Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

all his bones seemed to come unglued.
    “You can’t die, old Diao,” I cried out, “you can’t! Old Diao . . .”
    This time he didn’t respond, and tears finally came to my eyes, tears of remorse. As I pondered what had just happened, I could see that while it may have seemed that Diao Xiaosan’s death came at the hands of Xu Bao, in fact I was the cause of his death. La-ya-la — La-ya-la-la la-ya-la — Old Diao, my good brother, go in peace. I hope your soul will soon find its way to the underworld, where Lord Yama will arrange a good rebirth for you, maybe even as a human being, at least I hope so. You can leave this world worry-free. I’ll avenge you by giving Xu Bao a taste of his own medicine. . . .
    As these thoughts raced through my mind, Baofeng came running up behind Huzhu, her medicine bag over her shoulder. By that time, Jinlong might well have been sitting in the rickety old armchair at Xu Bao’s house sharing a bottle with Xu Bao as they enjoyed Xu’s favorite dish — boar’s eggs. In the end, women are more kindhearted than men. Just look there at Huzhu, sweat beading her forehead, tears clouding her vision, as if Diao Xiaosan were her blood relative, not a scary-looking boar. By then it was the sixth lunar month, nearly two months after your wedding. You and Huang Hezuo had already been working in Pang Hu’s cotton processing plant for a month. The cotton was just then blooming; in three months it would be on the market.
    During those days, I — Lan Jiefang — along with the head of the cotton inspection office and a bunch of girls, was sent over from a number of villages and the county town to weed the enormous compound and prepare the surface for the cotton sale. The Cotton Processing Plant Number Five occupied a thousand acres of land and was ringed by a brick wall. The bricks had been taken from the graveyard as a cost-cutting measure initiated by Pang Hu himself. New bricks sold for ten fen; old bricks from the graves cost only three. For the longest time, none of the other workers knew that Huang Hezuo and I were man and wife, since I stayed in the men’s dorm and she stayed in the women’s. A place like the cotton processing plant, where employees worked on a seasonal basis, could not afford to supply married housing. But even if there had been quarters for us to share, we wouldn’t have wanted to, since our marriage was like a child’s game; at least it felt that way to me. It was a sham, almost like being told upon awakening: From today on this is your wife. You are now her husband. How could anyone accept something that absurd? I had feelings for Huzhu, not for Hezuo, and this was the root of a lifetime of agony. On my first morning at the cotton processing plant I laid eyes on Pang Ghunmiao, a lovely six-year-old girl with pretty white teeth and red lips, eyes like stars and lustrous skin, a crystalline beauty. She was practicing handstands in the plant doorway. Her hair was tied with a piece of red satin, she was wearing a navy blue skirt, a white short-sleeved shirt, white socks, and red plastic sandals. Urged on by the people around her, she bent over, put both hands on the ground, and lifted her feet up in the air, until her body was arced at the right angle to begin walking on her hands to shouts and applause. But her mother, Wang Leyun, ran up and turned her right side up. Don’t be silly, my angel, she said. But I can keep doing it, her daughter said reluctantly.
    I can see this as if it had happened yesterday, not nearly thirty years ago. Even great seers like Zhuge Liang and Liu Bowen could not predict that many years into the future. I gave up everything for love. By running off with that little girl, I created a huge scandal throughout Northeast Gaomi Township. But I was confident that what began as a scandal would one day be seen as a true love story. At least that’s what my good friend Mo Yan predicted when we were at the end of our rope. . . .
    — Hey! Big-head Lan Qiansui pounded the table like a judge with his gavel and snapped me back to reality. Don’t start woolgathering, listen to me. You’ll have plenty of time to daydream about and ponder, even complain about that ridiculous affair of yours, but for now I want you to listen and listen carefully to my glorious history as a pig. So where was I? Oh, right, your sister, Baofeng, and your sister-in-law — there’s no other way to describe her — Huzhu rushed up to Diao Xiaosan, who was barely