“For both of us,” my gongdieh said jubilantly.
“Who first, you or him?”
“Do you really need to ask?” my gongdieh replied forthrightly. “As they say, ‘Relatives tend to favor each other.’”
Dieh said nothing in response; he merely smiled and nodded. But then, as if a sheet of paper had been removed, his smile gave way to a face the color of pig iron. He turned to the prisoner’s escorts.
“Unlock the shackles!” he ordered.
Unsure of what to do, they looked around, as if waiting for a command from someone. My dieh repeated himself, impatiently:
“Unlock the shackles!”
One of them stepped up and, with trembling hands, unlocked my gongdieh’s chains. Now freed, he moved his arms around to limber them up, eyed the instruments of execution, and, as if this was the moment he’d waited for, strode confidently up to the pine plank, which was considerably narrower than his body, and lay down on his belly.
The plank, which Dieh had commissioned from the county’s finest carpenter, was as slick as glass. It had been placed across a hog-butchering rack that I’d used for more than a decade. By now the wood, saturated with pig’s blood, was as heavy as a bar of iron. It had required four strapping yayi to carry it over from our yard, forced to take ten or more breaks along the way. From where he lay on the wooden plank, my gongdieh turned his head toward us and asked modestly:
“Like this, Qinjia?”
Ignoring the question, my dieh reached under the stand to retrieve the leather strap we’d readied. He handed it to me.
About time, I was thinking. I snatched the strap out of Dieh’s hand and began to tie up my gongdieh just the way I’d practiced it. My gongdieh was not pleased.
“You must not think much of me, worthy son-in-law,” he said.
My dieh, who was watching my every move from right beside me, reached down to retie a knot I’d bungled. My gongdieh huffed and puffed to show his displeasure at being tied down. He was overdoing it, I thought; so did my dieh, who had to remind the man sternly:
“Don’t be so stubborn, Qinjia. I’m not sure you will be in control of your body when this trial of strength and will commences.”
But my gongdieh’s complaints kept coming, even after I’d strapped him down tightly on the wooden plank. Dieh tried to slip his finger between the strap and the man—he couldn’t. That was how he wanted it, and he nodded to show he was satisfied.
“Begin,” he said softly.
I went over to the knife hamper and removed the knife I’d used on the rooster a short while ago. With it I sliced open my gongdieh’s pants to expose his buttocks. After laying the oil-saturated mallet next to my hand, Dieh selected the sandalwood stake that seemed the smoothest, and wiped it down with an oilcloth. Taking a position to the left of my gongdieh, he held the stake in both hands and placed the pointed end, which was as round as a calamus leaf, at a spot just below my gongdieh’s tailbone, as he continued to complain, loudly and obstinately, interspersed with snippets of Maoqiang opera, as if what was about to happen was of no concern to him. But I could tell from the slight tremors in his voice and the twitching of his calf muscles that deep down he was tense and fearful. My dieh, who by then had stopped conversing with my gongdieh, held the stake tightly; I saw a serene expression on his red face as he raised his head and gave me an encouraging, expectant look. His affection toward me was plain to see, meow meow, and I knew there wasn’t a better dieh anywhere in the world. How lucky I was to have such a wonderful dieh, meow meow, and that was all made possible by my mother’s lifelong devotion to the Buddhist way. Dieh signaled with his chin for me to begin. So I spat in my hands, leaned to one side and took a step backward, and dug in my heels until I was anchored like a stake in the ground.
I picked up the mallet and gave the butt end of the sandalwood stake a light tap to see how it felt. Meow meow, not bad, no trouble at all. Now the real pounding began, neither fast nor slow, and I watched as my pounding drove the stake into my gongdieh’s body, inch by inch. The sound it made wasn’t heavy——beng——beng——beng——meow meow——not even loud enough to cover the sound of my gongdieh’s heavy breathing.
As the stake penetrated more deeply, my gongdieh’s body began to shake; despite the fact that he was strapped down so tightly he couldn’t move, every muscle in his body convulsed, causing even the heavy plank under him to move violently. But I kept pounding——beng——beng——beng——keeping in mind my dieh’s instructions: “Son, you must use only half the strength in your arm.”
