The Garlic Ballads (27 page)

Without waiting for a response, he darted into the corridor.

Feeling a bit sheepish about being treated to a bowl of noodles and an injection by an aristocratic woman, Gao Yang strained to sit up. After stepping barefoot onto the cold, damp cement floor, his head swimming, he stood wobbily, his injured foot so numb it felt as if he were stepping on cotton. He picked up the plastic pail, which wasn’t particularly heavy but stank horribly, and tried to hold it at arm’s length. Unfortunately, he wasn’t up to the task, and each time it bumped against him it splashed its stinking contents onto his bare leg.

The sun’s rays were blinding, his eyes ached unbelievably, and his face was awash with tears. After a moment, his eyes stopped hurting, but he still couldn’t get his arms and legs to stop quaking; so he halted, put down the pail, and grasped a post to steady himself and catch his breath. His respite was short-lived: a guard at the end of the corridor screamed at him, “No pails on the floor!” Frantically he picked it up and fell in line behind other prisoners carrying similar pails. At the end of the corridor they turned southwest, toward a little room with walls of corrugated metal and wormy planks, one of which sported the word “Men” in a red circle. Dozens of pail-toting prisoners lined up in single file waiting to enter the room. One came out, another went in, over and over.

When it was his turn, he walked inside, barefoot, and was immediately ankle-deep in a sickening mixture of mud and human waste. An open pit filled the center of the outhouse, and it was all he could do to keep from falling dizzily into it as he dumped his load. The other prisoners lined up beside a rusty water tap near the outhouse to clean their pails. The water came out weakly, like the stream of a little boy pissing into the air. The prisoners swabbed their pails with a balding short-handled broom, as if reaming out their own entrails. He felt like puking, and could nearly see the stringy noodles squirm around his stomach, chased by golden fried eggs. Clenching his teeth, he forced back the soggy lump that had risen to his throat. I can’t throw up. I mustn’t waste good food like that.

Before swabbing out his pail when he reached the tap, Gao Yang stuck his injured foot under the water to remove an accumulation of filth he didn’t dare look at. The man behind thumped him in the rear with his pail. “What the hell are you so picky about?” he growled. “This is no bathhouse!”

He turned and was face to face with a clean-shaven middle-aged inmate with large, jaundiced eyes and crinkled skin—a shriveled face that looked like a soybean soaked in water, then set out to dry. Frightened and chastened, Gao Yang excused himself pathetically: “Elder Brother, I’m new here … don’t know the rules … injured foot—”

The jaundiced-eyed inmate cut him short. “Speed it up, damn it! Exercise period’s almost over.”

Gao Yang hastily rinsed off his feet—the skin on his injured left foot was a ghostly white—then hastily scrubbed the inside of his pail.

Exhausted by the time he returned the refuse pail to its place in the wall, he could scarcely believe that in the space of twenty-four hours a vigorous man like him had been turned into a worthless, panting shell of a human being. The brief stay outside his cell made him aware of how foul the air was inside. He heard a rattle deep down in his chest and was confronted with thoughts of death. I can’t die now, he thought. He steadied himself and moved out through the still-open door into the light of the corridor, a vantage point that gave him a better sense of the prison layout.

Each end of the long, narrow corridor featured a steel cage manned by an armed guard. He spotted two small doors in the gray southern wall of the now-empty corridor, and wondered where the other prisoners were.

“Number Nine,” the guard at the western station called to him, “through that door.”

Doing as he was told, he emerged into the glorious outdoors, or, more exactly, an open-air cage around a concrete slab whose length corresponded to the corridor, but was some thirty feet wide and a good ten or fifteen feet high. Thick bluish steel ribs strung between rust-spotted steel posts formed the barrier between the prisoners and the land beyond the cage, which was planted with greens, potatoes, cucumbers, and tomatoes. Female guards were out picking cucumbers. Beyond the garden area rose an imposing gray wall topped with barbed wire, which reminded him of what he’d heard as a child, that prison walls are equipped with high-voltage wires that electrocute anything that comes into contact with them, even a bird.

