Excellency, you replied, “I am serious. Great men appear in chaotic times, and if the seal of authority is beyond their reach, the knife is not!”
“You did your job well, Grandma Zhao.” The great man’s comment brought my reveries to an abrupt end. His words seemed to come from the depths of a bell, like deeply moving chimes.
I admit that I had carried out my duty in a manner that did nothing to undermine the Board of Punishment’s reputation, and I was confident that I was the only person in the Great Qing Empire who could have performed the slicing death to such a high standard. But that was not the attitude I could assume in the presence of Excellency Yuan. I might be a man of little importance, but I knew that Excellency Yuan, who commanded an elite modern army, was a prominent figure in the Imperial Court. “It was not an effort I can be proud of,” I said humbly, “and I can only beg forgiveness for disappointing Your Excellency.”
“Grandma Zhao, you sound like an educated man.”
“I respectfully confess that Excellency Yuan’s humble servant can neither read nor write.”
“I see,” he said with a smile. Then he abruptly switched to his native Hunan dialect, as if swapping his official clothing for a jacket of homespun cloth: “If you raise a dog in an official yamen, in ten years it will speak like a classical scholar.”
“A wise comment, Excellency. In the Board of Punishments I am a dog.”
Excellency Yuan laughed lustily at my remark.
“Well spoken,” he said once he had finished laughing. “It takes a good man to humble himself! You are a dog in the Board of Punishments, and I am a dog at the Imperial Court.”
“Your humble servant does not deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Your Excellency . . . gold-inlaid jade, while I am nothing but a cobblestone . . .”
“Zhao Jia, how shall I thank you for helping me accomplish something so important?”
“Your humble servant is a dog raised by the nation; Your Excellency is a pillar of the state, whom I am obliged to serve.”
“I find nothing wrong in what you say, but I wish to reward you nonetheless.” He turned to his attendant. “See Grandma Zhao off to the capital with a hundred liang of silver.”
I got down on my knees and thanked him with a resounding kowtow.
“Your humble servant will never forget Excellency Yuan’s generosity,” I said, “but I cannot accept your gift of silver.”
“Why is that?” he said coldly. “Is it too little?”
“Your humble servant has never in his life received a hundred liang of silver,” I said after a second loud kowtow, “and I dare not take it now. By bestowing the honor of bringing me to Tianjin to carry out his orders, Excellency Yuan has enhanced my status in the Board of Punishments, and I fear that taking Excellency’s silver could shorten my allotted time on earth.
Excellency Yuan grew pensive.
“Grandma Zhao,” he said after a moment, “this was a difficult assignment.”
Once again I responded first with a kowtow.
“Excellency, I was thrilled to do it. I am indeed fortunate to have had the opportunity to put my talents to work for the Imperial Court.”
“What would you say if I asked you to stay on as a member of my criminal affairs unit, Zhao Jia?”
“I would not dare decline to be so favored by Your Excellency. I have worked in the Board of Punishments for more than forty years, and have put to death a total of nine hundred eighty-seven criminals, not counting those executions in which I assisted. I have been so favored by the nation that I should spare no effort to continue working until I am stopped by death or old age. But ever since the execution of Tan Sitong and his five fellow criminals, I have been bothered by a wrist that is sometimes so sore I cannot even use chopsticks. I have been hoping to return home and beg Your Excellency to seek permission from the Board of Punishments on my behalf.”
He merely laughed grimly. I did not know what to make of that.
“Excellency, your humble servant deserves death. I am a low-class nobody who is unworthy of inclusion in any of the lower nine trades. I am a dog if I leave and a dog if I stay, and I have no business troubling any of my superiors. And yet I can boldly assert that while I am a man of