The Garlic Ballads Read online

  “What time is it, Elder Brother Gao Ma?”

  He looked at his watch. “Eleven-fifteen.” He quickly added, “But my watch is a little fast.”.

  She sighed softly and looked over at his field of millet. “You’re lucky, Elder Brother Gao Ma, you’ve got only yourself to worry about. Now that you’re finished, you can take it easy.” She sighed again, then turned and picked up her scythe. “I have to get back to work.”

  He stood motionless behind her bent figure for a moment. “I’ll help you,” he said with a sigh.

  “Thanks, but I can’t let you do that,” she said as she straightened up.

  He looked her in the eye. “Why not? I don’t have anything else to do. Besides, what are neighbors for?”

  She lowered her head and muttered, “Well, I could use some help.”

  He took the cassette player out of his pocket, switched it off, and laid it on the ground, earphones and all.

  “What do you play on that?” she asked.

  “Music,” he replied, cinching up his belt.

  “It must sound nice.”

  “It’s okay, except the batteries are getting low. I’ll get some new ones tomorrow, so you can listen to it.”

  “Not me,” she said with a smile. “If I broke it, I couldn’t afford to have it fixed.”

  “It’s not that fragile,” he said. “And it’s the simplest thing in the world. Besides, I’d never make you pay.”

  They began cutting her millet, which rustled loudly. She walked ahead of him, but for every two rows she cut, he managed three; she laid out the bundles, he picked them up.

  “Your father’s not too old to be out here helping you,” he grumbled.

  Her scythe stopped in midair. “He has guests today.”

  The heavy-hearted, mournful tone of her comment did not escape Gao Ma, who dropped the subject and returned to his work. His mood was further soured by the millet brushing against his face and shoulders. “I cut three rows for every two of yours, and you’re getting in my way,” he snapped.

  “Elder Brother Gao Ma,” she complained, on the verge of tears, I’m worn out.”

  “I should have guessed,” he replied. “This is no job for a woman.”

  “People can endure anything.”

  “If I had a wife, she’d be home in the kitchen or mending clothes or feeding the chickens. I’d never make her work in the fields.”

  Jinju looked at him and muttered, “She’s a lucky woman, whoever she is.”

  “Jinju, tell me what the villagers say about me.”

  “I’ve never heard them say anything.”

  “Don’t worry—whatever it is, I can take it.”

  “Well, some of them say … don’t get mad … they say you messed up in the army.”

  “That’s right, I did.”

  “They say you and a regiment commander’s wife … he caught the two of you …”

  Gao Ma sneered. “It wasn’t his wife, it was his concubine. And I didn’t love her. I hated her—I hated them all.”

  “You’ve seen and done so much,” she said with a sigh.

  “It’s not worth a dog’s fart,” he snarled. Throwing down his scythe, he scooped up some millet and straightened up. Kicking it angrily, he cursed again, “Not worth a dog’s fart!”

  Her crippled brother limped up about then, as Gao Ma recalled. Though he was not yet forty, his hair was turning white and his face was deeply wrinkled. His left leg, shorter than the right, was rail thin, giving him a pronounced limp.

  “Jinju!” he bellowed. “You plan to stay here through lunch?”

  Cupping his hand over his eyes, Gao Ma muttered, “Why does your brother treat you like his worst enemy?”

  She bit her lip as two large tears slid down her cheeks.

  Jinju, I haven’t known a moment’s peace since you cried that day. I love you, I want to make you my wife…. It’s been a year already, Jinju, but you avoid me whenever I try to talk to you … I want to rescue you from your living hell. Zhang Kou, another dozen lines is all I ask, enough time for me to take her hand … even if she screams in front of everyone, even if her mother jumps up and curses or slaps me. No, she wont scream, I know she wont. She’s unhappy with the marriage they’ve arranged for her. It was the day her older brother called out to her, the day I helped her bring in the harvest that her parents signed an agreement with Liu Shengli’s grandfather and Cao Wen’s parents, stringing three boys and three girls together like so many locusts, a chain with six links, a tawdry way to create new families. She doesn’t hate me; she likes me. When we meet, she lowers her head and scoots by, but I can see the tears in her eyes. My heart aches my liver aches my lungs ache my stomach aches my gut aches everything inside me aches…. ‘ “Commander, hurry, give the order,” wailed Zhang Kou. “Send your troops down the mountain … save our Big Sister Jiang … so many moths have died in the yellow lame of the lantern, our Big Sister Jiang is held captive, the masses fear for her safety. Comrades! We must be cool-headed—if they take our elder sister from us, I’ll be the one to grieve…. The old lady fires two pistols, her white hair flutters in the wind, tears stream down her face.”

