Mo Yan - Sandalwood Death

At least fifty foreign horses were arrayed in front of his teashop, all ridden by foreign soldiers in bright, fancy uniforms with round, feathered caps, and firing bayonet-fitted blue-steel automatic rifles at the shop door and windows. Puffs of white smoke, like daisy blossoms, floated out of the muzzles and hung in the air for a long moment. Sunlight danced off the brass buttons on the soldiers’ tunics and the bayonets attached to the barrels of their guns, blinding bright. A squad of Imperial troops wearing red-tasseled summer straw hats and tunics with white circles in the center, front and back, was arrayed behind them. Suddenly dazed, he dropped the club, which fell to the ground, banging into one limb after another on its way down. Lucky for him he was holding on to a branch, or he’d have followed the club down.

Panic took hold. He knew that this was the calamity he had dreaded. But he held on to a thread of hope that his wife’s acting skills, honed over the years, especially her convincing acts of madness, would work on the German soldiers the way they had on His Eminence Magistrate Qian’s constables, that they would make a fuss until they were sure he was not there and then leave. At that moment he promised himself that if they somehow escaped with their lives, he would pack up and move his family away, far away.

Nothing could have been worse than what happened next. He watched as two of the soldiers dragged his wife, kicking and screaming, down to the river, while a third soldier, bigger and taller than the others, followed with the children, dragging each of them by one leg, as if they were ducks or chickens, and deposited them on the riverbank. Stone broke free from the soldier who was restraining him by biting him on the arm. But then he saw Stone’s small, dark figure back down off the riverbank, down and down, until he bumped into the rifle of a soldier behind him. The glinting blade of the bayonet ran him through. It looked like he screamed, but there was no sound as he rolled like a little black ball down the bank. From his vantage point up in the tree, Sun Bing was blinded by the sight of all that blood.

The German soldiers backed up against the riverbank, where some of them got down on one knee and others remained standing as they aimed at the townspeople. Their aim was unerring—one victim fell for each shot fired. The street and yards were littered with corpses, either face down or on their backs. Then the Imperial troops ran over and put a torch to his shop. First came the black smoke, rising into the sky, followed by golden yellow flames that crackled like firecrackers. The wind rose up and blew the smoke and fire in all directions, even carrying thick, choking clouds of smoke and the smell of fire up to his hiding place.

Then came something even worse. He looked on as the German soldiers began shoving and pulling his wife back and forth, slowly ripping off her clothes as they did so, until she was stark naked. He bit down on the branch he was holding and hit it so hard with his head that it broke the skin. While his heart flew to the opposite bank like a fireball, his body remained bound to a tree; he couldn’t move. They lifted up his wife’s fair body, swung her back and forth, and then let go, her momentum carrying her into the Masang River like a big white fish. Sprays of white transparent water splashed into the air without a sound and fell silently back. Finally, the soldiers speared his children and flung them into the river, too. His eyes filled with blood, nightmarishly, and his heart was on fire, yet he was frozen in place. He struggled with all his might, but in the end he could only roar, freeing his body from its paralysis; bending forward, he managed to topple over, snapping several branches as he fell before landing on the spongy ground at the base of the willow tree.

He opened his eyes and was nearly blinded by sunlight streaming in through the branches of the willow trees. The horrific sight he’d witnessed from his perch flashed through his mind, and the constricting pain in his heart leveled him. At that moment the sound of drums pounded against his eardrums, like the drumbeats preceding the first act of a Maoqiang opera, followed by the doleful sounds of a suona, a horn, and then finally the circular, repetitive performance of a cat zither. These sounds, which had been a steady accompaniment for more than half of his lifetime, blunted the stabbing pain in his heart, like shearing off a mountain peak or filling in a ravine and turning it into a boundless plateau. The calls of magpies followed the rhythms of his heart as they flew in dramatic fashion, forming a blue cloud in the air above. A woodpecker attacked a tree—incessantly, tirelessly—echoing the urgent sounds around him. Willow catkins floating on breezy gusts of wind resembled the handsome beard he’d once worn. With a date-wood club in my, my, my hand and a glinting dagger tucked in my waistband~~I take a step and release a wail~~take two steps as anger blazes like a fire fanned~~I, I, I race down a meandering path, this journey too great a demand . A song of grief and indignation thundered inside him as he struggled to his feet, bracing himself against the tree trunk, his head wobbly, his feet stomping the ground. ——Bong bong bong bong bong bong——kebong kebong kebong——bong! Alas! I, Sun Bing, gaze northward to my home, where flames send black smoke into the air. My wife murdered, she, she, she is buried in the bellies of fish, and my children so fair~~cruel, how cruel, so cruel! A little boy and a little girl consigned to the Devil’s lair~~Those loathsome foreign devils with their green eyes and white hair, vipers’ hearts, bereft of conscience, slaughtered the innocent, destroyed my home, and killed my family, I am alone, I, I, I~~cruel, how cruel, so cruel!~~more than I can bear! He picked up the club that had brought such a calamity down on his head and staggered out of the woods. I, I, I am like a wild goose separated from its flock, like a tiger out in the open, a dragon caught in the shallows… He struck out with his club, pointing east and striking west, pointing south and hitting north, shattering bark. Willows wept. You German devils! You, you, you cruelly murdered my wife and butchered my children~~this is a blood debt that will be avenged ——Bong bong bong bong bong—Clang cuh-lang clang Only revenge makes me a man. He staggered into the Masang River, swinging his club as he went, wading in till the water nearly reached his chest. The ice was breaking up, now that it was the second month, yet the water was still bone-chilling cold. But he was unmindful of the cold, as fires of vengeful loathing burned in his breast. Walking along the riverbed was difficult; the water hindered his progress like a line of foreign soldiers holding him back. He pressed forward, kept moving, striking the surface of the water with his club, pow pow pow pow pow pow! Splash, splash, water everywhere—like a tiger loose in a flock of sheep—water hit him in the face, a watery blur, a sheet of white, a sheet of blood-red. Charging into the dragon’s den, the tiger’s lair, looses a murderous river of blood, I, I, I am that judge from Hell, the messenger of death . He clawed and crawled his way up to the bank, where he fell to his knees and rubbed his hands across traces of blood that had yet to dry My beloved children, I see that you have been sent down to the Devil’s lair, and for my pain there is no gauge~~My head swims, my eyes glaze over, my world is spinning, my, my, my towering rage . His hands were stained with blood and mud. His house was still burning, releasing waves of heat and filling the sky with hot cinders. The cloyingly sweet taste of bile was caught in his throat. He leaned over and spat out a mouthful of blood.