The Garlic Ballads Page 10

  “Women are human, too,” she said.

  The mist on the jute bushes evaporated. Off to the north, somewhere in the wildwoods, a donkey brayed loudly.

  “We can’t travel in broad daylight, can we?” she asked.

  “Sure we can, since that’s the last thing they’d expect us to do. We’re about ten miles from Pale Horse, a three-hour walk. By the time your brothers get around to following us there, we’ll already be in Lanji.”

  “I don’t want to go,” Jinju protested. “I belong to you now, so my folks might change their minds and let us be together.”

  “Stop dreaming, Jinju,” Gao Ma said. “You’d be lucky if they didn’t beat you to death.”

  “My mother loves me….” There were tears in her eyes.

  “Loves you? She loves your brothers and uses you as a pawn to get them married. Spending the rest of your life with Liu Shengli, is that what you want? Use your head, Jinju, and come with me. My army comrade is a deputy county administrator. Do you hear what I’m saying? A deputy county administrator. Just think of the influence he has. All he has to do is give the word for us to find work. We were like brothers.”

  “Gao Ma, I’ve given you everything I have. If you call, I’ll come running, just like a dog.

  “Jinju,” he said, draping his arm around her shoulder, “I’ll make sure you have a decent life, even if I have to sell my blood to do it.”

  “Elder Brother, why don’t we just wrap our arms around each other and end it all here? Kill me first.”

  “No, Jinju, we’re not going to die. We’ll make it, and we’ll give your parents something to think about.”

  Seeing the cruel determination in her lover’s eyes, she touched the scab on his forehead with her fingertips. “Does it still hurt?” she asked tenderly.

  “It hurts here.” He grabbed her hand and placed it over his heart.

  She rested her head on his chest. “You’ve suffered because of me. My brothers are heartless wolves.”

  “You don’t have to talk about them like that,” Gao Ma objected magnanimously. “Life’s not easy for them, either.

  “Remember that day last year?” he continued expressively. “You know, when I was helping you in the field and told you I was going to get some fresh batteries for my cassette recorder so you could listen to it? Well, I finally did it. Here, listen to this.” He took the cassette recorder out of his bundle, pushed the play button, and the scratchy sound of a woman’s voice came spilling out: “Moonlight on the fifteenth cascading down on my old home and on frontier passes / In the silent night he longs for someone, and so do I.”

  “It’s a new tape by Dong Wenhua,” Gao Ma said. “She’s in the army, the Shenyang Military District. Short, chubby, real cute.”

  “You’ve seen her?”

  “Only on TV,” he admitted. “Sun Baojia has a new color set. His family planted six acres of garlic this year and sold it for over five thousand yuan. If we weren’t in such a fix, I’d stay home and make a killing on garlic, since this county is going to let us plant even more acreage next year.”

  He plugged the earphones into the recorder, cutting out the speaker, to Jinju’s bewilderment. Then he placed the earphones over her head. “It sounds better this way,” he said loudly.

  She watched him take an envelope filled with ten-yuan bills out of his bundle.

  “I sold off everything I could. My neighbor Yu Qiushui promised to watch my house Maybe we can come back after a few years in the Northeast.”

  She was listening to the woman’s loud singing through the headphones: “Ali Baba, hai! Ali Baba, hai! Ali Baba is a happy young man!”

  CHAPTER 7

  The mid-month moon isn’t round till the sixteenth—

  After that the erosion begins.

  Everyone is happy when the garlic is sold,

  But their hearts boil over when it is not….

  —from a ballad sung by Zhang Kou to garlic farmers

  1.

  Gao Yang was put into a large makeshift lockup in the county station house. At first he didn’t know where he was, but the double-paneled red gate had stuck in his mind, for it was the same gate he had passed when he came to town to sell his garlic; he remembered the ditch that served as a sort of moat. The water, filthy to begin with, was a floating home for clumps of half-dead grasses. There was plenty of activity all over town, except at this spot. The polluted water in the ditch was a spawning ground for tiny red insects; the second time he came to town to sell his garlic, he had seen an old white-clad man catching with mosquito netting attached to the end of a long bamboo pole. Someone said he used them as food for goldfish.

