The Garlic Ballads

by Mo Yan

  A meteor streaked earthward, dragging its fiery tail behind it. Old Man Wang continued the tale: Nine-five’s mother-in-law had a dispute with a neighbor that day, and in the heat of the argument forgot her husband’s admonition to keep this secret. “For your information,” she said, “my son-in-law is a future Son of Heaven, and after he mounts the Dragon Throne, I’ll have him lop off all your heads, one after the other.” Treating it as an idle threat, the neighbor said, “Everybody knows that scrawny monkey of a son-in-law doesn’t have a bone in his body worthy of an Emperor. Even if he did, with a black-hearted, ham-handed mother-in-law like you, Old Man Heaven would replace those bones!” A passing spirit, overhearing the angry comment, reported it to the Jade Emperor, who was so incensed he ordered Heavenly Prince Li and his son Nuozha to go down and replace Zhang Nine-five’s bones. That afternoon Heavenly Prince Li and his son arrived at the City God Temple, where they were feted with a banquet, at which Heavenly Prince Li had a bit too much to drink and let slip their reason for coming. Recalling with gratitude Zhang Nine-five’s retraction of the imperial edict, the City God quickly appeared in a dream to the teacher, saying, “Dear teacher, your wife repeated something that angered the Jade Emperor, who sent Heavenly Prince Li and his son to remove your worthy son-in-law’s imperial bones and replace them with turtle bones during the third watch tonight. Tell your worthy son-in-law that he must grit his teeth and bear up under any pain, no matter how great, and not to scream under any circumstances. That way he retains his golden mouth and teeth of jade. One scream, and even his teeth will become those of a turtle. The mysteries of heaven cannot be divulged. Please inform your worthy son-in-law that he must watch what he says.” After ensuring that his message was understood, the City God mounted the wind and rode off. This time the teacher awoke covered with sweat. Knowing this was no false alarm, he immediately informed Nine-five that later that night, no matter how much pain he experienced, he was to grit his teeth and not cry out. Nine-five, who was smarter than most, understood at once. Later that night, as expected, his body was racked with unbearable pain; but, remembering his teacher’s admonition, he gritted his teeth and didn’t utter a sound. The teacher, angered over his wife’s dreams of imperial favor, was tempted to throttle her, but didn’t dare let on. As for Zhang Nine-five, he retained his golden mouth and teeth of jade. Then one summer day, as he sat under a tree reading a book, his peace was shattered by croaking frogs in the bay. “Stop your croaking,” he said, “or I’ll turn you all belly-up!” The frogs in Zhang Family Bay haven’t croaked since that day, and every time one of them gets the urge to break its silence, the croak no sooner leaves its mouth than the frog goes belly-up.

  “I guess a golden mouth and teeth of jade are as potent as they say.” Gao Ma giggled. “Grandpa Three, being Emperor isn’t as easy as it sounds. You’re not free to say what you want, like we are.”

  “True enough,” Grandpa Three agreed. “The Son of Heaven isn’t permitted light banter.”

  “But I don’t really believe that if the Emperor ordered horses to grow horns, or cows to grow scales, or roosters to lay eggs, or hens to crow, that those things would happen.”

  “In such matters some speak, others obey,” Grandpa Three insisted. “Since no nonsense ever passes the Emperor’s lips, if he says to grow horns, no horse would dare disobey. If you want an example closer to home, take our Secretary Wang. A township party secretary isn’t even a rank-seven official, but the way he swaggers around, if he said he only had seven teeth, who would dare pry open his mouth to check it out?”

  After a thoughtful pause, Gao Ma said, “You’ve got a point.”

  2.

  “Elder Brother Gao Ma,” Jinju said petulandy, “tell me about your relationship with the chief of staff’s concubine.”

  “It wasn’t the chief of staff’s concubine, it was the regiment commander’s concubine.”

  “Then tell me about your relationship with her.”

  “She wanted to get married, but I never got used to her foul breath or her pouting. I didn’t love her.” He cringed at the word “love.” “I figured she was my ticket to officer rank. I hated them, but I was no better than them, and didnt deserve a promotion.”

