The Garlic Ballads

by Mo Yan

  Disappointed that she had not seen Gao Ma, she was, however, greeted by neighbor women at the well, and the peculiar expressions she thought she saw in their eyes vanished when she looked more closely. Maybe I’m imagining things, she thought. On her third trip to the well she ran into the wife of Yu Qiushui, Gao Ma’s neighbor, a big woman in her thirties with lofty breasts whose nipples seemed always to be quivering beneath her jacket. As the two women faced each other across the well, Yu Qiushui’s wife said, “Gao Ma wants to know if you’ve had a change of heart.”

  Her heart nearly stopped. “Has he?” she asked softly.

  “No.”

  “Then neither have I.”

  “Good for you,” Yu Qiushui’s wife replied, looking around before tossing a wad of paper to the ground. Jinju quickly bent over as if to draw some water, swept up the note, and stuffed it into her pocket.

  That afternoon, when it was time to return to the fields, Jinju begged off, complaining of a sour stomach. Father eyed her suspiciously, but Elder Brother said generously, “Stay home and get some rest.”

  So she went to her room, bolted the door behind her, and took out the wad of paper (during lunch her preoccupation with the note had made it nearly impossible to keep up a conversation with her parents), which she carefully unfolded with a trembling hand. She could hear herself breathing. When some cold air seeped in through the cracks in the door, she anxiously wadded the paper up again and jerked the door open. The outer room was empty. Then, hearing a rhythmic pounding out in the yard, she tiptoed over to the window, where she saw Mother standing under the radiant autumn sun, pounding ears of grain husks with a glossy purplish mallet. Her net jacket stuck to her sweaty back, and a layer of yellow husks stuck to the jacket.

  Finally, it was safe for Jinju to smooth the paper out. She avidly read the handful of printed characters:

  Tomorrow afternoon. The cornfield. We’ll run away together!

  The words, written in ballpoint, were sweat-smudged.

  4.

  More than once she made it as far as the edge of the cornfield, but each time she turned and walked back. Cool autumn winds had removed most of the moisture from the crops, so that Gao Ma’s corn rustled noisily and the bean pods in her field had begun to crack and pop. Elder Brother and Father were up ahead, Elder Brother complaining about Eighth Uncle Yang commandeering Second Brother to help make briquettes at the peak of the harvest season. “What are you grumbling about? That’s what family is all about—helping one another.” Chastised, Elder Brother held his tongue, turning to look at Jinju as if to seek her support.

  Father was crawling along on his hands and knees, Elder Brother was hobbling along on his game leg, and the pitiful sight of the two men weakened her resolve to leave. Gao Ma’s corn shuddered, it rustled, and she knew he was hiding in there somewhere, anxiously watching her every move. As her longing for him grew, she found it increasingly hard to recall what he looked like; so she concentrated instead on the aroma of indigo and the smell of his body. She decided to help Father and Elder Brother harvest the beans before she ran away.

  Throwing herself into her work, she quickly outstripped them both, and by late afternoon had taken in more than the two of them combined. When they neared the final section of the bean field, they stood up and stretched, breathing a collective sigh of relief. Father looked contented. “You’ve worked hard today,” her brother complimented her. “When we get home I’ll ask Mother to cook you a couple of eggs.”

  Sadness kept her from answering. She was already recalling Mother’s virtues and some hazy events from her own childhood. My gimpy elder brother carried me piggyback; now he and Father are crawling and hobbling through the field, cutting down beans. The setting sun has lit up the western sky. Their heads glisten. Even the wildwoods are gentle and inviting. There to the north is the village where I’ve lived for twenty years. Ribbons of chimney smoke mean Mother is cooking dinner. If I run away … the thought was unendurable. Off to the east an ox plodded down the road, pulling a cart piled high with beans. “The dog days of summer, sweltering in the sixth month,” the driver was singing. “Second Daughter rides her donkey out into the wilderness….”

