The Garlic Ballads (43 page)

At this point in his song something hot stung his blind eyes, as if tears had materialized from somewhere, and he remembered all he had suffered in the county lockup.

The policeman held the hot electric prod up to his mouth until he could hear it crackle. “Shut your trap, you blind fuck!” the policeman spat out venomously. Then the sparking prod touched his lips, and lightning hit him like a thousand needles. His teeth, his gums, his tongue, and his throat—-bursts of pain shot to the top of his head and down to the rest of his body. A scream tore from his throat, sending chills up his spine. Blood gushed from his withered eye sockets. “You can make me eat shit,” he said, “but I couldn’t keep my mouth shut if I wanted to. There are things inside me that must be said. I, Zhang Kou, am linked forever to the townspeople….”

“Good for you, Great-Uncle Zhang Kou!” a couple of young fellows shouted. ‘There are half a million people in Paradise County, and yours is the only mouth that dares to speak out!”

“Zhang Kou, you might be elected county head!” someone jeered.

At this point in his song, Zhang Kou bit off each word, loud and crisp, whipping his audience into a frenzy of wild talk.

“Shit! They call themselves public servants, do they? Bloodsucking demons is what they are!”

“They say you can become a county leader for fifty thousand yuan a year!”

“The guest house lays out a fancy spread every day, with enough food to last us a year.”

“Rotten to the core!”

An old man’s voice joined the discussion: “You young people better watch what you re saying. You, too, Brother Zhang Kou. Remember what happened to the people who trashed the government offices!”

Zhang Kou sang his response: “Good brother, stand there quietly and listen to my story…,”

The words were barely out of his mouth when several raucous men elbowed their way into the crowd. “What are you people doing here? You’re blocking traffic and disrupting order. Break it up, move on!”

Realizing at once that the voices belonged to the policemen who had dealt with him in the lockup, Zhang Kou recommenced plucking his
erhu:

“Zhang Kou, are you still singing those dirty rhymes?” one of the policemen asked.

“Officer, don’t be too quick to judge me,” Zhang Kou replied. “As a blind man, I have to rely on this mouth of mine for a living. I’m no criminal.”

A young fellow in the crowd spoke up: “Uncle Zhang Kou must be tired after singing all afternoon. He deserves a rest. Come on, folks, dig into your pockets. If you can’t spare ten yuan, a single copper is better than nothing. If everybody pitches in, he can treat himself to some good meaty buns.”

Coins clanked and paper notes rustled on the ground in front of him. “Thank you,” he said repeatedly, “thank you, one and all, young and old.”

“Officers, good Uncles, your rations come from the national treasury, and you make a good enough wage that you’ll never miss the few coins that drop between your fingers. Show some pity for a blind old man.”

“Shit! What makes you think we’ve got any money?” one of the policemen retorted angrily. “You earn more from one acre of garlic than we do from working our asses off all year long!”

“More talk about garlic? Maybe your grandsons will be stupid enough to plant garlic next year!” a young man jeered.

“You there,” the policeman demanded, “what did you mean by that?”

“What did I mean? Nothing. All I’m saying is no more garlic for me. From now on I’m going to plant beans and maybe a little opium,” the young man grumbled.

“Opium? How many heads do you have on your shoulders, you little punk?” the policeman demanded.

“Just one. But you’ll see me begging on the street before I’ll plant another stalk of garlic!” The young man walked off.

“Stop right there! What’s your name? What village?” The policeman ran after him.

“Everybody, run! The police are at it again!” someone shouted. With yells and shrieks, the crowd dispersed in all directions, leaving Zhang Kou in a blanket of silence. He cocked his ear to determine what was going on, but his rapt audience had slipped away like fish in the depths of the ocean, leaving behind a pall of silence and the stink of their sweat. From somewhere off in the distance came the sound of a bugle, followed by the noise of children on their way into a schoolhouse. He felt the warmth of the late-autumn afternoon sun on his back. After picking up his
erhu
, he groped around on the ground for the coins and paper money the people had thrown at his feet. Gratitude flooded his heart when he picked up an oversized ten-yuan bill; his hand began to quake. The depth of feeling toward his anonymous benefactor was unfathomable.

Back on his feet again, he negotiated the bumpy road, staff in hand, ‘ heading toward the train station and abandoned warehouse he and several other old vagrants called home. Ever since his release from the lockup, where he had been subjected to a barrage of physical abuse, he had earned the veneration of local thieves, beggars, and fortunetellers—the so-called dregs of society. The thieves stole a rush sleeping mat and enough cotting wadding to make him a nice soft bed, and the beggars shared their meager bounty with him. Over the long days and weeks he was on the mend, these were the people who cared for him, restoring in his mind a long-dormant faith in human nature. So, subordinating his own safety to a love for his outcast companions, he sang a ballad of garlic loud and long to protest the mistreatment of the common people.

About midway home, along with the smell of withered leaves on a familiar old tree, he also picked up the biting, metallic scent of rust-resistant oil. He barely had time to react before a hand clamped down on his shoulder. Instinctively, he drew his head down between his shoulders and squeezed his lips shut, fully expecting to be roundly cuffed. But whoever it was merely laughed amiably and said in a soft voice, “What are you flinching for? I wont hurt you.”

“What do you want?” he asked in a quaking voice.

“Zhang Kou,” the man said softly, “you havent forgotten what an electric prod does to the mouth, have you?”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Really?”

