Your son came running out of the main house to see what was going on in the side room. “Mama!” he shouted in alarm. “What are you doing?” Two more violent chops finally vented the hatred she was feeling; she put down her cleaver, turned her back to him to dry her tears, and said, “Why aren’t you in bed? Don’t you have school tomorrow?” He walked up in front of her. “You’re crying, Mama!” he cried out shrilly. “What do you mean, crying? What’s there to cry about? It’s the onions.” “Why are you chopping onions in the middle of the night?” “Go to bed. If you’re late for school tomorrow, I’ll show you what it means to cry.” The anger in her voice was unmistakable. She picked up the cleaver, throwing a fright into your son, who backed up and started muttering to himself. “Come back here!” she said, rubbing his head with one hand and gripping the cleaver in her other. “I want you to study hard and bring credit to yourself. I’ll make some onion-stuffed flat bread for you.” “I don’t want any, Mama,” he said. “You’re tired, you work so hard…” But she pushed him out the door. “I’m not tired. Now be a good boy and go to bed.” He took a few steps, then stopped and turned back. “Papa came home, didn’t he?” She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then: “Yes, but he left, he had to work overtime tonight.” “How come he always has to work overtime?”
I found the whole episode depressing. Among dogs I could be totally unfeeling. But in a family of humans, emotions came at me from all directions.
As promised, your wife set to work making onion-stuffed flat bread. She kneaded the dough, so much that she wound up with a pile half the size of a pillow. What was she thinking, that she’d treat your son’s whole class to freshly baked flat breads? Her bony shoulders rose and fell as she worked, sweat darkened the back of her jacket. Intermittent spells of crying spoke to her anger, to her sorrow, and to so many of her memories. Some of the tears fell on her jacket front, some fell on the backs of her hands, and some fell into the dough, which was getting softer and softer and producing a slightly sweet aroma. Adding some flour, she continued to knead the dough. She sobbed from time to time, but quickly stopped and dried her tears with her sleeves. Soon her face was dotted with white flour, a comical yet pitiful appearance. She occasionally stopped working, let her hands fall to her sides, and walked around the room, as if looking for something. On one of those occasions, she slipped on some scattered mung beans and fell to the floor, where she sat for a moment, looking straight ahead, as if staring at a gecko on the wall. Then she banged her hands against the floor and wailed, but just for a moment, before getting to her feet and going back to work.
Once the dough was ready, she set her pan on top of the stove, turned on the gas, and lit a fire. After carefully pouring in a bit of oil, she laid in the first prepared flat bread, which sizzled and sent bursts of fragrance into the kitchen air and from there to the yard outside and the street beyond; once it had spread through town I was able to relax a bit, after being so fidgety. I looked up into the western sky, where the moon now hung, and listened to what was happening at Tianhua Bridge. The scent told me that our regular meeting was ready to begin, and that they were all waiting for me.
The hundreds of mongrels seated around the central fountain stood up when I made my entrance at Tianhua Square and welcomed me boisterously.
Deputy chairmen Ma and Lü escorted me to the chairman’s podium, a marble foundation on which a replica of the Venus de Milo had stood before someone walked off with it. As I rested there to catch my breath, from a distance I must have looked like a memorial to a brave canine. My apologies, but I’m not a statue. I’m a living, breathing, powerful dog who carries the genes of the local big white dog and a German shepherd, in short, Gaomi County’s dog king. I gathered my thoughts for a couple of seconds before beginning my address. In that first second my sense of smell was still focused on your wife; the heavy aroma of onions coming from your home told me that everything was normal. In the final second I switched to you, sprawled at the window in your smoky office, gazing dreamily at the moon. That too was perfectly normal. I looked out into the flashing eyes and shiny fur of all those animals arrayed before me and announced in a loud voice:
“Brothers, sisters, I call this eighteenth full-moon meeting to order!”
A roar rose from the crowd.
I raised my right paw to quiet them down.
“During this past month our brother the Tibetan mastiff passed away, so let’s send his soul off to the plateau with three loud cheers!”
The chorus of cheers from several hundred dogs rocked the town. My eyes were moist: sadness over the passing of our brother and gratitude over the expressions of friendship.
I then invited the dogs to sing and dance and chat and eat and drink in celebration of the one-month birthday of my third elder sister’s litter of three.
Whoops and hollers.
She passed her male pup up to me. I kissed him on the cheek and raised him over my head for all to see. The crowd roared. I passed him down, and she passed up a female. I kissed her and raised her over my head, and the crowd roared again. Then she handed up the third pup, another female. I brushed her cheek with my lips, raised her over my head, the crowd roared for the third time, and I passed her down. The crowd roared.
I jumped down off the platform. My sister came up to me and said to her pups, “Say, Hello, Uncle. He’s your mother’s brother.”
Hello Uncle, Hello Uncle, Hello Uncle.
“I hear they’ve all been sold, is that right?” I asked her icily.
“You heard right,” she said proudly. “They’d barely been born before people were beating down our door. My mistress sold them to Party Secretary Ke from Donkey County, Industry and Commerce Department Chief Hu, and Health Department Chief Tu. They paid eighty thousand.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t a hundred thousand?” I asked, again icily.
“They brought a hundred, but our master would only accept eighty. My master isn’t a money-grubber.”
“Shit,” I said, “that’s not selling dogs, it’s selling-”
She cut me off with a shrill rebuke: “Uncle!”
“Okay, I won’t say it,” I promised in a soft voice. Then I announced to the crowd, “Come on, dance! Sing! Start drinking!”
A pointy-eared, slender German dachshund with a hairless tail came up to me with two bottles of beer. When he popped them open with his teeth, foam spilled over the sides and released the delightful aroma.
“Have one, Mr. Chairman.” So I took one of the bottles and clinked it against the one he held for himself.
“Bottoms up!” I said. So did he.
With two paws on the bottles, we tipped them up and slugged down the contents. More and more dogs came up to drink with me, and I didn’t send any of them away A pile of empties formed behind me. A little white Pekinese, her hair in pigtails and a ribbon tied around her neck, came rolling up to me like a little ball, with some locally produced sausage in her mouth. She was wearing Chanel No. 5 perfume, and her coat glistened like silver.
“Chairman… Mr. Chairman…” She stammered a little. “This sausage is for you.”
She undid the wrapping with her tiny teeth and with two paws carried the sausage up to my mouth. I accepted her gift and took a small bite, then chewed it slowly as a sign of respect. Vice chairman Ma walked up with a bottle of beer then, and clinked it against mine.
“How was the sausage?”
“Not bad.”
“Damn it. I told them to bring over one case, but they brought twenty cases of the stuff. Old Wei, over at the warehouse, is going to be in deep shit tomorrow.” There was a noticeable degree of pride in his voice.
I spotted a mongrel crouching off to the side with three bottles of beer lined up in front of him, along with three chunks of sausage and some cloves of garlic. He took a swig of beer, then a bite of sausage, and flipped a clove of garlic into his mouth. He smacked his lips as he chewed, as if he was the only dog around. He was enjoying himself immensely. The other local mutts were drunk by then. Some were howling at the moon, others were belching loudly, and some were spouting incomprehensible rubbish. I wasn’t happy about that, of course, but I didn’t do anything about it.