What I want to relate is that in honor of the gathering Huang Tong drove a double-axle donkey cart to the sundries section of the commune supply and marketing co-op and returned with two large Boshan vats, three hundred Tangshan ceramic bowls, ten metal ladles, ten jin of brown sugar, and ten jin of refined sugar. What for? So people could help themselves to a free bowlful of sugar water any time they wanted while the on-site conference was in progress. I knew that Huang had pocketed some of the money he’d been given to make these purchases. How did I know that? By the way he fidgeted when he handed the receipts to the accountant and the person in charge of brigade finances. I’m also sure he sampled the sugar on the way over, though he blamed the shortage on the people at the co-op. The way he hid behind an apricot tree to puke proved that a lot of the sugar had found its way into his stomach.
Next I want to talk about one of Ximen Jinlong’s bold ideas. Since this was a gathering on raising pigs, the pigs played the leading role. In other words, the meeting would succeed or fail based upon the appearance of the pigs. Here’s the way Jinlong put it to Hong Taiyue: You can say that the Apricot Garden Pig Farm is as pretty as a fresh flower if you want to, but if the pigs are ugly, you won’t fool the masses. And since the high point of the on-site conference will be reached when the masses and visiting VIPs tour the pens, if the pigs they see there are unattractive, the on-site conference will be a failure, and the dream of Ximen Village to become a model for the county, the province, even the whole country, will go up in smoke. Upon his return to service, Hong Taiyue was clearly grooming Jinlong as his successor, and after Jinlong’s successful purchase of the pigs from Mount Yimeng, his words gained weight. Secretary Hong gave Jinlong his full support.
His recommendation? Wash the pigs three times in salt water, then remove their bristles with barber’s shears. This time Huang Tong was sent to the co-op in the company of the man in charge of finances to purchase five big cook pots, two hundred Jin of table salt, fifty barber kits, and a hundred bars of the most expensive and most fragrant toilet soap. But carrying out the plan proved to be more difficult than Jinlong had imagined. About the only way they could have bathed and trimmed a bunch of crafty pigs from Mount Yimeng was to stab them to death first. The plan was put into effect three days before the meeting began, but by noon on the first day they still hadn’t cleaned up a single pig, and the man in charge had had a bite taken out of his rear end by one of the animals.
It pained Jinlong to see his plan failing. Then, two days before the meeting opened, he smacked himself on the forehead, like a man who’d snapped out of a dream. “How could I have been so stupid?” he said. Reminded of the liquor-soaked bun he’d used to trick Diao Xiaosan not long before, he immediately went to report to Hong Taiyue, who also saw the light. Back to the co-op, this time to buy liquor. Seeing no need to buy good stuff just to get pigs drunk, they settled on potato liquor that sold for half a yuan per jin. Everyone was sent home to steam the buns, but that order was quickly countermanded. Pigs, after all, will eat rocks if you let them, so why waste the flour? Hard corn bread would work just as well. For that matter, who needs corn? They could simply soak the pigs’ bran meal with the liquor in the trough. So they placed a big vat of liquor beside the stove, poured three ladles’ full into each bucket of bran, mixed it, and cooked it; then you, Jiefang, and the others carried the mixture over to the pigpens and dumped it into their troughs. The smell of alcohol lay so heavy over the pens that pigs with the smallest capacity for liquor got drunk just by breathing in the air.
Now I was a stud pig who would soon take up a special job assignment, one that required a body in perfect condition. The head of the farm, Ximen Jinlong, knew this better than anyone, and he made sure I was well fed, meat included, and no cottonseed filler, from the very beginning. Cottonseed filler had something in it that could kill male sperm cells. My feed contained bean cake, dried yams, and a small amount of fine leaves. It had a wonderful fragrance, was highly nutritious, and was good enough for people to eat, let alone pigs. As time passed and concepts changed, people began to recognize the fact that what I was given was true health food. Its nutritional value and safety were a considerable improvement over the poultry, fish, and meat humans normally eat.
Well, they put a ladle full of alcohol into my feed as well. In all fairness, I had a respectable capacity for alcohol, not unlimited, but a stiff drink or two had no effect on my thinking, my awareness, or my movements. I was nothing like my neighbor, that clown Diao Xiaosan, who’d fallen into a drunken stupor after eating a couple of liquor-soaked buns. But a ladleful of the stuff in my feed hit me hard within minutes.
Shit! I was dizzy, my legs were like cotton, and I felt like I was floating on a cloud. My home started to spin, the apricot tree began to sway, and the unpleasant squeals and grunts of the Mount Yimeng pigs suddenly filled my ears like lovely folk songs. It was the alcohol, I knew it. When Diao Xiaosan got drunk, his eyes rolled back into his head and he was out like a light, snoring and farting loudly. But I was different: I wanted to dance and sing. As the king of pigs, I retained my poise and graceful demeanor even when drunk. Except that I forgot to keep my special skills secret. All eyes were on me as I leaped into the air, like an earthling jumping to the moon, all the way up into the apricot tree, where I landed perfectly on two adjacent limbs. If it had been a poplar or willow, I’d have broken the limbs for sure, but apricot limbs have lots of give, and for me it was like riding a wave. I saw Lan Jiefang and the others as they crisscrossed Apricot Garden with food for the pigs; I saw pink smoke rising from the makeshift stove the pens; and finally I saw my neighbor Diao Xiaosan lying on his back, feet in the air, so drunk you could have slit his belly open and he wouldn’t have murmured a complaint. Then I saw the lovely Huang twins and Mo Yan’s elder sister in their clean white work smocks with red “Apricot Garden Pig Farm” lettering on the breast, watching Master Lin, the barber sent over from the commune HQ, as he showed them how to use the scissors in their hands. Master Lin, whose hair was as coarse as pig bristles, had a thin, gaunt face and big, bony knuckles. He had such a heavy southern accent the girls could hardly understand a word he said. I watched the pigtailed Mandarin-speaking teacher patiently teach the youngsters how to dance and sing. We quickly learned that the skit was called “The Little Pig Red Girl Goes to Beijing,” a popular skit that borrowed music from the folk tradition. Playing the part of Red Girl was the prettiest girl in the village; the other parts were for boys, all of them wearing pig masks with foolish expressions. As I watched the children dance and listened to them sing, my artistic cells got the itch, and I started to move, which made the limbs I was standing on creak. I opened my mouth to sing, and surprised – no, frightened – myself by the loud oinks that emerged. All along I’d thought I’d be able to sing like humans, but what did I get? Oinks! How depressing! But I reminded myself that mynah birds can imitate human speech, and I have heard that dogs and cats can too, and by thinking hard, I recalled how, both as a donkey and an ox, at critical moments, I was able to squeeze human sounds out of my coarse throat that could rouse the deaf and awaken the unhearing.
My “speech” drew the attention of the girls who were learning how to give pig haircuts. Mo Yan’s sister was the first to react: “Look, there’s a pig in the tree!” Mo Yan, who’d tried everything to be assigned a job at the pig farm, only to be denied the opportunity by Hong Taiyue, squinted and shouted: “If the Americans can make it to the moon, why get excited about a pig in a tree?” His words, unfortunately, were drowned out by the girls’ screams; no one heard him. Then he said, “There’s a wild boar in the South American rain forest that builds its nest in the crotch of a tree. They’re mammals that have feathers and lay eggs that hatch in seven days!” Once again his words were drowned out by the girls’ screams, and no one heard him. All of a sudden I found myself wanting to become friends with this guy. “Pal,” I wanted to say, “as long as you understand me, when I have the time one day, I’ll treat you to a few drinks.” But that was drowned out by the girls’ screams too.