“I’m just a blind old man who sings tales to get by. That’s how I keep from starving.”

“I’m only thinking about your well-being,” the man said. “No more songs about garlic, do you hear me? Which do you think will give out first, your mouth or the electric prod?”

“Thanks for the warning. I understand.”

“That’s good. Now don’t do anything foolish. A big mouth is the cause of most problems.”

The man turned and walked off, and a moment later Zhang Kou heard a motorbike start up and go putt-putting down the road. He stood beneath the old tree without moving for a long, long time. The woman who ran a snack shop near the big old tree saw him. “Is that you, Great-Uncle Zhang?” she called out warmly. “What are you standing there for? Come on over for some nice meaty buns, fresh from the oven. My treat.”

A wry laugh escaped from him as he banged the tree trunk with his staff; then he exploded in furious shrieks: “You black-hearted hyenas, do you really think you can shut me up so easily? Sixty-six years is long enough for any man to live!”

The poor woman gasped in alarm. “Great-Uncle, who got you so angry? Is anything worth getting hysterical over?”

“Blind and poor, my life’s never been worth more than a few coppers. Anyone who thinks he can shut Zhang Kou’s mouth better be prepared to overturn the verdicts in the garlic case!” Back on the street again, he began singing at the top of his lungs.

The proprietress heaved a long sigh as she watched the blind old man’s gaunt silhouette lurch down the street.

Three days later the autumn rains turned the side street into a sea of mud. As the snack-shop proprietress stood in her doorway gazing at the street lamp at the far end of the street, with raindrops dancing in its pale yellow light, she experienced a sense of desperate loneliness and paralyzing boredom. Before shutting the door and going to bed, she thought she heard the strains of Zhang Kou’s dreary song hover around her. She jerked the door open and looked up and down the street, but the music died out. It returned when she shut the door again, more intimate and moving than ever.

The next morning they found Zhang Kou’s body sprawled in the side street, his mouth crammed full of sticky mud. Lying beside him was the headless corpse of a cat.

Rain clouds brought with them the nauseating stench of rotting garlic, pressing it down over the town. Thieves, beggars, and other undesirables carried Zhang Kou’s body up and down the side street, wailing and lamenting from dawn to dusk, when they dug a hole next to the big old tree and buried Zhang Kou in it.

From that day onward the proprietress of the snack shop heard Zhang Kou sing every night. Soon the little side street turned into a street of ghosts. One by one the local residents moved away, except for the proprietress, who one day hanged herself on the big tree, joining the area’s spectral population.

All night long Fourth Aunt wheezed and coughed and fussed, robbing her cellmates of their sleep. The one they called Wild Mule cursed angrily, “If you re dying, damn you, be quick about it!”

‘Tm not
trying
to cough, girl,” Fourth Aunt said apologetically, “and I’d surely stop wheezing if I could.

The girl with long, pretty brows who slept on the bunk above Fourth Aunt grumbled, “It’s criminal the way they make an old woman like her serve time.”

Wounded by the reminder of injustice, Fourth Aunt felt tears well up in her eyes and spill out. And the more she thought about it, the worse she felt, until an agonizing groan swelled in her throat.

Her cellmates—about a dozen in all—sat up. The tender-hearted ones threw their coats over their shoulders and came up to see what was wrong, while those not so easily moved just grumbled and cursed. “Knock that off!” Wild Mule demanded. “I knew this would happen. I thought you were supposed to be hard as nails. You got off easy—five years for burning down a government building!”

Between sobs and wheezes Fourth Aunt moaned, “Girl, I know I’ll die in this camp….”

A sleepy-eyed guard appeared at the window and rapped on the bars. “What’s going on? Who’s making all that noise in the middle of the night?”

“Reporting, Officer,” the long-browed girl said. “Number Thirty-eight is sick.”

“What’s she got?”

“She cant stop coughing and wheezing.”

“That’s nothing new. Now knock it off and get some sleep. Calisthenics first thing in the morning, don’t forget.”

After the guard left, the long-browed girl poured some water into a mug and held it up to Fourth Aunt’s lips, then reached under her pillow for some tablets. “Here, Auntie,” she said, “these are for pain and inflammation. Take a couple, they might just help.”

“I can’t use up your medicine, dear,” Fourth Aunt demurred.

“We’re all in the same boat,” the girl replied, “so why worry about niceties like that now?”

The girl helped Fourth Aunt take the tablets. “Young lady,” a tearful Fourth Aunt said, “how can I repay you for this?”

“Try her out as a daughter-in-law,” Wild Mule volunteered.

“With those sons of mine?” Fourth Aunt remarked. “They’re not worthy of somebody like this.”

“And you, while you’re selling a mule up front, the head of a turtle sneaks up from behind,” the girl snapped.

Wild Mule sat up angrily and glared at her. “Who are you talking to?”

“You,” the girl replied defiandy. “I’m calling you a stinking whore who sells her pussy!”

Mortified, then enraged, Wild Mule picked up a scuffed leather shoe and flung it at her antagonist. “I sell pussy?” she snarled. “And you don’t? Stop acting so high and mighty around me. Nice little virgins don’t wind up in a place like this!”

The long-browed girl ducked just in time for the shoe to sail by and hit the shrewish woman in bed three, who was serving time for drowning her own child; she picked it up off the floor and hit the long-browed girl on the head.