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

  Son, I am using the time before Eminence Qian’s palanquin arrives to fill you in on family affairs. I was afraid that if I did not say this to you today, there might not be another chance.

  ————

  3

  ————

  Your grandfather contracted cholera when I, your dieh, was ten years old. The sickness took hold in the morning, and by noon he was dead. Every family in Gaomi County lost someone to the disease that year, and no house was spared the sound of wailing. People were too busy burying their own to give thought to their neighbors’ troubles. Your grandmother and I—I know this sounds terrible—dragged your grandfather like a dead dog over to the nearest potter’s field and buried him in a makeshift grave. We had no sooner turned to head back home than a pack of wild dogs ran over and dug him up out of the ground. I picked up a piece of broken brick and went after those dogs with carnage on my mind. But they just glared at me through bloodshot eyes, baring their fangs and baying. They feasted on the dead until their whiskers were slick with grease, their bodies sleek and powerful. Fierce as a pack of little tigers, they were a fearful enemy. Your grandmother pulled me away.

  “Your grandfather isn’t the only one, boy,” she said, “so let them go ahead and eat.”

  Knowing that I had no chance to ward off those crazed dogs, I backed off and watched as they tore the clothes off your grandfather and sank their fangs into his body. They went first to the internal organs and finished by gnawing at his bones.

  Five years later, typhoid fever came to Gaomi County and carried off your grandmother, who, like her husband, fell ill in the morning and was dead by noon. But this time I dragged the corpse over to a haystack and cremated it. Now I was on my own, all alone. All day long I roamed the land with a stick in one hand and a wooden ladle in the other, begging for food. At night I slept anywhere I could, staying warm in a haystack or by the lingering heat from a stove frame. Back then, there were lots of young beggars like me, and that made survival especially hard. On some days I knocked on hundreds of doors without getting even the scrapings of a sweet potato for my effort. I was on the verge of starvation when I recalled something your grandmother had told me about a cousin who lived and worked in a yamen in the capital. Life was so good for him, he often sent gifts of silver back home. I decided on the spot what to do. Off to the capital.

  I survived the trip by begging or doing occasional odd jobs for people. And so it went, breaking up the journey by staying in a place long enough to earn a little travel money, my progress slow but steady—hungry one day, full the next—until I reached my destination. Joining a bunch of liquor traders, I entered Peking through Chongwen Gate. I vaguely recalled your grandmother’s telling me that her cousin worked at the Board of Punishments; by asking along the way, I made it to the Six Boards District, where I walked up to one of the two hard-looking soldier-types who guarded the Board of Punishments gate and was sent flying by the back of his sword. A setback, to be sure, but not nearly enough for me to abandon my plan, not after traveling all that distance. All I could do was hang around the Board, pacing back and forth until my luck changed. The street was fronted by restaurants with fancy entrances, places with names like “Where Immortals Gather” and “The Inn of Sages,” all bustling with hungry customers whose carriages and other conveyances interrupted the flow of traffic. The air was heavy with the smells of cooked meat, fish, and poultry. The street was also home to nameless food stands where stuffed buns, wheat cakes, flatbreads, bean curd, and other treats were sold . . . who could have guessed that there could be so many good things to eat in Peking? No wonder people flocked to the city. I’ve been a survivor all my life, and have enviable judgment. I do not let opportunities pass me by. I did odd jobs for the restaurants, working for leftovers, and since Peking was so big, begging was easier than here in Gaomi. Rich diners would order a table filled with meat or fish or poultry, take a few bites, and leave the rest, which made it possible for me to keep my belly full without spending anything. Then, after filling up with someone’s leftovers, I’d find a quiet spot out of the elements and sleep. In the warmth of the sun’s rays, I heard my skeleton creak and pop as it grew bigger and stronger. By my second year in Peking, I was a head taller than when I’d arrived. I was like a thirsty rice shoot after a spring rain.

