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

profession are like palace eunuchs: Their potency has been excised with a knife, but their desire lives on. Our physical maleness remains intact, but our hearts have been purged of desire.” Grandma Yu said that when the day comes that the sight of a woman has no effect on you, when even the thought does not cross your mind, you are on the verge of becoming a totally accomplished executioner. Some decades ago, when I came home from an assignment and went to bed, a hint of potency remained, and I somehow sired a foolish but not totally worthless offspring, something hard to imagine, on the order of producing a stalk of sorghum from a fried seed. The reason I tried so hard to retire and return to my native home was that I had a son to return to, someone I wanted to train to become the Great Qing Empire’s next preeminent executioner. The Empress Dowager Herself once said that every profession has its zhuangyuan. I was one, and my son would follow in my footsteps. My daughter-in-law was a spirited woman who kept Qian Ding’s bed warm and subjected me to humiliation. But heaven has eyes, and saw to it that my qinjia fell into my hands. I laughed as I said to her: “Daughter-in-law, I must show him some favor, since we are related. All these things you see here are for him.”
    She glared at me, eyes wide open, mouth agape, face pale with fright, unable to say a word in response. My son, who was crouching in front of the rooster, cackled as he asked:
    “Will we be able to keep this rooster, Dieh?”
    “Yes, we can keep it.”
    “How about all this rice and flour and meat?”
    “Yes, we can keep it all.”
    “Ha-ha . . .”
    He laughed happily. That son of mine may have looked like a fool, but knowing the value of good things kept him from being one. “All this will be ours to keep, son, but we have a job to do for the nation. Tomorrow at this time will be our moment to shine.”
    “Are you really going to kill my dieh?” my daughter-in-law asked piteously. A face that had always been radiant and sleek seemed suddenly covered by a coat of rust.
    “That is his good fortune!”
    “How do you plan to kill him?”
    “With a sandalwood stake.”
    “Swine . . .” Her shouts were eerie. “You bastard . . .”
    She yanked open the gate and burst out of the compound, swaying her hips.
    I sent the crazed young woman off with a resounding comment: “Dear daughter-in-law, I am going to see that your dieh’s name will live forever, that his legend will become the stuff of grand opera, just you wait and see!”
    ————
    2
    ————
    I told my son to shut the gate as I placed the length of sandalwood on top of the flesh-and-blood-stained slaughtering rack, and had him fetch a saw, which I used to cut the wood in two lengthwise. Saw teeth biting into the wood produced the harsh, ear-piercing sound of metal on metal; sparks flew from the blade, which was too hot to touch, and a strange burning odor assailed my nose. Picking up a plane, I then painstakingly shaved the two halves into stakes with blunted tips and tapered edges, slightly rounded, like the leaves of a chive plant. Once that was done, I used sandpaper, coarse at first, then fine, turning the stakes over and over as I worked, until they shone like mirrors. True, I had never carried out a sandalwood execution, but I knew instinctively that success in this epochal event lay in the quality of the instrument. A job of this magnitude required meticulous preparation, something I had learned from Grandma Yu. The sanding alone took me half the day—a sharp ax makes the best kindling, or, as the adage goes, “The best work requires the finest tools.” I had no sooner sanded the two treasures to perfection than a yayi knocked at the gate to report that Gaomi County Magistrate Qian Ding’s workers had erected something called an Ascension Platform on the parade ground in front of the Tongde Academy in the center of town, one that adhered to my specifications and was sure to become the stuff of legend for a century or more. The mat shed I had requested was also in place, and sesame oil was churning in the large cauldron, while beef stewed in its smaller companion. I sniffed the air, and there it was, the heavy fragrance of sesame oil and meat carried on the autumn wind.
    After running out early in the morning, my son’s wife still had not returned. I could understand what was troubling her—it was, after all, her dieh who was to be executed, and she had