Sandalwood Death (34 page)

“The third cut!”

Having flung away the third piece, Zhao went immediately to the fourth cut. Qian’s flesh was crisp, easy to cut, a quality he found only in criminals who were in excellent physical shape. Slicing up a criminal as fat as a pig or as skinny as a monkey was exhausting work. But beyond exhaustion, a messy job was inevitable. An apt comparison would be a fine chef forced to work with substandard ingredients. Even the most skillful preparation cannot produce an outstanding banquet without the finest ingredients. Or for a carpenter who lacks the right material for his task, even uncanny workmanship is inadequate to produce high-grade furniture. Shifu told him that during the Daoguang reign he was assigned the task of dispatching a woman who had conspired with her lover to murder her husband. The woman was as blubbery as a sack of starchy noodles, so loose that her flesh quivered whenever the knife touched her. The stuff he cut off her body was like frothy snot, and not even the dogs would eat it. And she shrieked like a banshee, howling and wailing that so upset him, a work of art was out of the question. He said there had been good specimens of her sex, women whose skin and flesh had the texture of congealed fat that cut with ease and precision. It was like cutting through autumn water. The knife moved on its own, without the slightest deviation. He said he had dispatched just such an ideal woman during the Xianfeng reign. She had been condemned, it was said, as a prostitute who had murdered one of her clients for money. According to Shifu, she was a woman of surpassing beauty, the sort of gentle, demure woman who draws people to her at first sight. No one would have believed that she could actually commit murder. He said that the greatest degree of compassion an executioner can bestow upon his victim is to do his job well. If you respect or love her, then it is your duty to see that she becomes a model for execution. If you truly respect her, then you must fearlessly make her body the canvas on which you display the highest standards of your artistry. It is no different from a renowned actor performing onstage. Shifu said that so many Peking citizens thronged to watch the beautiful prostitute suffer the slicing death that more than twenty people were crushed or trampled to death on the marketplace execution ground. He said that in the presence of such a beautiful body, it would have been a sin, a crime, not to put all he had into the task before him, heart and soul. More to the point, if he had made a mess of things, an angry crowd might have torn him to pieces, for Peking crowds at executions were harder to please than any other. He did a fine job that day, with the cooperation of the woman herself. Seen from one angle, it was, from start to finish, a stage performance, acted out by the executioner and his victim. Such performances were spoiled if the criminal overdid the screaming part; but a total lack of sounds was just as bad. The ideal was just the right number of rhythmic wails, producing sham expressions of sympathy among the observers while satisfying their evil aestheticism. Shifu said that he had gained an insight into people only after thousands of individuals had died at his hands over a stretch of decades: All people, he said, are two-faced beasts. One of those faces displays the virtues of humanity, justice, and morality, representing the three cardinal guides and five constant virtues. The other is the face of bloodsucking thieves and whores. The appetite for evil is stimulated in anyone who willingly watches the spectacle of a beautiful woman being dismembered one cut at a time, whether that person be a man of honor, a virtuous wife, or a chaste maiden. Subjecting a beautiful woman to the slicing death is mankind’s most exquisitely cruel exhibition. The people who flock to such exhibitions, Shifu said, are far more malicious than those of us who wield the knife. He said he spent many sleepless nights reliving every detail of that day’s execution, like a chess master replaying each move in a brilliant match that has forged his reputation. That night he mentally dismembered her body, then pictured it all coming back together. Her tearful yet melodic moans and shrieks swirled around his ears from start to finish in an unbroken stream. And the captivating odor that emerged from her body as it was being ravaged by his knife filled his nostrils. An ill wind struck the nape of his neck, a swoosh created by the beating wings of impatient, rapacious birds of prey. His infatuated recollections paused briefly at that juncture, like a pose struck by an actor on the operatic stage. At this point, little skin or flesh remained on her body, but her face was unmarked, and it was time for the coup de grace. His heart lurched as he sliced off a piece of her heart. It was deep red, the color of a fresh date; he held it on the tip of his knife like a precious gem as he looked into her ashen oval face, moved by the sight. He heard a sigh emerge from somewhere deep down in her chest. Sparks—not many, just a few—seemed to glimmer in her eyes, from which two large teardrops slipped down her face. He saw her lips move with difficulty and heard her say, soft as a mosquito’s buzz: “not . . . guilty . . .” The light went out of her eyes; the flame of life was extinguished. Her head, which had rocked back and forth throughout the ordeal, slumped forward, covered by a curtain of hair so black it looked as if it had just been taken out of a dyeing vat.

