Mo Yan - The Garlic Ballads

The man turned and walked off, and a moment later Zhang Kou heard a motorbike start up and go putt-putting down the road. He stood beneath the old tree without moving for a long, long time. The woman who ran a snack shop near the big old tree saw him. “Is that you, Great-Uncle Zhang?” she called out warmly. “What are you standing there for? Come on over for some nice meaty buns, fresh from the oven. My treat.”

A wry laugh escaped from him as he banged the tree trunk with his staff; then he exploded in furious shrieks: “You black-hearted hyenas, do you really think you can shut me up so easily? Sixty-six years is long enough for any man to live!”

The poor woman gasped in alarm. “Great-Uncle, who got you so angry? Is anything worth getting hysterical over?”

“Blind and poor, my life’s never been worth more than a few coppers. Anyone who thinks he can shut Zhang Kou’s mouth better be prepared to overturn the verdicts in the garlic case!” Back on the street again, he began singing at the top of his lungs.

The proprietress heaved a long sigh as she watched the blind old man’s gaunt silhouette lurch down the street.

Three days later the autumn rains turned the side street into a sea of mud. As the snack-shop proprietress stood in her doorway gazing at the street lamp at the far end of the street, with raindrops dancing in its pale yellow light, she experienced a sense of desperate loneliness and paralyzing boredom. Before shutting the door and going to bed, she thought she heard the strains of Zhang Kou’s dreary song hover around her. She jerked the door open and looked up and down the street, but the music died out. It returned when she shut the door again, more intimate and moving than ever.

The next morning they found Zhang Kou’s body sprawled in the side street, his mouth crammed full of sticky mud. Lying beside him was the headless corpse of a cat.

Rain clouds brought with them the nauseating stench of rotting garlic, pressing it down over the town. Thieves, beggars, and other undesirables carried Zhang Kou’s body up and down the side street, wailing and lamenting from dawn to dusk, when they dug a hole next to the big old tree and buried Zhang Kou in it.

From that day onward the proprietress of the snack shop heard Zhang Kou sing every night. Soon the little side street turned into a street of ghosts. One by one the local residents moved away, except for the proprietress, who one day hanged herself on the big tree, joining the area’s spectral population.

2.

All night long Fourth Aunt wheezed and coughed and fussed, robbing her cellmates of their sleep. The one they called Wild Mule cursed angrily, “If you re dying, damn you, be quick about it!”

‘Tm not trying to cough, girl,” Fourth Aunt said apologetically, “and I’d surely stop wheezing if I could.

The girl with long, pretty brows who slept on the bunk above Fourth Aunt grumbled, “It’s criminal the way they make an old woman like her serve time.”

Wounded by the reminder of injustice, Fourth Aunt felt tears well up in her eyes and spill out. And the more she thought about it, the worse she felt, until an agonizing groan swelled in her throat.

Her cellmates — about a dozen in all — sat up. The tender-hearted ones threw their coats over their shoulders and came up to see what was wrong, while those not so easily moved just grumbled and cursed. “Knock that off!” Wild Mule demanded. “I knew this would happen. I thought you were supposed to be hard as nails. You got off easy — five years for burning down a government building!”

Between sobs and wheezes Fourth Aunt moaned, “Girl, I know I’ll die in this camp….”

A sleepy-eyed guard appeared at the window and rapped on the bars. “What’s going on? Who’s making all that noise in the middle of the night?”

“Reporting, Officer,” the long-browed girl said. “Number Thirty-eight is sick.”

“What’s she got?”

“She cant stop coughing and wheezing.”

“That’s nothing new. Now knock it off and get some sleep. Calisthenics first thing in the morning, don’t forget.”

After the guard left, the long-browed girl poured some water into a mug and held it up to Fourth Aunt’s lips, then reached under her pillow for some tablets. “Here, Auntie,” she said, “these are for pain and inflammation. Take a couple, they might just help.”

“I can’t use up your medicine, dear,” Fourth Aunt demurred.

“We’re all in the same boat,” the girl replied, “so why worry about niceties like that now?”

The girl helped Fourth Aunt take the tablets. “Young lady,” a tearful Fourth Aunt said, “how can I repay you for this?”

“Try her out as a daughter-in-law,” Wild Mule volunteered.

“With those sons of mine?” Fourth Aunt remarked. “They’re not worthy of somebody like this.”

“And you, while you’re selling a mule up front, the head of a turtle sneaks up from behind,” the girl snapped.

Wild Mule sat up angrily and glared at her. “Who are you talking to?”

“You,” the girl replied defiandy. “I’m calling you a stinking whore who sells her pussy!”

Mortified, then enraged, Wild Mule picked up a scuffed leather shoe and flung it at her antagonist. “I sell pussy?” she snarled. “And you don’t? Stop acting so high and mighty around me. Nice little virgins don’t wind up in a place like this!”

The long-browed girl ducked just in time for the shoe to sail by and hit the shrewish woman in bed three, who was serving time for drowning her own child; she picked it up off the floor and hit the long-browed girl on the head.

All hell broke loose then, with the long-browed girl and Wild Mule clawing and scratching each other, the shrew cursing up a storm, and Fourth Aunt shrieking tearfully. The other prisoners joined in by banging on the bars, howling, or getting in a few cheap shots of their own.

Two jailers armed with nightsticks burst into the cell and quickly subdued the combatants without worrying about sorting things out first.

“The next person who makes a sound,” one of them threatened, “goes hungry for three days!”

The other said, “Numbers Twenty-nine and Forty, outside! You’re coming with us.”

“I didn’t do anything,” the long-browed girl whined.

“Shut up,” said the jailer, underscoring her command with a well-placed thump with her nightstick.

Wild Mule smiled shyly. “Officers, I admit I was wrong, but I promise I won’t do it again. I just want to get some sleep.”

“Don’t give me that! Now get dressed and come with me.”

Fourth Aunt, bent at the waist, pleaded for her cellmates. “Don’t blame them, Officers, it’s all my fault. I’m just an old woman who can’t stop wheezing and coughing. The other girls couldn’t take it.”

“That’s enough,” the jailer said. “Don’t pull that saintly mother act on us!”

As the jailers led the long-browed girl and Wild Mule out of the cell, Fourth Aunt had to cover her mouth to keep from crying out loud.

That night she had a succession of nightmares. First she dreamt that Jinju came to see her, but when Fourth Aunt stepped forward, her pregnant daughter’s tongue shot out and her eyes bulged. Fourth Aunt woke with a scream, her skin cold and clammy. Telephone wires strung outside the prison wall sang in the autumn winds. Moonbeams slanting in through the window landed on the face of the thief in bed four. Hardly a grown woman yet, the girl slept with her nose scrunched up and ground her teeth to one of her many dreams.

Fourth Aunt had barely closed her eyes again when Fourth Uncle stood at the foot of her bed, his head bloodied, and said, “Mother of my children, why are you still here? I want you with me.” He reached out to Fourth Aunt, who once again was startled out of her sleep. Her heart was thumping wildly. Out beyond the camp’s kitchen a rooster crowed. One more time and it would be daybreak.