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?”
Gao Yang watched Wang Tai’s father, Six-Wheels Wang, enter. Team Leader Six-Wheels would later be his superior for twenty years. For two decades Gao Yang would serve as one of his commune underlings. A tall, beefy man, he was barefoot and stripped to the waist; his skin was tanned and healthy looking. Refusing to wear a belt, he always tied his baggy white pants at the waist, his scythe tucked into the waistband. Gao Yang called him Master Six.
“Principal,” Six-Wheels said in his gravelly voice, “what do you want me for?”
“Team Leader Wang,” the principal said, “now don’t get mad, but your son, Wang Tai, peed on some of the girls in his class… Something like that, well, it’s not a good idea. The heads of households share the responsibility for their children’s upbringing with those of us at school.”
“Where is the little asshole?” Six-Wheels Wang growled.
The principal gave the high sign to one of the teachers, who dragged Wang Tai into the office.
“You little asshole,” Six-Wheels said to his son, “did you pee on girls in your class? Is that where you’re supposed to pee?”
Wang Tai stood silently, his head bowed as he picked at his fingernails.
“Who told you to do something like that?” Six-Wheels asked.
Wang Tai pointed at Gao Yang. “Him,” he said without a moment’s hesitation.
Gao Yang was shocked. His head swirled.
“He wasn’t satisfied doing a terrible thing like that himself,” the principal said to Gao Yang’s father. “He had to drag the son of a poor and lower-middle-class peasant into his shameful affair. Things like this don’t happen by accident.”
“My family is cursed… family is cursed… produce scum like this… scum…” Father was pacing.
“You’ve always been a bad boy,” Six-Wheels Wang said to Gao Yang. One of these days your bad nature will be the death of you.” Then he turned to Gao Yang’s father. “How could you sire a bad seed like this?” he asked. “Hm?”
Father picked up the switch and hit Gao Yang square in the head… a couple of anguished cries… Gao Yang tried to recall if he had cried out. It had been twenty years, and he had no idea whether he had cried out or not. He remembered wanting to shout: “Father, all I did was drink my own piss!”
“Cheer up, Little Brother,” the middle-aged inmate consoled Gao Yang. “You’ll be fine now that you’ve passed the test. You took it like a man. You know when to stand your ground and when to give in. The best is yet to come for you. Once you leave here you’ll never return.”
To wash down the crumbs of his piss-soaked bun, the old inmate drank what was left in the soup bowl, reaching in to pick up a yellow sliver of garlic stuck to the bottom and shove it into his mouth. Last of all he licked the frothy, oily sides of the bowl-
The whistle sounded again, long and loud, followed by a tinny voice: “Attention all cells! Lights out! Bedtime! After-dark regulations: One, no talking or whispering. Two, no swapping beds. Three, no sleeping in the nude.”
The yellow light went out abrupdy, throwing the cell into darkness. In the silence that ensued, Gao Yang heard his three cellmates breathing and saw six eyes flashing in the darkness as if luminous. Drained of energy, he sat on his gray blanket, which reeked of garlic; swarms of mosquitoes took to the air, filling the darkness with their buzzing.
The seemingly interminable day was finally reaching its dark conclusion. He laid his head on the blanket and closed his eyes, which gave up two meaningless tears. He sighed, so softly that no one heard him, and through the spaces between the bars he saw the blurred outline of the derrick high in the sky, the soft-yellow crescent moon hanging at its tip looking soft and inviting.
CHAPTER 8
– from a ballad sung by Zhang Kou following the garlic glut,
to curse roundly Wang Tai, the new deputy director of the county supply and marketing cooperative
1.
The police van had traveled so far down the road that the dust had already settled on asphalt that was a blinding ribbon of reflected light. A squashed toad that had been there since who knows when was now no more than a dried-out flattened skin, like a decal. Jinju struggled to her feet and stumbled up to the side of the road; sweat-soaked, her knees knocking, her mind a blank, she sat down in a clump of grass, seemingly more dead than alive.
The road cut through a vast cropland, with waist-high corn and sorghum nearby and waves of golden millet in the distance. The black soil looked like a patchwork quilt in the fields, which had been prepared for a seeding of soybeans or corn. The dry air and blazing sun made the soil crack and sizzle. Everything the sun touched turned golden yellow, particularly the county government compound, where sunflowers were in bloom.
She sat lost in her thoughts until the sun sank in the west and clouds of mist climbed skyward; gloomy songs rose from the fields. Each summer day, as night fell, cool breezes drew songs from the throats of peasants. Thick layers of dust covered their naked bodies, which seemed to grow as the suns power faded. An ox was pulling a plow, turning the soil in a garlic field. Seen from a distance, the earth tumbled over glistening blades of the plow, rolling constandy, a shiny black wave in the wake of the plow.
Numbly, she watched the activity out in the field, and when the old man behind the plow began to sing, she wept openly.
“Sunset at West Mountain, the sky turns dark”-the old man flicked his whip, making the tip dance above the ox’s head-”Second Aunt rides her mule to Yangguan…”
He stopped after only two lines. But a few moments later, he was at it again: “Sunset at West Mountain, the sky turns dark / Second Aunt rides her mule to Yangguan…”
The same two lines, then he stopped again.
Jinju stood up, brushed the dirt off her backside with her bundle, and slowly headed home.
Father was dead, Mother had been arrested. A month earlier, he had been run over by the township party
