The Garlic Ballads

one into the bowl. As Jinju was swishing the drowning lice around with a blade of grass, a bald hen walked up, cocked its head, and scrutinized the insects.
    “The hen wants to eat our lice, Daddy,” she said.
    “I had to work too hard for these to let you gobble them up,” he said as he shooed the chicken away.
    “Give her some, and shell lay more eggs.”
    “I promised Mr. Wang in West Village I’d bring a thousand,” Fourth Uncle said.
    “What does he want them for?”
    “To make medicine.”
    “You can make medicine out of lice?”
    “You can medicine out of just about everything.”
    “How many have you got so far?”
    “Eight hundred and forty-seven.”
    “Want some help?”
    “No. He said no females could touch these. He can’t make medicine out of them if they’ve been touched by female hands.”
    Jinju pulled back her hand.
    “It’s not easy being a louse,” he told her. “Did you ever hear the story of the city louse and the country louse who meet on the road? The city louse asks, ‘Say, country brother, where are you off to?’ The country louse says, To the city. How about you?’ ‘I’m off to the country,’ the city louse replies. ‘What for?’ To get something to eat.’ ‘Forget it. I’m going to town to find food.’ When the city louse asks why, he says, ‘In the countryside they scour their clothing three times a day, and if they can’t find anything, they beat it with a club and pop whatever comes out into their mouths. If we’re not beaten to death we’re bitten to death. I barely escaped with my life.’ The country louse relates its tale of woe tearfully. The city louse sighs and says, ‘I assumed things had to be better in the countryside than in the city. I never thought they could be worse.’ Things must be better in the city than in the countryside,’ the country louse says. ‘Like hell they are!’ the city louse says. ‘In the city everybody wears silks and satins, layer upon layer of them. They clean them three times a day and change them five. We never catch a ghmpse of flesh. If the iron doesn’t get us, the water will. I barely escaped with
my
life.’ The two lice cry on each other’s shoulders for a while, and when they realize they have nowhere to go, they jump down a well and drown themselves.”
    Jinju was in stitches. “Daddy, you made that up.”

    With the sound of her daughter’s laughter in her ears, Fourth Aunt sniffled and bit down on a louse, saddened by thoughts of happier days. Putting aside her hunt for lice, she walked barefoot up to the barred window. But it was too high for her to see outside, so she went back and stood on the cot to get a better look. She could see a barbed-wire fence and, beyond that, fields planted with cucumbers, eggplants, and broad beans. The beans were yellowing, the eggplants blooming. A pair of pink-and-white butterflies flew around the purple flowers, moving back and forth between the bean trellises and the eggplant flowers. Fourth Aunt sat down and recommenced her hunt for lice in the blanket, and her mournful memories.

4.

    It was the fourth time that morning that the parakeets in the East Lane compound of Gao Zhileng had raised a din. Fourth Aunt nudged Fourth Uncle with the tip of her foot. “Hey, old man, it’s time to get up. This is the fourth time I’ve heard the parakeets this morning.”
    He sat up, threw a jacket over his shoulders, and filled his pipe. Then he sat on the kang smoking as he listened to the nightmarishly shrill cries of the parakeets. “Go out and take a look at the stars,” he said. “You can’t rely on a bunch of pet birds. Only roosters know when it’s dawn.”
    “Everybody says parakeets are smart,” she said, her eyes flashing in the darkness. “Have you ever looked at Gao Zhileng’s birds? They’re so colorful—green, yellow, red—-and they tuck their hooked beaks into their wing feathers, so only their bright little eyes show. Everybody says they’ve got the devil in them, which means Gao Zhileng is on the devil’s payroll. I never did trust him.”
    Fourth Uncle puffed on his pipe until the bowl glowed red, but didn’t say a word. The parakeets’ squawks cut through the darkness, loud one second, soft the next, and Fourth Aunt could envision the colorful birds cocking their heads and eying her.

    She pulled the covers up over her legs, growing more fearful by the minute and wishing that her cellmate would hurry back. Guards shouted in the