Sandalwood Death: A Novel (Chinese Literature Today Book Series)

  He recalled that his shifu kept a secret book with brittle, yellowing pages and crude drawings, with coded writing. According to Grandma Yu, the book, Secrets of a Penal Office, had been passed down by a Ming Dynasty grandma; it comprised lists of punishments, their concrete applications, matters to take into consideration, and copious illustrations. In a word, it was a classic text for executioners. Shifu pointed out to him and his fellow apprentices an illustration and accompanying text that described in detail the particulars of the slicing death, of which there were three levels. The first level required 3,357 cuts. For the second level it was 2,896, and for the third, 1,585. Regardless of how many cuts there were to be, he recalled hearing Shifu say, the final cut was the one that ended the prisoner’s life. So when the cutting began, the spacing between cuts must be precisely designed to fit the sex and physique of the condemned individual. If the prisoner died before the required number of cuts had been reached or was still alive after, the executioner had not done his job well. His shifu said that the minimum standard for the slicing death was the proportional size of the flesh removed—when placed on a scale, there should be only minimal differences. To that end, during an execution, the man with the knife must have his emotions under complete control. His mind must be clear and focused, his hand ruthless and resolute; he must simultaneously be like a maiden practicing embroidery and a butcher slaughtering a mule. The slightest hesitancy or indecision, even a spur-of-the-moment thought, would affect the hand in unwanted ways. This, the pinnacle of achievement, was exceedingly difficult to attain. The musculature of a human being varies from spot to spot in density and coherence. Knowing where to insert the knife, and with how much pressure, requires a skill that, over time, had become second nature. Gifted executioners, such as Elder Gao Tao and Elder Zhang Tang, sliced not with a knife and not with their hands, but with their minds and their eyes. Among the thousands of slicing deaths carried out down through the ages, none, it seems, had achieved perfection and been worthy of the term “masterpiece.” In virtually every case, what was accomplished was merely the dissection of a living human being. That appeared to explain why fewer cuts were required for slicing deaths in recent years. In the current dynasty, five hundred was the apex. And yet, precious few executions lasted nearly that long. Board of Punishments executioners, in respectful devotion to the sacred nature of this ancient profession, performed their duties in accordance with established practices handed down over time. But at the provincial, prefectural, sub-prefectural, and county levels, dragons and fish were all jumbled together—the good mixed with the bad—and most practitioners were hacks and local riffraff who did shoddy work and exerted minimal effort. If on a prisoner sentenced to five hundred cuts they made it to two or three hundred, that was considered a success. Most of the time, they chopped the victim into several chunks and quickly put him out of his misery.

  Zhao Jia flung the second piece of meat cut from Qian’s body to the ground. To an executioner, the second piece of the victim is a sacrifice to the earth.

  When Zhao was displaying the piece of meat on the tip of his knife for all to see, he was, he felt, the central figure, while the tip of his knife and the flesh stuck on it were the center of that center. The eyes of everyone in attendance, from the supremely prideful Excellency Yuan down to the most junior soldier in the formation, followed the progress of his knife, or, more accurately, the progress of Qian’s flesh impaled on that knife. When Qian’s flesh flew into the air, the observers’ eyes followed its ascent; when Qian’s flesh was flung to the ground, the observers’ eyes followed its descent. According to his shifu, in slicing deaths of old, every piece of flesh cut from the victim was laid out on a specially prepared surface, so that when the execution was completed, the official observer, along with members of the victim’s family, could come forward to count. One piece too many or too few was a serious transgression. According to his master, one slapdash executioner of the Song Dynasty made one too many cuts, and the complaint by the victim’s family cost him his life. Public executioner has always been a precarious profession, since a poor performance can itself be a death sentence. Consider: you must remove pieces of roughly the same size, the last cut must be the fatal one, and you must keep track of every cut you make. Three thousand three hundred and fifty-seven cuts require a full day, and there were times, by order of the sentencing authority, when the process was stretched out to three or as many as five days, making the work that much harder. A staunchly dedicated executioner invariably collapsed from fatigue at the end of a slicing death. As time went on, executioners heeded the travails of their predecessors by flinging away the excised flesh rather than laying it out for others to count. Old execution grounds were known for the wild dogs, crows, and vultures that prowled the area; slicing deaths provided feast days for these visitors.

  He dipped a clean chamois into a basin of salty water and wiped the blood from Qian’s chest. The knife holes now resembled the fresh scars of severed tree branches. Then he made his third cut on Qian’s chest. Also about the size of a bronze coin, it was made in the shape of a fish scale. This fresh wound abutted the edge of one of the earlier wounds but retained its distinct shape. His shifu had said that this had a name of its own—the fish-scale cut, for that is exactly what it resembled. The flesh exposed by the third cut was a ghostly white, from which only a few drops of blood poked out, the sign of a good beginning; that augured well for the entire process, to his immense satisfaction. Shifu had said that a successful slicing death was marked by a modest flow of blood. He had told him that the blow to the heart before the first cut constricted the victim’s major arteries. Most of the blood was then concentrated in his abdomen and calves. Only then can you make a series of cuts, like slicing a cucumber, without killing the victim. Absent this technique, blood will flow unchecked, creating a terrible stench and staining the body, which has a powerful effect on the observers and destroys the symmetry of the cuts—a real mess. To be sure, a lifetime of experience had equipped these men with a talent to deal with any unanticipated situation. They were not easily flustered or caught unprepared. For instance, if a heavy flow of blood made cutting difficult or impossible, the immediate recourse was to empty a bucket of cold water on the victim. The shock would constrict his arteries. If that did not work, a bucket of vinegar would. According to the Compendium of Materia Medica, vinegar is an astringent whose properties work to stanch the flow of blood. If that too failed, removing a piece of flesh from each calf served as a bloodletting. This last technique, however, normally led to an early death from a loss of blood. But Qian’s arteries appeared to be well constricted. Zhao Jia could relax, for indications were that today’s affair had a good chance of success, and the bucket of aged Shanxi vinegar on the ground near the post would not be needed. In the unwritten code of the profession, the shop that supplied a bucket of vinegar received no payment for it and was required to give the executioner a “vinegar reclaim fee” if it was not used. The vinegar had to be donated by the merchant, not sold, and a fee for its non-use was an extravagantly unreasonable demand. And yet the Qing Dynasty placed greater value on ancestral precedents than on the law. However outmoded or irrational a practice, so long as there was a historical precedent, it could not and must not be abandoned. To the contrary, it gained increased inviolability over time. In Qing tradition, a criminal who was about to be executed enjoyed the privilege of sampling food and drink at any establishment passed on his way to the execution ground, free of charge. And the executioner enjoyed the privilege of receiving a free bucket of vinegar as well as a fee for not using it. By rights, the vinegar should have been returned to the shop that supplied it, but it was sold to a pharmacy instead, for now that it had soaked up the blood airs of the executed criminal, it was no longer ordinary vinegar, but a cure-all for the sick and dying, and had acquired the name “blessed vinegar.” Naturally, the pharmacy paid for this bucket of “blessed vinegar,” and since executioners were given no fees for the tasks they perfo
rmed, they were forced to rely upon such earnings to make a living. He flung the third piece of flesh into the air, a sacrifice to the ghosts and gods. His apprentice announced:

  “The third cut!”

  Having flung away the third piece, Zhao went immediately to the fourth cut. Qian’s flesh was crisp, easy to cut, a quality he found only in criminals who were in excellent physical shape. Slicing up a criminal as fat as a pig or as skinny as a monkey was exhausting work. But beyond exhaustion, a messy job was inevitable. An apt comparison would be a fine chef forced to work with substandard ingredients. Even the most skillful preparation cannot produce an outstanding banquet without the finest ingredients. Or for a carpenter who lacks the right material for his task, even uncanny workmanship is inadequate to produce high-grade furniture. Shifu told him that during the Daoguang reign he was assigned the task of dispatching a woman who had conspired with her lover to murder her husband. The woman was as blubbery as a sack of starchy noodles, so loose that her flesh quivered whenever the knife touched her. The stuff he cut off her body was like frothy snot, and not even the dogs would eat it. And she shrieked like a banshee, howling and wailing that so upset him, a work of art was out of the question. He said there had been good specimens of her sex, women whose skin and flesh had the texture of congealed fat that cut with ease and precision. It was like cutting through autumn water. The knife moved on its own, without the slightest deviation. He said he had dispatched just such an ideal woman during the Xianfeng reign. She had been condemned, it was said, as a prostitute who had murdered one of her clients for money. According to Shifu, she was a woman of surpassing beauty, the sort of gentle, demure woman who draws people to her at first sight. No one would have believed that she could actually commit murder. He said that the greatest degree of compassion an executioner can bestow upon his victim is to do his job well. If you respect or love her, then it is your duty to see that she becomes a model for execution. If you truly respect her, then you must fearlessly make her body the canvas on which you display the highest standards of your artistry. It is no different from a renowned actor performing onstage. Shifu said that so many Peking citizens thronged to watch the beautiful prostitute suffer the slicing death that more than twenty people were crushed or trampled to death on the marketplace execution ground. He said that in the presence of such a beautiful body, it would have been a sin, a crime, not to put all he had into the task before him, heart and soul. More to the point, if he had made a mess of things, an angry crowd might have torn him to pieces, for Peking crowds at executions were harder to please than any other. He did a fine job that day, with the cooperation of the woman herself. Seen from one angle, it was, from start to finish, a stage performance, acted out by the executioner and his victim. Such performances were spoiled if the criminal overdid the screaming part; but a total lack of sounds was just as bad. The ideal was just the right number of rhythmic wails, producing sham expressions of sympathy among the observers while satisfying their evil aestheticism. Shifu said that he had gained an insight into people only after thousands of individuals had died at his hands over a stretch of decades: All people, he said, are two-faced beasts. One of those faces displays the virtues of humanity, justice, and morality, representing the three cardinal guides and five constant virtues. The other is the face of bloodsucking thieves and whores. The appetite for evil is stimulated in anyone who willingly watches the spectacle of a beautiful woman being dismembered one cut at a time, whether that person be a man of honor, a virtuous wife, or a chaste maiden. Subjecting a beautiful woman to the slicing death is mankind’s most exquisitely cruel exhibition. The people who flock to such exhibitions, Shifu said, are far more malicious than those of us who wield the knife. He said he spent many sleepless nights reliving every detail of that day’s execution, like a chess master replaying each move in a brilliant match that has forged his reputation. That night he mentally dismembered her body, then pictured it all coming back together. Her tearful yet melodic moans and shrieks swirled around his ears from start to finish in an unbroken stream. And the captivating odor that emerged from her body as it was being ravaged by his knife filled his nostrils. An ill wind struck the nape of his neck, a swoosh created by the beating wings of impatient, rapacious birds of prey. His infatuated recollections paused briefly at that juncture, like a pose struck by an actor on the operatic stage. At this point, little skin or flesh remained on her body, but her face was unmarked, and it was time for the coup de grace. His heart lurched as he sliced off a piece of her heart. It was deep red, the color of a fresh date; he held it on the tip of his knife like a precious gem as he looked into her ashen oval face, moved by the sight. He heard a sigh emerge from somewhere deep down in her chest. Sparks—not many, just a few—seemed to glimmer in her eyes, from which two large teardrops slipped down her face. He saw her lips move with difficulty and heard her say, soft as a mosquito’s buzz: “not . . . guilty . . .” The light went out of her eyes; the flame of life was extinguished. Her head, which had rocked back and forth throughout the ordeal, slumped forward, covered by a curtain of hair so black it looked as if it had just been taken out of a dyeing vat.

  Zhao Jia’s fiftieth cut completed the paring of Qian’s chest muscles. The first tenth of his work was now behind him. After his apprentice handed him a new knife, he took two deep breaths in order to normalize his breathing. Qian’s ribs were exposed, as he could see, connected by thin membranes. The man’s heart was pumping like a jackrabbit wrapped in gauze. He felt good about his progress so far. The flow of blood had been stanched, and the fiftieth cut had removed the chest muscles, just as he had planned. The sole blemish so far was that the valiant man bound to the post had not made a sound, had not yelled in pain. This flaw had turned what should have been a spirited drama into a mime performance that lacked appeal. In the eyes of these people, he was thinking, I am a butcher, a meat merchant. He deeply admired this Qian fellow, who, except for a few barely perceptible moans during the first two cuts, had not made a sound. He looked into the man’s face, and what he saw were: hair standing up straight, eyes wide and round, the dark pupils nearly blue, the whites now red, nostrils flaring, teeth grinding, and taut cheek muscles bulging like a pair of mice. The ferocity of that face secretly astounded him. Soreness crept into the hand holding the knife. If the victim was a man, tradition demanded that once the chest muscles had been pared away, next to be taken from the body were his genitals. For this, three cuts were permitted, and the size of the excised portions need not complement other portions. Decades of experience had shown his shifu that what male subjects feared most was not the loss of skin or tendons, but the treasured object between their legs. Not because it was especially painful—it wasn’t—but because it gave rise to a psychological dread and a sense of shame. Most men would choose to lose their head over losing their maleness. According to the shifu, once you have removed even the bravest man’s genitals, you have taken the fight out of him, the same effect as cutting the mane of a warhorse or the plume of a proud rooster. Zhao Jia turned away from the solemn and tragic face that was putting him on edge and sized up his flaccid organ. It was shriveled pathetically, like a silkworm tucked into its cocoon. I’m truly sorry, young friend, he muttered to himself as he picked it out of its nest with his left hand and, in one lightning-fast motion, sliced it off at its base. His apprentice announced:

  “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 unnerve
d 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: