The Garlic Ballads

  Too weak to stand, she gave in to the gentle pressure of his hands and sat down. So did Father and Mother, he to recommence smoking his pipe, she to ponder a way to bring Jinju around. Meanwhile, Elder Brother went into the house to mix some noodle paste for her injured head. But she pushed him away when he tried to daub it on her.

  “Be a good girl,” he said, “and let me put some of this on.”

  “Why are you treating her like that?” Father asked. “She has no sense of shame!”

  “Look who’s talking,” Jinju snapped back.

  “Watch that mouth of yours,” Mother threatened.

  Elder Brother fetched his stool and sat with the others.

  A meteor whistled as it sliced through the Milky Way.

  “Jinju, remember when you were two, how I took you and your brother fishing in the river? I sat you down on the bank when we got there so he and I could put out the nets, and when I turned around, you were gone. I almost died. But Second Brother yelled, There she is!’ And when I looked, you were thrashing in the river. So I cast my net and caught you first try. Remember what Second Brother said? This time you caught a great big fish!’ My leg was fine then. The bone didn’t go soft till the next year. …” He stopped and sighed, then continued with a self-deprecating laugh: “Nearly twenty years ago that was, and now you’re a grown woman.”

  More sighs.

  Jinju listened to the crisp hoofbeats of the chestnut colt as it ran past the gate and down the edge of the threshing floor, and to the squawking of parakeets in Gao Zhileng’s yard. She neither wept nor laughed.

  Father stood up after knocking his pipe against the sole of his shoe and coughed up some phlegm. “It’s bedtime,” he said as he walked inside, then emerged with a large brass lock for the gate. Snap. He locked it.

  2.

  The Fang compound was humming the following evening. The two sons had carried an octagonal table outside and borrowed four benches from the elementary school. Mother was inside cooking, her wok sizzling. Jinju stayed indoors—-hers was the small room off her brothers’ bedroom—listening to the racket outside. She hadn’t left her room all day, and Elder Brother, who stayed home instead of tending the fields, came in to make small talk every few minutes, it seemed. But she threw the covers over her head and didn’t reward him with a single word in reply.

  Father and Mother were speaking in hushed tones in the outer room. “They’re all wilted and yellow,” she said, “and wrapping them in plastic doesn’t help.”

  Jinju smelled garlic.

  “You didn’t seal them tightly enough,” Father said. “They won’t get dry or turn yellow if you keep the air out.”

  “I don’t know how the government manages to keep them so nice and green all the way to winter, like they were fresh out of the ground,” Mother said.

  “Cold storage, that’s how. Even in midsummer you have to wear a coat and lined pants in one of those places. How could they fail?”

  “Leave it to the government to get things done,” Mother said with an admiring sigh.

  “As long as they can squeeze us common folk.”

  The wok sizzled some more, suffusing the house with the smell of garlic.

  “Why not have Second Brother go talk to Deputy Yang at the township office?”

  “No,” Father disagreed. “He might get tired of being asked, and not come at all.”

  “He’ll come. If not for us, at least for his nephew’s sake.”

  “It’s not his real nephew,” Father said heavily.

  Later on, when the lamps were lit, Jinju heard voices in the yard, and from the audible snatches of conversation she could tell that the guests included her future father-in-law, Liu Jiaqing, and Cao Jinzhu, the father of her future sister-in-law, Cao Weiding. Other future family members were present, as was Deputy Yang from the township government. Once the formalities were dispensed with, it was time to start drinking.

  Elder Brother walked into Jinju’s bedroom with a steamed bun and a plate of garlic-fried pork. “Sister,” he said softly, “eat something. Then wash up, change your clothes, and come greet your future in-laws. Your grandfather-in-law is asking about you.”

  Not a word, not a sound.

  “Don’t be foolish,” he continued in a low voice. “Someone as rich as Mr. Liu surely didn’t come empty-handed today.” Not a word, not a sound.

  He placed the food on the kang and left dispiritedly. Out in the yard the drinking games had begun, and the party was starting to warm up. Deputy Yang could be heard above the others. Then Jinju heard Mother and Elder Brother whispering in the next room.

  “How much is left?” he asked.

