The Garlic Ballads

by Mo Yan

  At one time his mother, too, had been a white-haired yet energetic old woman. But that changed halfway through the Cultural Revolution, when her nice white hair was ripped out by poor and lower-middle-class peasants. Maybe she deserved it, since she had married a landlord. Who else could they attack, if not her? A husky, middle-aged member of the Guo family named Qiulang grabbed her by the hair and pushed her head down with all his might. “Bend over, you old silverhead!” he growled. Gao Yang watched from a distance, and the scene was as vivid in his mind now as the day it happened. He could hear his white-haired old mother whimper like a little girl.…

  Brought to her senses by the dousing, Fourth Aunt twisted her lips around her toothless gums and began to whimper like a little girl….

  “Thirsty?” he heard the policewoman ask Fourth Aunt with a hint of tenderness. But instead of replying, she just whimpered. Her voice was hoarse and shrill at the same time, and her sobs lacked the crispness and force of a moment before.

  “What happened to all that window-smashing bravado?” the policewoman asked as she dumped another ladleful of cool water over Fourth Aunt’s head as a final gesture before picking up the pail of water and walking over to Gao Yang. Unable to see her eyes because of the mirror lenses, he focused his attention on the narrow slit formed by her tightly shut lips. He shuddered, reminded for some reason of a debristled hog. She didn’t say a word as she set the pail down, ladled out some water, and splashed it on his chest; involuntarily he tucked his neck between his shoulders and uttered a strange muffled cry. She grinned, her pretty, even teeth sparkling in the light, then scooped out some more water and dumped it over his head. No shudder this time, since he knew it was coming, and after the cool water ran slowly down his back and chest it left gray streaks on his legs. Suddenly revitalized and uncommonly clear-headed, he sensed that the cool water was the greatest source of joy he had ever known. Now as he gazed at the policewoman’s lovely mouth, it was with an enormous sense of gratitude.

  She doused him only twice before moving on to the horse-faced young man, who stood deathly pale, one eye swollen shut, the other opened wide; his lip curled in a grin for the policewoman’s benefit. Insulted by the look, she scooped out a ladleful of water and hurled it into his pallid face with all her might. He, too, tucked his neck down between his shoulders.

  “What do you say to that?” she snarled angrily.

  He shook his drenched head. “Nice and cool,” he replied, still grinning. “Just wonderful.”

  She scooped out another ladleful and hurled it in his face, not caring where or how forcefully it struck him. “I’ll show you nice and cool!” she screeched. “Well see how wonderful it is!”

  “Nice and cool feels good nice and cool feels good … ? he was screaming, twisting at the waist, kicking out with both feet, and jerking his head back and forth.

  Tossing the ladle to the ground, the policewoman picked up the pail and dumped it over his head. But even that didn’t exhaust her anger, so she rapped him several times on the head with the rim of the pail, as if to make sure that every drop of water wound up on him. Then she flipped the pail to the ground and stood in front of him, hands on her hips, her chest heaving. -

  To Gao Yang, the sound of the pail banging against the young man’s head was muffled and wet, and it set his teeth on edge.

  The young man, sputtering now, rested his long head—which seemed to swell and turn a mahogany color—against the tree trunk. Gao Yang heard the man’s stomach growl and watched his neck stretch forward until the tendons seemed about to pop through the taut skin. Over and over he tried to close his mouth, but couldn’t. Then, all of a sudden, it gaped wide, and a gusher of filthy water spewed out, hitting the policewoman full in the chest before she could scramble out of the way.

  She shrieked and hopped around. But the horse-faced young man was too busy puking to pay any attention to her chest.

  “Okay, Song,” Zheng said, looking at his watch. “It’s nearly dinner. We’ll finish up here after we eat.”

  Whiskers Zhu picked up the pail and ladle, then fell in behind old Zheng and Song Anni.

  Gao Yang heard Whiskers Zhu shout into the office phone to speed up delivery of the stuffed dumplings they had ordered, and felt total revulsion; he had to clench his teeth to keep from regurgitating the three badly needed bottles of water he had just finished. The horse-faced young man was still puking, though by now it was just dry heaves. Gao Yang noticed a frothy string of bloody sputum at the corner of his mouth and felt sorry for the sharp-tongued fellow.