  But then, just when I had settled into a carefree life with plenty of food, a gang of beggars attacked me and beat me half to death. The leader, a scary-looking one-eyed man with a knife scar on his cheek, fixed his good eye on me and said:

  “You little bastard, what rock did you crawl out from under? Who said you could fill your belly with food in my territory? If I ever see you around here again, I’ll break your dog legs and gouge out your dog eyes!”

  Sometime in the middle of the night, I crawled out of a foul-smelling ditch and curled up beside a wall, hurting all over, shivering, and hungry. I thought I was going to die. But then, through a haze, I saw your grandmother standing in front of me.

  “Don’t let this get you down, son,” she said. “You are about to enjoy a stroke of good luck.”

  My eyes snapped open—there was nothing there but the autumn wind making the tips of tree branches moan, nothing but the last chirps of some half-dead crickets in the rotting weeds, that and a sky full of winking stars. But when I closed my eyes again, your grandmother was still there, telling me that my luck was about to change. I opened my eyes, and she was gone. Early the next morning, the sun rose round and red in the eastern sky, making the dew on dead grass shimmer beautifully. A flock of crows flew by, trailing caws behind them on their way to the south side of the city, for what reason I could not say. I would later learn the reason. I was so hungry I could barely stand, and I contemplated going over to beg for something to eat from one of the food stands. What held me back was the fear that I would run into that one-eyed beggar dragon. But then I spotted a piece of cabbage in a little pile of charcoal. I ran over, grabbed it, and carried it back to my spot beside the wall, where I took big crunching bites, just as mounted soldiers in gray uniforms with red borders and hats with red tassels emerged from the Board of Punishments and broke into a trot down the street, newly smoothed over with yellow earth. They had swords on their hips and whips in their hands. Every human who got in their way tasted the whips, as did the dogs. The street was swept clean of obstacles in no time. A few moments later, a prison van rolled out through the gate, pulled by a scrawny mule whose protruding backbone was as sharp as a knife and whose legs looked like spindles. I could not make out the features of the shaggy-haired prisoner standing in the caged wagon, whose ungreased axles creaked as it rolled along, swaying from side to side. The way ahead was led by the horsemen, who had ridden up and back earlier and were followed by a dozen or so men blowing horns, making a noise that could have been mistaken for weeping cattle. A clutch of officials on horseback came next, all in fancy court attire. In the middle was a rotund man with a thin moustache that looked as if it were pasted on. Another ten or fifteen mounted soldiers brought up the rear. Two men in black, with sashes around their waists and red caps on their heads, walked alongside the prison van, each holding a broadsword. They appeared to have ruddy complexions—at the time, I was not aware that they had smeared rooster blood on their faces. They had a spring in their steps, but their footfalls made no noise. I could not take my eyes off them. Fascinated by their impressive bearing, I wondered if I would ever get a chance to learn how to walk that way, like a big black cat. All of a sudden, I heard your grandmother say from behind me:

  “That’s your uncle, son.”

  I spun around. There was nothing behind me but the same old gray wall, not a trace of your grandmother. But I knew that her spirit had spoken to me. So I shouted out, “Uncle!” at the same time that someone behind me—or so I thought—shoved me up close to the prison van.

  I had no idea what I was doing, but the procession—officials, cavalrymen, everyone—froze. A horse reared up with a loud whinny and threw
its rider. I ran up to the swordsmen in black and called out, “Uncle, at last I’ve found you!” All the bitterness and sorrow I’d experienced over the years came pouring out in a cascade of tears. The two men in black were dumbstruck, their mouths hanging open as they exchanged surprised looks, as if to say:

  “Are you that beggar’s uncle?”

  But before they could gather their wits, soldiers came riding up from front and back, shouting and brandishing their swords until I was hemmed in. I felt a cold shadow settle above my head and immediately felt an enormous hand close around my neck. Whoever it was lifted me off the ground, and I thought he was going to break my neck. With my arms and legs flailing in the air, I kept shouting “Uncle! Uncle!” Until whoever it was flung me to the ground, where, with a splat, I crushed a frog in the road. Worst of all, my face landed in a pile of still-warm horse manure.

