Sandalwood Death

CHAPTER THREE





Xiaojia’s Foolish Talk

My name is Zhao, Zhao Xiaojia. I get up early with a laugh, ha-ha. (Damned fool, aha!) In my dream last night, I saw a white tiger at our house. Wearing a red jacket, tail standing up in the air. (Ha-ha-ha.) Big tail big tail big tail. White Tiger sat across from me, mouth open, white fangs, a great big maw. Big white fangs big white fangs big white fangs. (Ha-ha-ha.) Do you plan to eat me, White Tiger? There are more fat pigs and fat sheep than I can eat, White Tiger said, so why eat you raw? If you’re not going to eat me, why have you come to the house of my Pa? Zhao Xiaojia, White Tiger said, listen to me. I hear you are obsessed with a desire for tiger’s whiskers. So I’ve brought some for you to pluck from my jaw. (Ha-ha-ha, a damned fool, aha!)

—Maoqiang Sandalwood Death. A child’s aria





1




Meow, meow, I learned how to sound like a cat before I could talk. My niang said that the longest whisker on a tiger is precious, and that anyone who owns one can carry it on his body and see a person’s true form. All living humans, she said, are reincarnations of animals. If a person gets one of those precious whiskers, what he sees is not people. On the street, in alleyways, in taverns, in a public bath, what he sees are oxen, horses, dogs, cats, and the like. Meow, meow. There was once a man, Niang said, who traveled east of the Shanhai Pass, where he killed a tiger to get one of those precious whiskers. He was afraid of losing it, so he wrapped it in three outer and three inner layers, then sewed it into the lining of his padded jacket. When he returned home, his mother asked him, “Did you make your fortune during all those years you were away up north, son?” “My fortune? No,” he said proudly, “but I did lay my hands on a rare treasure.” He reached inside his jacket, tore open the lining, and removed the bundle, which he unwrapped to show her the whisker. But when he looked up, she’d vanished, her place taken by a nearsighted old dog. The poor man was so frightened by this that he ran outside and collided with an old horse carrying a hoe over its shoulder. The horse was puffing on a pipe and snorting streams of smoke from its flared nostrils. The man nearly died of fright at this encounter, and was about to run away when he heard the horse call out his childhood name: “Aren’t you Xiaobao? Don’t you even recognize your own dieh, you little bastard?” The whisker, that’s what made all this happen. He quickly rewrapped it and put it away. Now he could see that his dieh was not an old horse and his niang was not an old dog.

Getting one of those whiskers has long been a dream of mine. Meow, meow. I make this clear to everyone I know and ask people I meet if they can tell me where I can get one. Someone once said that the forests of the great Northeast are the best place. I was burning to go see, and would have if it hadn’t meant leaving my wife. A precious tiger’s whisker, just think how wonderful that would be! Well, I’d just put up a meat rack on the street when a huge boar in a long robe under a short jacket, wearing a black silk skullcap and carrying a thrush in a birdcage, sauntered up. “Two catties of pork, Xiaojia,” it said. “Give me a good weigh, and make it streaky pork.” There was no question that it was a boar standing in front of me, but the voice was that of Li Shizhai, Elder Li, the father of Graduate Li, a learned local scholar respected by all. If he didn’t get the respect he thought he deserved, he intoned in a loud voice, “A base man cannot be taught!” Who could have guessed that he’d actually be a boar? Even he didn’t know. No one but I knew. But if I told him, I’d get a taste of his dragonhead cane, for sure. The boar hadn’t even left when a white swan sashayed up carrying a bamboo basket on its wing. When it was right in front of me, it gave me a dirty look and said in a voice dripping with spite, “Xiaojia, you heartless fiend. I found a fingernail when I bit into the dog meat jelly you sold me yesterday. Are you selling human flesh and calling it dog meat?” It turned to the boar. “Did you hear what happened? Two nights ago, the Zheng family’s child bride was beaten to death. Her battered body was a mass of bruises!” Now that the swan had spewed its garbage, it turned back to me and said, “Give me two catties of dog meat jerky. We’ll try something different.” “Who do you think you are, you stinking bitch? A big-assed swan is what you are. I ought to turn you into swan jelly. That’d shut that mouth of yours once and for all.”

—If I’d owned a tiger’s whisker, think how wonderful that would have been! But I didn’t.

Uncle He was having a drink in the tavern that rainy afternoon—he was an ugly man with a pointed mouth, an ape-like chin, and shifty eyes, a damned gorilla if I ever saw one—when I told him about the tiger’s whisker. “You’re a man of the world, Uncle He,” I said, “so this is something you must know about. And you must know where to get one.” “Xiaojia,” he said with a chuckle, “you idiot. What’s your wife up to while you’re here selling meat?” “My wife is delivering dog meat to Eminence Qian, her gandieh.” “I’d say she’s delivering the human kind,” Uncle He said. “She’s a nice morsel, tender and tasty.” “Stop trying to be funny, Uncle; we sell pork and dog meat, that’s all. Who ever heard of selling the human kind? Besides, Eminence Qian isn’t a tiger, so why would he want to feast on my wife’s flesh? If he did, he’d have finished her off by now. But she’s still here, in the flesh.” With a strange laugh, Uncle He said, “Eminence Qian is not a White Tiger, he’s a Green Dragon, the Taoist guardian. It’s your wife who’s the White Tiger.” “Now you’re really not making sense, Uncle He. Without one of those tiger’s whiskers, how could you see the true form of Eminence Qian or my wife?” “Pour me another drink, idiot,” Uncle He said, “and I’ll tell you where you can get a tiger’s whisker.” I filled his glass to the brim.

