Sandalwood Death (62 page)

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Once the sun was up, the cordon of government soldiers around the shed was replaced by a contingent of German soldiers that ringed the parade ground, facing out. Once they were in place, another contingent, this time of government troops, moved in and took up positions around the parade ground, but facing in. Finally, six government troops and six German soldiers marched in and took their positions: one at each corner of the shed, one at each corner of the Ascension Platform, and four in front of the opera stage. Two of the four men at our shed were foreign; the other two were Yuan’s troops. They all had their backs to the shed, standing at attention, as if competing to see who could stand the straightest.
Meow meow
, straight as an arrow.

As he fingered his prayer beads, Dieh looked like a meditating old monk, Amita Buddha. Amita Buddha, my wife said that a lot. My eyes, like awls, bored into Dieh’s hands.
Meow meow
, they were uncommon hands; the Great Qing Empire’s hands, the nation’s hands, the hands of the venerable Empress Dowager Cixi and the ageless Emperor. My dieh’s were the hands They used to kill anyone They wanted dead. If the Empress Dowager said to my dieh: “Slaymaster, go kill someone for Me,” my dieh would say, “As you wish!” If the ageless Emperor said: “Slay-master, go kill someone for Me,” my dieh would say, “As you wish!” My dieh had wonderful hands. Still, they were a pair of little birds; in motion, they were like feathers.
Meow meow
. I still remember how my wife once said to me, “Your dieh’s hands are abnormally small,” and as I looked at those hands, I couldn’t help feeling that he was somehow not an ordinary human being. If not a ghost, he had to be an immortal. On pain of death, you would never believe that those hands were capable of killing a thousand people. Hands like his belonged to a midwife. Where I come from, we call a midwife an auspicious grandma. Auspicious Grandma, Grandma Auspicious, ah-ya-ah, and I suddenly understood why people in the capital referred to him as Grandma. He was a midwife. But then again, midwives are all women, and my dieh is a man. Or is he? Of course he is; I’ve seen his little pecker when I bathed him. It’s like a little frozen green carrot, heh-heh . . . What are you laughing at? Heh-heh, a little carrot . . . Idiot son.
Meow meow
, can men really be midwives? Wouldn’t a male midwife be a laughingstock? And wouldn’t he have a clear view of a woman’s privates? And wouldn’t that be all her menfolk needed to beat him to death? I didn’t know what to think, and the harder I tried, the more confused I became. To hell with it. Who’s got time to waste on stuff like that?

My dieh’s eyes snapped open; he draped his prayer beads around his neck, stood up, and went to check the cauldron of oil. I could see our upside-down reflections in the oil. The surface was brighter than a mirror, and so clear I could see every pore in our faces. Dieh lifted one of the sandalwood stakes out, breaking the smooth surface and turning my reflection into the long face of a goat. What a shock! All along, my true form has been that of a goat, with a pair of horns.
Meow meow
. What a disappointment. Dieh’s true form is a black panther, the County Magistrate is a white tiger, my wife is a white snake, and me? I’m a bearded goat. A goat! What kind of animal is that! I didn’t want to be a damned goat! Dieh examined the stake in the sunlight, like a master blacksmith examining a newly forged sword. Bright threads of oil dripped back into the cauldron, creating little eddies on the surface of the slightly gummy oil. He waited till the last of the oil had dripped from the stake before taking out a piece of white silk and wiping the stake dry. The silk quickly absorbed all the oil residue. Dieh laid the silk on the cauldron stand, then held the stake in two hands—one on the butt, the other on the tip—and tried to bend it. I detected a slight arch when he did that; it returned to its original shape as soon as he loosened his grip. After placing the stake on the cauldron stand, he lifted out the second stake, first letting all the oil drip off, then wiping it dry with the silk, and tried to bend it. As before, when he loosened his grip, it returned to its original shape. A look of satisfaction spread across his face. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him so happy, and it affected me the same way,
meow meow
. What a wonderful thing, the sandalwood death, for it made my dieh happy,
meow meow
.