  Say something, Zhang Kou. Sing, Zhang Kou. “My husband languishes in a prison camp … his widow and orphaned daughter carry on the revolution …” Zhang Kou, just a couple more lines, two more, and I can take her hand, I can feel the warmth of her body, I can smell the sweat in her armpits. “Making revolution doesn’t mean acting rashly…. It must be slow and sure, one careful step at a time.”

  Explosions went off inside his head, and a halo of light swirled until he was encircled by a cloud of many colors. He reached out; his hand seemed to have eyes, or maybe hers had been waiting all along. He gripped it tightly. His eyes were open, but he saw nothing. It was not cold, yet he was shivering; his heart paled.

  2.

  The next night Gao Ma hid behind a stack of chaff on the edge of Jinju’s threshing floor, waiting anxiously. It was another starry night, with the slender crescent moon hanging, it seemed, from the tip of a tall tree, its luminous rays weakened by the encircling starlight. A chestnut colt galloped along the edge of the floor, which was bordered on the south by a wide trench whose sloping banks had been planted with indigo bushes. Occasionally the colt galloped into the trench and up the other side, and when it passed through the bushes it set them rustling. The lamps were lit at Jinju’s home, where her father—Fourth Uncle Fang—was in the yard talking loudly and being constantly interrupted by Fourth Aunt, Jinju’s mother. Gao Ma strained to hear their conversation, but was too far away. A yardful of parakeets—well over a hundred of them—were setting up a deafening racket at the home of the Fangs’ neighbor Gao Zhileng. The noise put everyone on edge. Gao Zhileng raised parakeets for profit, of which there was a great deal, and his was the only family in the village that did not rely on garlic for its livelihood.

  The shrill squawks of the parakeets grated on the ears, as the chestnut colt, tail swishing rapidly, paced the area, its bright eyes poking holes in the misty darkness. It began nibbling at a pile of chaff, only half-seriously, it appeared, but enough to send the slightly mildewy smell of millet on the wind to Gao Ma, who crept around the stack to inch closer to Jinju’s barred gate, through which slivers of light seeped. He couldn’t tell what time it was, since his watch didn’t have a luminous dial. Around nine, he figured. Just then the clock in Gao Zhileng’s home began to chime, and Gao Ma moved far enough away from the parakeet squawks to count the chimes. Nine all together. He’d guessed right. His thoughts drifted back to what had happened the night before and to the movie Le Rouge et le Noir, which he had seen in the army: Julien takes Madame de Rênal’s hand while he is counting the peals of the church bell.

  Gao Ma had squeezed Jinju’s hand, and she had squeezed his back. They hadn’t let go until Zhang Kou finished his ballad, and then only with great reluctance. In the confusion of all the getting up and going, he whispered, “I’ll be waiting for you tom
orrow night by the millet chaff. We need to talk.”

  He wasn’t looking at her, didn’t even know if she heard him. But the next day he worked so absentmindedly that he frequendy dug up seedlings and spared the weeds. The afternoon sun was still high in the sky when he went home, where he trimmed his beard, squeezed a couple of pimples alongside his nose, scraped some of the gunk off his teeth with the scissors, and washed his shaved scalp and neck with toilet soap. After a hurried meal he dug out his seldom-used toothbrush and toothpaste to give his teeth a good brushing.

  The parakeets’ squawking made him edgy, and each time he strode up to the gate, he meekly turned and headed back. Then the gate creaked, setting off a drumroll in his heart. He thrust his hand into the stack of chaff up to the elbow without feeling a thing. The chestnut colt, suddenly energized, began to gallop, its hooves sending dirt clods thudding into the chaff with scary resonance.

  “Where do you think you’re going at this late hour?” Fourth Aunt shouted.

  “It’s not late. It’s barely dark out.” Just hearing Jinju’s voice made him feel slightly guilty.