“You know,” he said, “that they’re real treasures, worth a great quantity of silver.” “I’m not interested in selling them,” I said. “I want one for myself. Just think, I could walk down the street with my tiger’s whisker and meet up with all kinds of animals wearing clothes and talking just like you and me. Wouldn’t that be terrific?” “Are you serious about getting a tiger’s whisker?” Uncle He asked. “Yes,” I said, “very serious. I dream about it.” “Well, then, give me a plate of chopped dog meat, and I’ll tell you.” “If you’ll tell me where to get a tiger’s whisker, Uncle He, you can have the whole dog, and I won’t charge you anything.” I cut off a dog’s leg and handed it to him. Then I stood there, gaping expectantly. He leisurely sipped what was in his glass and sampled the dog meat. “Idiot,” he said with slow deliberation, “do you really want a tiger’s whisker?” “Uncle He, I’ve given you spirits to drink and dog to eat, so if you won’t tell me now, you’ve been playing tricks on me, and I’ll go home and tell my wife what you’ve done. You can fool me easily enough, but she’s a different story. All she has to do is curl her lip, and you’ll find yourself in the county yamen getting your ass whipped.” Now that I’d brought my wife into the discussion, he said, with a note of urgency, “Xiaojia, my good little nephew, if I tell you, you must promise never to tell anybody who you heard it from, especially your wife. If you do, any tiger’s whisker you get your hands on will lose its power.” “All right, I promise, I won’t tell a soul, and that includes my wife. If I do, I hope her belly starts to hurt.” “I’ll be damned, Xiaojia, what the hell kind of oath is that? What does a pain in your wife’s belly have to do with anything?” “Are you joking? Any time her belly starts to hurt, my heart aches and I end up bawling like a baby.” “All right, then,” Uncle He said, “I’ll tell you.” He took a look out on the street to make sure that no one was listening. Rain was sheeting off of eaves, a curtain of white. I pressed him to tell me. “We must be very careful,” he said. “If somebody hears us, you’ll never get your treasure.” He leaned over and put his burning lips up to my ear. “Your wife goes to see His Eminence every day,” he whispered. “His bed is covered by a tiger skin, and what are the chances of not finding a tiger’s whisker on a complete pelt? Now, pay attention. Have your wife pluck a curly golden whisker for you. Those, my friend, are the real treasures. None of the others are any good.”

When my wife returned home from delivering the dog meat, the night sky was inky black. “Why are you so late?” With a smile, she said, “Use your head, you poor fool. I had to wait till His Eminence ate every bite. And don’t forget, it’s raining, so it gets dark early. Why haven’t you lit the lamp?” “I’m not doing needlework, and I’m not reading, so why waste the oil?” “My dear Xiaojia, you’re all about getting by, aren’t you? A little bit of oil won’t make the difference between rich and poor. And we’re certainly not poor. My gandieh told me that from this year on, we’re exempt from paying taxes. Go ahead, light the lamp.” So I lit the bean-oil lamp, and she adjusted the wick with one of her hairpins, flooding the room with bright, holiday-like light. I saw that her face was red and her eyes were moist, the way she looked when she was drinking. “Have you been drinking?” “Greedy cats have pointy noses,” she said. “My gandieh was afraid I’d be cold on the way home, so he gave me what little was left in his flask. It was pouring out there, as if the River of Heaven had been diverted to earth. Now turn around; I’m going to change into dry clothes.” “Why? What you need is to climb into a nice warm bed.” “Now, that’s a good idea,” she said with a giggle. “Who’d dare call our Xiaojia a fool? No, he’s brilliant!” With that she began undressing, throwing one item of clothing after another into a wooden tub, until she stood there, milky white, like a luscious eel just out of the water. She arched her back and hopped up onto the heated bed, then arched it again and slipped under the covers. I stripped and climbed in beside her. But she rolled herself up in the bedding. “Don’t bother me, my young fool; I’ve been running around so much today I can barely keep my bones attached to my body.” “I won’t bother you,” I said, “but you have to promise something. I want you to get me a tiger’s whisker.” Again she giggled. “Where, my little fool, am I going to find you a tiger’s whisker?” “Somebody said you could get one. I want a curly one with a golden-yellow tip.” Her face turned bright red. “What son of a bitch told you that? I’ll flay his dog hide right off him! Give me the name of the bastard who put you up to this!” “You’ll have to kill me first. I’ve sworn on your belly not to tell. If I say who it was, your belly is going to hurt.” She just shook her head. “You poor fool, your niang was teasing you. Use your head. Things like that don’t happen in this world.” “Other people can tease me, but not my niang. I want a tiger’s whisker; I’ve wanted one all my life, so help me get one, I beg you.” “Where am I going to do that?” She was getting angry. “And a curly one, at that. You’re not a fool, you’re a big fool!” “The person told me that Eminence Qian uses a tiger pelt as a bedspread, and where there’s a tiger pelt, there must be tiger’s whiskers.” “Xiaojia,” she said with a heavy sigh, “Xiaojia, what do you expect me to say to that?” “Help me get one. I’m begging you. If you won’t do it, then I won’t let you deliver any more dog meat. Someone said you really deliver the human kind.” “Who said that?” she demanded, gnashing her teeth. “All you need to know is that somebody said it.” “All right, Xiaojia, if I get you what you want, will you leave me alone?” I just grinned.

My wife was as good as her word—she brought me a tiger’s whisker the next night. It had a golden-yellow tip. “Don’t let it fly away,” she said as she handed it to me. Then she doubled over laughing. My heart beat wildly as I clutched my whisker. A treasure I’d longed for most of my life, how could it have come so easily? Well, I examined it closely. It was just as Uncle He had described, curly with a golden-yellow tip. I held it between my fingers till my wrist tingled. It felt heavy in my hand. I looked up and said to my wife, “Let’s see what you really are.” She curled her lip. “Sure,” she said with a smile, “take a good look and tell me if I’m a phoenix or a peacock.” “Uncle He says you’re a white tiger.” Her face colored. “So it was that lousy maggot who told you,” she cursed. “I’m going to have my gandieh drag him over to the yamen tomorrow and see that he gets two hundred whacks with the paddle. He’ll know what it feels like to have his ass turned into fried bamboo shoots and meat!”

