The Garlic Ballads

being summoned, Gao Yang slipped on his shoes and tied the laces, noticing the opaque skin around his injured ankle, and the green-tinted, shifting pus lying just below the surface. He limped to the doorway, where the mysterious smile frozen on the policeman’s face had an ominous effect on him. He smiled foolishly in return, as if to ingratiate himself and lessen the psychological pressures at the same time.
    The policeman no sooner raised his hand than Gao Yang stuck out his arms, wrists together. The policeman retreated a step in the face of such immediate cooperation before separating Gao Yangs hands slighdy and snapping on the cuffs. Then, with a slight jerk of the head, he signaled Gao Yang out into the corridor, where policemen were putting handcuffs on other prisoners. Gao Yang glanced bashfully at his escort, recalling seeing him in the government compound. With a nudge from behind he fell in alongside other prisoners, who filed into the prison yard, where they were told to form a line and count off. There were ten in all. Someone grabbed Gao Yang’s arms. By cocking his head to the left he saw the sharp-featured policeman who had handcuffed him, and by twisting to look behind him he saw another policeman—fat, with pinched lips and puffy cheeks, clearly someone who would brook no nonsense. For some strange reason, Gao Yang tried to look up at the electrified wire atop the wall, but his neck stiffened up on him.
    He was last in line, in a column so straight that all he could see were the three backs in front of him, a black one sandwiched between two white ones.
    As they filed through the prison gate it dawned on him why he wanted to look at the electrified wire: during the previous day’s exercise period a piece of red cloth hung from the wire, and the old hooligan with whom he had first shared a cell was staring up at it. The malicious middle-aged convict walked up and winked at Gao Yang. “You’re being questioned tomorrow,” he said, “and your wife came to visit you.” Gao Yang stood there, mouth agape, unable to say a word. The other man changed the subject. “The old bastard’s lost his mind. That’s his daughter-in-law’s waistband hanging up there. Know what the old bastard does? Know his name? Know how the old bastard tricked his daughter-in-law? Know who his son is?” Gao Yang shook his head in response to each question. “Well, I can’t tell you,” the man said. “The shock would kill you.”
    He squirmed in the grip of the two policemen as they walked, which only made them grip him more tightiy. “Keep moving,” one of them whispered into his left ear, “and don’t try anything funny.”
    Crowds lined the road, eyes staring and mouth slack, as if waiting to snap at some floating object.
    They shuffled down the street, birds following their progress overhead and sending a foul rain down on prisoners and guards alike. But no one made a sound, as if oblivious to the assault, and no one raised a hand to wipe the black and white bird droppings from his head or shoulders.
    The road seemed endless as Gao Yang passed an occasional cluster of buildings with slogans painted on the sides, or a construction site with pale yellow derricks reaching the clouds; but always there were crowds of gawkers, including one hideous -looking, bare-assed juvenile who flung a cow chip at them, although it was impossible to tell if he was trying to hit a prisoner, or a policeman, or both, or was just moved to throw something. Whatever his intent, the missile caused a brief disruption in the procession, but not enough to stop it.
    They entered a wooded area and headed down a footpath barely wide enough for three people shoulder to shoulder. The policemen brushed against the mossy bark of trees, making soft scraping sounds. Sometimes the path was strewn with golden leaves, at others covered with pools of foul green water in which tiny red insects snapped and flipped like miniature shrimp; the surface was alive with red insects taking off or landing.
    A heavy rain began to fall as they crossed some railroad tracks, raindrops thudding onto shaved heads like pebbles. As Gao Yang tucked his head down between his shoulders, he carelessly banged his injured ankle on a railroad tie, sending sharp pains from the outside of his foot all the way up to the hollow of his knee. The skin above his ankle ruptured, releasing a pool of pus that ran into his shoe. My brand-new shoes, he thought sadly. Officers, can I