So Lü pressed Jiefang’s legs down with his body, but Yingchun immediately began tearing at his clothes and wailing, Let go of my son- Get up there, somebody, and help him! Hong shouted. You sons of bitches! Jiefang cried out. You’re a bunch of pig sons of bitches- Pass the rope underneath! The third son of the Sun family burst into the room. Get up on that kang and give him a hand! The rope was wrapped around Jiefang’s legs, but also around Lü Biantou’s arms, and then tightened. Loosen the rope, and let me get my arms back! Jiefang kicked the rope loose; it twisted like a crazed snake. Ow, Mother… Lü Biantou reeled backward and banged into Hong on his way to the floor. The Sun boy, with the strength of youth, sat down on Jiefang’s belly and, ignoring Yingchun’s clawing and cursing, quickly tightened the rope and eliminated the possibility of Jiefang mounting any resistance. On the floor, Lü Biantou was holding his nose, dark blood oozing out between his fingers.
Son, I know you don’t want to acknowledge any of this, but every word of what I’ve said is the unvarnished truth. When people are driven nearly mad, they are imbued with superhuman strength and are capable of almost supernatural deeds. That old apricot tree still has several egg-sized scars from injuries it sustained when you banged your head against it in a fit of rage. Under normal conditions, in any battle between a tree and a human head, the tree will win. But when they go a bit crazy, people’s heads get harder. So when your head and the tree met, it wobbled and sent snowflakes fluttering to the ground. You, meanwhile, recoiled backward and landed on your backside. A knot swelled up on your forehead, but the poor tree lost a chunk of bark, exposing the whiteness underneath.
Bound hand and foot, you writhed and twisted in a mighty attempt to get free. So Baofeng gave you a sedative and you slowly relaxed, your eyes open but unfocused, sounds of sleep leaving your mouth and nose. The tension in the room dissolved. I breathed a sigh of relief. Now, Lan Jiefang, you’re not my son, so whether you lived or died, whether you were crazy or just stupid, should have meant nothing to me. But I really did, I breathed a sigh of relief. After all, I concluded, you’d emerged from Yingchun’s womb, and in a previous life, that womb had been my – that is, Ximen Nao’s – property. The one I should have been concerned about was Ximen Jinlong, who was my son. With this thought in my head, I rushed over to the generator room, light blue moonlight on my shoulders. Apricot petals drifted to the ground like moonbeams. The whole grove of apricot trees trembled from the frenzied roar of the diesel motor. I heard the revitalized Yimeng pigs: some were talking in their sleep, others were whispering back and forth.
In the blindingly bright light of the naked two-hundred-watt bulb that lit up the generator I saw Ximen Jinlong on the brick floor, leaning against the wall with his legs stretched out in front of him, his feet pointing upward, drops of oil from the generator spraying onto his toenails and the backs of his feet, looking like sticky dog’s blood. His shirt was open to expose a purple vest. His hair was uncombed, his eyes bloodshot, like a madman, yet sort of cool. He probably wanted to drink himself to death, because I saw an empty liquor bottle lying next to his leg and a half-empty bottle in his hand… and if the youngster didn’t drink himself to death he’d surely drink himself stupid.
Mo Yan was standing beside him, squinting. “You’ve had enough, brother Jinlong,” he said. “Secretary Hong is waiting to give you hell.”
“Secretary Hong?” Jinlong looked up out of the corner of his eye. “Secretary Hong’s a prick! I’ll give him hell!”
“Brother,” Mo Yan said wickedly, “Jiefang saw what you and Huzhu were doing up in the apricot tree and went nuts. A dozen strong young men tried but failed to restrain him. He actually bit through a thick steel rod. You should go see him. After all, he’s your blood brother.”
“My blood brother? Who are you talking about? You’re the one who’s his blood brother!”
“Whether you go see him or not is your business, Jinlong,” Mo Yan said. “I’ve done my job by telling you.”
