The Garlic Ballads

1.

Morning. A rail-thin cook was led into the cell. “Tell old Sun here what you want for your last meal, Number One,” the jailer said.

The prisoner was momentarily speechless. ‘Tm not giving up yet,” he said finally.

“Your appeal was denied. The sentence will be carried out.”

The condemned prisoner’s head slumped forward.

“Come on, now,” the jailer said, “be reasonable, and tell us what you’d like. This is the last village on your trip. Let us dispense a little revolutionary humanism.”

“Tell me,” the cook urged. “We don’t want you leaving as a hungry ghost. It’s a long trip down to the Yellow Springs, and you’ll need a full stomach to make it.”

The condemned man breathed a long sigh and raised his head. There was a faraway look in his eyes, but a glow in his cheeks.

“Braised pork,” he said.

“Okay, braised pork it is,” Cook Sun agreed.

“With potatoes. And I want the meat nice and fatty.”

“Okay, braised pork and potatoes. Fatty meat. What else?”

The man’s eyes narrowed into slits as he strained to expand the menu.

“Dont be afraid to ask,” Cook Sun said. “Whatever you want. It’s on the house.”

He scrunched up his mouth as tears slipped down his cheeks. “I’d like some wafer cakes, fried on a griddle and stuffed with green onions, and, let’s see… some bean paste.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s enough,” the condemned prisoner said, adding warmly, “Sorry to put you to all this trouble.”

“It’s my job,” Cook Sun remarked. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

The two men left the cell.

The condemned prisoner lay facedown on his cot and sobbed piteously, nearly drawing tears of sympathy from Gao Yang, who walked up quietly and tapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t cry like that,” he whispered. “It won’t help.”

The condemned man rolled over and grabbed his hand. But when the frightened Gao Yang tried to pull it back, he said, “Don’t be scared, I won’t hurt you. I wish I hadn’t waited until my dying day to appreciate what it means to have a friend. You’ll be getting out someday, won’t you? Would you go see my father and make sure he doesnt grieve over me? Tell him I had braised pork, potatoes, and wafer cakes made from bleached flour, with green onions and bean paste, for my last meal. I’m from Song Family Village. My father’s name is Song Shuangyang.”

“I give you my word,” Gao Yang promised.

A short while later, the cook returned with the braised pork and potatoes, some peeled green onions, a bowl of bean paste, a stack of wafer cakes, plus half a bottle of rice wine.

The guard removed the condemned prisoner’s manacles, then sat across from him, his revolver drawn, as the prisoner knelt before the food and wine. His hand shook as he poured the wine into a cup, then tipped his head back and tossed it down, managing a single “Father!” before he was choked up by a flood of tears.

2.

As the condemned man was taken out, he turned to give Gao Yang a smile, which plunged into his heart like a knife.

“Outside, Number Nine!” a jailer ordered through the open door. Gao Yang nearly jumped out of his skin. A stream of warm urine dampened his shorts.

“I’ve got a wife and kids at home, Officer! Make me eat shit or drink my own piss, but please don’t shoot me!”

“Who said anything about shooting you?” the shocked jailer replied.

“You’re not going to shoot me?”

“What makes you think China’s got so many bullets we can waste them on the likes of you? Let’s go. You’ll be happy to know your wife’s here to visit you.”

A weight fell from Gao Yang’s heart, and he nearly leaped through the cell door. As a pair of brass handcuffs was snapped on his wrists, he said, “Please don’t cuff me, Officer. I promise I wont run. Seeing them will just make my wife feel worse.”

“Rules are rules.”

“Look at my ankle. I couldn’t run on that if I wanted to.”

“Button your lip,” the jailer barked, “and be grateful we’re letting her visit you at all. Normally we don’t allow that before sentencing.”

He was led to a seemingly unoccupied room. “Go on, you’ve got twenty minutes.”

Hesitantly he pushed open the door. There, sitting on a stool cradling the baby, was his wife; his daughter, Xinghua, stood so close to her their legs were touching. His wife stood up abrupdy, and he watched her face scrunch up and her mouth pucker as she began to cry.

With his hands frozen to the doorframe, he tried to speak, but something hot and sticky stopped up his throat. It was the same feeling he’d had several days before as he watched his daughter in the acacia grove from the tree to which he was tied.

“Daddy!” Xinghua spread her hands to feel where he was standing. “Is that you, Daddy?”

