Sandalwood Death (18 page)

Soon afterward, at a banquet for local worthies, his handsome demeanor and impressive beard were once again the focus of attention for all who were present. The nasal obstruction had cleared up, and Gaomi County’s local specialty, aged millet spirits, and fatty dog meat—the spirits relaxed his muscles and joints and enhanced the flow of blood, while the fatty dog meat improved his looks—made his face glow with conspicuous health and lent increased elegance to his beard. He offered a toast in a cadenced voice, announcing to his elite guests that he was determined to use his office to enrich the lives of the local population. His speech was interrupted frequently by thunderous applause and shouts of approval, and when he had finished, the ovation lasted until the incense sticks had burned halfway down. He then raised his glass to all the skullcaps and goatees at the table. The men’s legs trembled when they stood; their hands shook and their lips quaked as they emptied their glasses. The Magistrate then called their attention to one of the dishes—a head of cabbage a vivid emerald green that gave no sign of being cooked. None of the guests dared touch the spectacular dish with his chopsticks for fear of making a fool of himself. “Worthy gentlemen,” the Magistrate said, “not only is this cabbage fully cooked, it has been stuffed with more than a dozen rare delicacies.” He touched the seemingly unblemished head gently with his chopsticks, and it opened like a flower bud, to reveal a rich, pulpy interior and fill the room with an aroma of great refinement. Most of the honored guests—unsophisticated locals and voracious meat and fish eaters—were ignorant of the more poetic forms of cuisine. But urged on by their illustrious host, they reached out, snagged cabbage leaves with their chopsticks, and put them into their mouths. Approving headshakes and words of praise followed. Elder Xiong, Magistrate Qian’s revenue clerk, who had joined him at the table, wasted no time in introducing the Magistrate’s wife, Gaomi County’s First Lady, to the honored guests: she was the maternal granddaughter of Zeng Guofan—given the posthumous title and name of Lord Wenzheng. She had personally prepared the dish, Emerald Cabbage, the recipe having been passed down by her grandfather, who had created it with his master chef when he served in the capital as Vice President of the Board of Rites. Together they had tried several variants before reaching the perfection they were enjoying today. It embodied the wisdom of a generation of renowned officials. The revered Lord Wenzheng, who had mastered both the pen and the sword, had also been a chef par excellence, second to none. Xiong’s introduction was greeted with even greater applause; tears spilling from the eyes of aging worthies sluiced down through the wrinkles in their cheeks. Snivel hung from the strands of their feeble goatees.

After all around the table had emptied three glasses, the local worthies approached the Magistrate, one at a time, to toast his arrival and sing his praises, each in his own way. And while their comments differed in style if not in elegance, the one constant was a mention of the revered one’s beard. One intoned, “Our esteemed Magistrate is a reincarnation of Guan Yu, a rebirth of Wu Zixu.” Another pronounced that Zhuge Liang had returned in the person of the esteemed Magistrate; the Deva King had descended from heaven. Now, while Qian Ding could tolerate a great deal, this group of toadies was more than he could endure. He could not, of course, refuse to be toasted and was obliged to empty his glass each time, and the more he drank, the further he moved away from his official airs. He chatted energetically, he talked and laughed merrily, he shuffled and gestured, his head was turned by the effusive praise, and he began to display his unrestrained nature as he moved steadily closer to the people.

That day he drank himself into a stupor; his worthy guests, too, lay passed out around the table. It was a banquet that rocked Gaomi County to its core and became a popular topic of conversation far and wide. The Emerald Cabbage gained almost mythical qualities on the people’s tongues. People said that it was a mysterious viand that could not be separated until Magistrate Qian touched it with his chopsticks, at which time it opened like a white lily, with dozens of petals, each tipped with a glistening pearl.

Word quickly spread that the new Magistrate was the grandson-in-law of Lord Wenzheng. Endowed with an imposing presence, he sported a beard worthy of Guan Yu himself. Not only was the Magistrate the epitome of dignity, but his name had appeared high on the list of successful candidates at the Imperial Examination, and he thus joined the circle of Imperial attendants. Brimming with talent, he was a master of eloquence. With an unmatched capacity for spirits, even drunk he retained his poise, like a jade tree standing tall before a wind or a mountain withstanding a spring deluge. Then there was the Magistrate’s wife, descendant of an illustrious family, a woman of matchless beauty and incomparable virtue. Their arrival in Gaomi County promised immense blessings for the people.

