The Garlic Ballads (26 page)

He cried out for his mother and fell to his knees in the mud.

Dawn came. He had, apparently, gotten a little sleep, but now he was sore all over. Fire seemed to shoot from his nose and mouth, both of which nearly ignited spontaneously from the superheated air. He shivered so violently that the metal springs of the cot creaked. Why do people shiver? That’s what I want to know—why do people shiver? A covey of little red girls ran and jumped and screeched and yelled on the ceiling, so flimsy that swirling gusts of wind easily bent them this way and that. One of them—naked, holding a bamboo staff—stood off by herself. “Isn’t that Xinghua?” he asked out loud. “Xinghua, get down from there this minute! If you fall, you’ll kill yourself!”

“I can’t get down, Daddy.” She began to cry. Large crystalline tears hung suspended in midair on the tips of her hair instead of falling to the floor.

A strong gust of wind swept the children away, and a gray-haired old woman slogged unsteadily through the roadside muck, a tattered blanket thrown over her shoulders, one shoe missing. She was mud-spattered from head to toe.

“Mother!” he screamed. “I thought you were dead!”

As he ran toward her, he felt his body grow lighter, until he was as insubstantial as the cluster of little girls. Buffeted by gusty winds, his body was stretched to several times its original length, and he had to hold on to the rails around him to keep his balance as he stood before his mother. She rolled her muddy eyes and gaped at him.

“Mother!” he exclaimed excitedly. “Where have you been all these years? I thought you were dead.”

She shook her head lightly.

“Mother, eight years ago all the landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, bad elements, and rightists had their labels removed, and land was parceled out to people who work the fields. I married a woman with a crippled arm and a good heart. She bore you a granddaughter and a grandson, so our line wont die out. We have a surplus of food, and if this year’s garlic crop hadn’t rotted before it could be sold, we’d even have some money saved up.”

Mother’s face underwent a metamorphosis, and a pair of wormy maggots slithered out of her muddy eye sockets. Once the initial shock had worn off, he reached over to pluck out the maggots; but when he touched her skin, a clammy chill streaked from the tip of his finger all the way to the core of his heart. At the same time a yellow fluid oozed from Mother’s body, and her flesh and sinews flew off in chunks in the wind, until only a bare skeleton stood before him. A fearful scream tore from his throat.

Shouts came from far away: “Hey, pal… say, pal… wake up! Are you possessed or something?”

Six blazing green eyes were fixed on him. A clawlike hand, covered with green fur, reached out, utterly terrifying him. The icy hand recoiled when it brushed his forehead, as if scalded.

The green claw-hand returned to cover his forehead, bringing terror and contentment at the same time.

“You’re sick, pal,” the middle-aged inmate said loudly. “You’re burning up with fever.” He covered Gao Yang with a blanket—almost tenderly—this same man who had forced him to drink his own piss. “I’d say it’s the flu, so you’ll have to sweat it out.”

His mind was in an upheaval, and he was shivering uncontrollably. Why do people shiver? he asked himself. Why do they have to do that? His cellmates came up and added the weight of their blankets to his. He was still shivering, setting the four blankets in sympathetic motion. One rode up until it covered his face and blocked out the light. The stench made him gasp. Sweat oozing from his pores had the lice squirming and leaping. He sensed the imminence of his own death, if not from the illness that gripped him, then from the stifling oppressiveness of piled-on blankets that felt like moth-eaten cowhides. Straining with all his might, he managed to lift the errant blanket from his face, and immediately felt like a man whose head has bobbed to the surface of a swamp. “Help me, you people—-save me!” he screamed.

He struggled to grab an invisible handle that was the only thing keeping him from falling into a stupor—like a man grasping a drooping willow branch as he sinks into a quagmire. The space before his eyes was light one minute, dark the next. In the darkness, all the demons danced; his dead parents and the cluster of red children leaped and spun, giggling as they circled him, tickling him under the arms or tweaking his ears or nipping him on the buttocks. Father wandered a glass-strewn street, willow switch in hand, frequendy stumbling for no apparent reason—sometimes intentionally, it seemed, and sometimes as if an invisible behemoth had pushed him. But every time he fell, either by design or by accident, he rose with shards of glass inlaid in his face, which sparkled and shone.

