The Corpse Reader (25 page)

It was cold that morning, and Xu’s wives began complaining that Third was nothing but a nuisance. She was a slow learner, her head was always in the clouds, she got the prawns and the shrimp mixed up, and she ate too much. Plus they always had to look out for her health, which Cí knew was getting worse.

“Maybe we sell her,” shrugged Xu. It was a common thing to do when families were hard up, he pointed out. Of course, Cí wouldn’t hear of it.

“Marry her off, then,” suggested one of the wives.

Xu was all for it. He didn’t see how Cí could object. It was simply a question of finding a man who liked that she was still so young. When it came down to it, Xu thought girls were a nuisance until the day they married.

“It’s what we did with ours. Third’s eight years old—just tart her up a bit so she doesn’t look so sickly. I can think of plenty of guys who’d love a little puppy like her.”

Cí went and stood by Third. It wasn’t unusual for girls to be offered in marriage at a young age—sometimes it was their best chance in life—but Cí couldn’t accept the idea of Third being slobbered over by some old man.

But Xu kept on pushing.

As always, Cí’s only recourse was to offer money. But he was running out of that fast. Third’s medicine seemed to be having less effect; she needed more and more all the time. Since Xu had taken over the necromancer duties, and since he had gotten numerous tellings wrong, their joint income was much lower. In fact, before this conversation started, Cí had been about to ask for a loan.

“You’re going to have to go back to earning proper money yourself,” said Xu, pointing to the necromancer’s outfit. Cí looked at it; though Xu had said he would modify it, he had barely done so. Cí took a deep breath and frowned. He worried about Kao’s coming back, but if he wanted to save his sister, he had no choice.

That afternoon a group of students and their professor came to the cemetery. Seeing them coming, Xu told Cí how they would sometimes have visits from Ming Academy. For a fee, they were allowed to examine any unclaimed corpses. Luckily, there were three there at the time. Xu was exultant.

“Get dressed,” he said. “These youngsters are
so
easy to get money out of, if you don’t mind groveling a bit.”

Cí did as he was told, the thought of Third spurring him on.

He watched from a corner, waiting for Xu’s signal. The professor, a bald man dressed in red who seemed somehow familiar, arranged the students around the first body. Before they began, he reminded them of their responsibilities as future judges: respect for the dead and honor in their judgments were of utmost importance. Then he lifted the sheet covering the corpse, revealing a baby girl, a few months old perhaps, who had been found dead in a canal that morning. The professor embarked on a round of questions for the students to discern the cause of death.

“Drowned, no question,” said the first, a fresh-faced youth with a smug air. “Swollen belly, no other marks.”

The professor nodded, inviting the next student to speak.

“A typical case of drowned child. The parents threw her in the canal to avoid caring for her.”

“They might not have been able to,” chided the professor. “Anyone else want to say anything?”

Cí saw that the professor noticed one of the students—Cí had overheard him called Gray Fox, a fitting name given his gray-streaked hair—kept yawning, but the instructor said nothing. He covered the baby’s corpse and asked Xu to bring the next. Xu took the opportunity to bring Cí in and introduce him as the resident necromancer. The students looked at his outfit with disdain.

“We’re not interested in tricksters,” said the professor. “None of us here believe in necromancy.”

Cí withdrew, disconcerted. Xu whispered to him to take off the mask and stay alert. The next corpse was an ashen old man who had been found dead behind a market stall.

“Death by starvation,” said one of the students, looking closely at the corpse with its protruding bones. “Swollen ankles and feet. Approximately seventy years old. Natural causes, therefore.”

Again, the professor agreed with the evaluation, and everyone congratulated the student. Cí saw how Gray Fox went along with
it but was clearly being insincere in his praise. Xu and Cí brought the third corpse in a large pine coffin. When they removed the lid, the students at the front recoiled, but Gray Fox came forward, immediately quite interested.

“Looks like a chance for you to show your talents,” said the professor.

The student replied with an ironic smile and approached slowly, his eyes glittering as though the coffin contained a treasure. Cí watched as the student took out a sheet of paper, an inkstone, and a brush. His approach was very similar to the one Cí had seen Feng take in examinations.

First Gray Fox inspected the corpse’s clothes: the undersides of the sleeves, inside the shirt, trousers, and shoes. Then, having removed the clothes and scrutinized the body, he asked for water, which he used to clean the blood-spattered skin thoroughly. Next he measured the body and announced that the deceased was at least two heads taller than an average man.

He began examining the swollen face, which had a strange puncture on the forehead that exposed a bit of the skull. Instead of cleaning it, the student extracted some mud, saying the puncture was most likely the result of a fall, the head having struck the edge of paving stones or cobblestones. He made a note and then described the eyes, which, half open and dull, were like those of a dried fish; the prominent cheekbones; and the wispy mustache and strong jaw. Then he mentioned the long gash that ran from one side of the throat, across the nose, and all the way to the right ear. He looked closely at the edges of the cut and measured the depth. Smiling, he wrote something else down.

He moved on to the muscular torso, noting eleven stab wounds; then he scanned the groin; the small, wrinkled penis; and the thighs and calves, which were also muscular and hairless. Cí helped him turn the corpse over; aside from the bloodstains, the
back was unmarked. The student stood back, looking ever more pleased.

“So?” said the professor.

The student took his time before answering, looking at each person individually. He clearly enjoyed performing. Cí raised an eyebrow but paid attention.

“This is obviously an unusual case,” began the student. “The man was young, very strong, and ended up stabbed and with his throat slit. A shockingly cruel murder, which seems to point to there having been a very vicious fight.”

The professor gestured for the student to continue.