  “How about your love for me? Is it real or phony?”

  “You can actually ask that after all we’ve been through together?”

  “If you’d become an officer in the army, you probably wouldn’t have fallen in love with me.”

  “If I’d become an officer, I’d have turned bad.”

  “Would you have married the regiment commander’s concubine?”

  “Now listen to me. My promotion order was in the works, so I dropped the regiment commander’s concubine—after all, I was going to get what I wanted. So what happened? The regiment commander tore up the promotion order.”

  “Good for him!” Jinju said through clenched teeth.

  “If he hadn’t, I wouldn’t have become your man.”

  “Oh, I see, I’m a last-ditch rebound!” Jinju blurted out as she dissolved in tears, feeling terribly wronged.

  Gao Ma rubbed her shoulders in an attempt to console her. “Don’t cry. Who hasn’t been guilty of a youthful indiscretion at one time or another? I just want to sell my crop as fast as possible and give your blackhearted parents the money they demand for your hand, so we can live in peace together. Become an officer? What for? To sell my conscience? That’s what you have to do.”

  “Number Fifty-one, we’ve heard that you and the girl Fang Jinju from this village had an illicit love affair. Is that right?” The question came from a pale-faced interrogator sitting on Gao Ma’s cot. Gao Ma sat in the corner glaring daggers at the man, who grinned and said, “Apparently you hate me, too. Young man, you’re too extreme in your judgments. There are plenty of good officials in the party and the government.”

  “Crows are black wherever you go.”

  “Try to be a little more level-headed, my boy. I’m not here to argue with you. To tell the truth, I’m on your side. Trust me. I advise you not to smash your own water jug.”

  “Half a lifetime of being a slug is enough,” Gao Ma said.

  The interrogator fished out a pack of cigarettes. “Smoke?” Gao Ma shook his head. The interrogator lit one and let it dangle between his lips as he flipped through some papers filled with penciled notes. “I’ve studied your case thoroughly,” he said. “Even went on a fact-finding visit to your home village. I want you to understand that what you did at the county government compound on May 28th—destroying two telephones, setting fire to a stack of dossiers, and injuring a typist—was criminal, so your arrest was justified. And before the incident you incited the crowd to riot. Some call that counterrevolutionary activity intended to destroy social order, for which you must be punished.”

  “Is it serious enough for you to shoot me?”

  “No. I want a detailed account of your relationship with Fang Jinju. In my view, the tragic love affair was a major factor in your criminalization. “

  “You’ve wrong! I hate you all! If I could I’d skin every single corrupt official!”

  “You don’t want my help?”

  “I want you to shoot me!”

  The interrogator walked out shaking his head. Gao Ma heard him say to someone, “There’s a man whose head is screwed on wrong.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Calling me a counterrevolutionary is a slanderous lie:

  I, Zhang Kou, have always been a law-abiding citizen.

  The Communist Party, which didn’t fear the Jap devils—

  Is it now afraid to listen to its own people?

  ?—from a ballad sung by Zhang Kou following his interrogation

  1.

  Morning. A rail-thin cook was led into the cell. “Tell old Sun here what you want for your last meal, Number One,” the jailer said.

  The prisoner was momentarily speechless. ‘Tm not giving up yet,” he said finally.

  “Your appeal was denied. The sen
tence will be carried out.”

  The condemned prisoner’s head slumped forward.

  “Come on, now,” the jailer said, “be reasonable, and tell us what you’d like. This is the last village on your trip. Let us dispense a little revolutionary humanism.”

  “Tell me,” the cook urged. “We don’t want you leaving as a hungry ghost. It’s a long trip down to the Yellow Springs, and you’ll need a full stomach to make it.”

  The condemned man breathed a long sigh and raised his head. There was a faraway look in his eyes, but a glow in his cheeks.

  “Braised pork,” he said.

  “Okay, braised pork it is,” Cook Sun agreed.

  “With potatoes. And I want the meat nice and fatty.”

  “Okay, braised pork and potatoes. Fatty meat. What else?”

  The man’s eyes narrowed into slits as he strained to expand the menu.

