Mo Yan - Sandalwood Death

Xiaojia wiped his oily, sweaty face with his sleeve and said excitedly:

“Good news, Dieh! The County Magistrate has invited you to the yamen for some millet spirits and dog meat!”

My gongdieh remained seated in his chair, his bloodless little hands resting squarely on the arms. He made not a sound, and I could not tell whether he was resting calmly or putting on a show.

“Say something, Dieh. The yayi are out in the yard waiting for you.” Xiaojia’s nerves were beginning to show. “Will you take me with you, Dieh? Seeing the Great Hall would be a real treat. All those times my wife went, she never once agreed to take me along…”

I jumped in to put a stop to what the buffoon was saying:

“Don’t listen to him, Gongdieh. Why would they invite you for a social visit? I’m sure they plan to detain you. Have you committed a crime?”

My gongdieh lazily opened his eyes and sighed.

“If I have,” he said, “it is what was expected of me. As they say, ‘Confront soldiers with generals and dam water with earth.’ There is nothing to get excited about. Go invite them in.”

Xiaojia turned and shouted out the door:

“Did you hear that? My dieh wants you to come in.”

With a hint of a smile, my gongdieh said:

“Good boy; that’s the right tone for people like that.”

So Xiaojia went outside and said to the yayi:

“Are you aware of the fact that my wife and Magistrate Qian enjoy a close relationship?”

“You foolish boy,” his dieh said, shaking his head in exasperation before fixing his gaze on me.

I watched as the smirking yayi pushed Xiaojia to the side, hands on the hilts of their swords, resolute and ruthless in their determination as they rushed into the room where we were talking.

My gongdieh opened his eyes a crack, barely wide enough for two chilling rays to escape and smother the two men with contempt. Then he turned his gaze to the wall and ignored the intruders.

After a quick exchange of looks that seemed to bespeak their embarrassment, one of them said officiously, “Are you Zhao Jia?”

He appeared to be asleep.

“My dieh is getting on in years and doesn’t hear so well,” Xiaojia said breathlessly. “Ask him again, but louder.”

So the fellow tried again:

“Zhao Jia,” he said more forcefully, “we are here by order of the County Magistrate to have you visit him in the yamen.”

“You go back and tell your Eminence Qian,” he replied unhurriedly, without looking at them, “that Zhao Jia has weak legs and aching feet and cannot answer the summons.”

That prompted another quick exchange of looks, followed by an audible snigger from one of the men. But he turned serious and, with a display of biting sarcasm, said:

“Maybe His Eminence ought to send his palanquin for you.”

“I think that would be best.”

This was met with an outburst of laughter.

“All right, fine,” they said. “You wait here for His Eminence to come in his palanquin.”

They turned and walked out, still laughing, and by the time they were in the yard, their laughter was uncontrollable.

Xiaojia followed them into the yard and said proudly:

“My dieh is really something, don’t you think? Everyone else is afraid of you, but not him.”

One look at Xiaojia set them off laughing again, this time so hard that they weaved their way out the gate. I could hear them out on the street. I knew why they were laughing, and so did my gongdieh.

But not Xiaojia, who came back inside and asked, clearly puzzled:

“Why were they laughing, Dieh? Did they drink a crazy old woman’s piss? Baldy Huang once told me that if you drink a crazy old woman’s piss, you can laugh yourself crazy. That must be what they did. The question is, which crazy old woman’s piss did they drink?”

The wretch replied, but for my benefit, not his son’s:

“Son,” he said, “a man must not underestimate himself. That is something your dieh learned late in life. Even if the Gaomi County Magistrate is a member of the Tiger group, someone who passed the Imperial Examination with distinction, what is he but a grade five County Magistrate whose hat bears the crystal symbol of office in front and a one-eyed peacock feather in back? Even though his wife is the maternal granddaughter of Zeng Guofan, a dead prefect is no match for a live rat. Your dieh has never held official rank, but the number of red-capped heads he has lopped off could fill two large wicker baskets. So, for that matter, could the heads of nobles and aristocrats!”

Xiaojia stood there with a foolish grin on his face, his teeth showing, likely not understanding what his father had just said. But I did, every word of it. I’d learned a great deal in my years with Magistrate Qian, and my gongdieh’s brief monologue nearly froze my heart and raised gooseflesh on my arms. I’m sure my face must have been ghostly white. Rumors about my gongdieh had been swirling around town for months and had naturally reached my ears. Having somehow found a cache of hidden courage, I asked:

“Is that really what you did, Gongdieh?”

He fixed his hawk-like gaze on me and said, one slow word at a time, as if spitting out steel pellets, “Every—trade—has—its—master, its zhuangyuan! Know who said that?”

“It’s a well-known popular adage.”

“No,” he said. “One person said that to me. Know who it was?”

I shook my head.

He got up out of his chair, prayer beads in his hands—once more the stifling aroma of sandalwood spread through the room. His gaunt face had a somber, golden glow. Arrogantly, reverently, gratefully, he said:

“The Empress Dowager Cixi Herself!”

My dear dissolute daughter-in-law, why do you glare like that? Do you not worry that your eyes will pop out of your head? Yes, that is my profession. From my seventeenth year, when I dissevered the body of a thieving clerk at the silver repository, to my sixtieth year, when I administered the lingering death to the would-be assassin of His Excellency Yuan Shikai, I earned my living at that calling for forty-four years. You still glare. Well, I have witnessed many glares in my life, some far more insistent than yours, the likes of which no one in all of Shandong Province, let alone you people, has ever seen. You need not even see them in person. Merely describing them could make you soil yourself out of fear.

In the tenth year of the Xianfeng Emperor, a eunuch called Little Insect audaciously pilfered His Majesty’s Seven Star fowling piece from the Imperial Armory, where he worked, and sold it. A tribute gift from the Russian Tsarina to the Emperor, it was no ordinary hunting rifle. It had a golden barrel, a silver trigger, and a sandalwood stock in which were inlaid seven diamonds, each the size of a peanut. It fired silver bullets that could bring down a phoenix from the sky and a unicorn on land. No fowling piece like it had graced the world since Pangu divided heaven from earth. The larcenous Little Insect, believing that the sickly Emperor was rapidly losing his faculties, impudently removed the piece from the armory and sold it for the reported price of three thousand silver ingots, which his father used to buy a tract of farmland. The poor delusional youngster forgot one basic principle: Anyone who becomes Emperor is, by definition, a dragon, a Son of Heaven. Has there even been a dragon, a Son of Heaven, who was not endowed with peerless wisdom? One who could not foretell everything under the sun? Emperor Xianfeng, a man of extraordinary mystical skills, could see and identify the tip of an animal’s autumn hair with dragon eyes that appeared normal during the day, but emitted such powerful rays of light when night fell that he needed no lamp to put brush to paper or to read a book. It was said that the Emperor planned a hunting expedition beyond the Great Wall and called for his Seven Star fowling piece. A panicky Little Insect made up bizarre explanations for why that was not possible: first an old fox with white fur had stolen it, then it was a magical hawk that had flown off with it. Emperor Xianfeng’s dragon mien turned red with anger, and He handed down an Imperial Edict, ordering that Little Insect be turned over to the Office of Palace Justice, which was responsible for disciplining eunuchs. The standard employment of interrogation tactics secured a confession from the miscreant, so angering His Majesty that golden flashes shot from His eyes. He jumped to His feet in the Hall of Golden Chimes and roared: