The Garlic Ballads

are you up to?” the face thundered.
    The young fellow stopped dancing, rolled his not-quite-white eyes, and looked at the face in the window. “Nothing, Officer.”
    “Then why are you hopping around?” the angular face asked sternly. “And why are you shouting?” Gao Yang saw the glinting blade of a bayonet.
    “I’m exercising.”
    “Who said you could exercise in here, you dumb prick?”
    “Aha!” The young inmate blurted out as he walked up to the door. “So, as an officer, you enjoy calling people names, is that it? Chairman Mao’s instructions say; ‘Don’t beat people, and don’t call them names!’ I want to see the man in charge. We’ll find out if you can talk to me like that!”
    The guard—the so-called officer—banged the bars of the window with his rifle butt. “Hold your tongue, or I’ll get the turnkey to cuff you!”
    The young inmate turned and ran back to his cot, holding his head in his hands and begging shamelessly. Officer, good Uncle, I’ve stopped, see, I’m sorry, please!”
    “Shitty little prick!” the face grumbled as it disappeared from the window. Gao Yang heard the staccato sound of boots retreating down the corridor, which seemed endless. When Gao Yang was brought here in the police van, he was taken down the long corridor, past one steel door after another, one small window after another, behind which a parade of ashen faces appeared; they looked like white-paper cutouts, which he could have crumbled merely by blowing on them.
    He dimly recalled watching two comrade policemen lift the horse-faced young man down off the van, the white tunic still wrapped around his head. A stretcher arrived then, if he wasn’t mistaken, and the young man was carried away on it. He tried to imagine what happened to him after that, but those thoughts just confused him, so he gave up.
    It was a murky cell, with gray flooring, gray walls, and gray cots; even the eating bowls were gray. The last few rays of light from the setting sun filtered in through ‘ the barred window, turning portions of the gray wall a reddish purple. All that was visible through the window was a blue derrick, outfitted with a glass cage that shimmered in the sunlight. A flock of doves, wings painted a golden red, swept past the cage, their mournful cries making Gao Yang tremble with fear. They flew out of sight, then changed course and returned, accompanied by the same cries.
    A hunched-over old man walked up to the disoriented Gao Yang and touched him with a quaking finger. “Smoke … a smoke … new man … got a smoke?” he squeaked.
    Gao Yang, barefoot and barechested, was wearing only a pair of baggy shorts, and his skin crawled when the old man’s sticky, rank-smelling hand touched it. Somehow he kept from screaming. Rebuffed, the old man shuffled off angrily and curled up on his cot.
    “What’re you in for, my man?” a voice across from Gao Yang asked offhandedly.
    Gao Yang couldn’t make out the man’s features in the murky darkness, but instinct told him that he was middle-aged. He was sitting on the concrete floor and resting his large head against a gray cot. “I …” Gao Yang was reluctant to answer. “I’m not sure.”
    “Are you saying you were framed?” the man said with hostility.
    “No, that’s not what I’m saying,” Gao Yang defended himself.
    “Don’t lie to me!” the man snapped, pointing menacingly with a pudgy black finger. “You can’t fool me—you’re in for rape.”
    “Not me,” Gao Yang protested bashfully. “I’ve got a wife and kids. How could I do something despicable like that?”
    “Then you’re in for robbery.”
    “I am not!” Gao Yang fired back angrily. “Not once in my forty years have I stolen so much as a needle!”
    “Then … then you must be a murderer.”
    “If anybody’s a murderer, you are.”
    “You’re close,” the middle-aged man replied. “Except the fellow didn’t die. I cracked his skull with a club, and they say it shook his brain loose. Who the hell ever heard of shaking a brain loose?”
    A shrill whisde reverberated up and down the corridor, cutting short their conversation.
    “Mealtime!” someone shouted hoarsely in the corridor. “Get your bowls out here.”
    The old man who had touched Gao Yang took two gray enamel basins out from under his bed and shoved them through a small rectangular opening at the base of the door. The cell was illuminated by a bright light, but only briefly, before being thrown