“Nothing can penetrate my body, not even shells fired by those dog soldiers!”
The Magistrate bent down, picked up a brick, and struck it against Sun Bing’s forehead before he had time to react. Sun fell backward, but the Magistrate caught him by the collar and held him up.
“Now show these people your indestructible body!”
Dark blood snaked down from Sun Bing’s forehead, like worms squirming across his face. Zhu Bajie swung his rake at the Magistrate, who jumped out of the way and flung his dagger; it stuck in Zhu’s abdomen, sending him tumbling off the brick pile with agonizing screams.
“Have you seen enough, fellow townsmen? These are your altar master and one of his senior aides. If they have failed to withstand even the modest brick-and-dagger efforts of a local official, how are they going to repel enemy cannon fire?”
The adherents’ confidence was shaken, to which the buzzing below the platform bore irrefutable witness.
“Sun Bing,” the Magistrate said, “as a man of valor, you must not send these people to certain death just to satisfy a personal desire. I have secured a promise from the German Plenipotentiary that he will withdraw his troops if you surrender to him. You have already accomplished something so astonishing it has captured the attention of the whole world, and if you are willing to sacrifice yourself in order to keep your fellow townsmen from harm, your legacy will live forever!”
“Heaven’s will!” Sun Bing said with a sigh. “It is heaven’s will.” Then he began to sing: “Ceding territory and vanquished by the Jin~~I forsake the Central Plain and abandon the common people, a decade of exploits squandered in a single day~~Humiliated, we sue for peace, remorse follows an overturned nest~~I fear the whale will swallow our land away. Do not falsely consign me to confinement with no end, for when I am gone, the Yue army will stay~~ Fellow countrymen, disperse!”
The Magistrate led Sun Bing down from the brick pile, taking advantage of the chaos below to head to the township’s main gate. He forgot that he had come on horseback.
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6
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As he single-handedly brought Sun Bing out of Masang Township, the Magistrate was bursting with a sense of his own valor. What happened next dealt him a crippling blow, causing anguish over the knowledge that he had made yet another imbecilic mistake, this one far worse than the humiliating hostage exchange. Instead of withdrawing his troops, as he had promised, von Ketteler ordered the artillery commander to open fire the moment the Magistrate and Sun Bing were standing before him—with a roar, twelve cannons sent deadly shells flying past the defenses. Explosions erupted all over town, sending flames and smoke into the air. The screams of dying townspeople raised a terrible cacophony as an enraged Sun Bing spun around and began throttling the Magistrate, who put up no resistance, welcoming the death he felt he deserved. But Ma Longbiao signaled his guards to pull Sun Bing away and save his colleague’s life. County Magistrate Qian Ding closed his eyes as Sun Bing railed against him. Though he was lightheaded, he heard the clamor of the German attack, and he knew that Gaomi County’s most prosperous township had ceased to exist. Who had caused that to happen? Sun Bing, perhaps, or the Germans. Or maybe he himself.
BOOK THREE
Tail of the Leopard
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Zhao Jia’s Soliloquy
I am Zhao Jia, preeminent executioner in the Board of Punishments for more than forty years, a period during which I lopped off more heads than I can count, a wagon or a boatload at least. In my sixtieth year, thanks to the grace of the Empress Dowager, I was permitted to return home in retirement with a grade seven official rank medallion for my cap. At first I planned to conceal my identity in a butcher’s home in a humble lane in this little town, to engage in moral cultivation, conserve my nature, and live out my allotted time, from duties released. What spoiled my plan was my qinjia, Sun Bing, who beguiled the local throngs, hoisted the flag of rebellion, and, by running afoul of the nation’s laws, ignited armed conflict with the alien beast. To unnerve unruly subjects and preserve discipline and the rule of law, the Shandong Governor, Excellency Yuan, invited me out of retirement to inflict the sandalwood death. A popular adage has it that “A scholar will die for a true friend, a bird will sing for an admirer.” So as to repay a debt of gratitude to Excellency Yuan, I picked up the knife again, my burden increased. Truly a case of:
In the early morning my hand burned as if it held hot cinders, and I knew that heavy responsibilities awaited my shoulders. (ya-ya-wei) The self-important Magistrate of Gaomi County, Qian Ding, felt that I, Zhao Jia, was unworthy of his attention (wei-ya-ya), yet a gift from the Emperor had him groveling at my feet. (ha-ha ha-ha) As they say, People are spirited when good things happen, a triumphant general has a broad view of the world. (ya-ya-ah-wei) I lost two of my teeth, for which Qian Ding’s right to an official’s cap has ceased. Old Zhao Jia sits in front of his house, wind in his face, as grumbling yayi carry favored objects, item by case by basket by chest, into my yard, north, south, west, and east.
