Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

like me?” “Oh, no,” I sputtered, “I like you very much. . . .” She came up to me again, but I took her hand and said, “Dear Chunmiao, the janitor will be coming in to clean in a minute. You go now. I have so much to say to you, but it will have to wait a few days.” She walked out of my office, and I collapsed in my leather swivel chair, listening to her footsteps until they died out at the end of the hallway.

41

Lan Jiefang Feigns Affection for His Wife
Dog Four Watches over a Student
    If you want to know the truth, when you came home that evening you had a new smell, one that could make man and dog happy. It was nothing like the one you brought home after shaking a woman’s hand or sharing a meal or dancing with a woman. It wasn’t even the way you smelled after sex. Nothing got past that nose of mine. Big-head Lan Qiansui’s eyes lit up when he said this.
    His expression and the look in his eyes made me realize that at that moment it wasn’t Pang Fenghuang’s exceptional child, with whom I had such an unbelievably complicated relationship, talking to me; no, it was my long-dead dog. Nothing got past that nose of mine, he’d said.
    That fresh, new smell merged with your personal odor and changed the way you smelled altogether. That told me that a deep and abiding love had developed between you and that woman. It seeped into your blood and your bones, and no power on earth could separate the two of you after that.
    The show you put on that night was, in truth, wasted effort. After dinner you went into the kitchen and washed the dishes, then you asked your son what he’d learned in school that day — both things you almost never did. Your wife was so touched she went in and made you a cup of tea. You had sex that night. By your count it was the twentieth time; it would also be the last time. From the strength of the odor I could tell that the sex wasn’t bad, even though it held no real meaning. In the midst of your sense of moral obligation, guilt feelings temporarily overwhelmed the physical revulsion you normally felt for your wife. Meanwhile, the smell of that other woman was beginning to germinate, like a seed in the ground, and when its buds burst to the surface, no power in the world could drag you back into the arms of your wife. My nose told me that you’d experienced a rebirth, one that portended the death of this family.
    Seven years had passed from the day I arrived at your house up to the day of your and Pang Chunmiao’s first kiss, during which time I’d grown from a little puppy into a large, powerful dog. Your son had grown from a little baby into a fourth-grade student. Everything that happened over that period was enough to fill a novel, or it could be written off with a single stroke of the pen.
    Now I think it’s time to talk about your son.
    He was a filial boy, no doubt about that. When he started school, your wife took him there and picked him up on her bicycle. But the school schedule interfered with her work schedule, which put a strain on her. And whenever something put a strain on your wife, she started to complain; and when she started to complain, curses flew at you; and whenever curses flew at you, your son frowned. So you see, he really did love you. “Ma,” he said, “you don’t have to take me to school or pick me up. I can go by myself.” She’d have none of it. “What if you got hit by a car or were bitten by a dog or got picked on by bullies or got taken off by a slap-lady or were kidnapped for ransom?” Five ugly scenarios in a row, without taking a breath. Public safety was a big problem in the early 1990s. People knew there were some women from the south — known on the street as slap-ladies — who traded in children. Pretending to be selling flowers or candy or shuttlecocks made with colorful chicken feathers, they hid a spellbinding drug in their clothes, and when they saw a good-looking child, they slapped him or her on the head, and the child walked off with them. Well, your son slapped his own face, right on the birthmark, and said, “Slap-ladies only deal in good-looking children. If someone looking like me volunteered to walk off with them, they’d shoo me away. And what could you, a woman, do if someone tried to kidnap me? You can’t run away—” He looked at your injured hip, which made your wife so sad her eyes reddened and she began to sob. “Son,” she said, “you’re not ugly, your mother’s the ugly one, with half her