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

carried by two eunuchs, a slightly hunchbacked eunuch in a loose tan robe nodded enigmatically to me. I fell in behind him and passed through a maze of gardens and corridors, finally arriving in front of a hall that seemed to reach the heavens. By then the sun had climbed into the sky, its redness sending rays of morning sunlight in all directions. I sneaked a look around me, and saw that magnificent linked buildings in resplendent golds and greens surrounded me, as if ringed by a prairie fire. The eunuch pointed to the ground at my feet; I was standing on green bricks that shone like the bottom of a scrubbed frying pan. I looked up, hoping to see in his face a sign that would tell me what he meant, but the old fellow had already turned away from me, and all I could see was his back as he stood respectfully, arms at his sides, and I realized that he wanted me to wait where I was. By then I knew precisely what awaited me—Excellency Yuan’s welcome news. The next thing I saw was a progression of high officials in red caps backing out of the hall, heads down and bent at the waist. They wore somber looks and looked out of breath; oily drops of perspiration dotted some of their faces, and the sight made my heart race wildly. My legs trembled, and my palms were sweaty despite the cold. I did not know whether what awaited me was good fortune or ill, but if I’d had the chance, I’d have slunk out of there as fast as possible and taken refuge in my little room, where I could quell my fears with a decanter of fine spirits. But now that I was here, that was out of the question.
    A eunuch whose face glowed beneath his red cap emerged through an enormous doorway that I dared not even glance at; he gestured to the old eunuch who had brought me there. The man’s large face was as radiant as a Buddhist treasure, and though no one has ever told me who he was, I suspect it was the Chief Eunuch, Li Lianying. He and my confidant, Excellency Yuan, were sworn brothers, and it was all but certain that it was he who had arranged my audience with his benefactress, the Empress Dowager. I stood there like a fool, my mind a blank, until the hunchbacked old eunuch tugged my sleeve and said softly: “Move! They are summoning you!”
    That was when I heard someone call out in a booming voice:
    “Summoning Zhao Jia—”
    I have no recollection of walking into the hall that morning, and recall only the scene of splendor that greeted my eyes once inside, as if a golden dragon and a red phoenix had suddenly materialized. When I was a child, my mother told me that the Emperor was the reincarnation of a golden dragon, and the Empress Dowager the reincarnation of a red phoenix. Terror-stricken, I knelt on the floor, which felt as hot as a newly heated brick bed. I kowtowed and I kowtowed and I kowtowed; it wasn’t until later that I realized how badly I had injured my forehead, which was a bloody mess, like a rotten radish, which must have nauseated the Empress Dowager and Emperor. I deserved a thousand deaths. I was supposed to wish Them long, long lives, but I was so flummoxed by then that my head might as well have been filled with paste. All I could do was kowtow over and over and over.
    It must have been a hand grabbing hold of my queue that brought my head banging to a halt. I struggled to keep connecting with the heated floor, but was stopped by a voice behind me:
    “No more kowtows. The Old Buddha has asked you a question.”
    Peals of laughter erupted up ahead, and I was by then so disoriented that I looked up. And there, in front of my eyes, on a throne sat an old lady whose body radiated light. The words “I deserve death” slipped from my mouth. Seated in front of me was the wise, ageless Empress Dowager, the Old Buddha Herself. A question floated slowly down from on high:
    “I asked you, Slay-master, what is your name?”
    “Your servant is Zhao Jia.”
    “Where are you from?”
    “Your servant is from Gaomi County in Shandong Province.”
    “How many years have you plied your trade?”
    “Forty years.”
    “How many people have you put to death?”
    “Nine hundred eighty-seven.”
    “Ah! You must be a death-dealing demon king!”
    “Your servant deserves death.”
    “Why should you deserve death? Those whose heads you detached are the ones who deserved death.”
    “Yes.”
    “I say, Zhao Jia, when you kill someone, are you afraid?”
    “I was at first, but no longer.”
    “What did you do for Yuan Shikai in