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

by Mo Yan

  The constables put up with the racket as long as they could before reemerging with their torches, some jabbering something he couldn’t hear, others yawning. After a brief discussion in front of the shop and some shouted commands, they mounted up and rode off. As soon as the hoofbeats and torchlight disappeared, peace and quiet returned to the town. He was about to come out of hiding when lights flared up in town, all at once, as if on command. Everything stopped for a moment, and then dozens of lanterns appeared on the street, forming a luminous, fast-moving line that snaked its way toward him. Hot tears slipped out of his eyes.

  ————

  7

  ————

  Relying on the guidance of an experienced old man, he hid during the daylight hours over the days that followed and slipped back into town at night, when the streets were quiet and deserted. He spent his days in the woods on the opposite bank of the Masang River, where there were a dozen or so cottages the villagers used to cure tobacco. That was where he slept during the days, crossing the river to return home late at night. He headed back to his cottages first thing the next morning with a bundle of flatbreads and a gourd filled with water.

  Many of the willow trees near the cottages were home to nesting magpies. He would lie on the kang, eating and sleeping, sleeping and eating. At first he could not screw up the courage to step outside, but gradually he grew less guarded and slipped out to look up at the squawking magpies in their nests. He and a tall, well-built young shepherd struck up a friendship. He shared his flat-breads with Mudu, the simple, honest young man, and even told him who he was—Sun Bing, the man who had killed the railroad engineer.

  On the seventh day of the second lunar month, five days after killing the German, he finished off several of the flatbreads and a bowlful of water in the afternoon and was lying on the kang listening to the magpies and to the tattoos of a woodpecker attacking a tree. As he slipped into that twilight zone between sleep and wakefulness, the sharp crack of gunfire snapped him out of his stupor. He had never before heard the sound of a breech-loading rifle, which was nothing like that of a local hunting rifle. He knew immediately that this was bad. Jumping off the kang and picking up his club, he flattened himself against the wall behind the door to await the arrival of his enemies. More gunfire. It came from the opposite bank. Unable to sit still in the cottage, he slipped out the door, bent at the waist, and scrambled over a series of crumbling walls to move in among the willow trees. A cacophony of shrill sounds erupted in town: his wife was crying, his children were bawling, horses whinnied, mules brayed, and dogs barked, all at the same time. But he could not see a thing. Then an idea struck him. Slipping his club into his belt, he began climbing the tallest tree he saw. When the magpies spotted the invader, they launched an attack, but he drove them off with his club, once, twice, over and over, until they retreated. He stood on a limb next to a large nest and, holding on to keep from falling, looked down at the far side of the river. Now he could see what was happening, all of it.

  At least fifty foreign horses were arrayed in front of his teashop, all ridden by foreign soldiers in bright, fancy uniforms with round, feathered caps, and firing bayonet-fitted blue-steel automatic rifles at the shop door and windows. Puffs of white smoke, like daisy blossoms, floated out of the muzzles and hung in the air for a long moment. Sunlight danced off the brass buttons on the soldiers’ tunics and the bayonets attached to the barrels of their guns, blinding bright. A squad of Imperial troops wearing red-tasseled summer straw hats and tunics with white circles in the center, front and back, was arrayed behind them. Suddenly dazed, he dropped the club, which fell to the ground, banging into one limb after another on its way down. Lucky for him he was holding on to a branch, or he’d have followed the club down.

  Panic took hold. He knew that this was the calamity he had dreaded. But he held on to a thread of hope that his wife’s acting skills, honed over the years, especially her convincing acts of madness, would work on the German soldiers the way they had on His Eminence Magistrate Qian’s constables, that they would make a fuss until they were sure he was not there and then leave. At that moment he promised himself that if they somehow escaped with their lives, he would pack up and move his family away, far away.

  Nothing could have been worse than what happened next. He watched as two of the soldiers dragged his wife, kicking and screaming, down to the river, while a third soldier, bigger and taller than the others, followed with the children, dragging each of them by one leg, as if they were ducks or chickens, and deposited them on the riverbank. Stone broke free from the soldier who was restraining him by biting him on the arm. But then he saw Stone’s small, dark figure back down off the riverbank, down and down, until he bumped into the rifle of a soldier behind him. The glinting blade of the bayonet ran him through. It looked like he screamed, but there was no sound as he rolled like a little black ball down the bank. From his vantage point up in the tree, Sun Bing was blinded by the sight of all that blood.

  The German soldiers backed up against the riverbank, where some of them got down on one knee and others remained standing as they aimed at the townspeople. Their aim was unerring—one victim fell for each shot fired. The street and yards were littered with corpses, either face down or on their backs. Then the Imperial troops ran over and put a torch to his shop. First came the black smoke, rising into the sky, followed by golden yellow flames that crackled like firecrackers. The wind rose up and blew the smoke and fire in all directions, even carrying thick, choking clouds of smoke and the smell of fire up to his hiding place.

  Then came something even worse. He looked on as the German soldiers began shoving and pulling his wife back and forth, slowly ripping off her clothes as they did so, until she was stark naked. He bit down on the branch he was holding and hit it so hard with his head that it broke the skin. While his heart flew to the opposite bank like a fireball, his body remained bound to a tree; he couldn’t move. They lifted up his wife’s fair body, swung her back and forth, and then let go, her momentum carrying her into the Masang River like a big white fish. Sprays of white transparent water splashed into the air without a sound and fell silently back. Finally, the soldiers speared his children and flung them into the river, too. His eyes filled with blood, nightmarishly, and his heart was on fire, yet he was frozen in place. He struggled with all his might, but in the end he could only roar, freeing his body from its paralysis; bending forward, he managed to topple over, snapping several branches as he fell before landing on the spongy ground at the base of the willow tree.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Divine Altar

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  1

  ————

  He opened his eyes and was nearly blinded by sunlight streaming in through the branches of the willow trees. The horrific sight he’d witnessed from his perch flashed through his mind, and the constricting pain in his heart leveled him. At that moment the sound of drums pounded against his eardrums, like the drumbeats preceding the first act of a Maoqiang opera, followed by the doleful sounds of a suona, a horn, and then finally the circular, repetitive performance of a cat zither. These sounds, which had been a steady accompaniment for more than half of his lifetime, blunted the stabbing pain in his heart, like shearing off a mountain peak or filling in a ravine and turning it into a boundless plateau. The calls of magpies followed the rhythms of his heart as they flew in dramatic fashion, forming a blue cloud in the air above. A woodpecker attacked a tree—incessantly, tirelessly—echoing the urgent sounds around him. Willow catkins floating on breezy gusts of wind resembled the handsome beard he’d once worn. With a date-wood club in my, my, my hand and a glinting dagger tucked in my waistband~~I take a step and release a wail~~take two steps as anger blazes like a fire fanned~~I, I, I race down a meandering path, this journey too great a demand. A song of grief and indignation thundered inside him as he struggled to his feet, bracing himself against the tree trunk, his head wobbly, his feet stomping the ground. ——Bong bong bong
bong bong bong——kebong kebong kebong——bong! Alas! I, Sun Bing, gaze northward to my home, where flames send black smoke into the air. My wife murdered, she, she, she is buried in the bellies of fish, and my children so fair~~cruel, how cruel, so cruel! A little boy and a little girl consigned to the Devil’s lair~~Those loathsome foreign devils with their green eyes and white hair, vipers’ hearts, bereft of conscience, slaughtered the innocent, destroyed my home, and killed my family, I am alone, I, I, I~~cruel, how cruel, so cruel!~~more than I can bear! He picked up the club that had brought such a calamity down on his head and staggered out of the woods. I, I, I am like a wild goose separated from its flock, like a tiger out in the open, a dragon caught in the shallows . . . He struck out with his club, pointing east and striking west, pointing south and hitting north, shattering bark. Willows wept. You German devils! You, you, you cruelly murdered my wife and butchered my children~~this is a blood debt that will be avenged——Bong bong bong bong bong—Clang cuh-lang clang Only revenge makes me a man. He staggered into the Masang River, swinging his club as he went, wading in till the water nearly reached his chest. The ice was breaking up, now that it was the second month, yet the water was still bone-chilling cold. But he was unmindful of the cold, as fires of vengeful loathing burned in his breast. Walking along the riverbed was difficult; the water hindered his progress like a line of foreign soldiers holding him back. He pressed forward, kept moving, striking the surface of the water with his club, pow pow pow pow pow pow! Splash, splash, water everywhere—like a tiger loose in a flock of sheep—water hit him in the face, a watery blur, a sheet of white, a sheet of blood-red. Charging into the dragon’s den, the tiger’s lair, looses a murderous river of blood, I, I, I am that judge from Hell, the messenger of death. He clawed and crawled his way up to the bank, where he fell to his knees and rubbed his hands across traces of blood that had yet to dry My beloved children, I see that you have been sent down to the Devil’s lair, and for my pain there is no gauge~~My head swims, my eyes glaze over, my world is spinning, my, my, my towering rage. His hands were stained with blood and mud. His house was still burning, releasing waves of heat and filling the sky with hot cinders. The cloyingly sweet taste of bile was caught in his throat. He leaned over and spat out a mouthful of blood.

