The Garlic Ballads

  His shouts were joined by sounds of crying from inside: Zhou Jinhua, Gao Yang assumed. The absence of infant sounds puzzled him. Jinhua hadn’t smothered her own baby, had she?

  “Get up right this minute,” the doctor demanded, “and take care of your wife and baby. Other people are waiting.”

  Rising unsteadily to his feet, the man staggered inside, emerging a few moments later carrying a bundle. “Doctor,” he said as he paused in the doorway, “do you know anyone who’d like a little girl? Could you help us find her a home?”

  “Do you have a stone for a heart?” the doctor asked angrily. “Take your baby home and treat her well. When she’s eighteen you can get at least ten thousand for her.”

  A middle-aged woman shuffled out the door, her rumpled hair looking like a bird’s nest, her clothing torn and tattered, and a grimy face that looked anything but human. The man handed her the bundled-up baby as he went to fetch his pushcart, in which she sat opposite a dung basket filled with black dirt. After slipping the harness around his neck, he took a few faltering steps before the cart flipped over, dumping his wife and the baby in her arms onto the ground. She was wailing, the baby was bawling, he was weeping.

  Gao Yang heaved a sigh; so did the man standing beside him.

  The doctor walked up. “Where’d that other cart come from?”

  “Doctor,” a flustered Gao Yang replied, “my wife’s going to have a baby.”

  The doctor raised her arm, peeled back a rubber glove, and looked at her watch. “No sleep for me tonight,” she muttered.

  “When did the contractions start?”

  “About … maybe as long as it takes to eat a meal.”

  “Then there’s plenty of time. Wait your turn.”

  The lightbulb and moonlight illuminated the area. The fair-skinned doctor, who had large features on a round face, went from one cart to the next, poking and probing distended abdomens. To the woman lying in the westernmost cart, a little horse-drawn affair, she said, “Screaming like that only makes it worse. Look at the others. You don’t see them carrying on like that, do you? Is this your first?”

  The little man standing beside the wagon answered for his wife: “Her third.”

  “Your third?” the doctor replied, obviously displeased. “How can you scream like that? And what’s that awful smell? Have you soiled yourself? Body odor shouldn’t stink that bad!”

  The woman, properly chastised, stopped screaming.

  “You should have washed up before coming,” the doctor said.

  “We’re sorry, Doctor,” the little man said apologetically, “but we’ve been too busy harvesting garlic the past few days … plus there are the kids to worry about.”

  “And here you are, having another?”

  “The other two are girls,” he explained. “Farmers need sons to help in the fields. Girls grow up and marry out of the family. What good’s a child who can’t do hard work? Besides, people laugh if you don’t have a son.”

  “If you brought up a daughter like the famous Dowager Empress, you’d have something far better than ten thousand of your precious sons,” the doctor countered.

  “You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?” the little man said. “Any child born to parents as ugly as us is lucky if it’s not crippled, blind, deaf, or dumb. All this talk of having a child with a pedigree is just that—talk.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” the doctor replied. “A plain chrysalis brings forth a lovely butterfly, so what’s to stop a couple like you from producing a future party chairman?”

  “With a mother who looks like her? I’d fall to my knees and kowtow till the end of time if she gave me a son whose features managed to be in the right places,” the little man said.

  From the bed of the wagon, the woman strained to sit up. “What makes you think you’re so goddamned desirable? Look at yourself in a puddle of piss if you want to see what I see: rat eyes, a toad’s mouth, the ears of a jackass, all stooped over like a turtle. I must have been blind to marry someone like you!”

  He giggled. “I wasn’t bad looking in my youth.”

  “Dog fart! You looked more animal than human. As bad as the hideous Wu Dalang, maybe worse!”

  That got a laugh out of the others, including the doctor, whose gaping mouth could have accommodated a whole apple. Nearby fields were suffused with joyous airs, as the fragrance of datura plants finally won out over the outhouse stench. A pale green moth flitted in the air around the lightbulb, and the ugly couple’s white pony pawed the ground happily.

  Okay, it’s your turn,” the doctor said to the woman.

