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

panther dieh. His paws were becoming hands, and his face was changing, but he still had the ears of a panther: thin and nearly transparent, they stuck up in the air and were topped by bristly hairs. Dieh reached out to straighten my clothes and said softly:
    “Don’t be afraid, son. Just do as your dieh taught you, courageously. It is time for father and son to show what we can do!”
    “I’m not afraid, Dieh!”
    Dieh looked at me with tenderness in his eyes.
    “You are a good son!”
    Dieh Dieh Dieh Dieh, do you know that people say the County Magistrate and I are in the same pot fighting over a ladle . . .
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    8
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    I noticed right away that there were two cages on the prison van, with a Sun Bing in each of them. Two cages, two Sun Bings. At first glance they looked identical; but a closer look revealed significant differences. The true form of one was a big black bear, the other a big black pig. My wife’s father was too heroic a character to be a pig, so he had to be the bear. The eighty-third story my dieh told me was about a fight between a black bear and a tiger. In the story, the bear and the tiger always fought to a draw, until finally the tiger won. The bear lost not because it was an inferior fighter, but because it was too practical an animal. After each fight, the tiger went hunting for food—pheasants, gazelles, or rabbits—and went to drink from a mountain stream. But there was no food or drink for the bear, which angrily dug up trees on the battlefield, since it never felt there was enough space. Once the tiger had eaten and drunk its fill, it returned to start the fight all over. Eventually, the bear, its strength sapped, was beaten, and the tiger was anointed king of the beasts. I could also tell which of the two was my gongdieh by the look in his eyes. Sun Bing’s eyes were bright and lively, and when they settled on something, they seemed to emit sparks. The fake Sun Bing’s eyes were dark, his gaze evasive, sort of fearful. The fake Sun Bing looked familiar somehow, and it didn’t take much thought to figure out that he was Xiao Shanzi, a member of the beggar community, Zhu Ba’s right-hand man. Each year, on the fourteenth day of the eighth month, Beggars’ Day, a pair of chili peppers hung from his ears in his role as a matchmaker. Now he’d assumed the role of my gongdieh. What did the fool think he was doing?
    My dieh had seen that there were two criminals even before I had, but he’d witnessed so much in his life that one more criminal, or ten for that matter, had no effect on him. I overheard him say under his breath:
    “I’m glad I prepared an extra stake.”
    My dieh was a man of foresight, a modern-day Zhuge Liang.
    Who would be first? First impale the real criminal or the imposter? I tried to find the answer in my dieh’s face. But his gaze was glued to the face of the official in charge of the execution, Qian Ding, who was returning the look, though his gaze was clouded, sort of like a blind man. The look in Qian Ding’s eyes told my dieh that he was seeing nothing. It was up to my dieh to choose the first to be impaled. So he turned his eyes to the two criminals in front of him. The eyes of the fake Sun Bing were unfocused. Those of the real Sun Bing emitted a strong, steady gaze. He nodded to my dieh and said loudly:
    “You are well, I assume, Qinjia!”
    My dieh responded with a smile and a respectful bow with his fists closed over his chest.
    “A joyous day for you, Qinjia!” he replied.
    “For both of us,” my gongdieh said jubilantly.
    “Who first, you or him?”
    “Do you really need to ask?” my gongdieh replied forthrightly. “As they say, ‘Relatives tend to favor each other.’”
    Dieh said nothing in response; he merely smiled and nodded. But then, as if a sheet of paper had been removed, his smile gave way to a face the color of pig iron. He turned to the prisoner’s escorts.
    “Unlock the shackles!” he ordered.
    Unsure of what to do, they looked around, as if waiting for a command from someone. My dieh repeated himself, impatiently:
    “Unlock the shackles!”
    One of them stepped up and, with trembling hands, unlocked my gongdieh’s chains. Now freed, he moved his arms around to limber them up, eyed the instruments of execution, and, as if this was the moment he’d waited for, strode confidently up to the pine plank, which was considerably narrower than his body, and lay down on his belly.
    The plank, which Dieh