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

by Mo Yan

  Chunsheng nearly soiled himself as he banged his head on the floor. “I thank the First Lady for not having me beaten. You will have no further need to be upset with Chunsheng.”

  “I want you to go to that shop that sells dog meat and inform Sun Meiniang that I wish to see her,” the First Lady said with seeming innocence. “I will have words with her.”

  “Madam,” Chunsheng screwed up the courage to say, “Sun Meiniang is a good-natured woman . . .”

  “Shut up!” The First Lady’s face darkened. “Laoye is not to know about this. If I find that you have had the audacity to breathe a word of this to him . . .”

  “I would not dare . . .”

  ————

  6

  ————

  When news of the County Magistrate’s lingering illness reached Sun Meiniang, she was so upset that she could neither sleep nor eat; her distress eclipsed even that which she had suffered upon the tragic deaths of her stepmother and her siblings. She tried several times to deliver spirits and dog meat to the yamen and, she hoped, see the Magistrate, but she was stopped at the gate each time by guards with whom she had gotten friendly over time. Now they acted as if they didn’t know her, almost as if there had been a regime change within. An order specifically forbidding her to enter had been handed down.

  Meiniang was a woman without a soul, distracted beyond the limits of endurance. Day in and day out, she roamed the streets aimlessly, carrying a basket of dog meat and followed everywhere by malicious chatter, as if she were some sort of monster. She visited every temple in town, large and small, where she offered up prayers for the health of the County Magistrate to a host of deities and divinities. She even lit joss sticks and kowtowed in the celebrated Bala Temple, which was devoted to issues and concerns other than sickness, and when she emerged, she was surrounded by a clutch of children who sang a song that had obviously been written by adults:

  Gaomi’s Magistrate has the lovesick disease, food has lost its taste, sleep can no longer please.

  He spits blood up top and passes filth down past his knees.

  Gaomi’s Magistrate has a beard so long, day and night one thought only, of Sun Meiniang.

  One man and one woman, Mandarin ducks made famous in song.

  A pair of Mandarin ducks, yet unhappily apart, he thinks of death, she has a broken heart.

  But dying and crying the First Lady will not let start.

  On the children’s lips, this sounded like a message from the Magistrate, and it raised towering waves of passion in Sun Meiniang’s heart. Now that she had learned that his illness was more serious than she had feared, tears spurted from her eyes. Silently she repeated his name, over and over, and, relying upon her imagination, conjured up a vision of the damage the illness had done to his face. Dearest, she said to herself, you have fallen ill, all because of me, and if something should happen to you, I could not go on living! I am miserable, I must see you, no matter what. I need to enjoy one last decanter of spirits with you, share one last meal of dog meat. Though I know you do not belong to me, in my heart you are mine, for I have tied our fates together. I know, too, that you and I are different people, and that the things you and I think about are a million miles apart. I also know that what you feel for me is not true love, that I just happened to be there when you felt a powerful need for a woman. What you love about me is my body and my passion, and when the luster fades from my body, you will simply cast me aside. Something else I know is that you were the one who plucked my dieh’s beard clean, and that while you may steadfastly deny it, you ruined his life and brought about the destruction of Northeast Gaomi Township’s Maoqiang opera. I am aware that you vacillated about whether or not you should arrest my dieh, but that if Governor Yuan Shikai promised you a promotion and a fancy title for taking Sun Bing into custody, you would do it. If His Imperial Majesty the Emperor ordered you to kill me, you would take a knife to me without hesitation, even though it would sadden you to do so . . . I know all these things, I know everything, especially that my infatuation will end tragically, and yet that knowledge has no effect on my obsession. The truth is, you happened to be there when I felt a powerful need for a man. What I fell in love with was your appearance and your knowledge, not what was in your heart. I do not know what is in your heart, but why should I care about that? Enjoying a passionate relationship with a man like you is enough for an ordinary woman like me. Because of you, I have neither the time nor the heart to worry about my own dieh, who has suffered the grievous loss of his family. In my heart, in my flesh, in my bones there is only you. I freely admit that I am in the grip of a sickness, one that claimed me on the day I first saw you; it is a sickness every bit as serious as the one you are suffering now. You have said that I am the remedy that can cure you. Well, you are the opium that sustains me. If you die inside your yamen, I will die out here. There are many reasons why you are dying inside your yamen, and I am but one of them; but there is only one reason why I would die out here, and that is you. If I die and you do not, you will grieve over me for three days; if you die and I do not, I will grieve over you for the rest of my life. If you die, in truth my life will be over. It is an unequal transaction, in which I am a willing partner. I am your loyal dog; you need only whistle for me to come running, wagging my tail, rolling in the dirt, nipping at your heels, whatever you desire. I know that you love me the way a greedy cat loves a nice fat fish; I love you the way a bird loves a tree. My love for you knows no shame. Because of you, I have forsaken my honor, my will, and my future. I cannot control my legs, and have no control over my heart. Since I would climb a mountain of knives or dive into a sea of fire for you, malicious gossip means nothing to me. From the children’s song, I have learned that it is your wife who has made it impossible for me to enter the yamen and see you. I know that she comes from a respected family of high officials and that she is endowed with great learning and a talent for scheming; if she were a man, she would surely climb high in the official ranks. I readily admit that I, the daughter of an actor and wife of a butcher, cannot claim to be her peer, but I am the blind man at the door: if it is closed, I am rewarded with a bloody nose, but I gain entrance if luck is with me and it is open. I’ve lost all sense of the rules of decorum and taboos. If the main gate stands in my way, I will go around to the back; if the rear gate is closed, I will try a side door; and if that too does not admit entry, I will climb a tree and jump over the wall. So all the rest of that day I paced the area around the wall, trying to find a way into the yamen.

