The Garlic Ballads

As Gao Ma scrambled over the wall, two shots rang out, raising puffs of smoke and sending tiny shards of the mud wall down on him. He stumbled into a pigpen, scattering muck in all directions and causing a couple of startled pigs to squeal and run around in panic. Not knowing which way to turn, he quickly crawled into the covered area. A loud buzz erupted above his head, and sharp pains tore at his cheeks and scalp. He jerked his head up and saw that he had disturbed a hornets’ nest hanging from the sorghum-stalk covering. With hundreds of agitated hornets descending on him like a yellow cloud, he flattened out in the muck, afraid to move. But, reminded that the police were right on his heels, he wrapped his arms around his head, wriggled back outside, grabbed the enclosure fence, and leapt over it, landing behind a woodpile. He quickly rolled out into the yard, jumped to his feet, and turned to head east, when someone grabbed him by the arm and held him fast. Panic-stricken, he looked up into the face of a fair-skinned man. Recognition set in almost at once: it was Schoolmaster Zhu from the local elementary school. Having suffered a broken pelvis at the hands of the Red Guards, Zhu could no longer stand straight; the frames of his glasses were held together with tape.

Gao Ma fell to his knees, like an actor in a soap opera, and pleaded for Schoolmaster Zhu to save him from the police, who were trying to arrest him in connection with the garlic incident.

Zhu grabbed his hand and led him into a dark room where chicken feathers and garlic leaves nearly covered the floor and a pickling vat filled with sweet-potato slops stood in the corner. “Climb in,” Zhu said.

Undeterred by the stench, Gao Ma climbed into the vat and squatted down, raising the level of slops to the rim, where it frothed noisily. He was up to his neck in the stuff, but Schoolmaster Zhu pushed him until it covered his mouth. “Dont make a sound,” Zhu said, “and hold your breath.” He covered Gao Mas head with a well-used gourd, then slid a battered lid over the vat, leaving just a crack.

Footsteps sounded in the yard. Gao Ma raised his head to listen. He could tell the police had reached the sty. “You … you’re hiding in the p-pigpen, don’t think I wont f-find you. C-come out of there.”

“Come out or well shoot!”

“Comrades, what’s going on out here?” Zhu asked them.

“C-catching a c- counterrevolutionary! ”

“In my pigpen?”

“Stay out of the way. We’ll get to you after we’ve caught him,” the policeman demanded. “Come out of there, or we’ll shoot! We can use deadly force if you resist arrest.”

“Comrades, is this a joke or something?”

“W-who’s joking?” the stammerer said. “I’m going in to see for myself.”

With his hands on the low wall, he leapfrogged into the pigpen, then waded into the covered area and stuck his head in, where he was greeted by a couple of hornets that stung him on the mouth.

“Comrades,” Schoolmaster Zhu said, “what do you take me for, a Nationalist spy? Do you really think I’d try to put something over on you? I heard shots, and when my pigs started to squeal, I came out to see what was going on, just in time to spot a dark figure running like hell toward the southern wall.”

“Aiding a fugitive is a felony,” the policeman said. “I want you to be clear on that score.”

“I know,” Zhu replied.

“W-what’s your name?” the stammerer asked.

“Zhu Santian.”

“Y-you say you spotted a dark figure running toward the southern wall?”

“That’s right.”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a teacher.”

“A p-party member?”

“I was in the Nationalist Party before Liberation.”

“The Nationalist Party? That must have been the life. I’m t-telling you. if you’re 1-lying, you’ll be up on charges, no matter what party you belong to.”

“I understand.”

Both policemen jumped out of the pigpen and ran toward the southern wall in search of the dark figure. Gao Ma knew that the lane beyond the southern wall dead-ended at a noodle mill alongside a ditch of putrid stagnant water.

Schoolmaster Zhu removed the beat-up gourd from Gao Mas head and said urgently, “Get moving. Head east down the lane.”

Gao Ma pulled himself out of the gooey slops. He was covered with rotting sweet-potato leaves, and a dark-red liquid dripped from his arms and legs. The room was filled with the stink. Again he bent over as if wanting to kneel in front of Schoolmaster Zhu to show his gratitude. “None of that,” Zhu said. “Get moving!”