  The little man lifted his wife down off the wagon. You’d have thought he was killing her, the way she groaned. “Stop that!” he demanded, giving her a rap on the head. “The first time it hurts, the second time it goes smoothly, and the third’s like taking a shit.”

  She scratched his face. “Your mother’s burning hemorrhoids! How do you know what it’s like—ow, Mother, it’s killing me!”

  “You’re a couple of real gems,” the doctor commented, “a match made in heaven.”

  “The scar-faced woman marries a harelipped man. That way nobody has any complaints,” the little man said.

  “Screw your mother! After this one’s born, I’m starting divorce proceedings … ow, Mother!”

  The doctor led the woman inside. “Wait here,” she said to the husband, who paused in the doorway for a moment, then walked back to his wagon and picked up his feedbag. The white pony snorted loudly as it began munching the feed.

  The other three expectant fathers clustered around the little man, who handed cigarettes around. Gao Yang, not used to smoking, had a fit of coughing. “Where are you from?” the little man asked him.

  “The village south of here.”

  “Where the Fang family lives?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’ve got a slut for a daughter!” he said indignantly.

  “You mean Jinju? She’s as innocent as the day is long,” Gao Yang defended her.

  “Who asked you?” Gao Yang’s wife demanded.

  “Innocent, you say?” thé little man’s lip curled. “She changes her mind, and three weddings are called off. My fellow villager Cao Wen had a nervous breakdown because of it.”

  “It hasn’t been easy for her,” Gao Yang said defensively, “what with all those beatings and stuff. She and Gao Ma were made for each other.”

  The little man muttered sorrowfully, “What are the times coming to when a girl can decide who she marries?”

  A prematurely gray man standing next to his oxcart said, “It’s those movies. Young people nowadays learn all the wrong things from movies.”

  “Cao Wens a fool,” one of the others commented. “Why is someone like him, with a powerful official for an uncle behind him, mooning over not having a wife, anyway? It’s not worth losing your mind over.”

  “Not enough girls is the problem,” the gray-haired man said. “They get engaged when they’re still teenagers. I’d like to know where all the girls went. There are plenty of young bachelors, but you never seen an unmarried woman. It’s gotten to the point where young men fight over them like warm beancurd, even if they’re crippled or blind.”

  Gao Yang coughed. The gray-haired fellow angered him. “Where do you get off laughing at others?” he said. “No one knows what’s in a mother’s belly till it’s out. One head or two, who can say?”

  The gray-haired man, missing Gao Yang’s point completely, continued, although he could have been talking to himself for all anyone knew. “Where did the girls go? Into town? City boys aren’t interested in girls off the farm. A real puzzle. Take a steer or a horse: when it’s time to raise their tails and drop a young one, if it’s female people jump for joy; but if it’s a male, nothing but long faces all around. With people it’s just the opposite. Rejoicing follows the birth of a boy, but long faces greet the birth of a girl. Then when the boy grows up and can’t find a wife, out come the long faces again.” br />
  A baby’s cry interrupted their conversation. The little man stopped feeding his horse and walked toward the delivery room tentatively, as if his legs were lead weights.

  “You there, little man,” the doctor called to him as she opened the delivery-room door, “your wife’s given you a son.”

  He grew two inches on the spot. Striding into the clinic, he emerged moments later with his newborn son, whom he placed in the bed of the wagon. “Say, friend,” he said to the gray-haired man, “watch my horse for me while I go fetch the mother of my son, would you? Dont spook him.”

  “He’s sure feeling potent all of a sudden,” Gao Yang heard one of the women comment.

  “Hell be able to stand tall around other men now.”

  He emerged all stooped over, carrying his wife on his back, her feet dragging in the dirt; one of her shoes fell off, but the gray-haired man retrieved it.

  “I’m holding you to your word,” she said to her husband once she was lying in the wagon bed.

  “I mean it. I did!”

  “You’ll buy me a nylon jacket.”

  “One with two rows of metal snaps.”

  “And a pair of nylon stockings.”

  “Two pairs. One red, one green.”

