Sandalwood Death (52 page)

“I was at first, but no longer.”

“What did you do for Yuan Shikai in Tianjin?”

“Your servant went to Tianjin to carry out a slicing death for Excellency Yuan.”

“You mean carving up a living person so he will suffer before he dies?”

“Yes.”

“The Emperor and I have decided to abolish the slicing death punishment. Are We not expected to initiate reforms? Well, this is one of them. Is that not right, Your Majesty?”

“Yes.” It was a melancholy sound that floated over to me, and when I boldly looked up, I saw someone in a chair to the left and a bit ahead of the Empress Dowager. He was wearing a bright yellow robe, a golden dragon with glittering scales embroidered on the chest, and a tall hat whose centerpiece was a sparkling pearl the size of a hen’s egg. The face beneath that hat was large and as white as fine porcelain. The August Ruler, the Son of Heaven, Emperor of the Great Qing Dynasty. Of course I knew that he had fallen out of favor with the Empress Dowager over the commotion caused by Kang Youwei and his fellow reformers, but that did nothing to alter the fact that He was the Emperor. Long live His Majesty the Emperor, may He live forever and ever! The Emperor said:

“What my august progenitor says is true.”

“Yuan Shikai has said that you desire to return to your native home in retirement.”

The sarcastic tone in the Empress Dowager’s comment was unmistakable, and I felt two of my three souls departing in abject fear. “Your humble servant deserves to die ten thousand deaths,” I said. “Your humble servant is a pig and a dog, and has no right to cause the Old Buddha any concern. But your humble servant is not thinking of himself alone. It is his thought that while an executioner may be demeaned, the work he performs is not, and as such he is a symbol of national power. We are a nation with a thousand laws, but in the end it is we who enforce them. Your humble servant ventures to propose that executioners be included in the personnel ranks of the Board of Punishments with a monthly wage, and hopes for the creation of a retirement system for executioners, who can subsist on a national pension and not be reduced to wandering the streets in poverty. Your humble servant . . . humble servant hopes as well for the creation of a hereditary system for executioners, so that this ancient profession will be viewed as an honorable one . . .”

A stately cough by the Empress Dowager sent shivers through me. I stopped talking, went back to kowtows, and said over and over:

“Your humble servant deserves death . . . humble servant deserves death . . .”

“What he says is sensible and has merit,” the Empress Dowager said. “No single trade may be excluded from the list of professions. It is said that every profession has its zhuangyuan. Zhao Jia, in my view, you are the zhuangyuan of your profession.”

“By investing me with the designation zhuangyuan of my profession, the Empress Dowager brought me immeasurable glory.” More kowtows.

“Zhao Jia, you have put many people to death on behalf of the Great Qing Empire, which has brought you credit for hard work, if not for good work, and has earned praise from Yuan Shikai and Li Lianying. So I shall break from precedent and award you a grade seven medallion for your cap and allow you to return home in retirement.” The Empress Dowager tossed a ring of sandalwood prayer beads at my feet and said, “Lay down your knife and turn at once to a life of Buddhist contemplation.”

My kowtows continued.

“How about Your Majesty?” she asked. “Should you not reward him with something for all the people he has put to death for us, including those running dogs of yours whose heads he lopped off?”

I sneaked a glance at His Majesty, who, clearly flustered, got to His feet and said:

“We have nothing prepared. What do you suggest We reward him with?”

“I think, maybe,” the Empress Dowager said with a distinct chill, “You should give him the chair You have just vacated!”

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6

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When I listened to my dieh-dieh relate history, my heart sang. Dieh-dieh, Dieh-dieh, you are wonderful, for the Imperial audience you had. Xiaojia wants to be an executioner, to learn the trade from his dad . . .

—
Maoqiang
Sandalwood Death.
A father and son duet

Xiaojia sat on the rustling straw mat, leaning against a tent post as the night deepened. He looked like an oversized rabbit, his eyes dim with sleep. Flames in the belly of the stove flickered on his young face, and words that sometimes sounded foolish and sometimes not emerged from his grease-encrusted mouth to find their way into my recollections and my narrative—”Dieh, what does the Emperor look like?”—creating a close link between my recollections and narrative and the scene and situation we faced. “Dieh, does the Empress Dowager have breasts?”—All of a sudden, I smelled something burning in the sesame oil cauldron. With shocking clarity, I realized what was happening. My god, boiling oil is not boiling water! Water cooks something till it is soft; oil can burn it to a crisp! I jumped up off the mat and shouted:

“Come with me, son!”

I bounded over to the cauldron, reached into the oil barehanded—no time to worry about tongs—and fished out the two sandalwood spears, holding them up to a lantern to check them carefully. They had a dark, muted sheen and a powerful fragrance. I saw no singed spots. They burned my hands, so I laid them on a piece of cloth to rub them and turn them over and over, thanking my lucky stars there were no burn marks. The beef, on the other hand, was not so fortunate; I scooped out the burned pieces and threw them away, just as the chief yamen attendant sidled up and asked enigmatically:

“Something wrong, Laoye?”

“No.”

“That’s good.”

“Old Song,” my son cut in, “my dad is a grade seven official, so I am not afraid of you people anymore! If you harass me in the future, I’ll see that a bullet has your name on it.” My son pointed a finger at Song’s head. “Pow! There go your brains!”

“Young Brother Xiaojia, when did I ever harass you?” Song Three said inscrutably. “Even if your father were not a grade seven official, I would never think of making things difficult for you. If your wife were to utter a single word against me to Magistrate Qian, I would be kicked out of the yamen.”

“Don’t you know he’s not quite right, you foolish man?”

I could see a number of yayi standing in the shadows of the stage and the Ascension Platform. I lowered the fire under the cauldron and added oil. Then I carefully put my precious spears back into the cauldron, reminding myself, Pay attention, Old Zhao. Wild geese leave behind their cry; men leave behind a name. You need only carry out this sandalwood execution with perfection to live up to your designation as the zhuangyuan of executioners. If you fail, your name will die with you.

I draped the Empress Dowager’s sandalwood prayer beads around my neck, got up out of the Emperor’s chair, and looked heavenward, where a scattering of stars twinkled and the moon, like a silver platter, was rising in the east. That extraordinary brightness put me on edge, as if something monumental were about to happen, a feeling that persisted until it occurred to me that it was the fourteenth day of the eighth month and that the next day, the fifteenth, was the Mid-Autumn Festival, a day for families to come together. How lucky you are, Sun Bing, that Excellency Yuan has chosen that auspicious day for you to receive your punishment! In the light of the flames beneath the cauldron and the bright moonlight above, I watched the two sandalwood spears tumble in the oil like a pair of angry black snakes. I picked one out of the oil with a white cloth—taking care not to damage it—unimaginably sleek, it glistened with beads of oil that flowed to the tip and then formed liquid threads that fell silently back into the cauldron, where they coagulated and exuded a pleasant scorched aroma. It felt heavier in my hand now that it had absorbed so much fragrant oil; it was no longer the same piece of wood, but had taken on the characteristics of a hard, slippery, and exquisite instrument of death.

While I was taking solitary pleasure in admiring the spear, Song Three sneaked up behind me and said in a spiteful tone: “Laoye, why are you taking such pains simply to impale the man?”

I looked askance at him and snorted disdainfully. How could he understand what I was doing? He was good only for flaunting the power of his superior to oppress and extort money from the common people.

“You really ought to go home and get a good night’s sleep and leave these trivial matters to us.” Tailing along behind me, he added: “That son of a bitch Sun Bing is no one to take lightly. He’s skillful and courageous, a man of substance who refuses to blame others for his actions. It was his misfortune to have been born in Gaomi, an insignificant little place that gave him no room to put his talents to good use.” Song Three was clearly trying to ingratiate himself with me. “You have been away for many years, Laoye, and there is much about your qinjia that you do not know. He and I were friends for many years, so close that I can tell you how many moles he has on his you-know-what.”

I had seen too many people like this fellow—toadies and bullies who know how to say what you want to hear, whoever you are, man or demon—but I was in no mood to expose him for what he was, not then; allowing him to carry on behind me served a purpose.

“Sun Bing is a man of extraordinary talents. Words flow from his mouth as if written by a scholar, and he is endowed with a flawless memory. If only he knew how to read and write, he could be a capped scholar ten times over. Some years back,” Song Three continued, “when Old Qin’s mother died, they asked Sun Bing’s troupe to perform in the mourning hall. Qin and Sun were good friends—Qin’s mother was Sun’s ganniang—and Sun sang the funeral passages with deep emotion. But it was more than that—not only did his singing break the hearts of the filial descendants, they heard a pounding sound emerge from the coffin itself; the gathered descendants and people who had dropped by out of curiosity nearly died of fright, their faces a ghostly white. Isn’t that what’s called shocking the dead back to life? Well, Sun Bing walked up to his ganniang’s bier, opened the lid in grand fashion, and the old lady sat up, light streaming from her eyes, like a pair of lanterns tearing through the dark curtain of night. Then Sun Bing sang these lines:
‘When I call out Ganniang, listen carefully as your son sings “Chang Mao Wails at the Bier.” If you have not lived enough, get up and live some more. If you have, then when my song is finished, fly to heaven, away from here.’
Sun Bing kept changing roles, from the sheng to the dan, weeping one moment and laughing the next, interspersed with all sorts of cat cries, turning the bier into a living, lively opera stage. All the filial descendants put aside their grief, while the casual spectators forgot that an old lady, just brought back from the dead, was sitting up in her coffin, listening to the performance. When Sun Bing sang the final high note, which hung in the air like the tail of a kite, Old Lady Qin slowly closed her eyes, released a contented sigh, and fell back into her coffin like a toppled wall. That is the story of how Sun Bing sang someone back from the dead. And there is more: he can also sing the living to death. Old Lady Qin is the only person he ever sang back from the dead, but the bastard has sung more living people to death than there are stars in the sky.” While he was spouting his story, Song Three sidled over to the cauldron, reached in, and snatched a piece of beef. “This beef of yours,” he said with an impudent smile, “has a wonderful flavor—”

Before he could finish what he was going to say, I saw the bastard straighten up as something erupted on his head and he tumbled into the cauldron of boiling oil. While my eyes were riveted on the scene in front of me, my ears pounded from the explosion of bone, and my nose was assailed by the smell of gunpowder merging with the sesame-enhanced smell of sandalwood. I knew immediately what had happened: someone had fired a shot in ambush, one meant for me. The greedy Song Three had been my unwitting stand-in.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

Dieh, oh, Dieh, Zhao Jia says he will impale you on a sandalwood stake, and Meiniang has nearly lost her mind. She flies to the county yamen to appeal to Qian Ding, but the gate is shut, guarded by soldiers malign. To the left, Yuan Shikai’s Imperial Guards, to the right, von Ketteler’s German troops, standing heads high, chests out, Mauser rifles aligned. I step forward; those German devils and Chinese soldiers glare with eyes big and round as brass bells, their ferocious snarls meant to keep me out. My heart pounds, my legs tremble, I fall. With wings on my shoulders, I could not enter the yamen, for these are powerful, strong-willed soldiers, not bumbling militiamen, those friends of mine. They have enjoyed my company, and the iron railing would come down by letting them have their way, I opined. But the Germans are hard-hearted, the Imperial Guards an impressive cadre, and if I break for the gate, the holes in my body would be of their design. In the distance stand the lockup and Main Hall, both with roofs of green. My tears fall—tin tin tine tine. I think of my dieh suffering in his prison cell, and of our kinship. I think of how you taught me to sing an opera feline, trained me to be an acrobat and martial artist. I followed you from village to town, from temple to shrine, singing in roles female, major and minor, to Little Peach, all truly divine. On mutton buns and beef noodles, flatbreads fresh from the oven we dined. My dieh’s cowardice purged from my mind, his virtues of a heroic kind. To save his life, his daughter to bold action is resigned. Calling up nerves of steel, I rush the gate, leaving shouts of protest far behind.

—
Maoqiang
Sandalwood Death.
A soliloquy

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1

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A crowd of people in vivid dress, faces painted all the colors of the rainbow, some tall and some short, emerged from Rouge Lane, southwest of the county yamen. The leader had powdered his face the white of a handsome young actor and painted his lips the bright red of a ghost of someone hanged. His upper body was covered in a red satin unlined robe (almost certainly appropriated from a corpse) that fell below his knees and revealed a pair of greasy black legs and bare feet. A live monkey was perched on his shoulder, enjoying its bumpy ride as the man hopped along, brass gong in hand. He was none other than Hou Xiaoqi of the beggar troupe. After three beats of the gong—
clang clang clang
—he sang a line from a Maoqiang opera: