Sandalwood Death (61 page)

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Now that he had told his story, Dieh sat quietly with his eyes shut. But I was too enraptured to want to extract myself from the tale. It was yet another story about a boy and his father, and I could not help feeling that all his stories about a boy and his father were really about me and him. Dieh was the mimic, Guo Mao, and I was the boy who walked through the crowd, hat in hand—
Meow meow~~mew~~

My dieh had performed countless executions in the capital to audiences of thousands, people who were drawn to his unparalleled skill, and it seemed to me that I could actually see tears in the people’s eyes. Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if I’d been there with Dieh at the time, hat in hand, a cat cap on my head, collecting donations from onlookers? While I was collecting money, I’d be practicing my cat cries
~~meow meow~~
and how wonderful that would be! Just think about all the money I’d get! I tell you, Dieh, why did you wait so long to come home and introduce yourself to your son? You could have taken me to the capital with you. If I’d been at your side ever since I was a boy, by now I’d be a man-slaying zhuangyuan . . .

When my dieh first showed up in town, people took me aside and whispered, “Xiaojia, your dieh isn’t human.” “What is he, then?” “He’s a ghost that has taken over a corpse and brought it back to life. Think about it, Xiaojia, before your mother died, did she ever say you had a father? No? Of course not. So your mother said nothing about a father on her deathbed, and then he shows up, like he’d dropped out of the sky or popped up out of the ground. What could he possibly be except a ghost?”

“Go fuck yourself!”
Meow meow
. I rushed those tongue-wagging bastards with a cleaver. I went without a dieh for more than twenty years, and now, by some miracle, I suddenly have one, and you people have the nerve to say not only that is he not my dieh, but that he’s a ghost. You’re as brazen as rats that’ll lick a cat’s ass. I raised my cleaver and ran at them.
Meow meow
. With one swing of my cleaver I could chop them in two, from their heads all the way down to their heels. My dieh said that particular chop is called the “big cleave,” and today I’m going to use it on any son of a bitch who has the guts to say my dieh isn’t really my dieh. Well, they nearly shit their pants when they saw the look of rage on my face, and could not get out of there fast enough.
Meow meow
, watch out, you bunch of long-tailed rats. Provoke my dieh, and you’re asking for trouble. The same goes for me.
Meow meow
. Come give it a try if you don’t believe me, any of you. My dieh is an executioner who sits in the Emperor’s chair. His Majesty gave him leave to report an execution after it had been carried out, to kill without constraints, man or dog. And when I take my place, knife in hand, at my dieh’s side, I can kill a man as easily as I can butcher a pig or a dog.

I pleaded with Dieh to tell me another story. He said:

“Quit dawdling and get things ready. I don’t want you rushing around when it’s time to do our job.”

I knew that a spectacle was planned for today—spectacles always made for happy days for Dieh and me—and that there would be plenty of time later for stories. Good food needs to be savored. Once the sandalwood death was successfully carried out, Dieh would be in a good mood, and there’d be nothing holding him back from spitting out all the stories he held inside, for my ears alone. I walked out behind the shed to relieve myself—numbers one and two—and took a look around while I was at it. The opera stage and Ascension Platform were there, and I watched a flock of wild pigeons, their wings flapping loudly, fly past in the bright sunlight. The parade ground was surrounded: soldier, wooden post, soldier, wooden post. A dozen cannons hunkered down at the field’s edge. People called them turtle cannons, I called them dog cannons. Turtle cannons, dog cannons, slick and smooth, loud barks, green moss on the turtles’ shells, dogs’ bodies covered with fur,
meow meow
.

I retraced my steps to the front of the shed, itching for something to do. I needed a job of some sort. By this time on most days, I’d already have slaughtered the day’s pigs and dogs and hung the carcasses on the a rack, letting the smell of fresh meat join the birds in the sky. Customers would be lined up in front of the shop, while I stood at the butcher block, cleaver in hand to chop off a hunk of the still-warm fatty meat, giving my customers the exact amount they asked for, not an ounce more or an ounce less. They’d give me a thumbs-up. “Xiaojia,” they’d say, “you’re quite the man!” I didn’t need them to tell me that. But this was the first time I was to be part of a spectacle with Dieh, one that was a lot more important than butchering pigs. But what about all those customers? What do we do? Sorry, folks, I guess you’ll have to be vegetarians for a day.

