Sandalwood Death (3 page)

When we passed on the street, he strained to look up and greeted me with an ugly smirk. Even a wooden-headed deaf man is audacious enough to smirk at me, Dieh, which can only mean there is no way you can escape death this time, not even if His Imperial Majesty—forget about the likes of Qian Ding—were to come to stop it. I am discouraged, of course I am, but unwilling to give up. “You hit the tree whether there are dates or not; you treat a dead horse as if it were alive.” If I had to guess, I would say that at that moment Magistrate Qian was with Governor Yuan, who had come to the yamen from Jinan, and Clemens von Ketteler, who had ridden over from Qingdao, all lying on an opium bed in the guest house to enjoy a pipeful, so I decided to wait till Yuan and the foreigner left before taking my dog’s leg into the yamen. If they would let me see the Magistrate, I was sure I could get him to listen to me, for at that moment he would not be Magistrate Qian, but Creepy Eminence Qian, who keeps circling me. What frightens me, Dieh, is that they will transport you to the capital in a prison van. We can deal with them so long as they carry out the sentence here in the county. We’ll find a beggar to take your place, what they call stealing beams and changing pillars, to manage a bit of trickery. You were so mean to my niang, I should not be trying to save your skin; once you are dead and buried, you can never hurt another woman. But you are my dieh. Without heaven there can be no earth, without an egg there can be no chicken, without feelings there can be no opera, and without you there could be no me. Tattered clothes can be replaced, but I have only one dieh. The Temple of the Matriarch is up ahead, and I rush to prostrate myself at the Buddha’s feet. When you are sick, any doctor will do. I will beg the Matriarch to display her powers and extract you from the jaws of death.

The Temple of the Matriarch was eerily dark, too murky to see a thing, but I heard bats flying around, their wings flapping against the rafters—oh, maybe they were swallows, not bats, yes, that’s what they were, swallows. Slowly my eyes adapted to the darkness, and I saw a dozen beggars lying on the floor in front of the Matriarch. My head reeled from the stink of urine, farts, and spoiled food; I nearly retched. Revered Matriarch of Sons and Grandsons, how you must suffer, forced to live with these wild tomcats. Like snakes emerging from their hibernation, they stretched their stiff bodies and got lazily to their feet, one after the other. Zhu Ba—Zhu the Eighth—the white-haired, red-eyed beggar chief, made a face and fired a gob of spit my way.

“Bad omen, bad omen, truly bad omen!” he shouted. “This rabbit’s a female!”

His motley pack followed his lead and spat at me, then shouted in unison:

“Bad omen, bad omen, truly bad omen! This rabbit’s a female!”

A red-bottomed monkey was on my shoulder like a bolt of lightning, frightening two and a half of my three souls right out of my body, and by the time I gathered my wits, the little bastard had reached into my basket and stolen my dog’s leg. It scampered over to an incense table and in a flash was perched on the Matriarch’s shoulder. All that movement produced jangles from the chain around its neck, while its tail swept up clouds of dust that made me sneeze—
ah-choo
! The damned, stinking monkey, as much human as beast, perched on the Matriarch’s shoulder and bared its teeth as it gnawed noisily on the dog’s leg, making a mess of the Matriarch’s face with its greasy paws. But she bore it meekly, without complaint, merciful and benevolent. If the Matriarch was powerless to control a monkey, how could she possibly save my dieh’s life?

Dieh, oh, Dieh, your bluster knew no bounds, like a weasel on a camel, the biggest mate it could find. You have forged such a monstrous calamity that even the Old Buddha, Empress Dowager Cixi, knows your name, and Kaiser Wilhelm himself has been told what you have done. For an ordinary, worthless opera singer who haunted city streets and country roads to put food in his belly, you now know that your life did not pass through the world unnoticed. The opera lyric says: “Better to live three days and go out in a blaze of glory than to live a thousand years as a timid soul.” You sang on the stage for most of your life, Dieh, acting out other people’s stories. This time you were determined to insert yourself into the drama; you acted and acted, until you yourself became the drama.

The beggars surrounded me. Some held out rotting arms oozing with pus; others exposed their ulcerated midriffs. Catcalls and jeers rose from their ranks, a cacophony of bizarre sounds, some loud, some soft: songs, calls to the dead, wolf bays, donkey brays, every sound imaginable, all tangled, like feathers on a chicken.

“Help me, Dog-Meat Xishi, please, Sister Zhao, be charitable. Hand over a couple of coppers now, and you’ll find two silver dollars on your way home . . . if you refuse, I won’t worry, for in this life you’ll be sorry . . .”

All the time they were filling the temple with their horrid noise, those dogshit bastards pinched me on the thigh or squeezed my bottom or manhandled my breasts . . . groping here and fondling there, whatever they could do to have their way with me. I tried to get away, but they grabbed my arms and held me around the waist, so I threw myself at Zhu Ba. “Zhu Ba,” I said, “Zhu Ba, let this be between you and me.” Well, he picked up a willow switch and poked me in the back of the knee, dropping me to the floor. With a smirk, he said:

“When a fat pig comes to your door, you’d be a fool not to kill and eat it. Boys,” he said, “Magistrate Qian might feast on the meat, but you can have a taste of the soup.”

The beggars piled onto me and pulled my pants down. Out of desperation, I said, “Zhu Ba, you dog-shit bastard, a true burglar does not wait for a fire. You may not care, but my dieh was imprisoned by Qian Ding, and now has a date with the executioner.” He rolled his pus-filled eyes.

“Who is your dieh?” he asked.

“Zhu Ba,” I said, “your eyes are open, yet you pretend to be asleep. How could you not know who he is, when all of China knows? He is Sun Bing, from Northeast Gaomi Township, the Sun Bing who sings Maoqiang opera, the Sun Bing who pried up railroad tracks, the Sun Bing who led the fight between local residents and the German devils!” Zhu Ba rose up, cupped his hands in front of his chest, and said:

“Do not take offense, Elder Sister; I did not know. We were aware that Qian Ding was your gandieh, but not that Sun Bing was your real dieh. Qian Ding is a no-good bastard; your dieh is a hero who courageously stood up to the foreign devils, pitting sword against sword and gun against gun. How we envy him. If there is anything you need from us, do not hesitate to ask. On your knees, boys, and kowtow to the fair lady as an act of contrition.”

As one, the gang of beggars knelt down and kowtowed to me, banging their heads on the floor, which marked their foreheads with dust.

“Great blessings for Elder Sister, great blessings!” they shouted in unison.

Even the monkey crouching on the Matriarch’s shoulder tossed away the dog’s leg and bounded headlong to the floor, where, in imitation of the men, it kowtowed to me in its own strange way, to my delight.

“Boys,” Zhu Ba announced, “tomorrow we deliver several dog’s legs to the fair lady.”

“That is not necessary,” I said.

“Your generosity is appreciated,” said Zhu Ba, “but these boys can catch a dog faster than they can pluck a flea out of their pants.”

The beggars laughed, some revealing yellow teeth and others toothless gums, and I was struck by the feeling that these were decent men who lived simple yet interesting lives. Sunlight burst in through the temple entrance, its red, warm rays lighting up the smiles on the beggars’ faces. My nose began to ache; hot tears filled my eyes.

“Elder Sister, do you want us to break him out of jail?”

“No,” I said, “that you cannot do. My dieh is no run-of-the-mill case, and the prison gate is guarded not only by yamen soldiers, but by armed Germans as well.”

“Hou Xiaoqi,” Zhu Ba said, “go check things out. Report back with anything you hear.”

“Understood!” Hou replied as he picked up a bronze gong that 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, smelly dog hair combed out one time, you can thank eight generations of your pious ancestors. But like a cat that’s had a taste of fish, an old bachelor who’s had a taste of the good life, you can’t get enough. Did you really think that a five-ounce silver certificate was all you needed to buy my favors? Hah! Ponder for a moment who you are and who I am. I climbed down off the kang, boiling mad and of a mind to say exactly what I thought and teach him a lesson. But before I could open my mouth, the old wretch looked up and, as if talking to himself, said to the wall:

“I wonder who combs the County Magistrate’s hair for him.”

