Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

Lan Lian’s place in Ximen Village. The living room floor was made of marble from Laiyang, so highly waxed I could slide across it, and when your son stepped inside the first time, he was enthralled by its mirrorlike quality. He looked down at his reflection, and so did I. Then he skated across the floor as if it were an ice rink. The walls, with their fine-grained wood baseboards, were painted white, and so was the ceiling, from which hung a light blue chandelier with lights like flower buds. An enlarged photograph of a pair of swans on a pond of green, tulip-bordered water in a wooded area hung on the wall opposite the front door. To the east a long, narrow study with a bookcase that covered one wall but held only a few dozen books. There was a bed in one corner; next to it a desk and a chair. A hallway off to the west of the living room led to one room directly ahead and another to the right, each furnished with a bed and had oak floors. The kitchen was at the rear. That house was all the evidence anyone needed to see that you’d done well for yourself, Lan Jiefang. You weren’t that high up the official ladder, but your talents had made you a man to reckon with.
    Now, since I was a dog, I had a canine responsibility to carry out. Which was? I had to mark my new home with my personal scent, in part as a sort of beacon in case I got lost away from home.
    I left my first dribble to the right of the front door, the second on the living room baseboard, and the third on Lan Jiefang’s bookcase. The last one earned me a kick from you, which sent the remaining liquid back up inside. Thoughts of that kick stayed with me over the next decade and more. You may have been the head of the household, but I never considered you my master. In fact, I wound up considering you my enemy. My first master — mistress, actually — was that woman with a chunk of her rear end missing. My second master was the boy with the big blue birthmark. You? Shit, in my mind you were nothing!
    Your wife placed a basket in the hallway, filled with newspapers. Your son added a little ball, and that was where I was to sleep. It looked okay to me. Since it even came with a toy, I figured I had it made. But the good times didn’t last. In the middle of the first night, you moved my bed out to the coal shed. Why? Because I kept thinking about my kennel back in Ximen Village, or the warm bosom of my mother, or the smell of that kindly old woman, and couldn’t stop whimpering. Even your son, who slept in the arms of your wife, woke up in the middle of the night crying for his grandma. Boy and dog were the same. Your son was three years old, I was three months old and wasn’t permitted to miss my mother. Besides, I didn’t just miss my canine mother, I missed your mother too. But none of that was worth mentioning, since you flung open the door, picked up my basket, and exiled me to the coal shed, where you left me with an angry curse: “Any more noise from you, you little mongrel bastard, and I’ll throttle you!”
    You hadn’t even been in bed. No, you were hiding in the study, chain-smoking until the room was yellow with smoke, just so you wouldn’t have to sleep with your wife.
    My coal shed was pitch-black, but there was enough light for a dog to distinguish one thing from another. The smell of coal was thick in the air — large, glistening chunks of good coal. Most families couldn’t burn coal that good back then. I jumped out of my bed basket and ran into the yard, where I was drawn to the smell of fresh well water and the aroma of parasol blossoms. I left my mark on four separate parasol trees and at the gate, and everywhere else that was called for. The place was becoming mine. I’d left the bosom of my mother and come to a strange new place; from now on I had no one to rely upon but myself.
    I took a turn around the yard to learn the layout. I walked past the front door and, owing to a temporary weakness, rushed up and clawed at it, accompanied by some agonizing yelps. But I quickly got my feelings under control and returned to my basket bed, feeling that I’d grown up in that short time. I looked up at the bright red face of the half moon, like a shy farm girl. Stars filled the sky as far as I could see, and the light purple flowers on the four parasol trees looked like living butterflies in the murky moonlight, about to flit away. In the very early hours of the morning I heard strange, mysterious sounds coming from town and