But Mo Yan seemed in no hurry to leave. He kicked the bottle on the ground, then bent down and picked it up. He squinted and looked inside; seeing some green contents, he tipped his head back and drained it, then licked his lips noisily. “Good stuff,” he said, “worthy of its name.”
Jinlong raised the bottle in his hand and drank deeply. The room filled with the aroma of strong liquor as he flung the bottle at Mo Yan, who raised his bottle. When bottle met bottle, shards of exploding glass rained down to the ground. Now the aroma was stronger than ever. “Get lost!” Jinlong bellowed. “Get the hell out of here!” As Mo Yan backed up, Jinlong picked up a shoe, a screwdriver, and some other stuff, and threw them at him, one after the other. “You goddamn spy, you little prick, get out of my sight!” “You’re crazy!” Mo Yan muttered as he dodged the missiles. “You’ve gone nuts before he even comes out of it!”
Jinlong stood up shakily and wobbled back and forth, like one of those tip-over dolls. The moment Mo Yan stepped out the door, the moonlight lit up his shaved head and turned it into a honeydew melon. I was watching the two weirdoes from my hiding place behind the tree, worried sick that Jinlong might fall onto the generator belt and be crushed. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. Instead, he stepped over it, then stepped back. “Crazy!” he screamed. “Crazy! Everybody’s gone goddamned crazy-” He picked up a broom from the corner and threw it out, then followed that with a tin bucket used for diesel oil, the smell of which spread beneath the moonlight and merged with the aroma of apricot blossoms. Jinlong stumbled over to the generator and bent down as if to engage the turbine in a conversation. Be careful, son! I shouted inwardly as my muscles tightened and I prepared to run over and rescue him if necessary. He was bent so low his nose was nearly touching the belt. Be careful, son! Another inch and you’ll have no nose. But that tragedy didn’t happen either. He put his hand on the throttle and pressed it all the way down. The generator screeched like a man when you squeeze his balls. The machine shuddered and sent oil flying in all directions. Black smoke poured out of the exhaust, while the bolts securing the generator to its wooden base began to shudder and seemed in danger of pulling loose altogether. At the same time, the needle on the power gauge shot past the danger mark and the high-wattage bulb above them lit up before it popped and sent slivers of glass flying into the wall and up to the rafters. I didn’t know till later that when the bulb in the generator room blew, so did all the lights in the pig farm. The next thing I heard was the loud slap the belt made when it hit the wall, followed by Jinlong’s terrified screams. My heart sank. That’s it, I figured; my son, Ximen Jinlong was probably a goner.
Slowly the darkness gave way to the light of the moon and I saw Mo Yan, down on his hands and knees, rear end sticking up in the air, just like an ostrich; scared stiff, he slowly got to his feet. Curious but cowardly, virtually useless yet pigheaded, stupid and cunning at the same time, he was incapable of doing anything worthwhile and unwilling to do anything spectacularly bad; in other words, someone who was always causing trouble and forever complaining about his lot. I knew about all the scandals he’d been involved in and could pretty much read his mind. He slipped cautiously back into the moonlit generator room, where Ximen Jinlong was sprawled on the floor, striped by moonlight filtering in through the slats in the window. One of the moonbeams fell on his head, including his hair, of course, from which threads of blue-tinted blood seeped down across his face, like a millipede. Mo Yan bent down, mouth agape, and touched the wet, sticky blood with two fingers that were black as a pig’s tail. First he examined it with his eyes, then with his nose, and finally with his mouth. What the hell was he doing? Whatever it was, it was strange, to say the least, so bizarre that even an intelligent pig like me couldn’t figure it out. He couldn’t tell if Ximen Jinlong was dead or alive just by looking at, smelling, or tasting his blood, could he? Or maybe this was his involved way of determining whether the blood on his fingers was real or fake. So there I was, trying to decipher his strange behavior, when, like someone who’s just emerged from a nightmare, he screeched, then jumped high in the air and ran out of the generator room.