  Sparrows flew by like a dissolving cloud, heading for Gao Ma’s corn, which stirred briefly. A tall figure came into view, then just as quickly vanished. She moved toward it but stopped. She was being pulled in opposite directions by equally powerful forces.

  Father’s voice broke the stalemate: “What are you standing around for? The earlier we finish, the sooner we can go home.”

  There was no warmth in his voice now, and her resolve returned in a flash. Throwing down her scythe, she ran toward Gao Ma’s cornfield.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” an unhappy Father yelled.

  She kept running.

  “You’re not going home before we finish, are you?” Elder Brother shouted.

  She turned. “I have to pee. You can come along if you don’t trust me!” Without another glance at either of them, she darted into the cornfield.

  “Jinju.” Gao Ma grabbed her around the waist and held her for a moment. “Crouch down,” he whispered. “Run like the wind!”

  They ran hand in hand down a furrow, heading south as fast as their legs would carry them. Dry corn leaves slapped her in the face, so she closed her eyes and simply ran where the hand led her. Warm tears slid down her cheeks. I’ll never come back, she was thinking. The silken thread tying her to home had parted, and there was no turning back. The din set up by dry corn leaves nearly paralyzed her with fear, and she could hear the pounding of her heart.

  The cornfield was bordered by a riverbank lined with indigo bushes, and even in her confused state she sensed their unique, intoxicating aroma.

  Gao Ma dragged her up onto the riverbank. Instinctively she turned to look back and saw an enormous bronze orb sinking slowly toward the horizon: she saw multihued clouds; she saw an expanse of sunlit fields; and she saw Father and Elder Brother stumbling toward her, brandishing their scythes. Tears gushed from her eyes.

  Gao Ma dragged her down the inside slope of the riverbank, but by then she was too weak to stand. The narrow river formed the boundary between two counties—Pale Horse to the south, Paradise to the north. It was called Following Stream. The flow of shallow murky water caused a barely perceptible swaying of reeds at the river’s edge as Gao Ma hoisted her onto his back and ran into the water without taking off his shoes or rolling up his pant cuffs. From her piggyback vantage point she heard dry reeds whisper and water splash. She knew the mud was thick and gooey by the way he was panting.

  After climbing the opposite bank, they were in Pale Horse County, where a vast marshland spread out before them, planted exclusively with jute. As a late crop, it was still kingfisher green, and still full of life. They felt stranded in the middle of an ocean, and no shore in sight.

  With Jinju still perched on his back, Gao Ma dashed into the jute fields. Now they were like two fish in that ocean.

  CHAPTER 5

  In the eighth month sunflowers face the sun.

  If the baby cries, give him to his mother.

  Be brave, fellow townsmen, throw out your chests—

  If you cant sell your garlic, go see the county administrator….

  —from a ballad sung by Zhang Kou,

  the blind minstrel, during a garlic glut

  1.

  The police frantically placed the horse-faced young man into a red-and-yellow police wagon. Gao Yang couldn’t see his face, but there was blood all over the white tunic wrapped around his head, and more of it dripping to the ground. The unlocked handcuffs dangling from his wrist dragged along the ground as he was lifted into the wagon. A young policeman jumped into the cab to take over for the driver, who stood by ashen-faced, neck scrunched down and arms hanging stiffly at his sides as he quaked in terror. After confiscating his driver’s license, the policemen kicked him repeatedly.

  “Little Gao, hurry up and get the prison
ers loaded,” old Zheng shouted. “We’ll come back to pick this one up later.”

  One of the policemen unlocked Gao Yang’s handcuffs and ordered him to his feet. As he heard the command and then the click of the lock, his first instinct was to pull his arms forward from around the tree; but they wouldn’t answer his bidding, and he was horrified to realize that they might as well not have existed at all. The only sensation was of a heavy weight pressing down on his back. When the policeman moved the limp arms around front with his foot, Gao Yang was relieved to find that they were still attached to his shoulders.