  “I asked you where you’re going,” Fourth Aunt repeated.

  “Down to the riverbank to cool off,” Jinju replied with determination.

  “Don’t be long.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t run away.”

  Jinju, Jinju, Gao Ma moaned softly, how do you stand it all?

  The latch clanged loudly as the gate was pulled shut. From his vantage point beside the chaff, Gao Ma longingly watched her blurred silhouette head north toward the river instead of coming toward him. He managed to keep from running after her, assuming this was a sham for her mother’s benefit.

  Jinju … Jinju … He buried his face in the chaff, his eyes dampening. Meanwhile the colt galloped back and forth behind him, and the parakeets squawked. Off to the south, in the stinking, weed-infested reservoir, frogs croaked to one another, the mournful sound falling unpleasantly on the ear.

  All this reminded Gao Ma of the night three years earlier when he and the regiment commander’s concubine had slipped away together: how the pert-nosed, freckle-faced woman threw herself into his arms, how he held her tight and smelled her heavy body odor. Like holding a wooden log, he embraced her even though he didn’t love her. You’re despicable, he had cursed himself, pretending to be in love in order to enhance your prospects with her patron. Yet things have a way of evening out, and I paid a heavy price for my hypocrisy.

  But it’s different with Jinju. I’d die for Jinju, my Jinju.

  She walked in the shadow of the wall, skirting the starlit threshing floor, and came toward him. His heart pounded wildly, he began to tremble, his teeth chattered.

  She walked around the stack and stopped a few feet from him. “What do you want to talk to me about, Elder Brother Gao Ma?” Her voice quaked.

  “Jinju …” His lips were so stiff he could barely get the words out. He heard his own heartbeat and a voice that quaked like a woman’s. He coughed—it sounded forced and unnatural.

  “Dont … please don’t make any noise,” she pleaded anxiously as she backed up several steps.

  The colt, feeling mischievous, rubbed its flank against the stack, even extracted some chaff with its lips and flung it to the ground in front of them.

  “Not here,” he said. “Let’s go down to the trench.”

  “I can’t…. If you have something to say, hurry up and say it.”

  “Not here, I said.” He walked down the edge of the threshing floor, all the way to the trench. Jinju still hadn’t moved. But when he turned to go back for her, she began walking timidly toward him. He threaded his way through the indigo bushes and waited for her at the bottom of the trench, and when she reached the gently sloping side, he took her hand and pulled her to him.

  She tried to take her tiny hand, but he cupped it tightly in his and stroked it. “I love you, Jinju,” he blurted out. “Marry me!”

  “Elder Brother Gao Ma,” she replied softly, “you know I’ve been betrothed so that my brother can get married.”

  “I know, but I also know it’s not what you want.”

  She loosened his grip with her free hand and liberated its mate. “Yes it is.”

  “No, it’s not. Liu Shengli is a forty-five-year-old man with an infected windpipe. He’s too sickly to even carry a load of water. Are you telling me you’d marry coffin pulp like that?”

  She whimpered in reply, the sound hanging in the air for a long moment. “What can I do?” she sobbed. “My brother’s over thirty … a cripple … Cao Wenling is only seventeen, and prettier than me.…”

  “You’re not your brother, and you’re not required to go to your grave for his sake.”

  “Elder Brother Gao Ma, it’s fate. Go find yourself a good woman…. Me … next life …” Holding her face in her hands, she turned and broke for the indigo bushes. But he grabbed her, making her stumble and fall into his embrace.

  He hugged her so tightly he could feel the heat of her soft belly, but when he tried to find her mouth with his, she covered her face with her hands. Undaunted, he began nibbling her earlobe, as fine strands of hair brushed his face. His chill was replaced by hot cinders deep in his heart. She began to squirm, as if tormented by a powerful itch. Suddenly letting her hands drop, she threw her arms around his neck. “Elder Brother Gao Ma, please don’t nibble my ear,” she begged tearfully. “I can’t bear it….” He moved his mouth back to hers and began sucking on her tongue. She groaned, as hot tears welled up and wetted both their faces. A surge of hot air floated up from her stomach, bestowing on Gao Ma the taste of garlic and fresh grass.

  His hands moved roughly over her body.

  “Elder Brother Gao Ma, not so rough. You’re hurting me.”

