Gao Yang looked at the sinking sun, whose rays were growing gender and friendlier by the minute. He knew that the comrade policemen were by then dipping steamed dumplings in the vinegary, garlicky sauce; this held a hidden and frightful significance. When they finish their meal, he reminded himself, they’ll come out to put me into a shiny red van and take me… where will they take me? Wherever it was, it had to be better than being shackled to a tree, right? But who could say? Actually, it made no difference what happened, as he saw it. “The people’s hearts are made of steel, but the Law is a forge.” If I’m guilty, there goes my head. Another breeze rose up, rusding the leaves of the poplars and carrying the brays of a distant mule, which chilled the nape of his neck. He forced himself to stop thinking about what might happen.
A woman carrying a bundle stumbled up to the compound gate, where she argued with a young man who wouldn’t let her pass. Failing to force her way past him, she took the long way around the poplar grove. Gao Yang watched her approach. It was Jinju, so heavy with child she could barely walk. She was weeping. The bundle in her hands was large and round, the exact shape and size of a human head. But when she got closer, he saw it was only a melon. Not having the heart to look her in the eye, he sighed and lowered his head. Compared with poor Jinju, he had no complaints. People ought to count their blessings.
“Mother… Mother…” Jinju was so close he could all but touch her. “Mother… dear Mother… what’s wrong?”
I’m not crying, Gao Yang reminded himself, I am not crying, I’m not
Jinju fell to her knees besides Fourth Aunt and cupped the old lady’s gray, grimy head. She was sobbing and mumbling like an old woman.
Gao Yang sniffled, closed his eyes, and strained to listen to the shouts of farmers calling their livestock out in the fields. The modulated, rhythmic braying of that mule fell upon his ears. It was the sound he feared most of all, so he looked back at Jinju and Fourth Aunt. The soft orange rays of the sun lit up Fourth Aunt’s face framed in Jinju’s hands.
“Mother… it’s all my fault… Mother… wake up…”
Fourth Aunt’s lids rose slowly, but the whites of her eyes barely showed before the lids closed again, squeezing out a couple of sallow tears, which slid down her cheeks.
Gao Yang watched Fourth Aunt’s white, prickly tongue emerge to lick Jinju’s forehead, like a bitch bathing her pup or a cow cleaning its calf. At first the sight disgusted him, but he reminded himself that she wouldn’t be doing that if her hands were free.
Jinju took the melon out of her bundle, cracked it open with a well-placed thump, then scooped out some reddish pulp and placed it between the lips of Fourth Aunt, who began blubbering like a baby.
Gao Yang’s attention was riveted on the melon, the sight of which twisted his guts into knots. Anger rose in him. What about me? he agonized. There’s enough to go around.
The horse-faced young man, who had stopped heaving (Gao Yang was too busy watching Jinju to notice), had slid down the trunk that held him captive, until he was sitting in a heap at the base of the tree, his head jerking and his body slumping forward. He seemed to be bowing.
Mother and daughter wailed, obviously revived by the melon they had devoured. This Gao Yang assumed, and he was shocked to see that they hadn’t finished even a single wedge. Jinju was cradling her mother’s head in her arms and crying so piteously that her entire body shook.
“Dear Jinju… my poor baby,” wept Fourth Aunt. “I shouldn’t have hit you… I won’t stand in your way anymore… Go find Gao Ma… live happily together.
Trucks, so loaded down with furniture that they nearly bottomed out, sputtered unsteadily toward them. The police, having finished their meal, emerged in a chatty mood, and when Gao Yang heard their approaching footsteps, his fear returned. A truck creaked and groaned as it drove by, the last slanting rays of sun reflecting sharply off its windshield, behind which sat a red-faced driver.
What happened next Gao Yang would never be able to forget. The roadway was narrow, and the driver probably had a bit too much to drink. Fate would have been kinder to the horse-faced young man if he hadn’t had such an elongated head, but a triangular pice of metal jutting out from the heavily loaded vehicle caught him on the forehead and opened up an ugly gash, which showed white for an instant before gushing inky blood. A gasp escaped from his mouth as he slumped further forward; yet even with its extraordinary length, his head stopped short of the ground, since his arms were still held fast around the tree. His blood splattered on the hard-baked roadway in front of him.
The police froze in their tracks.
Old Zheng broke the silence by cursing the red-faced driver with heated fury: “You simple, motherfucking bastard!”
The stammering policeman quickly stripped off his tunic and wrapped it around the young man’s head.
CHAPTER 4
– from a ballad by Zhang Kou sung to township public servants during a garlic glut
1.
Fourth Uncle hit Jinju on the head with the red-hot bronze bowl of his pipe. She crumpled to the ground, angered and humiliated. “Brute!” she shrieked, “You hit me!”
“You asked for it!” replied an enraged Fourth Aunt. “You re lucky we don’t kill someone as immoral as you!”
“Zw immoral? What about you?” Jinju screamed. “You re a pack of thugs-”
“Jinju!” Elder Brother Fang Yijun cut her off sternly. “I wont have you talking to our mother like that!”
After beating Gao Ma to the ground, the Fang brothers stood over him in the flickering lamplight, looming large. Jinju reached up to wipe her burning forehead, and when she pulled back her hand she saw the blood. “Look what you did!” she screeched.
Elder Brother Fang Yijuns silhouette shifted unevenly in the lamplight. “The first rule for a son or daughter,” he said, “is to listen to your parents.”
Jinju spat defiantly. “I’m not going to listen to them, and I wont be a party to that bogus marriage pact!”
“Her problem is she hasn’t been beaten enough,” Second Brother Fang Yixiang commented. “She’s spoiled.”
Jinju picked up a bowl and threw it at him. “Then beat me, you thug, come and beat me!”
“Have you lost your mind?” asked Fourth Uncle, cocking his head. In the kerosene lamplight his face seemed cast in bronze.
“What if I have?” She kicked the table.
Fourth Uncle jumped to his feet like an aging lion, fuming; he reached for his pipe again and swung it wildly at her head, which she protected with her arms, dodging the blow and screaming in terror.
While the Fang brothers’ attention was diverted, Gao Ma staggered to his feet. “It’s me you want,” he said. A chill swept through Jinju’s heart as she watched him teeter precariously.
The brothers whirled, the older one struggling to maintain his balance, the younger one standing straight and
