Mo Yan - The Garlic Ballads

Wang Tai roared with laughter. “How’d it taste? How was it?”

“Kind of like tea,” he lied.

“Who else wants to try?” Wang Tai asked. “Who’s next?” No takers.

Some of the smaller kids ran out onto the athletic field and shouted, “Come over here, quick! The sixth-graders are seeing who’ll drink his own pee!”

Wang Tai turned to another of the sixth-graders. “Li Shuanzhu, go out there and take care of those little pussies.” Then he lowered his voice. “Hey, guys, do you know how girls pee?”

They said they didn’t.

Wang Tai spread his legs, squatted down, and made a hissing sound with his mouth. “Like that.”

The sixth-graders shrieked in delight.

Then Wang Tai lined them up on the west edge of the precipice. “Now we’ll see who can piss the highest,” he said. “The winner gets a prize.”

A dozen or more students lined up, with Wang Tai at the head, and launched that many watery columns — some yellow and some white, some clear and some murky — into the air. Most crashed down on the wall dividing the boys’ and girls’ lavatories, but at least two landed on the other side. By far the most turbulent stream belonged to Wang Tai himself — Gao Yang was absolutely certain of that.

A shriek erupted from the girls’ lavatory, followed by curses.

Gao Yang couldn’t believe it when Wang Tai put the blame on him.

The principal dragged Gao Yang into his office and smacked him in front of the teachers. “The sons of heroes are as solid as bricks, the sons of reactionaries are all little pricks,” he announced, before turning to one of the younger teachers. “Liu Yaohua, go to Gaotong Village and tell Wang Tai’s and Gao Yangs fathers I want to see them.”

Gao Yang burst out crying, afraid his father would suffer again, all because of him.

The old inmate scooped the bun out of Gao Yang’s piss and squeezed it with both hands; it made a bubbling sound as the gummy urine dripped through his gnarled, grimy fingers. After he’d squeezed it dry, he wiped his hands on his pants, then tore off a chunk and popped it into his mouth.

“See, buddy, he’s eating it. Now, go on, drink up. It’s your own piss, so it can’t hurt you,” the grinning middle-aged inmate said, softly enough so the guards wouldn’t hear him.

Gao Yang glared at the would-be murderer, feeling morally superior to someone for the first time in his life. Killer! Thief! Incestuous old bastard! When the poor and lower-middle-class peasants made me drink my own piss, I did it. And when the Red Guards made me drink it, I did it. But for common criminals like you? “I won’t do it!” he announced defiantly,

“Are you sure about that?” the middle-aged inmate asked with a thin laugh.

“I’m sure,” Gao Yang replied as he glanced at the old man, who was gobbling up the piss-soaked bun; he felt a wave of nausea rise in his throat.

“You’d better do as he says, if you know what’s good for you,” the young inmate urged him.

“If the guards ordered me to drink it, I’d have no choice,” Gao Yang replied. “But I’ve done nothing to offend any of you.”

“Maybe not,” the young man said sympathetically. “But rules are rules.”

“Go on, drink,” the old inmate added his encouragement. “People have to learn how to deal graciously with humiliation. Look at me — I’m drinking your piss, aren’t I?”

“I’m not the tyrant you think I am, friend,” the middle-aged inmate said earnestly. “Believe me, it’s for your own good.”

Beginning to waver, Gao Yang was actually touched by the man’s apparent sincerity.

“Go on, Little Brother, drink it,” the old man croaked, his throat filled with pieces of steamed bun.

“Do as he says, Elder Brother,” the young cellmate urged him with watery eyes.

Gao Yang’s nose began to ache — he was about to cry — and when he looked at the three criminals who shared his cell, he felt like a man whose loved ones were coaxing him into taking a dose of bitter medicine.

“I’ll drink it … I’ll drink it…” His throat tightened until he couldn’t string together a complete sentence.

“Good boy — that’s what I like to hear!” the middle-aged inmate said with a friendly pat on the shoulder.

Gao Yang sank slowly to his knees on the cement floor in the middle of his own puddle of piss, which retained the enticing odor of garlic. As he closed his eyes, images of his father and mother drifted into his mind. Father wore a tattered conical rain hat, a scrawny tuft of hair peeking through the hole at the top. He was hunched over and was wheezing badly. Mother, struggling on tiny bound feet, was hauling a wagon uphill in the snow. Gao Yang quickly flattened his feverish lips against the cold cement floor. The smell of garlic — ah, the smell of garlic! He sucked up a mouthful of cool urine, and another, and a third … ah, the smell of garlic!

The middle-aged man grabbed him by the shoulders and lifted him up. “Little Brother,” he said, “you can stop now.”

After being led over to his cot, Gao Yang sat onthe edge as if in a trance, not saying a word for about half as long as it takes to smoke a pipeful. A gurgle rose in his throat. Another long pause before his lips parted and he blurted out tearfully, “Father … Mother … today your son … drank his own piss … again.”

Father wore his tattered conical rain hat, and wheezed badly. He held a switch in his hands as he stood in the school office, looking pitifully into the face of the nearly apoplectic principal. “Mr. Principal, sir, the boy didn’t know what he was doing.

“What do you mean, he didn’t know what he was doing?” the principal barked as he banged his desk. “He’s a little hooligan!”

“A hoo … ligan?”

“He peed on the girls in his class! Was that your idea?”

“Mr. Principal… sir … I’m a lifelong reader of the classics … benevolence, justice, rites, knowledge, trust… no contact between boys and girls. …” Father was wailing before he finished.

“You can put away that bunch of feudalistic crap,” the principal snarled.

“I had no idea he could do something as shameful as that,” said Father, who was trembling from head to toe. He raised the thick willow switch in his hands. “I… I’ll kill him.… I’ll beat you to death You let me down, you good-for-nothing little bastard As if I didn’t have enough trouble, now you do something like this….”

The hunched-over old man in a tattered conical rain hat raised the willow switch in both hands … it arched downward toward Gao Yang’s head but landed on his shoulder….

“What do you think you’re doing?” the principal bellowed. “Where do you think you are, pulling a stunt like that?” He yanked the switch out of Father’s hands and tossed it aside. “We’ve decided to expel Gao Yang. Take him home with you. Once you get him home you can beat him to death for all we care.”

“Mr. Principal, please don’t expel me, please don’t….” Gao Yang felt awful.

“You expect us to keep a hooligan like you?” The principal glared at him. “Go on — go with your father!”

“Mr. Principal…” Father bent double, again holding the switch in both hands, quaking badly, tears running down his face. “Mr. Principal, I beg you … let him graduate, please.”

“Button your lip!” the principal demanded. “Is Team Leader Wang out there?”

Gao Yang watched Wang Tai’s father, Six-Wheels Wang, enter. Team Leader Six-Wheels would later be his superior for twenty years. For two decades Gao Yang would serve as one of his commune underlings. A tall, beefy man, he was barefoot and stripped to the waist; his skin was tanned and healthy looking. Refusing to wear a belt, he always tied his baggy white pants at the waist, his scythe tucked into the waistband. Gao Yang called him Master Six.