Mo Yan - Sandalwood Death

Dieh carried the two sandalwood stakes into the shed and laid them on a small table. He then knelt on the straw mat and bowed down to pay his respects, as if an invisible apparition were ensconced behind the table. His obeisance completed, he got up and sat in his chair, shielding his eyes with his hand as he gazed heavenward. The sun had begun its climb in the morning sky; normally by this time I’d have sold off all that day’s fresh pork, and it would be time to slaughter dogs. Having noted the sun’s progress, without looking at me, Dieh said:

“You can kill the rooster, son!”

Meow meow~~mew~~

My heart soared when Dieh said that! Meow meow meow , Dieh, dear Dieh, my dear dieh! My seemingly unending wait was over, and the long-delayed moment of excitement had arrived. I selected a razor-sharp paring knife from the knife hamper and showed it to Dieh. He nodded. Then I went up to the rooster, which began flapping its wings; its tail feathers jerked up, and out came a puddle of white excrement. On most mornings at this time, it would be perched on the wall at home crowing loudly, but today it was tied to a post. With the knife held between my teeth, I reached down and grabbed it by its wings and held its legs down with my foot. Dieh had told me this rooster was for its blood, not for eating, so I placed a black bowl under its neck to catch the blood. The rooster, burning hot, was struggling to free its head from my hand. I squeezed hard. Behave yourself, damn it, how am I supposed to do this if you don’t behave yourself? Pigs are stronger than you, dogs meaner, and they don’t scare me, so what makes a rooster think it can scare me? Fuck you. I plucked its neck clean, stretched it taut, and made a pass with my knife. The skin parted. No blood appeared at first, which made me nervous, because Dieh had said that if you kill a rooster prior to an execution and it doesn’t bleed, things will not go well that day. I made a second cut, and this time it worked: purplish blood gushed from the wound, like the stream a young boy makes when he gets up after a good night’s sleep. Splash splash, meow meow . More blood spurted than the bowl could take, and some of it spilled over the side. “There, Dieh,” I said as I tossed the limp bird to the ground, “that does it.” With a broad smile, he waved me over and told me to get down on my knees. Then he plunged both hands into the blood, almost as if he expected them to drink it up. Dieh’s hands come equipped with mouths, I was thinking, and can drink blood. He smiled.

“Close your eyes, son,” he said.

I closed them, as he said. I am an obedient child. Wrapping my arms around his legs, I banged my forehead into his knees and sputtered: Meow meow … “Dieh Dieh Dieh Dieh…”

Dieh clasped my head between his knees.

“Raise your head, son,” he said.

So I did, and I was looking into his impressive face. I am an obedient child. Before I had a dieh, I obeyed my wife, but after that I obeyed my dieh. That thought reminded me of my wife, whom I hadn’t seen for a day and a half. Where had she gotten to? Meow meow … Dieh rubbed his blood-soaked hands all over my face, sending a stench much worse than pig’s blood into my nostrils. I hated the idea of having my face smeared with rooster blood, but Dieh had the final word on that. If I didn’t obey him, he’d send me into the yamen to be paddled, five ten fifteen twenty swats from a big wooden paddle that would leave me with a bloody behind. Meow meow . Dieh plunged his hands back into the bowl and smeared more blood over my face. Including my ears. Whether he meant to or not, he got some of it in my eyes, and— ouch !—that stung, meow meow . It also blurred my vision, veiling everything in a red haze. With a mew mew I complained, “Dieh, Dieh, you’re blinding me.” I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands and mewed loudly. Everything got brighter the more I rubbed, until the light itself was blinding. Oh, no, that’s bad, meow meow , the magical tiger whisker was working again, meow meow , no more Dieh, in front of me now was a panther. It was standing on its hind legs and dipping its front paws in the blood bowl, staining them red with pearls of blood dripping from the black fur, making it look like the paws were injured. He reached up and smeared blood all over the coarse fur of his face, turning it red as a cockscomb. I was well aware that Dieh’s true form was a panther, so that was nothing to make a fuss over. But I didn’t want the power of that tiger whisker to last and last—just a little while would be plenty. But its power this time wouldn’t fade away, meow meow , and what would it take for things to return to normal? No matter how upset I was, there was nothing I could do about it. I was torn between worries and happiness. Worries over my strange inability to see human beings, happiness over the knowledge that no one but me had the ability to see people’s true forms. I took a look around, taking in all of Yuan’s government troops and the German soldiers standing guard over the parade ground—long-tailed wolves, dogs with hairless tails, plus a few raccoons and other animals. There was even one that looked like a cross between a wolf and a dog; its uniform identified it as a junior officer. It was probably the offspring of a wolf-dog mating. I gave it a name: lobo-dog. It was sneakier than a wolf and meaner than a dog; anything it bit was doomed, meow meow .

After using up all the blood in the bowl on his face and front paws, my panther dieh focused his bright black eyes on me and treated me to a barely perceptible smile, lips parted just enough to show his yellow teeth. Even though the change in his appearance was enormous, the expressions and mannerisms were unmistakably Dieh’s. I returned his smile, meow meow . He swaggered over to the purplish-red chair; his tail made his pants stand up in back. He sat down and narrowed his eyes, looking perfectly serene. I surveyed the area around us, yawned, mewed once, and sat on a board next to him, within view of the slanting shadow of the Ascension Platform on the ground. As I stroked Dieh’s tail, he stuck out his rough tongue and began licking the hair on my head. Mew , I wheezed just before falling asleep.

I was awakened by raucous noise, meow meow , a mixture of horns and trumpets and gongs and Western drums, and all of it punctuated by the low rumble of cannon fire. I saw that the shadow cast by the Ascension Platform was much shorter than before and that blinding lights were making their way onto the parade ground from the street. At some point the green tarpaulins covering the cannons on the edge of the parade ground had been removed to reveal the weapons’ blue steel. Four wolfhounds behind each of the cannons were in motion, and even though they were quite a ways away, the hair on their bodies did not escape my sharp eyes. The barrels of the cannons were like turtles’ necks, recoiling back into their shells each time a shell was spat out, followed by puffs of white smoke. The wolfhounds moved like puppets behind the cannons, comical little figures. My eyes began to sting badly, and it only took a moment’s thought to realize that I was sweating. I wiped my face with my sleeve; it came away red. That was nothing to worry about, but the scene in front of me had changed again. My dieh no longer wore the face of a panther, but his body was still that of a panther, and his pants rose up behind him because of the tail. Then the heads of the soldiers standing guard were once again human, sitting atop wolfhounds’ bodies. It was a comforting sight, and it made me feel better, knowing I was still living in the world of humans. And yet the look on Dieh’s face puzzled me, since it didn’t look especially human. But he was still my dieh, and when he licked my head, I moaned with pleasure, mew~~