Still clutching the tiger’s whisker in the lighted room, I stared at her. My heart was racing, my wrist shaking. Now, with heaven’s help, I was going to see my wife’s true form! She was an animal, but which one? A pig? A dog? A rabbit? A goat? A fox? A hedgehog? I didn’t care what she was, as long as it wasn’t a snake. I’ve been afraid of snakes since I was a little boy, and I’m more afraid of them now than ever before. If I so much as step on a rope, I jump three feet in the air. My niang said that snakes usually turn into women, and that most beautiful women are transformed snakes. Sooner or later, one of those snake-women will suck dry the brain of any man who sleeps with her, she told me. Don’t let me down, heaven. I don’t care what my wife is, even a toad or a gecko, just so it isn’t a snake. And if she is, well, I’ll pick up my butcher’s tools and run off with my tail between my legs. So with all those wild thoughts scrambling the landscape in my head, I sized up my wife, who turned the lamp up as high as it would go, until the wick was as red as a pomegranate and really lit up the room. Her hair was so black it was almost blue, as if oiled. Her shiny forehead was as bright as the belly of a porcelain vase. Her brows arched and curved like a pair of willow leaves. Her nose was so white it was nearly transparent, as if carved from a tender lotus root. Her limpid eyes looked like grapes floating in egg white. Her mouth, which was a little too big for her face, curled upward at the corners, like water chestnuts, the lips naturally red. I could have looked till my eyes ached and not known what she was before she was a woman.

She curled her lips into a sneer and said with palpable sarcasm, “Well? Tell me, what am I?”

Bewildered, I shook my head. “I don’t know, you’re just you. How can this treasure lose its effectiveness when it’s in my hand?”

She reached out and tapped me on the forehead with one finger. “You’re possessed,” she said. “You’ve let a whisker take control of your life. Your niang told you a story one time, and you elevated it into your life’s work, like treating a stick as a needle. Are you ready to finally give it up now?”

I shook my head again. “You’re wrong. My niang wouldn’t lie to me. The rest of the world might, but not her.”

“Then why doesn’t it let you see what I am? I don’t need a tiger’s whisker to show me what you are—you’re a pig, a big, stupid pig.”

I knew this was her way to make me feel bad. She couldn’t possibly see my true form without a tiger’s whisker. But why wasn’t I able to see hers, either, even with one? Why wasn’t my little treasure working? Oh, no! Uncle He had said that if I mentioned his name, the thing wouldn’t work. And that’s what I’d just done without realizing it. I was crushed. How stupid could I have been, ruining something I’d worked so hard to get? I stood there with the whisker in my hand, in a daze. Hot tears streamed from my eyes.

My wife sighed when she saw me crying. “You fool, when will you grow up?” She sat up, snatched the whisker out of my hand, and, with a single puff, blew it out of sight. “My treasure—!” I shrieked tearfully. She wrapped her arms around my neck and tried to calm me down. “There, now, don’t be foolish. Here, let me hold you, and we can get some sleep.” But I fought my way out of her grip. “My tiger’s whisker! It’s mine!” Frantically, I groped all over the bed trying to find it. Oh, how I hated her at that moment. “I want my tiger’s whisker! You owe me!” I went over and picked up the lamp to help me look for my treasure, cursing and crying the whole time. She just sat there watching me, shaking her head one minute and sighing the next. “Stop looking,” she said at last. “It’s right here.” I was thrilled. “Where? Where is it?” With her thumb and index finger, she held the curly tiger’s whisker with its golden-yellow tip and laid it across my palm. “Do a better job of holding on to it this time,” she said. “If you lose it again, don’t blame me.” I curled my fingers tightly around it. It might not do what I wanted it to do, but it was still a treasure. But why wouldn’t it work for me? I needed to try again. So once again, I stared into my wife’s face. If it works this time, I was thinking, if she turns out to be a snake, then so be it. But once again she was just my wife, nothing more.

“Hear me out, my foolish husband. My niang told me the same story yours told you. She said the whisker doesn’t work all the time, only at critical moments. Otherwise, it would be nothing but trouble. How would you live if all you ever saw were animals? So listen to me and put that thing in a safe place, where you can retrieve it at a critical moment. It’ll work then.”

“Honest? You’re not lying, are you?”

She nodded. “Why would I want to lie to my beloved husband?”

I believed her. After scaring up a piece of red cloth, I wrapped up my treasure, tied it tight with string, and hid it in a crack in the wall.





2




My dieh is a force unto himself. He sent Magistrate Qian’s two yayi back to the yamen empty-handed. You might not know what the Magistrate is capable of, Dieh, but I do. When Xiaokui from the Dongguan oil mill spat at his palanquin as it passed by, a pair of yayi dragged him off in chains. Two weeks later, his father sold two acres of land to pay someone to stand as guarantor to get his son back. But by then one of Xiaokui’s legs was shorter than the other, and he not only walked with a limp, but the toes of one foot dragged along the ground. They started calling him the foreigner, because the lines he scraped in the dirt looked like foreign writing. After that, any time he heard the name “Magistrate Qian,” he foamed at the mouth and fainted. Xiaokui knew what Magistrate Qian was capable of. Not only doesn’t he dare spit at the palanquin when it passes by anymore, but the minute he sees it, he wraps his arms around his head, turns tail, and hobbles off. What you’ve done today, Dieh, is a lot worse than spitting at his palanquin. I may be a fool in other things, but where Magistrate Qian is concerned, I’m as smart as I need to be. Even though my wife is the Magistrate’s little pet, he is strictly impartial. How could he let you get away with what you’ve done when he went and arrested that disappointing gongdieh of mine?

On the other hand, I could see that my dieh was no pushover. He was hard as nails, not soft as bean curd, a man who’d done and seen plenty in the nation’s capital, where he’d lopped off a truckload—maybe a shipload—of heads; a power struggle between him and Magistrate Qian would be like a fight between a dragon and a tiger, and I could not say who would come out ahead. Now, at this critical moment, I was suddenly reminded of my tiger’s whisker. Truth is, that treasure was never far from my mind. According to my wife, it was my amulet, which could turn bad luck into good as long as I kept it with me. So I jumped onto the bed, reached over to the wall, and retrieved my red bundle, which I frantically unwrapped to make sure the curly, golden-tipped tiger’s whisker was still there. It was. As my little treasure lay in my hand, I felt it move, little flicks, sort of like a hornet’s stinger, against my palm.

