Mo Yan - The Garlic Ballads

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 sentence 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.