Mo Yan - Sandalwood Death

A young yayi in uniform emerged from a path alongside the Western Parlor and, bent at the waist, stole over to us. He beckoned for us to follow him back onto the path, past the Western Parlor, the tariff room, the chief clerk’s office, and the dispatch office all the way up to the lockup, which was in front of the Prison God Temple.

Flames shot thirty feet into the air in the square fronting the lockup. The mess hall kitchen was on fire. Clouds beget rain, fire creates wind. Thick, choking smoke made us cough. The scene was as chaotic as ants on the move, as raucous as a disturbed crows’ nest. Soldiers scurried back and forth with buckets of water. We took advantage of the confusion to slip past the outer cells and the women’s jail, as if our feet were oiled, spry as cats, undetected, all the way up to the condemned cells. The stench nearly made us gag. The rats there were bigger than cats; fleas and ticks were everywhere. Windowless cells were fronted by low doors, the interiors black as pitch.

As he unlocked the door, Master Four urged us to move fast fast fast! Zhu Ba tossed his firefly sack inside, abruptly flooding the cell with a green glow. I saw my dieh; his face was bruised black and blue, his mouth caked with dried blood. His front teeth had been knocked out. He no longer looked human. My shout of “Dieh!” was cut short by a hand over my mouth.

Dieh had been chained, hands and feet, to a “bandit’s stone” in the center of the cell. It was immovable, no matter how much strength was employed. In the flickering firefly light, Master Four removed the padlock on the chains and set him free. Then Xiao Shanzi took off his jacket, which he’d worn over tattered clothes the same color as my dieh’s, and sat down in the vacated spot, where he let Master Four put the chains on him as the others quickly dressed my dieh in the jacket Xiao Shanzi had taken off. With a disjointed stammer, my dieh sputtered:

“What are you people doing? What do you want?”

Master Four clamped his hand over his mouth.

“Dieh,” I said softly, “snap out of it. It’s me, Meiniang. I’ve come to save you.”

He was still making noise, trying to talk, so Zhu Ba doubled up his fist and hit him in the temple, knocking him unconscious. Xiao Luanzi bent down, slipped his hands under my dieh’s arms, and hoisted him onto his back.

“Let’s get out of here,” Master Four urged softly.

We squeezed out of the cell at a crouch and, as the confusion outside continued, ran all the way to the path behind the Prison God Temple, where we spotted a pack of yayi carrying water headed our way from the secondary gate. Magistrate Qian Ding was standing on the gateway steps shouting:

“Stay in line; careful with that water!”

Hidden in the shadows of the Prison God Temple, we froze in place as a line of red lanterns led the way for a high-ranking official who materialized on the pathway in front of the side gate, a cluster of bodyguards behind him. If that wasn’t the Shandong Governor Yuan Shikai, I don’t know who it was. We watched as Qian Ding ran up, knelt at the man’s feet, and sang out:

“Your humble servant has failed to keep the mess hall from catching fire and disturbing Your Honor. I deserve to die a thousand deaths!”

We heard Yuan Shikai respond with a command:

“Send someone to the jail to see if anyone has escaped, and do it this minute!”

We watched the Magistrate scramble to his feet and run with attendants in the direction of the condemned cells.

We held our breath, wishing we could disappear into a hole in the ground as our ears filled with shouts from Master Four in the prison yard. The cell doors clanged open. We kept our eyes peeled for a chance to run, but Yuan Shikai and his bodyguards were in no hurry to vacate the path in the center of the courtyard. After what seemed like an eternity, the Magistrate puffed his way up to Yuan Shikai, fell a second time to one knee, and announced:

“Reporting to Your Excellency: I have examined the jail cells. All prisoners are present and accounted for.”

“What about Sun Bing?”

“Chained to a stone.”

“Sun Bing is the Imperial Court’s foremost criminal. Tomorrow he is to be executed, and your heads are on the line if anything goes wrong.”

Yuan Shikai turned and headed back to the Official Guesthouse, sent off by the County Magistrate with a courtly bow. We breathed a sigh of relief, but it was short-lived, for my dieh, that damned fool, chose that moment to regain consciousness, and with a vengeance. He stood up, disoriented, and blurted out:

“Where am I? Where are you taking me?”

Xiao Luanzi grabbed his leg and pulled him to the ground. But he rolled over, out of the shadows and into the moonlight. Xiao Luanzi and Xiao Lianzi pounced on him like marauding tigers, each grabbing a leg to pull him back into the shadows. He fought like a madman.

“Let me go, you bastards!” he shouted. “I’m not going anywhere with you!”

His shouts caught the attention of the soldiers, whose bayonets and brass buttons reflected the cold light of the moonbeams.

“Run, boys!” Zhu Ba said, keeping his voice low.

Xiao Luanzi and Xiao Lianzi let go of my father’s legs and stood there for a moment, not knowing what to do, before running straight at the onrushing soldiers, whose shouts merged with crisp gunfire: “Assassins!” Like a hawk, Zhu Ba pounced on my dieh and, unless my eyes deceived me, began to throttle him. I knew at once that he was trying to kill my dieh to keep them from subjecting him to the sandalwood death. Hou Xiaoqi grabbed my hand and dragged me over to the path on the western edge, where we were met by a gang of yayi coming straight at us. Without missing a beat, Hou Xiaoqi flung his monkey at the men. With a screech, the animal attached itself to the neck of one of the petty officials, who voiced his agony with appropriate shrillness. Still holding me by the hand, Hou Xiaoqi ran from the dispatch office back to behind the Main Hall. Yayi were streaming from the Central Hall, and my ears rang with the sound of gunfire, the roar of flames, and men’s shouts, all coming from the courtyard beyond the side gate, while my nostrils were assailed with the smell of blood and fire. The moon abruptly changed color, from silver to blood red.

We kept running, heading north, desperate to make it to the rear garden, our only chance of escape. More and more footsteps sounded behind us; bullets whizzed overhead. When we reached the side of the Eastern Parlor, Hou Xiaoqi jerked a time or two, and the hand holding mine fell away weakly as steamy green blood, like newly pressed oil, streamed from a hole in his back. I stood there, not knowing what to do, when a hand reached out and pulled me off the path, just in time for me to see soldiers run down the path past me.

I had been saved by the County Magistrate’s wife, who quickly led me into a private room in the Eastern Parlor, where she removed my straw hat and stripped the tattered jacket off me, rolling it into a ball and tossing it out a rear window. Then she shoved me down onto the four-poster bed and under the covers. Next she lowered the silk drapes on both sides of the bed, with her on one side and me on the other, in total darkness.

I heard the loud voices of soldiers, who were now in the rear garden. Raucous human noise rose everywhere—the garden’s front and rear paths, the compounds fronting the two main halls, and the side courtyards. Then the moment I’d feared arrived: the pounding of footsteps had reached the Eastern Parlor courtyard. “Commander,” someone said, “these are the Magistrate’s private quarters.” The next sound I heard was that of a whip landing on someone’s back. The drape was pulled back, and a scantily clad, chilled body slipped into my bed and pressed up against me. It was, of course, the Magistrate’s wife, the body my lover had once embraced. There was a knock at the door; the knock then became a pounding. We held each other tight, and though I could tell she was trembling, I knew that I was more frightened than she. The door flew open; she pushed me to the far side of the bed and covered me from head to toe before parting the drape. Her hair was a mess, I assumed; she was dressed for bed, and she must have looked like someone who has been startled out of a deep sleep.