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

sweat. Whenever he raised his head, I saw rivulets of sweat coursing down from his damp hair, sweat that was a sticky yellow, like rice soup straight from the pot; and when he turned his head toward me, I saw how puffy his face had gotten, looking like a bronze-colored basin. His sunken eyes reminded me of those butchered pigs I puffed up before skinning them, meow meow , just like the hollow eyes of a puffed-up pig.
    pa——pa——pa——
    Meow . . .
    The sandalwood stake was nearly halfway in—— meow . . . sweet-smelling sandalwood . . . meow . . . Up to this point, my gongdieh had not uttered a sound. The look on Dieh’s face showed his admiration toward the man. Long before we began, Dieh and I had striven to anticipate every situation that might arise during the execution. Dieh’s greatest fear was that my gongdieh would fill the air with wild shrieks and howls that would unnerve me, a neophyte, at my first execution, and that I’d start doing things wrong, like driving the stake too hard and damaging the internal organs. To keep that from happening, he’d wrapped a pair of date pits in cotton, ready to stuff into my ears if his fears were borne out. But my gongdieh still hadn’t made a sound, except for heavy breathing that was louder and huskier than any I’d ever heard from a buffalo pulling a plow. He did not bellow in pain, nor did he weep or beg for mercy.
    pa——pa——pa——
    Meow . . .
    Dieh was sweating, too, something he never did, meow , and I noticed a slight tremor in his hands as he continued guiding the stake. He was getting anxious; the look in his eyes made that clear, and that worried me. Meow , Sun Bing clenching his teeth and refusing to cry out was not something we’d hoped for. We’d gotten used to shrieks of pain when we experimented on that pig, and in more than ten years of slaughtering pigs, there had only been one mute, and that animal had nearly been my undoing. For weeks I’d suffered nightmares in which the pig looked at me and sneered. Cry out, gongdieh, I beg you to cry out! Meow meow , but not a sound. My wrist was getting sore, my legs were weakening, my head felt swollen, my eyes were failing me and had begun to sting from invading sweat; the stench of dried rooster blood was making me nauseous. A panther’s head had replaced Dieh’s human head, and black fur now covered those lovely hands. Black fur also grew on my gongdieh, whose head, which kept rising and falling, was now that of a huge bear. His body had grown dramatically, as had his strength, while the leather strap holding him down was stretched thin and brittle, ready to snap. That was when my hand slipped. Carelessly, I hit Dieh’s paw instead of the butt end of the stake; with an audible moan, he dropped his hand. I swung again, harder this time. The stake flew out of Dieh’s hands and arched upward. The tip obviously went somewhere it wasn’t supposed to, injuring something inside Sun Bing and sending a stream of blood running down the length of the stake. A shriek erupted from Sun Bing’s mouth, meow meow , more hideous than I’d heard from any of the pigs I’d slaughtered. Sparks flew from Dieh’s eyes.
    “Careful!” he said under his breath.
    I wiped my face with my sleeve and took several deep breaths. In the midst of howls that got louder and louder, I began to calm down. My wrist was no longer sore, my legs were strong again, my head was no longer swollen, and my vision returned, meow . Dieh had regained his human face, and my gongdieh no longer had the head of a bear. Pumping myself up as my strength surged back, I recommenced pounding the stake:
    beng——beng——beng——
    Meow meow ——
    There was no stopping Sun Bing’s howls now, shrieks that drowned out all other sounds. The stake was back in the right position, guided by Dieh as it inched its way deeper into him, between his vital organs and his backbone . . .
    Ow——oh——ahh——yeow——
    Meow meow mew——
    Disturbing sounds emerged from inside his body, like cats in heat. What was that? I wondered. Are my ears deceiving me? Strange strange really strange, there are cats in the stomach of my wife’s father. I was on the verge of losing my concentration again, but before that happened, I received calm assurances from Dieh. The louder Sun Bing screamed, the more comforted I was by the smile on Dieh’s face. Even his eyes, which had narrowed to a slit, were smiling. He looked like a man who was enjoying