Mo Yan - The Garlic Ballads

“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.

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 prisoners 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?”