A huge white snake, as big around as a water bucket, stood in front of the bed and thrust its head toward me, a purple forked tongue darting in and out between its red lips. “Xiaojia.” It was my wife’s voice! “What do you think you’re doing?” Heaven help me, how could you do this to me? You know I’m afraid of snakes, and so you made sure that’s what my wife is. Someone I’ve frolicked in bed with for the last ten years without knowing she was a snake. My own wife, a reincarnated white snake. Of course, The Legend of the White Snake, now I get it. Back when she was on the stage, she played the part of the white snake, and I’m the scholar she married, Xu Xian. But why hasn’t she sucked out my brains? Because she isn’t all snake. She has a snake’s head, but arms and legs, too, and breasts. And there’s hair on her head. Still, well and truly frightened, I flung the whisker away like a piece of hot charcoal and broke out in a full-body sweat.

My wife stood there sneering at me. Since I’d just had a glimpse of her true form, seeing her now as my wife was both strange and unsettling. That big, fleshy snake living inside her could break through the flimsy skin covering and take its true form any time it wanted. Maybe she already knew that I’d seen her true form, which would have explained the strange, forced smile on her lips. “Well, did you see it?” she asked. “What am I behind this human façade?” Cold rays of light shot from her eyes, eyes once beautiful but now ugly and malignant, the eyes of a snake.

A foolish grin was the best I could manage to mask my terror. My lips had stopped doing my bidding; my skin tingled. She must have released a cloud of noxious airs onto my face. “No, I didn’t,” I stammered, “I saw nothing.”

“Liar,” she said with a sneer, “I’m sure you saw something.” A chilling, foul odor emerging from her mouth—snake’s breath—hit me square in the face.

“Tell me the truth, what am I beneath all this?” She smiled in a peculiar way, and light glinted off the shiny, scaly things on her face. I could not tell the truth, not without harm to myself, and I was suddenly no longer the fool I’d always been. “Really, I didn’t see a thing.” “You can’t fool me, Xiaojia, you’re a terrible liar. Your face is red, and you’re sweating. So, come on, tell me. Am I a fox? Or maybe a weasel. Or how about a white eel?” White eels are members of the snake family, real close members. She was trying to trick me. But I was not about to be fooled. The only way I’d let my tongue betray me was if she came out and admitted that in reality she was a white snake. The surest way to have her take on her true form was to tell her I’d seen that she was a reincarnated white snake. She’d open that bloody mouth wide and swallow me up. No, she knew I always carried a knife, and if I wound up inside her, I’d slice her open. That would be the end of her. So instead, she’d open a hole in my head with her tongue, which was harder than a woodpecker’s beak, and suck out my brains. Then she’d suck the marrow from my bones, followed by my blood, reducing me to a pile of hollow bones wrapped in human skin. You cannot pry the words out of me, not even in your dreams. My niang used to say to me, “Pretend you know nothing, and the spirits will have no control over you.” “Honest, I saw nothing.” This time she reacted by laughing and changing form. Laughing made her look more human and less snake-like. Pretty much all human. She began crawling out of the room, her body soft and pliable, saying on her way out, “Take that treasure of yours and see what animal your dieh is after spending forty-four years killing people. This is just a guess, but I’ll say eight or nine chances out of ten, he’s a poisonous snake.” More talk of snakes! I knew she was like the fleeing bandit who yells “Stop, thief!” and I was not about to be fooled by that.

I put my treasure back in its hiding place in the wall, beginning to wish I’d never gotten it in the first place. The less you know, the better, most of the time. Knowledge only gets you into trouble. Knowing a person’s true form is especially dangerous, because that’s something you cannot get past. Now that I’d seen what my wife really was, that was the end of it for me. If I’d been ignorant of her snake background, nothing could have stopped me from wrapping my arms around her in bed. Think I’d dare do that now? That was reason enough not to want to know what my dieh was. I was already pretty much a loner, and now that my wife was a snake, my dieh was all I had.

So I hid my treasure and went into the living room, where I got the shock of my life. Heaven help me, there on my dieh’s sandalwood chair sat an emaciated panther! It turned to look at me out of the corner of its eye. I’d seen that look before, and it didn’t take a genius to know that it was in fact my dieh in an earlier form. It opened its mouth, making its whiskers twitch. “Son,” it said, “so now you know. Your dieh was the preeminent executioner at the Great Qing Court, the recipient of accolades from the Empress Dowager Herself. It is a calling that must stay in the family.”

My heart skipped a beat. Heaven help me, what was that all about? In the story my niang told me about the tiger’s whisker, she said that after the man hid the whisker he’d gone up north to get, he could only see people as people—his dieh was not a horse and his niang was not a dog. I’d tucked my whisker back into a crack in the wall, so why was I now seeing my dieh as a panther? My eyes must have been deceiving me. Maybe the effects of that thing lingered on my hand. I was already having trouble accepting the fact that my wife was a white snake, and now that I’d discovered that my dieh was a panther, well, for me the road ahead was a dead end. In a state of panic, I ran into the yard, where I scooped up a pail of water and frantically washed my hands and rinsed out my eyes. Then I buried my head in the water. One weird occurrence after another that day had swelled my head, and I was hoping that a cold-water bath would bring it down to size.

I returned to the living room, only to find the panther still sitting in my dieh’s sandalwood armchair. There was a look of disdain in those eyes, disappointment that I hadn’t made much of myself. A red-tasseled skullcap was perched atop its large, furry head; two hairy ears were pricked straight up in a state of vigilance. Dozens of long, wiry whiskers fanned out from the sides of its wide mouth. After licking its chops and the tip of its nose with a spiky, slurpy tongue, it yawned with red grandeur. It was wearing a tea-colored short jacket over a long robe, from whose wide sleeves fleshy, clawed paws emerged. It was such a strange, comical scene, I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. At the moment, those claws were deftly manipulating a string of sandalwood prayer beads.

Niang once told me that a tiger manipulates Buddhist prayer beads to give the impression of goodness. She never said anything about a panther.