I saw my gongdieh’s head shake uncontrollably. He seemed to be stretching his neck out of shape. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I’d never have believed that a man could do that to his neck. Fiercely stretching it out——stretch——stretch——stretch——as far as it would go, until, like a leather strap about to snap in two, his head looked like it was on the verge of separating itself from his body. Then his neck snapped back with incredible force, until it completely disappeared, as if his head were growing straight out of his shoulders.
beng——beng——beng——
Meow meow——
My gongdieh’s body was heating up; his clothes were drenched with sweat. Whenever he raised his head, I saw rivulets of sweat coursing down from his damp hair, sweat that was a sticky yellow, like rice soup straight from the pot; and when he turned his head toward me, I saw how puffy his face had gotten, looking like a bronze-colored basin. His sunken eyes reminded me of those butchered pigs I puffed up before skinning them, meow meow, just like the hollow eyes of a puffed-up pig.
pa——pa——pa——
Meow . . .
The sandalwood stake was nearly halfway in——meow . . . sweet-smelling sandalwood . . . meow . . . Up to this point, my gongdieh had not uttered a sound. The look on Dieh’s face showed his admiration toward the man. Long before we began, Dieh and I had striven to anticipate every situation that might arise during the execution. Dieh’s greatest fear was that my gongdieh would fill the air with wild shrieks and howls that would unnerve me, a neophyte, at my first execution, and that I’d start doing things wrong, like driving the stake too hard and damaging the internal organs. To keep that from happening, he’d wrapped a pair of date pits in cotton, ready to stuff into my ears if his fears were borne out. But my gongdieh still hadn’t made a sound, except for heavy breathing that was louder and huskier than any I’d ever heard from a buffalo pulling a plow. He did not bellow in pain, nor did he weep or beg for mercy.
pa——pa——pa——
Meow . . .
Dieh was sweating, too, something he never did, meow, and I noticed a slight tremor in his hands as he continued guiding the stake. He was getting anxious; the look in his eyes made that clear, and that worried me. Meow, Sun Bing clenching his teeth and refusing to cry out was not something we’d hoped for. We’d gotten used to shrieks of pain when we experimented on that pig, and in more than ten years of slaughtering pigs, there had only been one mute, and that animal had nearly been my undoing. For weeks I’d suffered nightmares in which the pig looked at me and sneered. Cry out, gongdieh, I beg you to cry out! Meow meow, but not a sound. My wrist was getting sore, my legs were weakening, my head felt swollen, my eyes were failing me and had begun to sting from invading sweat; the stench of dried rooster blood was making me nauseous. A panther’s head had replaced Dieh’s human head, and black fur now covered those lovely hands. Black fur also grew on my gongdieh, whose head, which kept rising and falling, was now that of a huge bear. His body had grown dramatically, as had his strength, while the leather strap holding him down was stretched thin and brittle, ready to snap. That was when my hand slipped. Carelessly, I hit Dieh’s paw instead of the butt end of the stake; with an audible moan, he dropped his hand. I swung again, harder this time. The stake flew out of Dieh’s hands and arched upward. The tip obviously went somewhere it wasn’t supposed to, injuring something inside Sun Bing and sending a stream of blood running down the length of the st
ake. A shriek erupted from Sun Bing’s mouth, meow meow, more hideous than I’d heard from any of the pigs I’d slaughtered. Sparks flew from Dieh’s eyes.
“Careful!” he said under his breath.
I wiped my face with my sleeve and took several deep breaths. In the midst of howls that got louder and louder, I began to calm down. My wrist was no longer sore, my legs were strong again, my head was no longer swollen, and my vision returned, meow. Dieh had regained his human face, and my gongdieh no longer had the head of a bear. Pumping myself up as my strength surged back, I recommenced pounding the stake:
beng——beng——beng——
Meow meow——
There was no stopping Sun Bing’s howls now, shrieks that drowned out all other sounds. The stake was back in the right position, guided by Dieh as it inched its way deeper into him, between his vital organs and his backbone . . .
Ow——oh——ahh——yeow——
Meow meow mew——
Disturbing sounds emerged from inside his body, like cats in heat. What was that? I wondered. Are my ears deceiving me? Strange strange really strange, there are cats in the stomach of my wife’s father. I was on the verge of losing my concentration again, but before that happened, I received calm assurances from Dieh. The louder Sun Bing screamed, the more comforted I was by the smile on Dieh’s face. Even his eyes, which had narrowed to a slit, were smiling. He looked like a man who was enjoying a leisurely smoke and listening to opera, not someone inflicting the cruelest form of punishment on a man, meow meow . . .
