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

life. Your niang told you a story one time, and you elevated it into your life’s work, like treating a stick as a needle. Are you ready to finally give it up now?”
    I shook my head again. “You’re wrong. My niang wouldn’t lie to me. The rest of the world might, but not her.”
    “Then why doesn’t it let you see what I am? I don’t need a tiger’s whisker to show me what you are—you’re a pig, a big, stupid pig.”
    I knew this was her way to make me feel bad. She couldn’t possibly see my true form without a tiger’s whisker. But why wasn’t I able to see hers, either, even with one? Why wasn’t my little treasure working? Oh, no! Uncle He had said that if I mentioned his name, the thing wouldn’t work. And that’s what I’d just done without realizing it. I was crushed. How stupid could I have been, ruining something I’d worked so hard to get? I stood there with the whisker in my hand, in a daze. Hot tears streamed from my eyes.
    My wife sighed when she saw me crying. “You fool, when will you grow up?” She sat up, snatched the whisker out of my hand, and, with a single puff, blew it out of sight. “My treasure—!” I shrieked tearfully. She wrapped her arms around my neck and tried to calm me down. “There, now, don’t be foolish. Here, let me hold you, and we can get some sleep.” But I fought my way out of her grip. “My tiger’s whisker! It’s mine!” Frantically, I groped all over the bed trying to find it. Oh, how I hated her at that moment. “I want my tiger’s whisker! You owe me!” I went over and picked up the lamp to help me look for my treasure, cursing and crying the whole time. She just sat there watching me, shaking her head one minute and sighing the next. “Stop looking,” she said at last. “It’s right here.” I was thrilled. “Where? Where is it?” With her thumb and index finger, she held the curly tiger’s whisker with its golden-yellow tip and laid it across my palm. “Do a better job of holding on to it this time,” she said. “If you lose it again, don’t blame me.” I curled my fingers tightly around it. It might not do what I wanted it to do, but it was still a treasure. But why wouldn’t it work for me? I needed to try again. So once again, I stared into my wife’s face. If it works this time, I was thinking, if she turns out to be a snake, then so be it. But once again she was just my wife, nothing more.
    “Hear me out, my foolish husband. My niang told me the same story yours told you. She said the whisker doesn’t work all the time, only at critical moments. Otherwise, it would be nothing but trouble. How would you live if all you ever saw were animals? So listen to me and put that thing in a safe place, where you can retrieve it at a critical moment. It’ll work then.”
    “Honest? You’re not lying, are you?”
    She nodded. “Why would I want to lie to my beloved husband?”
    I believed her. After scaring up a piece of red cloth, I wrapped up my treasure, tied it tight with string, and hid it in a crack in the wall.
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    2
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    My dieh is a force unto himself. He sent Magistrate Qian’s two yayi back to the yamen empty-handed. You might not know what the Magistrate is capable of, Dieh, but I do. When Xiaokui from the Dongguan oil mill spat at his palanquin as it passed by, a pair of yayi dragged him off in chains. Two weeks later, his father sold two acres of land to pay someone to stand as guarantor to get his son back. But by then one of Xiaokui’s legs was shorter than the other, and he not only walked with a limp, but the toes of one foot dragged along the ground. They started calling him the foreigner, because the lines he scraped in the dirt looked like foreign writing. After that, any time he heard the name “Magistrate Qian,” he foamed at the mouth and fainted. Xiaokui knew what Magistrate Qian was capable of. Not only doesn’t he dare spit at the palanquin when it passes by anymore, but the minute he sees it, he wraps his arms around his head, turns tail, and hobbles off. What you’ve done today, Dieh, is a lot worse than spitting at his palanquin. I may be a fool in other things, but where Magistrate Qian is concerned, I’m as smart as I need to be. Even though my wife is the Magistrate’s little pet, he is strictly impartial. How could he let you get away with what you’ve done when he went and arrested that disappointing gongdieh of mine?
    On the other hand, I could see that my