  The police removed his handcuffs, and once his hands were free, even the two ugly purple welts girding his wrists did not lessen his tearful gratitude. A comrade policeman hung the cuffs on his belt and gave Gao Yang a shove. “Inside!” he said gruffly, pointing to a cot near the window. “That’s yours,” he said. “From now on you’re Inmate Number Nine.”

  One of his cellmates—a young fellow—jumped down off his cot and clapped his hands. “Welcome, comrade-in-arms. Welcome.” The metal door clanged shut. The young fellow made drumrolls with his mouth and, in the cramped space, began twirling and prancing about. Gao Yang watched him nervously. His head had been shaved, but it had so many little dents that tufts of dark hair the razor missed gave his scalp an ugly, mottled look. As the young fellow twirled around the makeshift cell, Gao Yang’s view of him alternated between a pale, gaunt face and a mole-spotted back. He was so skeletal he didn’t seem to have any hips at all, and when he pranced around the cell he looked like one of those paper figures that turn somersaults when you squeeze the sticks they’re tied between.

  Someone outside banged the door with a hard object, then shouted. Almost immediately a somber, angular face appeared in the window high on the door. “Number Seven, what the hell are you up to?” the face thundered.

  The young fellow stopped dancing, rolled his not-quite-white eyes, and looked at the face in the window. “Nothing, Officer.”

  “Then why are you hopping around?” the angular face asked sternly. “And why are you shouting?” Gao Yang saw the glinting blade of a bayonet.

  “I’m exercising.”

  “Who said you could exercise in here, you dumb prick?”

  “Aha!” The young inmate blurted out as he walked up to the door. “So, as an officer, you enjoy calling people names, is that it? Chairman Mao’s instructions say; ‘Don’t beat people, and don’t call them names!’ I want to see the man in charge. We’ll find out if you can talk to me like that!”

  The guard—the so-called officer—banged the bars of the window with his rifle butt. “Hold your tongue, or I’ll get the turnkey to cuff you!”

  The young inmate turned and ran back to his cot, holding his head in his hands and begging shamelessly. Officer, good Uncle, I’ve stopped, see, I’m sorry, please!”

  “Shitty little prick!” the face grumbled as it disappeared from the window. Gao Yang heard the staccato sound of boots retreating down the corridor, which seemed endless. When Gao Yang was brought here in the police van, he was taken down the long corridor, past one steel door after another, one small window after another, behind which a parade of ashen faces appeared; they looked like white-paper cutouts, which he could have crumbled merely by blowing on them.

  He dimly recalled watching two comrade policemen lift the horse-faced young man down off the van, the white tunic still wrapped around his head. A stretcher arrived then, if he wasn’t mistaken, and the young man was carried away on it. He tried to imagine what happened to him after that, but those thoughts just confused him, so he gave up.

  It was a murky cell, with gray flooring, gray walls, and gray cots; even the eating bowls were gray. The last few rays of light from the setting sun filtered in through ‘ the barred window, turning portions of the gray wall a reddish purple. All that was visible through the window was a blue derrick, outfitted with a glass ca
ge that shimmered in the sunlight. A flock of doves, wings painted a golden red, swept past the cage, their mournful cries making Gao Yang tremble with fear. They flew out of sight, then changed course and returned, accompanied by the same cries.

  A hunched-over old man walked up to the disoriented Gao Yang and touched him with a quaking finger. “Smoke … a smoke … new man … got a smoke?” he squeaked.

  Gao Yang, barefoot and barechested, was wearing only a pair of baggy shorts, and his skin crawled when the old man’s sticky, rank-smelling hand touched it. Somehow he kept from screaming. Rebuffed, the old man shuffled off angrily and curled up on his cot.

  “What’re you in for, my man?” a voice across from Gao Yang asked offhandedly.

  Gao Yang couldn’t make out the man’s features in the murky darkness, but instinct told him that he was middle-aged. He was sitting on the concrete floor and resting his large head against a gray cot. “I …” Gao Yang was reluctant to answer. “I’m not sure.”