I backed up slowly, barely able to keep from turning and running. My wife was a snake, my dieh a panther. This house was no place for me. I’d be in real trouble if either one of them reverted back to its original form. Even if what we’d meant to each other kept them from eating me, I don’t think I could stand the crushing anxiety of doubt. I forced a smile, hoping that would keep him from getting suspicious. It was my only hope. That panther was showing its age, but its hind legs, folded into a crouch in the armchair, looked to have plenty of spring left—leaping a good five or six feet would be no problem. Sure, its teeth had worn down over the years, but those steely fangs would have no trouble crushing my throat. And let’s say I had the leg strength to get away from the panther; there’d still be the white snake. According to my niang, a snake that has gained spirit status is half a dragon and can move like the wind, faster than a racehorse. She said she’d actually seen a snake as thick as her arm and as long as a carrying pole chase down a fawn in the wild. The young deer had run and bounded through the grass, fast as an arrow off the bow. The snake? With the front half of its body raised off the ground, it parted the grass with a whoosh. In the end, it swallowed the fawn whole. My wife was as big around as a water bucket and had reached heights of Taoist cultivation way beyond that of the snake that ate the fawn. I could run faster than a jackrabbit and still not escape something that could soar with the clouds and mist.

“Where are you going, Xiaojia?” A gloom-laden voice sounded behind me. I turned to look. The panther had risen up out of the sandalwood chair, its forelegs pressing down on the armrests, its hind legs now touching the brick floor. I was caught in a withering glare. Heaven help me, the old-timer was ready to pounce, and could easily make it out into the yard in one leap! Don’t panic, I told myself to boost my courage; calm down. Heh-heh, I feigned a laugh. “I’m going to take care of that pig, Dieh. Pork must be sold when it’s fresh. It’s heavier on the scale and it looks better.” The panther smirked. “It’s time for you to take up a new calling, son,” the panther said. “It too involves ‘killing,’ but pig-killing is one of the three debased occupations, while man-killing has been elevated to one of the nine chosen occupations.” I kept backing up. “You’re right, Dieh. From today on, I’ll stop killing pigs and learn from you how to kill a man . . .” At that moment the white snake raised its head, a head covered with glistening, scary coin-sized scales all the way down its white neck. “Cluck cluck cluck cluck” . . . a strand of laughter sounding more like a laying hen sputtered from her mouth. “Xiaojia,” she said, “did you see it? What animal was your dieh? A wolf? A tiger? A poisonous snake?” I watched her scaly white neck rise up as the red jacket and green pants she was wearing slid off her body like a multihued snakeskin. Her red-tinged black tongue was within striking distance of my eyes. Niang! I lost it then, jumping backward in terror, and—bang! I heard what sounded like a thunderclap and saw stars—Niang! I passed out, foaming at the mouth. My wife later said I’d suffered an epilepsy attack. Nonsense! How can someone who’s not an epileptic suffer one of those? What happened is that in my panicky jump I hit my head on a doorjamb nail. The pain knocked me out.

A woman was calling me from far, far off: “Xiaojia . . . Xiaojia . . .” I couldn’t tell whether it was my niang or my wife. I had a splitting headache, and when I tried to open my eyes, I couldn’t—my lids were stuck shut by something gummy. There was a perfumed smell in the air, and then the smell of crushed grass, and finally the heavy, rank odor of boiled pig entrails. The calls kept coming: “Xiaojia, Xiaojia . . .” Then something cool and refreshing pelted me in the face, and my mind was abruptly as clear as a bell.

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was a rainbow of dancing colors. Then I saw brilliant flashes of light, followed by a big, pasty face that nearly touched mine. It belonged to my wife. “Xiaojia,” I heard her say, “you scared me half to death.” She was tugging me with a hand that felt sweaty, and finally managed, very clumsily, to pull me up off the floor. I shook my head. “Where am I?” “Where are you? You’re home, you poor fool.” Home. Feeling a sense of agony, I frowned, as everything that had just happened came back in a flash. “As heaven is my witness, I don’t want that tiger’s whisker, I don’t! I’m going to throw it into the fire.” She smirked and put her mouth up close to my ear. “You big fool,” she said, “did you really think that’s a tiger’s whisker? It’s one of my hairs.” I shook my head. It hurt, it hurt like crazy. “No, that can’t be. You don’t have hair like that. But even if you did, how do you explain the fact that when I held it in my hand, I could see your true form? And I saw my dieh’s true form even when I wasn’t holding it.” “Tell me, then,” she said, her curiosity piqued, “what was I?” As I looked into that fair, fresh face, then down at her arms and legs, before glancing over at my dieh, who was slumped in his armchair, everything suddenly cleared up. I must have been dreaming. My wife as a snake, my dieh as a panther, it was all a dream. She laughed a strange little laugh. “Who knows, maybe I am a snake. Yes, that’s exactly what I am, a snake!” Her face lengthened, and her eyes turned green. “If I’m a snake,” she added venomously, “I’ll wriggle my way into your belly!” Her face grew longer and longer, her eyes a deeper and deeper green, and scales reappeared on her neck. I covered my eyes with my hands and screamed: “No, you’re not, you’re not a snake, you’re human!”





3




The gate to our compound flew open.

There stood the two yayi my father had sent packing, except that now they were gray wolves in human clothing. Hands resting on their swords, they stood one on each side of the door. Scared out of my wits, I shut my eyes in hopes that this would rescue me from my dream. When I reopened my eyes, I saw that they now had yayi faces, but the backs of their hands were coated with fur, and their fingers ended in sharp claws. I was struck by the sad realization that my wife’s hair was more powerful than any tiger’s whisker could ever be. The whisker worked its magic only when you held it in your hand, but all my wife’s hair had to do was touch your hand to hold you in its supernatural power, and then it made no difference whether you kept it or threw it away, whether you were aware of its existence or not.