Most of the prisoners gripped the steel ribs and gazed outside the enclosure; the spaces between the ribs were about the size of a small bowl, nowhere big enough to accommodate even the smallest head. A few men sat on the ground against the northern wall, sunning themselves, while others paced the outer edges of the cage, which was divided into two sections: the western half for male prisoners, the eastern half for women.

Gao Yang spotted Fourth Aunt Fang holding on to the bars in the women’s side. He barely recognized her, she had changed so much in the day since he’d last seen her. He chose not to hail her.

Under the watchful eyes of silent prisoners holding on to the bars, the guards carried a large bamboo basket over to the tomato patch. They were giggling and having a grand time, especially a short, freckle-faced girl of about twenty, who was laughing the loudest.

Gao Yang heard his young cellmate call out playfully, Officer, be a good girl and toss one of those tomatoes this way, all right?”

The woman just gaped at the cage.

“Come on, be a good girl, and toss me one,” he tried again.

“Call me ‘Great-Aunt,’ “ the freckle-faced guard said, “and maybe I will.”

“Great-Aunt!” the young prisoner shouted without hesitation.

Shocked at first, she then doubled over with laughter.

“Little Liu, you’d better give your great-nephew a tomato,” her companions teased her.

So she straightened up, pulled a half-ripe tomato out of the bamboo basket, took careful aim, and flung it with all her might. It rebounded off a bar and landed a couple of feet from the cage.

“Is that the best you can do, Little Liu?” one of her companions, who was skinny as fishbone, mocked her.

The freckle-faced guard picked up another tomato, aimed it at the young inmate, and let fly again. This one made it through the bars and landed on the cement floor, where it was pounced on by a swarm of prisoners. Gao Yang couldn’t see who wound up with the tomato, but he heard strange, piteous wails.

“Damn it!” the young inmate cursed. “That was a gift from my great-aunt! Damn it to hell! The tiger kills the prey just so the bear can eat.”

By now the tomato was in someone else’s stomach, so the prisoners went back to holding the bars and gazing outside.

“Great-Aunt, one more, please!” the young inmate pleaded.

He was joined by a chorus of shouts—-”Great-Aunt” by some prisoners, “Big Sister” by others—and the unmistakable voice of his middle-aged cellmate: “Fuck your great-aunt!” By then the guards were pelting the cage with tomatoes, over which the prisoners fought like a pack of mad dogs, snarling and growling and forming tight little clusters.

Guards came rushing up from both ends of the corridor, rifles at the ready, followed by turnkeys, who ran into the cage. Rifle bolts clicked as the cloth-shod turnkeys kicked the array of legs and buttocks in front qf them. The shriek of a police whisde split the air.

“Get your asses back inside, all of you!” the turnkeys shouted.

Like a tightly packed school of fish, the inmates slipped through the little metal door. It clanged shut and was bolted behind Gao Yang, the last man in. The exercise period was over.

The cage, the garden, the barbed wire—all of it gone. For the first time, Gao Yang realized how narrow the corridor was. He heard a man arguing with the female guards outside. The high-pitched voice of the freckle-faced officer was easy to distinguish from all the others.

Reentering the cell felt like crawling into a cave, one so dark it dulled Gao Yang’s sight and hearing—but not, unfortunately, his sense of smell. The stench of mildew and rot nearly bowled him over.

In a low voice the middle-aged inmate said, “You there, new man, stand up.”

“Elder B-Brother,” he stammered, “what do you want from me?”

The man grinned conspiratorily. “How were those noodles?”

“They were good,” he replied shyly.

“Did you hear that? He said they were good.”

“Good, but hard to digest,” the young inmate said.

“You got special food,” the old prisoner spat out as he rushed Gao Yang and began scratching his head and face.

The middle-aged inmate pulled the old man away and forced Gao Yang to back up. When his back was against the wall, he gazed fearfully at the opening in the door. “Don’t shout, or I’ll strangle you,” the inmate threatened. “An ass-licking, tail-wagging dog is what you are!”

“Elder Brother … please don’t.”

