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

rise up in resistance against the tyrannical forces arrayed before us. Take Sun Bing, your Maoqiang Patriarch, who stands impaled upon a sandalwood stake on the Ascension Platform, as a solemn and stirring cautionary example.”
    But the local gawkers turned a deaf ear to my admonition and swept up to the Ascension Platform like waves crashing against the shore. Yayi drew their swords, as if to confront an enemy surge. But the people, though silent, looked on with alarmingly strange expressions, sending an upsurge of panic to my heart. The sun settled in the west in all its redness; the moon’s jade rabbit climbed into the sky; warm, soft rays of golden sunlight merged with cool, refreshing silver moonbeams on the Tongde Academy parade ground, on the Ascension Platform, and on the faces of the mass of humanity.
    “County elders, friends and fellow villagers, disperse and return to your homes . . .”
    The people remained silent.
    All of a sudden, Sun Bing, whose voice had been long stilled, broke into song. His mouth leaked air and his chest thumped in and out, very much like an old beat-up bellows. From his vantage point, he could see what was going on all around him, and for a man like him, as long as there was breath in his body, not even the sorry circumstances in which he now found himself could keep him from singing. It would not be unreasonable to say that this was the very opportunity he had sought. And I realized at that moment that the swelling crowd had no intention of freeing him from his predicament, but had drawn closer to hear him sing. See how they all raised their heads and let their mouths fall open? That was the perfect image of an opera devotee.
    The fifteenth day of the eighth month, the moon is bright~~wildwood breezes sweep past the platform at night~~
    Sun Bing opened with a sorrowful Maoqiang aria. He had hurled abuse for so long that his voice was hoarse and scratchy, but the combination of that hoarseness and the bloody mess his body had become merged to invest his tune with a chilling aura of solemnity and to confer upon it the power to stir hearts. I must admit that Sun Bing, a product of Gaomi, a small, out-of-the way county, was a true genius, a heroic figure equal to those who appeared in the biographies of Sima Qian’s Records of the Historian . His name will be spoken down through the ages, praised by the masses and memorialized in Maoqiang opera. My subordinates reported to me that in the immediate wake of his apprehension, a Maoqiang troupe formed spontaneously in Northeast Gaomi Township, and that its performances were tied to burial and funeral activities conducted during chaotic events involving the deaths of so many. Every performance began and ended with howls of grief and was tied to the tragedy of Sun Bing’s resistance against the Germans.
    By cruel torture my body torn~~this ancient land I tearfully mourn~~
    The sobs of the people at Sun Bing’s feet filling the air contained bleak strains of meow, a sign that even in their agonizing sorrow, they had not forgotten to provide the singer with a chorus.
    I gaze at distant blazing fires in this ancient land~~ah, my wife, my children~~
    At that moment, the people seemed to know what was expected of them. As if by prior agreement, they intoned every form of meow known to them, and into that chorus was thrust a climactic cry of desolation, like a whirling pillar of white smoke funneling into the cloudy sky:
    “Dieh-dieh~~my beloved Dieh-dieh~~”
    It was a cry of heartbreaking dolefulness, yet one that highlighted the sorrowful Maoqiang aria and, in concert with the hoarse, scratchy singing from the platform and the chorus of meows by the onlookers, produced a climactic moment. Pile-driving pains thudded into my heart, as if from a human fist. My lover was here, the woman who had stolen my heart, Sun Bing’s daughter, Sun Meiniang. Despite the fact that I had been in the grip of terror for days, like a yellowed leaf fluttering precariously from a branch in the elements, this woman had been on my mind the whole time, and not just because she was carrying my child. I watched as she moved forward, parting the crowd like a black eel emerging from the school against the current. The people slipped away, to her left and her right, opening up a path to the Ascension Platform. Her hair was in disarray, her clothing in complete disorder, and her face grimy, looking like a demon incarnate; she had shed all signs of the flirtatious,