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

he looked up, she’d vanished, her place taken by a nearsighted old dog. The poor man was so frightened by this that he ran outside and collided with an old horse carrying a hoe over its shoulder. The horse was puffing on a pipe and snorting streams of smoke from its flared nostrils. The man nearly died of fright at this encounter, and was about to run away when he heard the horse call out his childhood name: “Aren’t you Xiaobao? Don’t you even recognize your own dieh, you little bastard?” The whisker, that’s what made all this happen. He quickly rewrapped it and put it away. Now he could see that his dieh was not an old horse and his niang was not an old dog.
    Getting one of those whiskers has long been a dream of mine. Meow, meow . I make this clear to everyone I know and ask people I meet if they can tell me where I can get one. Someone once said that the forests of the great Northeast are the best place. I was burning to go see, and would have if it hadn’t meant leaving my wife. A precious tiger’s whisker, just think how wonderful that would be! Well, I’d just put up a meat rack on the street when a huge boar in a long robe under a short jacket, wearing a black silk skullcap and carrying a thrush in a birdcage, sauntered up. “Two catties of pork, Xiaojia,” it said. “Give me a good weigh, and make it streaky pork.” There was no question that it was a boar standing in front of me, but the voice was that of Li Shizhai, Elder Li, the father of Graduate Li, a learned local scholar respected by all. If he didn’t get the respect he thought he deserved, he intoned in a loud voice, “A base man cannot be taught!” Who could have guessed that he’d actually be a boar? Even he didn’t know. No one but I knew. But if I told him, I’d get a taste of his dragonhead cane, for sure. The boar hadn’t even left when a white swan sashayed up carrying a bamboo basket on its wing. When it was right in front of me, it gave me a dirty look and said in a voice dripping with spite, “Xiaojia, you heartless fiend. I found a fingernail when I bit into the dog meat jelly you sold me yesterday. Are you selling human flesh and calling it dog meat?” It turned to the boar. “Did you hear what happened? Two nights ago, the Zheng family’s child bride was beaten to death. Her battered body was a mass of bruises!” Now that the swan had spewed its garbage, it turned back to me and said, “Give me two catties of dog meat jerky. We’ll try something different.” “Who do you think you are, you stinking bitch? A big-assed swan is what you are. I ought to turn you into swan jelly. That’d shut that mouth of yours once and for all.”
    —If I’d owned a tiger’s whisker, think how wonderful that would have been! But I didn’t.
    Uncle He was having a drink in the tavern that rainy afternoon—he was an ugly man with a pointed mouth, an ape-like chin, and shifty eyes, a damned gorilla if I ever saw one—when I told him about the tiger’s whisker. “You’re a man of the world, Uncle He,” I said, “so this is something you must know about. And you must know where to get one.” “Xiaojia,” he said with a chuckle, “you idiot. What’s your wife up to while you’re here selling meat?” “My wife is delivering dog meat to Eminence Qian, her gandieh.” “I’d say she’s delivering the human kind,” Uncle He said. “She’s a nice morsel, tender and tasty.” “Stop trying to be funny, Uncle; we sell pork and dog meat, that’s all. Who ever heard of selling the human kind? Besides, Eminence Qian isn’t a tiger, so why would he want to feast on my wife’s flesh? If he did, he’d have finished her off by now. But she’s still here, in the flesh.” With a strange laugh, Uncle He said, “Eminence Qian is not a White Tiger, he’s a Green Dragon, the Taoist guardian. It’s your wife who’s the White Tiger.” “Now you’re really not making sense, Uncle He. Without one of those tiger’s whiskers, how could you see the true form of Eminence Qian or my wife?” “Pour me another drink, idiot,” Uncle He said, “and I’ll tell you where you can get a tiger’s whisker.” I filled his glass to the brim.
    “You know,” he said, “that they’re real treasures, worth a great quantity of silver.” “I’m not interested in selling them,” I said. “I want one for myself. Just think, I could walk down the street with my tiger’s whisker and meet up with all kinds of animals