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The Garlic Ballads

“We’ll go to Magnolia County in Heilongjiang. One of my army comrades is the deputy county administrator. He can help us find work,” Gao Ma said, showing he’d thought things out. He turned his attention to the second rolled cake, which he began eating as he released another resounding fart.

She giggled, even though she didn’t know what was so funny.

Gao Ma blushed. “I’ve lived alone too long,” he said bashfully. “Don’t laugh at me.”

Immediately forgiving, she said as if talking to a child, “You’re no different than other people. Anyone who eats grain knows what it’s like to pass wind.”

“Even women? I can’t imagine a pretty thing like you farting.”

“Women are human, too,” she said.

The mist on the jute bushes evaporated. Off to the north, somewhere in the wildwoods, a donkey brayed loudly.

“We can’t travel in broad daylight, can we?” she asked.

“Sure we can, since that’s the last thing they’d expect us to do. We’re about ten miles from Pale Horse, a three-hour walk. By the time your brothers get around to following us there, we’ll already be in Lanji.”

“I don’t want to go,” Jinju protested. “I belong to you now, so my folks might change their minds and let us be together.”

“Stop dreaming, Jinju,” Gao Ma said. “You’d be lucky if they didn’t beat you to death.”

“My mother loves me….” There were tears in her eyes.

“Loves you? She loves your brothers and uses you as a pawn to get them married. Spending the rest of your life with Liu Shengli, is that what you want? Use your head, Jinju, and come with me. My army comrade is a deputy county administrator. Do you hear what I’m saying? A deputy county administrator. Just think of the influence he has. All he has to do is give the word for us to find work. We were like brothers.”

“Gao Ma, I’ve given you everything I have. If you call, I’ll come running, just like a dog.

“Jinju,” he said, draping his arm around her shoulder, “I’ll make sure you have a decent life, even if I have to sell my blood to do it.”

“Elder Brother, why don’t we just wrap our arms around each other and end it all here? Kill me first.”

“No, Jinju, we’re not going to die. We’ll make it, and we’ll give your parents something to think about.”

Seeing the cruel determination in her lover’s eyes, she touched the scab on his forehead with her fingertips. “Does it still hurt?” she asked tenderly.

“It hurts here.” He grabbed her hand and placed it over his heart.

She rested her head on his chest. “You’ve suffered because of me. My brothers are heartless wolves.”

“You don’t have to talk about them like that,” Gao Ma objected magnanimously. “Life’s not easy for them, either.

“Remember that day last year?” he continued expressively. “You know, when I was helping you in the field and told you I was going to get some fresh batteries for my cassette recorder so you could listen to it? Well, I finally did it. Here, listen to this.” He took the cassette recorder out of his bundle, pushed the play button, and the scratchy sound of a woman’s voice came spilling out: “Moonlight on the fifteenth cascading down on my old home and on frontier passes / In the silent night he longs for someone, and so do I.”

“It’s a new tape by Dong Wenhua,” Gao Ma said. “She’s in the army, the Shenyang Military District. Short, chubby, real cute.”

“You’ve seen her?”

“Only on TV,” he admitted. “Sun Baojia has a new color set. His family planted six acres of garlic this year and sold it for over five thousand yuan. If we weren’t in such a fix, I’d stay home and make a killing on garlic, since this county is going to let us plant even more acreage next year.”

He plugged the earphones into the recorder, cutting out the speaker, to Jinju’s bewilderment. Then he placed the earphones over her head. “It sounds better this way,” he said loudly.

She watched him take an envelope filled with ten-yuan bills out of his bundle.

“I sold off everything I could. My neighbor Yu Qiushui promised to watch my house Maybe we can come back after a few years in the Northeast.”

She was listening to the woman’s loud singing through the headphones: “Ali Baba, hai! Ali Baba, hai! Ali Baba is a happy young man!”