Mo Yan - The Garlic Ballads

“The scar-faced woman marries a harelipped man. That way nobody has any complaints,” the little man said.

“Screw your mother! After this one’s born, I’m starting divorce proceedings … ow, Mother!”

The doctor led the woman inside. “Wait here,” she said to the husband, who paused in the doorway for a moment, then walked back to his wagon and picked up his feedbag. The white pony snorted loudly as it began munching the feed.

The other three expectant fathers clustered around the little man, who handed cigarettes around. Gao Yang, not used to smoking, had a fit of coughing. “Where are you from?” the little man asked him.

“The village south of here.”

“Where the Fang family lives?”

“Yes.”

“They’ve got a slut for a daughter!” he said indignantly.

“You mean Jinju? She’s as innocent as the day is long,” Gao Yang defended her.

“Who asked you?” Gao Yang’s wife demanded.

“Innocent, you say?” thé little man’s lip curled. “She changes her mind, and three weddings are called off. My fellow villager Cao Wen had a nervous breakdown because of it.”

“It hasn’t been easy for her,” Gao Yang said defensively, “what with all those beatings and stuff. She and Gao Ma were made for each other.”

The little man muttered sorrowfully, “What are the times coming to when a girl can decide who she marries?”

A prematurely gray man standing next to his oxcart said, “It’s those movies. Young people nowadays learn all the wrong things from movies.”

“Cao Wens a fool,” one of the others commented. “Why is someone like him, with a powerful official for an uncle behind him, mooning over not having a wife, anyway? It’s not worth losing your mind over.”

“Not enough girls is the problem,” the gray-haired man said. “They get engaged when they’re still teenagers. I’d like to know where all the girls went. There are plenty of young bachelors, but you never seen an unmarried woman. It’s gotten to the point where young men fight over them like warm beancurd, even if they’re crippled or blind.”

Gao Yang coughed. The gray-haired fellow angered him. “Where do you get off laughing at others?” he said. “No one knows what’s in a mother’s belly till it’s out. One head or two, who can say?”

The gray-haired man, missing Gao Yang’s point completely, continued, although he could have been talking to himself for all anyone knew. “Where did the girls go? Into town? City boys aren’t interested in girls off the farm. A real puzzle. Take a steer or a horse: when it’s time to raise their tails and drop a young one, if it’s female people jump for joy; but if it’s a male, nothing but long faces all around. With people it’s just the opposite. Rejoicing follows the birth of a boy, but long faces greet the birth of a girl. Then when the boy grows up and can’t find a wife, out come the long faces again.”

A baby’s cry interrupted their conversation. The little man stopped feeding his horse and walked toward the delivery room tentatively, as if his legs were lead weights.

“You there, little man,” the doctor called to him as she opened the delivery-room door, “your wife’s given you a son.”

He grew two inches on the spot. Striding into the clinic, he emerged moments later with his newborn son, whom he placed in the bed of the wagon. “Say, friend,” he said to the gray-haired man, “watch my horse for me while I go fetch the mother of my son, would you? Dont spook him.”

“He’s sure feeling potent all of a sudden,” Gao Yang heard one of the women comment.

“Hell be able to stand tall around other men now.”

He emerged all stooped over, carrying his wife on his back, her feet dragging in the dirt; one of her shoes fell off, but the gray-haired man retrieved it.

“I’m holding you to your word,” she said to her husband once she was lying in the wagon bed.

“I mean it. I did!”

“You’ll buy me a nylon jacket.”

“One with two rows of metal snaps.”

“And a pair of nylon stockings.”

“Two pairs. One red, one green.”

The little man put the feed basket away, picked up his whip, and turned the wagon around until it was perpendicular to the other carts. The pony’s hide glistened like silver. After reining the animal in, he passed more cigarettes around. “I don’t smoke,” Gao Yang said. “I’ll just waste a good cigarette.”

“Give it a try,” the little man encouraged him. “It’s only a cigarette. Can’t you see how happy I am? Aren’t you glad for me?”

“Sure, sure I am.” Gao Yang accepted the cigarette.

The gray-haired man’s wife was next. “Brothers,” the little man said, “you’ll all have sons. Kids are like yellow fish in schools. Since our sons will all have the same birthday, they’ll be like brothers when they grow up!”

He cracked his whip, shouted at his horse, and rode out of the compound in high spirits, the clicking of his horses’s hooves quickly swallowed up in the murky moonlight

The gray-haired man’s wife had a baby girl.

The other man’s wife delivered a stillborn, misshapen fetus.

After taking his wife into the delivery room, Gao Yang paced the compound, which he now had all to himself. By this time the moon shone directly down on the datura plants. His wife was toughing it out, since not a sound came from the delivery room. Outside, all alone with his donkey, he felt emotionally drained, so he walked over to the flower bed, where, in the grip of his private terror, he sniffed the strange fragrance and studied the fluttering petals. He bent down and poked one of the plump white leaves. It felt cool as dewdrops rolled off it. His heart fluttered. Before he knew it, his nose was buried in the flower, his nostrils filled with its strange fragrance. With a grimace he gazed at the moon and sneezed violendy.

At daybreak his wife bore him a son. Shit! he muttered amid his joy. Why? Because his darling son had six toes on each foot.

His wife’s heart knotted up, but Gao Yang consoled her, “You’re the mother of my children, so you should be happy. ‘Special people have special features/ Who knows, he might grow up to be a big official. And when that happens, you and I will get a taste of the good life.”

4.

Gao Yang said, “I broke the law. How can I make it up to you?”

His wife sighed. “You weren’t alone. Even Fourth Aunt Fang was arrested, at her age. Compared to her we’re in fine shape.”

The baby started crying, so she stuffed a nipple into his mouth. Gao Yang leaned over to study the face of his son, whose eyes were closed. He flicked some flaky white skin off the face. “He’s getting so big,” he said. “He keeps growing out of his skin.” The baby kicked his mother’s breast with his six-toed right foot. She pushed it away. “You have to name him,” she said.

“Let’s call him Shoufa — Law Abider,” he said after a thoughtful pause. “I don’t expect him to become a high official, and I’ll be happy if he’s a farmer who abides by the laws.”

Xinghua felt her father’s arm, from his shoulder all the way down to the handcuffs. “What are these, Daddy?”

Gao Yang stood up. “Nothing.”

The baby slept at his mother’s breast, so when she stood up she gendy removed the nipple, then laid him on the table and hurriedly opened her bundle. She fished out a pair of plastic sandals (new), a blue workshirt (also new), and a pair of black gabardine pants (brand new). “Put these on,” she said. “I was worried sick when they dragged you off half-naked. I wanted to bring you some clothes, but didnt know where you were until a couple of days ago. I spent last night outside. Then this morning a kind woman opened all the right doors for me to see you.”