Ha Jin - Under the Red Flag

Liao Ming of Horse Village was drinking sorghum liquor in his yard. The dog barked and the front gate opened. Raising his thick eyelids, Liao recognized the visitor and stopped the dog. “What wind brought you here, Old Leng?” he said loudly.

Leng was panting hard, so Liao asked again, “How are things?”

“Not very good, Old Liao,” Leng said, coming closer. Sweat was trickling down his forehead and cheeks, and he wiped it off with his soiled hand. That turned his face into an opera-mask, full of streaks. “Old Liao, I came to beg you for help.”

“How can I help you?” Liao asked, and tilted his gray head. “Why don’t you sit down and have a cup first?”

“No, thanks,” Leng said, standing in front of Liao with both hands on his narrow hips. “Vet Bai said today is the best time for my sow, but Ma Ding, the son of a bitch in Willow Village, didn’t show up with his boar. He promised me to come at three o’clock. Damn his grandma, I washed my sow and cleaned up everything, waiting for him all the while. It’s past four already. My sow can’t wait anymore. So …”

“So what?” said Liao. He struck a match and lit a new load of tobacco.

“So I came to invite you to help.”

“No, no.” Liao waved to put out the match and exhaled two lines of smoke. “My boar will have a good time with Mu Bushao’s sow tomorrow morning. If he gives all his stuff to your sow today, he’ll be empty tomorrow and have nothing left for Mu’s sow. No, that won’t do. You know, I can’t cheat folks of our village. Even a rabbit knows not to eat the grass near its own hole.”

“I beg you, Old Liao! Please come, just for the reason we’ve been neighbors for generations, just for the respect for our old folks who were friends.”

“Just for all those, humph? Why didn’t you come here in the first place?” Liao’s cheeks turned red.

“Forgive me just this once, all right? Next time I’ll come to you first.” Leng paused, then added, “But to be fair, I’ll pay you better. How about fifteen yuan a mating? You know, five yuan more. You can buy two bottles of sorghum liquor for that money.”

“Save the five yuan for your mother!” Liao said, and knocked the bronze pot of his pipe against the stone stool under his hips. “You black-hearted men only know money. For a few yuan you’d sell your fathers’ coffin lumber. You heard that white foreign pigs grew bigger than our black native pigs, so you all take your sows to Ma Ding for a foreign fucking. Everybody knows white pigs’ pork tastes no good, but you don’t care. You only want your pigs to grow bigger and weigh more on the scale at the buying station. Where’s your heart, man? You can’t cheat the buyer, our country, like this!” Whitish foam circled Liao’s lips.

“All right, I’m in the wrong, Old Liao. Come on, we have no time to talk like this. The sow is waiting for you at my home. Please come and finish the business.”

“Waiting for me? What makes you think I’ll come?”

“I know you will, ‘cause you understand things and you’re always good to your neighbors. If you don’t help me, who will?”

Liao’s anger seemed to be fading. He raised the cup and emptied the last drops, but he thrust the pipe into the tobacco pouch and was about to load it again.

“Come on, Brother Liao, I beg you.”

“You go first. I’ll follow you,” Liao said casually. He tied the pouch around the pipe and tucked the package behind his cloth waistband.

“Now I have your word, Old Liao. I’m running back and waiting for you, all right?”

“You can run your doggy legs off. I’ll be with you in a couple of minutes.”

As soon as Leng disappeared beyond the gate Liao went to a vat beneath the eaves. He scooped out two gourd-ladles of boiled soybeans for his boar. Before every mating he would give it some nutritious food. After all, it labored for him. In recent years it had brought him a profit equal to the amount that two farmhands could make. The mating business had been very good until Ma Ding got his white foreign boar and became a competitor, but so far Liao still had enough customers. Most households in Horse Village remained loyal to him.

“Big boy, today you’re lucky again,” he spoke to the boar, which was eating away noisily. “You’ve luck both for your mouth and your cock. I arrange weddings for you every week, aren’t you grateful? You ought to be. You happy pig, your children are spread everywhere. You should work harder for me, shouldn’t you?” He rapped the neck of the boar twice, and it snorted back appreciatively.

He brought out a hemp rope and tied it around the boar’s neck. The door of the pigpen was lifted and the boar came out. Watching its large body that weighed over three hundred kilos, Liao couldn’t help speaking again. “I’m proud of you, boy. You brought me not only cash but also respect among the folks. With one spear you’ve conquered so many villages. No man can do as much as you did. Now, shall we go?”

“Who are you talking to over there, my old man?” his wife called out from the house.

“To our boar, my old woman. We’re leaving to do business. Scramble a dozen eggs for supper. We’ll make some extra money today. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

“All right, you come back soon. We’ll wait for you.” The bellows in the kitchen resumed croaking while fat was sputtering in the cauldron.

Liao set out for Leng’s house. Rapidly the boar was treading the road, whose surface of dried mud had been cut into numerous ruts by oxcarts. The air was still warm, though the crimson sun was approaching the indigo peak of the Great Emperor Mountain. Grass had pierced the soil here and there, and the cornfields, sown a few days before, looked like huge gray ribs stretching towards the end of the green sky. Everything seemed sluggish and even the air made one feel languid. In the west, a herd of sheep were slowly coming down the mountain slope like clouds lying atop the bushes. Small voices, children’s voices, were buzzing from distant places. Once every few seconds a donkey’s bray split the air.

Leng’s house was at the northern end of Horse Village, within ten minutes’ walk. When he arrived, Liao led his boar directly into Leng’s yard and closed the gate behind him. He wanted to get the business done quickly, take the pay, and return home for the supper of scrambled eggs, fried dough cakes, soy paste, raw scallions, stewed hairtail, which he bought in Dismount Fort that morning after he had sold a litter of piglets there. He liked that fish best and never could have enough of it.

To his surprise, in the middle of Leng’s yard was standing a huge white boar. Beyond it a young sow was lying on her back against a nether millstone. The boar’s owner, Ma Ding, whom Liao recognized at a glance, was talking with Leng. Second Dog, Leng’s teenage son, was shoveling manure out of the pigpen. Seeing Liao and the black boar, the boy stopped to make a face, a snouty pout, at his father and Ma Ding.

Anger welled up in Liao. I’m taken in, he thought. Leng, you dung-eater, you have Ma here already, ahead of me.

He wanted to walk straight to Leng and give him a round of curses that would make his ancestors squirm in their graves, but he hesitated because right in front of him was the white boar that was so large, even larger than his black boar. Shedding fierce glints, the white boar’s lozenge eyes were blinking at Liao and the black boar behind him.

Leng realized the embarrassment he had caused. He stopped talking and turned around, coming over to calm Liao. He had hardly walked a step when Liao yelled out and was thrown to the ground. A black shadow flitted over his body and dashed to the white boar. Both Leng and Ma jumped aside instinctively. Chickens and ducks burst away in every direction, and a rooster landed on the wall, then flew off to the neighbor’s yard. Second Dog thrust the shovel into the manure heap and vaulted out of the pigpen, shouting excitedly, “Good pig, get that foreign bastard. Drive him back home!”