—Maoqiang Sandalwood Death. Soliloquy and nonsense
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1
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The chief yamen attendant, Song Three, only yesterday a browbeating toady who took advantage of his favored position, a universally feared man whom people called Third Master, today stood at my door with an ingratiating smile. A petty servant who only the day before had stood tall and proud was now bent nearly double. You young men, in more than forty years, there is nothing I did not see in the capital, men and affairs, and I tell you that shitty little functionaries are all like that. If one from this county were to be the exception, then Gaomi would be outside the Great Qing Empire’s sphere of influence. He bowed deeply at my door and sputtered:
“Old . . . old . . . sir, if it please you, shall we carry in what you requested?”
I curled my lip and smiled inwardly. I knew that the “old” dripping from that dog’s mouth was intended to be followed by “master,” but clearly I was not his master. I think he wanted to be familiar by calling me Old Zhao, but I was sitting in a chair bestowed upon me by the Emperor Himself. Having no choice, he had to settle for “old sir.” A wily son of a bitch. With an almost imperceptible wave of my hand, I said, “Bring everything in.”
Mimicking a stage voice, he announced loudly:
“Bring the old gentleman’s things inside!”
Like a line of black ants, the yayi entered the compound carrying everything I had requested from Excellency Yuan. Each item was presented at the door for my approval:
A purple sandalwood stake five feet long and five fen wide, like the metal spike used by the Tang general Qin Shubao. The absolutely indispensable item.
A large white rooster with a black comb, legs tied with a strip of red cloth, which lay in the arms of a fair-faced yayi like a bawling, unhappy baby boy. A rare breed, one of which they had managed to find somewhere in Gaomi County.
New leather straps that still gave off the pungent smell of tanning salt, light blue in color, as if grass-stained.
Two wooden mallets with a reddish luster that had been used in an oil mill as far back, perhaps, as the reign of the Kangxi Emperor, two centuries before. Made from date-wood knots and in constant contact with oil, they had by now drunk their fill and were heavier than their metal counterparts. But they were nonetheless wood and not metal, and thus more yielding. Hardness with a bit of give was what I had specified.
Two extra-large baskets, each filled with a hundred jin of the finest white rice. The unique fragrance and blue tinge were proof that it had come from Tengzhou Prefecture, which produced rice of a quality unmatched anywhere in Gaomi County.
Two hundred jin of flour packed in four gunnysacks stamped with the Tonghe Refined Flour Mill trademark.
A basket of red-shelled eggs, one of which, a first egg, was stained by real blood. Just seeing it evoked the image of a little red-faced hen straining to la
y her first egg.
A sizeable cut of beef on a large platter, the sinews in the meat seemingly still vibrating.
An enormous cauldron, carried by two men, big enough to cook a whole cow.
Song Three was carrying half a jin of ginseng under his clothes. He took it out and handed it to me. Even through the paper wrapper, the bitter smell of fine ginseng was strong.
“Old sir,” Song Three said as his face lit up, “your humble servant personally visited the herbal shop and kept his eye on Qin Seven, that wily old fox, as he opened a catalpa cabinet with three locks and selected this ginseng from a blue and white porcelain jar. ‘If it’s not the real thing,’ he said, ‘you can twist my head right off my shoulders.’ This is prized ginseng. Just by carrying it next to me this little while and smelling its fragrance, your humble servant grew light on his feet, sharp-eyed and clear-headed; I felt like I was becoming an immortal. Just think what eating it could do!”