Zhao Jia’s fiftieth cut completed the paring of Qian’s chest muscles. The first tenth of his work was now behind him. After his apprentice handed him a new knife, he took two deep breaths in order to normalize his breathing. Qian’s ribs were exposed, as he could see, connected by thin membranes. The man’s heart was pumping like a jackrabbit wrapped in gauze. He felt good about his progress so far. The flow of blood had been stanched, and the fiftieth cut had removed the chest muscles, just as he had planned. The sole blemish so far was that the valiant man bound to the post had not made a sound, had not yelled in pain. This flaw had turned what should have been a spirited drama into a mime performance that lacked appeal. In the eyes of these people, he was thinking, I am a butcher, a meat merchant. He deeply admired this Qian fellow, who, except for a few barely perceptible moans during the first two cuts, had not made a sound. He looked into the man’s face, and what he saw were: hair standing up straight, eyes wide and round, the dark pupils nearly blue, the whites now red, nostrils flaring, teeth grinding, and taut cheek muscles bulging like a pair of mice. The ferocity of that face secretly astounded him. Soreness crept into the hand holding the knife. If the victim was a man, tradition demanded that once the chest muscles had been pared away, next to be taken from the body were his genitals. For this, three cuts were permitted, and the size of the excised portions need not complement other portions. Decades of experience had shown his shifu that what male subjects feared most was not the loss of skin or tendons, but the treasured object between their legs. Not because it was especially painful—it wasn’t—but because it gave rise to a psychological dread and a sense of shame. Most men would choose to lose their head over losing their maleness. According to the shifu, once you have removed even the bravest man’s genitals, you have taken the fight out of him, the same effect as cutting the mane of a warhorse or the plume of a proud rooster. Zhao Jia turned away from the solemn and tragic face that was putting him on edge and sized up his flaccid organ. It was shriveled pathetically, like a silkworm tucked into its cocoon. I’m truly sorry, young friend, he muttered to himself as he picked it out of its nest with his left hand and, in one lightning-fast motion, sliced it off at its base. His apprentice announced:

“The fifty-first cut!”

He flung the once-treasured object away, and a skinny, mangy dog that had come out of nowhere snatched it up and darted in amid the military formation, where it began to yelp as soldiers kicked it. A forlorn howl of despair tore from the mouth of Qian, who until then had endured the torture by clenching his teeth. Zhao Jia had expected that, and yet it shocked him. He was not aware that he was blinking lightning-fast, but his hands were burning and swelling, as if red-hot needles were pricking his fingers. It was a discomfort he could not possibly describe. Qian’s howl—neither human nor beastly—had a horrifying quality that both unnerved and sent shivers through the ranks of the Right Militant Guard, who were witnessing the execution. Logic demanded that His Excellency ought to have been moved by the sound, but Zhao Jia had no time to turn back and scrutinize the reaction of Yuan and the high-ranking officials around him. He heard snorts of terror from the horses, which were loudly champing the bits in their mouths and agitating the bells hanging from their necks; he saw how the tight leggings arrayed behind the execution post seemed to be straining to break free. Qian’s body squirmed in concert with his repeated howls, while his heart, which could be seen behind exposed ribs, was thumping loudly enough to hear and so violently that Zhao Jia actually worried it might leap out of his chest. If that happened, the execution, a slicing death that had been days in the planning, would end in abject failure. Not only would it be a loss of face for the Board of Punishments, but it would make even His Excellency Yuan look bad. That was the last thing Zhao wanted, but it was made more possible by Qian’s head, which began to rock backward and forward and from side to side, producing loud thumps against the post. His eyes were blood-streaked, his features twisted beyond recognition, a look that would forever haunt the dreams of anyone seeing that face. Zhao Jia had never seen anything like it, nor, he knew, had his shifu. His hands were tingly and so uncomfortably swollen he could barely hold the knife. He glanced up at his apprentice, whose face was the color of clay and whose mouth hung wide open. For him to take over and finish the job was out of the question. So he forced himself to bend down and dig out one of Qian’s testicles, which had shrunk into his body. One swift cut detached it. The fifty-second cut, he coached his apprentice, who stood there transfixed until he was able to announce, barely able to keep from sobbing:

“The . . . fifty-second . . . cut . . .”

