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

she looked up in time to see the other figure, the Magistrate’s stinking wife, turn and wobble off. The third lash landed as hard as the first two, but the next one did not hurt as much, and those that followed got lighter and lighter, until the person was hitting the wall, not her. Meiniang knew that her assailant was a decent person at heart, although her exaggerated screams continued for their dramatic effect, to their mutual benefit. When he was done, the man dragged her over to the side gate of the Western Parlor, opened it, and shoved her outside, where she lay in a heap on the cobblestone lane east of the yamen.
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    7
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    Sun Meiniang lay on the kang, gnashing her teeth one minute and heartbroken the next. She gnashed her teeth out of hatred toward that savage, cold-hearted woman, while she was heartbroken that the Magistrate was confined to a sickbed, and cursed herself for a lack of willpower; even when she bit her own arm till it bled, she could not drive the image of the wonderful Qian Ding out of her mind. Chunsheng came to see her when her torment had reached a fever pitch, just the familiar face she needed to see. She grabbed him by the arms and said tearfully:
    “Chunsheng, dear Chunsheng, tell me, how is Laoye?”
    Her anxiety moved him deeply. After glancing into the yard, where Xiaojia was skinning a dog, he said softly, “He’s improving physically, but mentally he is in bad shape; he gets agitated easily. He’s wasting away, and if he doesn’t start eating soon, I’m afraid he’ll starve to death.”
    “My dear Magistrate!” Sun Meiniang cried out mournfully, accompanied by a cascade of tears.
    “The First Lady has sent me to ask you to take some millet spirits and dog meat to the yamen, both to make Laoye feel better and,” he said with a little laugh, “to get his appetite back.”
    “The First Lady? Don’t mention her to me,” she said with a gnashing of her teeth. “Your First Lady is worse than a sadistic scorpion spirit.”
    “Mistress Sun, our First Lady is kind and honest, and always reasonable. How can you curse her like that?”
    “What do you know?” Meiniang replied angrily. “Kind and honest, you say? Well, I say that her heart must have steeped in a vat of black dye for twenty years, and that one drop of her blood would be enough to kill a horse!”
    “What did the First Lady ever do to you?” Chunsheng said with a little laugh. “This is like a mugger getting angry instead of his victim, or a lack of tears from a child that has lost its mother but wails from one whose mother is still alive.”
    “Get out of my sight!” Meiniang demanded. “I’ll have nothing more to do with anyone in that yamen.”
    “Mistress Sun, does this mean that your concern for Laoye no longer exists?” Chunsheng said with a supercilious grin. “If you no longer care about Laoye, does that mean you no longer care about his queue? And if you no longer care about his queue, does that mean you no longer care about his beard? And if you no longer care about his beard, does that really mean you no longer care about Laoye himself?”
    “I said get out of my sight! Laoye, Shaoye, what difference does it make? What could his death possibly mean to a commoner?” Despite her tone of voice, tears continued to flow.
    “Mistress Sun,” Chunsheng said, “you might fool others, but not me. You and the Magistrate are so close you might as well be one person. Break the bone, and there’s still meat attached; tug on the ear, and the cheek twitches. But enough of that. Don’t pull back on the reins now. Get ready and come with me.”
    “I will not step foot in that place as long as your First Lady is there.”
    “But, Mistress Sun, she has ordered me to come for you.”
    “Chunsheng, don’t treat me like a circus monkey. How could I face someone who did what she did to me?”
    “Apparently, Mistress Sun, someone has done something terrible.”
    “Do you really not know, or are you just pretending?” Meiniang asked in anger. “They used a whip on me in that yamen of yours!”
    “What are you saying, Mistress Sun?” Chunsheng was clearly shocked. “Who would dare use a whip on you in the yamen? We who work there see you as the Second Lady. We try our best to get on your good side. Who in his right mind would dare to even threaten you with a whip, let alone use it?”
    “That First Lady of yours, that’s who. She had someone give me fifty