The Garlic Ballads

better bring it out, Fourth Aunt.”
    She opened the beat-up old chest and took out the jacket.
    “Brother,” Number One said, “now that we’ve divided up all the family property, my bachelorhood is settled once and for all. Since you can easily find a wife, I should get the jacket.”
    “Dear Brother,” Number Two replied, “I can eat shit, I just don’t like the taste. Since we’re dividing the family property, we have to be fair. No one should do better than anyone else.”
    One jacket, and both of you want it,” Gao Jinjiao commented. “Any ideas? Except for cutting it in two, that is.”
    “Then cut it in two if that’s the only way,” Number Two demanded. Picking the jacket up, he draped it over a wood stump, went inside for his cleaver, and split the jacket right down the middle seam, as Fourth Aunt looked on and cried her eyes out. Then, gritting his teeth with the fire of determination in his eyes, he picked up the two* halves and tossed one to his brother. “Half for you and half for me,” he said. “We’re even.”
    A sneering Jinju picked up a pair of worn-out shoes. “These were Father’s. One for you and one for you!”—and she flung a single shoe at each of her brothers.

C HAPTER 16

    Arrest me if that’s what you want…
Someone read the Criminal Code aloud for me—-
Blind lawbreakers get lenient treatment—?
I wont shut my mouth just because you put me in jail…
.
—from a ballad by Zhang Kou sung after being touched on the mouth with a policeman’s electric prod. The incident occurred in a tiny lane around the corner from the county government compound on the twenty-ninth of May, 1987

1.

    A jailer led him down the long corridor while another walked behind him to the right, pressing a rifle muzzle up against his ribs. An identical gray metal door with an identical small opening fronted each cell, the only differences being the Arabic numbers above the doors and the faces looking out through the tiny openings. They were bloated, grotesquely enlarged, the faces of living ghosts. He shuddered. Every step was torture. Behind one of the windows a female convict giggled. “Jailer, here’s twenty cents, buy me some sanitary napkins, okay?” The jailer responded with an angry curse: “Slut!” But when Gao Yang turned to see what the woman looked like, he felt a nudge from the rifle. “Keep moving!”
    Reaching the end of the corridor, they passed through a steel door and climbed a narrow, rickety staircase. The jailer’s leather shoes clacked loudly on the wooden steps, while the slaps of Gao Yang’s bare feet were barely audible. The warm, dry wood felt so much better on his feet than the damp, slippery concrete corridor floor. Up and up he climbed, with no end in sight; he was soon panting, and as the staircase wound steeply round, he began to get dizzy. If not for the jailer behind him, silently nudging him along with his rifle, he’d have lain down like a dying dog, spread out over as many steps as were required to support him. His injured ankle throbbed like a pulsating heart; the surrounding skin was so puffy his anklebone all but disappeared. It burned and ached. Old man in heaven, please don’t let it get infected, he uttered in silent prayer. Would that aristocratic woman be willing to lance it and release the pus? That thought reminded him of how she had smelled.

    A large room with a wooden floor painted red. White plaster shows through the peeling green paint on the walls. Bright daylight shines down from the ceiling on four crackling electric prods. Desks line the northern wall. A male and two female jailers sit behind the desks. One of the women has a face like a persimmon fresh from the garden. He recognizes the words painted on the wall behind them.
    A jailer orders him to sit on the floor, for which he is immensely grateful. He is then told to stretch his legs out in front and rest his manacled hands on his knees. He does as he’s told.
    “Is your name Gao Yang?”
    “Yes.”
    “Age?”
    “Forty-one.”
    “Occupation?”
    “Farmer.”
    “Family background?”
    “Urn … my, uh, parents were landlords….”
    “Are you familiar with government policy?”
    “Yes. Leniency to those who confess, severity to those who refuse to do so. Not coming clean brings severe punishment.”
    “Good. Now tell us about your criminal activities of May twenty-eighth.”

2.

    Dark clouds filled the sky on May 28 as Gao Yang drove his donkey; it was scrawnier