  “Dont be afraid to ask,” Cook Sun said. “Whatever you want. It’s on the house.”

  He scrunched up his mouth as tears slipped down his cheeks. “I’d like some wafer cakes, fried on a griddle and stuffed with green onions, and, let’s see … some bean paste.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s enough,” the condemned prisoner said, adding warmly, “Sorry to put you to all this trouble.”

  “It’s my job,” Cook Sun remarked. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

  The two men left the cell.

  The condemned prisoner lay facedown on his cot and sobbed piteously, nearly drawing tears of sympathy from Gao Yang, who walked up quietly and tapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t cry like that,” he whispered. “It won’t help.”

  The condemned man rolled over and grabbed his hand. But when the frightened Gao Yang tried to pull it back, he said, “Don’t be scared, I won’t hurt you. I wish I hadn’t waited until my dying day to appreciate what it means to have a friend. You’ll be getting out someday, won’t you? Would you go see my father and make sure he doesnt grieve over me? Tell him I had braised pork, potatoes, and wafer cakes made from bleached flour, with green onions and bean paste, for my last meal. I’m from Song Family Village. My father’s name is Song Shuangyang.”

  “I give you my word,” Gao Yang promised.

  A short while later, the cook returned with the braised pork and potatoes, some peeled green onions, a bowl of bean paste, a stack of wafer cakes, plus half a bottle of rice wine.

  The guard removed the condemned prisoner’s manacles, then sat across from him, his revolver drawn, as the prisoner knelt before the food and wine. His hand shook as he poured the wine into a cup, then tipped his head back and tossed it down, managing a single “Father!” before he was choked up by a flood of tears.

  2.

  As the condemned man was taken out, he turned to give Gao Yang a smile, which plunged into his heart like a knife.

  “Outside, Number Nine!” a jailer ordered through the open door. Gao Yang nearly jumped out of his skin. A stream of warm urine dampened his shorts.

  “I’ve got a wife and kids at home, Officer! Make me eat shit or drink my own piss, but please don’t shoot me!”

  “Who said anything about shooting you?” the shocked jailer replied.

  “You’re not going to shoot me?”

  “What makes you think China’s got so many bullets we can waste them on the likes of you? Let’s go. You’ll be happy to know your wife’s here to visit you.”

  A weight fell from Gao Yang’s heart, and he nearly leaped through the cell door. As a pair of brass handcuffs was snapped on his wrists, he said, “Please don’t cuff me, Officer. I promise I wont run. Seeing them will just make my wife feel worse.”

  “Rules are rules.”

  “Look at my ankle. I couldn’t run on that if I wanted to.”

  “Button your lip,” the jailer barked, “and be grateful we’re letting her visit you at all. Normally we don’t allow that before sentencing.”

  He was led to a seemingly unoccupied room. “Go on, you’ve got twenty minutes.”

  Hesitantly he pushed open the door. There, sitting on a stool cradling the baby, was his wife; his daughter, Xinghua, stood so close to her their legs were touching. His wife stood up abrupdy, and he watched her face scrunch up and her mouth pucker as she began to cry.

  With his hands frozen to the doorframe, he tried to speak, but something hot and sticky stopped up his throat. It was the same feeling he’d had several days before as he watched his daughter in the acacia grove from the tree to which he was tied.

  “Daddy!” Xinghua spread her hands to feel where he was standing. “Is that you, Daddy?”

  3.

  As his wife tossed a bundle of garlic onto the bed of the wagon, she clutched her belly and doubled over.

  “Is it time?” an anxious, almost panicky Gao Yang asked.

  “I tried,” she said, “but I think this is it.”

  “Can’t you hold back for another day or two? At least until f ve sold the garlic?” There was a grudging edge to his voice. “If not a day or two late, a day or two earlier would have been fine. Why does it have to be now?”

  “It’s not my fault…. I didn’t will it to come now…. If it was a bowel movement, I could hold off a little longer, but …” She gripped the railing, beads of sweat bathing her face.

  “Okay, have your baby now,” he said with resignation. “Shall I go get Qingyun?”