I shuddered. The old wretch was not human, I felt, but an invisible, all-knowing ghost. How else would he know that I combed Magistrate Qian’s hair? Having said what he wanted to say, he turned back around, sat up in his chair, and fixed his gloomy eyes on me. My anger suddenly gone, I meekly walked around and began combing his dog hair. And as I was doing that, I unconsciously thought about my gandieh’s nice black hair—sleek, glossy, fragrant. And when I grabbed hold of a queue that resembled nothing so much as a shedding donkey’s tail, my thoughts drifted to my gandieh’s heavy, fleshy queue, which seemed capable of moving all by itself. He could brush my body with that queue, from the top of my head down to my heels, gentle claws that burrowed into my heart and squeezed waves of seduction out of every pore.

I had no choice but to work the comb. It was time to drink the bitter brew of my own creation. Whenever I combed my gandieh’s hair, he began touching me, and before I had a chance to finish, our bodies were intertwined. I found it hard to believe that this old wretch was unmoved by my ministrations, and I was waiting for him to start climbing the pole. Old wretch, if you even try, I’ll make sure you can’t climb down once you’re up there. Yes, when that happens, you’ll start doing my bidding, and I’ll be damned if I’ll ever comb your hair again! Rumors swirled that the old wretch was in possession of a hundred thousand in silver certificates; sooner or later, he would have to bring it out for me to see. So I looked forward to the day when he would try to make the climb; but that day had yet to come. Still, I was not prepared to believe that there is a cat anywhere that does not like fish. Old wretch, we’ll see how long you can hold out. I loosened his queue and ran my comb through those soft, scraggly hairs. I was especially gentle that day, though it was a struggle not to vomit as my fingers touched the base of his ears and I pressed my breasts against the nape of his neck. “My dieh has been arrested,” I said, “and thrown in jail. With all the time you spent in the capital, and the reputation you enjoyed there, you can get him out.” He made no sound in response. He sat like a deaf mute, so with a gentle squeeze of his shoulder I repeated myself. Still no response. As the sun’s rays drifted by, they made the brass buttons on his brown silk Mandarin jacket shine, and then moved on to his hands, with which he unhurriedly fingered his sandalwood Buddhist beads. Pale and soft, those delicate hands seemed not to belong to someone of his sex and age. You could put a knife to my throat, and I still could not believe that they wielded an executioner’s sword. At least that is what I thought at the time; now I wasn’t so sure. I pressed myself even harder against him and said coyly, “Gongdieh, my dieh did something bad, but you, after all you’ve seen and done in the capital, you can do or say something to help him.” I squeezed his bony shoulder a second time and rested my full breasts on the nape of his neck as my lips formed a series of provocative sounds. When I used tricks like that on Qian Ding, Eminence Ding went limp and was ready to do whatever I asked. But the balding old wretch in front of me now was like an egg that could never be cooked; I could bounce my soft, supple breasts up and down in front of him or send enough seductive waves his way to submerge Gold Mountain Temple without getting a rise out of him. But then he abruptly stopped fingering the beads; I thought I saw those small, meaty hands begin to shake, and I was ecstatic. Have I finally gotten to you, you old wretch? A toad can hold up a bedpost only so long. I don’t believe you can keep those silver certificates hidden forever, and I don’t believe you will use my relationship with the County Magistrate to force me to comb your dog hair. Dieh, help me think of something. So I kept up the seductive act behind him, until, that is, I heard a contemptuous laugh, like the chilling hoot of an owl emerging from a graveyard deep in a dark woods on a moonless night. I froze. It felt as if ice ran through my veins, and all my thoughts and wishes flew off to I don’t know where. The old wretch, was he even human? Could a human being produce a laugh like that? No, he was not human; he was a demon. And so he must not be my gongdieh. In more than a dozen years with Xiaojia, I had never heard him say he had a dieh who lived in the capital. And he was not alone: our neighbors, too, who had seen much of the world and knew a thing or two, had never mentioned him. He could be a lot of things, but not my gongdieh. He and my husband looked nothing alike. Old baldy, you must be a beast in human form. Others might fear demons and spirits, but not the people in this family. I’ll have Xiaojia butcher the black dog out in the pen and keep its blood in a basin. Then, when you’re not looking, I’ll dump it over your bald pate to reveal your true form.