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

feet~~wuliaoao, wuliao~~Another dead rat is the blood-soaked flesh~~Sandalwood stakes tested on a pig, Dieh-dieh training me to match his masterful skills. All to impale Sun Bing from the bottom up. Pound in the stake, ah, pound in the stake, pound in the stake~~meow meow meow~~A raucous crowd comes our way down the street, a cannon fires, bad news brings a change to my eyes. Then the tiger whisker spirit reappears, and the scene around me augurs defeat. No more people, the ground is full of pigs and dogs and horses and cows, bad people turned into savage wild animals, even a big turtle carried on an eight-man palanquin seat. It is Yuan Shikai, that bastard effete, a high official who is no match for my dieh~~meow meow meow~~mew~~
    — Maoqiang Sandalwood Death. A childish aria
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    1
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    Brilliant reds greeted me when I opened my eyes—Hey! Where’s the fire? Heh-heh, there’s no fire. The sun had come out. The bed of wheat straw was alive with insects that bit me all over. Half-cooked oil fritters lay heavily in my stomach all night long, and I could not stop breaking wind. I could see that Dieh was no longer a panther, just my dieh, a mystical dieh who sat primly in the sandalwood Dragon Chair given to him by His Majesty the Emperor, fingering his string of sandalwood prayer beads. There were times when I wanted to sit in that chair just to see how it felt, but Dieh said no. “Not just anyone can sit in this chair,” he said. “If you don’t have a dragon bunghole, you’ll get up with hemorrhoids.” Liar! If Dieh had a dragon bunghole, how could his son not have one? If he did and his son didn’t, then the dieh wouldn’t be the dieh and the son wouldn’t be the son. So there! I was used to hearing people say “A dragon begets a dragon, a phoenix begets a phoenix, and when a rat is born, it digs a hole.” So Dieh was sitting in his chair, half his face red, the other half white, eyes barely open, lips seeming to quiver, all sort of dreamlike.
    “Dieh,” I said, “please let me sit in that chair just for a moment before they get here.”
    “No,” he said, pulling a long face, “not yet.”
    “Then when?”
    “After we’ve completed the important task ahead of us.” The expression on his face had not changed, and I knew that was intentional. He was very, very fond of me, a boy everyone was drawn to. How could he not be? I went up behind him, wrapped my arms around his neck, and touched the back of his head with my chin. “Since you won’t let me sit in the Dragon Chair,” I said, “then tell me a Peking story before they get here.”
    “I do that every single day,” he said, seemingly annoyed. “How many stories do you think there are?”
    I knew his annoyance was just an act. Dieh enjoyed nothing more than telling me Peking stories. “Please, Dieh,” I said. “If you don’t have any new stories, tell me one of the old ones.”
    “What’s so appealing about the old stories?” he said. “Have you never heard the adage ‘Repeat something three times, and not even the dogs will listen’?”
    “I’ll listen even if the dogs won’t,” I said.
    “What am I going to do with you, my boy?” He looked up at the sun. “We have a little time,” he said finally. “I’ll tell you a story about Guo Mao, how’s that?”
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    2
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    I have not forgotten a single story my dieh told me, not one of the hundred and forty-one. Each of them is packed away in my head, which has lots of drawers, like those cabinets in herbal pharmacies. Every story has a drawer of its own, and there are still lots of drawers left over. I started pulling out drawers, and found that none of them held a story about Guo Mao. Happy? I was thrilled! A new story! I pulled out the hundred and forty-second drawer, into which I would put the story of Guo Mao.
    “During the Xianfeng reign in the mid-nineteenth century, a father and son showed up in Tianqiao. The father’s name was Guo Mao, or Guo the Cat. His son’s name was Xiaomao, or Kitten. Both father and son were accomplished mimics. Do you know what that is? It’s someone who uses his mouth to imitate all the different sounds in the world.”
    “Could they imitate the cry of a cat?”
    “Children mustn’t interrupt when grownups are talking! Anyway, father and son quickly gained a reputation as street performers in Tianqiao. When I heard about them, I sneaked over to Tianqiao, without telling Grandma Yu, and