  They sat on the slope of the trench in each other’s arms, hands roaming freely. Through cracks in the lush indigo covering they caught glimpses of golden starlight in the deep-blue sky. The crescent moon was sinking. An orbiting satellite tore through the Milky Way, and the air was suffused with the distinctive aroma of indigo.

  “What do you love about me?” she asked, looking up at him.

  “Everything.”

  The night was cooling off. They talked in hushed tones.

  “But you know I’m spoken for,” she said with a shiver. “What we’re doing, it’s wrong, isn’t it?”

  “No, it’s not. We’re in love.”

  “But I’m betrothed.”

  “You have to register to be legally married.”

  “Does that mean we can be together?”

  “Yes. Just tell your father you won’t agree to the wedding.”

  “No,” she protested, tripping over her tongue. “They’d kill me…. I’ve been a burden to them for so long.”

  “Does that mean you’d rather marry a dying old man?”

  “I’m afraid.” By now she was weeping. “Mother says she’ll take poison if I don’t.”

  “Scare tactics.”

  “You don’t know her.”

  “I know she’s just trying to scare you.”

  “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you had a younger sister? She could marry my brother and I could be your wife.”

  Gao Ma sighed and rubbed her chilled shoulder. He was nearly in tears.

  “Elder Brother Gao Ma, we can be secret lovers. Then when he dies, we’ll get married.”

  “No!” Gao Ma exploded. He kissed her, and could feel the heat in her belly. A hairy mouth above them touched their heads, as the sound of raspy breathing and the smell of fresh grass settled around their necks. It scared them half to death, until they discovered to their relief that it was only the colt, up to a little mischief.

  3.

  Jinju showed Gao Ma the fateful wedding contract. She had come to his home at noon, a month after their tryst amid the indigo. They had met nearly every night after that first one—in the trench, then later in the fields, hiding in farmland planted with shallots. They watched the progress of fu
ll moon and crescent moon, with or without cloud cover; leaves were dusted with silver, insects chirped and screeched, cool dew moistened the dry earth below. She wept and he laughed; he wept and she laughed. The fiery passions of love made the young couple grow haggard, but their eyes glowed and crackled like hot cinders.

  Jinju’s parents had sent an angry message to Gao Ma: there has never been hostility or rancor between our families, and you have no right to interfere with our arranged marriages.

  Jinju burst through the door like a whirlwind and looked anxiously over her shoulder, as if she were being followed. Gao Ma led her over to the kang, where she sat down. “They wont come for us, will they?” she asked in a tremulous voice.

  “No,” he assured her, handing her a cup of water. But she scarcely moistened her lips before setting the ebony-colored cup down on the table. “Dont worry, no one will come,” he reassured her. “And what if they did? We have nothing to be ashamed about.”

  “I brought it.” She removed a folded piece of red paper from her pocket and dropped it onto the table before sprawling out on the kang, burying her face in her arms and bursting into tears.

  Gao Ma gendy rubbed her back to get her to stop crying; but when he saw it was futile, he unfolded the sheet of red paper, which was covered with black calligraphy:

  On the auspicious tenth day of the six month in the year nineteen hundred and eighty-five we betroth the eldest grandson of Liu Jiaqing, Liu Shengli, to Fang Jinju, daughter of Fang Yunqiu; the second daughter of Cao Jinzhu, Cao Wenling, to the eldest son of Fang Yunqiu, Fang Yijun; and the second granddaughter of Liu Jiaqing, Liu Lanlan, to the eldest son of Cao Jinzhu, Cao Wen. With this agreement, our families are forever linked, even if the rivers run dry and the oceans become deserts. Witness the three principals: Liu Jiaqing, Fang Yunqiu, Cao Jinzhu.

  Dark fingerprints were affixed to the paper beside the names of the three men.

  Gao Ma refolded the contract and stuffed it into his pocket, then opened a drawer and removed a booklet. “Jinju,” he said, “stop crying and listen to the Marriage Law. Section 3 says, Arranged marriages, mercenary marriages, and all other types that restrict individual freedom are prohibited/ Then in Section 4 it says, ‘Both marriage partners must be willing. Neither they nor any third party may use coercion to force a marriage upon the other party/ That’s national policy, which is more important than this lousy piece of paper. You have nothing to worry about.”