  Now that the horse-faced young man was in the police van, the policeman unceremoniously recuffed Gao Yang’s hands in front; then he and his partner lifted him to his feet and told him to walk to the van. At that moment he wanted nothing more than to comply with the comrade policemen’s request, since they had enough trouble on their hands already. Anything to make their job easier. Which was why the discovery that his legs were no more capable of moving than his arms so disturbed him. He blushed from a profound sense of embarrassment.

  They had to drag him to the van. “Get in.” He looked up bashfully, trying to speak, but his lips seemed frozen. This time they appeared to appreciate his predicament, for instead of yelling, they lifted him up under his arms; he tried to help by making himself as light as possible when his curled legs left the ground, and the next thing he knew he was lying beside the bloodied young man across the bed of the vehicle.

  Another curled-up object was flung into the van. It was Fourth Aunt Fang. He could tell by the way she was groaning that she had banged her hip badly when she landed.

  The rear door was latched after two policemen climbed in and sat on side benches. Then the driver started the engine, and off they went. As they drove through the government compound, Gao Yang took a last look at the poplar tree where he had been shackled, and actually felt a tinge of nostalgia. Bathed in late-afternoon sunlight, the trunk had turned deep brown, and the once lush green leaves now looked like a cache of ancient bronze coins. Purplish blood belonging to the horse-faced young man had puddled at the base. The moving van was still parked there, its driver surrounded by a crowd of neatly dressed people who, to all appearances, were making life miserable for him.

  Jinju, her belly jutting out in front, stood motionless, a sight that reminded Gao Yang of Fourth Aunt’s admonition to go find happiness with Gao Ma. He sighed, for at that moment Gao Ma, who had scaled the wall one step ahead of the police, was a fugitive with handcuffs dangling from one wrist.

  As soon as the police wagon was out on the main road, it sped up, and the eerie howl of its siren sent chills up Gao Yang’s spine. But he quickly got used to it. Jinju now seemed to be chasing them, but so slowly she all but disappeared from view; and when they negotiated a curve, she and the government compound were gone.

  Fourth Aunt was curled up in a corner. Her blurry eyes were open, but what she saw was anyone’s guess. Blood from the young man’s head dripped onto the floorboards—you could smell it. His body twitched, and his wrapped head lolled back and forth, emitting an occasional puffing noise.

  Lying in the speeding police van, Gao Yang felt vaguely motion-sick. He saw swirling dust through cracks in the rear door; trees lining the road fell like dominoes, and fields on both sides spun in slow motion. Other vehicles pulled over when they heard the shriek of the siren, and Gao Yang watched a hounded tractor with an open-air cab crash into a scarred willow tree at the side of the road. Jittery cyclists were left in their dust, making Gao Yang’s chest swell with pride. Have you ever gone this fast before? he asked himself. No, never!

  2.

  As they sped along, Gao Yang detected the scent of fresh raw garlic in the young man’s blood. Surprised, he breathed in deeply to make sure he wasn’t mistaken. No, it was garlic, all right—raw and clean, like bulbs fresh from the ground, a drop of nectar still clinging to the spot where the stalk has snapped.

  Gao Yang touched the drop of nectar with his tongue, and his taste buds were treated to a cool, sweet taste that relaxed him. He surveyed his three acres of garlic field. It was a good crop, the white tips large and plump, some at a jaunty angle, others straight as a board. The garlic was moist and juicy, with downy sprouts beginning to appear. His pregnant wife was on her hands and knees beside him, yanking garlic out of the ground. Her face was darker than usual, and there were fine lines around her eyes, like veins of spreading rust on a sheet of iron. As she knelt, knees coated with mud, her childhood deformity—a stunted left arm that inconvenienced her in everything she did—made the job harder than it ought to have been. He watched her reach down and pinch the stalks with a pair of new bamboo chopsticks; the effort made her bite her lip each time, and he felt sorry for her. But he needed her help, for he’d heard that the co-op was setting up shop in the county town to buy the garlic crop at slighdy over fifty fen a pound, higher than last year’s peak price of forty-five. He knew the county had expanded the amount of acreage given over to garlic this year; and with a bumper crop, the earlier you harvested yours, the sooner you could sell it. That was why everyone in the village, women and children included, was out in the fields. But as he looked at his pitiable pregnant wife, he said, “Why not rest awhile?”

