Sandalwood Death (50 page)

“Dieh,” my son said excitedly from behind me with a platter of dough the size of a millstone, “the dough is ready.”

Believe it or not, he had used up the entire sack of flour. But no harm done, since we would expend a great deal of energy tomorrow, and would need plenty of nourishment to get through the day. I twisted off a chunk of dough, rolled it between my hands, and pulled it into a long strip, which I dropped into the oil. It rolled and twisted in the churning oil like an eel fighting to stay alive. With a clap of his hands, my son jumped up and down.

“Fried fritter!” he shouted. “It’s a fried fritter!”

Together we dumped a steady stream of dough twists into the oil. They sank to the bottom, but quickly floated to the top and tumbled in the space between the sandalwood spears. I was frying them in the same oil so the essence of grain would attach to the wood. I knew that these stakes would enter Sun Bing’s grain passage and travel up through his body, and that the grain coating would be beneficial. The aroma of frying fritters spread—they were done, so I fished them out with a pair of tongs. “Eat one, son.” With his back to the mat shed, he started in on the lip-burning fritter; his bulging cheeks showed how happy he was. I picked one up and took a bite, slowly savoring its unique sandalwood taste and its Buddhist aura. I had stopped eating meat after receiving the string of prayer beads from the Old Buddha Herself. Kindling blazing beneath the stove crackled and spit; the oil in the cauldron bubbled and popped. After eating several of the fritters, I went to work cutting the slab of beef into fist-sized chunks and tossing them into the oil. I did that so the essence of meat would overlay that of grain and soften the wood even more. All this I was doing for Qinjia! My son moved up close and muttered:

“I want some meat, Dieh.”

“Son,” I said affectionately, “this is not for us. In a while you can have some from the small cauldron. Once the punishment is administered to your Maoqiang-singing gongdieh, you can eat the meat and he’ll drink the broth.”

Just then the crafty chief yamen attendant, Song Three, came up and asked what I wanted him to do next, slavishly bowing and scraping as if I were a powerful official. Naturally, I had to assume the proper air, so I coughed importantly and said:

“Nothing more. Preparing the stakes is all there is to do today, and that is my job, not yours, so you may leave and do whatever you are supposed to do.”

“Your humble servant may not leave.” The words slithered out of his oily mouth like loaches. “We dare not leave.”

“Has His Eminence your master the County Magistrate told you to stay?”

“Not His Eminence, but His Excellency Governor Yuan, who ordered us to stay for your protection. You have become a living treasure, sir.”

He stuck out his paw, picked up an oil fritter, and stuffed it into his mouth. As I stared at his greasy lips, I said silently: I am not the treasure, you bastards; it is that which I carry with me. I reached under my clothes and took out the sandalwood prayer beads given to me by the wise and august Empress Dowager Cixi, and began fingering them, closing my eyes and striking the calming pose of a meditating monk to keep those bastards from knowing what was on my mind. I could have crushed them into pulp without their ever guessing what I was thinking.

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4

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Old Zhao Jia sits by the shed, his state of mind a mass of tangles. (What are you thinking, Dieh?) Images of earlier days float past his eyes from all angles. (What images?) The benevolent Yuan Shikai had not forgotten his old friend, and that is how father and son have reached this day. (What day is this?)

—
Maoqiang
Sandalwood Death.
A father and son duet

After completing the slicing death on the brave Qian Xiongfei, I picked up my tools and, along with my apprentices, planned to return overnight to Peking. People say that one should avoid crowded, hectic places and not linger where disputes arise. With our belongings on our backs, we were about to set out when our way was blocked by one of Excellency Yuan’s most loyal retainers, a fierce-looking man who gazed up into the sky and said:

“Do not leave, Slay-master. Excellency Yuan wants to see you.”

