Sandalwood Death (70 page)

“Uncle . . .” Li Pu fell to his knees and, his voice breaking with sobs, said, “please accept your unworthy nephew’s obeisance!”

I went up to him and raised him off his knees.

“Now this is where we say good-bye, worthy nephew.”

I turned and headed to the Tongde Academy parade ground.

Liu Pu fell in behind me.

“Uncle,” he said softly.

I looked back.

“Uncle!”

I walked back to him.

“Is there something else you want to say?”

“I, your unworthy nephew, want to avenge my father; I want to avenge the Six Gentlemen and my Uncle Xiongfei. By doing this, I would also extirpate the hidden evil that imperils the Great Qing Dynasty!”

“Do you plan to assassinate him?” I stopped to think for a moment. “Is this a deed to which you are irrevocably committed?”

He nodded decisively.

“Then I can only hope that you have better luck than your Uncle Xiongfei, worthy nephew.”

I turned and once again headed to the parade ground. This time I did not look back. The moon cast its light into my eyes, and I suddenly had the feeling that my heart was like a garden in which countless flowers were ready to bloom. Each of those blooming flowers was a rousing Maoqiang aria. Long and lingering, the arias swirled rhythmically in my head so that all my movements were musically cadenced:

Gaomi Magistrate leaves the yamen, heart full of sorrow~~meow meow~~autumn winds and cold moonbeams and loud drumbeats herald the morrow~~

The moon cast its light on my body, and on my heart. You moonbeams, how bright you are, brighter than I’ve ever seen before, and brighter than I’ll ever see again! I followed the path of moonbeams with my eyes, and what I saw was my wife lying in bed, her face as white as paper. She had dressed in ceremonial attire—phoenix headdress and tasseled cape—and laid a last note on the bed beside her. “The Imperial Capital has fallen,” she had written, “the nation is lost. A foreign power has invaded the country and partitioned the land. I have been graced by Imperial favor in all its majesty. I cannot live an ignoble life, on a par with the animals. A loyal minister dies for his country; a chaste wife dies for her husband. These virtues have been praised down through the ages. Your faithful wife has gone on ahead and is waiting for her mate to join her. Alas and alack, my sorrow is endless.”

My beloved! Knowing the path of righteousness, you have taken poison for the sake of our land. You have set a glorious example for me~~I have chosen to take the same route, for I too cannot live ignobly~~my death has long been planned. But my work is not yet finished, and I cannot die before the end of the story is told. Wait for me at Wangxiang tai~~once I have done what I set out to do, I shall join you and the emperors of old~~

The parade ground was overlaid with a solemn stillness; the moon soundlessly spilled its beams on the ground. Owls and bats cast gliding shadows from above; the eyes of feral dogs flashed on the edges. You pilferers of putrid flesh, are you waiting to feast on the bodies of those who lie where they died? No one has come to collect my subjects’ bodies, which lie in the moonlight waiting for the sun’s rays. Yuan Shikai and von Ketteler are engaged in revelry, drinking good wine and enjoying fine food brought to them from sizzling woks in the yamen kitchen. Are you not worried that I will put Sun Bing out of his misery? You must know that if I want to go on living, Sun Bing will not die. What you do not know is that I have no desire to go on living. I want to follow my wife’s lead and sacrifice myself for the Great Qing Nation after ending Sun Bing’s life. I want it to be his dead body that is the focus of your rail line ceremony, to let your train pass by a Chinese corpse as it rumbles down the track.

I staggered up to the Ascension Platform. Sun Bing’s Ascension Platform; Zhao Jia’s Ascension Platform; Qian Ding’s Ascension Platform. A lantern hung high above the platform, identified as belonging to the Main Hall of the county yamen. My gaze took in the listless yayi standing like marionettes at the platform’s edge, red-and-black batons gripped tightly in their hands. An earthenware pot in which herbal medicine stewed sat atop a small wood-burning stove directly beneath the lantern, sending steam into the air and spraying ginseng fragrance in all directions. Zhao Jia was sitting beside the stove, his narrow, dark face lit up by the fire’s light, his arms wrapped around his knees, on which he was resting his chin. He was staring intently at the flames licking out of the stove’s belly, like a youngster lost in dreams. Xiaojia was leaning against a post behind his father, legs spread apart to accommodate a container of sheep’s intestines, which he was stuffing into steaming cakes before cramming them into his mouth as if he were alone up there. Sun Meiniang was leaning against another post across from Xiaojia, her head lolled to the side, her face hidden behind a mass of uncombed hair. Looking more dead than alive, she had lost every vestige of her once-graceful bearing. I was able to distinguish the hazy outline of Sun Bing’s face behind the gauzy curtain. His low moans told me that he was barely hanging on. The stench of his body was drawing hordes of owls to the site, where they soared in the sky directly above, the silence broken by their frequent chilling screeches. Sun Bing, you should be dead by now,
meow meow
, that Maoqiang opera of yours is a fount of myriad feelings, and now the sound that has such complex implications—that
meow
—has actually made a wild dash out of my mouth,
meow meow
. Sun Bing, it all happened because I was so muddleheaded, blessed or cursed with a soft heart, always cautious and indecisive, a mind too cluttered to see through their cunning scheme. Keeping you alive cost the lives of too many of Northeast Gaomi Township’s residents and cut Maoqiang opera off from its future.
Meow meow
. . .

I woke the club-wielding yayi out of their stupor and told them to go home to sleep, that I would take care of things up on the platform. I’d just taken a heavy load from their shoulders, and they scooted down the plank, dragging their clubs behind them, as if they feared I’d change my mind; they vanished into the moonlight.

My arrival sparked no reaction from the two men up there, almost as if I were nothing but an empty shadow, or a minor accomplice. Well, they’d have been right, because that’s exactly what I was, one of their accomplices. I was trying to decide which of them to stab first when Zhao Jia picked up the medicine pot by its handle and poured its contents into a black bowl.

“Son,” he said with authority, “are you done eating? If not, finish later. I want you to help me pour this down his throat.”

Xiaojia, ever the obedient son, got to his feet. His monkey-like clownish airs had largely receded after what had happened earlier that day. He smiled at me, then parted the gauzy curtain of the enclosure, exposing Sun Bing’s body, which had shriveled considerably. His face had gotten smaller, his eyes bigger; I could count his ribs, and was reminded of a dead frog I’d seen down in the countryside, nailed to a tree by mischievous children.

Sun Bing moved his head when Xiaojia opened the curtain and began to mumble:

“Hmm . . . hmm . . . let me die . . . just let me die . . .”

It was a stirring snippet of speech, and it gave my plan even more cause and meaning, for now Sun Bing no longer wanted to live, having finally comprehended the sinful nature of trying to stay alive. Plunging my knife into his chest would grant him his wish.

Xiaojia willfully thrust an ox-horn funnel designed for medicating domestic animals into Sun Bing’s mouth, then gripped his head to hold it steady and let Zhao Jia slowly pour in the ginseng. A gurgling sound emerged from that mouth, emanating from deep down in his throat, as the mixture slid into his stomach.

“What do you say, Old Zhao,” I said in a mocking tone from where I stood behind him. “Think he’ll live till tomorrow morning?”

Suddenly on his guard, he turned and said, a bright, piercing light in his eyes:

“I guarantee it.”

“Granny Zhao is the author of a true wonder in the world of humans!”

“I could not have reached the pinnacle of my profession without the support of my betters,” Zhao Jia said humbly. “I cannot lay claim to achievements made possible by others.”

“Zhao Jia,” I said with a chill to my voice, “don’t be too quick to claim success. I do not think he will survive the night—”

“I will stake my life on it. If Your Eminence will grant me another half jin of ginseng, I can keep him alive another three days!”

I laughed out loud before reaching down and extracting a razor-tipped dagger from inside my boot. Knife in hand, I leaped forward to plunge it into Sun Bing’s chest. But the chest it penetrated was not Sun Bing’s. Seeing what was about to happen, Xiaojia had thrown himself between Sun and me. He slumped to the ground at Sun Bing’s feet when I pulled my knife out. Blood spurting from the wound seared my hand. Zhao Jia released a plaintive cry:

“My son . . .” He was disconsolate.

He flung the bowl in his hand at my head; I too let out a plaintive cry when the hot, fragrant liquid splashed on my face. The sound still hung in the air as Zhao Jia crouched down, like a panther about to pounce, and flung himself headfirst at me. His skull struck me flush in the abdomen, sending me flying, arms flailing, to the platform floor, face-up. He wasted no time in straddling me and digging his seemingly soft, delicate hands into my throat, like the talons of a bird of prey, at the same time gnawing on my forehead. Everything went dark as I struggled, but my arms were like dead branches.

Zhao Jia’s fingers loosened their grip at the very moment I saw my wife’s face above Wangxiang tai, and he stopped gnawing on my forehead. I rolled him off me with my knee and struggled to my feet. He lay on the platform floor, a knife in his back, his gaunt face twitching pitifully. Sun Meiniang stood over him, a dazed look in her eyes. The muscles in her pale face were quivering, and her features had shifted; she looked less human than demonic. The moonbeams were like water, like liquid silver; they were ice, they were frost. I would not see such brilliant moonbeams ever again. Looking past them, I believed I could see the worthy nephew of the Liu family suddenly appear in front of Yuan Shikai and, in the name of his father, and of the Six Gentlemen, and of the Great Qing Nation, draw a pair of shiny golden pistols, just as my brother had done . . .

My mind reeled as I got to my feet. I reached out to her. Meiniang . . . my beloved . . .

She screamed, turned, and ran down the plank. Her body looked like a mass of moldy cotton floating through the air, as if weightless. Was there any need for me to go after her? No, my affairs were coming to an end, and we would have to wait to meet again in another world. I pulled her knife out of Zhao Jia’s back and wiped the blood from the blade on my clothing. Then I walked up to Sun Bing and, with the light from the lantern and from the moon—the former was a murky yellow, the latter bright and transparent—looked closely into his tranquil face.

“Sun Bing, I have wronged you in so many ways, but it was not I who plucked out your beard.” With that heartfelt comment, I drove the knife into his chest. And when I did, brilliant sparks flew from his eyes, producing a bright halo around his face, brighter than the moonlight. I watched blood flow from the corners of his mouth, along with a single brief statement:

“The opera . . . has ended . . .”

As this novel was taking shape, friends asked me what it was about. I had trouble coming up with an answer, though I tried. Not until a couple of days after I handed the final manuscript in to my publisher, and I could breathe a sigh of relief, did it occur to me that it is all about sound. Each chapter title in the first and third parts—“Head of the Phoenix” and “Tail of the Leopard”—is in the style of speech of that particular narrator: “Zhao Jia’s Ravings,” “Qian Ding’s Bitter Words,” “Sun Bing’s Opera Talk,” and so on. In Part Two, “Belly of the Pig,” I employ an objective, omniscient narrator, though in fact it is in the style of a historical romance whose narration follows the oral tradition, complete with chorus—again, at bottom, sound. It was sound that planted the seed for the novel and drove its creation.

Twenty years ago, as I set out on the road to becoming a writer, two disparate sounds kept reappearing in my consciousness, ensnaring me like a pair of enchanting fox fairies and, in their persistence, often putting me on edge.

The first of those sounds—rhythmical, resonant, powerful, evoking a somber, blue-black color, weighty as iron and steel, and icy cold—was the sound of trains, specifically those on the historic Jiaozhou-Jinan line, which has linked the cities of Jinan and Qingdao for a century. For as long as I can remember, gloomy weather has been the backdrop for train whistles that sound like the mournful, drawn-out lowing of cows: hugging the ground, they pass through the village and enter our houses, where they startle us out of our dreams. They were followed by the crisp, icy sound a train makes as it crosses the majestic steel bridge over the Jiao River. Back then, the two sounds—the whistle and the wheels on the bridge—coalesced with the overcast sky and humid air to merge with my emotionally starved, lonely youth. Each time I was awakened by those two sharply contrasting sounds in the middle of the night, my head filled with vivid images from tales of trains and railroad tracks told to me by people of all kinds. They first appeared in the guise of sound, followed by visual forms as annotations of sounds. Put another way, the visual images were mental associations with sounds.

I heard, then saw the tracks of the Jiaozhou-Jinan rail line, which were laid around 1900, when my grandparents were infants, by gangs of pigtailed Chinese coolies who carried wooden stakes across fields some twenty li from my village under the direction of German civil engineers with equipment brought from home and, so I was told, inlaid with tiny mirrors. German soldiers then cut the queues off many strapping young Chinese men and buried them under railroad ties. Shorn of their queues, the men were instantly turned into useless, almost inanimate, objects. After that, other German soldiers transported Chinese boys on donkeys to a secret spot in Qingdao, where they trimmed their tongues with scissors so they could learn to speak German in preparation for becoming future managers on the completed rail line. A preposterous legend, obviously, as I learned later, when I asked the director of the Goethe Institute whether Chinese children had to have their tongues surgically trimmed to learn German. “Ja,” he said with a deadpan expression, “das ist korrekt.” Then he burst out laughing, proving the absurdity of my question. And yet this legend has gained staunch adherents over the years. We refer to people who can speak a foreign language as “trimmed tongues.” In my mind’s eye, I can see a long line of boys on donkeys walking along the muddy banks of the twisting Jiao River. Each donkey is carrying two baskets, with a little boy in each one. They have an escort of German soldiers. Slightly to the rear of this procession is a contingent of weeping mothers, their sorrowful wails reverberating in all directions. I heard that a distant relative of mine, who was one of the boys sent to Qingdao to study German, later took a position as general accountant for the Jiaozhou-Jinan Railroad at an annual salary of thirty thousand silver dollars, and that even his family’s servant, Zhang Xiaoliu, went home and built a mansion with three courtyards. Here is a sound and an image that swirl around in my head: a dragon hidden deep underground moans in pain as the rail line bears down on it. When it arches its back, the rail line rises up, sending a passing train off the tracks and onto its side. If the Germans had not built that line, Northeast Gaomi Township was destined to become a capital city. But when the dragon turned, flipping the train off the tracks, the dragon’s back was broken, which destroyed the feng shui of my hometown. And I heard another legend: The rail line had just been completed, and a number of local young men thought that the train was a giant beast that fed on grass and grains. So they came up with a plan to build a branch pathway out of straw and black beans to lead the train over to a nearby lake, where it would drown. The train was not fooled. They later learned the facts about the trains from the train station workers, who were third-generation Russians, and they were devastated to have wasted all the straw and black beans. But one fantastic story had no sooner ended than another followed on its heels. The Russians told them that the train’s boiler had been forged from a gigantic gold ingot. Otherwise, how could it withstand the buildup of heat year in and year out? They believed every word the Russians said, because of the adage “Real gold is fireproof.” In an attempt to make up for the wasted straw and beans, they removed a section of track, causing a train to flip over. But when they converged upon the locomotive with their tools, there was not an ounce of gold to be found.