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

soft and pliable, saying on her way out, “Take that treasure of yours and see what animal your dieh is after spending forty-four years killing people. This is just a guess, but I’ll say eight or nine chances out of ten, he’s a poisonous snake.” More talk of snakes! I knew she was like the fleeing bandit who yells “Stop, thief!” and I was not about to be fooled by that.
    I put my treasure back in its hiding place in the wall, beginning to wish I’d never gotten it in the first place. The less you know, the better, most of the time. Knowledge only gets you into trouble. Knowing a person’s true form is especially dangerous, because that’s something you cannot get past. Now that I’d seen what my wife really was, that was the end of it for me. If I’d been ignorant of her snake background, nothing could have stopped me from wrapping my arms around her in bed. Think I’d dare do that now? That was reason enough not to want to know what my dieh was. I was already pretty much a loner, and now that my wife was a snake, my dieh was all I had.
    So I hid my treasure and went into the living room, where I got the shock of my life. Heaven help me, there on my dieh’s sandalwood chair sat an emaciated panther! It turned to look at me out of the corner of its eye. I’d seen that look before, and it didn’t take a genius to know that it was in fact my dieh in an earlier form. It opened its mouth, making its whiskers twitch. “Son,” it said, “so now you know. Your dieh was the preeminent executioner at the Great Qing Court, the recipient of accolades from the Empress Dowager Herself. It is a calling that must stay in the family.”
    My heart skipped a beat. Heaven help me, what was that all about? In the story my niang told me about the tiger’s whisker, she said that after the man hid the whisker he’d gone up north to get, he could only see people as people—his dieh was not a horse and his niang was not a dog. I’d tucked my whisker back into a crack in the wall, so why was I now seeing my dieh as a panther? My eyes must have been deceiving me. Maybe the effects of that thing lingered on my hand. I was already having trouble accepting the fact that my wife was a white snake, and now that I’d discovered that my dieh was a panther, well, for me the road ahead was a dead end. In a state of panic, I ran into the yard, where I scooped up a pail of water and frantically washed my hands and rinsed out my eyes. Then I buried my head in the water. One weird occurrence after another that day had swelled my head, and I was hoping that a cold-water bath would bring it down to size.
    I returned to the living room, only to find the panther still sitting in my dieh’s sandalwood armchair. There was a look of disdain in those eyes, disappointment that I hadn’t made much of myself. A red-tasseled skullcap was perched atop its large, furry head; two hairy ears were pricked straight up in a state of vigilance. Dozens of long, wiry whiskers fanned out from the sides of its wide mouth. After licking its chops and the tip of its nose with a spiky, slurpy tongue, it yawned with red grandeur. It was wearing a tea-colored short jacket over a long robe, from whose wide sleeves fleshy, clawed paws emerged. It was such a strange, comical scene, I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. At the moment, those claws were deftly manipulating a string of sandalwood prayer beads.
    Niang once told me that a tiger manipulates Buddhist prayer beads to give the impression of goodness. She never said anything about a panther.
    I backed up slowly, barely able to keep from turning and running. My wife was a snake, my dieh a panther. This house was no place for me. I’d be in real trouble if either one of them reverted back to its original form. Even if what we’d meant to each other kept them from eating me, I don’t think I could stand the crushing anxiety of doubt. I forced a smile, hoping that would keep him from getting suspicious. It was my only hope. That panther was showing its age, but its hind legs, folded into a crouch in the armchair, looked to have plenty of spring left—leaping a good five or six feet would be no problem. Sure, its teeth had worn down over the years, but those steely fangs would have no trouble crushing my throat. And let’s say I had the leg strength to get away from the panther; there’d still be the white snake. According to my niang, a snake that has gained spirit status is half a dragon and