Life and Death are Wearing Me Out

of them, took them into town to sell next to shops that carried all sorts of mementos; from that she maintained a simple life. I occasionally saw her comb her hair, standing on a bench to let it fall all the way to the floor. Watching the way she had to bend her neck to run the comb through it made me very sad.
    Someone else I made sure to see each day was your father-in-law. Huang Tong was laid up with liver disease and probably didn’t have long to live either. Your mother-in-law, Wu Qiuxiang, looked to be in good health, though her hair had turned white and her eyesight had dimmed. No trace of her youthful flirtatiousness remained.
    But most of all I went to your father’s room, where I sprawled on the floor next to the kang, and the old man and I would just look at each other, communicating with our eyes and not our mouths. There were times when I assumed he knew exactly who I was; he’d start jabbering, as if talking in his sleep:
    “Old Master, you shouldn’t have died the way you did, but the world has changed over the last ten years or more, and lots of people died who shouldn’t have. . . .”
    I whined softly, which earned an immediate response from him:
    “What are you whining about, old dog? Did I say something wrong?”
    Rats shamelessly nibbled the corn hanging from the rafters. It was seed corn, something a farmer values almost as much as life itself. But not your father. He was unmoved. “Go ahead, eat up. There’s more food in the vats. Gome help me finish it off so I can leave. . . .”
    On nights when there was a bright moon he would walk out with a hoe over his shoulder and work in the moonlight, the same as he’d done for years, as everyone in Northeast Gaomi Township knew.
    And every time he did that, I tagged along, no matter how tired I was. He never wound up anywhere but on his one-point-six-acre sliver of land, a plot that, over a period of fifty years, had nearly evolved into a graveyard. Ximen Nao and Ximen Bai were there, your mother was buried there, as were the donkey, the ox, the pig, my dog-mother, and Ximen Jinlong. Weeds covered the spots where there were no graves, the first time that had ever happened there.
    One night, by jogging my deteriorating memory, I located the spot I’d chosen. I lay down and whimpered pathetically.
    “No need to cry, old dog,” your father said. “I know what you’re thinking. If you die before me, I’ll bury you right there. If I go first, I’ll tell them to bury you there, if I have to do it with my last breath.”
    Your father dug up some dirt behind your mother’s grave.
    “This spot is for Hezuo.”
    The moon was a melancholy object in the sky, its beams translucent and chilled. I followed your father as he prowled the area. He startled a pair of partridges, which flew off to someone else’s land. The rends they made in the moonlight were quickly swallowed up. Your father stood about ten yards north of the Ximen family graveyard and looked all around. He stamped his foot on the ground.
    “This is my place,” he said.
    He then started to dig, and didn’t stop until he’d carved out a hole roughly three feet by six and two feet deep. He lay down in it and stared up at the moon for about half an hour.
    “Old dog,” he said after climbing out, “you and the moon are my witnesses that I’ve slept in this spot. It’s mine, and no one can take it from me.”
    Then he went over to where I had lain down, measured my body, and dug a hole for me. I knew what he had in mind, so I jumped in. After lying there for a while, I got out.
    “That’s your spot, old dog. The moon and I are your witnesses.”
    In the company of the melancholy moon, we headed home along the riverbank, reaching the Ximen compound just before the roosters crowed. Dozens of dogs, having been influenced by dogs in town, were holding a meeting in the square across from the Ximen family gate. They were sitting in a circle around a female with a red silk kerchief around her neck; she was singing to the moon. Needless to say, to humans her song sounded like a bunch of crazed barks. But to me it was clear and musical, with a wonderfully moving melody and poetic lyrics. Here is the gist of what she was singing:
    “Moon, ah, moon, you make me so sad . . . girl, ah, girl, you make me go mad ...”
    That night your father and your wife spoke through the wall for the first time. He rapped on the thin wall and said:
    “Kaifang’s mother.”
    “I can hear you, Father,