The Garlic Ballads

“You expect us to keep a hooligan like you?” The principal glared at him. “Go on — go with your father!”

“Mr. Principal…” Father bent double, again holding the switch in both hands, quaking badly, tears running down his face. “Mr. Principal, I beg you … let him graduate, please.”

“Button your lip!” the principal demanded. “Is Team Leader Wang out there?”

Gao Yang watched Wang Tai’s father, Six-Wheels Wang, enter. Team Leader Six-Wheels would later be his superior for twenty years. For two decades Gao Yang would serve as one of his commune underlings. A tall, beefy man, he was barefoot and stripped to the waist; his skin was tanned and healthy looking. Refusing to wear a belt, he always tied his baggy white pants at the waist, his scythe tucked into the waistband. Gao Yang called him Master Six.

“Principal,” Six-Wheels said in his gravelly voice, “what do you want me for?”

“Team Leader Wang,” the principal said, “now don’t get mad, but your son, Wang Tai, peed on some of the girls in his class…. Something like that, well, it’s not a good idea. The heads of households share the responsibility for their children’s upbringing with those of us at school.”

“Where is the little asshole?” Six-Wheels Wang growled.

The principal gave the high sign to one of the teachers, who dragged Wang Tai into the office.

“You little asshole,” Six-Wheels said to his son, “did you pee on girls in your class? Is that where you’re supposed to pee?”

Wang Tai stood silently, his head bowed as he picked at his fingernails.

“Who told you to do something like that?” Six-Wheels asked.

Wang Tai pointed at Gao Yang. “Him,” he said without a moment’s hesitation.

Gao Yang was shocked. His head swirled.

“He wasn’t satisfied doing a terrible thing like that himself,” the principal said to Gao Yang’s father. “He had to drag the son of a poor and lower-middle-class peasant into his shameful affair. Things like this don’t happen by accident.”

“My family is cursed … family is cursed … produce scum like this … scum …” Father was pacing.

“You’ve always been a bad boy,” Six-Wheels Wang said to Gao Yang. One of these days your bad nature will be the death of you.” Then he turned to Gao Yang’s father. “How could you sire a bad seed like this?” he asked. “Hm?”

Father picked up the switch and hit Gao Yang square in the head … a couple of anguished cries…. Gao Yang tried to recall if hé had cried out. It had been twenty years, and he had no idea whether he had cried out or not. He remembered wanting to shout: “Father, all I did was drink my own piss!”

“Cheer up, Little Brother,” the middle-aged inmate consoled Gao Yang. “You’ll be fine now that you’ve passed the test. You took it like a man. You know when to stand your ground and when to give in. The best is yet to come for you. Once you leave here you’ll never return.”

To wash down the crumbs of his piss-soaked bun, the old inmate drank what was left in the soup bowl, reaching in to pick up a yellow sliver of garlic stuck to the bottom and shove it into his mouth. Last of all he licked the frothy, oily sides of the bowl—slurp slurp—like a dog.

The whistle sounded again, long and loud, followed by a tinny voice: “Attention all cells! Lights out! Bedtime! After-dark regulations: One, no talking or whispering. Two, no swapping beds. Three, no sleeping in the nude.”

The yellow light went out abrupdy, throwing the cell into darkness. In the silence that ensued, Gao Yang heard his three cellmates breathing and saw six eyes flashing in the darkness as if luminous. Drained of energy, he sat on his gray blanket, which reeked of garlic; swarms of mosquitoes took to the air, filling the darkness with their buzzing.

The seemingly interminable day was finally reaching its dark conclusion. He laid his head on the blanket and closed his eyes, which gave up two meaningless tears. He sighed, so softly that no one heard him, and through the spaces between the bars he saw the blurred outline of the derrick high in the sky, the soft-yellow crescent moon hanging at its tip looking soft and inviting.

CHAPTER 8

A treacherous ape, a turncoat dog—

Ingratitude has existed since ancient times.

Little Wang, you’ve thrown away your scythe and hoe

To learn the tyrant’s walk, just like a crab….

— from a ballad sung by Zhang Kou following the garlic glut, to curse roundly Wang Tai, the new deputy directorof the county supply and marketing cooperative

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