The Garlic Ballads

hollyhocks bloomed in lush abundance; it observed him with its moist, crystalline eyes. Gao Ma stumbled toward it and reached out to grab a branch covered with spiny hollyhocks. The suns rays blazed down, and he felt the heavy flowers dance on top of his head; he tried to look up, but the sunlight stung his eyes. He ripped a hollyhock leaf in half and wadded it into balls, which he stuffed up his nostrils. But the buildup of hot blood swelled his head, and as the salty taste spread through his mouth, he knew the blood was flowing down his throat. All human orifices are connected.
    Gao Ma wanted to smash the compound’s green gate but didn’t have the strength. He assumed that everyone in the township offices— officials, handymen, plumbers, people in charge of women’s affairs, family planners, tax collectors, news dispatchers, boozers, meat eaters, tea drinkers, smokers—more than fifty in all, had seen him get tossed out of the compound like a discarded weed or a whipped puppy. He tried to catch his breath as he wiped a bloody hand on the red letters carved into the government office’s white signboard.
    The young gateman, wearing a plaid shirt, kicked him from behind. “You bastard!” Plaid Shirt railed, although Gao Ma only heard a muffled noise. “Where do you think you’re wiping that dog blood of yours? Dumb bastard! Who said you could leave your dog blood here?”
    After he backed up a step or two to look at the red letters on the wooden signboard, the fires of rage burned in Gao Ma; he aimed a mouthful of bloody saliva at Plaid Shirt, who was agile, wiry—probably a martial-arts practitioner. He sprang out of the way and charged Gao Ma, who worked up another gob of bloody spit and aimed it at the man’s long, thin face.
    “What are you doing out there, Li Tie?” It was the voice of authority, coming from inside the government compound.
    Plaid Shirt lowered his arms compliantly.
    Gao Ma spat the bloody mess on the ground and walked off without a backward glance at the gatekeeper. With the blue horizon stretched out before him, he moved haltingly down the paved country road; the eyes of an old melon peddler gleamed like phosphorescent lights.
    Gao Ma slipped and fell into the gutter, and as he lay amid vines and tendrils, he gazed sadly at the gentle slope of the gutter. Certain he could not walk upright, he dropped to his knees to slink home on all fours, like a dog.
    It would be a long, arduous trip; his head, drooping of its own weight, felt as if it might fall off and roll into the gutter. Thorns pricked his hands, and his back felt as if it were being peppered by poison darts.
    After negotiating the slope of the gutter, he straightened up. The prickly pains in his back so tormented him that he turned to look behind him, where he saw Plaid Shirt walking up to the gateway with a bucket of water and a rag to clean the blood off the signboard. The roadside melon peddler had his back to Gao Ma, who still carried the image of the old man’s phosphorescent eyes. Even in his dazed state, he heard the shrill cry: “Melons—mushy melons.…”
    The sound stabbed at his heart; all he wanted was to go home and lie quietly on his kang, like a man dead to the world.
    Now someone was at the door. He tried to sit up, but his head was too heavy. Straining to open his eyes, he saw the wife of his neighbor, Yu Qiushui, watching him with pity in her eyes.
    “Feeling better?” she asked.
    He tried to open his mouth, but a rush of bitter liquid stopped up his throat and nose. “You were unconscious for three days,” she said. “You had us scared half to death. Even with your eyes closed you yelled, ‘Boys and girls, children on the wall!’ and The colt! The little colt!’ Big Brother Yu called the doctor, who gave you a couple of injections.”
    He strained to sit up, with the help of Big Brother Yu’s wife, who put his filthy comforter behind his back. One look at her face told him she knew everything.
    “Thank you, and thank Big Brother Yu.” Tears began to flow.
    “Crying wont help,” she consoled him. “Don’t fool yourself into thinking it could ever work between you and Jinju. For now just worry about getting better. I’m going to my folks’ house in a few days, and I’ll find you someone as good as Jinju.”
    “What about Jinju?” he asked anxiously.
    “They say her family beats her every day. When the Caos and the Lius heard the news, they rushed over to mediate. But as the saying