3.

As his wife tossed a bundle of garlic onto the bed of the wagon, she clutched her belly and doubled over.

“Is it time?” an anxious, almost panicky Gao Yang asked.

“I tried,” she said, “but I think this is it.”

“Can’t you hold back for another day or two? At least until f ve sold the garlic?” There was a grudging edge to his voice. “If not a day or two late, a day or two earlier would have been fine. Why does it have to be now?”

“It’s not my fault… I didn’t will it to come now… If it was a bowel movement, I could hold off a little longer, but…” She gripped the railing, beads of sweat bathing her face.

“Okay, have your baby now,” he said with resignation. “Shall I go get Qingyun?”

“Not her,” she replied. “She charges too much, and she’s not very good. I’ll go to the clinic. I think it’s a boy.”

“Give me a son and I’ll buy you a nice, plump hen. I’ll even carry you on my back if you want.”

“I can walk. Just let me lean on you.” By then she was lying facedown on the ground.

“We’ll use the wagon.” After unloading the garlic, Gao Yang pulled the wagon through the gate, hitched up the donkey, then went back to get a comforter for the wagon bed.

“What else do we need?”

“A couple of wads of paper… everything’s ready… blue cloth bundle at the head of the kang.”

Gao Yang went inside, fetched the bundle, then carried his wife piggyback out the gate and laid her gendy in the wagon. Xinghua, awakened by the commotion, was screaming. Gao Yang walked back inside. “Xinghua,” he said, “your mother and I are going to fetch you a baby brother. Go back to sleep.”

“Where are you going to get him?”

“In a burrow in the field.”

“I want to go with you.”

“Children aren’t allowed. We have to be alone to get one.” The moon still hadn’t risen as he drove his rickety wagon across the bumpy bridge, his wife moaning behind him. “What are you groaning about?” he asked, irritated by the sight of garlic-laden carts on the paved road. “You’re having a baby, not dying!”

The moans stopped. The wagon smelled of garlic mixed with his wife’s sweat.

The health clinic was located in a clearing by a graveyard. A cornfield lay to the east, a field of yams to the west, and a recently harvested field of garlic to the south. After reining in his wagon, Gao Yang went to locate the delivery room. He was stopped from knocking by a hand attached to a man whose features were unclear in the dark. “Someone’s having a baby in there,” the man said hoarsely. The glow of a cigarette dangling from his lips flickered on his face. The smoke smelled good.

“My wife’s having a baby, too,” Gao Yang said.

“Get in line,” the man said.

“Even to have a baby?”

“You stand in line for everything,” the man replied icily.

That was when Gao Yang noticed the other carts parked outside the delivery room: two ox-drawn, one horse-drawn, and a pushcart over which a blanket was draped.

“Is it your wife inside?”

“Yes.”

“Why’s it so quiet?”

“The noisy part’s over.”

“Boy or girl?”

“Don’t know yet.” The man walked up and put his ear to a crack in the door.

Gao Yang moved his wagon up closer.

The dark red, blurry moon had risen above the yard, where datura plants bloomed at the base of the wall, their flowers looking like ethereal white moths in the murky moonlight. Their pleasant medicinal odor vied with the stench from the outhouse, neither able to overpower the other. Gao Yang moved his wagon up next to the three carts: pregnant women lay in each, either faceup or facedown, their men standing nearby.

As the moonlight brightened, the other carts and their occupants became increasingly visible. The two oxen were chewing their cuds, glistening threads of spittle suspended from their lips like spun silk. Two of the men were smoking; the third was waving his whip idly. Sure that he’d seen them somewhere, Gao Yang assumed they were farmers from villages in his township whom he’d met up with at one time or another. The expectant mothers were a fright: grimy faces, ratty hair, scarcely human. The one in the westernmost cart filled the air with hideous wails that had her husband storming around the area and grumbling, “Stop that crying-stop it! You’ll have people laughing at us.”

The delivery-room door opened and a light beneath the eaves snapped on. A doctor in white, a woman, stood in the doorway, her hands encased in elbow-length rubber globes that were dripping wet- blood, most likely. The man pacing the area ran up to her. “What is it, Doctor?” he asked anxiously.

“A little girl,” the doctor mumbled.

Hearing that he was the father of a little girl, the man rocked a time or two, then fell over backwards, cracking his head resoundingly on tile, which he apparendy smashed.