“Tell us what kind of noodles they were.”

He shook his head.

“I know, they were hollow-core noodles. Now we’ll see how hollow your core is!” The inmate signaled the others. “Come on, men, three punches apiece, until we get him to puke!”

The young inmate clenched his fist, took aim at Gao Yang’s breastbone, and delivered three quick, hard punches.

Gao Yang wailed piteously, and while his mouth was open, the mass of noodles came tumbling out. When he was through vomiting, he lay sprawled on the cement floor.

Okay, thief,” the middle-aged inmate said, “I heard you yell for your great-aunt out there, but you didn’t get a single tomato. So now I’m going to reward you.”

“Uncle, I don’t want—”

“Keep your voice down. I’m going to let you lap up the noodles he just deposited on the floor.”

Down on his knees, the young inmate begged softly, “Uncle, good Uncle, dear Uncle, I promise I’ll never again—”

The sudden rattle of keys at the door sent the three men scurrying to their cots.

The door opened with a blaze of light, and an officer standing in the doorway held up a sheet of paper. “Number Nine, out!”

Crawling over to the door as fast as he could, leaving a trail of tears and snot, Gao Yang pleaded, Officer, please, please save me!”

“What’s wrong with you, Number Nine?” the officer asked him.

“He’s sick,” the middle-aged inmate said. “All feverish, talks jibberish. They brought him some food from the infirmary, but he threw everything up.”

“Should we still take him out?” the man asked his partner.

“Let’s try it and see what happens.” • “On your feet!” the guard ordered.

As soon as Gao Yang was standing, the nearest officer snapped a pair of golden handcuffs over his wrists.

After clambering unsteadily to his feet, Gao Ma toppled over again, just as seven or eight gaily colored parakeets flew in through the open window, made passes above and below the roof beams, then playfully hugged the walls, brushing past Jinju’s hanging corpse. The silkiness of their feathers made them appear bare-skinned. Jinju’s body swung gracefully, causing the doorframe to creak. In the late-night silence even the faintest sounds thudded against his eardrum. Although no pain disturbed his numbed heart, the sickeningly sweet taste in his mouth told him he was about to cough up blood again. “Gao Ma!” He shouted his own name. Gao Ma, you were fated to take a bloody fall from the moment Jinju became yours. You have coughed up blood, vomited blood, spat blood, pissed blood—you are blood-spattered from head to toe.

Clutching the doorframe, he straightened up slowly, like a bent tree reaching for the sky. It was hard, but he managed to stand on his own two feet. It’s all my fault, Jinju. The sight of her sagging belly made the sickeningly sweet taste in his throat stronger than ever. Mounting a bench, he fumbled with the knot in the rope—shaky hands, feeble fingers. The strong, acrid, and garlicky smell of her body hit him full-force; so did the sickeningly sweet taste in his throat. He could discern a slight difference between the smell of her blood and his. A man’s blood is blazing hot, a woman’s icy cold. A woman’s blood is clean and pure, a man’s dirty and polluted. Parakeets flitted under his armpits and between his legs, their malicious squawks making his heart skip a beat. He lacked the strength to loosen the knot. The rope was so thick, and was stretched so taut, that he knew he could never untie it.

He found a match and lit the kerosene lamp; as light flooded the vacant room and cast shadows of flying parakeets on the wall, he seethed with sudden hostility toward those lovely birds. The shadow of Jinju’s body spread out across the wall and the floor.

He brushed against her as he went into the kitchen for the cleaver. In his gropings his hand touched the chimney brush and the spatula, but not his cleaver.

“Have you forgotten that my brothers took your cleaver, Gao Ma?” It was Jinju’s voice. With her face backed by the lamplight, she appeared to be smiling, although he couldn’t be sure. “Elder Brother Gao Ma,” she said with a smile, “I’m sure it’s a son.”

“I’d be just as happy with a daughter. I’ve never favored boys over girls.”

“No, a daughter won’t do. We have to make sure he gets a good education, high school and college, so he can find work in town and not have to suffer the miserable life of a farmer.”