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2

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Northeast Gaomi Township was home to the leader of the local Maoqiang troupe, Sun Bing, a man who was also endowed with a splendid beard. Maoqiang, otherwise known as Cat Opera, is an operatic genre created and developed in Northeast Gaomi Township. The arias are exquisite, the staging unique, the ambience magical; in short, it is the ideal portrayal of life in the township. Sun Bing was both a reformer and an inheritor of the Maoqiang tradition, a man who enjoyed high prestige among his peers. As a performer of the old-man role, playing respected old men, he was never in need of a stage beard, since none could match the natural appeal of his own. As luck would have it, upon the birth of his grandson, the township’s richest man, Master Liu, hosted a celebration banquet, to which Sun Bing was invited. Also in attendance was a yamen clerk by the name of Li Wu, who sat at the head of a table in a pompous demonstration of his stature, and proceeded to sing the praises of the County Magistrate, from his eloquence to his every action, from his interests to his favorite activities. But the climactic note was sounded in his tribute to the Magistrate’s impressive beard.

Now, even though Li Wu was on leave from his post, on this occasion he was dressed in full formal attire, minus only his baton of authority. Gesticulating dramatically and blustering nonstop, he so intimidated the other guests, all decent, simple men, that they could only gape in stupefaction, the meal in front of them forgotten. With ears pricked, they listened wide-eyed to the man’s voluble outbursts as he slung slobber into the air. Sun Bing, a man of the world, had been to many places and seen many things, and had Li Wu not been present, Sun would have been the center of attention. But Li
was
present, and since everyone knew that he was in attendance to the County Magistrate, Sun was ignored. He could only drink alone to drown his melancholy, casting disdainful looks and snorts of derision in the direction of the despicable lackey. No one noticed, and in the eyes of Li Wu, Sun might as well not have been at the table at all, so intent was he on elaborately extolling the virtues of the Magistrate’s beard.

“Among ordinary mortals, no more than a thousand strands make up the finest beard. But can you guess how many strands His Eminence’s superb specimen contains? Ha ha, I see you are stumped. I am not surprised. Last month I accompanied His Eminence on a tour to observe the people’s mood, and engaged him in a conversation. ‘Young Li,’ he said to me, ‘how many strands do you think are in this official’s beard?’ ‘I dare not presume to guess, Your Eminence,’ I replied. ‘I am not surprised,’ he remarked. ‘Well, I shall tell you. This official’s beard is comprised of nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine strands! One short of ten thousand! The First Lady performed the calculation.’ How, I asked, was the calculation of such a beard accomplished? ‘The First Lady is as finely meticulous as a human hair and endowed with surpassing intelligence. By counting one hundred strands at a time and tying them off with a silk thread, she accomplished the feat. She could not possibly be wrong.’ ‘Your Eminence,’ I said, ‘if you grew but one more strand, you would have the ultimate round number.’ To which he replied, ‘That, young Li, shows your lack of understanding. In the affairs of the world, perfection is a taboo. Take the moon, for instance. Once it is a perfect circle, the erosion begins. Or fruit on a tree. The moment it is perfectly ripe, it falls to the ground. A degree of deficiency is vital for all things if they are to last. There is no more auspicious number than nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine. Ten thousand is detrimental for the people and for those who govern them. This, my young Li, is a paradox you must work hard to grasp.’ That comment by His Eminence is an arcane truth of boundless import, yet one that I have yet to unlock. He then said to me, ‘Young Li, the number of strands in this official’s beard is known to only three people alive. One is you, I am another, and the third is my wife. You must not breathe a word of it to anyone, for if it were to be revealed, it not only would be a harbinger of bad tidings, but might well spawn a great calamity.’”

Li Wu picked up his glass, drank from it, and then picked at dishes with his chopsticks, clicking his tongue in a display of criticism over the crude array of food. Finally he picked up a bean sprout, which he chewed noisily with his front teeth, like a mouse that lazily grinds its teeth after eating its fill. Master Liu’s son, the father of the new grandson, rushed up with a plate of steaming pig’s-head meat and placed it in front of Li Wu before wiping his sweaty brow with the back of his greasy hand. “We have treated you shamelessly, Uncle Li,” he said. “We are peasants, untrained in the preparation of fine cuisine. Won’t you do us the honor of sampling this?”

