the Tongde Academy in the center of town, one that adhered to my specifications and was sure to become the stuff of legend for a century or more. The mat shed I had requested was also in place, and sesame oil was churning in the large cauldron, while beef stewed in its smaller companion. I sniffed the air, and there it was, the heavy fragrance of sesame oil and meat carried on the autumn wind.
After running out early in the morning, my son’s wife still had not returned. I could understand what was troubling her—it was, after all, her dieh who was to be executed, and she had to be experiencing emotional, even physical, pain because of it. But where could she have gone? To plead her case with her gandieh, Magistrate Qian? Maybe, but my dear daughter-in-law, your gandieh is like a clay bodhisattva who must worry about its own survival while crossing the river. I do not intend to curse him by predicting that the day your dieh breathes his last will also see his downfall.
I changed into a new set of official clothes: a black robe cinched with a red sash, a red felt cap with red tassels, and black leather boots. There is truth in the adage that “People are known by their clothes, horses by their saddles.” With new clothes, I was no longer an ordinary man. With a grin, my son asked me:
“What are we going to do, Dieh, sing Maoqiang opera?”
Maoqiang? Songs from your idiotic dog opera, maybe! I cursed inwardly. Talking to him was a waste of time, so I simply told him to get out of his greasy clothes, which were stained with pig fat and dog blood. Guess what he said to me.
“Close your eyes, Dieh, don’t look. That’s what she tells me to do when she changes clothes.”
Keeping my eyes slitted, I watched him take off his clothes. He had a coarse, ugly body, and that thing drooping above his scrotum was an obviously useless appendage.
Yet in his high-topped, soft-soled black leather boots, red waist sash, and red-tasseled cap, his size gave him a formidable, martial appearance. But then he made a face, tugged at his ear, and scratched his cheek, and he was just another monkey in human form.
With the two stakes over my shoulders, I told him to pick up the rooster and follow me out the gate on our way to the Tongde Academy. The streets were lined with would-be spectators, men and women, young and old, all standing wide-eyed and open-mouthed, like fish sucking air above water. With my head up and my chest thrown out, I appeared to be oblivious to their presence, though in fact I saw everything out of the corner of my eye. My son, on the other hand, kept looking right and left and greeting the crowds with a foolish grin, as the rooster struggled to get free, squawking frantically. The dull-witted people gaped as we passed. Xiaojia was stupid, all right, but the people were worse. The show hasn’t even begun, you clods, and if that’s how you look now, what are you going to be like tomorrow during the grand performance? It’s your good fortune to have a man like me in your midst. The finest play ever staged cannot compete with the spectacle of an execution, and no execution on earth can begin to compare with the sandalwood death. And where in China will you find another executioner talented enough to kill a man with it? With me in your midst, you will be treated to a show the likes of which no one has ever seen, nor likely ever will again. If that is not good fortune, what is? I ask you, if that is not good fortune, what is?
Old Zhao Jia walks with his stakes and says with respect to the gathered fold, I carry the law of the nation in my arms; it is weightier than gold. I call out to my son to pick up the pace and stop gawking like a fool. Tomorrow we will show them who we are, like carp transformed into dragons so bold. Three steps instead of two, two steps outpacing one, strides faster than a shooting star—the Tongde Academy awaits.
We look up, ahead is the parade ground, flat and even, its sand white and cold. An opera stage on one side, where Pear Garden actors will come to play. Kings and princes, generals and ministers, heroes and