The Garlic Ballads (21 page)

“These are bad times. It’s getting harder to sell anything.”

“Wake the boys and have them load the wagon and hitch up the cow,” Fourth Uncle said. “I’m in no mood to do it. That tramp Jinju has me so upset the slightest thing gets my heart acting up.”

“Do you know that your sons are talking about dividing up the family property and going their own way?”

Tm not blind. Number Two’s afraid his brother will ruin his own marriage prospects. Number One sees how determined Jinju is to be with Gao Ma, and with the marriage contract now a worthless piece of paper, he figures hell take what he can get and live a bachelor’s life. Damned ingrates, that’s what they are!” Fourth Uncle was beside himself. “Once I sell this garlic crop we can add on three rooms, then divide everything up.”

“Will Jinju stay with us?”

“She can get her ass out!”

“Where’s Gao Ma going to get the ten thousand yuan we demanded?”

“He homesteaded four acres of land this year along with the two he already had, and planted it all with garlic. I passed his field the other day, and I can tell you he’s going to have a bumper crop, six thousand pounds at least, which he’ll sell for five thousand yuan. I’ll take that and tell him he can give me the other half next year. The little tramp’s getting off cheap, but I won’t let her raise some bastard kid here at home.”

“After she’s gone and
We
have Gao Ma’s money, she’ll really suffer.”

“Are you starting to feel sorry for her?” He tapped his pipe on the kang. “I don’t care if the little slut starves.”

He turned and went out to the cow shed, where Fourth Aunt heard him tap on the west-wing window. “Number One, Number Two—time to get up, load the garlic.” She got down off the kang, lit the lamp, and hung it beside the door, then poured a ladleful of water from the vat into the pot.

“What’s that for?” Fourth Uncle asked her when he returned.

“To make some broth,” she replied. “You’ll be walking half the night.”

“Don’t worry about me,” he snapped back. “I’m not going to walk. I’ll ride the whole way. Go water the cow if you want to make yourself useful.”

The brothers emerged from their room and stood in the middle of the yard, shivering in the cold night air and not saying a word.

Meanwhile Fourth Aunt dumped three ladlefuls of water into a basin, spread a layer of bran husks over the top, and stirred it with a poker. Then she carried it outside and laid it on the path as Fourth Uncle led the cow out of the shed. But it just stood there smacking its lips stupidly without taking a sip.

“Drink, drink,” she urged the animal. “Drink some water.”

The cow stood there without moving, a heated stench rising from its hide. The parakeets were at it again, their squawks rising like shifting clouds. The half-moon, a bit higher in the sky now, flooded the yard with golden rays. The stars had lost some of their glitter.

“Throw in some more bran husks,” Fourth Uncle said.

Fourth Aunt did as she was told.

“Come on, girl,” he said, patting the cow gently. “Drink up.”

The cow lowered her head, snorted into the basin, then began lapping up the water.

“What are you standing around for?” Fourth Uncle snapped at his sons. “Hitch up the wagon and load the garlic!”

After fetching the wagon bed, they rolled out the wheels and axles and assembled the vehicle. There were too many thieves in the village to leave it outside the gate. All the garlic had been stacked in bundles by the southern wall, under sheets of plastic.

“Sprinkle some water on it to keep it from drying out,” Fourth Uncle said. His eldest son did as he was told.

“Why not take Number Two along?” his wife asked him.

“No,” he said curtly.

“Stubborn ass,” she groused. “At least get something decent to eat in town, since I don’t have anything to send with you.”

“I thought there was still half a grainy flatcake,” Fourth Uncle said.

“That’s all you’ve eaten for days.”

“Get it for me.” He led the cow out the gate and hitched it to the wagon. Then he walked back into the yard, threw a tattered coat over his shoulders, stuffed the cold flatcake down the front of his shirt, picked up a switch, and headed out the gate.

“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.

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.

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.