  “Not her,” she replied. “She charges too much, and she’s not very good. I’ll go to the clinic. I think it’s a boy.”

  “Give me a son and I’ll buy you a nice, plump hen. I’ll even carry you on my back if you want.”

  “I can walk. Just let me lean on you.” By then she was lying facedown on the ground.

  “We’ll use the wagon.” After unloading the garlic, Gao Yang pulled the wagon through the gate, hitched up the donkey, then went back to get a comforter for the wagon bed.

  “What else do we need?”

  “A couple of wads of paper … everything’s ready … blue cloth bundle at the head of the kang.”

  Gao Yang went inside, fetched the bundle, then carried his wife piggyback out the gate and laid her gendy in the wagon. Xinghua, awakened by the commotion, was screaming. Gao Yang walked back inside. “Xinghua,” he said, “your mother and I are going to fetch you a baby brother. Go back to sleep.”

  “Where are you going to get him?”

  “In a burrow in the field.”

  “I want to go with you.”

  “Children aren’t allowed. We have to be alone to get one.” The moon still hadn’t risen as he drove his rickety wagon across the bumpy bridge, his wife moaning behind him. “What are you groaning about?” he asked, irritated by the sight of garlic-laden carts on the paved road. “You’re having a baby, not dying!”

  The moans stopped. The wagon smelled of garlic mixed with his wife’s sweat.

  The health clinic was located in a clearing by a graveyard. A cornfield lay to the east, a field of yams to the west, and a recently harvested field of garlic to the south. After reining in his wagon, Gao Yang went to locate the delivery room. He was stopped from knocking by a hand attached to a man whose features were unclear in the dark. “Someone’s having a baby in there,” the man said hoarsely. The glow of a cigarette dangling from his lips flickered on his face. The smoke smelled good.

  “My wife’s having a baby, too,” Gao Yang said.

  “Get in line,” the man said.

  “Even to have a baby?”

  “You stand in line for everything,” the man replied icily.

  That was when Gao Yang noticed the other carts parked outside the delivery room: two ox-drawn, one horse-drawn, and a pushcart over which a blanket was draped.

  “Is it your wife inside?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why’s it so quiet?”

  “The noisy part’s over.”

  “Boy or girl?”

  “Don’t know yet.” The man walked up and put his ear to a
crack in the door.

  Gao Yang moved his wagon up closer.

  The dark red, blurry moon had risen above the yard, where datura plants bloomed at the base of the wall, their flowers looking like ethereal white moths in the murky moonlight. Their pleasant medicinal odor vied with the stench from the outhouse, neither able to overpower the other. Gao Yang moved his wagon up next to the three carts: pregnant women lay in each, either faceup or facedown, their men standing nearby.

  As the moonlight brightened, the other carts and their occupants became increasingly visible. The two oxen were chewing their cuds, glistening threads of spittle suspended from their lips like spun silk. Two of the men were smoking; the third was waving his whip idly. Sure that he’d seen them somewhere, Gao Yang assumed they were farmers from villages in his township whom he’d met up with at one time or another. The expectant mothers were a fright: grimy faces, ratty hair, scarcely human. The one in the westernmost cart filled the air with hideous wails that had her husband storming around the area and grumbling, “Stop that crying—stop it! You’ll have people laughing at us.”

  The delivery-room door opened and a light beneath the eaves snapped on. A doctor in white, a woman, stood in the doorway, her hands encased in elbow-length rubber globes that were dripping wet— blood, most likely. The man pacing the area ran up to her. “What is it, Doctor?” he asked anxiously.

  “A little girl,” the doctor mumbled.

  Hearing that he was the father of a little girl, the man rocked a time or two, then fell over backwards, cracking his head resoundingly on tile, which he apparendy smashed.

  “What’s that all about?” the doctor remarked. “Times have changed, and girls are every bit as good as boys. Where would you males come from if not for us females? Out from under a rock?”

  Slowly the man sat up, trancelike. Then he began to wail and weep, like a crazy man, punctuating his cries with reproachful shouts of “Zhou Jinhua, you worthless woman, my life’s over, thanks to you!”