Mo Yan - Sandalwood Death

pa——pa——pa——

Meow …

Dieh was sweating, too, something he never did, meow , and I noticed a slight tremor in his hands as he continued guiding the stake. He was getting anxious; the look in his eyes made that clear, and that worried me. Meow , Sun Bing clenching his teeth and refusing to cry out was not something we’d hoped for. We’d gotten used to shrieks of pain when we experimented on that pig, and in more than ten years of slaughtering pigs, there had only been one mute, and that animal had nearly been my undoing. For weeks I’d suffered nightmares in which the pig looked at me and sneered. Cry out, gongdieh, I beg you to cry out! Meow meow , but not a sound. My wrist was getting sore, my legs were weakening, my head felt swollen, my eyes were failing me and had begun to sting from invading sweat; the stench of dried rooster blood was making me nauseous. A panther’s head had replaced Dieh’s human head, and black fur now covered those lovely hands. Black fur also grew on my gongdieh, whose head, which kept rising and falling, was now that of a huge bear. His body had grown dramatically, as had his strength, while the leather strap holding him down was stretched thin and brittle, ready to snap. That was when my hand slipped. Carelessly, I hit Dieh’s paw instead of the butt end of the stake; with an audible moan, he dropped his hand. I swung again, harder this time. The stake flew out of Dieh’s hands and arched upward. The tip obviously went somewhere it wasn’t supposed to, injuring something inside Sun Bing and sending a stream of blood running down the length of the stake. A shriek erupted from Sun Bing’s mouth, meow meow , more hideous than I’d heard from any of the pigs I’d slaughtered. Sparks flew from Dieh’s eyes.

“Careful!” he said under his breath.

I wiped my face with my sleeve and took several deep breaths. In the midst of howls that got louder and louder, I began to calm down. My wrist was no longer sore, my legs were strong again, my head was no longer swollen, and my vision returned, meow . Dieh had regained his human face, and my gongdieh no longer had the head of a bear. Pumping myself up as my strength surged back, I recommenced pounding the stake:

beng——beng——beng——

Meow meow ——

There was no stopping Sun Bing’s howls now, shrieks that drowned out all other sounds. The stake was back in the right position, guided by Dieh as it inched its way deeper into him, between his vital organs and his backbone…

Ow——oh——ahh——yeow——

Meow meow mew——

Disturbing sounds emerged from inside his body, like cats in heat. What was that? I wondered. Are my ears deceiving me? Strange strange really strange, there are cats in the stomach of my wife’s father. I was on the verge of losing my concentration again, but before that happened, I received calm assurances from Dieh. The louder Sun Bing screamed, the more comforted I was by the smile on Dieh’s face. Even his eyes, which had narrowed to a slit, were smiling. He looked like a man who was enjoying a leisurely smoke and listening to opera, not someone inflicting the cruelest form of punishment on a man, meow meow …

The stake finally broke through Sun Bing’s skin just above his shoulders, making a small tent of his collar. My dieh’s original idea was to have the stake emerge from Sun Bing’s mouth, but for someone who had sung opera all his life, a stake through the mouth would have ended that possibility, so he decided to have it emerge from between his shoulder blades. I laid down the oily mallet, picked up my knife, and cut open the collar of his shirt. Dieh signaled me to keep pounding, so I picked up the mallet and swung it another ten or fifteen times, meow meow , until the same length of stake impaling Sun Bing was visible top and bottom. Sun Bing’s howls continued without weakening. Dieh examined the points of entry and exit, in each of which a trickle of blood had stuck to the wood. A contented look spread across his face. I heard him breathe a huge sigh of relief. I did the same, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Meow …

Under Dieh’s direction, four yayi lifted the pine plank, with my gongdieh on it, off the rack and carried it carefully up the Ascension Platform, which was taller than the rooftop of any house in town. The platform was next to the shed, connected by a long, gently sloping ramp of rough wood and some logs to make it easy to negotiate. And yet the four strong men were sweating profusely, leaving damp footprints on the wood as they climbed. Sun Bing, who was strapped tightly to the plank, was still howling, but he was losing his voice, and his energy level was dropping fast. Dieh and I followed the men up the ramp to the spacious top of the platform, whose new flooring smelled refreshingly of pinesap. A three-foot-long crossbar of white wood had been attached to a spot just below the top of a thick pine pole that had been erected in the center of the platform, creating a frame that looked like the cross I’d seen at the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

The yayi gently laid down the plank to which Sun Bing was attached and retreated to the side to await further instructions. Dieh told me to cut the leather straps holding Sun Bing to the plank. His body immediately expanded, and his limbs flailed wildly, but that was the only movement the stake would allow. So as not to completely sap what strength he had left and, at the same time, to protect against injury to his internal organs, with me looking on, Dieh had the yayi pick Sun Bing up and tie his legs to the dark pole and his hands to the crossbar. He was now standing upright in the center of the platform, but only his head enjoyed freedom of movement. Out came the curses:

“Fuck your old granny, von Ketteler——fuck your old granny, Yuan Shikai——fuck your old granny, Qian Ding——fuck your old granny, Zhao Jia——fuck your old granny——ow——!”

Black blood streamed from his mouth and ran down onto his chest.

Meow meow …

Before walking down off the platform, I took a look around, and my heart suddenly seemed to contract, so violently was I having trouble breathing, meow …

All four sides of the parade ground were packed with people, bright sunlight glinting off their heads. The only reason for that, I knew, was that all those heads were wet with sweat. Sun Bing’s curses merged with the pigeons soaring above us and spread out in all directions, like waves rushing to the shore. Soldiers—foreign troops and Yuan’s government troops—stood as motionless as posts amid the crush of local residents. There was someone on my mind at that moment, meow , know who that was? I searched among the onlookers. Found her! Two burly women were gripping my wife by the arms, and a tall woman was holding her tightly around the waist to keep her from taking even one step forward; she could only leap backward. I heard her cry out in agony, a knife-edged sound as sharp and as oily green as a bamboo leaf.

My wife’s wails threw my mind into upheaval. There was no denying that my feelings toward her had decreased after Dieh came into my life, but I’d had strong feelings toward her before that. She used to let me suck on her breasts even during the daytime, a thought that got an immediate response from my little pecker. Meow meow , I recalled how she said: “Go on, go to your dieh, go ahead and die in your dieh’s room!” When I wouldn’t move, she kicked me… memories of my wife’s virtues brought a soreness to my eyes and an ache to my nose, meow meow , I was nearly in tears. I started to run down the ramp, intent on going straight to my wife, so I could feel her breasts again and smell her. I’d give her the remainder of a malt candy Dieh had given to me that was still in my pocket. But a small heated hand grabbed hold of my wrist; I knew it was Dieh without having to look. He pulled me over to the pig-slaughtering rack, where another criminal awaited, along with an oil-steeped sandalwood stake that emitted a strong sesame aroma. Dieh got his message across without having to say a word; his hand said it all. Then his words pounded against my eardrums: “Son, you are doing something too important to let your thoughts run wild. You mustn’t cast aside the nation and the Imperial Court over a woman. I cannot let you commit a capital offense like that. Dieh has told you many times that once our faces are smeared with the blood of a white rooster, men in our line of work are no longer people, and the suffering of the human world is none of our concern. We are tools in the employ of the Emperor, visible, corporal manifestations of the law. How could you even think of giving your wife that piece of candy under these circumstances? Even if I said it was all right, Yuan Shikai and von Ketteler would not permit it. Take a good long look at the impressive figures sitting on the stage where your wife’s father once performed, and tell me if either one of them looks any less fierce than a tiger or a wolf.”