“At first glance we might think that there were several assailants—there would have been several of them to overcome a hulk like this—and the many stab wounds attest to that. The number of injuries indicates the fight lasted some time, before someone delivered the decisive wound to the throat. After that, the victim fell forward, causing the strange rectangular mark on the forehead.” Here the student paused for effect. “And the motive? Perhaps we ought to think of several: from a simple tavern brawl to an unpaid debt or old feud or even a dispute over some beautiful ‘flower.’ But the most likely motive is robbery, given the fact the body’s been stripped of all valuables, including the bracelet that should have been…here,” he said, pointing to a tan mark at the wrist. “A magistrate would have done well to order the immediate vicinity searched, paying particular attention to taverns and any troublemakers either showing wounds or throwing money around.” The student closed his notebook, covered the corpse, and stared at the group, waiting for his applause.

Cí remembered what Xu had said about the possibility of tips if they groveled, and went over to congratulate the student, but the student looked at him with disdain.

“Stupid show-off,” muttered Cí, turning away.

“How dare you!” Gray Fox grabbed his arm.

Cí shrugged him off and squared up to the student, ready to argue, but before he could reply, the professor was between them.

“So, it seems the sorcerer thinks we’re loudmouths,” said the professor. Looking at Cí more closely, his face changed. “Do I know you?”

“I don’t think so, sir. I haven’t been in the capital long,” he lied. As he said it, though, he realized the professor was Ming, the man to whom he’d tried to sell his copy of the penal code at the book market.

“Are you sure? Well, anyway…I think you owe my student an apology.”

“Or maybe he owes me one.”

At Cí’s impertinence, a murmur went around.

Xu stepped in. “Please, sir, forgive him. He’s been quite out of sorts lately.”

But Cí wasn’t backing down. He wanted to wipe the smile off the conceited student’s face.

He turned to Xu and whispered, “Put a bet on me. Everything you’ve got. It’s what you know best, right?”

Professor Ming resisted betting at first, but once he admitted a bit of curiosity, his students urged him on, and he agreed to the challenge. Xu skillfully upped the bets, making a show of worrying that he’d lose everything.

“If you mess this up,” warned Xu, “I swear I’ll sell your sister for less than the price of a pig.”

Cí wasn’t daunted. He asked the group to give him some space and took out instruments for his examination: a small hammer, forceps made from bamboo, a scalpel, a small sickle-like object, and a wooden spatula. Beside these he placed a washbasin, gourds containing water and vinegar, paper, and a brush.

Cí had some doubts about Gray Fox’s inspection, and Cí was ready to see if he was right.

He went first to the corpse’s nape, working his fingers from there up along the scalp to the crown of the head, and then inspecting the ears with the help of the little spatula. Then he went downward from the neck, examining the muscular shoulders, upper arms, elbows, and forearms, stopping at the right hand and paying particular attention to something at the base of the thumb.

A circular callus
.

He made a note.

He checked the spine, the buttocks, and the legs for injuries before cleaning the face, neck, and torso—properly, with water and vinegar. He spent a good deal of time on the stab wounds, measuring and probing, and then concluding that at least three were fatal.

Just as I suspected.

Then the terrible throat wound: shaking his head, he measured it and made a note of the tears at the edges. Last came the face. Using the forceps inside the nose and mouth, he extracted a whitish substance. He made another note.

“We’re waiting,” warned the professor.

But Cí refused to be hurried. A hundred facts were swirling in his mind, and he still hadn’t quite come to the answer. He returned to the face, where, now that it was clean, he noticed some small scratches on the cheeks. He moved to the mark on the forehead, which he concluded couldn’t have been caused by an impact at all; the edges of the rectangular mark were too neat to be anything but an incision. The mud stuck in the flesh was a red herring, he decided.

Now he was getting somewhere.

He went back to the arms and hands, finding new scratches, then again to the head, parting the hair very carefully and inspecting the scalp. His suspicion confirmed, he turned to the professor. The game was won, and only he knew.

Gray Fox smiled. “So, sorcerer, anything to add?”

“Not really,” he said timidly, dropping his head and looking at his notes.

Laughter broke out among the students, who began clamoring for Xu to pay up. Xu looked nervously to Cí, who was still consulting his notes. Xu cursed and was about to begin paying on the bets, when Cí piped up.

“Not so fast.”

They will be the ones to pay once I am done.

“What are you saying?”

Gray Fox came up to him. “If you think you can mock us and get away with it…”

But Cí ignored him and looked to the professor for permission to present his conclusions. Ming nodded, seeming interested to hear what Cí had to say.

“Your student has carried out a superficial examination. Blinded by his ego, he ignored the value of what seemed to him banal facts. Just as a race over a thousand
li
can only be achieved one step at a time, examining a corpse requires patience and attention to the most minute details.”

Before his opponent could object, Cí continued. “The victim’s name was Fu Leng. Convicted of serious crimes, he was condemned to serve as a soldier at the Xiangyang outpost, on the River Han border, but he recently deserted. He came to Lin’an hoping to embark on a new life, but his violent personality was an obstacle. Yesterday afternoon, as so often, he fought with his wife and then beat her. Later, when he sat down to eat, she came up behind him and slit his throat. The unfortunate woman, should you be interested in speaking to her, will be found in her house, which is close to the walls where the body was found. Ask at the Yurchen shop near the north jetty. They’ll know where she lives—if she hasn’t killed herself already.”

Everyone was silent—even Xu, who just stared back when Cí told him to take their winnings. Gray Fox stepped forward and, out of nowhere, slapped Cí.

“I thought I’d heard it all, but this is unforgivable. You should be ashamed. Listen—”