He tossed the sac to the ground, where it lay in the dirt looking hideous. For the first time in all his years in the profession, he experienced something unique, for him, at least: disgust.

“Fucking . . . bastard!” In an earthshaking display of loathing, Qian Xiongfei somehow found the strength to curse: “Yuan Shikai, Yuan Shikai, you turncoat, I may not be able to kill you in this life, but I will return as a ghost to take your life!”

Zhao Jia, afraid to turn his head, could only imagine the look on Excellency Yuan’s face at that moment. Desperate to finish the job, he bent down again, dug out the second testicle, and cut it off. But as he was straightening up, Qian Xiongfei leaned over and bit him on the head. Since he was wearing a cap, the bite did not inflict serious damage, but it did break the skin, even through the cloth cap. Well after the incident, Zhao shuddered when he considered the possibility that Qian could have bitten him on the neck and chewed his way into his throat; or if he had bitten him on the ear, he’d have lost that organ for sure. Experiencing a strange pain on his scalp, he jerked his head upward and connected with Qian’s chin. He heard the frightful crunch of Qian’s teeth as they bit through his tongue, which sent blood spurting from his mouth. But that did not keep him from hurling epithets, now less intelligible, though by no means incoherent, and still directed at Yuan Shikai. The fifty-third cut. As Zhao Jia threw down the thing in his hand, he saw flashes of light in front of his eyes, he felt light-headed, and his stomach lurched. He clenched his teeth to keep whatever it was down, telling himself that he mustn’t vomit, not now; for if he did, the power of intimidation enjoyed by Board of Punishments executioners would die in his hands.

“Cut out his tongue!”

Yuan Shikai’s voice thundered behind him in all its fury. Instinctively, he turned to look. Yuan’s face was livid as he smacked his knee with his fist and forcefully repeated his command:

“Cut out his tongue!”

Zhao Jia wanted to tell him that this was not the way of his ancestors, but the look of rage, born of mortification, on His Excellency’s face made him swallow his words. What good would it have done to say anything, when even the Empress Dowager respected almost anything that Excellency Yuan said? So he turned his attention to Qian’s tongue.

Qian’s damaged tongue had turned his face into too bloody a mess to make Zhao’s knife effective. Cutting out the tongue of a crazed condemned individual was a bit like trying to pull the teeth of a tiger. But Zhao was not foolhardy enough to ignore Yuan’s command. Without wasting time, he thought back to his shifu’s teachings and what experience he had gained from them, but nothing helpful came to mind. Qian was still shouting invectives. Excellency Yuan repeated his command yet again:

“I said, cut out his tongue!”

At that critical moment, the spirit of the profession’s founder saved the day with an inspiration. After placing the knife between his teeth, he picked a bucket of water up off the ground and emptied it into Qian’s face, bringing an immediate halt to his curses. Then he wrapped his hands around Qian’s throat and squeezed with all his might. Qian’s face turned the color of pig’s liver as his purple tongue emerged from between his teeth. Squeezing the man’s throat with one hand, Zhao reached up with the other, took the knife from between his teeth, and sliced off the tongue. This spur-of-the-moment change to the ritual brought a roar from the formation of soldiers, like a wave crashing over a sandbar.

Zhao displayed Qian’s defiant tongue in the palm of his hand, feeling it twitch like a dying frog. “The fifty-fourth cut,” he murmured weakly before throwing Qian’s tongue onto the ground in front of Excellency Yuan.

“The fifty . . . fourth cut . . .” his apprentice announced.

Qian Xiongfei’s face had turned the color of gold. Blood gurgled from his lips. A mixture of blood and water slid down his body. He was still cursing, even without a tongue. But now there was no way to tell what he was saying and whom he was cursing.

Zhao Jia’s hands were burning up and seemed in danger of being reduced to ashes. He was on the verge of collapse. Professional pride, however, kept him focused on the job at hand. Yuan’s disruptive order to cut out the man’s tongue had freed him to put his victim out of his misery without delay, but a sense of responsibility and personal ethics would not let him do that. As he saw it, not inflicting the requisite number of cuts was more than a blasphemy against the laws of the Great Qing Dynasty; it was an act of disrespect toward the good man tied to the post before him. Under no circumstances could he allow Qian to die before the five-hundredth cut. If he did, he would give credence to the view that Board of Punishments executioners were little more than common butchers.