Mo Yan - Sandalwood Death

“The fifty-first cut!”

He flung the once-treasured object away, and a skinny, mangy dog that had come out of nowhere snatched it up and darted in amid the military formation, where it began to yelp as soldiers kicked it. A forlorn howl of despair tore from the mouth of Qian, who until then had endured the torture by clenching his teeth. Zhao Jia had expected that, and yet it shocked him. He was not aware that he was blinking lightning-fast, but his hands were burning and swelling, as if red-hot needles were pricking his fingers. It was a discomfort he could not possibly describe. Qian’s howl—neither human nor beastly—had a horrifying quality that both unnerved and sent shivers through the ranks of the Right Militant Guard, who were witnessing the execution. Logic demanded that His Excellency ought to have been moved by the sound, but Zhao Jia had no time to turn back and scrutinize the reaction of Yuan and the high-ranking officials around him. He heard snorts of terror from the horses, which were loudly champing the bits in their mouths and agitating the bells hanging from their necks; he saw how the tight leggings arrayed behind the execution post seemed to be straining to break free. Qian’s body squirmed in concert with his repeated howls, while his heart, which could be seen behind exposed ribs, was thumping loudly enough to hear and so violently that Zhao Jia actually worried it might leap out of his chest. If that happened, the execution, a slicing death that had been days in the planning, would end in abject failure. Not only would it be a loss of face for the Board of Punishments, but it would make even His Excellency Yuan look bad. That was the last thing Zhao wanted, but it was made more possible by Qian’s head, which began to rock backward and forward and from side to side, producing loud thumps against the post. His eyes were blood-streaked, his features twisted beyond recognition, a look that would forever haunt the dreams of anyone seeing that face. Zhao Jia had never seen anything like it, nor, he knew, had his shifu. His hands were tingly and so uncomfortably swollen he could barely hold the knife. He glanced up at his apprentice, whose face was the color of clay and whose mouth hung wide open. For him to take over and finish the job was out of the question. So he forced himself to bend down and dig out one of Qian’s testicles, which had shrunk into his body. One swift cut detached it. The fifty-second cut, he coached his apprentice, who stood there transfixed until he was able to announce, barely able to keep from sobbing:

“The… fifty-second… cut…”

He tossed the sac to the ground, where it lay in the dirt looking hideous. For the first time in all his years in the profession, he experienced something unique, for him, at least: disgust.

“Fucking… bastard!” In an earthshaking display of loathing, Qian Xiongfei somehow found the strength to curse: “Yuan Shikai, Yuan Shikai, you turncoat, I may not be able to kill you in this life, but I will return as a ghost to take your life!”

Zhao Jia, afraid to turn his head, could only imagine the look on Excellency Yuan’s face at that moment. Desperate to finish the job, he bent down again, dug out the second testicle, and cut it off. But as he was straightening up, Qian Xiongfei leaned over and bit him on the head. Since he was wearing a cap, the bite did not inflict serious damage, but it did break the skin, even through the cloth cap. Well after the incident, Zhao shuddered when he considered the possibility that Qian could have bitten him on the neck and chewed his way into his throat; or if he had bitten him on the ear, he’d have lost that organ for sure. Experiencing a strange pain on his scalp, he jerked his head upward and connected with Qian’s chin. He heard the frightful crunch of Qian’s teeth as they bit through his tongue, which sent blood spurting from his mouth. But that did not keep him from hurling epithets, now less intelligible, though by no means incoherent, and still directed at Yuan Shikai. The fifty-third cut. As Zhao Jia threw down the thing in his hand, he saw flashes of light in front of his eyes, he felt light-headed, and his stomach lurched. He clenched his teeth to keep whatever it was down, telling himself that he mustn’t vomit, not now; for if he did, the power of intimidation enjoyed by Board of Punishments executioners would die in his hands.

“Cut out his tongue!”

Yuan Shikai’s voice thundered behind him in all its fury. Instinctively, he turned to look. Yuan’s face was livid as he smacked his knee with his fist and forcefully repeated his command:

“Cut out his tongue!”

Zhao Jia wanted to tell him that this was not the way of his ancestors, but the look of rage, born of mortification, on His Excellency’s face made him swallow his words. What good would it have done to say anything, when even the Empress Dowager respected almost anything that Excellency Yuan said? So he turned his attention to Qian’s tongue.

Qian’s damaged tongue had turned his face into too bloody a mess to make Zhao’s knife effective. Cutting out the tongue of a crazed condemned individual was a bit like trying to pull the teeth of a tiger. But Zhao was not foolhardy enough to ignore Yuan’s command. Without wasting time, he thought back to his shifu’s teachings and what experience he had gained from them, but nothing helpful came to mind. Qian was still shouting invectives. Excellency Yuan repeated his command yet again:

“I said, cut out his tongue!”

At that critical moment, the spirit of the profession’s founder saved the day with an inspiration. After placing the knife between his teeth, he picked a bucket of water up off the ground and emptied it into Qian’s face, bringing an immediate halt to his curses. Then he wrapped his hands around Qian’s throat and squeezed with all his might. Qian’s face turned the color of pig’s liver as his purple tongue emerged from between his teeth. Squeezing the man’s throat with one hand, Zhao reached up with the other, took the knife from between his teeth, and sliced off the tongue. This spur-of-the-moment change to the ritual brought a roar from the formation of soldiers, like a wave crashing over a sandbar.

Zhao displayed Qian’s defiant tongue in the palm of his hand, feeling it twitch like a dying frog. “The fifty-fourth cut,” he murmured weakly before throwing Qian’s tongue onto the ground in front of Excellency Yuan.

“The fifty… fourth cut…” his apprentice announced.

Qian Xiongfei’s face had turned the color of gold. Blood gurgled from his lips. A mixture of blood and water slid down his body. He was still cursing, even without a tongue. But now there was no way to tell what he was saying and whom he was cursing.

Zhao Jia’s hands were burning up and seemed in danger of being reduced to ashes. He was on the verge of collapse. Professional pride, however, kept him focused on the job at hand. Yuan’s disruptive order to cut out the man’s tongue had freed him to put his victim out of his misery without delay, but a sense of responsibility and personal ethics would not let him do that. As he saw it, not inflicting the requisite number of cuts was more than a blasphemy against the laws of the Great Qing Dynasty; it was an act of disrespect toward the good man tied to the post before him. Under no circumstances could he allow Qian to die before the five-hundredth cut. If he did, he would give credence to the view that Board of Punishments executioners were little more than common butchers.

Zhao Jia wiped the bloody water from Qian Xiongfei’s skin with a chamois dipped in saltwater; then, while rinsing it in a bucket of clean water, he cooled his overheated hands and dried them. Qian’s tongue-less mouth was still vigorously opening and closing, but the sounds coming out of it were growing weak. Zhao knew he needed to speed up the process, remove smaller pieces of flesh, and avoid spots with heavy concentrations of blood vessels. It had become necessary to make a practical adjustment in the cutting scheme he’d begun with. Rather than call into question the skills of a Board of Punishments executioner, this change was a direct result of Yuan’s disruptive command. In a move that went unnoticed by the witnesses, he jabbed the tip of his knife into his own thigh to produce a sharp pain that drove away his sluggishness and at the same time took his mind off his burning hands. With renewed energy, he stopped worrying about Yuan Shikai and the ranking officials behind him and gave no more thought to the five thousand soldiers arrayed in front. His knife began swirling like the wind, removing pieces of Qian’s flesh that rained down like hailstones or a swarm of beetles. The next two hundred cuts removed all the flesh and muscles from Qian’s thighs, followed by fifty cuts to do the same to his upper arms. Fifty cuts in the abdomen preceded seventy-five on each side of his buttocks. By that time, Qian’s life was hanging by a thread, though light still burned in his eyes. Bloody foam oozed from his mouth, while his viscera, now bereft of constraint by muscles and skin, strained to exit his body. That was particularly true of his intestines, which were writhing like a nest of vipers beneath a thin membrane cover. Zhao Jia straightened up and exhaled. He was sweating profusely; his crotch had gotten sticky, from either blood or sweat, it was hard to tell which. He was paying for his desire to honor the life of Qian Xiongfei and uphold the prestige of the Board of Punishments executioners with his own blood and sweat.