  The little man put the feed basket away, picked up his whip, and turned the wagon around until it was perpendicular to the other carts. The pony’s hide glistened like silver. After reining the animal in, he passed more cigarettes around. “I don’t smoke,” Gao Yang said. “I’ll just waste a good cigarette.”

  “Give it a try,” the little man encouraged him. “It’s only a cigarette. Can’t you see how happy I am? Aren’t you glad for me?”

  “Sure, sure I am.” Gao Yang accepted the cigarette.

  The gray-haired man’s wife was next. “Brothers,” the little man said, “you’ll all have sons. Kids are like yellow fish in schools. Since our sons will all have the same birthday, they’ll be like brothers when they grow up!”

  He cracked his whip, shouted at his horse, and rode out of the compound in high spirits, the clicking of his horses’s hooves quickly swallowed up in the murky moonlight

  The gray-haired man’s wife had a baby girl.

  The other man’s wife delivered a stillborn, misshapen fetus.

  After taking his wife into the delivery room, Gao Yang paced the compound, which he now had all to himself. By this time the moon shone directly down on the datura plants. His wife was toughing it out, since not a sound came from the delivery room. Outside, all alone with his donkey, he felt emotionally drained, so he walked over to the flower bed, where, in the grip of his private terror, he sniffed the strange fragrance and studied the fluttering petals. He bent down and poked one of the plump white leaves. It felt cool as dewdrops rolled off it. His heart fluttered. Before he knew it, his nose was buried in the flower, his nostrils filled with its strange fragrance. With a grimace he gazed at the moon and sneezed violendy.

  At daybreak his wife bore him a son. Shit! he muttered amid his joy. Why? Because his darling son had six toes on each foot.

  His wife’s heart knotted up, but Gao Yang consoled her, “You’re the mother of my children, so you should be happy. ‘Special people have special features/ Who knows, he might grow up to be a big official. And when that happens, you and I will get a taste of the good life.”

  4.

  Gao Yang said, “I broke the law. How can I make it up to you?”

  His wife sighed. “You weren’t alone. Even Fourth Aunt Fang was arrested, at her age. Compared to her we’re in fine shape.”

  The baby started crying, so she stuffed a nipple into his mouth. Gao Yang leaned over to study the face of his son, whose eyes were closed. He flicked some flaky white skin off the face. “He’s getting so big,” he said. “He keeps growing out of his skin.” The baby kicked his mother’s breast with his six-toed right foot. She pushed it away. “You have to name him,” she said.

  “Let’s call him Shoufa—Law Abider,” he said after a thoughtful pause. “I don’t expect him to become a high official, and I’ll be happy if he’s a farmer who abides by the laws.”

  Xinghua felt her father’s arm, from his shoulder all the way down to the handcuffs. “What are these, Daddy?”

  Gao Yang stood up. “Nothing.”

  The baby slept at his mother’s breast, so when she stood up she gendy removed the nipple, then laid him on the table and hurriedly opened her bundle. She fished out a pair of plastic sandals (new), a blue workshirt (also new), and a pair of black gabardine pants (brand new). “Put these on,” she said. “I was worried sick when they dragged you off half-naked. I wanted to bring you some clothes, but didnt know where you were until a couple of days ago. I spent last night outside. Then this morning a kind woman opened all the right doors for me to see you.”

  “Did you walk the whole way?” Gao Yang asked her.

  “After a mile or two somebody happened by. Guess who it was. Remember that little man at the clinic the night I had the baby? He was heading to town with some ammonia, so he gave us a ride.”

  “Who bought these new clothes? Where’d the money come from?”

  “I sold the garlic. Don t worry about us. We’ve broken the law and well take our punishment, whatever it is. I can manage things at home, and Xinghua can watch the baby for me. The neighbors have been so helpful it’s embarrassing.”

  “What about Gao Ma? What happened after he scaled the wall and took off?”

  “I’ll tell you, but don’t breathe a word of this to Fourth Aunt. Jinju’s dead.”

  “How’d she die?”

