Mo Yan - Sandalwood Death

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.”

Once the sun was up, the cordon of government soldiers around the shed was replaced by a contingent of German soldiers that ringed the parade ground, facing out. Once they were in place, another contingent, this time of government troops, moved in and took up positions around the parade ground, but facing in. Finally, six government troops and six German soldiers marched in and took their positions: one at each corner of the shed, one at each corner of the Ascension Platform, and four in front of the opera stage. Two of the four men at our shed were foreign; the other two were Yuan’s troops. They all had their backs to the shed, standing at attention, as if competing to see who could stand the straightest. Meow meow , straight as an arrow.

As he fingered his prayer beads, Dieh looked like a meditating old monk, Amita Buddha. Amita Buddha, my wife said that a lot. My eyes, like awls, bored into Dieh’s hands. Meow meow , they were uncommon hands; the Great Qing Empire’s hands, the nation’s hands, the hands of the venerable Empress Dowager Cixi and the ageless Emperor. My dieh’s were the hands They used to kill anyone They wanted dead. If the Empress Dowager said to my dieh: “Slaymaster, go kill someone for Me,” my dieh would say, “As you wish!” If the ageless Emperor said: “Slay-master, go kill someone for Me,” my dieh would say, “As you wish!” My dieh had wonderful hands. Still, they were a pair of little birds; in motion, they were like feathers. Meow meow . I still remember how my wife once said to me, “Your dieh’s hands are abnormally small,” and as I looked at those hands, I couldn’t help feeling that he was somehow not an ordinary human being. If not a ghost, he had to be an immortal. On pain of death, you would never believe that those hands were capable of killing a thousand people. Hands like his belonged to a midwife. Where I come from, we call a midwife an auspicious grandma. Auspicious Grandma, Grandma Auspicious, ah-ya-ah, and I suddenly understood why people in the capital referred to him as Grandma. He was a midwife. But then again, midwives are all women, and my dieh is a man. Or is he? Of course he is; I’ve seen his little pecker when I bathed him. It’s like a little frozen green carrot, heh-heh… What are you laughing at? Heh-heh, a little carrot… Idiot son. Meow meow , can men really be midwives? Wouldn’t a male midwife be a laughingstock? And wouldn’t he have a clear view of a woman’s privates? And wouldn’t that be all her menfolk needed to beat him to death? I didn’t know what to think, and the harder I tried, the more confused I became. To hell with it. Who’s got time to waste on stuff like that?

My dieh’s eyes snapped open; he draped his prayer beads around his neck, stood up, and went to check the cauldron of oil. I could see our upside-down reflections in the oil. The surface was brighter than a mirror, and so clear I could see every pore in our faces. Dieh lifted one of the sandalwood stakes out, breaking the smooth surface and turning my reflection into the long face of a goat. What a shock! All along, my true form has been that of a goat, with a pair of horns. Meow meow . What a disappointment. Dieh’s true form is a black panther, the County Magistrate is a white tiger, my wife is a white snake, and me? I’m a bearded goat. A goat! What kind of animal is that! I didn’t want to be a damned goat! Dieh examined the stake in the sunlight, like a master blacksmith examining a newly forged sword. Bright threads of oil dripped back into the cauldron, creating little eddies on the surface of the slightly gummy oil. He waited till the last of the oil had dripped from the stake before taking out a piece of white silk and wiping the stake dry. The silk quickly absorbed all the oil residue. Dieh laid the silk on the cauldron stand, then held the stake in two hands—one on the butt, the other on the tip—and tried to bend it. I detected a slight arch when he did that; it returned to its original shape as soon as he loosened his grip. After placing the stake on the cauldron stand, he lifted out the second stake, first letting all the oil drip off, then wiping it dry with the silk, and tried to bend it. As before, when he loosened his grip, it returned to its original shape. A look of satisfaction spread across his face. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him so happy, and it affected me the same way, meow meow . What a wonderful thing, the sandalwood death, for it made my dieh happy, meow meow .