Mo Yan - Sandalwood Death

Magistrate Qian glowered at my dieh, a contemptuous smirk on his face. Dieh wore a contemptuous smirk as he glowered at Magistrate Qian. In his eyes, this County Magistrate, who had ordered his lackeys to beat Xiaokui nearly to death, was beneath contempt. Dieh was panther-savage, mule-stubborn, ox-bold. The looks in the combatants’ eyes were like crossed swords, embodying clangs that produced sparks, some of which blistered my face. They held their intense gazes, neither willing to turn away, and by then my heart was in my throat, on the verge of leaping out of my body and turning into a jackrabbit, its tail sticking up as it bounded away, out of the yard and onto the street, to be chased by dogs all the way to the southern foothills to graze on fresh grass. What kind of grass? Butter grass. Eats a lot, hits the spot, too much and it grows a pot. When it returns, in my chest it’s a knot. Their muscles were taut, claws unsheathed from the folds of their paws. They could pounce at any minute and be at each other’s throat. At that critical moment, my wife walked in, bringing her feminine perfume into the room. Her smile was a rose in bloom, petals arching outward, opening wide. Her hips shifted from side to side like braiding a rope. Her original form glimmered for a brief moment, but was quickly hidden beneath fair, tender, fragrant, sweet skin. She knelt down dramatically and, in a voice dripping with honey yet sour as vinegar, said, “Sun Meiniang, a woman of the people, bows down before His Eminence the County Magistrate!”

That bow took the steam out of Magistrate Qian. He looked away and coughed, sounding like a billy goat with a cold: ahek ahek ahek ahek, ahek ahek ahek ahek. It was obviously contrived. I might have been a bit of an idiot, but I was not fooled. He sneaked a glance at my wife, willing neither to look her in the eye nor to look for long. That look was a grasshopper, bouncing all over the place, until it finally smacked into the wall. His face twitched, a pitiful sight, whether from shyness or fear I could not say. “No need for that,” he said; “please get up.”

My wife stood up. “I understand that His Eminence has locked up my dieh, for which he was handsomely rewarded by the foreigners. I have prepared some good strong drink and dog meat to offer His Eminence my congratulations!”

After a hollow laugh and a pregnant pause, Magistrate Qian replied, “As an official in the service of the throne, I must carry out my duties.”

As she exploded in lascivious laughter, my wife reached up and audaciously tugged on the Magistrate’s black beard, then twisted his thick queue—how come my niang never gave me one of those?—and marched him over behind the sandalwood chair, where she grabbed my dieh’s queue and said, “You two, one is my gandieh, the other my gongdieh. My gandieh has arrested my real dieh and wants my gongdieh to put him to death. So, Gandieh, Gongdieh, my real dieh’s fate is in your hands.”

She had barely gotten this crazed talk out of her mouth before she ran over to the wall and had an attack of the dry heaves. The sight nearly broke my heart, so I walked up to shyly thump her on the back. “Have they driven you crazy?” I wondered aloud. She straightened up and, with tears in her eyes, growled, “You fool, where do you get off asking me that? At this moment I am carrying the next generation’s evil bastard for your family!”

My wife’s barbs were directed at me, but her eyes were on Magistrate Qian. My dieh was staring at the wall, probably looking for the fat gecko that often appeared there. Magistrate Qian’s rear end began to shift uncomfortably, like a boy trying to keep from soiling himself. His forehead was beaded with sweat. Diao Laoye stepped up and, with a bow to his superior, said, “Eminence, business first. His Excellency Yuan Shikai is waiting at Court for your response.”

Magistrate Qian mopped his brow with the sleeve of his robe and tidied his beard, which my wife had ruffled. He coughed, sounding more like a goat than a man, and then composed himself, clasped his hands in front of his chest, and, with obvious reluctance, bowed to my dieh. “Unless I am mistaken, you must be the renowned Grandma, Zhao Jia.”

My dieh, sandalwood prayer beads in hand, stood up and replied smugly, “I am your public servant Zhao Jia, and since I am holding a string of prayer beads that were a gift from the Empress Dowager Herself, you’ll forgive me for not kneeling before a local official.”

Once the words were out, he lifted the sandalwood beads, which looked to be weightier than a chain of steel, over his head, as if waiting for something to happen.

Magistrate Qian took a step backward, brought his legs together, and straightened his wide sleeves. Then, with a swish of those sleeves, he fell to his knees and banged his head on the floor. “I, Magistrate of Gaomi County, Qian Ding,” he called out, his voice cracking, “wish Her Royal Highness, our Empress Dowager, a long, long life!”

The ritual of respect completed, Magistrate Qian scrambled to his feet and said, “This humble official would never presume to trouble the revered Grandma on his own. I come on behalf of the Governor of Shandong, Excellency Yuan Shikai, who requests an audience.”

Dieh’s reaction to the invitation was to finger his beads, ignoring the request, and gaze at the gecko on the wall. “Honorable Magistrate,” he said, “the sandalwood chair upon which I have been sitting was a gift from His Imperial Majesty the Emperor, and the custom is to treat any object from His Royal Personage as if it were the Emperor Himself.”

Magistrate Qian’s face turned the color of the darkest sandalwood. Flames of anger seemed to burn in his chest, but he managed to keep them from bursting forth. I thought my dieh had gone a bit overboard by forcing the Magistrate to kneel, an act that could be seen as turning the world upside down, reversing the order of official and subject. But to do it twice? I think you’re flirting with danger, Dieh. Niang said it best: The Emperor is a mighty force, but a distant one. A County Magistrate is a low-ranking official, but local. It would not be hard for him to find an excuse to make our lives difficult. Magistrate Qian is not someone you want to provoke, Dieh. I told you how he broke my friend Xiaokui’s leg just because he spat at the Magistrate’s palanquin.

Magistrate Qian rolled his eyes. “When did the Emperor sit in this chair?” he asked frostily.

“On the eighteenth day of the twelfth month in the Ji-Hai year of 1899 at the Imperial Residence in the Hall of Benevolence and Longevity. When the Empress Dowager heard Grand Steward Li’s report on how I had carried out my duties, She favored me with a private audience. It was then that She presented me with this string of Buddhist prayer beads, telling me that when I laid down my executioner’s sword, I ought to become a Buddha. She then had me seek a reward from the Emperor Himself. His Imperial Majesty stood up and said, “We have nothing at hand to give you, and if you are not bothered by a bulky object, you may take this chair with you.”

A smirk appeared on the County Magistrate’s gloomy face. “I am a man of little learning and few talents. Yet however ignorant and ill-informed I may be, I have read a classic or two, ancient and modern, domestic and foreign, and in none have I ever read that an emperor would willingly surrender the chair in which he is sitting to anyone—especially not to an executioner. I submit, Grandma Zhao, that this tale is a bit far-fetched, even for you, and that you display unwarranted audacity. Why not go further and maintain that His Imperial Majesty rewarded you with three hundred years of property belonging to the Great Qing Empire, including its rivers and mountains? You wielded a sword for the Board of Punishments for many years, from which we must conclude that you are familiar with most, if not all, national laws. And so, I ask you, how should your fabrication of an Imperial Edict, your bogus assertion that you have come into possession of Imperial furniture, be dealt with under the law, given that you have created a rumor that touches upon the persons of the Empress Dowager and His Imperial Majesty? The slicing death? Or perhaps being cleaved in two at the waist. Shall your entire clan be exterminated?”