  A half moon illuminated the rear wall and the flower garden behind it, where he and his wife strolled on most days. The limb of a tall elm tree reached out across the wall, its moonlit bark shining like dragon scales—a living, glittering creature. She stood on her tiptoes to reach the limb, which, cold to the touch, reminded her of snakes. Into her mind flashed the recollection of a time, several years before, when she had been in the field, obsessed by the desire to find a pair of snakes, and that thought produced feelings of desolation and humiliation.

  Dearest Magistrate, my love for you is torture, agony you cannot possibly comprehend. And your wife, descendant of a famous official, member of an illustrious family, how can she understand what is in my heart? Madam, I have no desire to take your husband from you. In truth, I am but a sacrificial object willingly offered up for the pleasure of a temple god. Madam, can you possibly not have noticed how your husband has become a thirsty stalk of grain finally getting the spring rain it needs, all because of me? Madam, if you are the open-minded, charitable person you are reputed to be, then you must support my relationship with your husband. If you are a woman of reason and good sense, then you should not bar my entry into the yamen. Trying to keep me out, madam, will prove to be futile. You may be able to bar the way to Tripitaka, the monk who went to India to fetch scriptures, and to his disciples, the Celestial Horse and Sun Wukong, but you will fail to keep me, Meiniang, from being with Qian Ding. Qian Ding’s glory Qian Ding’s st
atus and Qian Ding’s property all belong to you, but Qian Ding’s body Qian Ding’s smell and Qian Ding’s sweat are mine. Madam, I, Meiniang, followed my father onto the opera stage to sing and dance from an early age. My body may not be as weightless as a swallow, but I am light on my feet; I cannot fly onto eaves or walk on walls, but I know how to climb a tree. They say that when a dog is frightened it jumps over a wall, and when a cat is frightened it climbs a tree. Meiniang is neither a dog nor a cat, but I am going to climb a tree and jump over a wall. I am not afraid to demean myself, and I am perfectly capable of reversing the yin and the yang. You will not find me waiting for the moon in the Western Chamber, like Cui Yingying. No, I prefer to leap across the wall at night, like Zhang Junrui, who scaled a wall to be with Yingying; Meiniang will leap across the wall to be with her lover. Eight or ten years from now, someone may act out this Western Chamber drama in reverse.