  The setting sun had lost some of its sting; that and the fact that he had no feeling in his arms instilled in Gao Yang a sense of well-being. A slight breeze rose to cool his scalp, which had been sun-baked, then doused with water until it tingled. All in all, he still felt pretty good—so good, in fact, that he wanted to talk. The horse-faced young man’s dry heaves were getting on his nerves, so Gao Yang cocked his head and said, “Say, pal, can’t you stop that?”

  It had no effect. The heaves just kept coming.

  A couple of trucks and a blue minivan were parked at the far end of the township compound, where a boisterous gang of supervised men loaded cartons, cabinets, tables, chairs, stools. Probably helping some official move, he surmised as he became absorbed in the activity. But after a while, the sight of all that stuff was more than he could bear, so he looked away.

  Fourth Aunt knelt silently, her hair brushing the ground. When he heard a soft rattle in her throat, he assumed she must be asleep. Another image from the Cultural Revolution flashed before his eyes: his aging mother being vilified on her hands and knees. He shook his head to drive away some bottleneck flies straying from the vile puddle in front of the horse-faced young man. Mother was kneeling on bricks, her arms pulled behind her … she rested a hand on the ground to ease the pain, only to have it stepped on by a rough leather boot … she screamed … fingers bent and twisted so badly she couldn’t straighten them out….

  “Fourth Aunt,” he whispered. “Fourth Aunt…”

  She grunted softly, in what he took to be a reply.

  The restaurant delivery boy rode skillfully up on his bike. This time he carried the food in one hand and steered with the other as he threaded his way between a couple of white poplars, trailing the fragrance of vinegar and garlic.

  Gao Yang looked at the sinking sun, whose rays were growing gender and friendlier by the minute. He knew that the comrade policemen were by then dipping steamed dumplings in the vinegary, garlicky sauce; this held a hidden and frightful significance. When they finish their meal, he reminded himself, they’ll come out to put me into a shiny red van and take me … where will they take me? Wherever it was, it had to be better than being shackled to a tree, right? But who could say? Actually, it made no difference what happened, as he saw it. “The people’s hearts are made of steel, but the Law is a forge.” If I’m guilty, there goes my head. Another breeze rose up, rusding the leaves of the poplars and carrying the brays of a distant mule, which chilled the nape of his neck. He forced himself to stop thinking about what might happen.

  A woman carrying a bundle stumbled up to the compound gate, where she argued with a young man who wouldn’t let her pass. Failing to force her way past him, she took the long way around the poplar grove. Gao Yang watched her approach. It was Jinju, so heavy with child she could barely walk. She was weeping. The bundle in her hands was large and round, the exact shape and size of a human head. But when she got closer, he saw it was only a melon. Not having the heart to look her in the eye, he sighed and lowered his head. Compared with poor Jinju, he had no complaints. People ought to count their blessings.

  “Mother … Mother …” Jinju was so close he could all but touch her. “Mother … dear Mother … what’s wrong?”

  I’m not crying, Gao Yang reminded himself, I am not crying, I’m not

  Jinju fell to her knees besides Fourth Aunt and cupped the old lady’s gray, grimy head. She was sobbing and mumbling like an
old woman.

  Gao Yang sniffled, closed his eyes, and strained to listen to the shouts of farmers calling their livestock out in the fields. The modulated, rhythmic braying of that mule fell upon his ears. It was the sound he feared most of all, so he looked back at Jinju and Fourth Aunt. The soft orange rays of the sun lit up Fourth Aunt’s face framed in Jinju’s hands.

  “Mother … it’s all my fault…. Mother … wake up….”

  Fourth Aunt’s lids rose slowly, but the whites of her eyes barely showed before the lids closed again, squeezing out a couple of sallow tears, which slid down her cheeks.

  Gao Yang watched Fourth Aunt’s white, prickly tongue emerge to lick Jinju’s forehead, like a bitch bathing her pup or a cow cleaning its calf. At first the sight disgusted him, but he reminded himself that she wouldn’t be doing that if her hands were free.

