Mo Yan - Sandalwood Death

Six cuts remained. With the knowledge that success was within his grasp, Zhao Jia could bring an end to the performance at a more comfortable pace. With the four hundred ninety-fifth cut, he sliced off Qian’s left ear. It had felt like a chunk of ice in his hand. Then came the right ear, and when he threw it to the ground, the formerly emaciated dog whose full belly now scraped the ground ambled up to sniff the latest offering before turning and walking off in a show of contempt, leaving behind a foul-smelling discharge from beneath its tail. Qian’s ears lay untouched and unwanted in the dirt, like a matching pair of gray seashells. Zhao Jia was reminded of something his shifu had told him. When he was carrying out the slicing death on that exquisite prostitute on the marketplace execution ground, he had sliced off her delicate left ear, from which a pearl-studded gold earring dangled. The ear had held a powerful attraction for him; forbidden, however, from taking anything away from the execution ground, he had no choice but to reluctantly throw it to the ground. A mob of transfixed observers broke through the cordon of guards and swarmed to the spot like a tidal wave; their crazed, terrifying behavior drove away the birds of prey and wild animals prowling the execution site, all in pursuit of the detached ear. It may have been the gold earring they were after, but the shifu, knowing that this interruption could ruin everything, sprang into action by immediately slicing off the prostitute’s other ear and flinging it as far as he could. His quick action saved the day by diverting the onrushing crowd. His reputation as a man of superior intelligence was well earned.

Qian Xiongfei now presented a ghastly sight. Zhao readied himself for the four hundred ninety-seventh cut. By tradition, he had two options. He could cut out the condemned man’s eyes or cut off his lips. Since Qian’s lips were already such an awful mess, to do more seemed a shame, so he decided to cut out his eyes. Zhao knew that Qian was going to die with an unresolved grievance, but in the end, what did that matter? Young brother, he muttered to himself, you have no voice in this decision, but by removing your eyes, I will let you become a ghost that is content with its lot. The heart cannot grieve over what the eyes cannot see. This will cause you less suffering down in the bowels of Hell. No suffering in either this world or the next.

Qian closed his eyes just as Zhao held his knife up to them, catching him by surprise. This cooperation brought Zhao feelings of immense gratitude, since removing the organs of sight was an unpleasant task, even for someone who killed for a living. Taking advantage of the opportunity granted him, he inserted the tip of his knife into a socket and, with an almost imperceptible flick of his wrist, out popped a clearly defined eyeball. “The four hundred ninety-seventh cut,” he said weakly.

“The four hundred ninety-seventh cut…” His apprentice’s announcement was barely audible.

But when Zhao held his knife up to the right eye, it opened unexpectedly; at the same time, Qian released the last howl of his life. Even Zhao shuddered at the sound, and dozens of soldiers fell to the ground like bricks in a collapsing wall. Zhao had no choice but to apply his knife to Qian Xiongfei’s remaining eye, which was blazing. What emerged from that eye was not so much a ray of light as a red-hot gas. Zhao Jia’s hand was burning as he fought to hold on to the slippery handle. Young brother, he said prayerfully, close your eye. But this time Qian would not cooperate, and Zhao knew he mustn’t delay, not even for a moment. He forced himself to act, slipping the tip of his knife into the right eye, and as he circled the socket, he heard a barely audible hissing sound. Yuan Shikai could not hear it; the ranking officials standing in front of their horses, looks of utter terror on their faces, perhaps like foxes grieving over the death of the hare, could not hear it; and the five thousand soldiers who had been reduced to wooden statues with bowed heads could not hear it. What they all heard was the flaming, toxic howl that exploded out of the ruined mouth of Qian Xiongfei, a sound that had the power to drive an ordinary man insane. But it had no effect on Zhao Jia. What had affected him, nearly rocked him to his soul, was the hissing sound the tip of his knife made as it circled the eye socket. For a brief moment, he went blind and deaf as the hiss entered his body, encircled his viscera, and took root in the marrow of his bones. It would not leave easily, not then and not later. “The four hundred ninety-eighth cut,” he said.

His apprentice lay passed out in the dirt.

Dozens more soldiers fell headlong to the ground.

Qian’s eyes lay brightly on the ground, sending gloomy, deathly blue-white rays through the mud that all but covered them, as if staring at something. Zhao Jia knew exactly what they were staring at—it was Yuan Shikai—and the thought that crowded his mind was: would Yuan recall the gaze from those two eyes in his memories of that day?

Zhao Jia was beyond exhaustion. Not long before this, he had beheaded the Six Gentlemen of the failed Hundred Days Reform movement, an event that had caused a national, even an international, sensation. In appreciation of the great Liu Guangdi’s talents in front of his apprentices, he had sharpened the sword named “Generalissimo,” which had become rusty and saw-toothed, until it could cut a hair that fell on it in half. The other five gentlemen owed their swift, painless deaths to their association with Liu Guangdi. When he lopped off their heads with Generalissimo, it was lightning quick, and he was sure that all they felt when their heads were separated from their bodies was a momentary breath of cool air on their necks. Owing to the speed of decapitation, some of the headless bodies flopped forward, and others jerked upward. The faces all had the appearance of being alive, and he believed that long after the heads were rolling in the dirt, clear thoughts continued to swirl inside. After the Six Gentlemen had been dispatched, talk of miracles created by a Board of Punishments executioner swept through the capital. All sorts of fanciful tales relating to the six executions passed from mouth to ear. One story, for instance, related how the headless body of Tan Sitong, of Hunan’s Liuyang County, ran up to Excellency Gang Yi, the official in charge of the executions, and slapped him across the face. In another, as it rolled along the ground, the head of Liu Guangdi, known also as Liu Peicun, intoned a poem in such a loud voice that thousands of witnesses heard it. Even an event of this magnitude had failed to tire Grandma Zhao, and yet on this day, in the city of Tianjin, the responsibility of carrying out the slicing death on an insignificant captain of a mounted bodyguard unit had so enervated the preeminent executioner of the land that he could barely stand. Even stranger was the fact that he could not keep his hands from feeling as if they were burning up.

The nose fell at the four hundred ninety-ninth cut. By then, nothing emerged from Qian’s mouth but bloody froth—no more sounds. His head, once supported by a strong, rigid neck, now hung limply to his chest.

The final cut—the coup de grace—entered Qian’s heart, from which black blood the color and consistency of melted malt sugar slid down the knife blade. The strong smell of that blood once again made Zhao nauseous. He cut out a piece of the heart with the tip of his knife and, with his head slumped, announced to his feet:

“May it please Your Excellency, the five hundredth cut.”

Peking experienced a heavy snowfall on the eighth night of the twelfth month in the twenty-second year of the Guangxu reign, 1896. Residents awoke early to a blanket of silvery white. As temple bells rang out across the city, the chief executioner assigned to the Board of Punishments Bureau of Detentions, Zhao Jia, got out of bed, dressed in casual clothes, and, after summoning his new apprentice, left for a temple to fill the bowl tucked under his arm with gruel. After leaving the chilled atmosphere of Board of Punishments Avenue, they met up with a fast-moving crowd of beggars and the city’s poor. It was a good day for beggars and the city’s poor, as attested by the joyful looks on faces turned a range of colors from the biting cold. Snow crunched beneath their feet. Limbs and branches on roadside scholar trees were a collage of silvery white and jade green, as if clusters of white flowers were abloom. The sun broke its way through a dense layer of gray clouds, creating a captivating contrast of white and red. The two men merged with a stream of humanity heading northwest along Xidan Boulevard, where most of Peking’s temples were located, and where great pots of charity gruel sent steam skyward from makeshift tents. As they neared the Xisi gateway, whose history was written in blood, flocks of crows and gray cranes were startled into flight out of the jumble of trees behind the Western Ten Storehouses.