  “A good half-bottle—seven ounces or more. Is that enough?”

  “Far from it. Deputy Yang and old man Liu can polish off a whole bottle by themselves.”

  “How about borrowing some?”

  “At this time of night? Go get an empty bottle. We’ll dilute what we have with water and try to make do.”

  “What if they taste the difference? We’d be laughingstocks.”

  “Their taste buds are numb by now. They can’t taste a damned thing.”

  “Still, it doesn’t seem right.”

  “Doesn’t seem right? Everywhere you turn these days someone is trying to cheat us out of something. Anyone who doesn’t cheat back is a fool. If even the government co-op is dishonest, what’s to stop us poor peasants?”

  Mother said nothing, and a moment or so later Jinju heard the sound of liquid being poured into a bottle. “Do we have any DDT?”

  “You horrid beast!” Mother tried to keep her voice down. “How can you think such evil thoughts?”

  “They say a little DDT makes it taste like real Maotai.”

  “You’ll kill somebody.”

  “Not a chance. I’ll only add a drop, and it’s a big bottle. The worst that could happen is it’d rid them of roundworms.”

  “What about your father?”

  “He’s too tight-fisted to drink any himself.”

  Jinju, suddenly agitated, threw back the covers and sat up; she stared at a New Year’s wall scroll with a cherubic boy in a red vest holding a large red peach like an offering in his hands.

  “Ah, Deputy Yang, Elder Master, Father”—that had to be Cao Jinzhu; the thought sickened her—”try some of this good stuff my brother picked up at the horse market. They say it’s a little like Maotai, but since we’ve never tasted real Maotai, we can’t tell.”

  Cao Jinzhu sniffled a time or two. “Our friend Eighth Uncle is the well-traveled one. If anyone’s tried it, he has.”

  Deputy Yang laughed smugly. “Only a time or two. Once at the home of Party Secretary Geng, and once at Zhang Yunduan’s. Eighty yuan a bottle means nothing to someone as rich as Zhang.”

  “Come on, Eighth Uncle, tell us if it tastes like Maotai,” Elder Brother urged.

  Jinju heard him smack his lips; he’d taken a drink.

  “Well?”

  He must have taken another, since she heard him smack his lips again.

  “Well, I’ll be damned, it does taste a little like Maotai.”

  “Good stuff,” Father said. “Drink up.”

  The cherubic boy on the wall looked down at Jinju as if he wanted to jump out of the picture.

  Liu Jiaqing cleared his throat. “Father of the bride,” he said, “I hear the girl has quite a temper.”

  “She’s just a girl,” Father said, “who doesn’t know what she’s doing half the time. She’s impetuous, but she’ll never get her way as long as there’s breath in my body.”

  “It’s not unusual for someone that young to have a mind of her own,” Cao Jinzhu said. “Wenling’s the same. When she heard that Jinju wanted to terminate the agreement, she caused such a scene at home that her mother and I had to give her a beating.”

  “Here, Father, let me fill your glass,” Elder Brother said.

  “No more for me, I’ve had enough,” Cao Jinzhu demurred. “This stuff goes right to m
y head.”

  ‘The good stuff will do that,” Deputy Yang said. “But once a girl grows up, you shouldn’t be beating her. In our new society it’s against the law to beat a girl, even your own daughter.”

  “To hell with the law!” Cao fired back. “If she doesn’t do what she’s told, I beat her. Who’s going to stop me?”

  “You’re just being stubborn,” Deputy Yang said. “And maybe a tiny bit drunk? If there were only one thing the Communist Party didn’t fear, it would be stubborn people like you. It’s against the law to beat a person. Now since your daughter is clearly a person, and beating your daughter is by definition beating a person, then beating her is against the law. If you break the law, they haul you away. You watch TV, don’t you? When the governor broke the law, they led him away in handcuffs, just like anyone else. You don’t mean to imply that you’re more important than the governor, do you? You’re a smelly piece of garlic, if you ask me.”

  “So what if I am?” an angered Cao Jinzhu replied—from inside it sounded as if he got noisily to his feet. “If it weren’t for all us smelly pieces of garlic, you government bigshots would have to fill your bellies with the northwest wind. It’s our taxes that pay your salaries and fill you with good wine and rich food, just so you can think up more ways to bleed us common folk.”