  “What for?” She raised her sweaty face. “I’m not tired. I just worry the baby might come.”

  “Already?” he asked anxiously.

  “I figure some time in the next couple of days. I hope it waits till the harvest is in, at least.”

  “Do they always come when they’re due?”

  “Not always. Xinghua was ten days late.”

  They turned to look behind them, where their daughter sat obediently at the edge of the field, her sightless eyes opened wide. She was holding a stalk of garlic in one hand and stroking it with the other.

  “Careful with that garlic, Xinghua,” he said. “Each stalk is worth several fen.”

  She laid it down and asked, “Are you finished, Daddy?”

  “We’d be in trouble if we were,” he said with a chuckle. “We wouldn’t earn enough to get by.”

  “We’ve barely started,” her mother answered tersely.

  Xinghua reached down to run her hand over the pile of garlic beside her. “Yi!” she exclaimed. “The pile’s really getting big. We’ll make lots of money.”

  “I figure we’ll bring in over three thousand pounds this year. At fifty fen a pound, that makes fifteen hundred yuan.”

  “Don’t forget the tax,” his wife reminded him.

  Oh, right, the tax,” Gao Yang muttered. “Not to mention extra-high expenses. Last year fertilizer cost twenty-one yuan a sack. This year it’s up to twenty-nine ninety-nine.”

  “They think it sounds better than thirty,” she grumbled.

  “The government always deals in odd numbers.”

  “Money’s hardly worth the paper it’s printed on these days,” his wife complained. “At the beginning of the year you could buy a pound of pork for one-forty, now it’s up to one-eighty. Eggs went for one-sixty a handful, and they were big ones. Now it’s two yuan, and they’re no bigger than apricots.”

  “Everyone’s getting rich. Old Su from the business institute just built a five-room house. I almost died when I heard it cost him fifty-six thousand.”

  “That kind never has trouble getting money,” his wife said. “But people like us, who scratch a living out of the earth, will still be poor thousands of years from now.”

  “Count your blessings,” Gao Yang said. “Think back a few years ago, when we didn’t even have enough to eat. The past couple of years we’ve had good bleached flour for every meal, and our elders never had it that good.”

  “You come from a landlord family, and you can still say your elders never had it as good as us?” his wife mocked him.

  “What good did being landlords do them? They were too stingy to eat and too cheap to shit. Every fen went into more land. My parents suffered their whole lives. Mother told me once tha
t before Liberation in ‘49, they would start each year with eight ounces of cooking oil, and have six left at the end of the year.”

  “Sounds like some kind of magic to me.”

  “Nope. She said that when they cooked a meal they’d wet a chop-stick in water before dipping it in the oil. Then for every drop of oil that stuck to the chopstick a drop of water remained in the bottle. That’s how you start out with eight ounces and end up with six.”

  “People knew how to get by back then.”

  “But their sons and daughters learned what suffering is all about,” Gao Yang said. “If not for Deng Xiaoping, the landlord label would have stuck to me.”

  “Old Man Deng’s been in power for ten years now. I hope the gods let him live a few more.”

  “Anyone that high-spirited is bound to live a long time.”

  “What puzzles me is how senior officials can eat like kings, dress like princes, and have the medical care of the gods; then, when they reach their seventies or eighties and it’s time to die, off they go. But take a look at our old farmers. They work all their lives, raise a couple of worthless sons, never eat good food or wear decent clothes, and in their nineties they’re still out in the fields every day.”

  “Our leaders have to deal with all lands of problems, while we con cera ourselves with working, eating, and sleeping, period. That’s why we live so long—we don’t wear our brains out”

  “Then tell me why everyone wants to be an official and no one wants to be a peasant.”