Mo Yan - Sandalwood Death

After arranging board and lodging for the regiment, the Magistrate held a welcoming dinner for Commander Ma, a modest man who, throughout the meal, proclaimed his enormous respect for Lord Wenzheng and made a point of saying that he had long admired the Magistrate as a learned man. When the meal was nearly over, Ma whispered to him that Qian Xiongfei, who had suffered the slicing death in Tianjin, had been a close friend, a revelation that convinced Qian that he and his guest had a special relationship, as if they had been fast friends for years, someone from whom there were no secrets.

To help ensure Commander Ma’s success in his mission, Magistrate Qian lent him fifty of the county militiamen, who were assigned as scouts for the government troops and foreign soldiers, deploying them around the township in the darkness just before daybreak. The Magistrate himself made a personal appearance to help compensate for the ridiculous travesty the day before, when the anticipated hostage swap had blown up in his face. Sun Bing had made fools out of him and the German; his proclamation and the shouts of his followers rang in the County Magistrate’s ears: “They turned themselves into pigs and dogs! They turned themselves into pigs and dogs!” I should have known they would not let those three German soldiers live, he was thinking. As a matter of fact, he had heard that Sun Bing and his followers had tied the captives to trees and taken turns urinating in their faces. After that, he was sure, they would have offered the men’s hearts and livers in sacrifice to the souls of their twenty-seven dead. I should have followed my instincts instead of blithely believing that the German soldiers were still alive. Even more laughable was my thought that if I rescued the hostages, Excellency Yuan would take note of my achievement and view me with favor. My mistake was listening to my wife and letting what she said convince me to do something incredibly stupid. Von Ketteler’s luck was hardly better than mine. By taking a shot at Sun Bing, he had set in motion the creation of a legend that Sun’s martial skills were so advanced he could redirect bullets in midair, while his followers could fire a fowling piece without aiming and not only bring down a powerful horse but put a hole in its rider’s ear. The Magistrate assumed that von Ketteler had already sent his telegram, but even if he hadn’t, it was only a matter of time. For all he knew, Yuan had already left Jinan for Gaomi, and his only hope of keeping his head attached to his shoulders was to capture or kill Sun Bing before His Excellency arrived.

The County Magistrate watched as his militiamen, under the command of Liu Pu, approached the fortified town at a crouch from a position in front of the Imperial Right Guard troops, who treated ordinary citizens with the ferocity of wolves or tigers, but as soon as fighting broke out, they were as gutless as mice. They started out in a loose formation, but each step nearer to the fortified wall drew them closer together, like chickens huddling for warmth. Though he had no battle experience, the Magistrate had read everything Lord Wenzheng had written many times, and he knew that a tight formation was an invitation to be wiped out by fortress defenders. He wished he’d given them a bit of basic training before heading into battle, but it was too late now. They pressed forward, drawing closer and closer to the wall, which appeared unmanned; but he knew by the puffs of smoke rising every few yards above the wall and the smell of porridge cooking that there were people on the other side. He had learned from Lord Wenzheng’s military writings that defenders of walls did not prepare pots of boiling porridge to satisfy their appetite; the real purpose was something he knew only too well, yet tried not to think about. His militiamen stopped when they were but a few yards from the protective wall, and began the attack—musketeers shooting their fowling pieces, archers letting their arrows fly. The anemic sound of gunfire—some twenty or so shots altogether—was no demonstration of military might. Then the guns fell silent. Some of the archers’ arrows had sailed over the wall; others were lucky to have made it to the wall, a showing that failed to match even that of the musketeers. It was more like a children’s game than anything. After firing their fowling pieces, the men knelt in place and reached for the powder horns hanging from their belts. The horns were actually bottle gourds coated with tung oil, which made them glossy and strikingly attractive. In earlier days, when the Magistrate had led his musketeers out searching for bandits and highwaymen, those twenty gleaming powder horns had been a source of pride. Now, seen alongside the Imperial Right Guard and German battle formations, they looked like toys. The kneeling men finished loading their fowling pieces with powder, fired off a second scattered volley, and stormed the fortified wall, filling the air with battle cries. Last year’s straw on the ten-foot gently sloped wall quivered under the onslaught of running feet. Or was it the County Magistrate’s quivering heart? A pair of palanquin bearers ran up carrying a ladder. Years of carrying a palanquin had left them with a prancing gait that was in evidence even now; they no longer knew how to actually run. Despite the fact that this was an assault against an enemy fortification, they moved as if they were carrying the County Magistrate’s chair through the countryside. As soon as they reached the wall, they leaned the ladder up against it, and still there was no sign of defenders; the Magistrate was prepared to thank his lucky stars. Now that the ladder was ready, the bearers steadied it for their comrades, who began climbing with their fowling pieces and their bows and arrows. Three men were on the ladder, the first having just about reached the top of the wall, when the heads of Boxers in red kerchiefs appeared on the other side; they dumped full pots of steaming porridge onto the county militiamen. The screams were like stakes driven into the Magistrate’s heart. At any minute, he felt, the accumulated filth in his colon would empty into his trousers, and he had to bite down on his lower lip to hold it in. He watched as his men fell backward into their comrades, who had already begun beating a chaotic, panicky retreat to the raucous delight of the Boxers on the wall. But then a regimental bugler gave a signal to the better-trained Imperial Right Guards, who shouldered their rifles and opened fire on the fortified wall.