  “Old Cao”—Deputy Yang was obviously on his feet by now, and probably pointing at Cao Jinzhu with a chopstick—”it sounds like you’ve got bones to pick with the Communist Party. You’re the ones who pay our salaries? Bullshit! We’re on the national payroll, and if we lie in the shade all day watching ants climb trees we still get paid. Your garlic could rot until it was nothing but a puddle of goo, and I’d still draw my salary.”

  “All right,” Father interceded, “that’s enough. We’re family here, so we should support each other, not fight.”

  “This is a matter of principle,” Deputy Yang insisted.

  “Will you listen to what an old man has to say?” Liu Jiaqing volunteered. “It’s not easy to have family gatherings these days, and since national affairs have little to do with us, why worry about them? Let’s concern ourselves with local affairs, like getting drunk.”

  “Right, drink up!” Elder Brother echoed him. “Have some more wine, Uncle.”

  “Elder Brother,” Deputy Yang said, “Fm warning you two—say, where is your brother?” Elder Brother told him he had gone out. “Anyway, you beat Gao Ma pretty severely.”

  “They could beat the bastard to death and still not settle accounts!” Father said.

  “Fourth Uncle,” Deputy Yang continued, “you act like you’ve lost your mind. I just said it’s illegal to beat people.”

  “He disgraced my family. He’s the reason Jinju acted up like she did.”

  “Interfering with people’s wedding plans is nasty business,” Liu Jiaqing said.

  “Gao Ma lodged a complaint against you,” explained Deputy Yang. “I warded him off, but only because we’re family. If it had been anyone else, I wouldn’t have bothered.”

  “We’re grateful,” Elder Brother said.

  “You tell your brother he’s not to raise a hand against anybody again.”

  “Eighth Uncle, you know as well as anyone that my brother and I have been honest, law-abiding citizens since childhood. We wouldn’t have resorted to violence if he hadn’t disgraced us.”

  “If you must hit someone, go for the buttocks, not the head.”

  “What do you think, Eighth Uncle? What will he do now?”

  “In a case like this …”

  They lowered their voices, so Jinju went to the window and laid her ear against the paper covering to hear what they were saying.

  “Wenling’s only seventeen, too young to be registered to marry,” Cao Jinzhu said.

  “Is there a back door somewhere we can try?”

  “Are you asking me to do something improper?”

  “Lanlan’s only sixteen, that’s even worse.”

  “Wenling’s census registration can be changed, but not Lanlan’s. We’re talking about a different township, and no matter how big my hand is, it cant cover the whole sky.

  “Bring the girl out and let me talk to her,” Liu Jiaqing said loudly. His speech was a little slurred.

  “Go get her,” Father said. His voice, too, was slurred.

  Jinju quickly moved away from the window and lay down on the kang, pulling the covers up over her head. Footsteps drew nearer, and as she hid herself in the darkness, she began to quake.

  3.

  The days passed quickly toward the end of the eighth lunar month. Jinju wasn’t being watched as closely as before: the gate was no longer locked at night, and she was permitted outside during the day. Elder Brother, who treated her better than ever, even bought her a pair of pigskin shoes, which she merely tossed to the foot of the kang without giving them a second look.

  On the morning of the twenty-fifth, Elder Brother said to her, “Instead of spending all day moping around the house, why not come help me pick beans? Second Brother went to help Deputy Yang make briquettes, and I can’t manage by myself.”

  It seemed like a reasonable request, so she picked up her scythe and followed him out the door.

  The fields had changed dramatically in the two months since her last visit. Mature, sun-dried kernels of sorghum had turned dark red, the cornsilks had withered, and bean leaves had turned a pale yellow. Under the deep-blue sky the vista seemed endless; Little Mount Zhou looked like a broken green fan. Birds far from their nests whirred noisily in the sky, a cheerless sound that Jinju found particularly unsettling. She couldn’t bear to watch the unnatural movements of Elder Brother as he cut the beans, dragging his game leg behind him. That leg was inextricably linked to her fate, and over the two months of her confinement she had often dreamed it was crushing her; she would awake with a fright, gasping for breath, her eyes filled with tears.

