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

and gazed at the bird perched at the top. Her lips trembled as a jumble of indecipherable words poured from between those red lips and the white teeth behind them. Her sincerity was so moving that the bird cried out as it spread its wings and disappeared without a trace in the moonlight, like ice melting in water or rays of light overwhelmed by bright flames.
    A pounding at the gate startled her out of her crippling infatuation. She ran back into the house and dressed quickly, then, with no shoes on her big feet, ran across the muddy ground to the gate, where, with her hand held over her pounding heart, she asked in a shaky voice:
    “Who is it?”
    She hoped, nearly prayed, for a miracle, that the person on the other side of the gate was the beneficiary of her impassioned sincerity, the one the gods had linked to her by a red thread. He had come to her in the moonlight. It was all she could do to keep from falling to her knees and praying for her dream to come true. But the person outside the gate called her name softly:
    “Meiniang, open the gate.”
    “Who are you?”
    “It’s your dieh.”
    “Dieh? What are you doing here at this late hour?”
    “Don’t ask, daughter, your dieh is in trouble. Open the gate!”
    After hurriedly sliding back the bolt, she opened the squeaky gate for Northeast Gaomi Township’s famous actor, Sun Bing—who fell heavily to the ground.
    Moonlight revealed patches of blood on her dieh’s face. His beard, which had been the loser in a contest not long before, but had not been torn out completely, was now reduced to a few scraggly strands curled up on his bloody chin.
    “What happened?” she asked in alarm.
    She ran inside and woke up Xiaojia to help her dieh over to the kang, where she pried open his mouth with a chopstick and poured in half a bowlful of water. He came to, and the first thing he did was reach up to feel his chin. He burst into tears, like a little boy who has been bullied. Blood continued to ooze from his injured chin, staining the few remaining hairs, which she removed with a pair of scissors before daubing on a handful of white flour. His face had undergone a transformation; he now resembled a very strange creature.
    “Who did this to you?” Meiniang demanded.
    Green sparks seemed to shoot out of his tear-filled eyes. His cheek muscles tensed; his teeth ground against each other.
    “It was him, it had to be him. He was the one who pulled out my beard. He won the contest, why couldn’t he let it go at that? He pardoned me in front of everyone, said I didn’t have to do it, but then he carried out his revenge in secret. Why? He’s more vicious than a viper, a marauding blight on humanity!”
    At that moment, her lovesickness was suddenly cured, and as she pondered her dazed and confused thoughts over the past several months, she felt both shame and remorse. It was almost as if she had conspired with Qian Ding to rip out her own father’s beard. Magistrate Qian, she said to herself, you are a mean and sinister man, someone to whom justice means nothing. What made me think that you were a tolerant, loving people’s Magistrate, instead of a cruel and ruthless thug? So what if I hovered between human and ghost because of you? That was my fault for demeaning myself. But what gave you the right to treat my father with such cruelty after he publicly acknowledged his defeat? When you pardoned him in front of everyone, I was so moved that I got down on my knees and let you tear my heart to shreds. That gesture earned for you a reputation of magnanimity, while all the time you planned to seek revenge in secret. How could I have let myself become besotted by a beast in human form, a true scoundrel? Do you have any idea what sort of life I have lived over the past few months? It was a simple question that produced both sadness and anger in her. Qian Ding, I will one day erase your dog life for tearing out my father’s beard.
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    6
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    After picking out two nice fatty dog’s legs, she cleaned and tossed them into a pot of soup stock, where they boiled noisily. She added spices to enhance the flavor of the meat, and tended to the fire herself, making it as strong as possible at first and then letting the meat stew over a low flame. People out on the street could smell it cooking, and big-eared Lü Seven, a regular customer, banged on the door when the aroma drifted his way. “Hey, Big-Footed Fairy,” he shouted, “what wind cleared the