  “Are you saying you were framed?” the man said with hostility.

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying,” Gao Yang defended himself.

  “Don’t lie to me!” the man snapped, pointing menacingly with a pudgy black finger. “You can’t fool me—you’re in for rape.”

  “Not me,” Gao Yang protested bashfully. “I’ve got a wife and kids. How could I do something despicable like that?”

  “Then you’re in for robbery.”

  “I am not!” Gao Yang fired back angrily. “Not once in my forty years have I stolen so much as a needle!”

  “Then … then you must be a murderer.”

  “If anybody’s a murderer, you are.”

  “You’re close,” the middle-aged man replied. “Except the fellow didn’t die. I cracked his skull with a club, and they say it shook his brain loose. Who the hell ever heard of shaking a brain loose?”

  A shrill whisde reverberated up and down the corridor, cutting short their conversation.

  “Mealtime!” someone shouted hoarsely in the corridor. “Get your bowls out here.”

  The old man who had touched Gao Yang took two gray enamel basins out from under his bed and shoved them through a small rectangular opening at the base of the door. The cell was illuminated by a bright light, but only briefly, before being thrown back into a murky darkness. But it was enough for Gao Yang to see how tall and narrow the cell was: a small electric lightbulb shaped like a head of garlic hung from the ceiling—painted gray, naturally—like a single dim star in a vast sky. The high ceiling couldn’t be reached even by one tall man standing on the shoulders of another. Why, he wondered, would anyone want to make a ceiling so high? It just made it hard to change the bulb. A couple of feet north of the light fixture was a small skylight covered by sheets of tin. When the light went on, a dozen or so large flies began buzzing around the room, which unsettied him. He spotted another phalanx of flies stuck to the walls.

  The would-be murderer—he was indeed middle-aged, as it turned out—picked up an enamel bowl from his cot and wiped some crumbs of food from the inside with his bare hand, then held it by the edge with one hand and began drumming it with a pair of red chopsticks. The gaunt young inmate fished his bowl out from under his cot. But instead of drumming it, he flung it onto the cot, then stretched lazily and yawned, squeezing tears from his eyes and mucus from his nose.

  The other inmate stopped drumming his bowl long enough to kick his younger cellmate with a rough leather shoe that looked as if it weighed several pounds; dark skin and yellow hair poked through rips in his trousers. His kick—it must have been a hard one—caught the younger man on the shin, drawing a painful screech out of him. Jumping to his feet, he hopped over to his cot and fell on it to rub his sore leg. “What was that for, killer? Do you enjoy being mean?”

  The middle-aged man clenched his strong, discolored teeth and snarled, “Your old man must have died young, right?”

  “Your old man died young!”

  “Yeah, he did, the lousy bastard,” the man said, to Gao Yang’s puzzlement. How could he call his own father a bastard? “But I asked if your old man died young.”

  “My old man’s alive and well,” the young inmate said.

  “Then he’s a bad father, and an old bastard to boot. Didn’t he teach you it’s impolite to stretch and yawn in front of others?”

  “What’s impolite about it?”

  “It brings bad luck,” the middle-aged man said somberly. He spat on the floor, stomped three times on the gooey mess with his left foot, then three more with the right one.

  “You’ve got a problem,” his young cellmate said as he rubbed his leg. “You should be shot, you killer,” he added under his breath.

  “Not me.” The middle-aged man laughed strangely. “The ones who are going to be shot are on death row.”

  After pushing the two enamel bowls into the corridor through the hole in the door, the old man licked his lips, like a lizard eating grease balls. Gao Yang was frightened by his rotten, misshapen teeth and weepy, festering eyes.

  The stillness in the corridor was broken by the banging of a ladle against a metal pail. The sound was still quite a ways away. The stooped old man shuffled up and gripped the bars to look out, but he was too short, so he moved away from the door and began scratching his head and twitching his cheeks like a jittery monkey. Then he flopped down on his belly to peek through the hole in the bottom of the door. Most likely, the basins were all he could see, so he stood up, still licking his lips. Gao Yang turned away in disgust.

