Li Dafa was dying.
He hadn't swallowed a single grain of rice for three days. He even vomited up milk, and after that, he spat out a mouthful of greenish water.
His neck was covered with big lumps, squeezing his throat and esophagus. It was just like the mythological movies he had watched when he was a kid. When the monster exerted its power, huge rocks rumbled down the mountain path, blocking thousands of troops and horses. Without reinforcements coming, the monster won. And those big lumps were the monsters.
He had lymphoma. It was diagnosed near the Mid-Autumn Festival last year. After chemotherapy in the county hospital, he was still in pain and wanted to have an operation.
The doctor said, "Don't bother with the operation. Eat something nice if you can, drink something good if you can. Having an operation is just a waste of money."
Li Dafa felt that the hospital looked down on him, an old farmer. Indeed, he was short of money. The amount of money he could come up with was only a four-digit figure. However, he had a lot of vines and creepers in his garden. He had two elder sisters, two elder brothers, six nephews, and seven nieces. If each of them contributed a little, curing his illness wouldn't be a problem. As soon as it entered the twelfth lunar month, he felt as if his neck was about to burst. He really wanted to chop off his neck with one stroke and attach his head directly between his shoulders. Maybe if he became a robot, he wouldn't feel pain anymore.
He sold his corn and peanuts, and finally, his savings reached a five-digit figure. He stuffed all the banknotes into his arms and walked straight into the hospital entrance with his back straight.
The doctor asked, "Where are your family members?"
Li Dafa said, "I don't have any family members."
The doctor asked, "Where are your relatives?"
Li Dafa said, "I don't have any relatives."
So Li Dafa signed the papers himself. He straightened his back again, like a brave soldier going to his heroic death, and walked into the operating room without looking back.
Nine days after the operation, the doctor urged him to leave the hospital. At that time, the wound hadn't healed completely, and there always seemed to be a centipede moving around in his neck. The doctor was afraid that he would die there and his family members would come to make trouble. In recent years, for those who couldn't be saved after a car accident or those terminally ill patients who died in the hospital, not only did their family members refuse to pay the medical bills, but there were also people wearing white cloth and white headbands crying and wailing at the entrance, burning paper and kowtowing. This was called "medical troublemaking". It was said that in a village near the county town, there were professional medical troublemakers for rent. Each person was paid eighty yuan a day and was also provided with meals. All they had to do was to cry and wail, pretending that the dead person was their own father or mother. To be qualified, they had to cry with real tears and snot. Many people said that crying for no reason was the hardest thing in the world. Indeed, it was much better than working odd jobs all day long and being exposed to the elements. When these medical troublemakers got tired, they would line up in a row in a sheltered place. Someone would give them instant noodles and provide boiling water. They always ate the noodles before they were fully soaked and slurped them noisily.
Li Dafa said, "I don't have any family members."
The doctor said, "Surely you have relatives?"
Li Dafa said, "Aren't relatives and family members the same thing?" The doctor said, "Taking a fart with your pants off and taking a fart with your pants on seem to be the same thing. But when you take a fart with your pants off, the smell can spread three miles away, while when you take a fart with your pants on, it can't get out of your pants. 'Relatives' is like taking a fart with your pants off, and 'family members' is like taking a fart with your pants on."
Li Dafa understood that whether with pants on or off, the hospital was just afraid of them, these poor people, "farting". He never wanted to cause trouble for the country. He always handed in the best grains as public grain when farming. So he listened to the doctor and went home.
His elder brothers and sisters pooled some money for him. Besides the operation cost, he still had some money left. After the operation, for a while, he felt his body was very light, but he also felt a sense of solidity. He used to be as strong as an ox. Having those tumors removed was like losing a few pounds of meat. Slowly, he regained his former condition. The next year, he planted peanuts in spring, harvested wheat and planted corn in summer, and in autumn, he harvested corn and peanuts.
The crops he planted were like his children, ranking first in the village. While the crops were growing, something in his neck was also growing. Before the corn was harvested, the sarcoma on his neck grew very large, and he often grimaced in pain.
After harvesting the corn and as the Mid-Autumn Festival was approaching, Li Dafa still went to the market in the town eight li away. He stood in front of the meat stall for a while with the sarcoma on his neck. He said, "Chop me two pounds of rib pieces. I want the rib chops, and chop them a bit smaller."
The meat boss sharpened his knife on the chopping block a few times, and the rib chops were chopped as big as bamboo boards. Li Dafa said, "Chop them even smaller, like mahjong tiles." So the meat boss chopped the bamboo boards in half again, a little bigger than mahjong tiles. When giving the change, the meat boss stared at Li D't neck and said, "Buddy, you have goiter. One year I slaughtered a pig, and the pig's neck was also covered with big tumors, as big as a big white bowl, even bigger than yours, and there were several of them."
After Li Dafa returned, he stewed the ribs with liquefied gas for nearly two hours. Usually, he was reluctant to use liquefied gas to stew ribs. He always used firewood or tree branches. He said, "Stewing meat with liquefied gas has a spicy smell. Our ancestors have been stewing with firewood for thousands of years, and the taste is the most authentic."
He didn't feel sorry for using two hours of liquefied gas.
He only ate one piece of rib, the rib that was a little bigger than a mahjong tile. It took him nearly five minutes to slowly swallow it and make sure it reached his stomach. The rest he gave to the old stupid dog that had been raised in the yard for thirteen years. The old stupid dog was tied to a big sycamore tree all year round. After eating meat for three days, it wagged its tail furiously at Li Dafa. This was its only feast in thirteen years.
After the rib incident, the sarcoma on his neck began to grow wildly. Not only was it difficult for him to eat, but even his voice was blocked, sounding like a one-year-old child learning to speak, and needed to be translated by someone close.
The people close to him were his two elder sisters.
The eldest sister lived in the town, and the second sister lived in the mountains ten li away. Every so often, they would come to see this younger brother. Li Dafa had been a bachelor for most of his life and was one of the five old bachelors in the village.
The only doctor in the village, nicknamed Wok Lid, had been wearing a bowl-shaped haircut for over sixty years. His hair had already fallen out, and there was no "wok lid" to wear anymore. When Li Dafa hadn't eaten a grain of rice for three days, the bald Wok Lid came to have a look. Li Dafa stretched out his hand from under the quilt, and Wok Lid pressed on his wrist, which was as rough as old tree bark, for a long time. Then he said to Li Dafa, "You're okay. The King of Hell won't take you."
After walking out of the room, Wok Lid said to Li Dafa's two elder sisters, "Have you prepared the burial clothes? In about seven or eight days."
After hearing what Wok Lid said, the second sister called the eldest brother in Jiamusi. The eldest brother in Jiamusi had a bit of a hearing problem. He misheard and said, "Ah? Dead? How could he die so young? Wuwuwu..."
The second sister raised her voice and almost shouted into the phone, "Not dead yet! Almost! Not dead yet..."
Li Dafa, lying on the bed, heard it clearly. His forehead flushed, and he spat out a mouthful of green water. He tapped the bedside with a small wooden stick, and the eldest sister ran over and wiped it off with toilet paper. He saw that the wrinkles on the eldest sister's face were as fine and dense as those on a walnut, but he liked to see the eldest sister's face.
The second sister was still in the yard calling the second brother in Tianjin. The second brother didn't have a hearing problem, but the second sister's voice was still loud. The second brother said, "Okay, okay, okay. I'll go back tomorrow to see him for the last time. He likes to eat the big pretzels here. Can he still eat them?"