The Garlic Ballads

when to give in. The best is yet to come for you. Once you leave here you’ll never return.”
    To wash down the crumbs of his piss-soaked bun, the old inmate drank what was left in the soup bowl, reaching in to pick up a yellow sliver of garlic stuck to the bottom and shove it into his mouth. Last of all he licked the frothy, oily sides of the bowl—
slurp slurp
—like a dog.
    The whistle sounded again, long and loud, followed by a tinny voice: “Attention all cells! Lights out! Bedtime! After-dark regulations: One, no talking or whispering. Two, no swapping beds. Three, no sleeping in the nude.”
    The yellow light went out abrupdy, throwing the cell into darkness. In the silence that ensued, Gao Yang heard his three cellmates breathing and saw six eyes flashing in the darkness as if luminous. Drained of energy, he sat on his gray blanket, which reeked of garlic; swarms of mosquitoes took to the air, filling the darkness with their buzzing.
    The seemingly interminable day was finally reaching its dark conclusion. He laid his head on the blanket and closed his eyes, which gave up two meaningless tears. He sighed, so softly that no one heard him, and through the spaces between the bars he saw the blurred outline of the derrick high in the sky, the soft-yellow crescent moon hanging at its tip looking soft and inviting.

C HAPTER 8

    A treacherous ape, a turncoat dog—
Ingratitude has existed since ancient times.
Little Wang, you’ve thrown away your scythe and hoe
To learn the tyrant’s walk, just like a crab…
.
—from a ballad sung by Zhang Kou following the garlic glut,
to curse roundly Wang Tai, the new deputy director of the county supply and marketing cooperative

1.

    The police van had traveled so far down the road that the dust had already settled on asphalt that was a blinding ribbon of reflected light. A squashed toad that had been there since who knows when was now no more than a dried-out flattened skin, like a decal. Jinju struggled to her feet and stumbled up to the side of the road; sweat-soaked, her knees knocking, her mind a blank, she sat down in a clump of grass, seemingly more dead than alive.
    The road cut through a vast cropland, with waist-high corn and sorghum nearby and waves of golden millet in the distance. The black soil looked like a patchwork quilt in the fields, which had been prepared for a seeding of soybeans or corn. The dry air and blazing sun made the soil crack and sizzle. Everything the sun touched turned golden yellow, particularly the county government compound, where sunflowers were in bloom.
    She sat lost in her thoughts until the sun sank in the west and clouds of mist climbed skyward; gloomy songs rose from the fields. Each summer day, as night fell, cool breezes drew songs from the throats of peasants. Thick layers of dust covered their naked bodies, which seemed to grow as the suns power faded. An ox was pulling a plow, turning the soil in a garlic field. Seen from a distance, the earth tumbled over glistening blades of the plow, rolling constandy, a shiny black wave in the wake of the plow.
    Numbly, she watched the activity out in the field, and when the old man behind the plow began to sing, she wept openly.
    “Sunset at West Mountain, the sky turns dark”—the old man flicked his whip, making the tip dance above the ox’s head—”Second Aunt rides her mule to Yangguan …”
    He stopped after only two lines. But a few moments later, he was at it again: “Sunset at West Mountain, the sky turns dark / Second Aunt rides her mule to Yangguan …”
    The same two lines, then he stopped again.
    Jinju stood up, brushed the dirt off her backside with her bundle, and slowly headed home.
    Father was dead, Mother had been arrested. A month earlier, he had been run over by the township party secretary’s car, while she had been thrown into a wagon by the police and taken away, and Jinju didn’t know why.
    She walked onto the river embankment, but her bulging belly made it necessary to lean backwards to keep her balance on the way down. Gingerly she stepped on the slick grass and onto the sandy stretch where weeping willows grew. The spongy soil was dotted with clumps of conch grass—green with yellow tips. Leaning against a medium-sized willow, she gazed at the glossy brown-and-green bark, on which an army of red ants was marching. Not knowing what thoughts she should force into the emptiness of her mind, she gradually became aware of a swelling in her legs and