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

the Great Qing Dynasty . . . back and forth my thoughts went, from one side to the other, over and over, until I lost my resolve. To save Sun Bing was to flow with the current; to let him be was to swim against it. No, this was no time to seem wise. “Sun Bing, how do you feel now?” With difficulty, he raised his head; fragments of sound escaped through his quivering lips, and heated black rays with red threads shot from his slitted eyes, seemingly right through my heart. His exceptional life force shook me to the core, and in that brief moment a powerful thought sprang up in my mind: Let him live. He mustn’t die, for this solemn and stirring drama cannot end like this!
    I ordered a pair of duty yayi to fetch the county’s preeminent doctors: Cheng Buyi, our expert surgeon, from Nanguan, and Su Zhonghe, the renowned internist, from Xiguan. “Tell them to come with the most effective nostrums at their disposal as quickly as humanly possible. Say that you have come on the order of the Shandong Governor, Yuan Shikai, Excellency Yuan, who will tolerate neither disobedience nor delay. No mercy will be shown to anyone who defies his order!” They left at once.
    I then told one of the yayi to summon Chen Qiaoshou, the papier-mâché craftsman, who was to bring with him all his tools and craft material. “Say that you have come on the order of the Shandong Governor, Yuan Shikai, Excellency Yuan, who will tolerate neither disobedience nor delay. No mercy will be shown to anyone who defies his order!” He left at once.
    I then ordered another yayi to fetch Pockface Zhang, the tailor at the clothing store, who was to bring with him his tools and two yards of white gauze. “Say that you have come on the order of the Shandong Governor, Yuan Shikai, Excellency Yuan, who will tolerate neither disobedience nor delay. No mercy will be shown to anyone who defies his order!” He left at once.
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    4
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    Led by the two yayi, expert surgeon Cheng Buyi and renowned internist Su Zhonghe stepped onto the Ascension Platform. Cheng was a tall, lanky man with a dark, clean-shaven face; wizened and seemingly devoid of body fat, he moved with quick and nimble ease. Su, on the other hand, was short and portly; completely bald on top, he sported a lush, graying beard. Both local men of distinction, they had been ensconced in front-row seats during the battle of the beards between Sun Bing and me. Su Zhonghe had arrived with a full backpack; Cheng Buyi carried a small white cloth bag. Their nervousness showed. A gray cast underlay Cheng’s dark complexion, as if he were unusually cold. Su’s paler face was tinged with yellow and covered with a slick layer of sweat. They knelt at my feet, but before they could say a word, I bent down and had them rise. “This is an emergency,” I said, “which requires the medical mastery of the finest physicians. You know the identity of this individual and are fully aware of why he is here in this condition. Excellency Yuan has commanded that he must remain alive until the twentieth of this month. Today is the eighteenth, which gives us two days and two nights to carry out Excellency Yuan’s orders. One look at him will tell you why I have summoned you here. So now I ask you two gentlemen to come forward and put your skills to use!”
    The physicians deferred to one another over and over, neither willing to step up and attend to their new patient. Two men—one tall, the other short; one fat, the other skinny—bowed back and forth, up and down, producing such a comical scene that a young and inexperienced yayi actually covered his mouth to stifle a laugh. I felt nothing but disgust over their ludicrous demonstration of superficial etiquette. “That’s enough decorum,” I said assertively. “If he dies before the twentieth, you”—I pointed to Cheng Buyi—“you”—I pointed to Su Zhonghe—“you”—with a sweeping motion, I pointed my finger at the people crowding around the platform—“and, of course, me—all of us will be buried with him”—I pointed to Sun Bing. You could almost cut through the tension in the air up there. The dumbstruck physicians could only stand and stare. I turned to Cheng Buyi. “You’re a surgeon. You first.”
    Cheng stepped gingerly up to Sun Bing like a dog stealing a piece of meat off a butcher block, reached out, and gently touched the tip of the sandalwood stake between Sun’s shoulders with one slender finger. Then he went