After getting my apprentices settled in a tiny inn, I fell in behind the retainer. We passed through a series of sentry posts before I was kneeling in front of Excellency Yuan. Sweat dripped from my back, and I was out of breath. I banged my head loudly on the floor, managing between kowtows to sneak a look at his corpulent image. Over the previous twenty-three years, as I well knew, thousands of high officials and talented individuals had passed in front of the great man’s eyes like a running-horse lantern, so what chance was there that he would remember someone as insignificant as me? But I remembered him, remembered him well. Twenty-three years earlier, as a handsome young man who could not even grow a moustache, he had spent much of his time in the yamen with his uncle, Yuan Baoheng, Vice President of the Board of Punishments. Bristling at his enforced idleness, he had come to the Eastern Compound, where we executioners lived, and struck up a conversation with me. Excellency, you were fascinated by our profession—putting people to death—and said to Grandma Yu, who was still healthy and active, “Take me on as your apprentice, Grandma!” Seized with terror at the request, Grandma Yu said, “Young scion, are you toying with us?” With a straight face, Excellency, you replied, “I am serious. Great men appear in chaotic times, and if the seal of authority is beyond their reach, the knife is not!”

“You did your job well, Grandma Zhao.” The great man’s comment brought my reveries to an abrupt end. His words seemed to come from the depths of a bell, like deeply moving chimes.

I admit that I had carried out my duty in a manner that did nothing to undermine the Board of Punishment’s reputation, and I was confident that I was the only person in the Great Qing Empire who could have performed the slicing death to such a high standard. But that was not the attitude I could assume in the presence of Excellency Yuan. I might be a man of little importance, but I knew that Excellency Yuan, who commanded an elite modern army, was a prominent figure in the Imperial Court. “It was not an effort I can be proud of,” I said humbly, “and I can only beg forgiveness for disappointing Your Excellency.”

“Grandma Zhao, you sound like an educated man.”

“I respectfully confess that Excellency Yuan’s humble servant can neither read nor write.”

“I see,” he said with a smile. Then he abruptly switched to his native Hunan dialect, as if swapping his official clothing for a jacket of homespun cloth: “If you raise a dog in an official yamen, in ten years it will speak like a classical scholar.”

“A wise comment, Excellency. In the Board of Punishments I am a dog.”

Excellency Yuan laughed lustily at my remark.

“Well spoken,” he said once he had finished laughing. “It takes a good man to humble himself! You are a dog in the Board of Punishments, and I am a dog at the Imperial Court.”

“Your humble servant does not deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Your Excellency . . . gold-inlaid jade, while I am nothing but a cobblestone . . .”

“Zhao Jia, how shall I thank you for helping me accomplish something so important?”

“Your humble servant is a dog raised by the nation; Your Excellency is a pillar of the state, whom I am obliged to serve.”

“I find nothing wrong in what you say, but I wish to reward you nonetheless.” He turned to his attendant. “See Grandma Zhao off to the capital with a hundred liang of silver.”

I got down on my knees and thanked him with a resounding kowtow.

“Your humble servant will never forget Excellency Yuan’s generosity,” I said, “but I cannot accept your gift of silver.”

“Why is that?” he said coldly. “Is it too little?”

“Your humble servant has never in his life received a hundred liang of silver,” I said after a second loud kowtow, “and I dare not take it now. By bestowing the honor of bringing me to Tianjin to carry out his orders, Excellency Yuan has enhanced my status in the Board of Punishments, and I fear that taking Excellency’s silver could shorten my allotted time on earth.

Excellency Yuan grew pensive.

“Grandma Zhao,” he said after a moment, “this was a difficult assignment.”

Once again I responded first with a kowtow.

“Excellency, I was thrilled to do it. I am indeed fortunate to have had the opportunity to put my talents to work for the Imperial Court.”

“What would you say if I asked you to stay on as a member of my criminal affairs unit, Zhao Jia?”

“I would not dare decline to be so favored by Your Excellency. I have worked in the Board of Punishments for more than forty years, and have put to death a total of nine hundred eighty-seven criminals, not counting those executions in which I assisted. I have been so favored by the nation that I should spare no effort to continue working until I am stopped by death or old age. But ever since the execution of Tan Sitong and his five fellow criminals, I have been bothered by a wrist that is sometimes so sore I cannot even use chopsticks. I have been hoping to return home and beg Your Excellency to seek permission from the Board of Punishments on my behalf.”

He merely laughed grimly. I did not know what to make of that.

“Excellency, your humble servant deserves death. I am a low-class nobody who is unworthy of inclusion in any of the lower nine trades. I am a dog if I leave and a dog if I stay, and I have no business troubling any of my superiors. And yet I can boldly assert that while I am a man of demeaned status, the work I perform is not, and as such I am a symbol of national power. We are a nation with a thousand laws, but in the end it is I who enforce them. My apprentices and I have no annual stipend and no monthly wage, and must rely upon the sale of our victims’ cured flesh as a medical restorative. I have accumulated no savings after more than forty years in the Board of Punishments. It is my hope that the Board will give me a settling-in allowance so that I will not have to wander the streets destitute. I venture to ask for fair treatment for my brethren in the profession by including executioners in the personnel ranks of the Board of Punishments with a monthly wage. I ask this not just for myself, but for all of us. As I see it, executioners will be indispensable for as long as the nation exists. This is a parlous age, with a host of criminals among official ranks and legions of robbers and bandits on the loose, the precise moment in time when skillful executioners are most in demand. With unforgivable audacity, I implore Excellency Yuan to grant this humble request.”

I followed my bold statement with a series of resounding kowtows, then remained on my knees and waited with sly glimpses to see how he would react. He stroked his dark moustache, with the calm look of a man deep in thought. Suddenly he laughed.

“Grandma Zhao, there is more to you than a lethal hand. Your mouth is nearly as lethal!”

“I deserve death, but I have spoken the truth. Only because I know that Excellency is a man of great wisdom and uncommon magnanimity have I had the audacity to make the request.”

“Zhao Jia,” Excellency Yuan said, suddenly lowering his voice in an aura of mystery, “do you still recognize me?”

“For someone as impressive and dignified as His Excellency, a single glance can last a lifetime.”

“I do not mean now; I am talking about twenty-three years ago, when my uncle was Left Vice President of the Board of Punishments and I was a frequent visitor to the yamen when I had some free time. You had not met me then, had you?”

With bad eyes and a poor memory, I truly had not known who he was. But I did know Yuan Baoheng, Excellency Yuan, who had bestowed favors on me at the time.

“Truth is, how could I not recognize such a distinguished appearance? Back then, Excellency Yuan, you were a mischievous youngster. Your uncle wanted you to take up studies and make your name as a civil service scholar. But you were not scholar material, and you never missed an opportunity to come to the Eastern Compound to spend time with us. Once you gained an understanding of our rules and traditions, you talked Grandma Yu into letting you put on a set of executioner’s clothing without telling your uncle, then you smeared your smooth, round face with rooster blood and went with us to the marketplace for the execution of a criminal who had impudently hunted a rabbit near the Imperial Mausoleum and disturbed the sleep of deceased emperors. I pulled the criminal’s queue to expose his neck while you raised your sword and, with no change of expression and a steady hand, needed but one chop to separate him from his head. When it was all over, your uncle learned what you had done and slapped you in front of us. We were so terrified we fell to our knees and banged our heads on the floor as if we were crushing cloves of garlic. ‘You miserable wretch,’ your uncle exploded, ‘how dare you do something like that!’ But you leaped to your own defense: ‘Do not be angry, revered uncle; killing someone during a crime is a heinous offense, but killing someone who has committed a crime is an act of patriotism. Your unworthy nephew is determined to make his name on the battlefield, and the reason I assumed the appearance today was to fortify my courage for the future.’ Your uncle continued to rage, but we all knew that he was looking at you with increased respect . . .”

“Old Zhao, you are too smart a man,” a smiling Excellency Yuan said, “not to recognize me. You are afraid I will blame you for what happened. In truth, I do not regard what happened as anything to be ashamed of. Back when I was studying with my uncle in the Board of Punishments, I read up on the executioner’s trade and benefited greatly from it. Going with you to execute that criminal was a rare and unforgettable experience that has had a major impact on my life, and I have summoned you here today to thank you.”

I responded with more kowtows and expressions of gratitude.

“Get up,” Excellency Yuan said. “Go back to Peking and wait there, quite possibly for welcome news.”

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