The stake finally broke through Sun Bing’s skin just above his shoulders, making a small tent of his collar. My dieh’s original idea was to have the stake emerge from Sun Bing’s mouth, but for someone who had sung opera all his life, a stake through the mouth would have ended that possibility, so he decided to have it emerge from between his shoulder blades. I laid down the oily mallet, picked up my knife, and cut open the collar of his shirt. Dieh signaled me to keep pounding, so I picked up the mallet and swung it another ten or fifteen times, meow meow, until the same length of stake impaling Sun Bing was visible top and bottom. Sun Bing’s howls continued without weakening. Dieh examined the points of entry and exit, in each of which a trickle of blood had stuck to the wood. A contented look spread across his face. I heard him breathe a huge sigh of relief. I did the same, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.
Meow . . .
————
9
————
Under Dieh’s direction, four yayi lifted the pine plank, with my gongdieh on it, off the rack and carried it carefully up the Ascension Platform, which was taller than the rooftop of any house in town. The platform was next to the shed, connected by a long, gently sloping ramp of rough wood and some logs to make it easy to negotiate. And yet the four strong men were sweating profusely, leaving damp footprints on the wood as they climbed. Sun Bing, who was strapped tightly to the plank, was still howling, but he was losing his voice, and his energy level was dropping fast. Dieh and I followed the men up the ramp to the spacious top of the platform, whose new flooring smelled refreshingly of pinesap. A three-foot-long crossbar of white wood had been attached to a spot just below the top of a thick pine pole that had been erected in the center of the platform, creating a frame that looked like the cross I’d seen at the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
The yayi gently laid down the plank to which Sun Bing was attached and retreated to the side to await further instructions. Dieh told me to cut the leather straps holding Sun Bing to the plank. His body immediately expanded, and his limbs flailed wildly, but that was the only movement the stake would allow. So as not to completely sap what strength he had left and, at the same time, to protect against injury to his internal organs, with me looking on, Dieh had the yayi pick Sun Bing up and tie his legs to the dark pole and his hands to the crossbar. He was now standing upright in the center of the platform, but only his head enjoyed freedom of movement. Out came the curses:
“Fuck your old granny, von Ketteler——fuck your old granny, Yuan Shikai——fuck your old granny, Qian Ding——fuck your old granny, Zhao Jia——fuck your old granny——ow——!”
Black blood streamed from his mouth and ran down onto his chest.
Meow meow . . .
————
10
————
Before walking down off the platform, I took a look around, and my heart suddenly seemed to contract, so violently was I having trouble breathing, meow . . .
All four sides of the parade ground were packed with people, bright sunlight glinting off their heads. The only reason for that, I knew, was that all those heads were wet with sweat. Sun Bing’s curses merged with the pigeons soaring above us and spread out in all directions, like waves rushing to the shore. Soldiers—foreign troops and Yuan’s government troops—stood as motionless as posts amid the crush of local residents. There was someone on my mind at that moment, meow, know who that was? I searched among the onlookers. Found her! Two burly women were gripping my wife by the arms, and a tall woman was holding her tightly around the waist to keep her from taking even one step forward; she could only leap backward. I heard her cry out in agony, a knife-edged sound as sharp and as oily green as a bamboo leaf.