  She took two steps backward, cinched the sash around her waist, adjusted her clothes, limbered her joints, and then, after taking a deep breath, leaped into the air and grabbed hold of the limb with both hands. It bent from the weight, so frightening a perched owl that it shrieked, spread its wings, and glided silently into the yamen. Owls were among the Magistrate’s favorite birds. Ten or more of them often perched on a large scholar tree in the grain-storage compound, and he was given to referring to them as its guardian spirits, the bane of rodents. He would sometimes walk by, stroking his beard and intoning: “Rodents in the storehouse, big as a large jar; if someone comes in, they stay where they are . . .” Dearest Magistrate, you of great learning, filled with classical wisdom, my lover. She pulled herself up until she was sitting on the limb.

  The third watch had just been sounded, the sole interruption of silence in the yamen. From her perch she saw the silvery glass ball atop the pavilion in the center of the flower garden and the shiny ripples on the little pond beside it. Patches of light emerged from the Western Parlor, apparently the Magistrate’s sickroom. My dear Magistrate, I know you are craning your neck, hoping to see me; your mind must be as unsettled as boiling water. Do not be worried, my dear, for your Meiniang, daughter of the Sun family, is about to leap over this wall. I am determined to see you, even if your wife is sitting at your side, like a lioness keeping watch over her kill, even if she lashes me across the back!

  After edging her way along the limb, she jumped down onto the wall, but what happened next was something she would not forget as long as she lived. Her foot slipped when it landed on the wall, and she came crashing down on the other side, decapitating stalks of green bamboo, with the accompanying noise. Her backside ached, her arms suffered painful scrapes, and her insides were badly jumbled. With difficulty she managed to stand by holding on to a bamboo stalk, and, overcome by resentment over having to go through this to see him, she focused on the lamplight emerging from the Western Parlor. She reached down to rub her backside and felt something sticky. What is that? Her first thought was that she was bleeding from the fall, but when she brought her hand up to her nose, the foul-smelling, sticky dark substance could only be dog filth. My god, what black-hearted, unscrupulous wretch thought up this sinister plan to turn Sun Meiniang into such a sorry figure? Does this mean I am reduced to seeing Magistrate Qian with dog filth on my behind? Could I even want to see him after the way he has disgraced and humiliated me? Utterly dispirited, she felt rage build up inside her alongside feelings of low self-esteem. Go on, Qian Ding, be sick and die, and leave your respectable wife to her widowhood. If she chooses not to remain a widow, she can take poison or hang herself in defense of her wifely virtue and become a martyr; the citizens of Gaomi will then contribute to the purchase of a commemorative stone arch dedicated to her chastity.

  She walked up to the elm tree, wrapped her arms around the trunk, and started to climb. Where the nimble, springy, squirrel-like energy of only a few moments before had gone, she could not explain, but she barely made it halfway up before she slid back down, once, twice, several times, until her arms and legs were coated with a dark, smelly substance—more dog filth, which had been smeared all over the tree trunk. Meiniang wiped her hands on the ground, tears of indignation slipping from her eyes, when she heard the sound of mocking laughter from behind the rockery. Then two black-clad, veiled figures emerged, preceded by a lantern that cast a muted red glow, reminiscent of the lantern the legendary Fox Fairy used to lead people to safety. The two figures, who could have been men and could have been women, gave no signs of their true appearance.