Li Wu spat out the bean sprout, which had been stuck between his front teeth, and banged his chopsticks down on the table. Clearly unhappy, he forced himself to speak with laudable forbearance: “Elder nephew Liu,” he said, “your concern is misplaced. Do you really think I am here because of the food? If it were a meal I desired, I could visit any establishment in town and, without a word, be served fine sea cucumbers and abalone, camel’s hoof and bear’s paw, monkey brains and bird’s nest soup, one dish after another. Eating one while sampling another with an eye to the third, that, my boy, is a banquet worthy of the name. And what has your family provided? Some half-cooked bean sprouts, a plate of rotting, pestilential pig’s head, and a decanter of sour millet spirits neither hot nor cold enough. Is this what you call a celebration banquet? It is more like a meal to get rid of stinking actors. No, I have deigned to attend for two reasons: first as a favor to your father, to prop up your family, and second to mix with the local gentry. I am kept so busy that flames shoot out of my ass, and finding this little bit of time has not been easy.”

The elder son of the Liu family could only nod and bow in response to Li Wu’s rebuke, and make a quick, desperate exit when Li paused to cough.

“Master Liu, you are a learned, cultivated man,” Li Wu said. “How could you have raised such an empty-headed turtle?”

None of the embarrassed guests dared make a sound. But Sun Bing, infuriated by what he had witnessed, pulled the plate of pig’s head over in front of him. “Since the eminent Li Wu is used to eating delicacies from land and sea, placing this pig’s head in front of him is clearly meant to sicken him. For those of us who survive on a diet of chaff and coarse greens, this nicely greases our innards and helps us shit!”

That said, without so much as a glance around the table, he began stuffing greasy, dripping chunks of meat into his mouth, one after the other. “Um, good,” he mumbled, “really good, fucking delicious!”

Li Wu glowered at Sun Bing, who did not so much as look up. Gaining no satisfaction from his angry glare, Li blinked and turned his gaze on the others around the table. With a curl of his lip, he shook his head in the sort of contempt typical of those in high position, the common display of a gentleman in the presence of petty men. The guests, fearful of causing trouble, held out their glasses in a show of respect for Li, who, like a man who dismounts from his mule on a downward slope, emptied his glass, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and, picking up the thread of conversation lost in the remonstrance of the elder Liu son, said:

“Worthy gentlemen, I revealed the secret of the Lord Magistrate’s beard to you only because we are all friends. As the adage goes, ‘While we are not related, we come from the same place.’ Now that you have been let in on the secret, you must keep it inside and let it rot there. Under no circumstances is what I said to leave this room, for if it were to find its way to the ear of His Eminence, my rice bowl would be unalterably smashed. These are things known only to the Magistrate, to the First Lady, and to me. Kindly take heed!”

Clasping his fists together at his chest, Li Wu bowed to each of the guests in turn; they returned the gesture. “You needn’t worry. It is a rare honor for a place like ours to have in its midst a superior man like Elder Li Wu! Our residents, one and all, wait with bated breath to benefit from their association with you. With that in mind, by speaking out of turn, we would be doing injury to ourselves.”

“It is precisely because we are one big family that I am willing to speak my mind.” Li Wu took another drink and then lowered his voice to speak conspiratorially: “His Eminence frequently summons me to his official document room as a conversation partner. We sit across from one another, like brothers, drinking millet spirits, eating dog meat, and chatting about everything under the sun, past and present. Our Magistrate is a man of erudition, familiar with the affairs of the world, and never happier than when he is engaged in such conversations, with a supply of meat and spirits at hand. These talks frequently continue late into the night, so unnerving the Magistrate’s wife that she sends a maidservant to rap on the window and call out, ‘Master, the Mistress says it is getting late; time to take your rest.’ He invariably replies, ‘Meixiang, go back and tell the Mistress not to wait up for me, that our young Li and I have yet to finish our chat.’ I am not in favor with the Mistress, and that is the cause. A few days ago, on my way to the rear hall on an assignment, I met up with her, and as she blocked my way, she said, ‘Aren’t you something, Little Li, keeping the Magistrate up half the night talking about who knows what, to the point that he has even begun to neglect me. You little wretch, do you or do you not deserve a beating?’ Shaken to the core, I stammered, ‘I do, I do!’”