The Garlic Ballads

where Gao Yang was standing with his donkey, and sped down the hill, leaving puddles of water from a punctured radiator—a wet, leaky, short trip.
    With his arms still wrapped around his donkey’s head, Gao Yang tried to figure out what had happened. He reached up and felt his own head. It was still whole. Nose, eyes, ears, mouth: all right where they should be. Then he examined the donkey’s head; it was also in fine shape, except for its ears, which were icy cold. He broke down and cried like a baby.

C HAPTER 15

    Pluck the two-stringed erhu and bring me great joy,
Sing of the brilliant Party Central Committee.
The Third Plenary Session has taken the proper road-
Elders and brothers, get rich on garlic, remake yourselves!
—a song of congratulation sung by Zhang Kou in the first lunar month of 1987, at the wildly jubilant wedding party for Wang Mingnius third son at Qingyang Bazaar (Zhang Kou, drunk as a lord, slept for three straight days at the Wang home)

1.

    On the second night of her incarceration, Fourth Aunt dreamed that a blood-spattered Fourth Uncle stood at the foot of her bed. “Why aren’t you trying to clear your husband’s name and avenge his death instead of sitting around eating prepared food and enjoying a life of leisure?” “Husband,” she replied, “I cannot clear your name or avenge your death, for I have become a criminal.” “Then there’s nothing to be done, I guess,” Fourth Uncle said with a sigh. “I stashed two hundred yuan in a crack between the second row of bricks under the window. When you get out of jail, use a hundred of it to buy me a replica of the National Treasury and fill it with all manner of riches. The world of darkness is the same as the world of light—to get anything done you have to find a back door somewhere, and everything takes money.” Reaching up to wipe his bloody face, Fourth Uncle turned and walked slowly away.
    The specter frightened Fourth Aunt awake; her bedding, hard and rough as armor plating, was soaked with cold sweat. The tragic, bloody image of Fourth Uncle swayed before her eyes, terrifying and saddening her at the same time. Is there really a nether world? she wondered. When I get home, I’ll knock out the second row of bricks under the window, and if there’s two hundred yuan there, that means there is a nether world. I mustn’t divulge any of this to my sons, since those two bastards seem to be trying to outdo each other in the pursuit of evil.
    The mere thought of her sons made Fourth Aunt sigh. Her cellmate, whose thoughts were on her own son, also sighed. She had been taken out for more questioning that evening, and when they brought her back, she flopped down on her cot and cried awhile, then lay there as if in a trance. Asleep now, she was snoring loudly—fast one moment, slow the next, as if dreaming.

    For Fourth Aunt sleep was out of the question. Her husband still had not returned from selling the garlic. A bat flew in through the window, circled the room a time or two, then flew back out. The boundless darkness of night harbored scattered dreamlike mutterings and the ominous squawks of parakeets. She got up, threw her jacket over her shoulders, and walked into the yard. Amid the eerie squawks of her neighbor’s parakeets, she gazed up at the stars and the waxing half-moon. It was past midnight, and she was worried.
    “Yixiang,” she had said to her son after dinner, “aren’t you going out to meet your father?”
    “What for?” he replied. “If he’s not coming home, what good would going out to meet him do? And if he is, what harm would not going out to meet him do?”
    Fourth Aunt was speechless. “I wonder why we ever took the trouble to raise you,” she said after a while.
    “I didn’t ask you to. You should have stuffed me down the septic tank when I was born and let me drown. That way you could have spared me years of grief.”
    Choked with sobs, Fourth Aunt sat on the edge of the kang and let her tears flow. Her shadow spread across the floor, painted by yellow moonlight.
    A frantic pounding at the door.
    Fourth Aunt rushed to open it. Gao Yang stumbled into the room.
    “Fourth Aunt,” he muttered through his sobs, “Fourth Uncle was killed by a car.…”
    Fourth Aunt crumpled to the floor, where she lay without twitching. Gao Yang picked her up and thumped her back and shoulders until she spat out a mouthful of phlegm. “Number One, Number Two, Jinju … get up, all of you. Your father’s