“What’s that all about?” the doctor remarked. “Times have changed, and girls are every bit as good as boys. Where would you males come from if not for us females? Out from under a rock?”

Slowly the man sat up, trancelike. Then he began to wail and weep, like a crazy man, punctuating his cries with reproachful shouts of “Zhou Jinhua, you worthless woman, my life’s over, thanks to you!”

His shouts were joined by sounds of crying from inside: Zhou Jinhua, Gao Yang assumed. The absence of infant sounds puzzled him. Jinhua hadn’t smothered her own baby, had she?

“Get up right this minute,” the doctor demanded, “and take care of your wife and baby. Other people are waiting.”

Rising unsteadily to his feet, the man staggered inside, emerging a few moments later carrying a bundle. “Doctor,” he said as he paused in the doorway, “do you know anyone who’d like a little girl? Could you help us find her a home?”

“Do you have a stone for a heart?” the doctor asked angrily. “Take your baby home and treat her well. When she’s eighteen you can get at least ten thousand for her.”

A middle-aged woman shuffled out the door, her rumpled hair looking like a bird’s nest, her clothing torn and tattered, and a grimy face that looked anything but human. The man handed her the bundled-up baby as he went to fetch his pushcart, in which she sat opposite a dung basket filled with black dirt. After slipping the harness around his neck, he took a few faltering steps before the cart flipped over, dumping his wife and the baby in her arms onto the ground. She was wailing, the baby was bawling, he was weeping.

Gao Yang heaved a sigh; so did the man standing beside him.

The doctor walked up. “Where’d that other cart come from?”

“Doctor,” a flustered Gao Yang replied, “my wife’s going to have a baby.”

The doctor raised her arm, peeled back a rubber glove, and looked at her watch. “No sleep for me tonight,” she muttered.

“When did the contractions start?”

“About… maybe as long as it takes to eat a meal.”

“Then there’s plenty of time. Wait your turn.”

The lightbulb and moonlight illuminated the area. The fair-skinned doctor, who had large features on a round face, went from one cart to the next, poking and probing distended abdomens. To the woman lying in the westernmost cart, a little horse-drawn affair, she said, “Screaming like that only makes it worse. Look at the others. You don’t see them carrying on like that, do you? Is this your first?”

The little man standing beside the wagon answered for his wife: “Her third.”

“Your third?” the doctor replied, obviously displeased. “How can you scream like that? And what’s that awful smell? Have you soiled yourself? Body odor shouldn’t stink that bad!”

The woman, properly chastised, stopped screaming.

“You should have washed up before coming,” the doctor said.

“We’re sorry, Doctor,” the little man said apologetically, “but we’ve been too busy harvesting garlic the past few days… plus there are the kids to worry about.”

“And here you are, having another?”

“The other two are girls,” he explained. “Farmers need sons to help in the fields. Girls grow up and marry out of the family. What good’s a child who can’t do hard work? Besides, people laugh if you don’t have a son.”

“If you brought up a daughter like the famous Dowager Empress, you’d have something far better than ten thousand of your precious sons,” the doctor countered.

“You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?” the little man said. “Any child born to parents as ugly as us is lucky if it’s not crippled, blind, deaf, or dumb. All this talk of having a child with a pedigree is just that-talk.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” the doctor replied. “A plain chrysalis brings forth a lovely butterfly, so what’s to stop a couple like you from producing a future party chairman?”

“With a mother who looks like her? I’d fall to my knees and kowtow till the end of time if she gave me a son whose features managed to be in the right places,” the little man said.

From the bed of the wagon, the woman strained to sit up. “What makes you think you’re so goddamned desirable? Look at yourself in a puddle of piss if you want to see what I see: rat eyes, a toad’s mouth, the ears of a jackass, all stooped over like a turtle. I must have been blind to marry someone like you!”

He giggled. “I wasn’t bad looking in my youth.”

“Dog fart! You looked more animal than human. As bad as the hideous Wu Dalang, maybe worse!”

That got a laugh out of the others, including the doctor, whose gaping mouth could have accommodated a whole apple. Nearby fields were suffused with joyous airs, as the fragrance of datura plants finally won out over the outhouse stench. A pale green moth flitted in the air around the lightbulb, and the ugly couple’s white pony pawed the ground happily.

