Mo Yan - Sandalwood Death

“Don’t say a word, Dieh,” she said. “You have to get out of here.”

“Why?” For some reason, this made him angry. “They’re the ones who took liberties with a good and decent woman—”

She cut him off.

“It doesn’t get any worse than this, Dieh. The Germans have already sent a telegram to Peking and Jinan. Yuan Shikai has ordered Magistrate Qian to arrest you. The constables are on their way, and will be here soon.”

“Is there no justice, no fairness anywhere—”

She was in no mood to let him defend his actions.

“How can you jabber about things like that when the flames are singeing your eyebrows? If you want to get out of this alive, you must go into hiding. If not, then wait here, for they won’t be long.”

“What happens to my family if I run away?”

“They’re almost here,” she said, cocking her ear. The sound of horses was faint for the moment, but getting louder. “Are you leaving or are you staying? It’s up to you.” She turned and ran out the door, but immediately stuck her head back in and said, “If you go, tell Little Peach to fake madness.”

He watched as his daughter nimbly jumped into the saddle and leaned forward until she looked like she was part of the mule she was riding. With a snort, the animal took off running, its flanks flashing for a moment before it disappeared in the surrounding darkness. The sound of its hooves sped east.

He shut the door, turned, and saw Little Peach standing in the room, her hair already down around her shoulders, soot smeared over her face. A torn blouse revealed her fair bosom. She came up to him and, in a voice that brooked no nonsense, said:

“Do as Meiniang said: leave, and leave now!”

An agonizing emotion welled up inside him as he looked into his wife’s eyes, which flashed in the dark room, and in the midst of that seminal moment, he realized that this woman, so gentle and fragile in appearance, was blessed with great courage and a quick mind. He wrapped his arms around her, but she pushed him away.

“There’s no time; you must go. Don’t worry about us.”

So he ran out of the shop and headed down the street he knew so well from fetching water, then ran up the Masang River bank and hid behind a large willow tree, where he could look down at the peaceful village below, the gray street, and his house. He could hear Bao’er and Yun’er—they were crying—and that nearly broke his heart. The new moon, hanging low in the western sky, was especially beautiful; the vast canopy of sky was dotted with stars that twinkled like diamonds. Every house in town was dark, and yet he knew that the occupants were not asleep, but were silently and expectantly listening for any activity outside, almost as if darkness was their best protection against bad tidings. The clack of horse hooves neared; dogs began to bark. A dark, tight formation of horses approached—how many it was impossible to say—and reddish sparks flew as the staccato beat of horseshoes on cobblestones announced their arrival.

The posse rode up and, after some confused jockeying, stopped in front of the shop. He witnessed the blurred silhouette of constables appearing to dismount from the blurred outlines of their horses, a spurt of boisterous wrangling seemingly intended to alert people to their purpose in coming. That accomplished, they lit torches they’d brought with them. The burst of light illuminated the street and nearby houses, as well as the willows on the riverbank, where he cowered behind the tree, from whose branches a flock of startled birds flew off. With a backward glance at the river behind him, he readied himself to jump in to save his skin, if necessary. But the constables took no note of the sudden bird migration, and gave no thought to searching the riverbank.

Now he could see clearly enough to count the horses—altogether nine piebald animals, a few black and white, some of the others red and brown, and all local horses: unattractive, neither plump nor robust-looking, with ragged manes and well-used saddles and fittings. Two did not even have saddles, their riders forced to make do with gunnysacks thrown over their backs. In the flickering light of the torches, the horses’ heads looked big and clumsy, but their eyes were bright and clear. After shining the light of their torches on the signboard over the door, the constables calmly knocked at the door.

No response from inside.

They attacked the door.

From his vantage point, he had a vague suspicion that the constables had no intention of arresting him. They would not have dawdled like that if they had, and they would have knocked more aggressively. No, they would have scaled the wall to get inside if they’d had to, something many of them were good at. Agreeable feelings toward the constables washed over him. He did not have to be told that Magistrate Qian was in the background, and behind him, his own daughter, Meiniang.

The door eventually gave way to the assault on it, and the torch-bearing constables swaggered into the shop. Almost immediately, he heard his wife’s feigned wails of insanity and crazed laughter, accompanied by the bawling of his terrified children.

The constables put up with the racket as long as they could before reemerging with their torches, some jabbering something he couldn’t hear, others yawning. After a brief discussion in front of the shop and some shouted commands, they mounted up and rode off. As soon as the hoofbeats and torchlight disappeared, peace and quiet returned to the town. He was about to come out of hiding when lights flared up in town, all at once, as if on command. Everything stopped for a moment, and then dozens of lanterns appeared on the street, forming a luminous, fast-moving line that snaked its way toward him. Hot tears slipped out of his eyes.

Relying on the guidance of an experienced old man, he hid during the daylight hours over the days that followed and slipped back into town at night, when the streets were quiet and deserted. He spent his days in the woods on the opposite bank of the Masang River, where there were a dozen or so cottages the villagers used to cure tobacco. That was where he slept during the days, crossing the river to return home late at night. He headed back to his cottages first thing the next morning with a bundle of flatbreads and a gourd filled with water.

Many of the willow trees near the cottages were home to nesting magpies. He would lie on the kang, eating and sleeping, sleeping and eating. At first he could not screw up the courage to step outside, but gradually he grew less guarded and slipped out to look up at the squawking magpies in their nests. He and a tall, well-built young shepherd struck up a friendship. He shared his flat-breads with Mudu, the simple, honest young man, and even told him who he was—Sun Bing, the man who had killed the railroad engineer.

On the seventh day of the second lunar month, five days after killing the German, he finished off several of the flatbreads and a bowlful of water in the afternoon and was lying on the kang listening to the magpies and to the tattoos of a woodpecker attacking a tree. As he slipped into that twilight zone between sleep and wakefulness, the sharp crack of gunfire snapped him out of his stupor. He had never before heard the sound of a breech-loading rifle, which was nothing like that of a local hunting rifle. He knew immediately that this was bad. Jumping off the kang and picking up his club, he flattened himself against the wall behind the door to await the arrival of his enemies. More gunfire. It came from the opposite bank. Unable to sit still in the cottage, he slipped out the door, bent at the waist, and scrambled over a series of crumbling walls to move in among the willow trees. A cacophony of shrill sounds erupted in town: his wife was crying, his children were bawling, horses whinnied, mules brayed, and dogs barked, all at the same time. But he could not see a thing. Then an idea struck him. Slipping his club into his belt, he began climbing the tallest tree he saw. When the magpies spotted the invader, they launched an attack, but he drove them off with his club, once, twice, over and over, until they retreated. He stood on a limb next to a large nest and, holding on to keep from falling, looked down at the far side of the river. Now he could see what was happening, all of it.