Mo Yan - Sandalwood Death

Still clutching the tiger’s whisker in the lighted room, I stared at her. My heart was racing, my wrist shaking. Now, with heaven’s help, I was going to see my wife’s true form! She was an animal, but which one? A pig? A dog? A rabbit? A goat? A fox? A hedgehog? I didn’t care what she was, as long as it wasn’t a snake. I’ve been afraid of snakes since I was a little boy, and I’m more afraid of them now than ever before. If I so much as step on a rope, I jump three feet in the air. My niang said that snakes usually turn into women, and that most beautiful women are transformed snakes. Sooner or later, one of those snake-women will suck dry the brain of any man who sleeps with her, she told me. Don’t let me down, heaven. I don’t care what my wife is, even a toad or a gecko, just so it isn’t a snake. And if she is, well, I’ll pick up my butcher’s tools and run off with my tail between my legs. So with all those wild thoughts scrambling the landscape in my head, I sized up my wife, who turned the lamp up as high as it would go, until the wick was as red as a pomegranate and really lit up the room. Her hair was so black it was almost blue, as if oiled. Her shiny forehead was as bright as the belly of a porcelain vase. Her brows arched and curved like a pair of willow leaves. Her nose was so white it was nearly transparent, as if carved from a tender lotus root. Her limpid eyes looked like grapes floating in egg white. Her mouth, which was a little too big for her face, curled upward at the corners, like water chestnuts, the lips naturally red. I could have looked till my eyes ached and not known what she was before she was a woman.

She curled her lips into a sneer and said with palpable sarcasm, “Well? Tell me, what am I?”

Bewildered, I shook my head. “I don’t know, you’re just you. How can this treasure lose its effectiveness when it’s in my hand?”

She reached out and tapped me on the forehead with one finger. “You’re possessed,” she said. “You’ve let a whisker take control of your life. Your niang told you a story one time, and you elevated it into your life’s work, like treating a stick as a needle. Are you ready to finally give it up now?”

I shook my head again. “You’re wrong. My niang wouldn’t lie to me. The rest of the world might, but not her.”

“Then why doesn’t it let you see what I am? I don’t need a tiger’s whisker to show me what you are—you’re a pig, a big, stupid pig.”

I knew this was her way to make me feel bad. She couldn’t possibly see my true form without a tiger’s whisker. But why wasn’t I able to see hers, either, even with one? Why wasn’t my little treasure working? Oh, no! Uncle He had said that if I mentioned his name, the thing wouldn’t work. And that’s what I’d just done without realizing it. I was crushed. How stupid could I have been, ruining something I’d worked so hard to get? I stood there with the whisker in my hand, in a daze. Hot tears streamed from my eyes.

My wife sighed when she saw me crying. “You fool, when will you grow up?” She sat up, snatched the whisker out of my hand, and, with a single puff, blew it out of sight. “My treasure—!” I shrieked tearfully. She wrapped her arms around my neck and tried to calm me down. “There, now, don’t be foolish. Here, let me hold you, and we can get some sleep.” But I fought my way out of her grip. “My tiger’s whisker! It’s mine!” Frantically, I groped all over the bed trying to find it. Oh, how I hated her at that moment. “I want my tiger’s whisker! You owe me!” I went over and picked up the lamp to help me look for my treasure, cursing and crying the whole time. She just sat there watching me, shaking her head one minute and sighing the next. “Stop looking,” she said at last. “It’s right here.” I was thrilled. “Where? Where is it?” With her thumb and index finger, she held the curly tiger’s whisker with its golden-yellow tip and laid it across my palm. “Do a better job of holding on to it this time,” she said. “If you lose it again, don’t blame me.” I curled my fingers tightly around it. It might not do what I wanted it to do, but it was still a treasure. But why wouldn’t it work for me? I needed to try again. So once again, I stared into my wife’s face. If it works this time, I was thinking, if she turns out to be a snake, then so be it. But once again she was just my wife, nothing more.

“Hear me out, my foolish husband. My niang told me the same story yours told you. She said the whisker doesn’t work all the time, only at critical moments. Otherwise, it would be nothing but trouble. How would you live if all you ever saw were animals? So listen to me and put that thing in a safe place, where you can retrieve it at a critical moment. It’ll work then.”

“Honest? You’re not lying, are you?”

She nodded. “Why would I want to lie to my beloved husband?”

I believed her. After scaring up a piece of red cloth, I wrapped up my treasure, tied it tight with string, and hid it in a crack in the wall.

My dieh is a force unto himself. He sent Magistrate Qian’s two yayi back to the yamen empty-handed. You might not know what the Magistrate is capable of, Dieh, but I do. When Xiaokui from the Dongguan oil mill spat at his palanquin as it passed by, a pair of yayi dragged him off in chains. Two weeks later, his father sold two acres of land to pay someone to stand as guarantor to get his son back. But by then one of Xiaokui’s legs was shorter than the other, and he not only walked with a limp, but the toes of one foot dragged along the ground. They started calling him the foreigner, because the lines he scraped in the dirt looked like foreign writing. After that, any time he heard the name “Magistrate Qian,” he foamed at the mouth and fainted. Xiaokui knew what Magistrate Qian was capable of. Not only doesn’t he dare spit at the palanquin when it passes by anymore, but the minute he sees it, he wraps his arms around his head, turns tail, and hobbles off. What you’ve done today, Dieh, is a lot worse than spitting at his palanquin. I may be a fool in other things, but where Magistrate Qian is concerned, I’m as smart as I need to be. Even though my wife is the Magistrate’s little pet, he is strictly impartial. How could he let you get away with what you’ve done when he went and arrested that disappointing gongdieh of mine?

On the other hand, I could see that my dieh was no pushover. He was hard as nails, not soft as bean curd, a man who’d done and seen plenty in the nation’s capital, where he’d lopped off a truckload—maybe a shipload—of heads; a power struggle between him and Magistrate Qian would be like a fight between a dragon and a tiger, and I could not say who would come out ahead. Now, at this critical moment, I was suddenly reminded of my tiger’s whisker. Truth is, that treasure was never far from my mind. According to my wife, it was my amulet, which could turn bad luck into good as long as I kept it with me. So I jumped onto the bed, reached over to the wall, and retrieved my red bundle, which I frantically unwrapped to make sure the curly, golden-tipped tiger’s whisker was still there. It was. As my little treasure lay in my hand, I felt it move, little flicks, sort of like a hornet’s stinger, against my palm.

A huge white snake, as big around as a water bucket, stood in front of the bed and thrust its head toward me, a purple forked tongue darting in and out between its red lips. “Xiaojia.” It was my wife’s voice! “What do you think you’re doing?” Heaven help me, how could you do this to me? You know I’m afraid of snakes, and so you made sure that’s what my wife is. Someone I’ve frolicked in bed with for the last ten years without knowing she was a snake. My own wife, a reincarnated white snake. Of course, The Legend of the White Snake , now I get it. Back when she was on the stage, she played the part of the white snake, and I’m the scholar she married, Xu Xian. But why hasn’t she sucked out my brains? Because she isn’t all snake. She has a snake’s head, but arms and legs, too, and breasts. And there’s hair on her head. Still, well and truly frightened, I flung the whisker away like a piece of hot charcoal and broke out in a full-body sweat.