Mo Yan - Sandalwood Death

“First Lady,” a coarse voice said, “we have been ordered by Excellency Yuan to search for an assassin!”

With a sarcastic little laugh, she said:

“Back when my great-grandfather Zeng Guofan led soldiers into battle, Commander, he had one inviolable rule to maintain discipline and preserve the cardinal guides and constant virtues, and that was, no soldier was permitted to enter women’s chambers. Apparently the New Army personally trained by Yuan Shikai, Excellency Yuan, has no use for that rule.”

“Your humble servant would not dare offend Your Ladyship!”

“What does daring or not have to do with anything? And what do you mean, offend me? You search what you wish and see what you want. You people have already destroyed the revered Zeng family name, with no voice at the court, and you take your puffed-up courage from that fact.”

“Those are harsh words, Your Ladyship. Your humble servant is only a soldier who obeys his superior’s orders.”

“Then go tell Yuan Shikai that I want to know if it is acceptable for soldiers to break into women’s quarters in the middle of the night, humiliating their occupants and besmirching their virtuous good name. Is Yuan Shikai an official of the Great Qing Dynasty or isn’t he? Does he have no womenfolk of his own? A popular adage has it that ‘A warrior can be killed but not dishonored; a woman can die but not be defiled.’ I shall let my death stand in opposition against Yuan Shikai!”

Just then a flurry of footsteps sounded outside the door.

“The Magistrate is here,” someone whispered.

The First Lady burst into tears.

The Magistrate came through the door and, in a voice quivering with emotion, said:

“Dear wife, I am a worthless man for letting them give you such a fright!”

Once the commander and his troops were scolded out of the room, the door was shut, and the candle extinguished, I climbed out of the Magistrate’s bed, with moonlight filtering in through the window lattice, lighting up part of the room and leaving the rest in darkness.

“I thank Your Ladyship for saving me from certain death,” I said softly. “If there is another life after this one, I hope I can return to serve you, even as a beast of burden!”

I turned to leave, but she stopped me by tugging on my sleeve. I saw a glimmer in her eyes and detected the subtle fragrance of cassia on her body. That took my thoughts back to the cassia tree that stood tall in the courtyard of the Third Hall. The Mid-Autumn Festival was a time when the perfume of cassia blossoms filled the air, and the County Magistrate and his wife ought to be enjoying a shared drink and the beauty of a full moon. I knew I was not fated to share that enjoyment with my beloved, but the taste of a lovers’ tryst in the yamen late at night was nearly overpowering. People said that my dieh was guilty of disturbing the peace, but in my view, it was the tyrannical behavior of the Germans that had caused all the problems. I thought about the anguish my dieh felt, as if his heart were tied up in knots. Dieh, you old fool! Your daughter nearly ran her legs off, and a gang of beggars did not rest, day or night, all in an attempt to rescue you. In order to do that, Xiao Shanzi knocked out three of his own teeth and bled all over his chest. In order to rescue you, Zhu Ba himself led the effort, which wound up costing the lives of some of his beggars. We exhausted ourselves, devising a ruse to free you from your condemned cell, but when success was nearly in our grasp, you opened your big mouth and sounded the alarm…

“You cannot leave, not yet,” the First Lady said, a chill to her voice as she broke into my confused thoughts. I could hear that the situation outside remained unsettled, with the occasional soldier’s shout.

On orders from Yuan Shikai, the Magistrate had been sent to keep watch at the Main Hall. Thoughts of the danger I had barely managed to escape when the commander burst into the women’s quarters with his men would not leave me. The First Lady went over and closed the door, and in the light from the weepy red candle, I saw how red her face was, without knowing whether she was excited or angry.

“My husband,” I heard her say, the chill still in her voice, “your humble wife took it upon herself to hide your lover in your bed.”

The Magistrate took a look outside through the window before rushing up to the bed and pulling back the covers to reveal my face. He hurriedly covered me back up, and I heard him say softly:

“My dear, you magnanimously put aside all previous concerns. You are an extraordinary woman, and Qian Ding thanks you from the bottom of his heart!”

“The question is, should I send her away or let her stay where she is?”

“That is for you to decide.”

There was a shout in the yard. Qian Ding left, obviously flustered. While he appeared to be leaving to carry out his official duties, in truth he was running from an awkward situation. It was the sort of thing that occurred often on the operatic stage, so I knew what he was doing. His wife blew out the candle and let the moon light up the room again.

Feeling awkward, I got up and sat on a stool in the corner, my tongue parched, my throat dry and raspy. As if she could read my mind, she poured a cup of cold tea and held it out to me. Hesitant at first, I took it from her and drank every drop.

“I thank Your Ladyship.”

“I could never have pictured you as a brave and resourceful woman!” the Magistrate’s wife said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

How was I supposed to respond to that?

“How old are you?”

“May it please Your Ladyship, I am twenty-four this year.”

“I understand that you are pregnant.”

“I am young and ignorant, and I can only ask Your Ladyship’s forgiveness for any offense I have given. As the popular adage has it, ‘A great man overlooks the flaws of a lesser man, and a Prime Minister has a capacious nature.’”

“What a clever little mouth you have,” the First Lady replied with the sobriety of her station. “Can you say with certainty that the child in your belly is Laoye’s?”

“Yes, I can.”

“Then,” she said curtly, “do you want to stay or leave?”

“I want to leave,” I said without a moment’s hesitation.

I stood beside a gatepost in front of the yamen staring blankly inside. I’d not slept a wink, suffering through a hellish night worse than any performed onstage. This was no performance, but it would not take long for it to find its way into operatic lore. Before I left the yamen, the First Lady urged me to go somewhere far away to keep myself safe. She even handed me five liang of silver. But I was not about to leave. My mind was made up. If I was going to die, it would be in Gaomi County, nowhere else. Whatever happened, happened.

All the local people knew that I was Sun Bing’s daughter, and they spared no effort to shield me, like mother hens protecting a single chick. White-haired old ladies tried to hand me still-warm eggs, and when I refused to take them, they stuffed them into my pockets.

“Eat, young lady,” they said tearfully, “you must eat to stay well and strong.”

Truth is, as I knew all too well, before troubles had beset my dieh, all these county women—young and old, daughters of fine families and prostitutes from local brothels—had ground their teeth when they heard my name mentioned and would have loved to take a bite out of me. They hated the fact of my relationship with the County Magistrate, they hated the fact that I lived better than they did, and they hated the fact that I had healthy, unbound feet that could run and hop and were prized by the Magistrate. Dieh, when you raised the flag of rebellion, their attitude toward me changed for the better, and better still when you were taken into custody. When the Ascension Platform was erected on the Tongde Academy parade ground and an announcement was posted in all the villages that you were to be dispatched by the sandalwood death, well, Dieh, your daughter was transformed into everyone’s favorite niece, loved by all.