After the wolf-yayi took their positions by the sides of the gate, a four-man palanquin was set down on the cobblestone street in front of the gate. The bearers—a quartet of donkeys, with big, floppy ears hidden under stovepipe caps, but with easily identifiable faces—rested their glistening front hooves on the chair shafts, slobber oozing from their mouths as their breath came in snorts. By all appearances, they had run the whole way, their hoof-encased boots covered with a thick layer of dust. The legal secretary, Diao, whom everyone called Diao Laoye—he was a pointy-faced hedgehog—grabbed a corner of the chair curtain with his pink paw and pulled it open. I knew it was Magistrate Qian’s official palanquin, the one Xiaokui had spat at to bring the wrath of its owner down on his head, and I knew that the person about to step out was Gaomi County’s Magistrate, His Eminence Qian Ding, my wife’s gandieh. Logically, that made him my gandieh as well. But when I told my wife that I’d like to go along to pay my respects to him, she flatly refused. Fairness requires me to admit that Magistrate Qian had generously exempted us from paying taxes over the years, saving us a lot of silver. But he really shouldn’t have broken Xiaokui’s leg just because he spat at his palanquin. Xiaokui was a friend of mine, after all, even though he’d said to me, “You really are a fool, Xiaojia. Magistrate Qian has given you a cuckold’s green hat, so why don’t you wear it?” Well, I went home and said to my wife, “Dear wife, Xiaokui said that Magistrate Qian has given me a green hat. What’s it look like? Why won’t you show me?” “You idiot,” she cursed, “Xiaokui is a bad person, and I don’t want you spending time with him. If you do, I won’t sleep with you anymore.” Before three days had passed, some yayi had broken Xiaokui’s leg. Breaking somebody’s leg just because he spits at you makes you a very cruel man, Magistrate Qian. So now here you are, and I want to see just what you used to be.

I watched as a white tiger head, as big as a willow basket, emerged from the palanquin. Heaven help me, Magistrate Qian was a white tiger in human form! No wonder my niang said that the Emperor is a reincarnated dragon and that high officials are reincarnated tigers. A blue official’s cap sat atop the tiger’s head, while its body was sheathed in a red official’s robe with a pair of strange-looking white birds—neither chickens nor ducks—embroidered on the chest. Bigger than my dieh, a skinny panther, this was a very fat tiger. It was doughy white, my dieh coal black. The tiger stepped down and lumbered in through our gate, taking slow, measured steps. The hedgehog dashed ahead of it into the courtyard and announced, “His Eminence the County Magistrate has arrived!”

The tiger and I were face to face. It snarled, and I shut my eyes in fear. “You must be Zhao Xiaojia.”

Bent like a shrimp, I replied, “Yes, yes, I am Zhao Xiaojia.”

While I was bent over like that, he hid the bulk of his original form, leaving only the tip of his tail showing beneath his robe and dragging it along the muddy ground. I had a very private thought: Tiger, there’s pig’s blood and dog shit in our compound mud, so pretty soon flies will be landing on your tail. My thought still hung in the air when flies resting on the wall swarmed over, buzzing and raising a din as they landed not just on the Magistrate’s tail, but on his cap, his sleeves, and his collar. “Xiaojia,” the Magistrate said amiably, “go inside and announce that the County Magistrate has come calling.”

I said, “The Magistrate can go on in. But my dieh might bite.”

The legal secretary reverted to human form and said angrily, “Are you really so reckless as to disobey the County Magistrate? Go inside and tell your dieh to come out here!”

His Eminence raised his hand to stop his secretary and, bending slightly at the waist, stepped inside. I rushed in after him, wanting to see what would happen when tiger and panther met. I hoped they would be enemies at first sight—growling, their hackles raised, green lights shooting from their eyes, white fangs bared. The white tiger glares at the panther; the panther glares right back. The white tiger circles the panther; the panther does the same. No backing down. My niang told me that wild beasts display their aggressive power to potential enemies by snarling, glaring, and showing their fangs, trying to drive them away without a fight. If one shows a hint of vulnerability by pricking up its ears or wagging its tail or lowering its eyes, the other one will snap at it a time or two, and the battle is won. But if neither is willing to back down, a savage fight is inevitable. No fight, how much fun is that? A good fight, now that’s worth waiting for. And that’s what I was doing—waiting, no, hoping, for a tiger-panther fight to the death between my dieh and Magistrate Qian. They circle one another, faster and faster, more and more aggressively, alternating black and white trails of smoke, moving from the living room out to the yard, and from there to the street beyond, round and round and round, until I am dizzy just watching them, spinning like a top. At one point the two merge, with black encircling white, like an egg, and white encircling black, like a twisted rope. They spin from the east end of the compound to the west, and from the south to the north. One minute they are up on the roof, the next down deep in the well. A sudden shriek—mountains echoing, oceans roaring, rabbits mating—until finally the settling—heaven and earth—arrives. I see a white tiger and a black panther, separated by no more than a couple of yards, sitting on their haunches as they lick the wounds on their shoulders. My mind was awhirl from watching the tiger-panther battle, and I was wild with joy, trembling from fear, and damp with sweat, all at the same time. Nothing had been resolved—no winner and no loser. While they were locked in battle, tooth and claw, I was wishing that I could help my panther dieh somehow, but I never found an opening.

Magistrate Qian glowered at my dieh, a contemptuous smirk on his face. Dieh wore a contemptuous smirk as he glowered at Magistrate Qian. In his eyes, this County Magistrate, who had ordered his lackeys to beat Xiaokui nearly to death, was beneath contempt. Dieh was panther-savage, mule-stubborn, ox-bold. The looks in the combatants’ eyes were like crossed swords, embodying clangs that produced sparks, some of which blistered my face. They held their intense gazes, neither willing to turn away, and by then my heart was in my throat, on the verge of leaping out of my body and turning into a jackrabbit, its tail sticking up as it bounded away, out of the yard and onto the street, to be chased by dogs all the way to the southern foothills to graze on fresh grass. What kind of grass? Butter grass. Eats a lot, hits the spot, too much and it grows a pot. When it returns, in my chest it’s a knot. Their muscles were taut, claws unsheathed from the folds of their paws. They could pounce at any minute and be at each other’s throat. At that critical moment, my wife walked in, bringing her feminine perfume into the room. Her smile was a rose in bloom, petals arching outward, opening wide. Her hips shifted from side to side like braiding a rope. Her original form glimmered for a brief moment, but was quickly hidden beneath fair, tender, fragrant, sweet skin. She knelt down dramatically and, in a voice dripping with honey yet sour as vinegar, said, “Sun Meiniang, a woman of the people, bows down before His Eminence the County Magistrate!”

