The Garlic Ballads (32 page)

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 been killed by a car….”

Jinju, far along in her pregnancy, came running into the room, followed by her brothers.

Two horse-drawn wagons entered the lane at dawn and stopped in front of the threshing floor. Fourth Aunt ran outside, shouting for her husband. The area was packed with people, including even the village boss, Gao Jinjiao. Elder and Younger Brother stood impassively beside the wagon.

“Your father, where’s your father?” Fourth Aunt demanded, her hands spread out questioningly in front of her.

Elder Brother squatted down and held his head in his hands as he wept softly. “Father … my dear father

His younger brother, dry-eyed, flung back the sheet of plastic covering the bed of the wagon to reveal the rigid corpse of Fourth Uncle. His mouth was open, his eyes staring, his cheeks spattered with mud.

Husband, my husband, such a cruel way to die! Let me touch your face, your hands. Your face is cold as ice; so are your hands. Last night you were full of life, this morning just a cold cadaver! Fourth Aunt rubbed Fourth Uncle’s bald pate, then his ears. Through rips in his thin jacket she glimpsed his dark, sunken abdomen. Shredded pant legs revealed a gory mess of skin and blood.

Husband, bringing down a farmer is supposed to be so hard. A bump on the leg shouldn’t do it. She felt his cold scalp for wounds. And found one: a dent the size of an egg in the center of his cranium. Here it is, the spot where they cracked your skull and drove bone splinters into your brain—this is how they killed you.

Two of the villagers dragged Fourth Aunt away, teeth clenched and gasping for breath. Fearful that she was about to follow her husband in death, a couple of the bystanders forced her mouth open with a chop-stick; Jinju’s tearful, pathetic cries sounded in the background. “Take it easy, not so hard! Dont gouge her teeth out,” the one holding her head cautioned the one holding the chopstick. Once they had her lips parted, a mouthful of cold water brought her to her senses.

The dead cow lay on its side in the second wagon, its stiff legs poking over the side of the wagon like gun barrels. Inside its belly an unborn calf squirmed and wriggled.

A burst of weeping, followed by one of wailing. When the people next looked up, they saw that the sun was high in the sky. “Fang Yijun,” the village boss, Gao Jinjiao, said, “your father’s dead, and no amount of tears can bring him back. In this heat hell start to stink pretty soon, so dress him up in the newest clothing you can find, then hire a truck and take him to the county crematorium. As for the cow, skin it and sell the meat—tomorrow’s market day, and the price of beef has gone through the ceiling. What you get for the hide and meat will be more than enough for your father’s funeral expenses.”

“Uncle,” Fang Yijun said to the village boss, “do you expect us to accept our father’s death without a murmur? Gao Yang says they were parked by the side of the road, and that the car swerved into them.”

Oh?” Gao Jinjiao commented. “Is that how it happened? Then the driver should go to jail, and the owner should pay restitution. Whose car was it?”

“The township government. Party Secretary Wang Jiaxiu was in the car when it happened,” Gao Yang said.

Gao Jinjiao blanched. “Gao Yang,” he said sternly, “I want the truth. Are you sure?”

“That
is
the truth, Uncle. The car sprung a leak and broke down a few seconds later. I was holding Fourth Uncle in my arms and crying when Secretary Wang and his driver came running back. Little Zhang was shaking like a leaf, and he reeked of alcohol. ‘You don’t have anything to be scared of as long as I’m around, Little Zhang,’ Secretary Wang assured him. Then he asked what village I was from, and when I told him, he breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Little Zhang,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing to be afraid of. They’re peasants from our township. That’s easy. A little cash for the family will take care of everything.’ “

“Enough of that crazy talk, Gao Yang!” Gao Jinjiao said. “What about the license number?”

“Ifs a black car, with no license plate. The only time they dare drive it is at night,” Gao Zhileng, the neighbor who raised parakeets, remarked angrily. “The driver’s a cousin of Secretary Wang’s wife. Used to be a tractor driver, and doesnt have a passenger-car license.”

“Gao Zhileng!” Gao Jinjiao shouted.

