The Garlic Ballads (23 page)

Water, water. He fell to his knees and greedily sucked up the water like a thirsty horse. Within seconds his mouth, throat, and stomach shared the relief of the craved-for water. But the walls of his stomach cramped up with the sudden flood, and he heard the crackling sounds of bone-dry organs being irrigated. After another minute of frenzied drinking, he raised his head for about ten seconds to catch his breath, then leaned over and started in again, more leisurely this time, in order to savor the water’s taste and warmth.

The water was brackish, salty, and hot. But he buried his face in it one last time before slowly getting to his feet and letting it drip onto his neck and shoulders, then down to his abdomen, reaching the blisters left by the scar creepers, which popped open and released their poison; the killing pain tightened his rectum.

“Oh, Mother!” he moaned weakly, and lowered his head until his glance fell on the well’s crumbling walls and some tender green moss floating on the surface that was home to schools of tiny tadpoles. Three large speckled frogs crouched at the edge of the well, their opaque croaking sacs expanding and retracting rhythmically as six emerald eyes stared greedily at him. He jumped to his feet. A dry belch rose in his throat; his stomach and intestines felt as if hundreds of tadpoles were squirming around in them. Water erupted like a geyser out his mouth. Having seen all he could bear of the well, he turned and returned to the mulberry and acacia woods, rocking back and forth as he walked.

Even though the sun had fallen beneath the horizon, the sky had not yet turned dark; a heavy mist setded around multitudes of silkworms as they raised their strangely contoured metallic heads and gnawed through tinplatelike mulberry leaves, each crunch penetrating Gao Ma’s chest and sawing at his heart. He sat down against a mulberry tree and stared at the filmy waves of acacia blossoms peeking out through the enshrouding mist; the fragrance deepened at dusk, and a saffron powder soared on the wind currents as silkworm droppings like iron filings landed on his legs, which stretched out in front of him.

The moon rose in the deep-blue canopy of heaven, accompanied by a smattering of golden stars; the dew-laden silkworm droppings falling on his legs seemed to him to be the excrement of heavenly constellations. Every so often he felt compelled to jump to his feet in reaction to a powerful stimulus, which evaporated as soon as he tried to bend his knees. At other times he wanted to remove the manacles dangling from his wrist; but that resolve, too, vanished when he tried to raise his arm.

The silence was broken by the flapping wings of night birds; he thought he saw them deposit traces of phosphorescence on the tips of mulberry branches as they flew by. But when he strained to get a closer look, he realized it was just his imagination, and he couldn’t be sure he had even seen any birds.

It was past midnight, and he was getting cold; as his stomach growled, he felt an immense buildup of gas, which he couldn’t pass, no matter how he tried. He spotted Jinju moving past mulberry trees and skirting acacias, a red bundle over her arm, her belly sticking way out in front. She cringed as she walked up to him, stopping about five paces away. She held a quivering jute plant in one hand and was scraping its surface with her fingernails. “Come here, Jinju,” he said. Her face changed color—from red to yellow, from yellow to light green, then to dark green, and finally to a terrifying gray. “Elder Brother Gao Ma,” she said, “I’ve come to say goodbye.” The ominous tone of her words hit him full in the face; he struggled to go to her, but his legs were tied to the tree, and he couldn’t move. So he stuck out his arms, which began to grow, longer and longer. Just as his fingers were about to touch her face, when he could detect the chill of her body on his nails—at that critical point between the right length and not quite long enough—his arms stopped growing. “Jinju,” he called out anxiously, “you can’t leave—not before we have spent even a single happy day together! I’ll marry you as soon as I’ve sold my garlic, and Î promise you’ll never again be buffeted by the wind, baked by the sun, soaked by the rain, or frozen by the snow! You’ll stay home to mind the children and work in the kitchen!”

“Stop dreaming, Elder Brother Gao Ma. You’ll never sell your garlic. It’s rotted away. You broke the law when you demolished the county offices. The police have a Wanted poster out on you…. I have no choice but to take our son and leave.”

