“Old Hong, I thought we were friends,” Pang Hu said with a laugh. “Holding a momentous wedding in the village without letting us know. You weren’t afraid I’d come and drink up all the wedding liquor, were you?”
“Not at all. We were afraid that such an honored guest wouldn’t come even if we sent an eight-man sedan chair to bring you here. For Ximen Village, your presence here today-”
“Your gracious presence lends glitter to our humble surroundings,” Mo Yan proclaimed loudly from his seat at the end of the first row, a comment that not only caught the attention of Pang Hu, but of his daughter, Kangmei, as well. Raising her eyebrows in surprise, she fixed Mo Yan with a piercing stare at the same time as the other guests turned to look at him. He grinned complacently, revealing a row of golden yellow teeth. That’s the best I can do to describe the strange sight he presented as he jumped at yet another opportunity to show off.
Pang Hu removed his hand from Hong Taiyue’s grip and, along with the other hand, reached out to Yingchun. The hardened hands of this grenade-throwing war hero had softened over years of a more genteel life, and Yingchun, flustered and moved, but clearly grateful for the gesture, just stood there, her lips quivering, unable to speak. Pang Hu took her hands, shook them warmly, and said, “How happy you must be!”
“Happy, happy, everybody’s happy…,” Yingchun managed to mutter through her tears.
“Happy together, happy together!” Mo Yan interjected.
“Why isn’t Lan Lian here, ma’am?” Pang Hu’s gaze swept past the two rows of tables.
The question tied Yingchun’s tongue in knots and thoroughly embarrassed Hong Taiyue. An ideal opportunity for Mo Yan to speak up again.
“He’s probably taking advantage of the bright moonlight to till his one-point-six acres of land.”
Panther Sun, who was sitting next to Mo Yan, must have stepped on Mo Yan’s foot. “Why’d you do that?” he screamed with patent excess.
“Shut that stinking mouth of yours. No one would mistake you for a mute,” Sun said menacingly, keeping his voice down. He reached down and pinched Mo Yan on the thigh, drawing a loud screech and turning his face white.
“Okay, enough of that,” Pang Hu said to break the awkwardness. He then gave his best wishes to the four newlyweds. Jinlong wore a silly smile, Jiefang seemed to be about to cry, Huzhu and Hezuo displayed indifferent looks. Pang Hu turned to his wife and daughter: “Bring the wedding gifts.”
“I can’t believe this, Secretary Pang,” Hong Taiyue said. “You’ve already lent glitter to our humble surroundings by your gracious presence, and there was no need to go to any additional expense.”
Pang Kangmei held a framed mirror with the dedication in red “Congratulations to Lan Jinlong and Huang Huzhu in becoming a revolutionary couple” in one corner. The mirror was decorated with a drawing of Chairman Mao in a long gown, bundle in hand, as he encouraged miners to rebel in the city of Anyuan. Wang Leyun held up a similar framed mirror with the same dedication, with “Lan Jiefang and Huang Hezuo” replacing the other names, in red in the corner. The inlaid photograph was of Chairman Mao in a woolen overcoat standing on the beach at the resort city of Beidaihe. Jinlong or Jiefang ought to have stood up to receive the gifts, but they sat there as if glued to their seats, making it necessary for Hong Taiyue to urge Huzhu and Hezuo to go up in their stead, since they appeared to be reasonably alert. After taking the mirror, Huang Huzhu bowed deeply to Wang Leyun, and when she looked up there were tears in her eyes. She was wearing a red top over red pants, her thick black braid falling all the way to her knees, bound at the end with a red bow. Wang Leyun reached out and touched the braid with tender affection. “You must hate the idea of cutting it off, I guess,” she said.
At last the opportunity presented itself for Wu Qiuxiang to speak up. “It’s not that, ma’am. My daughter’s hair is different from other girls’. If she cut it, blood would seep from it.”
“How strange,” Wang said. “But now I know why it felt sort of fleshy when I touched it. There must be capillaries running through it.”
Hezuo refrained from bowing when she took the mirror from Pang Kangmei. She merely thanked her modestly. Kangmei offered her hand in friendship. “I wish you every happiness,” she said as Hezuo took the hand, turned her head, and said through her tears, “Thank you.”