My wife’s wails threw my mind into upheaval. There was no denying that my feelings toward her had decreased after Dieh came into my life, but I’d had strong feelings toward her before that. She used to let me suck on her breasts even during the daytime, a thought that got an immediate response from my little pecker. Meow meow, I recalled how she said: “Go on, go to your dieh, go ahead and die in your dieh’s room!” When I wouldn’t move, she kicked me . . . memories of my wife’s virtues brought a soreness to my eyes and an ache to my nose, meow meow, I was nearly in tears. I started to run down the ramp, intent on going straight to my wife, so I could feel her breasts again and smell her. I’d give her the remainder of a malt candy Dieh had given to me that was still in my pocket. But a small heated hand grabbed hold of my wrist; I knew it was Dieh without having to look. He pulled me over to the pig-slaughtering rack, where another criminal awaited, along with an oil-steeped sandalwood stake that emitted a strong sesame aroma. Dieh got his message across without having to say a word; his hand said it all. Then his words pounded against my eardrums: “Son, you are doing something too important to let your thoughts run wild. You mustn’t cast aside the nation and the Imperial Court over a woman. I cannot let you commit a capital offense like that. Dieh has told you many times that once our faces are smeared with the blood of a white rooster, men in our line of work are no longer people, and the suffering of the human world is none of our concern. We are tools in the employ of the Emperor, visible, corporal manifestations of the law. How could you even think of giving your wife that piece of candy under these circumstances? Even if I said it was all right, Yuan Shikai and von Ketteler would not permit it. Take a good long look at the impressive figures sitting on the stage where your wife’s father once performed, and tell me if either one of them looks any less fierce than a tiger or a wolf.”
I looked over at the stage, where Yuan Shikai and von Ketteler sat stony-faced, pinpoints of green light boring down on me from both pairs of eyes. Quickly lowering my head, I followed Dieh back to the stand. Wife of mine, I muttered under my breath, stop crying. After all, that father of yours isn’t much of a dieh. Didn’t you say he once let a donkey bite you on the head? That sandalwood stake has him pinned to a post, and that’s a fact. If he’d been a good dieh, like mine, then you’d be right to cry if he was pinned by the stake. But don’t cry over one like Sun Bing. You probably think he’s in agony. Well, you’re wrong. This is the moment of his greatest glory. He and my dieh were celebrating that a while ago, meow meow.
Qian Ding was rooted to the spot, staring at something, though I knew he saw nothing. For someone supposedly in charge of the execution, he hadn’t done a damn thing and was worse than useless. Better to let Dieh and me do ou
r job without waiting for him to give orders. Since the prison van had brought us two Sun Bings, we were required to inflict the sandalwood death on both of them. The real Sun Bing was already up on the Ascension Platform, thanks to us, and while I could see on Dieh’s face a bit of unhappiness over minor mistakes during the process, overall he was pleased. With one success behind us, it was time to move to the next, and it would be another assured success. Two yayi carried the pine plank no longer needed for Sun Bing down from the platform and laid it across the slaughtering rack. My dieh turned to the man watching over the fake Sun Bing and said in a casual manner:
“Unlock the shackles.”
The man removed the heavy chains from the fake Sun Bing’s body, but unlike the real Sun Bing, who had immediately straightened up, this one slumped helplessly to the ground like a wax-softened candle. His face was ashen, his lips as pale as torn paper window covering. Only the whites of his eyes showed, a pair of tiny moth eggs. He was dragged up to the slaughtering rack, and when they let go of him, he crumpled to the ground like a pile of mud.
My dieh told them to lift him onto the plank atop the slaughtering rack, where he lay flat on his belly, twitching uncontrollably. Dieh signaled for me to strap him down, which I managed to do expertly. Then, without waiting to be told, I cut open his trousers with my paring knife; but when I pulled them back to expose his backside——Aiya! Would you believe it!——a horrible stench rose up from the bastard’s crotch——he’d shit his pants!
Dieh frowned as he placed the sandalwood stake just below the fake Sun Bing’s tailbone; I picked up my oily mallet and stepped forward. But before I could raise it for the first strike, an even more disgusting smell assaulted me. I threw down the mallet and backed off, holding my nose, like a dog assailed by the rotten smell of a skunk. Dieh called out in a stern, deep voice:
“Come back here, Xiaojia!”
The summons reawakened my sense of responsibility; I stopped backing up and, in a roundabout fashion, headed toward him. The fake Sun Bing’s insides were probably a pile of mush by now. Normal excrement didn’t smell that scary bad. Now what? Dieh was still holding the stake in place, waiting for me to start pounding, while I was wondering what would come out of his backside once the stake entered his body. Dieh had emphasized over and over the importance of what we were doing that day, and I knew I’d have to put that mallet to use even if he fired bullets out of his ass. Truth is, the smell that emerged from his asshole was worse than bullets could possibly have been. I took a tentative step forward despite the vomit rising into my throat. Show me some mercy, Dieh! If you make me follow through with this execution, I’m afraid I’ll die of suffocation before the stake pokes out from between his shoulders.