Mo Yan - The Garlic Ballads

She regained consciousness in a corner of the wall; people were talking, including, it seemed to her, Deputy Yang. She struggled to her feet; lightheaded and leg-weary, she collapsed at the foot of her parents’ kang. A hand reached out to help her up; she didn’t know whose it was. She found her parents’ faces. “You can beat me to death if you want, but even then I’ll belong to Gao Ma, because I slept with him and I’m carrying his baby.” With that she dissolved in tears and loud wails.

“I give up,” she heard Father say. “Tell Gao Ma to bring me ten thousand yuan. We’ll hand over the girl when he gives us the cash.”

Jinju smiled.

2.

Gao Ma’s scowling son roared, “Let me out of here! Let me out this minute! What kind of mother wouldn’t even let her own son out?”

Her eyes bled. Pushing away the cool head of the chestnut colt, she said, “Don’t come out, child. Mother knows what’s best for you. What do you plan to do out here? Do you have any idea how tough life is?”

He stopped struggling. “What’s it like out there? Tell me.”

The chestnut colt tried to lick her face with its warm, purplish tongue. “Can you hear the cries of the parakeets, child?” she asked. “Listen carefully.”

His ears stood straight up as he concentrated on the sound. “Those are parakeets in Gao Zhileng’s yard — yellow ones, red ones, blue ones, every imaginable color. They’ve got curved beaks and topknots on their crowns. They eat meat, drink blood, and suck brains. Do you still have the nerve to come out, child?”

This struck fear into the boy, who drew into himself.

“Look, child, see how that broad expanse of garlic looks like a nest of poisonous serpents, all intertwined? They’re also meat eaters, blood drinkers, and brain suckers. Do you still have the nerve to come out, child?”

His hands and feet curled inward; his eyes frosted over.

“I wanted to come out and see the world when I was like you, child, but once I got here, I ate pig slops and dog food, I worked like an ox and a horse, I was beaten and kicked, I was even strung up and whipped by your grandfather. Do you still want to come out, child?”

He scrunched his neck down between his shoulders, becoming a virtual ball with staring, pathetic eyes.

“Child, your father’s a fugitive from justice, and his family is so poor they cant even raise rats. Your grandfather was struck down by a car, your grandmother has been arrested, and your uncles have divided up all our property. The family no longer exists — some members are gone, others are dead, and there’s no one to turn to. Do you still want to come out, child?”

The boy closed his eyes.

The chestnut colt stuck its head in through the open window to lick her hand with its warm tongue. The bell around its neck clanged loudly. She stroked its smooth head and sunken eyes with her free hand. The colt’s hide had the cool sheen of costly satin. Tears welled up in her eyes; there were also tears in the colt’s eyes.

The boy began to squirm again. “Mother,” he said, squinting, “I want to come out and look around. I saw a spinning fireball.”

“That’s the sun, child.”

“I want to look at the sun.”

“You can’t do that, child — its flames burn your mother’s flesh and skin.”

“I saw flowers in the fields, and smelled their perfume.”

“Those flowers are poisonous, child, and their perfume is a miasma. They will cause your mother’s death!’’

“Mother, I want to come out and stroke the red colt’s head.”

She reached up and slapped the horse, momentarily stunning it before it withdrew its head from the window and galloped away.

“There’s no colt, child — it’s an apparition.”

The boy squeezed his eyes shut and stopped moving.

She found some rope in the corner, tossed it over a beam, and made a noose in the other end. Then she fetched a stool and stood on it. The coarse fibers of the rope pricked her fingers. Maybe she should rub some oil on it. She was beginning to waver. Then she heard the colt whinny outside the window, and to protect the boy from any further shocks, she thrust her head through the noose and kicked the stool away. The colt stuck its head through the window again. She wanted to reach out and stroke its cool, glossy forehead, but she couldn’t lift her arms.

1.

As Gao Ma scrambled over the wall, two shots rang out, raising puffs of smoke and sending tiny shards of the mud wall down on him. He stumbled into a pigpen, scattering muck in all directions and causing a couple of startled pigs to squeal and run around in panic. Not knowing which way to turn, he quickly crawled into the covered area. A loud buzz erupted above his head, and sharp pains tore at his cheeks and scalp. He jerked his head up and saw that he had disturbed a hornets’ nest hanging from the sorghum-stalk covering. With hundreds of agitated hornets descending on him like a yellow cloud, he flattened out in the muck, afraid to move. But, reminded that the police were right on his heels, he wrapped his arms around his head, wriggled back outside, grabbed the enclosure fence, and leapt over it, landing behind a woodpile. He quickly rolled out into the yard, jumped to his feet, and turned to head east, when someone grabbed him by the arm and held him fast. Panic-stricken, he looked up into the face of a fair-skinned man. Recognition set in almost at once: it was Schoolmaster Zhu from the local elementary school. Having suffered a broken pelvis at the hands of the Red Guards, Zhu could no longer stand straight; the frames of his glasses were held together with tape.

Gao Ma fell to his knees, like an actor in a soap opera, and pleaded for Schoolmaster Zhu to save him from the police, who were trying to arrest him in connection with the garlic incident.

Zhu grabbed his hand and led him into a dark room where chicken feathers and garlic leaves nearly covered the floor and a pickling vat filled with sweet-potato slops stood in the corner. “Climb in,” Zhu said.

Undeterred by the stench, Gao Ma climbed into the vat and squatted down, raising the level of slops to the rim, where it frothed noisily. He was up to his neck in the stuff, but Schoolmaster Zhu pushed him until it covered his mouth. “Dont make a sound,” Zhu said, “and hold your breath.” He covered Gao Mas head with a well-used gourd, then slid a battered lid over the vat, leaving just a crack.

Footsteps sounded in the yard. Gao Ma raised his head to listen. He could tell the police had reached the sty. “You … you’re hiding in the p-pigpen, don’t think I wont f-find you. C-come out of there.”

“Come out or well shoot!”

“Comrades, what’s going on out here?” Zhu asked them.

“C-catching a c- counterrevolutionary! ”

“In my pigpen?”

“Stay out of the way. We’ll get to you after we’ve caught him,” the policeman demanded. “Come out of there, or we’ll shoot! We can use deadly force if you resist arrest.”

“Comrades, is this a joke or something?”

“W-who’s joking?” the stammerer said. “I’m going in to see for myself.”

With his hands on the low wall, he leapfrogged into the pigpen, then waded into the covered area and stuck his head in, where he was greeted by a couple of hornets that stung him on the mouth.

“Comrades,” Schoolmaster Zhu said, “what do you take me for, a Nationalist spy? Do you really think I’d try to put something over on you? I heard shots, and when my pigs started to squeal, I came out to see what was going on, just in time to spot a dark figure running like hell toward the southern wall.”