When Gao Yang reached out to grab the spirits, the darkness vanished, leaving only the giggles of spirits to reverberate near the ceiling. The emerging sun lit up the sky, but not his cell, even though he could make out the shapes of objects in it. The towering middle-aged inmate pounded angrily on the creaky door with both fists, while the other cellmates—one old and one young—raised their voices like wolves baying at the moon.

Thudding footsteps in the corridor signaled the approach of the guards. A face appeared at the opening. “Is this a rebellion or something?”

“It’s no rebellion. Number Nine’s so sick I think he’s dying.”

“This cell’s more trouble than all the others combined! I’ll tell the watch officer when he comes on duty.”

“He’ll be dead before then.”

The guard shone his flashlight on Gao Yang, who squeezed his eyes shut to keep out the blinding light.

“His color looks pretty rosy to me.”

“Because he’s got a fever.”

“Why all the fuss over a common cold?” The guard walked off.

Gao Yang returned to an agonizing realm of alternating light and darkness, where Father and Mother led little demons up to torment him. He could feel their breath and smell their odor. But, as before, when he reached out, they vanished, taking the darkness with them and leaving behind only the anxious faces of his cellmates.

Breakfast was slid in through the slot at the bottom of the door. He overheard his cellmates talking in hushed voices.

“Try to eat something, buddy,” the middle-aged inmate said as he held him by the shoulders.

He didn’t even have the strength to shake his head.

Some time later he heard the door open and felt a rush of fresh air fill the cell, which helped clear his head. One blanket after another was peeled away like layers of skin.

“What’s wrong?” It was a gentle, feminine voice. A simple question, so earnest and so warm. Dimly he saw the once-kindly face of his mother. Opening his eyes to gaze through strata of mist, he discerned the shape of a large white face atop a long white gown. The gown had an antiseptic smell; the wearer, the clean, soapy smell of an aristocratic woman.

It
was
an aristocratic woman, husky and thick-waisted, who held his wrist in icy fingers that moved up to his forehead, drawing the welcome antiseptic smell more powerfully to his nostrils. As he breathed it in greedily, the stuffiness of his chest began to dissolve. The scent of the woman gave him a powerful sense of well-being; an airy feeling of sadness, beauty, and blessedness all rolled into one cradled him. His nose ached—he was about to cry.

“Hold this down.” He watched her shake a glittering glass tube, then slip it under his armpit. “Hold it tight.”

A dark, gaunt, uniformed man wearing an unsure, uneasy expression stood behind the woman, hiding like a bashful child in front of strangers.

“You should be dressed,” the woman said.

He tried to say something in reply, but was unable to.

“That’s how you people brought him in,” the middle-aged inmate said. “Stripped to the waist and barefoot.”

“Warden Sun.” The woman turned to address the gaunt man behind her. “Can you have his family bring him some clothes?”

The warden nodded, then disappeared behind her.

“What’s it like, being in here?” he heard the warden ask.

“Great!” the young inmate boomed. “Cool, comfortable, a touch of Paradise! If not for those damned lice, that is.”

“Lice, you say?”

“No—at least none that can speak.”

Officer, how about dispensing some of that revolutionary humanism by getting rid of the lice in here?”

“That’s a reasonable request,” the warden said. “Dr. Song, have the infirmary make up some pesticide.”

“All together there are three of us in the infirmary. Where are we supposed to find the time to mix pesticide for every cell in the place?” Dr. Song grumbled as she removed the thermometer from under Gao Yang’s armpit. He heard her suck in her breath when she held it up to the fight.

From her leather bag she removed an instrument, draped it around her neck, and stuck the ends in her ears. Then she lifted a shiny, round metal object dangling from the end of a quivering rubber tube and bent over until her large white face was directly over his. The smell of her skin nearly sent him into another world, as the metal object moved heavily from spot to spot on his chest—a most pleasurable pressure.

If my life ends right now, in this cell, I’ll die fulfilled, he thought hazily. An aristocratic woman has touched my forehead and put her face next to mine, so close I can smell her natural fragrance and see the skin, fair as powder, below her neck when she bends over. It doesnt get any better than this.

