4.
He would check things out that night, no matter what. He was already feeling the pangs of alienation from other people, even though he had heard women talking as they gathered mulberries, and had watched farmers in the field from a hiding place on the riverbank. A southern wind carried the smell of ripened millet, a sign that tomorrow the harvest would begin. “Silkworms emerge without warning, and millet ripens overnight.” That increased his anxiety: having planted two acres of millet, he had been looking forward to a good harvest. Now that his garlic crop was a total loss, how would he make it through the year if he lost his millet? As he wearily rubbed his face, he noted that his forehead and the corners of his mouth were becoming lined.
He made plans to sneak into the village under the cover of darkness, doubting that the police would subject themselves to the discomfort of spending two nights in his house waiting for him to show up. The first order of business would be to get some clothes and, more importantly, shoes. A pair of new sneakers from his army days lay in a cardboard box in the corner-one of the few items that had survived the Fang brothers’ ransacking. There was also the 470 yuan from the initial sale of garlic-he had been one of the few lucky villagers who had managed to sell any in the glut-which he had stuffed in a crack in the eastern wall. He would retrieve this hidden cache, giving Jinju four hundred to buy food and baby clothes. The remaining seventy would be enough to get him to the northeast, where he would look up his old army buddy the deputy county head and ask him to write to Paradise County for a formal pardon.
The dangling handcuffs gleamed darkly in the murky air. They had to go, that’s all there was to it. He rubbed the thin metal ring digging into his wrist, and knew he could eventually free himself with a hammer and chisel. One more time-he needed to go home just one more time.
As he retraced his steps of the past day, avoiding streets and roads, he stayed alert to the sounds around him. Proceeding step by cautious step, he comforted himself with the thought that the police were on unfamiliar turf and did not enjoy the support of the masses; so even if he came face to face with them, he still had a good chance of getting away. Their revolvers gave him pause-they had fired a couple of shots the day before-but even if they shot him dead, so what? And if they were such bad shots that they’d missed him in broad daylight, he felt even safer at night.
His nerves were on edge as he turned into the lane, but his heart was warmed by the familiar shapes of houses and trees on either side. From the nearby stand of acacias he surveyed his yard, which was quiet, except for the bats flying around his window. He picked up a dirt clod and flung it toward the window. There was a loud thump when it hit the overturned pot on the ground. Nothing stirred in the house or in the yard. He threw another dirt clod, with no result, but skirted the yard just in case, and went to the back of the house, hugging the wall as he crept up to the rear window. He could hear nothing but scurrying rats.
Feeling secure at last, he remembered seeing clusters of bright parakeets darting in and out among the acacia trees, and he assumed that Gao Zhileng’s cages must have sprung a leak, releasing the birds into the night sky. The chestnut colt, which seemingly would never grow to adulthood, was galloping up and down the lane, its sleek hide smelling like bath soap.
The door stood open; that made the hair on his arms stand up. His eyes were already used to the dark, and he spotted the figure in the doorway of the east room the moment he entered. His first impulse was to turn and run; but his feet seemed to take root. He detected the faint smell of blood just before the familiar but oddly stagnant odor of Jinju came rushing toward him. The scene from last night’s nightmare flashed through his mind like a bolt of lightning, and he had to grab the doorframe to keep from falling.
With trembling hands he picked up a match from the stove; it took three tries to light it. In the flickering matchlight he saw Jinju’s purple face as she hung in the opening of the door, bulging eyeballs, lolling tongue, and sagging belly.
Reaching up as if to hold her in his arms, he crumpled heavily to the floor like a toppled wall.
CHAPTER 12
– from a ballad sung by Zhang Kou inciting the masses to storm
the county compound on the seventh day after the glut, when garlic lay rotting on the streets, sending a foul miasma skyward
1.
Gao Yang stretched out on the prison cot and was asleep before he’d pulled up the covers. Then came the nightmares, one after the other. First he dreamed of a dog gnawing leisurely on his ankle, chewing and licking as if it wanted to bleed him dry and consume the marrow in his bones. He tried to kick the dog away, but his leg wouldn’t move; he tried to reach out and punch it, but he couldn’t lift his arm. Then he dreamed he was locked in an empty room at the production brigade for burying his mother instead of delivering her to the crematorium. Two members of the “four bad categories”-landlords, counterrevolutionaries, rich peasants, and criminals-carried her into the house at ten o’clock at night. Her head was shiny as a gourd, her front teeth missing, her mouth bloodied. When he lit a lamp and asked what had happened, they just looked at him pitifully before turning and walking silently out the door. He laid her on the kang, wailing and gnashing his teeth. She opened her eyes, and her lips quivered, as if she wanted to speak; but before she could say a word, her head lolled to the side and she was dead. Grief-stricken, he threw himself on her…
A large hand clamped down over his mouth. He wrenched his head free, spitting saliva in all directions. The hand fell away.
“What’s all the screaming about, my boy?” The question, in a low, somber voice, emerged from beneath two phosphorescent dots.
He was awake now, and he knew what had happened. A light from the sentry box lit up the corridor, where a guard paced nervously.
He sobbed. I dreamed about my mother.”
Chuckles emerged from beneath the dots. “You’d have been better off dreaming about your wife,” came the voice.
The dots went out, returning the cell to darkness. But the old inmate’s sputtering snores, the young one’s greedy lip-smacking, and the middle-aged one’s demonic gasps kept him awake.
The mosquitoes, having sucked up all the blood they could handle, were resting on the walls, and at some time after midnight the buzzing stopped altogether. He covered himself with a blanket that suddenly seemed to move on its own-an army of insects began crawling over his skin. Gasping from fear and disgust, he flung the blanket away; but that only brought back the cold air, and the blanket was the lesser of the two evils. The middle-aged inmate giggled in his sleep.