Dieh carried the two sandalwood stakes into the shed and laid them on a small table. He then knelt on the straw mat and bowed down to pay his respects, as if an invisible apparition were ensconced behind the table. His obeisance completed, he got up and sat in his chair, shielding his eyes with his hand as he gazed heavenward. The sun had begun its climb in the morning sky; normally by this time I’d have sold off all that day’s fresh pork, and it would be time to slaughter dogs. Having noted the sun’s progress, without looking at me, Dieh said:

“You can kill the rooster, son!”

Meow meow~~mew~~

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6

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My heart soared when Dieh said that!
Meow meow meow
, Dieh, dear Dieh, my dear dieh! My seemingly unending wait was over, and the long-delayed moment of excitement had arrived. I selected a razor-sharp paring knife from the knife hamper and showed it to Dieh. He nodded. Then I went up to the rooster, which began flapping its wings; its tail feathers jerked up, and out came a puddle of white excrement. On most mornings at this time, it would be perched on the wall at home crowing loudly, but today it was tied to a post. With the knife held between my teeth, I reached down and grabbed it by its wings and held its legs down with my foot. Dieh had told me this rooster was for its blood, not for eating, so I placed a black bowl under its neck to catch the blood. The rooster, burning hot, was struggling to free its head from my hand. I squeezed hard. Behave yourself, damn it, how am I supposed to do this if you don’t behave yourself? Pigs are stronger than you, dogs meaner, and they don’t scare me, so what makes a rooster think it can scare me? Fuck you. I plucked its neck clean, stretched it taut, and made a pass with my knife. The skin parted. No blood appeared at first, which made me nervous, because Dieh had said that if you kill a rooster prior to an execution and it doesn’t bleed, things will not go well that day. I made a second cut, and this time it worked: purplish blood gushed from the wound, like the stream a young boy makes when he gets up after a good night’s sleep.
Splash splash, meow meow
. More blood spurted than the bowl could take, and some of it spilled over the side. “There, Dieh,” I said as I tossed the limp bird to the ground, “that does it.” With a broad smile, he waved me over and told me to get down on my knees. Then he plunged both hands into the blood, almost as if he expected them to drink it up. Dieh’s hands come equipped with mouths, I was thinking, and can drink blood. He smiled.

“Close your eyes, son,” he said.

I closed them, as he said. I am an obedient child. Wrapping my arms around his legs, I banged my forehead into his knees and sputtered:
Meow meow
. . . “Dieh Dieh Dieh Dieh . . .”

Dieh clasped my head between his knees.

“Raise your head, son,” he said.

So I did, and I was looking into his impressive face. I am an obedient child. Before I had a dieh, I obeyed my wife, but after that I obeyed my dieh. That thought reminded me of my wife, whom I hadn’t seen for a day and a half. Where had she gotten to?
Meow meow
. . . Dieh rubbed his blood-soaked hands all over my face, sending a stench much worse than pig’s blood into my nostrils. I hated the idea of having my face smeared with rooster blood, but Dieh had the final word on that. If I didn’t obey him, he’d send me into the yamen to be paddled, five ten fifteen twenty swats from a big wooden paddle that would leave me with a bloody behind.
Meow meow
. Dieh plunged his hands back into the bowl and smeared more blood over my face. Including my ears. Whether he meant to or not, he got some of it in my eyes, and—
ouch
!—that stung,
meow meow
. It also blurred my vision, veiling everything in a red haze. With a
mew mew
I complained, “Dieh, Dieh, you’re blinding me.” I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands and mewed loudly. Everything got brighter the more I rubbed, until the light itself was blinding. Oh, no, that’s bad,
meow meow
, the magical tiger whisker was working again,
meow meow
, no more Dieh, in front of me now was a panther. It was standing on its hind legs and dipping its front paws in the blood bowl, staining them red with pearls of blood dripping from the black fur, making it look like the paws were injured. He reached up and smeared blood all over the coarse fur of his face, turning it red as a cockscomb. I was well aware that Dieh’s true form was a panther, so that was nothing to make a fuss over. But I didn’t want the power of that tiger whisker to last and last—just a little while would be plenty. But its power this time wouldn’t fade away,
meow meow
, and what would it take for things to return to normal? No matter how upset I was, there was nothing I could do about it. I was torn between worries and happiness. Worries over my strange inability to see human beings, happiness over the knowledge that no one but me had the ability to see people’s true forms. I took a look around, taking in all of Yuan’s government troops and the German soldiers standing guard over the parade ground—long-tailed wolves, dogs with hairless tails, plus a few raccoons and other animals. There was even one that looked like a cross between a wolf and a dog; its uniform identified it as a junior officer. It was probably the offspring of a wolf-dog mating. I gave it a name: lobo-dog. It was sneakier than a wolf and meaner than a dog; anything it bit was doomed,
meow meow
.