  A fat, dark-faced man on an enormous roan charger behind the prison van wore a robe with a white leopard embroidered on the chest and a plumed hat studded with crystalline blue gems. One look told me that he was a high official. The soldier got down on one knee and, in a resounding voice, announced:

  “Excellency, it is a little beggar.”

  Two of the soldiers dragged me up in front of the official, where one of them jerked my head back by my hair to give the man on horseback a good look at me. He barely glanced at me. With a heavy sigh, he cursed:

  “The little prick has a death wish! Toss him off the road!”

  “Sir!” the soldiers barked in unison as they picked me up by my arms, dragged me to the side of the road, and flung me into the air with a “Fuck off!”

  Accompanied by their curse, I landed headfirst in the thick mud of the ditch.

  Climbing out of that ditch was no easy feat, especially because I couldn’t see a thing. By groping my way along, I got my hands on some weeds, with which I managed to clean the muck from my face, just in time to see that the execution procession was heading south, raising clouds of dust on the road. My mind was a blank as I sat there staring at the horses and their riders. But then your grandmother’s voice sounded in my ear:

  “Go watch them, son; he is your uncle.”

  I looked around, trying to find your grandmother, but all I saw was the dirt road, some steaming horse manure, and a bunch of sparrows, their heads cocked, their beady black eyes searching for undigested food in the manure. There was no sign of your grandmother. “Niang!” I felt so bad I started to cry, my wails stretching out longer than the ditch I was sitting in. Oh, how I missed your grandmother, and how she disappointed me. You told me to go up to my uncle, Niang, but which one was he? They picked your son up like a dead cat or a rotting dog and flung him into a filthy roadside ditch. I’m lucky I wasn’t killed. You must have seen what happened. If your spirit has the power, Niang, light up my path ahead so I can find my way out of this sea of bitterness. If it does not, then please do not talk to me anymore, and stop interfering in my life. Let me live or die, with my little pecker pointing to heaven, on my own. But she ignored my plea. The sound of her aged voice kept swirling inside my head, over and over:

  “Go watch them, son; he is your uncle . . . he is your uncle . . .”

  So I ran like a maniac to catch up with the procession. One of the benefits of running fast was that your grandmother’s voice was stilled. But as soon as I slowed down, that maddening, nagging voice found its way back into my ears. Running like a madman was the only way I could escape the mutterings of her floating spirit, even if it meant getting flung into another foul ditch by soldiers in their red-tasseled straw hats. I fell in behind the procession as it passed through Xuanwu Gate and headed down the narrow, bumpy road on its way to the execution ground by the open-air market. It was my first time on this infamous road. By now there are layers of my footprints on it. The scenery outside the wall had a more desolate feel than inside. Dark green vegetable plots separating the squat houses on both sides of the road were planted with cabbages, turnips, and beans on trellises, the leaves now withered, the vines all jumbled. People working plots had little or no interest in the raucous procession passing in front of them. A few cast stony glances behind them, but most went on about their business without looking up.

  As the procession neared its destination, the twisting road opened out onto a broad execution ground in which a pack of bored observers were milling around a raised platform. There were several beggars, including the one-eyed dragon who had beaten me. This was obviously his territory. The mounted soldiers spurred their horses on to form a line. The pair of magnificent executioners opened the cage and pulled the prisoner out. His legs must have been broken by the way they dragged him along the ground. The useless limbs reminded me of wilted onions. They carried him up onto the execution platform, where he crumpled to the floor as soon as they let go. He was all flesh and no bones. The onlookers began to make noise, shouting their disapproval of the condemned man’s poor showing. “Coward!” “Softy!” “Get up!” “Sing a line of opera!” The shouts seemed to have an effect on the man, who began to stir, a little bit at a time, flesh and bones, with painful slowness, but enough to earn him a round of applause and shouts of encouragement. He pushed himself up onto his knees as best he could. The crowd demanded more:

  “Good man, show some bravado! Say something. How about ‘Take off my head and leave a bowl-sized scar!’ or ‘I’ll be back in twenty years, better than ever!’”

  The man’s mouth twisted as he cried out tearfully:

  “Heaven is my witness, I am innocent!”

  The spectators gazed at the man in stunned silence. The two executioners were impassive, as always. And then your grandmother’s spirit spoke to me from behind.

  “Shout, son, be a good boy and shout. Call to them. He’s your uncle!”

  There was a sense of urgency in her voice, as the pitch rose and grew increasingly shrill. Cold, shuddering blasts of air hit the nape of my neck. If I hadn’t shouted, she’d have throttled me. There was no way out, so, risking retaliation from one of the fierce sword-wielding soldiers, I cried out in a choked voice:

  “Uncle—”

  Every eye in the crowd was on me in an instant—the official witnesses, the soldiers, the beggars, though I’ve forgotten what the looks in those eyes were like. But not those of the prisoner; I’ll never forget the look in his eyes. His blood-encrusted head jerked upward as he opened his bloodshot eyes and looked straight at me; I fell backward as if I’d been struck by red-tipped arrows. The next thing I heard was the voice of the dark, fat official in charge:

  “It’s time—”

  Trumpets blared, and the soldiers pursed their lips to make mournful sounds as one of the executioners grabbed the prisoner’s queue and pulled his head forward to expose the scruff of his neck for the other man, who raised his sword, turned slightly to the right, then handsomely to the left, and—swish—the glinting blade arced downward, truncating a scream of tragic innocence. The man in front was already holding aloft the severed head. He and the other man now stood shoulder to shoulder, faced the witnessing official, and shouted in unison:

  “May it please Your Excellency, the sentence has been carried out!”

  The dark, fat official, who was still sitting astride his horse, waved his hand in the direction of the severed head, as if seeing off an old friend, then reined his horse around and clip-clopped away from the execution ground. Whoops of excitement burst from the crowd of onlookers, as the beggars boldly rushed up to the stand to await the moment when they could climb up and strip the man’s clothing off. Blood was still pumping from the corpse, which had pitched forward and was resting on the stump of its neck, conjuring up the image of an overturned liquor vat.

  That was the moment everything became clear. The official witness to the execution was not my uncle, nor were the executioners or any of the soldiers. My uncle was the man whose head had just been lopped off.

  That night I went looking for a willow tree with a low-hanging branch, and when I
found it, I took the sash from around my waist, made a noose, tossed it over the branch, and stuck my head in. Dieh was dead, and so was Niang; and now my uncle, the only family member I had left, had just been beheaded. There wasn’t another soul in this world I could turn to. Ending my life now was the only answer. But at the very moment I was about to rub noses with King Yama of the Underworld, a huge hand grabbed me by the seat of my pants.

  It was the man who had just beheaded my uncle.

  He took me to a restaurant called The Casserole, where he ordered a plate of bean curd and fish heads. While I was eating—just me—he sat watching me. He didn’t even touch the tea the waiter had brought him. When I finished with a loud belch, he said:

  “I was your uncle’s good friend, and if you are willing, you can be my apprentice.”

  The impressive image he’d created earlier that day reappeared: standing tall and unmoving, then quickly turning slightly to the right, his right arm circling the air like a crescent moon, and swish—my uncle’s head was raised high in the air, accompanied by his scream of innocence . . . your grandmother’s voice sounded again in my ear, but now it was uncommonly gentle, and the sense of gratitude she felt was clear and sustaining.

  “My dear son,” she said, “get down on your knees and kowtow to your shifu.”

  I did that, and with tears in my eyes, though if you want to know the truth, my uncle’s death meant nothing to me. I was concerned only about myself. The cause of those hot tears was the realization that my daydream was about to come true. I wanted nothing more than to become a man who could lop off someone’s head without blinking. Those two men’s carriage and icy demeanor lit up my dreams.

  Son, your dieh’s shifu was the man I’ve mentioned to you hundreds of times—Grandma Yu. He later told me that he had been sworn brothers with my jailer uncle, who had committed a capital crime, and that it had been his good fortune to die by his hand. Swish, faster than the wind. Grandma said that when his sword severed my uncle’s head, he heard it say: