Mo Yan - Pow!

The dogs were not running and leaping for the sake of exercise—they were intent on leaping over the railing to freedom. Eating fresh meat and drinking warm blood had made them smart enough to realize what was in store for them. The onset of winter meant that they would be taken into the water-treatment building, where an infusion of water would bloat them out of shape, disrupt their ability to walk and make their eyes sink. Then it would be off to the kill rooms, where they'd be bludgeoned, skinned alive, disembowelled and packaged to be sent into town as a tonic for men who longed for hard-as-steel erections. Not the sort of future any self-respecting dog looked forward to. As I watched the dogs executing extraordinary leaps, I was thankful that we had built the fences tall enough. Constructed of iron posts, they were five metres high and, thanks to the thick steel wire, virtually indestructible. Lao Lan and I had been opposed to the use of iron posts at first, but my father had insisted upon it and we went along with him. He was, after all, the plant manager. And he was right. Back when he was living in the northeast, he'd developed an understanding of the link between dogs and wolves. Now, as I thought back, I cringed at the thought of what would have happened if those now wolfish animals had made it out of the pen. The entire area could have wound up under siege.

The man wheeled the scale over to the dog pen, where my father appeared, seemingly out of nowhere.

‘Hey, dog-peddlers,’ he shouted to the men waiting in the queue. ‘Line up over there.’

The old fellow squatted down, picked up his shoulder pole and straightened up, lifting the four dogs off the ground. Oh, there's one thing I forgot. People who raised dogs believed in marking their animals, including clipping their ears and inserting nose rings. This old fellow, shunning such half-baked strategies, actually removed his dogs’ tails; it gave them a dopey look but increased their agility. I wondered if his tailless dogs would turn wolfish in the pen and, if so, if they too would leap about in the moonlight. Let's say they would. Then would they be more graceful than the others or would they bounce about like billy goats? We fell in behind him, feeling sorry for the dogs yet knowing what hypocrites that made us. Showing sympathy to a dog was asking to be eaten by it. And what a waste, albeit insignificant, that would be. In ancient times, human flesh had probably—no, definitely—been a delicacy for beasts of prey, but in present times a human being eaten by beasts of prey would be turning the world upside down, confusing the roles of eater and eaten. Their purpose in life was to be eaten by humans, which makes sympathy for them both hypocritical and laughable. And yet, I couldn't help feeling sorry for those pitiful creatures hanging from the man's shoulders—or perhaps I should say that I found the sight hard to endure. Wanting to clear my head of these weak, shameful thoughts, I took Jiaojiao by the hand and headed towards the meat-cleansing workshop, where we watched as the dog-peddlers laid their animals, one on top of the other, onto the scale. The only signs of life were their low moans, a bit like an old woman with a toothache; it was hard to imagine them as living creatures. The scale operator skilfully moved the slide across the arm and announced the weight in a low voice. Father, who was standing to the side, said unemotionally: ‘Deduct twenty pounds!’

‘Why?’ the seller protested loudly. ‘Why are you deducting twenty pounds?’

‘Because you stuffed each of them with at least five pounds of food before you left home,’ Father said coolly. ‘I'm deducting only twenty to save you a bit of dignity.’

‘No one can put anything over on you, Manager Luo,’ the man confessed with a wry smile. ‘But these animals are here to be slaughtered and we had to let them eat, didn't we? I raised them myself. They're like family. Besides, don't you fill them full of water before you kill them?’

‘You'd better be ready to prove that,’ Father said with a steely look.

‘Seriously, Lao Luo,’ the dog-seller sneered, ‘if you don't want people to know something, don't do it in the first place. Everyone knows about your meat-cleansing technique. Who do you think you're fooling?’ The man glanced at me out of the corner of his eye and, in a voice dripping with sarcasm, said, ‘Am I right or am I not? You're the head of the meat-cleansing workshop, aren't you?’

‘We don't infuse our animals with water,’ I responded. ‘We cleanse the meat. Is that something you can understand?’