  Terror-stricken, Sun Meiniang raised her hands to cover her face, but stopped when she recalled that they were smeared with dog droppings. So she lowered her head and instinctively shrank back all the way to the base of the wall. The taller of the two figures held the lantern up close to Meiniang’s face, as if to illuminate it for the benefit of the shorter person, who raised a thin stick used to frighten snakes hidden in the grass, stuck it under Meiniang’s chin, and lifted up her face. Utterly mortified and ashamed, she was powerless to resist. So she squeezed her eyes shut and let the tears run freely down her cheeks. She heard the person holding the stick heave a long sigh, and could tell that it was a woman’s voice. It was only a guess, but she assumed that it must be Magistrate Qian’s wife, and in that split second, the anguish she had felt turned to defiance; she was energized. Holding her head high, she smiled and searched for the words that would inflict the most pain on her foe. Her initial instinct was to ask the First Lady if she was covering her face with a black veil to hide her pockmarks. But before she could get the words out, the person stepped up, thrust her hand down inside Meiniang’s collar, and yanked away a bright, shiny object. It was the jade Buddha the Magistrate had given her in exchange for the jadeite thumb guard, not exactly a pledge of love, more a protective amulet. She sprang frantically forward to retrieve the object, but a kick behind her knee from the taller person sent her down on all fours. She saw the First Lady’s black veil flutter and her body shift slightly. It’s too late to worry about saving face, since I am already soiled by dog filth, she was thinking, so now I need to find the most hurtful words possible as payback for how she has violated me. “I know who you are,” she said, “and I know all about your pockmarks. The love of my life tells me you have a terrible body odor, that your mouth smells like maggots, and that he hasn’t slept with you for three years. If I were you, I’d hang myself out of humiliation. Any woman who outlives a man’s desire is no different than a coffin anyway.”

  Meiniang’s gratifying outburst was interrupted by a stern retort from the short black-clad individual: “You little slut, how dare you come whoring around the yamen. Beat her, give her fifty lashes, then kick her out through the dog door!”

  The taller person took a whip out from under his black clothes, kicked Meiniang to the ground, and, before she could utter another curse, laid the whip across her buttocks. She shrieked in pain just before the second lash connected with her buttocks; she looked up in time to see the other figure, the Magistrate’s stinking wife, turn and wobble off. The third lash landed as hard as the first two, but the next one did not hurt as much, and those that followed got lighter and lighter, until the person was hitting the wall, not her. Meiniang knew that her assailant was a decent person at heart, although her exaggerated screams continued for their dramatic effect, to their mutual benefit. When he was done, the man dragged her over to the side gate of the Western Parlor, opened it, and shoved her outside, where she lay in a heap on the cobblestone lane east of the yamen.

  ————

  7

  ————

  Sun Meiniang lay on the kang, gnashing her teeth one minute and heartbroken the next. She gnashed her teeth out of hatred toward that savage, cold-hearted woman, while she was heartbroken that the Magistrate was confined to a sickbed, and cursed herself for a lack of willpower; even when she bit her own arm till it bled, she could not drive the image of the wonderful Qian Ding out of her mind. Chunsheng came to see her when her torment had reach
ed a fever pitch, just the familiar face she needed to see. She grabbed him by the arms and said tearfully:

  “Chunsheng, dear Chunsheng, tell me, how is Laoye?”

  Her anxiety moved him deeply. After glancing into the yard, where Xiaojia was skinning a dog, he said softly, “He’s improving physically, but mentally he is in bad shape; he gets agitated easily. He’s wasting away, and if he doesn’t start eating soon, I’m afraid he’ll starve to death.”

  “My dear Magistrate!” Sun Meiniang cried out mournfully, accompanied by a cascade of tears.

  “The First Lady has sent me to ask you to take some millet spirits and dog meat to the yamen, both to make Laoye feel better and,” he said with a little laugh, “to get his appetite back.”

  “The First Lady? Don’t mention her to me,” she said with a gnashing of her teeth. “Your First Lady is worse than a sadistic scorpion spirit.”

  “Mistress Sun, our First Lady is kind and honest, and always reasonable. How can you curse her like that?”

  “What do you know?” Meiniang replied angrily. “Kind and honest, you say? Well, I say that her heart must have steeped in a vat of black dye for twenty years, and that one drop of her blood would be enough to kill a horse!”

  “What did the First Lady ever do to you?” Chunsheng said with a little laugh. “This is like a mugger getting angry instead of his victim, or a lack of tears from a child that has lost its mother but wails from one whose mother is still alive.”

  “Get out of my sight!” Meiniang demanded. “I’ll have nothing more to do with anyone in that yamen.”

  “Mistress Sun, does this mean that your concern for Laoye no longer exists?” Chunsheng said with a supercilious grin. “If you no longer care about Laoye, does that mean you no longer care about his queue? And if you no longer care about his queue, does that mean you no longer care about his beard? And if you no longer care about his beard, does that really mean you no longer care about Laoye himself?”