Mo Yan - Sandalwood Death

“May it please Your Honors, the execution has been carried out!”

Yuan Shikai said something to von Ketteler, keeping his voice low, to which the German responded with hearty laughter. Then they stood up, walked down the steps on the side of the stage, and came up to me.

“On your feet, Gaomi County!” Yuan Shikai said coldly.

I got to my feet and followed them up to the Ascension Platform. Yuan Shikai, who was robust and stocky, and von Ketteler, who was thin as a pole, walked shoulder to shoulder like a duck and an egret, but took slow steps. I kept my head down, eyes shielded, yet still able to see their backs. Truth is, I had a dagger hidden in my boot, and if I’d had half the courage of my young brother, I could have killed them both on the spot. The calmness and unflappability I’d demonstrated when I went alone into the rebels’ camp to apprehend Sun Bing had given way to crippling fear as I followed along behind them. That alone was proof that I was a tiger in my dealings with ordinary citizens and a sheep in the presence of superiors or foreigners. No, not a sheep, for a ram can butt with its horns, while I have the nerve of a frightened mouse.

I stood at the feet of the intrepid Sun Bing and looked up into his face, bloated by the mass infusion of blood, some of which trickled out of the corners of his mouth. His puffy eyes were mere slits. The absence of teeth slurred the vituperations emerging from his mouth, but not so much as to make them unintelligible. Not only was he was flinging abuse at Yuan Shikai and von Ketteler, but he was straining to spit bloody foam into their faces. He simply did not have the strength, and all he could manage was childish dribbles. His mouth resembled nothing so much as the bubbly opening of a crab’s mouth. Yuan Shikai nodded his satisfaction.

“Gaomi County, reward Zhao Jia and his son with the agreed-upon amount of silver, place them into the second rank of yayi, the ‘black,’ and give them a land-tax waiver.”

Zhao Jia, who was in line behind me, fell to his knees on the inclined plank up to the platform.

“Humble thanks for Your Excellency’s boundless generosity and favor!” he intoned loudly.

“Listen carefully, Zhao Jia,” Yuan said to him in a somber yet intimate tone of voice. “You must not allow him to die, not until the ceremony to commemorate the completion of the rail line on the twenty-second. Foreign photographers will be on hand to memorialize the event. If he dies before then, do not expect our friendship to save you.”

“Fret not, Excellency,” Zhao Jia said, confident of his plan to keep the victim alive. “I will do whatever is necessary to ensure that he will not die before the ceremony on that day.”

“Gaomi County, in the name of the Empress Dowager and His Majesty, stay here with your three ranks of yayi and keep watch over the prisoner in shifts.” Yuan smiled. “There is no need to return to the yamen. Once the rail line has been completed, Gaomi County will become a major hub in the Great Qing Empire. While that may not guarantee a transfer and promotion for you, riches will migrate toward you. Have you not heard the adage ‘When the train whistle blows, a river of gold flows’? My friend, in point of fact, I am making it easy for you to govern your county and keep its people in line.”

Yuan Shikai roared at his little joke while I hastily knelt at his feet.

“I humbly thank Your Excellency for his patronage. Your humble servant will diligently carry out his duties!” I said over the background of Sun Bing’s hoarse curses.

Like a pair of bosom friends, Yuan Shikai and von Ketteler made their way down the platform, arm in arm. Then, within a protective ring of soldiers, Chinese and foreign, they left the premises, Yuan in his eight-man palanquin and the German on his massive horse, on their way back to the yamen. Dust flew over the Academy parade ground, accompanied by the clatter of horse hooves on the cobblestone road. The yamen had been turned temporarily into the two dignitaries’ official residence; the Tongde Academy compound had been transformed into barracks and stable facilities for the foreign troops. Now that the official parties had left, local residents, who had been confined to the outer edges of the parade ground, began moving toward the center. A momentary sense of bewilderment was followed by a jolt of terror. Excellency Yuan’s comment just before he departed sent an upsurge of emotion through my heart. “While that may not guarantee a transfer and promotion for you…” Transfer and promotion, ah, transfer and promotion; a whisper of hope threaded its way out of my heart, proof that Excellency Yuan still considered me a man of ability: Excellency Yuan bore me no malice. A close examination shows that I had handled the Sun Bing case properly. I entered the enemy stronghold alone and apprehended Sun Bing with no help from anyone, thus keeping the Imperial Guards and foreign soldiers out of harm’s way. As preparations for the sandalwood death were being carried out, I took command, working day and night, managing in less time than anyone thought possible to ready the tools and site of execution for this spectacle, something no one else could have managed as well. Maybe, just maybe, Excellency Yuan isn’t as sinister as people think he is; maybe he is a loyal and upright individual who happens to be prudent and farsighted. A man of great allegiance can appear disloyal; a man of great wisdom can sometimes seem slow-witted. For all I know, he could be a pillar in the resurgence of the Great Qing. Hai! I am an insignificant County Magistrate charged with carrying out his superior’s orders, fulfilling duties in furtherance of remaining true to his individual calling. Great affairs of state are the province of the Empress Dowager and His Majesty, beyond the reach of minor functionaries like me.

Now that I had overcome my confusion and was no longer wavering, I was once again in control of my wits and abilities. I issued orders for the three shifts of yayi to keep watch around the clock over Sun Bing, who was bound to a crossbar on the Ascension Platform. Local spectators crowded forward, until it seemed that the entire county had turned out, faces painted blood red in the rays of the dying sun. At sunset, crows flew past on their way to their nests and their families in the golden canopies of trees east of the parade ground. “County elders, friends and villagers, go home, please, there to live your lives in humiliation in the name of this important mission. Heed your Magistrate’s word that it is better to be a sacrificial lamb than to rise up in resistance against the tyrannical forces arrayed before us. Take Sun Bing, your Maoqiang Patriarch, who stands impaled upon a sandalwood stake on the Ascension Platform, as a solemn and stirring cautionary example.”

But the local gawkers turned a deaf ear to my admonition and swept up to the Ascension Platform like waves crashing against the shore. Yayi drew their swords, as if to confront an enemy surge. But the people, though silent, looked on with alarmingly strange expressions, sending an upsurge of panic to my heart. The sun settled in the west in all its redness; the moon’s jade rabbit climbed into the sky; warm, soft rays of golden sunlight merged with cool, refreshing silver moonbeams on the Tongde Academy parade ground, on the Ascension Platform, and on the faces of the mass of humanity.

“County elders, friends and fellow villagers, disperse and return to your homes…”

The people remained silent.

All of a sudden, Sun Bing, whose voice had been long stilled, broke into song. His mouth leaked air and his chest thumped in and out, very much like an old beat-up bellows. From his vantage point, he could see what was going on all around him, and for a man like him, as long as there was breath in his body, not even the sorry circumstances in which he now found himself could keep him from singing. It would not be unreasonable to say that this was the very opportunity he had sought. And I realized at that moment that the swelling crowd had no intention of freeing him from his predicament, but had drawn closer to hear him sing. See how they all raised their heads and let their mouths fall open? That was the perfect image of an opera devotee.