The Corpse Reader (23 page)

The elder went pale.

“Chang?” He reached a trembling hand into his robe and brought out a knife that glinted in the light. He advanced slowly on one of the men, who took a few terrified steps back.

The elder motioned to the others, and several of the men took hold of Chang. He denied his guilt at first, but when they started pulling out his fingernails, he burst out with the admission, but he said he hadn’t meant to do it.

They took their time putting him to death; the elder slit Chang’s neck veins, prolonging the process with great skill. Finally, Chang breathed his last and collapsed forward.

Then the men turned to Cí and bowed, and the elder handed Xu a purse full of coins.

“The rest of your money.” Though Xu was still recovering from the shock, he managed to return the elder’s bow. “Now, if you’ll allow us, it’s time for us to honor our dead.”

Xu made to leave, but Cí stopped him.

“Hear me!” Cí exhorted the room. “The gods have spoken through us. It was their will that the murderer be revealed. By the power vested in me, I order you to never breathe a word of what has happened here this evening. Not another soul can know. If anyone shares this secret, all hell’s devils and demons will pursue him, and his family, and death will be close on their heels.”

The elder considered the words, pursing his lips. Finally he gave another bow and withdrew with his contingent. Cí and Xu were shown the exit by the monk who had brought them in.

The pair made their way back into the city, coming back down the hill atop which the Great Pagoda sat. There was a glimmer of the rising sun out to sea—a sun that barely seemed real to Cí. They walked in silence, each of them lost in thought over what had happened. As they approached the city wall, Xu turned to face Cí.

“What the hell did you think you were doing, threatening them like that? They know everyone. If not for your clever little
sermon, everyone would be hearing about us; we’d be rolling in clients. We’d make enough to buy ourselves our own cemetery! You just threw it all away!”

Cí didn’t think he could tell Xu that a sheriff was trying to track him down. But that didn’t stop his stomach from churning with anger. Their lives had been on the line, and Xu didn’t even see fit to thank him for saving them. All Xu cared about was the future of the business.

He had a sudden urge to get away from Xu—to take Third and get away, anywhere.

“Is this how you repay me?” Cí said.

“Hey, careful now!” shouted Xu. “Don’t try and take all the credit. I named Chang!”

“OK, I get it,” he said. “You’d have preferred it if I let that guy slit your throat. It would have been better, you reckon, if I’d said nothing about the corpse.”

“I named Chang!” repeated Xu.

“OK! Who cares? When it comes down to it, this is going to be the last time we argue like this.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I’m never going to get involved in another situation like that one just because you see a chance to make a bit of money. I still have no idea what the hell you were thinking. I’ve not even finished my studies, and you think it’s a good idea to cart me out in front of those lunatics.”

Xu had opened the purse and was biting one of the coins.

“They’re real silver!”

“I don’t need a silver coffin,” muttered Cí.

“What would you like, then? One made of flax? Because that’s what you’re headed for if you carry on like you have been.”

Cí started to walk away.

“Where are you going?” Xu hurried after Cí. “Here.” Xu emptied out roughly a third of the money. “That’s more than you could make in six months doing anything else.”

Cí rejected it. He knew where avarice led—his father had taught him that much.

“Goddamn, boy. What are you about?”

“That man, Chang, maybe he—”

“Maybe he
what
?” roared Xu.

“Maybe he was innocent. What made you name him?”

“Innocent! Don’t make me laugh. All of those men were more than capable of butchering their own children. And anyway, he confessed in the end, didn’t he? I knew Chang—everyone knew Chang—and it was common knowledge he was out for the crown. And what does it matter, anyway? He was a thief, a lowlife; sooner or later he’d have ended up dead. It’s better that you and I become a little less poor in the bargain.”

“I don’t care about any of that. You didn’t know for sure. You didn’t have the proof, and without that no one should be accused. Maybe it was only the torture that made him confess. No, I’m never doing anything like that again. Get it? I’ll dig graves, probe patients, examine people dead or alive—but I’ll never again accuse someone without proper proof. If you ask me to do that, the first thing I’ll do is point my finger at you.”

For the rest of the walk, Xu shot poisonous looks at Cí. But Cí didn’t care; he was agonizing over what to do next.

The money Xu had offered him changed things: it meant he could actually take Third and get out of Lin’an—away from all this danger. But Lin’an still held the promise of all his dreams: university,
the Imperial exams, and the chance, if he passed them, to win back his father’s honor.

He didn’t want to submit to Xu’s crazy whims; he’d seen what the consequences might be. And he didn’t much want to wait around for Kao to come and finish him off, either.

He kicked a stone and cursed.

He bemoaned not having his father for advice. Or Feng. Someone upright and virtuous to help him through these troubles. He swore to himself that his children, if he ever had any, would never have to suffer this sort of disgrace. He’d do anything to make them proud of him. Everything that had been snatched from his father, he’d win back. That would be their inheritance.

