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

was lying in front of the Matriarch. Then he strapped on a sack and whistled. “Come along with your papa, my boy.” The monkey leaped onto his shoulder, and Hou Xiaoqi walked out of the temple banging his gong and singing, the monkey riding on his shoulders. I looked up at the Matriarch, whose body exuded ancient airs, and whose face, like a silver plate, was beaded with sweat. She was making her presence known; she was telling me something! Use your power, Matriarch, to protect my dieh!
    ————
    3
    ————
    I returned home full of hope. Xiaojia was already up and was out in the yard sharpening his knife. He smiled at me, a warm, friendly greeting. I returned the smile, equally warm and friendly. After he tested the point of the knife on his finger and found it still not sharp enough, he went back to work— zzzp zzzp . He was wearing only a singlet; the exposed skin showed off his taut muscles, like cloves of garlic, a powerful man with a patch of black chest hair. I walked inside, where my gongdieh was sitting in a sandalwood armchair made unique by a dragon inlaid with gold filaments; he’d had it sent over from the capital. He was resting, eyes closed, and softly muttering as he fingered the sandalwood beads of his rosary, and I could not tell whether he was reciting a Buddhist sutra or mouthing curses. The room had a gloomy feel, with faint streams of sunlight filtering in through the latticed window. One of those sunbeams, bright like gold or silver, lit up his gaunt face: sunken eyes, a high nose bridge, and a tightly shut mouth that sliced above his chin like a knife. No hairs decorated his short upper lip or his long chin. No wonder there was talk that he was a eunuch who had escaped from the Imperial Court. His hair had thinned out so much he could make a queue only by adding black thread. His eyes slitted open, sending icy rays my way. “You’re up, Gongdieh,” I said. He nodded without interrupting the fingering of his beads.
    A routine had developed over the months for me to groom his queue with an ox-horn comb, a task ordinarily performed by a maidservant, which we did not have. That was not something daughters-in-law were expected to do, and if word had gotten out, rumors of an incestuous relationship would have swirled. But something the old man knew put me at his mercy, and if he wanted me to comb his hair, I did so. In fact, it was I who had started the routine. One morning soon after his arrival, as he struggled with a comb with missing teeth, his son, my husband, went up to do it for him.
    “Dieh,” he said as he worked, “I have sparse hair, and as a boy I once heard Niang say that most of it had fallen out from scabies. Is that why yours is so sparse?”
    My idiot husband’s clumsy hands forced a grimace onto the old man’s face. He was lucky enough to have a son willing to comb his hair, though his head was being scraped like a debristled hog. I had just returned from Magistrate Qian’s and was in a decent mood, so to make them happy, I said, “Here, let me do that.” By adding black threads to the scant few strands of hair, I gave him a nice thick queue, and when I was finished, I handed him a mirror. He pulled the thing around front—half hair, half threads—and the gloomy look in his eyes gave way to glistening tears. It was a rare event, to say the least. Xiaojia dabbed at his father’s eyes.
    “Are you crying, Dieh?” he asked.
    The old man shook his head.
    “The Empress Dowager had a eunuch whose only task was to comb Her hair,” he said, “but She never used him. That responsibility She handed to Her favorite eunuch, Li Lianying.” I had no idea why he was telling us this, but Xiaojia, who was besotted by anything having to do with Peking, begged him to say more. Ignoring his son, the old man handed me a silver certificate.
    “Go into town and have some nice clothes made, Daughter-in-law. That’s the least I can do considering how you’ve looked after me these past few days.”
    The next morning, Xiaojia woke me out of a sound sleep. “What are you doing?” I snapped.
    “Get up,” he said with uncharacteristic boldness. “My dieh is waiting for you to comb his hair.”
    This unexpected news made me very uncomfortable. The door to goodness is easy to open, they say, and hard to close. What did he expect of me? You are not the Empress Dowager, old wretch, and I am not Li Lianying. For the favor of having those few scraggly strands of washed-out,