  Jinju took the melon out of her bundle, cracked it open with a well-placed thump, then scooped out some reddish pulp and placed it between the lips of Fourth Aunt, who began blubbering like a baby.

  Gao Yang’s attention was riveted on the melon, the sight of which twisted his guts into knots. Anger rose in him. What about me? he agonized. There’s enough to go around.

  The horse-faced young man, who had stopped heaving (Gao Yang was too busy watching Jinju to notice), had slid down the trunk that held him captive, until he was sitting in a heap at the base of the tree, his head jerking and his body slumping forward. He seemed to be bowing.

  Mother and daughter wailed, obviously revived by the melon they had devoured. This Gao Yang assumed, and he was shocked to see that they hadn’t finished even a single wedge. Jinju was cradling her mother’s head in her arms and crying so piteously that her entire body shook.

  “Dear Jinju … my poor baby,” wept Fourth Aunt. “I shouldn’t have hit you…. I won’t stand in your way anymore.… Go find Gao Ma … live happily together.

  Trucks, so loaded down with furniture that they nearly bottomed out, sputtered unsteadily toward them. The police, having finished their meal, emerged in a chatty mood, and when Gao Yang heard their approaching footsteps, his fear returned. A truck creaked and groaned as it drove by, the last slanting rays of sun reflecting sharply off its windshield, behind which sat a red-faced driver.

  What happened next Gao Yang would never be able to forget. The roadway was narrow, and the driver probably had a bit too much to drink. Fate would have been kinder to the horse-faced young man if he hadn’t had such an elongated head, but a triangular pice of metal jutting out from the heavily loaded vehicle caught him on the forehead and opened up an ugly gash, which showed white for an instant before gushing inky blood. A gasp escaped from his mouth as he slumped further forward; yet even with its extraordinary length, his head stopped short of the ground, since his arms were still held fast around the tree. His blood splattered on the hard-baked roadway in front of him.

  The police froze in their tracks.

  Old Zheng broke the silence by cursing the red-faced driver with heated fury: “You simple, motherfucking bastard!”

  The stammering policeman quickly stripped off his tunic and wrapped it around the young man’s head.

  CHAPTER 4

  Garlic in the black earth, ginger in sandy soil,

  Willow branches for baskets, wax reeds for creek,

  Green garlic and white garlic to fry fish and meat,

  Black garlic and rotteti garlic to make a compost heap….

  —from a ballad by Zhang Kou sung to township public servants during a garlic glut

  1.

  Fourth Uncle hit Jinju on the head with the red-hot bronze bowl of his pipe. She crumpled to the ground, angered and humiliated. “Brute!” she shrieked, “You hit me!”

  “You asked for it!” replied an enraged Fourth Aunt. “You re lucky we don’t kill someone as immoral as you!”

  “Zw immoral? What about you?” Jinju screamed. “You re a pack of thugs—”

  “Jinju!” Elder Brother Fang Yijun cut her off sternly. “I wont have you talking to our mother like that!”

  After beating Gao Ma to the ground, the Fang brothers stood over him in the flickering lamplight, looming large. Jinju reached up to wipe her burning forehead, and when she pulled back her hand she saw the blood. “Look what you did!” she screeched.

  Elder Brother Fang Yijuns silhouette shifted unevenly in the lamplight. “The first rule for a son or daughter,” he said, “is to listen to your parents.”

  Jinju spat defiantly. “I’m not going to listen to them, and I wont be a party to that bogus marriage pact!”

  “Her problem is she hasn’t been beaten enough,” Second Brother Fang Yixiang commented. “She’s spoiled.”

  Jinju picked up a bowl and threw it at him. “Then beat me, you thug, come and beat me!”

  “Have you lost your mind?” asked Fourth Uncle, cocking his head. In the kerosene lamplight his face seemed cast in bronze.

  “What if I have?” She kicked the table.

  Fourth Uncle jumped to his feet like an aging lion, fuming; he reached for his pipe again and swung it wildly at her head, which she protected with her arms, dodging the blow and screaming in terror.

  While the Fang brothers’ attention was diverted, Gao Ma staggered to his feet. “It’s me you want,” he said. A chill swept through Jinju’s heart as she watched him teeter precariously.

