Mo Yan - Sandalwood Death

“Let the competition begin!” the Secretary announced grandly.

Without further ado, Sun Bing tore off his shirt to reveal lash marks across his shoulders. After curling his queue on top of his head, he tightened his trouser sash, struck a martial pose—legs apart, arms spread—took a deep breath, and concentrated all his strength in his chin. Like magic, his beard began to vibrate, just long enough for each strand to stretch out as straight and rigid as wire. Then, finally, he lifted his chin, keeping his back straight, as he lowered his body and slowly began to immerse his beard in the water.

This elicited no discernible reaction from Magistrate Qian, who stood off to the side with a smile and gently waved the paper fan in his hand as he watched Sun Bing concentrate his strength in his beard. The onlookers, won over by the Magistrate’s graceful bearing, viewed Sun Bing’s performance as artificial and repulsive, on a par with the common scoundrels who spin spears and twirl clubs to draw attention to the fake nostrums they sell. As soon as Sun began immersing his beard in the vat of water, Magistrate Qian snapped his fan shut and tucked it into his wide sleeve. Then, with a slight shift of his body, he took his beard in both hands, moved it away from his chest, and shook it, displaying boundless elegance and grace, and nearly inducing a mortal swoon in Sun Meiniang in the process. He lifted his chin, keeping his back straight, as he lowered his body and slowly began to immerse his beard in the water.

People stood on tiptoe and craned their necks to see how the beards were faring in the water. But no matter how widely they opened their eyes, most were able to see only the Magistrate’s composed, smiling countenance and Sun Bing’s taut, purple face. Not even those a bit closer to the action had a view of how the beards were faring in the water. The sun was too bright, the brown wooden vats too dark.

The Judicial Secretary and Licentiate Shan, who were to judge the contest, walked back and forth between the two vats, comparing and contrasting, their faces brimming with delight. As a gesture to convince the crowd and forestall any objection, the Secretary called out:

“Those of you who want to see for yourself, come closer!”

Sun Meiniang all but leaped over the benches and strode purposefully up to the Magistrate, lowering her head to the level of the tip of his thick queue, where the inward curve of his spine and the fair lobes of his ear were displayed before her eyes. Her lips burned; a greedy desire gnawed at her heart like a little insect. She yearned to bend down and cover the Magistrate’s body with kisses from her pliant lips, but she lacked the courage. A sensation more profound than pain rose up in her heart and sent a scant few teardrops onto the Magistrate’s potent, handsome, well-proportioned neck. She detected a subtle fragrance emanating from the vat, in which she saw every strand of the Magistrate’s beard perfectly vertical in the water, like the root system of a well-tended plant. She hated the idea of leaving the spot beside his vat, but the Judicial Secretary and Licentiate Shan nudged her over to Sun Bing’s vat. There she saw that her father’s beard had also gone straight to the bottom, also like a plant’s root system. But the Secretary pointed to the few white whiskers floating on the surface.

“Do you see what I see, madam?” he said. “Tell everyone exactly what you see. What we say does not count, but what you say does. Go ahead, tell them who has won and who has lost.”

Sun Meiniang faltered. She looked into her dieh’s red face and bloodshot eyes, and in them she saw the ardent hope he placed in her. But then she turned and saw the expressive eyes of the Magistrate, and she felt as if her mouth were sealed by a sticky substance. In the end, thanks to the prodding of the Judicial Secretary and Licentiate Shan, she broke down and sobbed:

“His Eminence has won and my dieh has lost…”

Two heads shot up from their respective vats, bringing with them beards dripping with water. They shook them, sending drops spraying in all directions. Their eyes met. Sun Bing, breathing hard, was dumbfounded; His Eminence was smiling, calm and composed.

“Is there anything else you care to say, Sun Bing?” the Magistrate asked with a smile.

Sun’s lips were twitching. He said nothing.

“In accordance with our agreement, Sun Bing, you are obligated to pluck out your beard!

Sun Bing, I say, Sun Bing, you haven’t forgotten, have you? Does your word mean nothing?”

