Mo Yan - Pow!

All that pork lay heavily in my stomach, churning and grinding like a litter of soon-to-be-born piglets. But of course I was no sow, so I couldn't possibly know what that felt like. The belly of the pregnant sow at Yao Qi's nearly scraped the ground when she grunted her way over to the snow-covered garbage heap in front of the newly opened Beauty Hair Salon, to root out edible titbits. Lazy, fat and carefree, she was, as anyone could see, a happy sow, in a different class from the two skinny-as-jackals, moody, human-hating little pigs we'd once raised. Yao Qi made sausage out of meat so fatty that even the dogs turned their noses up at it, filled with sweet potato starch and red-dyed bean-curd skin, to which he added chemical ingredients no one knew about. The end result was a product that looked good, smelt nice and sold well; the money rolled in. He raised pigs as a hobby, not as an investment, and definitely not for the fertilizer produced, the way people once did. So his pregnant sow came out early in the morning, every morning, not to scavenge food but to play in the snow, take leisurely strolls and get a little exercise. I sometimes saw Yao Qi on the steps of his house (which didn't look as good as ours but was actually as sturdy as a fortress), left arm tucked under his right armpit, a cigarette in his right hand, squinting dreamily at the meanderings of his pig. Rays of light from the red sun turned his angular face into a slice of barbecued pork.

I'd eaten so much pork that the mere memory of Yao Qi's pig made me ill. The hideous outline of the pregnant sow undulated in front of my eyes, the stench of garbage churned in my stomach. All you sordid representatives of humanity, how can you think of filling your bellies with pork? Pigs feast on garbage and shit. Therefore, so do you! The day I become supreme ruler, I'll cast all the world's pork eaters into sties and turn them into muck-swilling pigs. I'm tormented by regret, shamed by ignorance. How could I have coveted that pig's head that Mother cooked without condiments, the one covered by a layer of white fat? The filthiest, most shameful thing the world has ever seen, good only for feeding the wild cats that live out their lives in the sewers…Ah—ugh—I actually picked up chunks of that foul, wiggly stuff with my filthy claws and stuffed them into my mouth, transforming my stomach into a garbage sack…Ah—ugh—I'm going to stop being a ruminate…Ah—ugh—I vigorously deposited what I'd brought up on the ground. Disgusting, so disgusting! My stomach lurched spasmodically at the repugnant sight of my vomit, and sent whatever was left down there erupting into my throat and mouth. A dog waited patiently and quietly close by. Father walked up behind me, holding Jiaojiao's hand in one of his and thumping me on the back with the other to relieve my anguish.

My stomach had collapsed into itself, my throat was on fire and my guts were tied up in knots, but I felt better, less burdened, like the sow after she's delivered her litter. I repeat: I was no sow, so I couldn't possibly know what that felt like. I looked at Father with tears in my eyes. He dried my face with his hand.

‘It's good to get that out of your system,’ he said.

‘Dieh, I swear I'm never going to eat meat again!’

‘Don't make promises you can't keep,’ he said, with a look of fatherly concern. ‘Always remember, son, you mustn't make vows, no matter what. That's like kicking the ladder away after you've climbed the wall.’

It would not take long for his words to prove prophetic. A new desire to eat meat materialized only three days after throwing up all that pork, and it would not go away. I began to wonder if the boy who had expressed revulsion towards meat and had called it every rotten thing he could think of was actually someone else, someone without a heart.

We stood in the doorway of the Beauty Hair Salon, next to the spinning barber pole, studying the price list in the window. After polishing off one of the richest breakfasts in memory, we were carrying out Mother's instructions to have our hair cut.

By all appearances—her face glowed, her spirits were high—Mother was in a good mood. Tossing the greasy dishes into the sink, she said to Father, who stepped up to help: ‘Stay where you are and leave this to me. New Year's is just round the corner. What day is it today, Xiaotong, the twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth?’

Did she really expect me to answer that? The meat I'd just eaten had already made its way up into my throat and was waiting for me to open my mouth to make its escape. Besides, I had no idea what day it was. During the dark days before Father's return, dates were the farthest thing from my mind. I hadn't enjoyed a minute's rest, not even during the major holidays. I'd been, for lack of a better term, a slave.

‘Take them out to get haircuts,’ Mother said, sounding like she was making a fuss, though the emotions written on her face when she looked at Father put the lie to that. ‘Go to the mirror and tell me if it's human beings that look back at you! You all look like you've crawled out of a doghouse. Maybe you don't care what people think but I do.’

I almost croaked when I heard the word haircut.

Father scratched his head. ‘Why waste the money? I'll buy some clippers and gnaw at their heads instead.’

‘Clippers? We've got those.’ Mother took some money out of her pocket and handed it to Father. ‘No, this time they need a real haircut. Fan Zhaoxia knows what she's doing, and she doesn't charge much.’

‘There are three heads here,’ said Father with a sweep of his arm. ‘How much do you think that will cost?’

‘For those three hard heads of yours, give her ten yuan.’

‘What?’ Father reacted with predictable alarm. ‘For ten yuan you can buy half a sack of rice.’

‘Three shaved heads are not going to make the difference between rich and poor,’ Mother said charitably. ‘Go on, take them over.’

‘Um…’ Father didn't know what to say. ‘Peasants’ heads aren't worth that kind of money.’

‘Ask Xiaotong what he thinks about letting me cut his hair,’ Mother said cleverly.

Holding my belly with my hands, I wobbled my way outside. ‘Dieh!’ I said in utter dejection, ‘I'd rather die than let her cut my hair!’

Portly Yao Qi walked up, stuck his head in and took a good look at Father, who was agonizing over the cost of professional haircuts. ‘Lao Luo!’ he bellowed as he smacked Father on the back of the neck.

‘What?’ Father turned and remarked calmly.

‘Is it really you?’

‘Who else would it be?’

‘Aren't you something—the prodigal son returns! What about Wild Mule?’

Father shook his head. ‘Don't ask.’ Then he opened the door and took us inside the salon.

‘I say, you really are something,’ Yao Qi's voice followed us in. ‘A wife, a mistress, a son and a daughter. Of all the men in Slaughterhouse Village, you're the best!’

Father shut the door in Yao Qi's face. Yao Qi pushed it back open and, one foot in, carried on: ‘I've missed seeing you about all these years.’

Father ignored him and, with a wry smile, pulled my sister and me over to a dusty bench strewn with dog-eared magazines that had been flipped through and pawed over more times than I could imagine. The bench was a replica of the one in the station's waiting room, so it was either made by the same carpenter or stolen by the salon owner. A swivelling barber-chair with a footrest and a leather seat—so cracked it looked like it had been slashed—awaited us. The mirror on the wall in front of the chair had rippled and faded, creating only blurred reflections. A narrow shelf under the mirror was crowded with shampoos, hair gels and mousse (that's right, it's called mousse). A pair of electric clippers hung from a rusty nail on the wall alongside a dozen coloured illustrations of fashionable hairstyles worn by young models—men and women; some still stuck fast to the wall while others had begun to peel away. The red brick floor had undergone a change in colour thanks to all the black, white and grey hair that had lain atop it, that and the mud tracked in by customers. A strange and pungent smell—not quite fragrant but far from offensive—in the air inside made me sneeze—three times in a row. It must have been contagious because Jiaojiao did the same thing, three times in a row. She looked funny yet adorable with her face scrunched up with every sneeze.