  Their bean field abutted Gao Ma’s cornfield, which had not yet been harvested. Where are you, Gao Ma? She thought back to the summer before, when a tall, husky Gao Ma strolled over, whistling confidently, to help her with the millet harvest. She could still hear the sound of his voice and see his figure. But the more she dwelled on the past, the more tightly her heart constricted, for she could also hear the thud of stools crashing down on Gao Ma’s head, a liquid sound swirling in her ears. She wouldn’t have believed her kind and decent Elder Brother capable of such ferocity had she not seen it with her own eyes.

  “Sit over there if you’re afraid this will tire you out,” Elder Brother said with a grimace. “I can manage.”

  Deep lines were etched in the corners of his clouded eyes, which seemed dull and lifeless. Something was hidden behind his expression, she felt, but she couldn’t put a name to it. Yet it reminded her of the leg he dragged along the ground. The deformed limb bore the scars of un-happiness and earned him people’s pity; but it was hideous, and that earned him their disgust. Her feelings for her brother matched her feelings for his game leg: pity on occasion, disgust the rest of the time. Pity and disgust, an emotional conflict that entangled her.

  Gao Ma’s cornfield rustled as a breeze swept past, tousling her hair and slipping under her collar to cool her off.

  Thoughts of Gao Ma made it both dangerous and necessary for her to look over at his cornfield as it protested uneasily in the breeze: withered tassels and stalks retaining barely a trace of moisture no longer enjoyed the resiliency of their youth, when they had been bent before the wind, their emerald leaves fluttering gracefully like ribbons of satin with each gust to form cool green waves; just thinking about it brought tears to her eyes, for now the wind made the stalks shudder as they stood tall and rigid, their once graceful movements just a memory.

  Yellow, withered bean leaves rustled on the plants and flapped around on the ground. When a thorn pricked her finger, she looked down at her hands, which had grown soft in the months since she had last worked. She sighed, without knowing why. Sensing Elder Brother
’s eyes on her increased both her disgust toward him and a longing for Gao Ma. As her scythe moved mechanically through the bean field, a sandy-colored hare was startled out of its hiding place. No bigger than a fist, with shiny black eyes, it curled into a furry little ball, flattening its ears over its back in fear and remaining motionless. Jinju threw down her scythe and bounded over to the slow-moving animal; squatting down and cupping her hand over it, she felt her heart flood with compassion as she gently pinched one of its ears, which was like a translucent petal. She picked it up carefully so as not to damage the ears; when the soft underbelly lay against her palm, and the tiny animal sniffed her hand in that awkward, timid way that rabbits have, she was deeply moved.

  “Get some string and tie it up,” said Elder Brother, who had walked up to her. “Maybe you can keep it for a pet.”

  She felt around in her pocket, hoping to find something, but there was nothing. As she searched the ground, he wordlessly removed a shoelace and tied it around the rabbit’s hind leg.

  Jinju stared down at the now bare foot attached to Elder Brother’s game leg. It was covered with a layer of mud, and shiny as lacquer. He carried the rabbit to the edge of the field and tied it to one of Gao Ma’s cornstalks, then cut down a widowed stalk, stripped it, and chewed it for the sweet sap.

  Each time Jinju glanced at the rabbit, which was often, she saw it struggling to free itself, straining so hard against the shoestring it looked as if it were trying to separate itself from the ensnared limb in order to escape on the other three. Finally she went over, cut the shoelace, untied the end around the rabbit’s leg, and released it. As she watched it hobble off and disappear amid the cornfield’s once beautiful, but now distressed, stalks, a vague sense of hope rose inside her. A dark, boundless secret was hidden amid all that corn.

  “You have the heart of a Bodhisattva, Sister,” Elder Brother said as he walked up. “Your goodness will be rewarded someday.”

  His garlicky breath sickened her.

  She was treated warmly at lunch, probably because everyone had heard of her compassion that morning. During the fall harvest season, when everyone wished he had another pair of hands, they couldn’t possibly watch her all the time. So after lunch she went to the well to fetch water. Father and Mother followed her with their eyes, but neither said a word. She returned with two full buckets, dumped them into the water barrel, then went back for more. Instinct told her she had won their trust.