Okay, it’s your turn,” the doctor said to the woman.

The little man lifted his wife down off the wagon. You’d have thought he was killing her, the way she groaned. “Stop that!” he demanded, giving her a rap on the head. “The first time it hurts, the second time it goes smoothly, and the third’s like taking a shit.”

She scratched his face. “Your mother’s burning hemorrhoids! How do you know what it’s like-ow, Mother, it’s killing me!”

“You’re a couple of real gems,” the doctor commented, “a match made in heaven.”

“The scar-faced woman marries a harelipped man. That way nobody has any complaints,” the little man said.

“Screw your mother! After this one’s born, I’m starting divorce proceedings… ow, Mother!”

The doctor led the woman inside. “Wait here,” she said to the husband, who paused in the doorway for a moment, then walked back to his wagon and picked up his feedbag. The white pony snorted loudly as it began munching the feed.

The other three expectant fathers clustered around the little man, who handed cigarettes around. Gao Yang, not used to smoking, had a fit of coughing. “Where are you from?” the little man asked him.

“The village south of here.”

“Where the Fang family lives?”

“Yes.”

“They’ve got a slut for a daughter!” he said indignantly.

“You mean Jinju? She’s as innocent as the day is long,” Gao Yang defended her.

“Who asked you?” Gao Yang’s wife demanded.

“Innocent, you say?” thé little man’s lip curled. “She changes her mind, and three weddings are called off. My fellow villager Cao Wen had a nervous breakdown because of it.”

“It hasn’t been easy for her,” Gao Yang said defensively, “what with all those beatings and stuff. She and Gao Ma were made for each other.”

The little man muttered sorrowfully, “What are the times coming to when a girl can decide who she marries?”

A prematurely gray man standing next to his oxcart said, “It’s those movies. Young people nowadays learn all the wrong things from movies.”

“Cao Wens a fool,” one of the others commented. “Why is someone like him, with a powerful official for an uncle behind him, mooning over not having a wife, anyway? It’s not worth losing your mind over.”

“Not enough girls is the problem,” the gray-haired man said. “They get engaged when they’re still teenagers. I’d like to know where all the girls went. There are plenty of young bachelors, but you never seen an unmarried woman. It’s gotten to the point where young men fight over them like warm beancurd, even if they’re crippled or blind.”

Gao Yang coughed. The gray-haired fellow angered him. “Where do you get off laughing at others?” he said. “No one knows what’s in a mother’s belly till it’s out. One head or two, who can say?”

The gray-haired man, missing Gao Yang’s point completely, continued, although he could have been talking to himself for all anyone knew. “Where did the girls go? Into town? City boys aren’t interested in girls off the farm. A real puzzle. Take a steer or a horse: when it’s time to raise their tails and drop a young one, if it’s female people jump for joy; but if it’s a male, nothing but long faces all around. With people it’s just the opposite. Rejoicing follows the birth of a boy, but long faces greet the birth of a girl. Then when the boy grows up and can’t find a wife, out come the long faces again.”

A baby’s cry interrupted their conversation. The little man stopped feeding his horse and walked toward the delivery room tentatively, as if his legs were lead weights.

“You there, little man,” the doctor called to him as she opened the delivery-room door, “your wife’s given you a son.”

He grew two inches on the spot. Striding into the clinic, he emerged moments later with his newborn son, whom he placed in the bed of the wagon. “Say, friend,” he said to the gray-haired man, “watch my horse for me while I go fetch the mother of my son, would you? Dont spook him.”

“He’s sure feeling potent all of a sudden,” Gao Yang heard one of the women comment.

“Hell be able to stand tall around other men now.”

He emerged all stooped over, carrying his wife on his back, her feet dragging in the dirt; one of her shoes fell off, but the gray-haired man retrieved it.

“I’m holding you to your word,” she said to her husband once she was lying in the wagon bed.

“I mean it. I did!”

“You’ll buy me a nylon jacket.”

“One with two rows of metal snaps.”

“And a pair of nylon stockings.”

“Two pairs. One red, one green.”

The little man put the feed basket away, picked up his whip, and turned the wagon around until it was perpendicular to the other carts. The pony’s hide glistened like silver. After reining the animal in, he passed more cigarettes around. “I don’t smoke,” Gao Yang said. “I’ll just waste a good cigarette.”