After watching the defenders repel the first assault on their fortification by the Imperial Right Guard with boiling water, hot porridge, homemade bombs, bricks, roof tiles, and rocks, even a couple of powerful and enormous local cannons, the Magistrate began to wonder if he had underestimated Sun Bing. Up till then, Sun had impressed him merely as a self-styled mystic; he had never entertained the thought that the man might actually be a military genius. Performing onstage had given him the same knowledge the Magistrate had acquired through extensive reading, and not just in military theories, but in practical applications that produced results. The Magistrate was comforted to see the mighty Imperial Right Guard suffer the same setback as his own ragtag militia; it was the sort of outcome he could almost revel in. As his anxieties vanished, they were replaced by resurgent courage and self-confidence. But now it was time for the Germans. He glanced at von Ketteler, who was training his field glasses on the fortified wall, blocking a view of his face, except for his cheeks, which were twitching. Not only had his soldiers, who had taken up positions behind the Imperial Right Guard, not mounted an assault, they had actually moved far back to the rear. Something was in the works. Von Ketteler lowered his field glasses and faced the scene with a smile of contempt before turning to his artillerymen and shouting a command. The stick figures leaped into action, and in a matter of seconds a dozen cannon shells screamed overhead on their way to the fortification, like a formation of crows, sending geysers of white smoke into the air on both sides of the wall, followed by deafening explosions. The Magistrate saw shells make direct hits on the wall itself, shattering bricks and tiles and flinging the shards high into the air, mixed here and there with human body parts. Another volley pounded eardrums, and this time many more body parts flew through the air. Howls of pain and anguish rose from behind the wall, whose pine gateway had been reduced to rubble. At this point, von Ketteler waved a red flag handed to him by his adjutant, a sign to his foot soldiers to begin the assault on the gateway’s yawning gap, rifles at the ready, battle cries on their lips, long legs striding forward. The Imperial Right Guard, having regrouped, launched their assault from a different direction, leaving behind the Magistrate’s wounded militiamen, who lay in a depression in the ground and wept piteously. The Magistrate’s mind was in a state of shock; this time, he knew, Masang Township was doomed, and a bloodbath awaited its thousands of residents. The most prosperous township in all of Gaomi County would simply cease to exist. In the face of German swagger, the Magistrate’s love for the common man was reborn, although he knew that the situation had deteriorated to the point where he was helpless to alter the outcome. Even if the Emperor himself made an appearance, He would be unable to halt the Germans, for whom total victory was assured. Symbolically, he now stood with the citizens behind the fortification, and he fervently hoped that they might escape with their lives, heading south before the enemy soldiers entered town. They would, of course, be forced to cross the Masang River, but villagers who live near water know how to swim. There was, he knew, a squad of Imperial Right Guardsmen lying in ambush on the southern bank of the river, but he was confident that many of the villagers would be taken to safety downriver. The Guardsmen would not fire on women and children as they crossed the river, he assumed; they were, after all, Chinese.