When they arrived at Xu’s houseboat, Cí still hadn’t decided what to do, but Xu’s stance made it easier for him.

“You’ve got two choices, boy,” he said, stepping one foot onto the houseboat. “Keep on working like you have been, or get out of here. Simple.”

Cí looked at Xu and gritted his teeth. He only had one option, really: to keep his sister alive.

The next few weeks weren’t easy.

Cí would get up every night and go to the Imperial Market so he could help one of Xu’s wives carry fish back to the houseboat and clean them. The fish cleaning had been assigned to Third, and it had to be done whether she was ill or not, so Cí tried to lighten the load. Then he would accompany Xu on a round of the markets and wharves to find out about the previous day’s deaths and violent accidents. They also would stop by the hospitals and clinics, including the Great Pharmacy, where Xu would slip an attendant a little money in exchange for details about the most seriously ill patients. With this information, Xu would plan their next move.

On their way to the Fields of Death, Cí would evaluate the patients’ backgrounds, looking for anything that could help make his pronouncements more believable. When they got to the cemetery, he’d put the tools in order and then help dig trenches, lug sacks of earth from one end of the cemetery to the other, place gravestones, help carry coffins. He and Xu would eat and then get ready for the performance; one of Xu’s wives had come up with a necromancer outfit with a mask.

“We’ll come across as more mysterious,” said Cí, but he didn’t mention that he was a fugitive and that the other advantage to the disguise was that it would hide his identity.

Xu wasn’t wild about the costume, but Cí convinced him by pointing out that if he ever decided to give up the work, it would make it easier for someone else to take his place.

Their work included corpses at the Buddhist monastery. Cremations tended to bring them less money than burials, but it all helped to spread their reputation, and intrigue grew.

They’d return to the houseboat after dark, and Cí would always wake Third to check that she was feeling well and that she’d done her chores. He’d give her little wooden figures that he’d whittled between burials. Then it would be time to give her medicine, check her writing exercises, and recite the thousand words children had to learn to master reading.

“I’m tired,” she’d say, but Cí would stroke her hair and insist they do a little more.

“You don’t want to be a fisherwoman your whole life,” he would tell her.

After everyone was asleep he’d go out into the cold night air and stare at the reflection of the stars in the water as he tried to recite
Prescriptions Left by the Spirits of Liu Jun-Zi
, an impassioned text on surgery that he’d bought secondhand. He’d study until overcome by sleep or until rain extinguished the lantern.

Every night he also remembered his father’s dishonor and felt overwhelmed by bitterness.

As the months went by, Cí learned to tell the differences between accidental wounds and those brought about in an attempt to kill; to recognize the incisions made by hatchets, daggers, kitchen knives,
machetes, and swords; to discern between a murder and a suicide. He discovered that a murderer’s methods would be sloppy when the motive was jealousy or sudden anger, and more sophisticated when the death was premeditated and based on revenge.

Each case challenged Cí differently, and required both knowledge and imagination. He attended most to the smaller details—scars, wounds, inflammation. At times something as slight as a lock of hair or a minor discharge could provide the key to an apparently inexplicable case.

There was nothing he hated more than when he failed to find the clues he needed. The more corpses he examined, the more he realized how little he really knew. Everyone else thought he had magical powers when he was actually learning the extent of his ignorance. He’d grow desperate sometimes—if there was a symptom he couldn’t make sense of, a corpse that wouldn’t give up its secrets, a scar whose origin he couldn’t figure out. Each time he came to an impasse, he remembered Feng and the man’s attention to detail. Feng had taught Cí things he never would have learned in university—but, surprisingly, he was also learning from Xu.

Xu had some expertise when it came to the dead. He knew how to figure out how bruises might have come about and how to discern what job a person had done. He’d developed a familiarity with corpses though years working at the cemetery and helping with cremations at the Buddhist monastery; he’d even worked at one time as a gravedigger at the prisons in Sichuan, where torture and death were commonplace. He had much of the practical experience Cí lacked.

“Did I see executions there!” he bragged. “Proper killings they were—none of this kid stuff. If prisoners’ families didn’t bring them food, neither did the government.”

Of course, this reminded Cí of Lu’s awful death. It was some comfort to know it probably wouldn’t have been any better for him if he had survived and made it to Sichuan.

Cí, as hungry for knowledge as ever, tried to glean as much information from Xu as he could, but he also had to study if he was to stand a chance with the Imperial exams. As winter approached, he mentioned to Xu that he wanted to buy more books.

“Fine by me,” said Xu. “But it comes out of your wages.”

Even though the price of food and medicine was rising, Cí still had ample money to keep Third fed and medicated. He could get the books, but after working such long days he didn’t have much time to study.