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

soldiers marched in and took their positions: one at each corner of the shed, one at each corner of the Ascension Platform, and four in front of the opera stage. Two of the four men at our shed were foreign; the other two were Yuan’s troops. They all had their backs to the shed, standing at attention, as if competing to see who could stand the straightest. Meow meow , straight as an arrow.
    As he fingered his prayer beads, Dieh looked like a meditating old monk, Amita Buddha. Amita Buddha, my wife said that a lot. My eyes, like awls, bored into Dieh’s hands. Meow meow , they were uncommon hands; the Great Qing Empire’s hands, the nation’s hands, the hands of the venerable Empress Dowager Cixi and the ageless Emperor. My dieh’s were the hands They used to kill anyone They wanted dead. If the Empress Dowager said to my dieh: “Slaymaster, go kill someone for Me,” my dieh would say, “As you wish!” If the ageless Emperor said: “Slay-master, go kill someone for Me,” my dieh would say, “As you wish!” My dieh had wonderful hands. Still, they were a pair of little birds; in motion, they were like feathers. Meow meow . I still remember how my wife once said to me, “Your dieh’s hands are abnormally small,” and as I looked at those hands, I couldn’t help feeling that he was somehow not an ordinary human being. If not a ghost, he had to be an immortal. On pain of death, you would never believe that those hands were capable of killing a thousand people. Hands like his belonged to a midwife. Where I come from, we call a midwife an auspicious grandma. Auspicious Grandma, Grandma Auspicious, ah-ya-ah, and I suddenly understood why people in the capital referred to him as Grandma. He was a midwife. But then again, midwives are all women, and my dieh is a man. Or is he? Of course he is; I’ve seen his little pecker when I bathed him. It’s like a little frozen green carrot, heh-heh . . . What are you laughing at? Heh-heh, a little carrot . . . Idiot son. Meow meow , can men really be midwives? Wouldn’t a male midwife be a laughingstock? And wouldn’t he have a clear view of a woman’s privates? And wouldn’t that be all her menfolk needed to beat him to death? I didn’t know what to think, and the harder I tried, the more confused I became. To hell with it. Who’s got time to waste on stuff like that?
    My dieh’s eyes snapped open; he draped his prayer beads around his neck, stood up, and went to check the cauldron of oil. I could see our upside-down reflections in the oil. The surface was brighter than a mirror, and so clear I could see every pore in our faces. Dieh lifted one of the sandalwood stakes out, breaking the smooth surface and turning my reflection into the long face of a goat. What a shock! All along, my true form has been that of a goat, with a pair of horns. Meow meow . What a disappointment. Dieh’s true form is a black panther, the County Magistrate is a white tiger, my wife is a white snake, and me? I’m a bearded goat. A goat! What kind of animal is that! I didn’t want to be a damned goat! Dieh examined the stake in the sunlight, like a master blacksmith examining a newly forged sword. Bright threads of oil dripped back into the cauldron, creating little eddies on the surface of the slightly gummy oil. He waited till the last of the oil had dripped from the stake before taking out a piece of white silk and wiping the stake dry. The silk quickly absorbed all the oil residue. Dieh laid the silk on the cauldron stand, then held the stake in two hands—one on the butt, the other on the tip—and tried to bend it. I detected a slight arch when he did that; it returned to its original shape as soon as he loosened his grip. After placing the stake on the cauldron stand, he lifted out the second stake, first letting all the oil drip off, then wiping it dry with the silk, and tried to bend it. As before, when he loosened his grip, it returned to its original shape. A look of satisfaction spread across his face. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him so happy, and it affected me the same way, meow meow . What a wonderful thing, the sandalwood death, for it made my dieh happy, meow meow .
    Dieh carried the two sandalwood stakes into the shed and laid them on a small table. He then knelt on the straw mat and bowed down to pay his respects, as if an invisible apparition were ensconced behind the table. His obeisance completed, he got up and sat in his chair, shielding