‘Cleanse the meat?’ the man sputtered. ‘You fill those animals almost to the bursting point. Cleansing the meat! Well, I have to give you credit for coming up with such a fine term.’

‘I'm not going to argue with you,’ said Father angrily. ‘Sell your dogs for twenty pounds less or take them back home with you.’

‘Lao Luo,’ the man said, squinting, ‘you're a different man now that things are going your way. I guess you've forgotten the time you went round picking cigarette butts up off the ground.’

‘That's enough,’ Father said.

‘All right,’ the man conceded, ‘you win. You can tell when a man's luck is up by the state of his horse, and a bird of prey is always round when a rabbit's luck runs out.’ He reached down and arranged his dogs on the scale and then, with a forced smile, he said, ‘Not wearing your green cuckold's hat today?’

Father turned red all the way to his ears. Words failed him.

I was about to shred the man with my razor-sharp wit when I heard shouts coming from the ‘meat-cleansing’ station. When I turned to look, I saw the so-called goat-seller racing down the path to the main gate, followed by a posse of plant workers. He kept shooting them glances over his shoulder and they kept shouting: ‘Grab him—don't let him get away!’

Something clicked in my head, and I blurted ‘Reporter!’

When I looked at Father, I saw he'd turned ashen white. I grabbed Jiaojiao's hand and took off running to the gate. I was excited, pumped up, as if I'd spotted a dog running down a jackrabbit on a humdrum winter day. Jiaojiao was slowing me down, so I let go of her and ran as if my life depended on it. The wind whooshed past my ears. There were chaotic shouts behind me—barking dogs, bleating sheep, grunting pigs, lowing cows. The man stumbled on a rock and thudded to the ground, his momentum carrying him a good three feet on his belly. His bulging canvas bag flew off and an inhuman ‘oof!’ burst from his mouth, like a toad getting squashed. He'd taken such a fall that I couldn't help but feel sorry for him. We'd built the path with a mixture of old bricks, gravel and cinders, all unforgivingly hard. At the very least, he had to have a bloody nose and cut lips, maybe even a lost tooth or two. Broken bones weren't out of the question. But he scrambled to his feet, staggered over to his canvas bag and picked it up. Ready for another run, he froze when he saw—as did I—Lao Lan and my mother, two formidable opponents, standing like sentries and blocking his way. By then his pursuers had caught up with him.

Lao Lan and Mother were in front of him, Father and I were behind him and the plant workers all round him. With a wave of his hand, Lao Lan dismissed the workers. The hapless fellow turned round and round, looking for a way out of our human cage. I think he assumed that I was the weak link in the chain but then he noticed Jiaojiao and the knife she clutched in her hand. His next avenue of escape was past my mother but her expression changed his mind. Her face was red, her gaze unfocused, the quintessential look of distraction. But it made him lower his head in defeat. Father, on the other hand, suddenly looked the picture of dejection. Turning his back on the reporter and ignoring the queue of animal-sellers, he headed to the northeast corner of the plant, to a rebirth platform made of pine. That had been Mother's idea. She said that a platform was needed to perform regular Buddhist rites in order to help the sad ghosts of all those creatures that had served mankind move ahead on the wheel of life after we killed them. I didn't think that Lao Lan, a lifelong butcher, believed in ghosts and spirits, and so I was surprised when he accepted Mother's idea. We'd already performed rites on the platform—we'd invited a senior Buddhist monk to recite sutras while several lesser monks burnt incense and spirit paper and set off firecrackers at the base of the platform. The senior monk was a ruddy-faced man with a booming voice and high moral airs. Listening to him chant the sutras was a deeply spiritual experience. Mother compared him to the Tang monk in the Travels to the West TV series. When Lao Lan jokingly asked if she wanted to feast on the Tang monk's flesh to achieve immortality, she kicked him in the calf. ‘What do you think I am, some kind of demon?’ she'd grumbled.