  The brothers whirled, the older one struggling to maintain his balance, the younger one standing straight and tall, as Gao Ma rushed forward, straight into a wattle fence, which protested loudly before toppling over, taking him with it. The fence was intended to protect the family’s vegetable garden; and later on, whenever Gao Ma relived the episode, he recalled the smell of fresh cucumbers.

  “Get him off our property!” Fourth Uncle commanded.

  Stepping onto the downed fence, the brothers jerked Gao Ma to his feet and dragged him out to the gate. He was such a big man that the older son was bent nearly double from the strain.

  Jinju rolled on the ground, crying pitifully. “Ever since you were a baby,” her mother complained, “all you’ve known how to do is eat and dress up. We spoiled you rotten. Now what do you want from us?”

  Jinju heard a thump, followed by the slamming of the front gate, and she knew her brothers had dumped Gao Ma outside. They cast distorted, awful shadows—one long, one short—that filled her with disgust. Her heart contracting, she sat on the toppled fence, where she cried and cried, until her grief and humiliation were submerged in a sense of remorse that started out as a mere trickle but grew into a flood tide. Then, having no more tears to shed, she jumped up in a mad search for something to destroy; unfortunately, she was too lightheaded to stand properly, and collapsed back onto the fence. Her hands thrust into the darkness in front of her, where they touched a thorny vine covered with young cucumbers. In her frenzy, she plucked them off as fast as she could, then tore at the vine, ripping it out of the ground and flinging it at her father as he squatted by the table sucking on his pipe. The vine twisted and writhed in the ring of lamplight, like a dying snake. But instead of hitting her father, it landed on the messy dinner table. He jumped to his feet. Mother climbed to hers.

  “You little rebel bastard!” Father shrieked.

  “You’ll be the death of us. Is that what you want?” Mother complained tearfully.

  “Jinju, how could you do that?” Elder Brother asked sternly.

  “Beat her!” Second Brother hissed.

  “Go ahead, beat me!” she shouted as she climbed unsteadily to her feet and charged Second Brother, who stepped aside and grabbed her by the hair as she passed. Clenching his teeth, he shook her several times before flinging her into the garden, where she crushed or tore or broke everything within reach, screaming at the top of her lungs; when she finished with the cucumbers, she turned her wrath on her own clothing.

  “Why did you do that?” Elder Brother complained to Second Brother. “As long as our parents are alive, only they have the right
to discipline her. All we can do is reason with her.”

  Second Brother snorted contemptuously. “I’ve had all I can take from you,” he said. “You got yourself a wife, and now you think you’re better than everyone else.”

  Instead of arguing back, the crippled Elder Brother limped across the wattle fence, bent down, and tried to help his sister up. But his cold hands merely intensified her disgust, and she twisted free of his grip.

  “Sister,” he implored her after straightening up. “Please do as I say. Get up and stop crying. Our parents are getting old. Starting with dirty diapers and bed-wetting, they raised us to adulthood. The last thing they need now is more heartache.”

  She was still crying, but her anger had begun to wane.

  “It’s all my fault. Since I can’t get a wife on my own, I have to use my kid sister as a bargaining chip….” He swung his gimp leg back and forth as he spoke, making the wattle under his foot snap and crackle. “I’m worthless….” He suddenly squatted down and began thumping himself on the head with his fists. He was soon crying like a little boy; his pain and despair softened Jinju’s heart and turned her wails into sobs.

  “Go live your life. I don’t need a wife. I’ll remain a bachelor until my dying day….”

  Mother walked up to him. “Get up, both of you,” she said. “What will the neighbors think if they see you fighting like cats and dogs?”

  “Get up!” Father echoed her sternly.

  The obedient Elder Brother made the wattle snap and crackle as he stood up. “Father, Mother,” he said between sobs, “whatever you say.”

  Jinju stayed awhile longer before climbing to her feet.

  By then, Second Brother had gone inside and turned the radio up full blast. An opera singer was shrieking—wah-wah.

  Elder Brother moved a stool up behind Jinju and laid his hands on her shoulders. “Sit down, Sister. ‘Strong winds always cease, and families soon return to peace/ You can’t rely on outsiders, but your brothers will always be there for you.”