Sun grabbed his beard with both hands, looked up at the sky, and sighed. “All right, I shall pluck out these annoying threads!” With a violent tug, he jerked out a skein of whiskers and flung them to the ground; drops of blood fell from his chin. He grabbed another skein and was about to pull them out as well, when Sun Meiniang fell to her knees before the Magistrate. Her face, lovely as a peach blossom, could soften any heart. With tears in her eyes, she looked up and pleaded in a delicate voice:

“Your Eminence, I beg you to pardon my dieh.”

The Magistrate squinted, a look of amazement on his face, tinged with gladness and, even more obviously, emotion. His lips fluttered. It hardly seemed as if he spoke at all:

“It’s you…”

“Stand up, daughter.” Tears spurted from Sun Bing’s eyes. “I do not want you begging from anyone,” he said softly.

Magistrate Qian, momentarily taken aback by this exchange, burst out laughing, and when he had finished, he said:

“Do you think I really wanted Sun Bing to pluck out that beard of his? Even though he came in second best in today’s competition, a beard like his is rarely seen anywhere in the world. I would feel a sense of loss if he were to pluck it out. The goal of this competition was, first, to stamp out his arrogance, and, second, to supply this august assemblage with a bit of entertainment. Sun Bing, I forgive you your transgressions and spare you your beard. Now, go home and sing your operas!”

Sun Bing fell to his knees and kowtowed.

The commoners in attendance sighed with deep emotion.

The local gentry drenched the Magistrate in flattering words.

Sun Meiniang remained kneeling, looking into the face of the venerable Magistrate Qian with rapt concentration.

“Daughter of the Sun family, you have proven your impartiality, and though you are a woman, you have the pluck of a man, a rarity in this world.” Magistrate Qian turned to his revenue clerk and said, “Reward her with an ounce of silver!”

A clear and very bright moon hung high in the sky, looking like a naked beauty. The third-watch gong had just sounded, and the county town lay in stillness. Smells of nature—plants and trees and insects and fish—were carried on the summer-night breeze to cover heaven and earth like fine gauze decorated with pearl ornaments. The naked moon shone down on Sun Meiniang as she strolled alone in her courtyard. She too was naked; she and the moon enhanced each other’s beauty. Moonbeams flowed like water in which she swam like a large silvery fish. This was a fully bloomed flower, a piece of ripe fruit, a youthful, vigorous, and graceful body. From head to toe, with the exception of her feet—which were large and unbound—she was flawless. Her skin was glossy, the only blemish a scar on her head that was hidden by her lush hair.

That scar was the result of a bite from a donkey before she had taken her first step as an infant. Unaware that her mother lay dead on the kang from swallowing opium, she had crawled up on her mother’s neatly dressed body, like climbing a resplendent mountain range. She was hungry, searching for the nipple, but in vain. She cried, and in the process she fell to the floor, where she cried even louder. No one came. So she crawled out the door, attracted by the smell of milk. No sooner had she reached the yard than she saw a young donkey drinking its mother’s milk. The ill-tempered adult had been tied to a tree by her owner, and when the little girl crawled up to feed alongside, or in place of, her baby, the donkey bit down on the girl’s head, gave her a shake, and flung her away, where she was immediately stained by her own blood. This time her terrified wails reached a neighbor woman, who picked her up and covered the wound with powdered lime to stop the bleeding. The injury was so severe that most people believed she would not survive. Even her normally buoyant father was sure she would die, but she hung on tenaciously. For the first fourteen years of her life, she was a scrawny, frail girl with a conspicuous scar on the back of her skull. She tagged along behind her dieh as he made the opera circuit, taking the stage in a variety of parts: little girls, little demons, even kittens. But in her fifteenth year, like a desiccated wheat sprout nourished by a spring rain, she grew like a weed, and at the age of sixteen, her hair grew lush and black, the way dense new shoots burst forth from a willow tree whose canopy has been lopped off. The scar disappeared beneath all that hair. At seventeen, she fleshed out, and people discovered that she was a girl. Prior to this, because of her unbound feet and sparse hair, most of the performers in the troupe had assumed that she was a nearly bald little boy. At eighteen, she had become the prettiest maiden in Northeast Gaomi Township.