I was getting bored now that there were no more stories, so I went up to the stove, where the fire had gone out. There were no ripples on the surface of the glistening oil. It was no longer a cauldron of oil, but a mirror, a big bronze mirror, brighter than my wife’s mirror at home, and so clear that I could count the whiskers on my face. There were dried stains in the mud in front of the stove and on the stand—Song Three’s blood. And those weren’t the only places his blood had landed; some had splattered into the cauldron. Was that why the oil had such a bright sheen? After this business of the sandalwood death is done with, I’m going to move this cauldron into the yard back home and let my wife see her face in it, but only if she refrains from mistreating my dieh. Last night I was half asleep when I heard a loud pop. Song Three’s head was buried in the churning oil, and before they could pull it out, it was about half cooked. I got a kick out of that.
Meow meow
.

That was good shooting. Who did it? My dieh didn’t know, and the government soldiers who started looking the moment they heard the shot didn’t know. I’m the only one who knew. Gaomi County could boast only two marksmen that good. One was the rabbit hunter Niu Qing; the other was County Magistrate Qian Ding. Niu Qing had one eye—the left one. He’d lost his right one when his gun blew up in his face. A distinct improvement in his marksmanship followed the accident. He mastered the skill of shooting rabbits on the run. If he raised his fowling piece, a rabbit would be on its way to the netherworld. Niu Qing was a good friend of mine. My good friend. The other marksman was the venerable Qian Ding, our County Magistrate. Once, when I was in the Great Northern Wilderness hunting for herbal medicine for my wife’s illness, I saw Qian Ding, with his attendants Chunsheng and Liu Pu, out hunting. Chunsheng and Liu Pu were on donkeys driving rabbits out of the bushes so the Magistrate, sitting astride his horse, could draw his pistol and, seemingly without aiming, send a rabbit flying up into the air to land with a thud—dead.

From where I hid in the brush, not daring to make a sound, I could hear Chunsheng praise the Magistrate to the skies with words like “crack shot,” while Liu Pu sat in the saddle, head down, a blank look on his face that gave away nothing of what he was thinking. My wife once told me that the Magistrate’s loyal follower, Liu Pu, was Qian Ding’s wife’s ganerzi, and the son of some big shot. He was, she said, a wise and talented man. I refused to believe her. What talented man would serve as somebody’s lackey? A talented man would be like my dieh, who lifted up his sword, smeared his face with blood, and—thwack thwack thwack thwack thwack thwack, six heads rolled on the ground.

The Magistrate was no marksman, was how I saw it, just a lucky shot, like a blind cat bumping into a dead rat. He’d probably miss the next. Well, as if he knew what I was thinking, he pointed his pistol into the air and brought down a bird. A dead bird, like a black stone, plopped down right next to me. Would you believe it! A superhuman marksman,
meow meow
. The Magistrate’s hunting dog came bounding over to me. I stood up with the dead bird, its body heat burning my hand. The dog leaped and jumped up and down, barking the whole time. Now, I’m not afraid of dogs; dogs are afraid of me. Every dog in Gaomi County runs away with its tail between its legs, yelping like crazy, when it sees me coming. Dogs’ fear of me proves how much I take after my dieh, a panther. The Magistrate’s dog looked mean, but I could tell from its bark that it was expecting to be backed up by its master to make me think it wasn’t afraid. Me, Gaomi County’s King of Hell for dogs! The dog’s barks brought Chunsheng and Liu Pu riding up from two sides. I was a stranger to Liu Pu, but Chunsheng was a friend of mine. He’d often visited the shop, where he was treated to cut-rate food and drink. “What are you doing here, Xiaojia?” he asked. “Searching for herbal stuff,” I said. “My wife is sick, and she sent me out to find some heartbreak grass with red roots and green leaves. Know where I can find any? If so, tell me, and hurry, because she’s in a bad way.” By then the Magistrate had ridden up and was giving me the once-over with a pitiless look in his eyes. “Who are you?” he demanded. “What is your name?” He sputtered when I didn’t answer. When I was still a little boy, my mother told me to act dumb in the presence of an official. “He’s Dog-Meat Xishi’s husband,” Chunsheng whispered, “a borderline idiot.” Well, fuck you, Chunsheng! I felt like saying. I was just saying how you were a friend of mine, and that’s no way for a friend to talk. Would a real friend say that his friend is a borderline idiot?
Meow meow
, fuck you! Who are you calling a borderline idiot? If that’s what I am, then you’re a total idiot.

