The Garlic Ballads

held her breath; the sparkles, like tiny globules of quicksilver, froze in space and quivered briefly, as if to show they could glide away at any moment.
    “Come on, get up and eat,” Gao Ma said, shaking her wrist. He took some flatcakes and garlic out of his cloth bundle. After pinching the dry, withered tips and bulb ends of the stalks, leaving only the fresh-green middle parts, he rolled six of them into one of the flatcakes and handed it to Jinju.
    She shook her head, for she was still immersed in the joyful feelings of a moment before and wanted to hold them for as long as possible. The pungent smell of garlic put her on edge—over time she had grown to hate its smell.
    “Eat something, so we can get moving again,” Gao Ma said.
    Reluctantly she took the rolled flatcake, but waited until he had begun eating his before taking her first tentative bite. The thin cake was hard and resistant as a frozen rag. Gao Mas jaw was grinding, his cheeks twitching, and she heard the raw, cold garlic crunch sickeningly in his mouth. She bit down on her garlic, which cracked coldly, like bamboo being sliced by a knife. Her mouth filled with saliva; but her heart, now raw and cold, puckered inside her.
    Gao Ma wolfed down his food, grunting raspily as he chewed. He farted loudly. Turning her face away in disgust, she tossed her rolled flatcake back into the blue bundle, where it spread open to reveal its garlicky contents.
    “What’s wrong?” he asked anxiously, a string of garlic fiber caught between his teeth.
    “Nothing. You eat,” she answered softly. His garlicky breath again made her aware of the gap between them.
    Once he had finished off his own flatcake, Gao Ma reached into the bundle and took hers out. “You don’t have to eat this if you don’t want to,” he said as he rerolled it. “I’ll buy you something more edible when we reach Pale Horse Township.”
    “Where are we going, Gao Ma?”
    “When we reach Pale Horse Township we’ll take a bus to Lanji and catch a train for the Northeast, I’m sure your brothers and the rest of them are waiting for us at Paradise Station.” His voice took on a sinister tone as he continued: “We’ll make sure their scheme fails.”
    “What will we do in the Northeast?” she asked, somewhat dazed.
    “We’ll go to Magnolia County in Heilongjiang. One of my army comrades is the deputy county administrator. He can help us find work,” Gao Ma said, showing he’d thought things out. He turned his attention to the second rolled cake, which he began eating as he released another resounding fart.
    She giggled, even though she didn’t know what was so funny.
    Gao Ma blushed. “I’ve lived alone too long,” he said bashfully. “Don’t laugh at me.”
    Immediately forgiving, she said as if talking to a child, “You’re no different than other people. Anyone who eats grain knows what it’s like to pass wind.”
    “Even women? I can’t imagine a pretty thing like you farting.”
    “Women are human, too,” she said.
    The mist on the jute bushes evaporated. Off to the north, somewhere in the wildwoods, a donkey brayed loudly.
    “We can’t travel in broad daylight, can we?” she asked.
    “Sure we can, since that’s the last thing they’d expect us to do. We’re about ten miles from Pale Horse, a three-hour walk. By the time your brothers get around to following us there, we’ll already be in Lanji.”
    “I don’t want to go,” Jinju protested. “I belong to you now, so my folks might change their minds and let us be together.”
    “Stop dreaming, Jinju,” Gao Ma said. “You’d be lucky if they didn’t beat you to death.”
    “My mother loves me….” There were tears in her eyes.
    “Loves you? She loves your brothers and uses you as a pawn to get them married. Spending the rest of your life with Liu Shengli, is that what you want? Use your head, Jinju, and come with me. My army comrade is a deputy county administrator. Do you hear what I’m saying? A
deputy county administrator
. Just think of the influence he has. All he has to do is give the word for us to find work. We were like brothers.”
    “Gao Ma, I’ve given you everything I have. If you call, I’ll come running, just like a dog.
    “Jinju,” he said, draping his arm around her shoulder, “I’ll make sure you have a decent life, even if I have to sell my blood to do it.”
    “Elder Brother, why don’t we just wrap our arms around each other and end it all here? Kill me