  “Hanged herself. The poor girl’s legs were covered with blood. It was nearly time, but the baby never saw the light of day.”

  “Does Gao Ma know?”

  “They arrested him when he was making funeral arrangements.”

  “A waste of a good woman,” Gao Yang lamented. “She brought a melon to Fourth Aunt the afternoon we were arrested.”

  “Let’s not talk about other people. I brought some food.” She dumped the contents of a plastic bag—some dark-skinned hardboiled eggs dyed red—onto the table.

  He stuffed two of them into Xinghuas hands. “You eat them, Daddy, they’re for you,” his daughter said.

  His wife peeled one for him. He jammed it whole into his mouth, but tears were running down his face before it was gone.

  CHAPTER 19

  County Chief, your hands aren’t big enough to cover heaven!

  Party Secretary, your power isn’t as weighty as the mountain!

  You cannot hide the ugly events of Paradise County,

  For the people have eyes—

  —At this point in Zhang Kou’s ballad a ferocious policeman jumped to his feet and cursed, “You blind bastard, you’re the prime suspect in the Paradise County garlic case! We’ve got you dead to rights!” He kicked Zhang Kou in the mouth, cutting off the final note. Blood spurted from Zhang Kou’s mouth; several white teeth hit the floor. Zhang Kou climbed back into the chair; the policeman sent him back to the floor with another kick. Garbled speech spilled from Zhang Kou’s lips, scaring the interrogators, even though they hadn’t understood a word of it. The chief interrogator stopped the policeman from kicking him a third time, as another man bent down and sealed Zhang Kou’s mouth with a plastic gag.

  1.

  Shouting erupted in the corridor, followed by the clanging of cell doors being thrown open. Gao Yang’s was one of them. A gaunt, sharp -featured policeman stood in the doorway; he smiled and nodded. Realizing that he was being summoned, Gao Yang slipped on his shoes and tied the laces, noticing the opaque skin around his injured ankle, and the green-tinted, shifting pus lying just below the surface. He limped to the doorway, where the mysterious smile frozen on the policeman’s face had an ominous effect on him. He smiled foolishly in return, as if to ingratiate himself and lessen the psychological pressures at the same time.

  The policeman no sooner raised his hand than Gao Yang stuck out his
arms, wrists together. The policeman retreated a step in the face of such immediate cooperation before separating Gao Yangs hands slighdy and snapping on the cuffs. Then, with a slight jerk of the head, he signaled Gao Yang out into the corridor, where policemen were putting handcuffs on other prisoners. Gao Yang glanced bashfully at his escort, recalling seeing him in the government compound. With a nudge from behind he fell in alongside other prisoners, who filed into the prison yard, where they were told to form a line and count off. There were ten in all. Someone grabbed Gao Yang’s arms. By cocking his head to the left he saw the sharp-featured policeman who had handcuffed him, and by twisting to look behind him he saw another policeman—fat, with pinched lips and puffy cheeks, clearly someone who would brook no nonsense. For some strange reason, Gao Yang tried to look up at the electrified wire atop the wall, but his neck stiffened up on him.

  He was last in line, in a column so straight that all he could see were the three backs in front of him, a black one sandwiched between two white ones.

  As they filed through the prison gate it dawned on him why he wanted to look at the electrified wire: during the previous day’s exercise period a piece of red cloth hung from the wire, and the old hooligan with whom he had first shared a cell was staring up at it. The malicious middle-aged convict walked up and winked at Gao Yang. “You’re being questioned tomorrow,” he said, “and your wife came to visit you.” Gao Yang stood there, mouth agape, unable to say a word. The other man changed the subject. “The old bastard’s lost his mind. That’s his daughter-in-law’s waistband hanging up there. Know what the old bastard does? Know his name? Know how the old bastard tricked his daughter-in-law? Know who his son is?” Gao Yang shook his head in response to each question. “Well, I can’t tell you,” the man said. “The shock would kill you.”

  He squirmed in the grip of the two policemen as they walked, which only made them grip him more tightiy. “Keep moving,” one of them whispered into his left ear, “and don’t try anything funny.”