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

relationship with the County Magistrate to force me to comb your dog hair. Dieh, help me think of something. So I kept up the seductive act behind him, until, that is, I heard a contemptuous laugh, like the chilling hoot of an owl emerging from a graveyard deep in a dark woods on a moonless night. I froze. It felt as if ice ran through my veins, and all my thoughts and wishes flew off to I don’t know where. The old wretch, was he even human? Could a human being produce a laugh like that? No, he was not human; he was a demon. And so he must not be my gongdieh. In more than a dozen years with Xiaojia, I had never heard him say he had a dieh who lived in the capital. And he was not alone: our neighbors, too, who had seen much of the world and knew a thing or two, had never mentioned him. He could be a lot of things, but not my gongdieh. He and my husband looked nothing alike. Old baldy, you must be a beast in human form. Others might fear demons and spirits, but not the people in this family. I’ll have Xiaojia butcher the black dog out in the pen and keep its blood in a basin. Then, when you’re not looking, I’ll dump it over your bald pate to reveal your true form.
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    4
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    A light rain fell on Tomb-Sweeping Day; dirty gray clouds rolled lazily low in the sky as I walked out of town through South Gate, along with colorfully dressed young men and women. I was carrying an umbrella decorated with a copy of the painting Xu Xian Encounters a White Snake at West Lake , and I had oiled my hair and pinned it with a butterfly clip. I had lightly powdered my face and dabbed rouge on each cheek, had added a beauty mark at a spot between my eyebrows, and had painted my lips red. I was wearing a cerise jacket over green slacks, both of imported fabric. However terrible foreigners might be, their fabrics are first-rate. On my feet I wore full-sized cloth shoes whose green silk tops were embroidered with yellow Mandarin ducks floating amid pink lotus flowers. You people laugh at me because of my unbound feet, don’t you? Well, I’ll give you something to look at. I stole a glance at the quicksilver mirror, and there I saw a radiant, amorous beauty. That was someone even I could love, to say nothing of all those young men. Of course I was griefstricken over my dieh’s situation, but my gandieh once said that the deeper the sadness, the more important it was to put on a happy face and not give the impression of being a slave to your emotions. All right all right all right, take a look. Today this old madam is going to see how she stacks up against Gaomi’s city girls. I don’t care if it’s the daughter of the provincial licentiate or the apple of the Hanlin scholar’s eye, they cannot compete with one of my big toes. Big feet are the only things holding me back. When my niang died so young, there was no one at home to bind my feet, and it hurts me even to hear feet mentioned. But my gandieh says he loves big, natural feet, loves the natural feel of them, and whenever he is on top of me, he has me pummel his bare bottom with my heels.
    “Big feet are best!” he shouts when I do that. “Big feet are best! Golden ingots, better than bound feet, those goat hooves . . .”
    Back then, even though my dieh was playing with magical powers and had erected a spirit altar in Northeast Gaomi as part of his plan to engage the Germans in mortal combat, and even though his activities drove my gandieh to distraction, and even though he was depressed over the deaths of twenty-seven citizens, peace reigned in the town. The bloody events that had occurred in Northeast Township had had no effect on the big city. My gandieh, Eminence Qian, had built a swing set out of China fir on the grounds of the military academy outside South Gate, attracting boys and girls from all over town. The girls dressed in their finest; the boys combed and oiled their queues until they shone. Shrieks of joy and whoops of laughter filled the sky and were joined by the shouts of peddlers:
    Candied——crabapples——!
    Melon seeds——peanuts——!
    After folding my umbrella, I made my way into the crowd and looked around. My eyes fell first on the young mistress of the Qi family, who was attended by a pair of maidservants. Renowned as someone who wrote especially well—verse and prose—she was splendidly dressed and resplendently jeweled. Too bad she had a long, horse-like face, pale as a salt flat, on which lay two anemic grassy