When Niu Qing pulled the trigger, only buckshot came out of the barrel. But the Magistrate fired a single bullet each time he pulled the trigger. A neat little hole dotted Song Three’s head, and if that doesn’t prove it was the Magistrate, I don’t know what does. But then why would the Magistrate want to kill Song Three? Oh, now I get it. Song Three, you must have stolen money from the Magistrate, something most people would not dare to do. Stealing from the Magistrate was signing your own death warrant. Most of the time you pranced around the yamen like a big shot and refused to even acknowledge my presence. You refused to settle up the five strings of cash you owed the shop, and I didn’t have the nerve to ask you for it. Well, things worked out in the end. We’re out the money, but you’re out for good. Now, which was more important, your money or your life? Your life, of course, so take your unpaid debt and talk it over with the King of Hell.

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Government troops were swarming our way even as the sound of gunfire hung in the air. They dragged the top half of Song Three’s body out of the oil. His head reeked of sesame oil, which dripped along with his blood back into the cauldron. It looked like a newly fried hawthorn berry.
Meow meow
. The soldiers laid him out on the ground, where his legs, a thread of life still in them, twitched uncontrollably, evoking the image of a half-dead chicken. The soldiers stared wide-eyed at the soon-to-be corpse, not knowing what to do. One of their officers rushed up and bundled my dieh and me into the shed, then turned to look in the direction from which the bullet had come and fired his weapon. I’d never had a rifle fire that close to me, a foreign rifle, at that—I’d heard it was a German weapon whose bullets could penetrate a wall at over a thousand yards. The other soldiers took his lead and fired at the same spot. Smoke emerged from their muzzles when they stopped shooting, and the smell of gunpowder engulfed us, like New Year’s, when firecrackers are set off. “Go after him!” the officer commanded.
Meow meow
. The soldiers took off running, whooping and hollering. If Dieh hadn’t grabbed me by the arm, I’d have taken out after them to watch the fun! Those morons, I was thinking, what do they think they’re going to find? By the time you dragged Song Three out of the boiling oil, the Magistrate was already back in the yamen, thanks to his spirited horse, a Red Rabbit thoroughbred. With its sleek red coat, it looked like a fiery red blur when it galloped at high speed, faster and faster, filling the air with a whistling sound. The animal, which had once belonged to Master Guan Yu, did not eat hay. When it was hungry, it ate a mouthful of fresh dirt, and when it was thirsty, it drank the wind. Or so Dieh told me. He also said that instead of Red Rabbit, it ought to be called an earth-eating or wind-drinking thoroughbred, because those traits described the animal’s essence. It was a fine animal, a rare treasure, and I wondered whether I would ever own such a horse. If that happened one day, I’d let my dieh be its first rider. He’d probably want that privilege to be mine, but I’d insist. As a filial son, I always let him have the best. The most filial son in Gaomi County, the most filial son in Laizhou Prefecture, the most filial son in Shandong Province, the most filial son in all of the Great Qing Empire!
Meow meow
.

After searching the area, the soldiers started heading back in twos and threes.

“Grandma Zhao,” the officer said, “Excellency Yuan asks you to please remain inside the shed from now on. It’s for your protection.”

Dieh merely grinned in response. Several dozen soldiers quickly surrounded the shed,
meow meow
, as if we were treasures to be protected. The officer blew out the candle and moved the two of us out of the moonlight. Then he asked my dieh if the sandalwood stakes in the cauldron were ready. “More or less,” Dieh replied. So the officer removed the kindling under the stove and dumped it in water. I love the smell of charred wood, so I breathed in deeply. In the darkness I heard Dieh say, either to me or to himself:

“Heaven’s will, it was heaven’s will. A sacrifice to the sandalwood stakes!”

“What did you say, Dieh?”

“Go to sleep, son. Tomorrow is our big day.”

“Would you like me to massage your back, Dieh?”

“No.”

“Scratch your back?”

“Go to sleep!” he said, starting to get annoyed.

Meow meow
.

“Go to sleep.”

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