Who would pay any attention to pigs like that just because they were coughing, ran a fever, and had lost their appetite? The person responsible for feeding them and cleaning out their pen was someone who has appeared and reappeared up to now and will continue to do so down the line, our old friend Mr. Mo Yan. By kissing up to any and everybody at the farm, he eventually realized his goal of becoming a pig tender. His “Tales of Pig-Raising” had gained him quite a reputation, since it was a work that was clearly related to his experience and position at Apricot Garden Pig Farm. There was talk that the renowned film director Ingmar Bergman thought about bringing “Tales of Pig-Raising” to the silver screen, but where was he going to find that many pigs? I’ve seen plenty of today’s pigs. Like chickens and ducks these days, they’re nothing but empty-headed animals, thanks to chemical feed and all sorts of additives, which have made them feebleminded. You won’t find any pigs as classy as we were these days. Some of us had strong, healthy legs, some had extraordinary intelligence, some were crafty old scoundrels, and others had the gift of gab. In a word, we were good-looking animals with strong personalities, the sort you won’t find again on this earth. Nowadays, you get moronic porkers that weigh three hundred jin at five months and couldn’t qualify as extras in any film. And that is why, to my way of thinking, Bergman’s planned filming will never take place. Yes, yes, yes, you don’t have to tell me, I know Hollywood, and I know all about digital special effects. But those are expensive and tricky. But most of all, I’ll never believe that any digital pig could come close to matching the style and substance of Pig Sixteen. Or for that matter, Diao Xiaosan, Butterfly Lover, even Butting Crazy.
Now Mo Yan was never much of a farmer. His body may have been on the farm, but his mind was in the city. Lowborn, he dreamed of becoming rich and famous; ugly as sin, he sought the company of pretty girls; generally ill-informed, he passed himself off as a knowledgeable academic. And with all that, he managed to establish himself as a writer, someone who dined on tasty pot stickers in Beijing every day, while I, the classy Ximen Pig… ah, the ways of the world are so incomprehensible it does no good to talk about them. Mo Yan wasn’t much of a pig raiser either, and it was my good luck that he was not assigned to take care of me. Fortunately, that assignment was given to Ximen Bai. I don’t care how fine a pig you have, let Mo Yan look after it for a month or so, and you’ll wind up with a crazed animal; so, as I saw it, it was a good thing Butting Crazy and the others had survived a sea of troubles in their lives, or they never would have survived being looked after by Mo Yan.
To be sure, seen from a different angle, Mo Yan’s motive for joining the pig-raising enterprise was a good one. He was curious by nature and given to daydreaming. At first, he wasn’t terribly put off by Butting Crazy and his friends, believing that they were incapable of putting on weight no matter how much they ate because the ingested food spent so little time in their intestines, and all that was needed was for that passage to be slowed down enough for the nutrients to be absorbed into their bodies. This idea went to the heart of the matter, so he began to experiment. His rudimentary solution was to install a valve in the pigs’ anus, to be opened and closed by farm personnel. Obviously, this proved to be impractical, so he next turned his attention to food additives. Both Chinese and Western antidiarrhea remedies were available, but they were too expensive and hard to obtain if you didn’t know someone. So he tried mixing grass and tree ash into the feed, which drew a chorus of curses from the crazy pigs, not to mention a frenzy of head butting. But Mo Yan refused to relent, and eventually the crazies had no choice but to eat what was put in front of them. I recall hearing him pound on the feed bucket and say to Butting Crazy and his friends, Come on, eat up. Ash is good for your eyes and your heart and will make your intestines healthier than they’ve ever been. But when ash proved ineffective, Mo Yan tried adding dry cement to the feed. Now this did the trick, but nearly killed Butting Crazy and his friends in the process. They rolled around on the ground in agony and only escaped death when they were able to pass what looked like a bellyful of pebbles.
Butting Crazy and his friends carried loathing for Mo Yan in their bones. He felt nothing but disgust for the incorrigible animals. At the time, you and Hezuo were off working in the cotton processing plant, so he was feeling somewhat out of sorts. He dumped feed into the pigs’ trough and said to the hacking, feverish, whining Butting Crazy and his friends, What’s up with you little devils? Is this a hunger strike? Mass suicide? Fine with me, go ahead and kill yourselves. You’re not pigs anyway. You’re unworthy of the name. You’re nothing but a bunch of counterrevolutionaries who are wasting the commune’s valuable food.
The “Butting Crazies” lay dead the next day, their skin dotted with purple splotches the size of bronze coins, their eyes open, as if they’d died with unresolved grievances. As we’ve seen, it was a rainy month, hot and humid, ideal weather for swarms of flies and mosquitoes, so by the time the commune veterinarian had rafted across the rain-swollen river to the Apricot Garden Pig Farm, the pigs’ carcasses were bloated and foul-smelling. The old veterinarian wore a rain slicker and rubber rain boots. With a gauze mask over his nose and mouth as he stood outside the pen, he looked over the wall and said, “They died of what we call the Red Death. Cremate and bury them immediately!”
The pig farm personnel – including, of course, Mo Yan – dragged the five contaminated carcasses out of the pen, under the veterinarian’s supervision, all the way to the southeast corner of the farm, where they dug a hole. They hadn’t gone down more than a couple of feet before water began gurgling to the surface. So they flung the pigs in, doused them with kerosene, and tossed in a match. Since there were strong southeast winds, foul-smelling smoke was carried to the pig farm and beyond, to the village itself – the stupid bastards couldn’t have chosen a worse location for the cremation – and I was forced to bury my nose in the dirt to blot out what must be the worst stench in the world. I later learned that Diao Xiaosan had escaped from the farm the night before the carcasses were burned; he swam across the canal and headed east into the wilds, which meant that the noxious air of latent death had no effect on his health.
You weren’t witness to what happened after that, though I’m sure you heard all about it. An epidemic spread quickly through the farm and infected more than eight hundred pigs, including the twenty-eight pregnant sows. I was a rare survivor, thanks to my highly developed immune system and to the quantity of garlic Ximen Bai added to my feed. Sixteen, she said repeatedly, it’s peppery, but go ahead and eat it. Garlic protects against all kinds of poisons. Now I knew this was no common sickness, and eating some garlic was a cheap price to pay to avoid it. During those days it would have been more accurate to say I survived on garlic than on pig feed. Each peppery meal was accompanied by tears and sweat, and raised hell with my mouth and stomach. But the garlic did the trick – I survived.
After the Red Death decimated the pig population, several more veterinarians crossed the river to our farm. One of them was a brawny, hardy woman with a bad case of acne whom everyone called Station Chief Yu. She had a firm hand and dealt with things decisively. When she placed a phone call to the county from the farm office, you could hear her a mile away. Under her supervision, the veterinarians gave the sows shots and drew blood from them. I heard that around sunset, a motorboat came up the river with badly needed medicines. But none of that kept the majority of pigs alive, and that spelled the doom for the Apricot Garden Pig Farm. Carcasses were piled so high there was no way they could be cremated, so a burial ditch was dug; but once again, water rose to the surface a couple of feet down, so that was out. Driven to desperation, farm personnel had no choice but to wait until the veterinarians left and, in the fading light of dusk, load the carcasses onto a flatbed wagon and haul them down to the river, where they were tossed into the water to float downstream – out of sight and out of mind.