“Give it a try,” the little man encouraged him. “It’s only a cigarette. Can’t you see how happy I am? Aren’t you glad for me?”

“Sure, sure I am.” Gao Yang accepted the cigarette.

The gray-haired man’s wife was next. “Brothers,” the little man said, “you’ll all have sons. Kids are like yellow fish in schools. Since our sons will all have the same birthday, they’ll be like brothers when they grow up!”

He cracked his whip, shouted at his horse, and rode out of the compound in high spirits, the clicking of his horses’s hooves quickly swallowed up in the murky moonlight

The gray-haired man’s wife had a baby girl.

The other man’s wife delivered a stillborn, misshapen fetus.

After taking his wife into the delivery room, Gao Yang paced the compound, which he now had all to himself. By this time the moon shone directly down on the datura plants. His wife was toughing it out, since not a sound came from the delivery room. Outside, all alone with his donkey, he felt emotionally drained, so he walked over to the flower bed, where, in the grip of his private terror, he sniffed the strange fragrance and studied the fluttering petals. He bent down and poked one of the plump white leaves. It felt cool as dewdrops rolled off it. His heart fluttered. Before he knew it, his nose was buried in the flower, his nostrils filled with its strange fragrance. With a grimace he gazed at the moon and sneezed violendy.

At daybreak his wife bore him a son. Shit! he muttered amid his joy. Why? Because his darling son had six toes on each foot.

His wife’s heart knotted up, but Gao Yang consoled her, “You’re the mother of my children, so you should be happy. ‘Special people have special features/ Who knows, he might grow up to be a big official. And when that happens, you and I will get a taste of the good life.”

4.

Gao Yang said, “I broke the law. How can I make it up to you?”

His wife sighed. “You weren’t alone. Even Fourth Aunt Fang was arrested, at her age. Compared to her we’re in fine shape.”

The baby started crying, so she stuffed a nipple into his mouth. Gao Yang leaned over to study the face of his son, whose eyes were closed. He flicked some flaky white skin off the face. “He’s getting so big,” he said. “He keeps growing out of his skin.” The baby kicked his mother’s breast with his six-toed right foot. She pushed it away. “You have to name him,” she said.

“Let’s call him Shoufa-Law Abider,” he said after a thoughtful pause. “I don’t expect him to become a high official, and I’ll be happy if he’s a farmer who abides by the laws.”

Xinghua felt her father’s arm, from his shoulder all the way down to the handcuffs. “What are these, Daddy?”

Gao Yang stood up. “Nothing.”

The baby slept at his mother’s breast, so when she stood up she gendy removed the nipple, then laid him on the table and hurriedly opened her bundle. She fished out a pair of plastic sandals (new), a blue workshirt (also new), and a pair of black gabardine pants (brand new). “Put these on,” she said. “I was worried sick when they dragged you off half-naked. I wanted to bring you some clothes, but didnt know where you were until a couple of days ago. I spent last night outside. Then this morning a kind woman opened all the right doors for me to see you.”

“Did you walk the whole way?” Gao Yang asked her.

“After a mile or two somebody happened by. Guess who it was. Remember that little man at the clinic the night I had the baby? He was heading to town with some ammonia, so he gave us a ride.”

“Who bought these new clothes? Where’d the money come from?”

“I sold the garlic. Don t worry about us. We’ve broken the law and well take our punishment, whatever it is. I can manage things at home, and Xinghua can watch the baby for me. The neighbors have been so helpful it’s embarrassing.”

“What about Gao Ma? What happened after he scaled the wall and took off?”

“I’ll tell you, but don’t breathe a word of this to Fourth Aunt. Jinju’s dead.”

“How’d she die?”

“Hanged herself. The poor girl’s legs were covered with blood. It was nearly time, but the baby never saw the light of day.”

“Does Gao Ma know?”

“They arrested him when he was making funeral arrangements.”

“A waste of a good woman,” Gao Yang lamented. “She brought a melon to Fourth Aunt the afternoon we were arrested.”

“Let’s not talk about other people. I brought some food.” She dumped the contents of a plastic bag-some dark-skinned hardboiled eggs dyed red-onto the table.

He stuffed two of them into Xinghuas hands. “You eat them, Daddy, they’re for you,” his daughter said.

His wife peeled one for him. He jammed it whole into his mouth, but tears were running down his face before it was gone.