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

can move like the wind, faster than a racehorse. She said she’d actually seen a snake as thick as her arm and as long as a carrying pole chase down a fawn in the wild. The young deer had run and bounded through the grass, fast as an arrow off the bow. The snake? With the front half of its body raised off the ground, it parted the grass with a whoosh . In the end, it swallowed the fawn whole. My wife was as big around as a water bucket and had reached heights of Taoist cultivation way beyond that of the snake that ate the fawn. I could run faster than a jackrabbit and still not escape something that could soar with the clouds and mist.
    “Where are you going, Xiaojia?” A gloom-laden voice sounded behind me. I turned to look. The panther had risen up out of the sandalwood chair, its forelegs pressing down on the armrests, its hind legs now touching the brick floor. I was caught in a withering glare. Heaven help me, the old-timer was ready to pounce, and could easily make it out into the yard in one leap! Don’t panic, I told myself to boost my courage; calm down. Heh-heh, I feigned a laugh. “I’m going to take care of that pig, Dieh. Pork must be sold when it’s fresh. It’s heavier on the scale and it looks better.” The panther smirked. “It’s time for you to take up a new calling, son,” the panther said. “It too involves ‘killing,’ but pig-killing is one of the three debased occupations, while man-killing has been elevated to one of the nine chosen occupations.” I kept backing up. “You’re right, Dieh. From today on, I’ll stop killing pigs and learn from you how to kill a man . . .” At that moment the white snake raised its head, a head covered with glistening, scary coin-sized scales all the way down its white neck. “Cluck cluck cluck cluck” . . . a strand of laughter sounding more like a laying hen sputtered from her mouth. “Xiaojia,” she said, “did you see it? What animal was your dieh? A wolf? A tiger? A poisonous snake?” I watched her scaly white neck rise up as the red jacket and green pants she was wearing slid off her body like a multihued snakeskin. Her red-tinged black tongue was within striking distance of my eyes. Niang! I lost it then, jumping backward in terror, and— bang ! I heard what sounded like a thunderclap and saw stars—Niang! I passed out, foaming at the mouth. My wife later said I’d suffered an epilepsy attack. Nonsense! How can someone who’s not an epileptic suffer one of those? What happened is that in my panicky jump I hit my head on a doorjamb nail. The pain knocked me out.
    A woman was calling me from far, far off: “Xiaojia . . . Xiaojia . . .” I couldn’t tell whether it was my niang or my wife. I had a splitting headache, and when I tried to open my eyes, I couldn’t—my lids were stuck shut by something gummy. There was a perfumed smell in the air, and then the smell of crushed grass, and finally the heavy, rank odor of boiled pig entrails. The calls kept coming: “Xiaojia, Xiaojia . . .” Then something cool and refreshing pelted me in the face, and my mind was abruptly as clear as a bell.
    The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was a rainbow of dancing colors. Then I saw brilliant flashes of light, followed by a big, pasty face that nearly touched mine. It belonged to my wife. “Xiaojia,” I heard her say, “you scared me half to death.” She was tugging me with a hand that felt sweaty, and finally managed, very clumsily, to pull me up off the floor. I shook my head. “Where am I?” “Where are you? You’re home, you poor fool.” Home. Feeling a sense of agony, I frowned, as everything that had just happened came back in a flash. “As heaven is my witness, I don’t want that tiger’s whisker, I don’t! I’m going to throw it into the fire.” She smirked and put her mouth up close to my ear. “You big fool,” she said, “did you really think that’s a tiger’s whisker? It’s one of my hairs.” I shook my head. It hurt, it hurt like crazy. “No, that can’t be. You don’t have hair like that. But even if you did, how do you explain the fact that when I held it in my hand, I could see your true form? And I saw my dieh’s true form even when I wasn’t holding it.” “Tell me, then,” she said, her curiosity piqued, “what was I?” As I looked into that fair, fresh face, then down at her arms and legs, before glancing over at my dieh, who was slumped in his armchair, everything suddenly