I can see this as if it had happened yesterday, not nearly thirty years ago. Even great seers like Zhuge Liang and Liu Bowen could not predict that many years into the future. I gave up everything for love. By running off with that little girl, I created a huge scandal throughout Northeast Gaomi Township. But I was confident that what began as a scandal would one day be seen as a true love story. At least that’s what my good friend Mo Yan predicted when we were at the end of our rope…
– Hey! Big-head Lan Qiansui pounded the table like a judge with his gavel and snapped me back to reality. Don’t start woolgathering, listen to me. You’ll have plenty of time to daydream about and ponder, even complain about that ridiculous affair of yours, but for now I want you to listen and listen carefully to my glorious history as a pig. So where was I? Oh, right, your sister, Baofeng, and your sister-in-law – there’s no other way to describe her – Huzhu rushed up to Diao Xiaosan, who was barely alive after a botched operation, as he lay beneath the crooked apricot tree bleeding to death. There was a time when the mere mention of that crooked romantic tree would have had you foaming at the mouth until you passed out. But now, we could put you on the ground right under it and you, like a battle-scarred veteran, would sigh emotionally on a visit to an ancient – for you – battleground. In the face of life’s great healer, time, no matter how deep the torment, all wounds will one day heal. Hell, I was a damned pig then, so what’s with the somber attitude?
Anyway, as I was saying, Baofeng and Huzhu arrived on the scene to come to Diao Xiaosan’s aid. I stood off to the side, crying my eyes out like a dear old friend. At first, like me, they thought he had died, then they found that he had a heartbeat, but just barely. Baofeng took over immediately, taking a syringe out of her medical kit and giving Diao three consecutive injections: a stimulant, a blood thickener, and glucose, all intended for use on humans. But what I want to call your attention to is how she stitched up his open wound. Lacking both surgical needle and thread, she turned to Huzhu, who cleverly took a pin from her blouse – you know how married women carry pins on their clothing or in their hair. But what would they use for thread? As her face reddened, Huzhu said:
“How about a strand of my hair, would that work?”
“Your hair?” Baofeng asked, slightly incredulous.
“Yes. My hair has capillaries in it.”
“Sister-in-law,” Baofeng said with undisguised emotion, “your hair ought to be reserved for the likes of Golden Boy and Jade Girl, not a pig.”
“Listen to you, sister,” Huzhu said with growing agitation. “My hair is worth no more than that of an ox or a horse. If not for my peculiarity, I’d have cut it all off long ago. But while it can’t be cut, it can be pulled out.”
“Are you sure, sister-in-law?”
Baofeng had her doubts, but Huzhu went ahead and pulled out two strands of the most mysterious and most valuable hair anywhere in the world, each roughly five feet in length, a dark golden color – at the time, hair that color was considered especially ugly, whereas now it’s considered by some a sign of elegant beauty – and so much coarser than normal hair that it appeared to the naked eye to have considerable heft. Huzhu threaded one of the strands and handed the needle to Baofeng, who cleansed the wound with iodine, held the needle with a pair of tweezers, and stitched up Diao Xiaosan’s wound with Huzhu’s miraculous hair.
When that was done, both Huzhu and Baofeng spotted me, with my tear-streaked face, and were deeply moved by my deep concern and loyalty. Since only one of the strands was used to stitch up Diao’s wound, Huzhu threw the second strand away. Baofeng retrieved it, wrapped it in gauze, and placed it in her medical kit. The women waited; whether Diao would live or die was now up to him. We’ve done our best, they said as they walked off together.
I couldn’t say if it was a result of the injections or if it was Huzhu’s hair, but Diao’s wound stopped bleeding and his heartbeat regained its strength and rhythm. Ximen Bai brought over a basin half filled with rice gruel and placed it in front of him. He got up on his knees and slowly lapped it up. It was a miracle he didn’t die that time. Huzhu told Jinlong that Baofeng’s skills deserved all the credit, but I couldn’t help feeling that Huzhu’s miraculous hair played a major role in the pig’s recovery.
Postoperative Diao Xiaosan disappointed those who hoped he’d do little but eat and drink and gain lots of weight in a hurry. Fattening up after castration leads straight to the slaughterhouse. Knowing that, he ate in moderation; not only that, as I became aware, he did pushups every night in his pen, not stopping until every bristle on his body was wet with sweat. My respect for him increased daily, as did my sense of dread. Just what this victim of the ultimate humiliation, who had been brought back to life from certain death and who appeared to meditate during the daytime and work out at night, was up to escaped me. One thing was certain, however: he was a hero who was only temporarily lodged in a pigsty. At first he’d been an embryonic hero only. But after Xu Bao wielded that knife, a flash of understanding had sped up the process. I knew he’d be incapable of seeking a life of ease, content to grow old in a pigpen. A grand plan was surely taking form in his breast, with escape from the pig farm at its core… But what could a nearly blind castrated boar do once he’d gotten free? I guess that’s a question for another time. Let’s continue the tale of events from August of that year.
Shortly before the sows I impregnated were about to come to term, that is, on or about the twentieth of August 1967, following several unusual occurrences, a devastating epidemic struck the pig farm.
The first signs occurred when a castrated boar named Butting Crazy developed a chronic cough, accompanied by a high fever and a loss of appetite. The disease spread to four of his sty mates in short order. All this went unnoticed, since Butting Crazy and his friends were thorns in the side of farm personnel, a bunch of pigs who refused to grow. From a distance, they looked like normal little piglets of three to five months, but up close they shocked the observer with their scraggly bristles, coarse skin, and hideous faces. They’d experienced pretty much everything the world had thrown at them, and showed it. Back at Mount Yimeng, they’d been sold off every couple of months, since their voracious appetites had no effect on weight gain. They were menacing eating machines, seemingly lacking normal small intestines. Whatever they ate, regardless of quality, it went from their throats to their stomachs and straight to their large intestines, where, in less than an hour, it emerged in horribly foul form. They squealed when they were hungry, which was all the time, and if they weren’t fed, their eyes turned red and they ran headfirst into a wall or a gate, more crazed by the minute, until they foamed at the mouth and passed out. But as soon as they regained consciousness, it was back to the head butting. Anyone who bought them and raised them for a month or so could see they hadn’t gained an ounce, so it was back to the marketplace, where they were sold for whatever their owners could get. People sometimes asked the obvious question: Why not just kill and eat them? Well, you’ve seen them, so I don’t need to tell you, but if the people who asked that question took one look at Butting Crazy, you wouldn’t hear any more talk about killing and eating those pigs, whose meat was more disgusting than that of toads in a latrine. And that was how those little pigs got to enjoy considerable longevity. After being sold and resold on Mount Yimeng, they were bought for almost nothing and brought over by Jinlong. And you couldn’t say that Butting Crazy wasn’t a pig. He and his friends contributed to the pig population.