36
Thoughts Throng the Mind as the Past Is Recalled
Disregarding Personal Safety, Pig Saves a Child
Three months later, I was dead.
It all happened one afternoon when the sun was hidden. A bunch of kids were playing on the gray ice covering the river behind Ximen Village. They ranged in age from three and four up to seven and eight. Some were sledding across the ice, others were playing with tops, and I was watching this next generation of Ximen Village residents from the woods. I heard the welcoming call from the other side of the river:
“Kaifeng Geming Fenghuang Huanhuan – all you kids, come home.”
I saw the weathered face of the woman, the blue kerchief over her head waving in the wind, and I recognized her. It was Yingchun. I would be dead an hour later, but for now I was so caught up in turbulent memories of the past ten years or so I forgot all about my pig body. I knew that Kaifeng was the son of Lan Jiefang and Huang Hezuo, that Geming was the son of Ximen Baofeng and Ma Liangcai, that Huanhuan was the adopted son of Ximen Jinlong and Huang Huzhu. Fenghuang was the daughter of Pang Kangmei and Chang Tianhong, and I knew that her biological father was Ximen Jinlong, conceived beneath the renowned lover’s tree in Apricot Garden.
The children were having too much fun to climb up the bank, so Yingchun walked gingerly down the slope, just as the ice broke and the children fell into the icy water.
At the moment I was a human, not a pig; by no stretch of the imagination was I a born hero, but I was basically good and willing to do anything for a just cause. I jumped into the water while Yingchun scrambled back up the bank and shouted for help from the village. Thank you, Yingchun, my beloved. To me the water felt warm, not cold, and as the blood coursed through my veins I swam like a champion. I was not intent on saving the three children who were carrying on my line; I just swam for the nearest ones. I bit down on the pants of one of the boys and flung him back onto the ice. One after the other I tossed the children back onto the ice. They quickly crawled to safety. I took the foot of the fattest of the children in my mouth and brought him up out of the water; icy bubbles shot from his mouth as he hit the surface, just like a fish. The boy landed on the ice, which cracked under the weight, so this time I rammed my snout into his soft belly, moved all four of my legs as fast as I could – even with four legs treading water, I was still human – and flung him far off onto the ice. This time it held, thank goodness. The inertia from the effort drove me under the surface; water rushed up my nose, and I choked. When I made it back to the surface I coughed and gasped for air. I saw a crowd of people racing down the slope. Stay where you are, you stupid people! I put my head back under the water and dragged another child, a chubby little boy whose face was coated with ice, like syrup, when he broke the surface. The other kids I’d saved were still crawling along the ice, some of them crying, proof they were still alive. Go on, cry, all of you. In my mind’s eye I could see a bunch of girls, one after the other, crawling along the ground in the Ximen family compound and then climbing up the big apricot tree. The first girl in line passed gas. That was met by laughter. They all slid back down to the ground and dissolved into giggles. I saw their laughing faces. Baofeng’s laughing face, Huzhu’s laughing face, Hezuo’s laughing face. Back underwater I went, this time swimming after a boy who had been carried downriver. I caught him and raced for the surface, where the ice was thick and hard. I was running out of air; my chest felt as though it was about to explode. I rammed my head into the ice. Nothing. I did it a second time. Still nothing. So I turned and swam against the current. When I finally surfaced I saw red. Was it the setting sun? I flung the nearly drowned boy onto the ice. Through the red haze I saw Jinlong, Huzhu, Hezuo, Lan Lian, and many more… they all seemed made of blood, so red, poles and ropes and hoes in their hands as they crawled out onto the ice to rescue the children… how smart and how good they were. I had nothing but good feelings for all of them, was grateful even to the ones who had made my life as a pig so difficult. My thoughts were of a mysterious play being performed on a stage seemingly thrown up at the edge of a cloud as I hid among a copse of rare trees with golden limbs and jadeite leaves; music curled into the air above the stage, a song sung by a female opera performer dressed in a costume made of lotus petals. I was deeply moved, though I couldn’t say why. I felt hot all over; the water around me was getting warmer. It felt so good as I sank slowly to the bottom, where I was met by a pair of smiling blue-faced demons who looked very familiar.
“Well, old pal, you’re back!”
Book Four: Dog Spirit
37
An Aggrieved Soul Returns as a Dog
A Pampered Child Goes to Town with His Mother
The two underworld attendants grabbed my arms and dragged me out of the water. “Take me to see Lord Yama, you rotten bastards!” I raged. “I’m going to settle scores with the damned old dog!”
“Heh heh,” Attendant One giggled. “After all these years, you’re still a hothead.”
“As they say, You can’t keep a cat from chasing mice or a dog from eating shit,” Attendant Two mocked.
“Let me go!” I railed. “Do you think I can’t find the damned old dog on my own?”
“Calm down,” Attendant One said, “just calm down. We’re old friends by now. After all these years, we’ve actually missed you.”
“We’ll take you to see the damned old dog,” Attendant Two said.
So they raced down the main street of Ximen Village, dragging me along with them. A cool wind hit me in the face, along with feather-light snowflakes. We left dead leaves fluttering on the road behind us. They stopped when we reached the Ximen family compound, where Attendant One grabbed my left arm and leg, Attendant Two took my right arm and leg, and they lifted me off the ground. After swinging me back and forth like a battering ram slamming into a bell, they let go and I went flying.
“Go on, go see that damned old dog!” they cried out together.
Wham! My head really did feel as if I’d rammed it into a bell, and I blacked out. When I came to, well, you know without my saying so, I was a dog, after landing in the kennel belonging to your mother, Yingchun.
In order to keep me from causing a scene in his hall, that is the underhanded tactic rotten Lord Yama had stooped to: shortening the reincarnation process by sending me straight into the womb of a bitch, where I followed three other puppies out through the birth canal.
The kennel I landed in was unbelievably crude: two rows of brick remnants under the house eaves for walls, wooden planks topped by tarred felt as a roof. It was my mother’s home – what was I supposed to do? I had to call her Mother, since I popped out of her body. My childhood home too. Our bedding? A winnowing basket full of chicken feathers and leaves.
The ground was quickly covered by a heavy snowfall, but the kennel was nice and bright, thanks to an electric light hanging from the eaves. Snowflakes slipping in through cracks in the felt turned the kennel bone-chillingly cold. Along with my brothers and sister I kept from shivering by nuzzling up against our mother’s warm belly. A series of rebirths had taught me one simple truth; when you come to a new place, learn the local customs and follow them. If you land in a pigpen, suck a sow’s teat or starve, and if you’re born into a dog kennel, nuzzle up to a bitch’s belly or freeze to death. Our mother was a big white dog with black tips on her front paws and tail.
She was a mongrel, no doubt about that. But our father was a purebred, a mean German shepherd owned by the Sun brothers. I saw him once: a big animal with a black back and tail and a brown underbelly and paws. He – our father – was kept on a chain in the Suns’ yard. He had blood-streaked yellow eyes, pointy ears, and a perpetual scowl.