She opened her red bundle and took out a small cassette recorder. “This is yours,” she said. “I took it when my second brother wasn’t looking. You’ll be alone after I’m gone, and this will ease some of the loneliness.”

She turned and walked off, her red clothes dissolving into a white shadow.

“Jinju!” His own shout woke him.

He watched the pale half-moon climb into the southeastern sky; disappointment and loss glazed over his eyes. With mounting fear, he relived what had just happened in his mind. Over and over he counted the days, and it came out the same each time: the baby was due either yesterday or today.

Finally he stood up, just as he had less than a year before in Pale Horse County, on that piece of land between the jute field and the pepper crop. It was dusk then, and after getting to his feet he had spat out at least a dozen mouthfuls of blood. The Fang brothers had beaten him so badly they had nearly sent him to see Yama, the King of the Underworld—and would have if not for Deputy Yangs life-saving powder, or if the wife of his neighbor Yu hadn’t looked after him, or if she hadn’t come to him with a message from the Fangs that he could marry Jinju for the sum of ten thousand yuan—cash money for her freedom. He recalled the immense joy the news had brought him, and how he had wept openly and bitterly. Mrs. Yu had remarked that they were selling their daughter like livestock, and he recalled saying to her, “Dear Sister-in-Law, Im crying because I’m so happy. Ill scrape the ten thousand together somehow. I’ll keep planting garlic, and I’ll sell it. Jinju will be my bride within two years.”

Garlic! All because of that damned garlic. He ripped at mulberry branches, bent acacia trees, crashed into mulberry trunks, tore acacia bark—north, south, east, west, he circled in and out among the stand of trees. A sudden cloud formation of birds was swallowed up by the moon, and he was just as suddenly penned in by four walls—the demons’ pen. Men prosper for a decade, and demons dare not draw near! Gao Ma, from the day you met Jinju, from the first time you held her hand, you were fated to learn a lesson in blood.

Gao Ma spent the night among the mulberries and acacias, not emerging from the world of ghosts and goblins until dawn broke, and then feeling chilled all over—except for deep down in his chest, where a breath of warmth remained. The puffiness had abated around his eyes, and that brought him comfort. The red sun warmed him as it rose in the sky, and that brought him pleasure. His stomach growled; that was followed by the release of dozens of cold farts, proof that his digestive system and his internal organs were still in good working order; that restored hope. Regaining his clear-headedness squelched the desire to go into the village to see Jinju, for he guessed that the police were probably armed and hiding in his house, waiting for him to walk into a trap. Only a fool would enter the village in broad daylight, so he decided to go after nightfall. Even if Jinju was due today, her mother would be with her, so there was nothing to worry about. The crudest mother in the world is still a mother.

But what about the days to follow? He stopped to ponder the question. He couldn’t show his face anywhere in Paradise County, not with handcuffs dangling from his wrist. He’d go see Jinju after dark, then leave for the Northeast. Once he was back on his feet he’d send for her and the baby.

The stand of trees came to life with the arrival of brightly colored birds. Feeling hungry, he searched out a young eight-foot acacia whose branches were covered with blossoms. He jumped up, grabbed the tip of the tree, and bent it over with all his might. It arched, cracked loudly, and snapped in two. The exposed portions of pale wood oozed a yellow sap, but he was already reaping a two-handed harvest of acacia flowers—fully opened, partially opened, even unopened buds, it didn’t matter—and stuffing them into his mouth. The first few entered his stomach whole, but they were followed by petals that released their unique flavor—an overripe, somewhat bitter tang to the older blossoms and a slight puckery bite to the buds—as he chewed. The newly opened blossoms with their delicious nectar were the best. It took him most of the morning to devour three trees’ worth.

After Gao Ma couldn’t eat another acacia flower, he detected a sweet, slightly tart aroma in the hot, humid midday air; looking closely, he found purple, red, and off-white thorn-tipped balls in the crotches of mulberry branches. “Mulberries!” he shouted joyously. He attacked them just as he had the acacia petals: at first he closed his eyes and gobbled them down, green, red, black, white. But after a while, he grew more selective. Off-white mulberries: hard, semisweet, tart, somewhat puckery. Red mulberries: more yielding, sweeter, only slighdy tart. Purple mulberries: soft, very sweet, with a strong, pleasant aftertaste. He hunted for the purple ones, soon learning that if he shook a mulberry tree, only the ripe ones fell to the ground. By the afternoon he knew his lips were stained purple by looking at his fingers.

