The Garlic Ballads

He felt a warmth in his belly as the strength returned to his legs. His lips trembled, and he felt strangely compelled to shout a defiant slogan. But then he turned and stared at the bright red insignia on the policeman’s wide-brimmed cap, and lowered his head again, overcome with shame and remorse; letting his arms fall slack in front of him, he followed obediently.

Then he heard a tapping sound behind him and strained to see what it was: his daughter, Xinghua, was walking toward him, tapping the ground with a scarred and scorched bamboo staff that banged crisply against the stone steps and resonated painfully in his heart. He grimaced, as hot tears gushed from his eyes. He was truly crying; there was no denying it now. A scalding liquid stopped up his throat when he tried to speak.

Xinghua was clad only in a pair of red underpants and plastic red shoes whose frayed laces were held together by black thread. Dirt smudged her naked belly and neck. Pale ears beneath a boyish crewcut were pricked up alertly. The scalding blockage in his throat wouldn’t go down.

She took high, arching steps — he noticed for the first time what long legs she had — as she crossed the threshold and stood on the stone steps where he had knelt a moment earlier. Her staff was a foot or so taller than she, and he was suddenly and surprisingly aware of how tall she had grown. He tried again to force down the gooey lump in his throat as he gazed at the two shiny black dots in her cinder-streaked face. Her eyes were a dense, demonic black, seemingly with no white at all, and as she cocked her head, a strange expression of mature worldli-ness settled over her face. She called out to him softly, tentatively, before a scream tore from her throat: “Daddy!”

Moisture gathered in the corners of his mouth. One of the policemen prodded him hesitantly. “C-come on,” he said gently, “get moving. They may let you out in a day or two.”

Spasms wracked Gao Yang’s throat and guts as he stared at the stammering policeman, with his smug, ingratiating look; Gao Yang’s teeth parted, and out gushed a stream of white froth streaked with pale-blue threads. He wasted no time, now that his throat was clear: “Xinghua! Go tell Mommy—” His throat closed up again before he could get the rest out.

Gao Jinjiao slinked up to the gate and said, “Go home and tell your mommy that your daddy’s been taken away by the police.”

Gao Yang watched his daughter drop down on the threshold and rock backward, barely catching herself with a hand on the ground. With the help of her bamboo staff, she stood up again; her mouth was open, as if screaming, though Gao Yang heard nothing but a rumbling noise that might have been far off or could have been right next to him. Another wave of nausea hit him. His daughter looked like a chained monkey being whipped and dragged roughly along, leaping silently but wildly from side to side. Her staff tapped the stone threshold, tapped the rotting wood around it, tapped the hard, dry earth, leaving a track of pale scars in the ground.

His wife’s tormented screams from the yard pounded in his ears. “Village Chief Gao,” the policeman said, “you lead the way. Let’s get out of here.” They lifted Gao Yang by the arms, as they would a stubborn, spindly little boy, and dragged him toward the village as fast as their legs would carry them.

2.

They dragged him until his heart was racing, until he was gasping for breath and he sweat-stank. To the west of a dark line of acacia trees he saw three buildings with red roofs, but since he seldom ventured beyond the village, he wasn’t sure who lived there. They dragged him into the acacia grove, where they stretched and caught their breath. He noticed that their clothes were sweat-soaked under the arms and around the midriff, which earned for them both his respect and his pity.

Gao Jinjiao slipped into the grove. He spoke in whispers. “In the room … peeked through the window … sprawled across the kang fast asleep …”

“H-how should we take him?” the stammering policeman asked his partner. “Have the village chief trick him into coming out? It wont be easy. He used to be a soldier.”

Now he knew who they were after. It was Gao Ma; it had to be Gao Ma. He glared at the balding village boss, and would have bitten him if he could.

“No, we’ll rush him. We can always bring him down with our prods if need be.”

“You don’t need me anymore, Officers, so I’ll be on my way,” Gao Jinjiao said.

“D-don’t need you anymore? You have to watch him.”

He glared at Gao Jinjiao.

“I can’t watch him, Officer. If he got away, you’d say it was my fault.”

The stammering policeman wiped his sweaty face with his sleeve. “Gao Yang,” he said, “you g-going to try to run away?”

Feeling suddenly and perversely defiant, Gao Yang snarled through clenched teeth, “Just you watch me!”