In my view, her fashionable hairstyle, her slim waist, and her dark skin made Hezuo prettier than Huzhu, and with her you got better than you deserved, Jiefang. She’s the one who ought to feel cheated, not you. With that blue birthmark, you could be the best person in the world and you’d still scare the hell out of anyone who saw you. Where you belong is down in the bowels of hell as one of Lord Yama’s attendants, not here on earth as an official. But you made it, you became an official, and you felt that Hezuo was beneath you. Everything about this world befuddles me, I’ll tell you that.
Once that was behind them, Hong Taiyue made room at the table for Pang Hu and his family. “You,” he said sternly, pointing to where Mo Yan was sitting, “scoot over and free up some space for our guests.” A bit of chaos ensued, punctuated with complaints from the dislodged guests.
Once the new arrivals were seated, the wedding guests, eager to start eating, jumped to their feet and noisily raised their glasses in a toast. Then they sat down, some quicker than others, picked up their chopsticks, and took aim on the morsels of food they’d had their eyes on all along. Compared to cucumbers and turnips, the oil sticks were considered gourmet food, which led inevitably to momentous clashes of chopsticks above the tables. Mo Yan’s greedy mouth had a well-deserved reputation, but his behavior that night was uncharacteristically subdued and genteel. Why? We needn’t look beyond Pang Kangmei. Though he’d been banished to the far end of the table, his heart remained stuck on the head table. He kept looking that way, now that the college student Pang Kangmei had snared his soul, as he wrote in one of his stupid essays:
From the moment I laid eyes on Pang Kangmei my heart grew. The ones I’d always thought were fairylike beauties – Huzhu, Hezuo, and Baofeng – in that instant became unimaginably common. Only by leaving Northeast Gaomi Township was it possible to find girls like Pang Kangmei, tall and slender, with beautiful features, nice white teeth, lovely voices, and bodies that gave off a subtle perfume…
Well, Mo Yan wound up getting drunk – one glass did it – so Panther Sun picked him up by the scruff of the neck and deposited him in the pile of grass and weeds, not far from where the pig bones had been dumped. Back at the head table, Jinlong guzzled half a glassful, and life returned to his eyes. Out of motherly concern, Yingchun muttered, “You shouldn’t drink so much, son.” And then there was Hong Taiyue, who, having thought things out carefully, said, “Jinlong, it’s time to put a period to all that’s happened in the past. Your new life begins today, and I expect you to sing well for me in all the shows to come.” To which Jinlong replied, “Over the past two months, I’ve experienced mental blockage that has blurred my thinking. But I’ve come to my senses, and the blockage has disappeared.” He offered his glass in a toast to Pang Hu and his wife: “Secretary Pang, Aunty Wang, thank you for coming to my wedding and for a gift we’ll treasure.” Then he turned to Pang Kangmei. “Comrade Kangmei, you are a college student, an advanced intellectual. We welcome your views of our work here on the pig farm. Please don’t hold anything back. As someone who studies animal husbandry, if you don’t know something, no one on earth does.” Jinlong’s feigned madness and crazy actions had run their course. The same would be true of Jiefang’s madness in short order. Now that Jinlong had recovered the ability to control events, he went around toasting all the people he ought to have toasted, thanked all those who deserved it, and, finally and perhaps unnecessarily, held out his glass to Hezuo and Jiefang, wishing them happiness and a long life together. Hezuo thrust the mirror with the inlaid drawing of Chairman Mao into Jiefang’s lap, stood up, and held out her glass with both hands. The moon abruptly rose high in the sky, shrinking in size as it cast quicksilver beams that put everything below in stark relief. Weasels’ heads emerged from the weeds as they marveled over the unusual light; bold hedgehogs scurried among the legs under the tables in their search for food. What occurred next happened in less time than it takes to tell about it. Hezuo flung the contents of her glass into Jinlong’s face and then threw the empty glass down on the table. Shock registered on everyone’s face over this unforeseen turn of events. The moon jumped even higher in the sky, blanketing the ground with quicksilver beams. Hezuo covered her face and burst into tears.