That bow took the steam out of Magistrate Qian. He looked away and coughed, sounding like a billy goat with a cold: ahek ahek ahek ahek, ahek ahek ahek ahek. It was obviously contrived. I might have been a bit of an idiot, but I was not fooled. He sneaked a glance at my wife, willing neither to look her in the eye nor to look for long. That look was a grasshopper, bouncing all over the place, until it finally smacked into the wall. His face twitched, a pitiful sight, whether from shyness or fear I could not say. “No need for that,” he said; “please get up.”

My wife stood up. “I understand that His Eminence has locked up my dieh, for which he was handsomely rewarded by the foreigners. I have prepared some good strong drink and dog meat to offer His Eminence my congratulations!”

After a hollow laugh and a pregnant pause, Magistrate Qian replied, “As an official in the service of the throne, I must carry out my duties.”

As she exploded in lascivious laughter, my wife reached up and audaciously tugged on the Magistrate’s black beard, then twisted his thick queue—how come my niang never gave me one of those?—and marched him over behind the sandalwood chair, where she grabbed my dieh’s queue and said, “You two, one is my gandieh, the other my gongdieh. My gandieh has arrested my real dieh and wants my gongdieh to put him to death. So, Gandieh, Gongdieh, my real dieh’s fate is in your hands.”

She had barely gotten this crazed talk out of her mouth before she ran over to the wall and had an attack of the dry heaves. The sight nearly broke my heart, so I walked up to shyly thump her on the back. “Have they driven you crazy?” I wondered aloud. She straightened up and, with tears in her eyes, growled, “You fool, where do you get off asking me that? At this moment I am carrying the next generation’s evil bastard for your family!”

My wife’s barbs were directed at me, but her eyes were on Magistrate Qian. My dieh was staring at the wall, probably looking for the fat gecko that often appeared there. Magistrate Qian’s rear end began to shift uncomfortably, like a boy trying to keep from soiling himself. His forehead was beaded with sweat. Diao Laoye stepped up and, with a bow to his superior, said, “Eminence, business first. His Excellency Yuan Shikai is waiting at Court for your response.”

Magistrate Qian mopped his brow with the sleeve of his robe and tidied his beard, which my wife had ruffled. He coughed, sounding more like a goat than a man, and then composed himself, clasped his hands in front of his chest, and, with obvious reluctance, bowed to my dieh. “Unless I am mistaken, you must be the renowned Grandma, Zhao Jia.”

My dieh, sandalwood prayer beads in hand, stood up and replied smugly, “I am your public servant Zhao Jia, and since I am holding a string of prayer beads that were a gift from the Empress Dowager Herself, you’ll forgive me for not kneeling before a local official.”

Once the words were out, he lifted the sandalwood beads, which looked to be weightier than a chain of steel, over his head, as if waiting for something to happen.

Magistrate Qian took a step backward, brought his legs together, and straightened his wide sleeves. Then, with a swish of those sleeves, he fell to his knees and banged his head on the floor. “I, Magistrate of Gaomi County, Qian Ding,” he called out, his voice cracking, “wish Her Royal Highness, our Empress Dowager, a long, long life!”

The ritual of respect completed, Magistrate Qian scrambled to his feet and said, “This humble official would never presume to trouble the revered Grandma on his own. I come on behalf of the Governor of Shandong, Excellency Yuan Shikai, who requests an audience.”

Dieh’s reaction to the invitation was to finger his beads, ignoring the request, and gaze at the gecko on the wall. “Honorable Magistrate,” he said, “the sandalwood chair upon which I have been sitting was a gift from His Imperial Majesty the Emperor, and the custom is to treat any object from His Royal Personage as if it were the Emperor Himself.”

Magistrate Qian’s face turned the color of the darkest sandalwood. Flames of anger seemed to burn in his chest, but he managed to keep them from bursting forth. I thought my dieh had gone a bit overboard by forcing the Magistrate to kneel, an act that could be seen as turning the world upside down, reversing the order of official and subject. But to do it twice? I think you’re flirting with danger, Dieh. Niang said it best: The Emperor is a mighty force, but a distant one. A County Magistrate is a low-ranking official, but local. It would not be hard for him to find an excuse to make our lives difficult. Magistrate Qian is not someone you want to provoke, Dieh. I told you how he broke my friend Xiaokui’s leg just because he spat at the Magistrate’s palanquin.

Magistrate Qian rolled his eyes. “When did the Emperor sit in this chair?” he asked frostily.

“On the eighteenth day of the twelfth month in the Ji-Hai year of 1899 at the Imperial Residence in the Hall of Benevolence and Longevity. When the Empress Dowager heard Grand Steward Li’s report on how I had carried out my duties, She favored me with a private audience. It was then that She presented me with this string of Buddhist prayer beads, telling me that when I laid down my executioner’s sword, I ought to become a Buddha. She then had me seek a reward from the Emperor Himself. His Imperial Majesty stood up and said, “We have nothing at hand to give you, and if you are not bothered by a bulky object, you may take this chair with you.”

A smirk appeared on the County Magistrate’s gloomy face. “I am a man of little learning and few talents. Yet however ignorant and ill-informed I may be, I have read a classic or two, ancient and modern, domestic and foreign, and in none have I ever read that an emperor would willingly surrender the chair in which he is sitting to anyone—especially not to an executioner. I submit, Grandma Zhao, that this tale is a bit far-fetched, even for you, and that you display unwarranted audacity. Why not go further and maintain that His Imperial Majesty rewarded you with three hundred years of property belonging to the Great Qing Empire, including its rivers and mountains? You wielded a sword for the Board of Punishments for many years, from which we must conclude that you are familiar with most, if not all, national laws. And so, I ask you, how should your fabrication of an Imperial Edict, your bogus assertion that you have come into possession of Imperial furniture, be dealt with under the law, given that you have created a rumor that touches upon the persons of the Empress Dowager and His Imperial Majesty? The slicing death? Or perhaps being cleaved in two at the waist. Shall your entire clan be exterminated?”

