and a conical hat woven of sorghum stalks that hid most of his face from view, but not the luminous blue half or the intensely sad yet unyielding light in his eyes. He was waving a long bamboo pole with a piece of red cloth tied to the end, like the swishing tail of an ox, driving the egg-laying tussock moths away from his wheat stalks and onto the cotton plants or cornstalks belonging to the production brigade. Reduced to using this clumsy primitive method to protect his crops, it appeared as if he was doing battle with destructive insects, when in fact the real foe was the People’s Commune. Old friend, back when I was a donkey and then when I was an ox, I shared your comforts and your hardships; but now I’m a People’s Commune stud boar, and I can’t help you. I thought about relieving myself in your field to supply you with some organic fertilizer, but what if you stepped in it? Wouldn’t that turn a good deed into a bad one? I could bite through the People’s Commune cornstalks or uproot all their cotton plants, but that won’t do you any good, since they aren’t your enemy either. Old friend, keep at it, don’t waver. You are China’s sole independent farmer, so don’t forget, perseverance is victory. I looked up at the moon; the moon nodded at me and then leaped into the western sky. It was getting late, time for me to head back. But I’d no sooner