The bellyache hit at sunset. After rolling on the sand in excruciating pain until stars lit up the sky, he relieved himself for a good half-hour. The pain vanished. He could only guess at the time.

He would check things out that night, no matter what. He was already feeling the pangs of alienation from other people, even though he had heard women talking as they gathered mulberries, and had watched farmers in the field from a hiding place on the riverbank. A southern wind carried the smell of ripened millet, a sign that tomorrow the harvest would begin. “Silkworms emerge without warning, and millet ripens overnight.” That increased his anxiety: having planted two acres of millet, he had been looking forward to a good harvest. Now that his garlic crop was a total loss, how would he make it through the year if he lost his millet? As he wearily rubbed his face, he noted that his forehead and the corners of his mouth were becoming lined.

He made plans to sneak into the village under the cover of darkness, doubting that the police would subject themselves to the discomfort of spending two nights in his house waiting for him to show up. The first order of business would be to get some clothes and, more importantly, shoes. A pair of new sneakers from his army days lay in a cardboard box in the corner—one of the few items that had survived the Fang brothers’ ransacking. There was also the 470 yuan from the initial sale of garlic—he had been one of the few lucky villagers who had managed to sell any in the glut—which he had stuffed in a crack in the eastern wall. He would retrieve this hidden cache, giving Jinju four hundred to buy food and baby clothes. The remaining seventy would be enough to get him to the northeast, where he would look up his old army buddy the deputy county head and ask him to write to Paradise County for a formal pardon.

The dangling handcuffs gleamed darkly in the murky air. They had to go, that’s all there was to it. He rubbed the thin metal ring digging into his wrist, and knew he could eventually free himself with a hammer and chisel. One more time—he needed to go home just one more time.

As he retraced his steps of the past day, avoiding streets and roads, he stayed alert to the sounds around him. Proceeding step by cautious step, he comforted himself with the thought that the police were on unfamiliar turf and did not enjoy the support of the masses; so even if he came face to face with them, he still had a good chance of getting away. Their revolvers gave him pause—they had fired a couple of shots the day before—but even if they shot him dead, so what? And if they were such bad shots that they’d missed him in broad daylight, he felt even safer at night.

His nerves were on edge as he turned into the lane, but his heart was warmed by the familiar shapes of houses and trees on either side. From the nearby stand of acacias he surveyed his yard, which was quiet, except for the bats flying around his window. He picked up a dirt clod and flung it toward the window. There was a loud thump when it hit the overturned pot on the ground. Nothing stirred in the house or in the yard. He threw another dirt clod, with no result, but skirted the yard just in case, and went to the back of the house, hugging the wall as he crept up to the rear window. He could hear nothing but scurrying rats.

Feeling secure at last, he remembered seeing clusters of bright parakeets darting in and out among the acacia trees, and he assumed that Gao Zhileng’s cages must have sprung a leak, releasing the birds into the night sky. The chestnut colt, which seemingly would never grow to adulthood, was galloping up and down the lane, its sleek hide smelling like bath soap.

The door stood open; that made the hair on his arms stand up. His eyes were already used to the dark, and he spotted the figure in the doorway of the east room the moment he entered. His first impulse was to turn and run; but his feet seemed to take root. He detected the faint smell of blood just before the familiar but oddly stagnant odor of Jinju came rushing toward him. The scene from last night’s nightmare flashed through his mind like a bolt of lightning, and he had to grab the doorframe to keep from falling.

With trembling hands he picked up a match from the stove; it took three tries to light it. In the flickering matchlight he saw Jinju’s purple face as she hung in the opening of the door, bulging eyeballs, lolling tongue, and sagging belly.

Reaching up as if to hold her in his arms, he crumpled heavily to the floor like a toppled wall.