Oh, Dieh, how could you make such wild claims first thing in the morning? Now look what you’ve done—we’re doomed. I was so frightened, my soul flew out of my body, but not before I fell to my knees to beg for forgiveness. “My dieh has offended you, Your Eminence,” I said to Magistrate Qian, “and he is fully deserving of being chopped to pieces that are then tossed to the dogs. But she and I are blameless, and I beg you to be lenient. Please do not exterminate our clan, for if you did, who would bring you dog meat and spirits from now on? On top of that, my wife has now informed me that she is carrying a child, and if there is no way to avoid extermination, you must wait until after the child is born.”

Diao Laoye rebuffed me: “Use your head, Zhao Xiaojia. Exterminating a clan means precisely that, not letting a single member off the hook. Do you really think they would let a son off just so you could have an heir?”

My dieh walked up and kicked me. “What are you up to, you no-account son? You are the perfect son so long as there is no trouble. But in a crisis, this is what you turn into!” Then he spun around to face Magistrate Qian. “Since the County Magistrate seems to believe that I am spreading a rumor to dupe him, why not ask the Empress Dowager and His Imperial Majesty in the capital? If you are afraid that is too great a distance to travel, we can go to the yamen to see what Excellency Yuan has to say. He ought to recognize this particular chair.”

My father’s brief monologue sounded as soft as silk, but a barb was hidden inside it. A stunned and frightened Magistrate Qian shut his eyes and sighed. Then, opening his eyes again, he said, “No need for that. I am a man of inadequate knowledge and deserve Grandma Zhao’s ridicule.” He cupped his hands in front of him in a gesture of respect, after which he once again lowered his wide sleeves, assumed a look of distress, and fell to his knees with a swish of those sleeves, facing the chair. When his head hit the floor this time, the sound resonated throughout the room. “I, Gaomi County Magistrate Qian Ding,” he said as loud as a curse, “wish His Imperial Majesty a long life, a very, very long life!”

My dieh’s hands quaked as he fingered his prayer beads. An irrepressible look of triumph shone in his eyes.

Now that he was back on his feet, the Magistrate said, “Grandma Zhao, may I ask if there are other Imperial treasures in your possession? I have been on my knees once and then twice, so I can surely do it yet again.”

With a smile, Dieh said, “Your Eminence, that is not my fault. The custom has been dictated by the Imperial Court.”

“Well, then, since there is no more, will Grandma Zhao accompany me to the yamen, where Governor Yuan and Plenipotentiary von Ketteler await?”

“May it please the Magistrate to have his men pick up this chair? I would like for Governor Yuan to determine its authenticity.”

Magistrate Qian hesitated for a moment. “Very well,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Come take this!”

The two wolf-yayi picked up the Dragon Chair and followed my father and Magistrate Qian, who walked side by side out our gate. My wife stayed behind to vomit in the yard, crying between her stomach upheavals, “Dear Father, you must live on, for your daughter is carrying your grandchild!”

I watched as Magistrate Qian’s face went from red to white, proof of his discomfort, while the look of arrogance and self-satisfaction on my dieh’s face was, if anything, more apparent than ever. The two of them vied to let the other mount the palanquin first, like officials of equal rank or best friends. In the end, they both chose not to climb aboard, while the yayi tried to squeeze the Dragon Chair inside. When they failed, they hung it upside down from the shaft. My dieh leaned into the palanquin to set his prayer beads inside, and then leaned back out, as the curtain fell to keep the sacred object from view. Now that his soft white hands were empty, he looked contentedly at Magistrate Qian. With a leering smile, the Magistrate raised his hand and—whack—spun my father’s head around with a slap that sounded like the squashing of a toad. Caught unawares, my dieh stumbled, trying hard not to fall, but the moment he steadied himself, a second slap, more savage than the first, sent him thudding to the ground, where he sat only semi-conscious, his eyes glazed over. He leaned forward and spat out a mouthful of blood and, it appeared, a tooth or two. “Forward!” Magistrate Qian commanded.

The carriers picked up the palanquin and trotted off, leaving the two yayi behind to pick my dieh up by his arms and drag him along like a dead dog. Magistrate Qian walked on, head high, chest out, the epitome of power and prestige, like a rooster that has just climbed off a hen’s back. The head-up posture did not serve him well, as he nearly fell when his foot bumped into a brick in the middle of the road, and would have had it not been for the quick action of Diao Laoye. Not so fortunate was the Magistrate’s hat, which fell to the ground in the flurry of activity. He reached down, scooped it up, and put it back on his head—cockeyed, as it turned out. He straightened it, then continued walking behind the palanquin, followed by Diao Laoye; the yayi brought up the rear with my dieh in tow, his legs dragging along the ground. A bunch of impudent neighborhood children fell in behind my dieh, bringing the total number in the procession to a dozen or more traveling along the bumpy road on their way to the county yamen.

Tears spurted from my eyes. Oh, how I wished I had thrown myself at Magistrate Qian for what he’d done. No wonder Dieh said I was the perfect son so long as there was no trouble, but in a crisis, I turned into a no-account son. I should have broken the man’s leg with a club; I should have cut open his belly with a knife . . . Well, I picked up my butcher knife and ran out of the yard, intent on chasing down Magistrate Qian’s palanquin. But my curiosity got the better of me, and I followed a trail of houseflies to the spot where the puddle Dieh had made lay in the sun. Yes, there they were, two of his teeth, both molars. I moved them around with the tip of my knife, feelings of sadness bringing fresh tears to my eyes. After I got to my feet, I turned toward their retreating backs, spat mightily in their direction, and cursed at the top of my lungs, F*ck you—followed, in a barely audible voice, by: Qian Ding.