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Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

Titel: Life and Death are Wearing Me Out Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Mo Yan
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sense the danger they faced. Three of them stood in front, facing east, directly opposite the boar forces and their king, Split Ear. Two men stood to the side, facing south; two more stood on the other side, facing north, opposite the flanking forces. The three men with flamethrowers stood behind the front row, sweeping the area with their eyes, showing no signs of concern. With light-hearted banter they began moving eastward as the boars closed their encirclement. When the humans drew to within fifty yards of Split Ear, Zhao Yonggang ordered his troops to open fire. Assault rifles began shooting at the enemy on three sides. The automatic fire was the sort of military might the boars could never have imagined. At least 140 bullets left seven rifle muzzles within five seconds, felling thirty or more boar warriors, most from head shots, where there was no armor. Split Ear ducked when the first shots were fired, but not in time to keep his good ear from taking a direct hit. Screaming in agony, he charged the hunters straight on, just as the experienced fighters with flamethrowers took three steps forward, sprawled on the ground, and fired, releasing red hot flames and a noise like a hundred geese shitting at the same time. The sticky tips of the flames wrapped around Split Ear and shot ten feet into the air. The king disappeared. The boars to the north and south suffered the same end, thanks in part to the flammabil-ity of the thick layer of pine tar in their armor. Most of the inflamed boars took off running, screaming in agony. Only a few of the smarter ones immediately rolled on the ground instead of running. The remaining boar warriors, those that had escaped both bullets and flames, were paralyzed by fear. Like a swarm of headless flies, they banged and bumped into each other, allowing the hunters to take aim and pick them off one at a time, sending them all down to meet Lord Yama . . .
    Then Mo Yan wrote:
    Viewed from the perspective of environmental protection, the slaughter was excessive. The cruelty with which the boars were dispatched cannot be condoned. In 2005, I traveled to Korea and was taken to the Demilitarized Zone, where I saw wild boars frolicking, birds nesting, and egrets soaring above the treetops. I thought back to the massacre at the shoal and experienced deep remorse, even though the boars had been guilty of all sorts of evil. The use of flamethrowers started a fire that consumed all the pine and willow trees on the shoal, not to mention the ground cover. As for the other creatures on the shoal, those with wings flew away, while those confined to the ground escaped either by crawling into burrows or jumping into the river; most, however, burned along with the trees. . . .
    I was there among the red willows on the southern bank of the Grain Barge River that day. I heard the pops of rifle fire and the terrifying screams of the wild boars, and, of course, smelled the suffocating fumes that came on winds from the northwest. I knew that if I hadn’t abdicated as king I’d have suffered the same fate as all the other boars, but, strange as it may seem, I was not in a mood to rejoice over my good fortune. I’d rather have died with the boars than live an ignoble life.
    After the massacre had ended, I swam back to the shoal, a scene of burned-out trees, incinerated boars, and, along the banks of the river, the bloated carcasses of various critters. My mood vacillated between outrage and grief, with the two emotions gradually coming together, like a two-headed snake attacking my heart from two sides.
    I had no thoughts of revenge as overwhelming grief burned inside me, making me as restless as a mentally disturbed soldier on the eve of battle. I swam parallel to the riverbank, following a scent of diesel fuel and the burned hides of wild boars, with the occasional pungent odors of tobacco smoke and cheap liquor mixed in. After a day of tracking the scents, the image of a boat drenched with evil took shape in my head, like a scene emerging from dense fog.
    The boat was a dozen yards in length and constructed of steel plates crudely welded together. It was a ponderous, ugly steel monster that was carrying the remnants of a team of ten hunters upriver. The six ex-soldiers who had jobs to return to, having accomplished what they’d come for, had taken a bus back to town. That left the leader, Zhao Yonggang, and the hunters Qiao Feipeng, Liu Yong, and Lü Xiaopo. Thanks to such factors as a population

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