Mo Yan - Sandalwood Death

I ordered a pair of duty yayi to fetch the county’s preeminent doctors: Cheng Buyi, our expert surgeon, from Nanguan, and Su Zhonghe, the renowned internist, from Xiguan. “Tell them to come with the most effective nostrums at their disposal as quickly as humanly possible. Say that you have come on the order of the Shandong Governor, Yuan Shikai, Excellency Yuan, who will tolerate neither disobedience nor delay. No mercy will be shown to anyone who defies his order!” They left at once.

I then told one of the yayi to summon Chen Qiaoshou, the papier-mâché craftsman, who was to bring with him all his tools and craft material. “Say that you have come on the order of the Shandong Governor, Yuan Shikai, Excellency Yuan, who will tolerate neither disobedience nor delay. No mercy will be shown to anyone who defies his order!” He left at once.

I then ordered another yayi to fetch Pockface Zhang, the tailor at the clothing store, who was to bring with him his tools and two yards of white gauze. “Say that you have come on the order of the Shandong Governor, Yuan Shikai, Excellency Yuan, who will tolerate neither disobedience nor delay. No mercy will be shown to anyone who defies his order!” He left at once.

Led by the two yayi, expert surgeon Cheng Buyi and renowned internist Su Zhonghe stepped onto the Ascension Platform. Cheng was a tall, lanky man with a dark, clean-shaven face; wizened and seemingly devoid of body fat, he moved with quick and nimble ease. Su, on the other hand, was short and portly; completely bald on top, he sported a lush, graying beard. Both local men of distinction, they had been ensconced in front-row seats during the battle of the beards between Sun Bing and me. Su Zhonghe had arrived with a full backpack; Cheng Buyi carried a small white cloth bag. Their nervousness showed. A gray cast underlay Cheng’s dark complexion, as if he were unusually cold. Su’s paler face was tinged with yellow and covered with a slick layer of sweat. They knelt at my feet, but before they could say a word, I bent down and had them rise. “This is an emergency,” I said, “which requires the medical mastery of the finest physicians. You know the identity of this individual and are fully aware of why he is here in this condition. Excellency Yuan has commanded that he must remain alive until the twentieth of this month. Today is the eighteenth, which gives us two days and two nights to carry out Excellency Yuan’s orders. One look at him will tell you why I have summoned you here. So now I ask you two gentlemen to come forward and put your skills to use!”

The physicians deferred to one another over and over, neither willing to step up and attend to their new patient. Two men—one tall, the other short; one fat, the other skinny—bowed back and forth, up and down, producing such a comical scene that a young and inexperienced yayi actually covered his mouth to stifle a laugh. I felt nothing but disgust over their ludicrous demonstration of superficial etiquette. “That’s enough decorum,” I said assertively. “If he dies before the twentieth, you”—I pointed to Cheng Buyi—“you”—I pointed to Su Zhonghe—“you”—with a sweeping motion, I pointed my finger at the people crowding around the platform—“and, of course, me—all of us will be buried with him”—I pointed to Sun Bing. You could almost cut through the tension in the air up there. The dumbstruck physicians could only stand and stare. I turned to Cheng Buyi. “You’re a surgeon. You first.”

Cheng stepped gingerly up to Sun Bing like a dog stealing a piece of meat off a butcher block, reached out, and gently touched the tip of the sandalwood stake between Sun’s shoulders with one slender finger. Then he went behind Sun to examine the butt end of the stake. Each time the stake moved, top or bottom, colored bubbles oozed out, carrying the stifling stench of rotting flesh and sending the flies into convulsions of deafening buzzes. The physician staggered up to me and slumped to his knees on wobbly legs. His face twitched and his mouth twisted, like a man about to break down completely. His teeth chattered as he managed to say:

“Laoye… his internal organs have shut down… there is nothing I can do…”

“Nonsense!” Zhao Jia, his eyes wide, glared at Cheng Buyi. “Take my word for it,” he said sternly, “there is nothing wrong with his internal organs!” Then his gaze shifted to me. “If they had suffered any damage,” he defended himself, “he’d be dead by now. He could not have lived this long. You can see that for yourself, Laoye!”

I weighed his comment for a moment. “Zhao Jia is right,” I said. “Sun Bing’s injuries are just beneath the skin. The pus and blood you see are coming from infections, something a surgeon sees all the time. If you cannot deal with that, who can?”

“Laoye… Laoye…” He was nearly incoherent. “This humble… I…”

“Stop wasting time with that Laoye and humble business!” I cut him off. “Do what you’re here to do. If it’s a dead horse, treat it as if it were alive!”

Cheng finally summoned the courage to remove his robe and spread it on the platform floor, wind his queue atop his head, roll up his sleeves, and ask for water to wash his hands. Xiaojia ran down the plank and brought up a bucket of water, then waited on Cheng as he washed his hands. That done, Cheng laid his white cloth bag down on his robe, opened it, and removed its contents: two knives, one long and one stubby, two pairs of scissors, one big and one small, two pairs of tweezers, one thick and one thin, and two glass vials, one tall and one short. The taller vial held alcohol, the shorter one medicinal ointment. There were also cotton balls and a roll of gauze.

He picked up a pair of scissors and—snip snip—cut open Sun Bing’s clothing. He then poured alcohol onto a cotton ball, with which he cleansed the open wounds, top and bottom, squeezing out quite a bit of blood and pus, not to mention all the foul odors. Sun Bing shuddered violently and moaned with such agony that it made my skin crawl and gave me the shivers.

Cheng Buyi’s confidence and courage returned in force as he ministered to the injured Sun Bing; professional honor had won out over fear. At that point he stopped what he was doing and walked up to me, not bent over submissively, but standing tall and proud.

“Laoye,” he said, “if you remove the stake from his body, I guarantee that not only will he survive until the day after tomorrow, but he will regain his health completely…”

I stopped him in mid-sentence. “If you are willing to have the stake inserted in your own body,” I mocked him, “then feel free to remove it from his.”

Cheng’s face turned ghostly white, his back went from straight to bent, and his eyes shifted evasively. He went back to Sun Bing and continued rubbing his wounds with alcohol-soaked cotton, but this time his hands shook. Next he scooped some dark red medicinal ointment out of the small purple vial with a sliver of bamboo and daubed it on Sun Bing’s injuries.

His work finished, he backed away, bent at the waist. I next summoned Su Zhonghe, who came closer, shaking from head to toe as he reached out with one long-nailed hand and laid it on Sun Bing’s wrist where it was tied to the crossbar. With his hand in the air, his shoulder slumped to one side, and his head bowed in a meditative pose, he presented a comical yet pitiful sight.

His diagnostics completed, Su Zhonghe announced:

“Your Honor, the patient’s eyes are red, his mouth foul; his lips are dry, his tongue charred; his face is swollen, his skin hot to the touch. All symptoms point to internal heat, but his pulse has a floating quality, hollow like a green onion from excessive blood loss, all symptoms of weakness masked as strength, a deficit in the guise of plenty. An inferior physician would be powerless to cure what ails him, and treating him with heat or prescribing the wrong medication would place him at death’s door.”