  The bloodbath had blotted out the lives of twenty-seven citizens of Masang Township. People carried their dead to the embankment, where they lined up to await the arrival of the County Magistrate. Under the direction of Second Master Zhang, young men went into the river to retrieve the bodies of Little Peach and her twin children, Bao’er and Yun’er, which the currents had taken five li downriver. They were laid out beside the other victims. Her upper body was covered by a tattered coat, leaving her horribly pale, stiff legs exposed. Sun Bing thought back to her opera roles as chaste women, in her pheasant hat, a sword at her hip, and embroidered shoes with red velvet flowers on the tips. She swirled and twirled her broad sleeves as she sang and danced, face like a peach and waist as thin as a willow branch. She sang like an oriole, exuding charm with her alluring looks. My wife, how do I accept that the blush of spring has been shattered by a hailstone chime, and worse, how do I endure the blade of wind and sword of rime, my, my, my tears of blood fall in a steady stream . . . I see the red moon sink in the west, where a silver crescent once hung high in the sky~~the shepherd’s sad song, an old crow sings in the nighttime~~bong bong goes the gong, the palanquin shafts tremble, here comes the Gaomi County Magistrate to the scene of the crime . . .

  Sun Bing watched as Magistrate Qian stepped out of his palanquin, bent at the waist. His back, which had always been as stiff and straight as a board, was strangely hunched; his normally smiling face twitched horribly. The beard, once lush and full as a stallion’s tail, looked more like the scraggly appendage of a donkey. And his eyes, usually bright and keen, were now clouded and dull. His hands clenched into fists one minute and slapped his forehead the next. A squad of bodyguards, swords at the ready, followed cautiously. Whether they were protecting him or keeping watch on him was unclear. One by one, he examined the corpses laid out on the embankment under the quiet, watchful gaze of surviving family members. As his eyes swept the line of solemn villagers, crystalline beads of sweat soaked his hair. His agitated pacing ended. He wiped his perspiring face with his sleeve and said:

  “Village elders and worthy citizens, you must exercise restraint . . .”

  “Laoye, we want you to plead our case . . .” Wails of grief rose from the villagers, who knelt at his feet.

  “Fellow villagers, please rise. This tragic incident has struck your bereaved official like a knife to the heart. But we cannot bring the dead back to life, so please prepare coffins for your loved ones. The quicker they are buried, the earlier they will find peace . . .”

  “Are you telling us they died for nothing? Are you saying the foreign devils should be free to tyrannize us?”

  “Fellow villagers, I share your sorrow,” said the tearful County Magistrate. “Your fathers and mothers are my parents, your sons and daughters my children. Now I must ask you, village elders and worthy citizens, to settle your mood and not take matters into your own hands. Tomorrow I will travel to the capital to seek an audience with His Excellency the Provincial Governor. I will see that you get the justice you deserve.”

  “We are going to carry our dead into the provincial capital!”

  “No, you cannot do that, you mustn’t!” It was a worrying possibility. “Please trust me to vigorously argue your case. I am prepared to sacrifice my feathered official’s cap for you.”

  In the midst of bitter wailing on all sides, Sun Bing watched as Magistrate Qian walked up, awkwardly avoiding the villagers, and sputtered:

  “Sun Bing, please come with me.”

  The music swirling around inside Sun Bing suddenly reached a fever pitch, as if the earth were opening up and mountains crumbling, a frenzied soaring. His brows arched upward, his tiger-eyes rounded, as he raised his club. You sanctimonious dog of an official, shedding crocodile tears, empty promises to plead the villagers’ case, when all along your plan is to take credit for making an arrest in haste. You speak not for the people you serve, but are a willing conspirator with the murderers we faced. My, my, my wife and children are dead, my hopes all turned to ashes, for which my vengeance they will taste. That would not change even for His Imperial Majesty the Emperor, let alone a mere Magistrate. I, I, I rub my hands and clench my fists, eager to crush the head of an official by corruption debased. He aimed his club at Magistrate Qian’s head. I care, care, care not, for a lopped-off head means only a bowl-sized scar. You are an accomplice to the ferocious tiger who deserves only death. Magistrate Qian nimbly leaped out of the way, and Sun Bing’s club merely stirred up the air. The bodyguards, seeing the danger facing their Magistrate, drew their swords and rushed Sun Bing, but they were no match for a man unafraid of death; he rent the air with a shout and leaped up like a crazed beast, as fiery sparks flew from his eyes. A roar of intimidation rose from the crowd as they advanced in anger. Sun Bing swung his club, now his weapon, and connected with a fat yayi who could not get out of the way fast enough; he tumbled head over heels down the riverbank. Magistrate Qian looked into the sky and sighed.

  “Hear me out,” he breathed, “I have given this much thought, as the Son of Heaven is my witness. Countrymen, this event is tied up with foreign affairs, and you must not act rashly. Sun Bing, I must let you go today, but mark my word, you may be able to make it past the first of the month, as they say, but you will not make it past the fifteenth. You are on your own, so take care.”

  Under the protection of his yayi, Magistrate Qian slipped back into his palanquin, which was hoisted up by his bearers, who beat a hasty retreat and were swallowed up by the dark of night.

  The residents of Masang Township passed a sleepless night, with the rising and falling of wails from women and the sounds of coffin-making continuing till daybreak.

  As the day began, with neighbors
helping out, the dead were placed into coffins, which were lined up on the ground and sealed with nails.

  Then, after the dead were buried, the survivors, whose senses were dulled, as if they had awakened from a terrible nightmare, gathered at the levee and gazed out at the railroad shed erected in one of their fields. Tracks had already been laid up to Liuting, the easternmost village of Northeast Gaomi Township, no more than six li from Masang. Their ancestral graves would soon be overrun, their flood-relief channel filled in, and their thousand-year feng shui destroyed. Rumors flew that their souls would be taken by having their queues cut off and laid beneath railroad ties; everyone’s head was imperiled. The so-called mother and father officials were running dogs of the foreigners, and bitter times lay ahead for the people. Sun Bing’s hair turned white overnight; the few scraggly whiskers on his chin were like dead, brittle grass. He bounced around the village, dragging his club behind him, like a feverish old opera character. People felt sorry for him, assuming he was not in his right mind, so they were surprised to hear him speak with clarity and wisdom:

  “Fellow villagers, I, Sun Bing, caused this devastation when I killed that German engineer, and you have suffered, for which I, I, I feel much anguish. I, I, I am terrified of what might happen. So tie me up and deliver me to Qian Ding and ask him to explain the situation to the Germans. He can tell them that if they alter the path of the railroad, Sun Bing will die with no regrets.”

  The people lifted Sun Bing up and bombarded him with a chorus of voices:

  Sun Bing, oh, Sun Bing, you are brave, upright, and bold, a man whom officials, foreign and local, must behold. Masang Township has suffered over what you did, but we knew that someday this story would be told. Better now than later, for once those foreign devils complete their railroad, all talk of peace will grow old. They say that when the fire-dragon passes, the ground trembles, and that will surely bring down our homes. We’ve heard that the Righteous Harmony Boxers have fought the foreign devils in Caozhou. So, Sun Bing, take what you need and flee for your life. Go to Caozhou and bring back those Boxers to eradicate the foreign devils, the common people’s lives to enfold.