The Garlic Ballads

“Lock him up in the west wing,” the police chief said. “Dai Zijin, call an immediate meeting of the branch-committee members here in the office — use the PA system.”

Gao Yang was locked in an empty room in the west wing of the brigade headquarters, under the watchful eye of two armed militiamen sitting on a bench across from him. Thunder rolled outside, and the skies sent buckets of rain thudding into the leaves of parasol trees in the compound and onto the red-tiled roof in a deafening cadence.

The loudspeakers crackled for a moment, then sent forth the voice of Dai Zijin. Gao Yang knew the names released into the air.

“Gao Yang,” one of the militiamen said, “you re in big trouble this time.”

“Little Uncle,” replied Gao Yang, “I didn’t bury my mother on brigade land.”

“What you did with her body isn’t what this is all about.”

“What is it all about?” he asked fearfully.

“Aren t you trying to get the verdict on her reversed?”

“I only told the truth. Everybody knows that. My father was a famous skinflint who only cared about saving up money to buy land. He’d beat my mother if she bought an extra turnip.”

“You’re wasting your time telling me,” the militiaman said indifferently.

That evening, in spite of the heavy rainfall, a meeting of all brigade members was held, and although Gao Yang eventually forgot most of the particulars, he would always remember the sound of the rain and the shouted slogans, which continued without letup from early evening to late at night.

The following morning a squad of militiamen tied Gao Yang to a bench and placed four bricks strung together with hemp around his neck; it felt like a piece of garroting wire that would lop off his head if he so much as moved. Then in the afternoon the police chief tied his thumbs together with a piece of wire and strung him up from a steel overhead beam. He didn’t feel much pain, but the moment his feet left the ground, sweat seemed to squirt from every pore in his body.

“Now tell us, where’s the landlord’s wife buried?”

He shook his head, which swelled with images of a weed-covered plot of land and a swollen stream. The clumps of grass he had dug up and replanted had been soaking up rain all this time, until they must look as if they had never been moved. His footprints, too, would have been washed away by the rain; so long as he kept his mouth shut, Mother could rest in peace. He vowed never to reveal his secret, not if it cost him his life.

Not that his determination remained rock-solid the whole time: he screamed in agony when the police chief rammed a thorny branch several inches up his ass: “Uncle, spare me, please … I’ll take you there “

The bloody branch was removed and he was lowered from the steel beam. “Where’s she buried?”

He looked into the police chief’s dark face, then peeked down at his own body, and finally gazed out the window at the misty sky. “Mother,” he said, “wait for me, I’ll be there soon….” Lowering his head, he made a mad dash for the wall, but was restrained by two militiamen.

Indignation filled his heart. “Brothers,” he shouted hoarsely, “I — Gao Yang — have always done what’s right, ever since I was a little boy. There’s no bad blood between us, so why are you doing this to me?”

The police chief stopped hitting him, but then the traces of sympathy in his eyes were driven out by his stern response: “We’re talking about class struggle here!”

Since Gao Yang was to be detained that night, the militiamen carried two benches into the room. The plan was to sleep in turns, but before the night was very far gone, they were both snoring.

The window frame in the otherwise vacant room was made of wood, so if he wanted to run away, a well-placed kick would do the trick. But he neither felt like escaping nor had the leg strength to smash the window frame. The police chief’s branch had so swollen his rectum that he couldn’t pass the gas that was making his belly bulge and his guts swell. A kerosene lamp hung from the roof beam, its shade turned black by an accumulation of smoke that dimmed the light and cast a shadow the size of a millstone on the brick floor. When he looked at the two militiamen, clutching their rifles to their chests as they slept, fully dressed, he felt guilty for putting them to all this trouble. Once or twice he thought about snatching one of the rifles from its owner, smashing the window with the butt, and making his getaway into the yard. But it was a fleeting thought at most, replaced each time with a conviction that his punishment was simply the price he must pay to keep his mother from the flames of the crematorium. He’d just have to grit his teeth and bear whatever came along. Otherwise, she’d have suffered in vain.

The militiamen had slept like babies, but not him. Just like tonight — his cellmates were fast asleep, but he wasn’t the least bit drowsy after awaking from his nightmares.