Mo Yan - The Garlic Ballads

“The older you are, the more mule-headed you get,” she complained. “I don’t know what else to call someone who won’t let his own son help him sell his harvest.”

“He’s afraid I’ll skim off all the profits,” Number Two said sarcastically.

“Father’s just thinking about our well-being,” his elder brother rebuked him.

“Who asked him to?” Number Two grumbled on his way inside to go back to bed.

Fourth Aunt heaved a sigh as she stood in the yard listening to the creaking axles of the wagon slowly taper off in the murky darkness. Gao Zhileng’s parakeets set up a frenzy of squawks, and poor Fourth Aunt was a bundle of nerves as she faltered in the yard, which was now draped in dull yellow moonlight.

The cell door swung open and the policemen removed Number Forty-six’s handcuffs. She took a couple of jerky steps before flopping onto her cot, where she lay as if dead.

“Officers,” Fourth Aunt implored as they were closing the door, “please let me go home. My husband’s fifth-week memorial service is coming up.…”

The clanging door was her only answer.

1.

Jinju had nearly made it to Gao Ma’s yard when, with an anguished yelp, she collapsed. The fetus raised his fists and thundered, “Let me out! God damn it, let me out of here!”

“Gao Ma … come here … help me … come mind your son.

She crawled across the yard, then stood up by holding on to the door jamb. Four bare walls, a rusted pot, puddles of black water, and some rats that jumped out from behind the pot were all she saw inside. It looked as if a bull had been turned loose, and a sense of impending doom gripped her. As the child in her belly struck out with fists and feet, she wailed, “Gao Ma … Gao Ma …”

The baby punched her. “Stop shouting! Gao Ma’s a fugitive, a criminal! How did I wind up with parents like you?” He kicked her, sending shivers up her spine; again she yelped, and everything turned black. As she fell, she banged her head against the one table not smashed by her brothers.

Father, worn out from the beating he had administered, sat on the doorstep smoking his pipe. Mother, equally tired, sat on the bellows to catch her breath and wipe her tear-filled eyes. Jinju lay curled atop a pile of grass and weeds, neither crying nor complaining, a grin frozen on her face.

Her brothers returned, the older one carrying a couple of metal pails and a string of dried peppers, the younger one pushing a nearly new bicycle with some military uniforms on the rack. They were breathless. “He didn’t have much worth taking,” the younger one said. “I had to stop this one from smashing the pot,” chided his older brother, “so we could leave him something.”

“Tell me, do you still plan to run away with Gao Ma?” Father’s anger was rekindled.

The sound of music from Gao Ma’s cassette recorder filled her ears. Father’s words, out there somewhere, were irrelevant.

“Are you deaf? Your father asked if you still plan to run away with him!” Mother shouted, jumping down off the bellows and tapping her daughter on the forehead with a poker.

She closed her eyes. “Yes,” she replied softly.

“Beat her! Beat her! Beat her!” Father jumped up from the doorstep and stomped his feet. “String her up! I’ll show this little whore what it means to defy me!”

“I can’t, Father,” the older son dissented. “She’s my sister. She doesn’t know what she’s doing right now, that’s all. Go ahead, yell at her, that’ll do it. Jinju, you’re smart enough to know you’re bringing shame to the family by what you’re doing. People will be laughing at us for generations. Admit you’re wrong and start living a normal life. Mistakes are part of growing up. Be a good girl and say you’re sorry.”

“No,” she said softly.

“String her up!” Father repeated. “What’s the matter with you?” he railed at his sons. “Are you dead, or deaf, or what?”

“Father, we …” The older son was full of misgivings.

“She’s my daughter, and if I say she dies, she dies! Who’s going to stop me?” He stuck his pipe into his waistband and gave his wife a malignant look. “Go out and bolt the gate!”

She was quaking. “Let her do what she wants, all right?”

“Are you looking for a beating, too?” He slapped her. “Get out there and bolt the gate, I said.”

Mother backed up a couple of steps, her eyes starting to glaze over, then turned, like a marionette, and staggered out toward the gate. Jinju felt sorry for her.

Father took a coil of new rope down from the wall, shook it out, and ordered his sons, “Strip her!”

The older brother turned white as a sheet. “Dont beat her, Father. I don’t need to get married.”

Father lashed out with the rope, wrapping it around his son’s waist. That straightened him up in a hurry. He and his brother went up to Jinju and looked away as they groped for her buttons. But she jerked their hands away and removed her own jacket, then her trousers, and stood before them in a tattered undershirt and red underpants.

Father tossed one end of the rope to Elder Brother. “Tie her arms,” he commanded.

Holding the rope in his hand, Elder Brother begged Jinju, “Please, ask Father’s forgiveness.”

She shook her head. “No.”

Second Brother pushed Elder Brother away, then jerked Jinju’s arms behind her and tied them at the wrists. “The fact that this family has produced a Communist Party member who’d actually rather die than surrender amazes me.”

She laughed in his face. He tossed the loose end of the rope over the roof beam and looked over at his father.

“String her up!”

Jinju felt her arms jerk out and up. Her tendons went taut; her shoulders popped. All the slack went out of the skin on her arms, and sweat oozed from her pores. She bit down on her lip, but too late to hold back the pitiful wails that burst from her throat.

“Now what do you say — still plan to run away?”

She strained to raise her head. “Yes!”

“Pull, pull harder — pull her up!”

Green sparks flew past her eyes; the sound of crackling flames exploded around her ears; jute plants swayed in front of her. The chestnut colt was standing beside Gao Ma, licking his face clean of dried blood and grime with its purplish tongue as golden layers of fog rose from the roadside, from thousands of acres of jute plants, and from the pepper crop in Pale Horse County. The colt disappeared, then reappeared in the golden fog Elder Brother’s face was ashen, Second Brother’s was blue, Father’s was green, and Mother’s was black; Elder Brother’s eyes were white, Second Brother’s were red, Father’s were yellow, and Mother’s were purple. As she hung in the air, she looked down at them and felt enormously gratified. Another shout from Father. She stared into his green face and yellow eyes; with a grin she shook her head. He ran into the yard, fetched the whip from the oxcart, and lashed her with it; wherever the tip landed, her skin erupted in flames.