  The banging sound drew closer, and the old man blinked faster. The other inmates picked up their bowls and walked to the door. Not knowing what to do, Gao Yang sat puzzled on his gray cot and stared at a centipede on the opposite wall.

  The sound of the pail outside the door was joined by the voice of the guard who had screamed at them moments earlier: “Cook Han, a new man was put in here today—Number Nine.”

  Cook Han, or whoever it was, pounded on the door. “Listen up, Number Nine. One steamed bun and a ladleful of soup per prisoner.”

  The ladle banged against the pail, after which a basin slid through the hole in the door, followed by another. The first was filled with four steamed buns—gray, with a porcelain sheen—the second half-filled with soup, dark red, with globules of fat floating on the top, along with a few yellowed shreds of garlic.

  The whiff of mildewed garlic thudded into Gao Yang’s awareness, causing immediate anxiety and nausea. His stomach gurgled like a restive pool; it seemed still inhabited by the three bottles of cold water he’d swilled down at noon. Spasms in his belly, a swelling in his head.

  Each cellmate grabbed a steamed bun, leaving one, fist-sized and gray in color, with a shiny skin. Gao Yang knew it belonged to him, but he had no appetite.

  The middle-aged inmate and his younger cellmate laid their bowls alongside the soup basin. The old man followed suit, then glanced at Gao Yang with his putrid eyes.

  “Don’t feel like eating, eh, my man?” the middle-aged man said. “Probably haven’t digested all that rich food you had for breakfast, right?”

  Gao Yang clenched his teeth to ward off the powerful feelings of nausea.

  “Say, you old scoundrel, do the honors. And save some for him.” The middle-aged man’s voice carried the tone of authority.

  The aging prisoner picked up a greasy ladle and buried it in the soup, stirring it for a moment. Then he lifted the ladle, taking care not to spill any, and with surprising deftness and balance filled the middle-aged inmate’s proffered bowl. He wore an obsequious grin. But the middle-aged man’s expression didn’t change a bit. The second ladleful was dispatched more quickly, with no attempt at deftness or balance, straight into the bowl of the youngest inmate.

  “You old hooligan!” the young man yelled. “All I got was watery broth.”

  “You got plenty,” the old man retorted. “So what do you have to complain about?”

  The young man looked at Gao Yang as i
f seeking an ally. “Did you know that this old bastard was caught stirring the family ashes? When his son became an official in town, he left his old lady at home like some kind of grass widow. And so this one started sleeping with his own daughter-in-law—”

  Before the young prisoner could finish, his aging cellmate threw the aluminum ladle at him, hitting him with such force that he grabbed his head and howled, as soup dripped down his face. The collision had chipped the ladle, which the old inmate picked up, standing as straight as his twisted torso would allow, his neck rigid, a venomous look on his face.

  The young inmate, accepting the challenge, picked up his steamed bun, looked at it long and hard, then flung it at the old hooligan’s head, which was as bald as the steamed bun except for funny-looking tufts of hair along the sides. The bun landed in the middle of that broad, shiny head. The old man wobbled and stumbled backwards, wagging his head as if he were trying to shake something out of it. After careening off his bald skull, the gray bun bounced once on the floor in front of the young inmate, who snatched it out of the air and held it up to see if it had been damaged.

  The entire episode made Gao Yang’s hair stand on end, but it cured his nausea. The rumblings in his belly also came to an abrupt end; as if a plug had been pulled, the water seemed to empty into his intestines and from there into his bladder. Now he had to pee.

  When the old prisoner was finished filling the bowls with soup and a few wispy vegetables, a bit remained at the bottom of the basin. He looked at Gao Yang, then at the middle-aged man.

  “Leave it for our friend here,” the latter demanded.

  “Where’s your bowl?” the old inmate asked Gao Yang.

  With his bladder about ready to burst, Gao Yang could barely stand straight, let alone speak.

  The middle-aged inmate bent over and slid a wash basin out from under Gao Yang’s cot. Gray, with a red “9” stenciled on the side, it held a gray bowl for food and a pair of red chopsticks—plus the contrasting white of cobwebs and black of dirt and soot.