Mo Yan - Sandalwood Death

Li Wu picked up his glass, drank from it, and then picked at dishes with his chopsticks, clicking his tongue in a display of criticism over the crude array of food. Finally he picked up a bean sprout, which he chewed noisily with his front teeth, like a mouse that lazily grinds its teeth after eating its fill. Master Liu’s son, the father of the new grandson, rushed up with a plate of steaming pig’s-head meat and placed it in front of Li Wu before wiping his sweaty brow with the back of his greasy hand. “We have treated you shamelessly, Uncle Li,” he said. “We are peasants, untrained in the preparation of fine cuisine. Won’t you do us the honor of sampling this?”

Li Wu spat out the bean sprout, which had been stuck between his front teeth, and banged his chopsticks down on the table. Clearly unhappy, he forced himself to speak with laudable forbearance: “Elder nephew Liu,” he said, “your concern is misplaced. Do you really think I am here because of the food? If it were a meal I desired, I could visit any establishment in town and, without a word, be served fine sea cucumbers and abalone, camel’s hoof and bear’s paw, monkey brains and bird’s nest soup, one dish after another. Eating one while sampling another with an eye to the third, that, my boy, is a banquet worthy of the name. And what has your family provided? Some half-cooked bean sprouts, a plate of rotting, pestilential pig’s head, and a decanter of sour millet spirits neither hot nor cold enough. Is this what you call a celebration banquet? It is more like a meal to get rid of stinking actors. No, I have deigned to attend for two reasons: first as a favor to your father, to prop up your family, and second to mix with the local gentry. I am kept so busy that flames shoot out of my ass, and finding this little bit of time has not been easy.”

The elder son of the Liu family could only nod and bow in response to Li Wu’s rebuke, and make a quick, desperate exit when Li paused to cough.

“Master Liu, you are a learned, cultivated man,” Li Wu said. “How could you have raised such an empty-headed turtle?”

None of the embarrassed guests dared make a sound. But Sun Bing, infuriated by what he had witnessed, pulled the plate of pig’s head over in front of him. “Since the eminent Li Wu is used to eating delicacies from land and sea, placing this pig’s head in front of him is clearly meant to sicken him. For those of us who survive on a diet of chaff and coarse greens, this nicely greases our innards and helps us shit!”

That said, without so much as a glance around the table, he began stuffing greasy, dripping chunks of meat into his mouth, one after the other. “Um, good,” he mumbled, “really good, fucking delicious!”

Li Wu glowered at Sun Bing, who did not so much as look up. Gaining no satisfaction from his angry glare, Li blinked and turned his gaze on the others around the table. With a curl of his lip, he shook his head in the sort of contempt typical of those in high position, the common display of a gentleman in the presence of petty men. The guests, fearful of causing trouble, held out their glasses in a show of respect for Li, who, like a man who dismounts from his mule on a downward slope, emptied his glass, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and, picking up the thread of conversation lost in the remonstrance of the elder Liu son, said:

“Worthy gentlemen, I revealed the secret of the Lord Magistrate’s beard to you only because we are all friends. As the adage goes, ‘While we are not related, we come from the same place.’ Now that you have been let in on the secret, you must keep it inside and let it rot there. Under no circumstances is what I said to leave this room, for if it were to find its way to the ear of His Eminence, my rice bowl would be unalterably smashed. These are things known only to the Magistrate, to the First Lady, and to me. Kindly take heed!”

Clasping his fists together at his chest, Li Wu bowed to each of the guests in turn; they returned the gesture. “You needn’t worry. It is a rare honor for a place like ours to have in its midst a superior man like Elder Li Wu! Our residents, one and all, wait with bated breath to benefit from their association with you. With that in mind, by speaking out of turn, we would be doing injury to ourselves.”

“It is precisely because we are one big family that I am willing to speak my mind.” Li Wu took another drink and then lowered his voice to speak conspiratorially: “His Eminence frequently summons me to his official document room as a conversation partner. We sit across from one another, like brothers, drinking millet spirits, eating dog meat, and chatting about everything under the sun, past and present. Our Magistrate is a man of erudition, familiar with the affairs of the world, and never happier than when he is engaged in such conversations, with a supply of meat and spirits at hand. These talks frequently continue late into the night, so unnerving the Magistrate’s wife that she sends a maidservant to rap on the window and call out, ‘Master, the Mistress says it is getting late; time to take your rest.’ He invariably replies, ‘Meixiang, go back and tell the Mistress not to wait up for me, that our young Li and I have yet to finish our chat.’ I am not in favor with the Mistress, and that is the cause. A few days ago, on my way to the rear hall on an assignment, I met up with her, and as she blocked my way, she said, ‘Aren’t you something, Little Li, keeping the Magistrate up half the night talking about who knows what, to the point that he has even begun to neglect me. You little wretch, do you or do you not deserve a beating?’ Shaken to the core, I stammered, ‘I do, I do!’”

“Elder Brother Li,” Collegian Ma Da interrupted, “none of us here has ever laid eyes on the First Lady, though there is talk that her face is cratered with pockmarks…”

“Rubbish! Utter nonsense. Anyone who says that deserves to wind up in the layer of Hell for wayward tongues!” Li Wu was red in the face from anger. “I ask you, Collegian Ma Da, what is that head of yours filled with, soy milk or rice congee? You have been taught in the ‘Zhao Qian Sun Li Zhou Wu Zheng Wang’ of the Hundred Family Surnames and ‘Heaven is black and Earth is yellow, the universe is in chaos,’ from the Book of Changes , so why do you not use your head and consider the august lady’s lineage! Born into a great family, she was a pearl in the hand of a doting father, raised by a nanny and waited on by a household of maidservants. Her quarters are kept in such immaculate condition that a slice of sticky-rice cake dropped to the floor can be retrieved without a speck of dust. How, I ask you, could anyone emerge from such an environment scarred by the unspeakable affliction of smallpox? The only way she would have marks on her face is if you, Collegian Ma, were to scratch it with your fingernails!”

No amount of discipline could have kept the gathered elites from bursting into sidesplitting laughter, and no amount of self-control could have kept Collegian Ma’s face from turning bright red. “Yes, of course,” he said, both to defend and to mock himself. “How could a fairy among mortals possibly have pockmarks? What an ugly, hateful rumor that is!”

Li Wu cast a sideways glance at the nearly empty plate of meat in front of Sun Bing and swallowed a mouthful of saliva. “That His Eminence Qian and I, his subordinate, have a close and cordial relationship goes without saying. He once said to me, ‘Little Li, there is a natural affinity between us. I cannot tell you why, but it seems to me that you and I are of one heart and mind, adjacent lungs, entwined intestines, and overlapping stomachs.”

Sun Bing nearly spat out the food in his mouth along with his derisive snort, and only by stretching out his neck was he able to swallow it down. “What that means to me,” he said, “is that when Magistrate Qian has eaten his fill, you are no longer hungry.”