“What?” Gao Zhileng asked, glaring defiandy. “You want me to keep my mouth shut, is that it? Well, you may be afraid of him, but I’m not! My uncle is deputy director of the Municipal Committee Organization Department, and that makes our Wang Jiaxiu look like a cunt hair!”

“Okay, do what you want,” Gao Jinjiao said. “As long as it includes cremating the body and paying the village committee an administrative fee of ten yuan from the sale of the cow.”

“If you Fang boys weren’t such worthless garbage you’d carry your father over to the township compound and force Wang Jiaxiu’s hand,” Gao Zhileng said.

The older one stood there shilly-shallying, but his brother’s eyes blazed. “Let’s go, Brother!” he said resolutely. “Jinju, watch the house. Mother, you come with us.”

Well, the boys lifted their father’s body off the wagon and lay it facedown on the ground like a dead dog. “Hold on, Number Two,” I said. “Dress your father up first. He’s got a new lined jacket in the house. He needs to look good if he’s going to see an official.” “To hell with looking good!” Number Two said. “He’s dead.” He took down a door and laid his father on it, still facedown. “Turn him face-up, Number Two,” I said. So he rolled my husband over, to let him stare blindly at the sky. Good old Gao Zhileng went home to fetch a couple of ropes to tie the body down. Then the boys carried their father off to the township compound, the older one limping along up front, the younger one behind, and me bringing up the rear. Villagers crowded around me, and even that bastard Gao Ma showed up. But no matter what anyone says about him, he still would have been our son-in-law. Well, he walked up and grabbed the pole out of my oldest son’s hands. Since Gao Ma and my second son are the same height, the door leveled out and the old man’s head stopped lolling from side to side.

But when we reached the compound, the gatekeeper tried to stop us from entering, so Gao Ma shouldered him aside. The place was deserted except for a big barking dog that was squatting by the kitchen door. The car that killed my husband was parked there. The top was almost covered by a wagonload of green garlic, and the hood was all bloody.

The three of us waited in the compound with my husband’s body. We waited and we waited, all the way to high noon, but nobody came up to ask what we wanted. Flies were crawling all over my husband’s face, trying to find their way into his eye sockets and mouth and nostrils and ears to put their gunk inside. What’s gunk? You know, maggots. It didn’t take them long to start squirming all over the place. They were everywhere. When one swarm of flies left, another took its place. Then it flew off. I tried to cover the old man’s face with a sheet of newspaper, but the flies kept finding their way under it. Villagers from all over came to gawk—East Village, West Hamlet, Northville, and Southburg— everyone but the officials who should have been there.

My younger son went to the local café and bought a bunch of oil fritters, brought them back wrapped in newspaper, and tried to get me to eat. But I just couldn’t, not with my husband lying dead in front of me. He’d been there all morning and was starting to smell. My oldest son couldn’t eat, either. In fact, his brother was the only one who could. He scraped a handful of garlic off the car, then stood there with garlic in one hand and fritters in the other, taking a bite out of the left hand, then the right, back and forth, over and over. His eyes were wide and his cheeks puffed way out, and I could tell that deep down he felt bad.

Finally our waiting paid off. An official turned up, though by then the sun was good and red. It was Deputy Yang, a distant relative until he disowned us for letting our daughter go off with Gao Ma. But at least he’s no stranger. In fact my older son calls him Eighth Uncle, and my younger one does chores for him, like helping him build his house, put up walls, deliver manure, stuff like that. He’s almost one of his hired hands.

Well, he rode his bicycle through the gate. At last, I thought. After waiting for the stars and the moon, our savior from heaven had arrived! My sons ran up to greet him, with me right on their heels. But what was I supposed to call him? “Eighth Uncle” seemed the safest, I figured. “Eighth Uncle, we need your help. Here, I’ll get down on my knees and beg. As the saying goes, ‘Kneeling is the weightiest form of respect’ “ Well, that was more than Deputy Yang could bear, and he quickly helped me to my feet. I didn’t realize it was all for show until later on. He even took out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. Then he lifted up the sheet of newspaper and looked into my husband’s face. The flies took off with a buzz, and he jumped back in fright. “Fourth Aunt,” he said to me, “you can’t leave him here. That won’t solve anything.”