She tapped him. “Roll over,” she said gently, then held up a glass tube with dark rings around its surface. It was filled with a golden fluid and tipped with a long silvery needle. He rolled over as he was told. Her fingers, so soft and gentle, so cool and refreshing, so wonderful, grabbed the band of his underpants and jerked them down, exposing his buttocks to the cold air, which touched his anus; every muscle tensed. Something even colder touched his left cheek and began spreading outward.

“Relax!” This time her voice was stern. “Relax your muscles. What are you afraid of? Havent you ever had a shot before?”

She smacked him on the rear. “How am I supposed to stick a needle in something this tight?”

What more could I ask of life? An aristocratic woman like this doesnt even care how dirty I am. She smacked my grimy ass with her clean hand! I could die here and now with no regrets.

Gently she rubbed the spot with two fingers. “What happened to your foot?” she asked. “Why is it so swollen?”

His thoughts turned to his ankle and the lacks rained on it by the policemen, and he was so overwhelmed by the pressure of the well-being he felt now that he was incapable of answering.

Again she smacked him on the rear, but this time that was followed by a bee sting. He heard her breathe heavily as she pushed the needle in, and felt her pinkie make painless little nicks in his skin. Never before had such tenderness settled upon him. Feeling as if his very soul were in suspended animation, he shook with sobs.

The doctor pulled the needle out. As she put her instruments into her medical kit, she said, “What are you crying for? It didn’t hurt that much.”

‘ He said nothing, for all he could think was, She’ll be leaving now that she’s given me the shot.

“Doctor,” the young inmate said, “I’m constipated. Would you check me out while you’re at it?”

“Why get rid of it? Let it stay put,” she told him.

“That’s no way for a doctor to talk.”

“How am I supposed to talk to a little hooligan like you?”

“You have no right to call me a little hooligan. Your daughter and I were schoolmates. We even considered marriage.”

“Watch your mouth, Number Seven!” the warden threatened.

The dialogue between the young inmate and the doctor pained Gao Yang. He hoped she’d have more to say to him. But it wasn’t to be, for she picked up her bag, slung it over her shoulder, and walked out with the warden, who returned a half-hour later. “We have prepared a special meal for you, Number Nine,” he said from the corridor. “Try to eat it.”

A gray bowl slid under the door, flooding the cell with a delicious fragrance. Green lights shot from his cellmates’ eyes. The middle-aged inmate personally carried the bowl of noodles over to him, and when Gao Yang sat up he saw a pair of golden eggs nesded in the noodles and a layer of green onions and oil floating in the broth.

“Warden, Officer, I’m sick, too!” the young prisoner yelled. “I’ve got a bellyache!”

“Little Li,” the warden called to one of the soldiers pacing the corridor. “Make sure they don’t steal his food.”

Rattled, the middle-aged inmate quickly set the bowl down on Gao Yang’s cot and returned reluctantly to his own cot.

The sight of the noodles and eggs triggered Gao Yang’s appetite. Picking up his chopsticks with a trembling hand, he stirred the slippery white noodles—the thinnest and whitest he’d ever seen—then lifted the bowl to his lips and delivered a mouthful of the warm broth to his stomach and intestines, which rumbled pleasurably. As tears brimmed in his eyes, he faced the door and muttered to the soldier, “Thank you, Officer, for your great kindness.”

Gao Yang, you’re a lucky man. An aristocratic woman you could only gaze at from afar before actually touched your head, and noodles the likes of which you never saw before now rest in your stomach. Gao Yang, people are never content with their lot. Well, it’s time for you to be content with yours.…

He ate every noodle in the bowl, and slurped up every drop of broth. With some embarrassment, he noticed that the old and young inmates’ eyes were glued to his bowl. He was still hungry.

“Still sick?” the guard asked through the bars. “You could probably polish off a bucketful if you weren’t.”

“Officer, I’m sick, too,” his young cellmate wailed. “I’ve got a bellyache … ow! Dear Mother, it’s killing me!”

A shrill whisde signaled the exercise period, a time for prisoners to stretch their legs and get some fresh air. Two guards unlocked the cells, and as Gao Yang’s older cellmates stepped into the corridor, the younger one removed the plastic pail, which was brim-full of the inhabitants’ waste. An idea hit him. “Hey, new man,” he said to Gao Yang, “since you ate a big bowl of noodles, you should be the one to dump this.”