I peeled back the paper wrapping and counted the gnarled brown roots whose necks were tied together with a red string: one, two, three . . . five . . . eight altogether, each as thick as a chopstick at the top and as thin as a bean stalk at the end, from which a beard of fine hairs fluttered in the slightest breeze. Half a jin? I don’t believe it. I gave the man a cold glare. Well, the bastard bent at the waist and, with an unctuous smile, said softly:
“Nothing gets past the gentleman’s eyes. These eight roots only weigh four liang, not eight, but that is all Qin Seven had in his shop. He said you could boil them in water, pour the liquid into a dead man’s mouth, and he’d jump out of his coffin—do you think, sir . . .”
I waved him off without saying a word. What was I supposed to say? Chief yayi like him are craftier than demons and sneakier than a monkey. He got down on one knee to pay his respects. That, he thought, made up for the shortage. The swine was getting away with at least fifty liang of silver from the ginseng alone. But then he took a small chunk of silver out from under his clothes and said:
“This, old squire, is what your humble servant was given to buy pork, but it occurred to me that one does not fertilize another’s field, and since you have someone here in your home who slaughters pigs, why go elsewhere? This should be yours.”
Now, I knew that this little bit of silver was worth far less than what he had skimmed from the ginseng, but I thanked him anyway. “You put a great deal of thought into this,” I said, “so take the silver and divide it among your fellow yayi as a little bonus.”
“We thank the old squire!” He bowed again, as did the men who had come with him.
Money talks! A tiny bit of silver had that bastard calling me “old squire” instead of the vapid “sir.” If I’d given him a gold ingot, he’d be down on all fours, banging his head on the ground and calling me Daddy! Again I waved my hand, this time for him to get up, and without a trace of emotion, as if commanding a dog, said: “Go now. You and your men take all these things to the execution site, where you are to set up a big cook stove. Dump the sesame oil into the cauldron, fill the belly of the stove with kindling, and light it. Then set up a smaller stove for stewing the beef. After that, put up a mat shed near the stoves, place a vat inside, and fill it with water—be sure it’s fresh drinking water. And ready an earthen pot for herbal medicine along with a hollow horn used to medicate livestock. Carpet the ground in the shed with a thick layer of this year’s dry wheat straw. Then I want you personally to carry in my chair—you know its background, I take it. That master of yours and the Provincial Governor, Excellency Yuan, both got down on their knees and performed the rite of three bows and nine kowtows in front of it, so be very careful. If you so much as knock off a chip of paint, Excellency Yuan will skin you like a dog. Everything I’ve told you must be ready precisely at noon. If you are missing anything, go see your laoye.” The man bowed and proclaimed loudly:
“It will be as you say, Laoye.”
After they left, I checked off the remaining objects in the yard again: the sandalwood stake—the single most important item—would require much painstaking work, but nothing I would let those bastards watch, not with their unclean eyes, for that would spoil the effect. Nor would I let them hold the rooster, not with their dirty hands, for that would sap its power. I shut the gate; two armed yayi were posted to keep people out. Apparently our Magistrate Qian had seen to everything. Of course, I knew it was all for Excellency Yuan’s benefit. Oh, how he hated me, but my gums still bled from losing two teeth, and to teach the dog a lesson I needed to let him know who he was dealing with. I must not demean myself. I was not putting on airs or throwing my weight around, flaunting the fact that I had been favored by gifts from the Empress Dowager and the Emperor. And this assuredly was not a case of abusing public power to avenge a personal slight. It was a matter of national honor. Since I had been chosen to end the life of a man whose shocking criminal acts had gained worldwide attention, an extravagant display was both proper and necessary. The extravagance would belong not to me, but to the Great Qing Empire. Being laughed at by foreigners could not be tolerated.