After using up all the blood in the bowl on his face and front paws, my panther dieh focused his bright black eyes on me and treated me to a barely perceptible smile, lips parted just enough to show his yellow teeth. Even though the change in his appearance was enormous, the expressions and mannerisms were unmistakably Dieh’s. I returned his smile,
meow meow
. He swaggered over to the purplish-red chair; his tail made his pants stand up in back. He sat down and narrowed his eyes, looking perfectly serene. I surveyed the area around us, yawned, mewed once, and sat on a board next to him, within view of the slanting shadow of the Ascension Platform on the ground. As I stroked Dieh’s tail, he stuck out his rough tongue and began licking the hair on my head.
Mew
, I wheezed just before falling asleep.

I was awakened by raucous noise,
meow meow
, a mixture of horns and trumpets and gongs and Western drums, and all of it punctuated by the low rumble of cannon fire. I saw that the shadow cast by the Ascension Platform was much shorter than before and that blinding lights were making their way onto the parade ground from the street. At some point the green tarpaulins covering the cannons on the edge of the parade ground had been removed to reveal the weapons’ blue steel. Four wolfhounds behind each of the cannons were in motion, and even though they were quite a ways away, the hair on their bodies did not escape my sharp eyes. The barrels of the cannons were like turtles’ necks, recoiling back into their shells each time a shell was spat out, followed by puffs of white smoke. The wolfhounds moved like puppets behind the cannons, comical little figures. My eyes began to sting badly, and it only took a moment’s thought to realize that I was sweating. I wiped my face with my sleeve; it came away red. That was nothing to worry about, but the scene in front of me had changed again. My dieh no longer wore the face of a panther, but his body was still that of a panther, and his pants rose up behind him because of the tail. Then the heads of the soldiers standing guard were once again human, sitting atop wolfhounds’ bodies. It was a comforting sight, and it made me feel better, knowing I was still living in the world of humans. And yet the look on Dieh’s face puzzled me, since it didn’t look especially human. But he was still my dieh, and when he licked my head, I moaned with pleasure,
mew~~

A palanquin covered in blue wool was part of the contingent emerging onto the parade ground, preceded by wild animals with human heads, all carrying banners and gongs and umbrellas and fans. The chair was carried by horses with human heads and humans with horse heads, plus a few humans with cow heads. A thoroughbred horse trailed the palanquin, a bizarre wolf-headed human in the saddle, and I knew that was the German Plenipotentiary from Qingdao, Clemens von Ketteler. I’d heard that my gongdieh had shot the man’s first horse out from under him with a shotgun, so the one he was riding now he’d probably taken from one of his subordinates. More horses preceded a prison van that held a pair of cages. I thought the sandalwood death was reserved for my gongdieh alone. Why two cages? A long procession spread out behind the prison van, flanked by crowds of local residents. What I actually saw was a sea of hairy skulls, but I knew they were local residents. I was secretly thinking of someone, someone I tried to spot among all those dark heads. Do I need to say who that person was? No. I was searching for my wife. I hadn’t seen her since my dieh had sent her racing fearfully out of the house yesterday morning. I had no idea if she’d eaten or drunk anything, and though she was a white snake, she was a good white snake, like Bai Suzhen, the heroine of
The Legend of the White Snake
. She was Bai Suzhen, and I was her lover, Xu Xian. But who was the Green Snake Demon and who was the sorcerer Fa Hai? Of course. Yuan Shikai was Fa Hai. My eyes lit up. I see her, I see her! She’s standing with a bunch of women! Her flat white head is raised, her purple tongue flicks in and out, she’s slithering this way.
Meow meow
, I felt like crying out, but my dieh’s panther eyes were fixed on me.

“Son,” he said, “stop looking around!”

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