The Garlic Ballads (15 page)

“If you don’t,” the middle-aged inmate said menacingly, “I’ll stick your head in the chamber pot tonight and drown you!” Even in the fading light in the cell, the middle-aged inmate’s eyes seemed luminous.

The old mans eyes pooled with tears; since there were no eyelashes to control the flow, the tears fairly gushed from ducts in the festering corners. Gao Yang saw this with great clarity. The old inmate slowly stretched out his arms until they were about eight inches from his body, then opened his hands. Gao Yang counted seven old fingers buried in the steamed bun, which had long since given up its original shape. The whimpering old man suddenly went crazy, ripping off a hunk of the bun and cramming it into his mouth. Then he flung what was left into the puddle of piss Gao Yang had been unable to hold back.

“You want it? Then go get it!” he shrieked.

The middle-aged inmate curled his lip and said, “Is that the way you want it, you mongrel prick?” He walked up and grabbed the man’s neck in a viselike grip. “Either you pick up that bun and eat it or I’ll soak your head in the chamber pot! You choose.”

The old man’s eyes rolled back into his head.

“Well, what’s it going to be?” the middle-aged man asked in measured tones.

“I’ll eat… eat it,” the old man wheezed.

The middle-aged inmate loosened his grip and turned to Gao Yang. “You don’t look like somebody who’s going to give me any trouble,” he snarled. “I expect you to do as I say, and what I want you to do now is lap up the piss you deposited on the floor.”

“Come on, let’s see who can drink his own pee!” announced Wang Tai, a sixth-grader at the Gaotong Village elementary school in Paradise County’s Tree Trench Commune as he stood in the lavatory. It was the summer of 1960. Wang Tai, whose father was the leader of Gaotong Production Team Number 2, had a poor-peasant background.

It was recess time. As soon as the bell rang, the students had swarmed out of the schoolhouse, merging into a single body until they reached the athletic field, where they split up by gender, with boys to the east and girls to the west. Weeds grew all over the athletic field, whose wooden basketball post sported a nice crop of edible fungus; the basket rims were rust red. A blue-eyed, bearded old billy goat tied to a wooden post on the eastern edge of the field stared at the gang of gaunt, wiry, wild children.

The lavatories were located on the southern edge of the athletic field: two open-air structures, with the boys’ lavatory to the east and the girls’ to the west, separated by a low wall made of brick fragments. Gao Yang recalled that the wall barely cleared his head at the time. But Wang Tai, who was the oldest boy in the class, was as tall as the wall, so by standing on bricks he could see what was happening on the other side.

Gao Yang thought back to the sight of Wang Tai standing on three bricks to peek over the wall into the girls’ lavatory. He also recalled what the boys’ lavatory looked like: a large brick-lined pit in the center, with boys standing on all four sides pissing at the same time. The clearing around the opening of the pit was dubbed “the precipice,” the innermost portion of which was shiny from the boys’ feet. Sleek black weeds and red rushes grew on the far edges, alongside purslanes, with their tiny yellow flowers.

“Hey, everybody, don’t pee right away! Hold it, and we’ll see who can drink his own,” Wang Tai said from the precipice.

Since the boys from grades one through five couldn’t squeeze up to the precipice, they watered the weeds and flowers on the outer edge, making them rustle loudly.

“Who’s first?” Wang Tai asked. “Gao Yang, give it a try.”

Gao Yang and Wang Tai belonged to the same production team. Wang Tai’s father was the team leader, while Gao Yang’s was a former landlord assigned to work under the supervision of poor and lower-middle-class peasants.

“Okay, I’ll go first!” Gao Yang responded happily.

A quarter of a century later, he still recalled the incident.

Gao Yang had been only thirteen at the time, and even though their family had never had enough to eat or decent clothes to wear, by scrimping and saving, his folks kept him in school through the sixth grade. His father was a landlord, his mother a landlord’s wife. With that kind of background, all the talent in the world couldn’t help Gao Yang avoid the only path open to him—straight to Gaotong Production Team Number 2 as a worker under the supervision of Wang Tai’s father, and very soon. Gao Yang was pretty sure he’d never pass the middle-school entrance exam, even if he got perfect scores in every subject, which was impossible in any case. So naturally he was eager when Wang Tai gave him the chance to drink his own urine. Back then being noticed by others, for whatever reason, made him happy.

When he said he’d try, he was confident he could do it. So he aimed his taut little pecker skyward and shot a stream of yellow piss straight up, way over his head. Quickly sticking his lips into the watery column, he took a big mouthful and swallowed it. Then he did it again.

Wang Tai roared with laughter. “How’d it taste? How was it?”

“Kind of like tea,” he lied.

“Who else wants to try?” Wang Tai asked. “Who’s next?” No takers.

Some of the smaller kids ran out onto the athletic field and shouted, “Come over here, quick! The sixth-graders are seeing who’ll drink his own pee!”

Wang Tai turned to another of the sixth-graders. “Li Shuanzhu, go out there and take care of those little pussies.” Then he lowered his voice. “Hey, guys, do you know how girls pee?”

They said they didn’t.

Wang Tai spread his legs, squatted down, and made a hissing sound with his mouth. “Like that.”

The sixth-graders shrieked in delight.

Then Wang Tai lined them up on the west edge of the precipice. “Now we’ll see who can piss the highest,” he said. “The winner gets a prize.”

A dozen or more students lined up, with Wang Tai at the head, and launched that many watery columns—some yellow and some white, some clear and some murky—into the air. Most crashed down on the wall dividing the boys’ and girls’ lavatories, but at least two landed on the other side. By far the most turbulent stream belonged to Wang Tai himself—Gao Yang was absolutely certain of that.

A shriek erupted from the girls’ lavatory, followed by curses.

Gao Yang couldn’t believe it when Wang Tai put the blame on him.

The principal dragged Gao Yang into his office and smacked him in front of the teachers. “The sons of heroes are as solid as bricks, the sons of reactionaries are all little pricks,” he announced, before turning to one of the younger teachers. “Liu Yaohua, go to Gaotong Village and tell Wang Tai’s and Gao Yangs fathers I want to see them.”

Gao Yang burst out crying, afraid his father would suffer again, all because of him.

The old inmate scooped the bun out of Gao Yang’s piss and squeezed it with both hands; it made a bubbling sound as the gummy urine dripped through his gnarled, grimy fingers. After he’d squeezed it dry, he wiped his hands on his pants, then tore off a chunk and popped it into his mouth.

“See, buddy, he’s eating it. Now, go on, drink up. It’s your own piss, so it can’t hurt you,” the grinning middle-aged inmate said, softly enough so the guards wouldn’t hear him.

Gao Yang glared at the would-be murderer, feeling morally superior to someone for the first time in his life. Killer! Thief! Incestuous old bastard! When the poor and lower-middle-class peasants made me drink my own piss, I did it. And when the Red Guards made me drink it, I did it. But for common criminals like you? “I won’t do it!” he announced defiantly,

“Are you sure about that?” the middle-aged inmate asked with a thin laugh.

“I’m sure,” Gao Yang replied as he glanced at the old man, who was gobbling up the piss-soaked bun; he felt a wave of nausea rise in his throat.

“You’d better do as he says, if you know what’s good for you,” the young inmate urged him.

“If the guards ordered me to drink it, I’d have no choice,” Gao Yang replied. “But I’ve done nothing to offend any of you.”

“Maybe not,” the young man said sympathetically. “But rules are rules.”

“Go on, drink,” the old inmate added his encouragement. “People have to learn how to deal graciously with humiliation. Look at me—I’m drinking your piss, aren’t I?”

“I’m not the tyrant you think I am, friend,” the middle-aged inmate said earnestly. “Believe me, it’s for your own good.”

Beginning to waver, Gao Yang was actually touched by the man’s apparent sincerity.

“Go on, Little Brother, drink it,” the old man croaked, his throat filled with pieces of steamed bun.

“Do as he says, Elder Brother,” the young cellmate urged him with watery eyes.

Gao Yang’s nose began to ache—he was about to cry—and when he looked at the three criminals who shared his cell, he felt like a man whose loved ones were coaxing him into taking a dose of bitter medicine.

“I’ll drink it … I’ll drink it…” His throat tightened until he couldn’t string together a complete sentence.

“Good boy—that’s what I like to hear!” the middle-aged inmate said with a friendly pat on the shoulder.

Gao Yang sank slowly to his knees on the cement floor in the middle of his own puddle of piss, which retained the enticing odor of garlic. As he closed his eyes, images of his father and mother drifted into his mind. Father wore a tattered conical rain hat, a scrawny tuft of hair peeking through the hole at the top. He was hunched over and was wheezing badly. Mother, struggling on tiny bound feet, was hauling a wagon uphill in the snow. Gao Yang quickly flattened his feverish lips against the cold cement floor. The smell of garlic—ah, the smell of garlic! He sucked up a mouthful of cool urine, and another, and a third … ah, the smell of garlic!

The middle-aged man grabbed him by the shoulders and lifted him up. “Little Brother,” he said, “you can stop now.”

After being led over to his cot, Gao Yang sat
on
the edge as if in a trance, not saying a word for about half as long as it takes to smoke a pipeful. A gurgle rose in his throat. Another long pause before his lips parted and he blurted out tearfully, “Father … Mother … today your son … drank his own piss … again.”

Father wore his tattered conical rain hat, and wheezed badly. He held a switch in his hands as he stood in the school office, looking pitifully into the face of the nearly apoplectic principal. “Mr. Principal, sir, the boy didn’t know what he was doing.

“What do you mean, he didn’t know what he was doing?” the principal barked as he banged his desk. “He’s a little hooligan!”

“A hoo … ligan?”

“He peed on the girls in his class! Was that your idea?”

“Mr. Principal… sir … I’m a lifelong reader of the classics … benevolence, justice, rites, knowledge, trust… no contact between boys and girls. …” Father was wailing before he finished.

“You can put away that bunch of feudalistic crap,” the principal snarled.

“I had no idea he could do something as shameful as that,” said Father, who was trembling from head to toe. He raised the thick willow switch in his hands. “I… I’ll kill him.… I’ll beat you to death You let me down, you good-for-nothing little bastard As if I didn’t have enough trouble, now you do something like this….”

The hunched-over old man in a tattered conical rain hat raised the willow switch in both hands … it arched downward toward Gao Yang’s head but landed on his shoulder….

“What do you think you’re doing?” the principal bellowed. “Where do you think you are, pulling a stunt like that?” He yanked the switch out of Father’s hands and tossed it aside. “We’ve decided to expel Gao Yang. Take him home with you. Once you get him home you can beat him to death for all we care.”

“Mr. Principal, please don’t expel me, please don’t….” Gao Yang felt awful.

“You expect us to keep a hooligan like you?” The principal glared at him. “Go on—go with your father!”

“Mr. Principal…” Father bent double, again holding the switch in both hands, quaking badly, tears running down his face. “Mr. Principal, I beg you … let him graduate, please.”

“Button your lip!” the principal demanded. “Is Team Leader Wang out there?”