Damn you, von Ketteler, I know you Europeans have used wooden stakes on people, but that is simply nailing someone to a crossbar and leaving him to die. I am going to let you see what a real punishment is like, one that is so exquisite, so refined, that the name alone reveals its resounding elegance: sandal—wood—death, a term with a rough exterior but an aesthetic core, displaying the patina and aura of antiquity. It is a form of punishment beyond the imagination of any European. Out on the street, my neighbors, all hopelessly rustic and shortsighted, craned their necks to get a peek into my yard. The looks on their faces revealed envy and admiration. Attracted by wealth, they were blind to the dangers that lay behind it, and my son was no less wooly-headed than they, though his muddled mind had its endearing qualities. Hearing my shifu tell how he had dismembered the woman with skin like pure snow had brought an end to my sexual life. Not even the lascivious women of the capital’s infamous Eight Lanes, who oozed lust, had the power to arouse me. At some point—when I cannot say—my beard stopped growing, and I was reminded of Grandma Yu: “My sons,” he said, “people in our profession are like palace eunuchs: Their potency has been excised with a knife, but their desire lives on. Our physical maleness remains intact, but our hearts have been purged of desire.” Grandma Yu said that when the day comes that the sight of a woman has no effect on you, when even the thought does not cross your mind, you are on the verge of becoming a totally accomplished executioner. Some decades ago, when I came home from an assignment and went to bed, a hint of potency remained, and I somehow sired a foolish but not totally worthless offspring, something hard to imagine, on the order of producing a stalk of sorghum from a fried seed. The reason I tried so hard to retire and return to my native home was that I had a son to return to, someone I wanted to train to become the Great Qing Empire’s next preeminent executioner. The Empress Dowager Herself once said that every profession has its zhuangyuan. I was one, and my son would follow in my footsteps. My daughter-in-law was a spirited woman who kept Qian Ding’s bed warm and subjected me to humiliation. But heaven has eyes, and saw to it that my qinjia fell into my hands. I laughed as I said to her: “Daughter-in-law, I must show him some favor, since we are related. All these things you see here are for him.”
She glared at me, eyes wide open, mouth agape, face pale with fright, unable to say a word in response. My son, who was crouching in front of the rooster, cackled as he asked:
“Will we be able to keep this rooster, Dieh?”
“Yes, we can keep it.”
“How about all this rice and flour and meat?”
“Yes, we can keep it all.”
“Ha-ha . . .”
He laughed happily. That son of mine may have looked like a fool, but knowing the value of good things kept him from being one. “All this will be ours to keep, son, but we have a job to do for the nation. Tomorrow at this time will be our moment to shine.”
“
Are you really going to kill my dieh?” my daughter-in-law asked piteously. A face that had always been radiant and sleek seemed suddenly covered by a coat of rust.
“That is his good fortune!”
“How do you plan to kill him?”
“With a sandalwood stake.”
“Swine . . .” Her shouts were eerie. “You bastard . . .”
She yanked open the gate and burst out of the compound, swaying her hips.
I sent the crazed young woman off with a resounding comment: “Dear daughter-in-law, I am going to see that your dieh’s name will live forever, that his legend will become the stuff of grand opera, just you wait and see!”
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2
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I told my son to shut the gate as I placed the length of sandalwood on top of the flesh-and-blood-stained slaughtering rack, and had him fetch a saw, which I used to cut the wood in two lengthwise. Saw teeth biting into the wood produced the harsh, ear-piercing sound of metal on metal; sparks flew from the blade, which was too hot to touch, and a strange burning odor assailed my nose. Picking up a plane, I then painstakingly shaved the two halves into stakes with blunted tips and tapered edges, slightly rounded, like the leaves of a chive plant. Once that was done, I used sandpaper, coarse at first, then fine, turning the stakes over and over as I worked, until they shone like mirrors. True, I had never carried out a sandalwood execution, but I knew instinctively that success in this epochal event lay in the quality of the instrument. A job of this magnitude required meticulous preparation, something I had learned from Grandma Yu. The sanding alone took me half the day—a sharp ax makes the best kindling, or, as the adage goes, “The best work requires the finest tools.” I had no sooner sanded the two treasures to perfection than a yayi knocked at the gate to report that Gaomi County Magistrate Qian Ding’s workers had erected something called an Ascension Platform on the parade ground in front of the Tongde Academy in the center of town, one that adhered to my specifications and was sure to become the stuff of legend for a century or more. The mat shed I had requested was also in place, and sesame oil was churning in the large cauldron, while beef stewed in its smaller companion. I sniffed the air, and there it was, the heavy fragrance of sesame oil and meat carried on the autumn wind.