these lines: ‘When I call out Ganniang, listen carefully as your son sings “Chang Mao Wails at the Bier.” If you have not lived enough, get up and live some more. If you have, then when my song is finished, fly to heaven, away from here.’ Sun Bing kept changing roles, from the sheng to the dan, weeping one moment and laughing the next, interspersed with all sorts of cat cries, turning the bier into a living, lively opera stage. All the filial descendants put aside their grief, while the casual spectators forgot that an old lady, just brought back from the dead, was sitting up in her coffin, listening to the performance. When Sun Bing sang the final high note, which hung in the air like the tail of a kite, Old Lady Qin slowly closed her eyes, released a contented sigh, and fell back into her coffin like a toppled wall. That is the story of how Sun Bing sang someone back from the dead. And there is more: he can also sing the living to death. Old Lady Qin is the only person he ever sang back from the dead, but the bastard has sung more living people to death than there are stars in the sky.” While he was spouting his story, Song Three sidled over to the cauldron, reached in, and snatched a piece of beef. “This beef of yours,” he said with an impudent smile, “has a wonderful flavor—”
Before he could finish what he was going to say, I saw the bastard straighten up as something erupted on his head and he tumbled into the cauldron of boiling oil. While my eyes were riveted on the scene in front of me, my ears pounded from the explosion of bone, and my nose was assailed by the smell of gunpowder merging with the sesame-enhanced smell of sandalwood. I knew immediately what had happened: someone had fired a shot in ambush, one meant for me. The greedy Song Three had been my unwitting stand-in.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Meiniang’s Grievance
Dieh, oh, Dieh, Zhao Jia says he will impale you on a sandalwood stake, and Meiniang has nearly lost her mind. She flies to the county yamen to appeal to Qian Ding, but the gate is shut, guarded by soldiers malign. To the left, Yuan Shikai’s Imperial Guards, to the right, von Ketteler’s German troops, standing heads high, chests out, Mauser rifles aligned. I step forward; those German devils and Chinese soldiers glare with eyes big and round as brass bells, their ferocious snarls meant to keep me out. My heart pounds, my legs tremble, I fall. With wings on my shoulders, I could not enter the yamen, for these are powerful, strong-willed soldiers, not bumbling militiamen, those friends of mine. They have enjoyed my company, and the iron railing would come down by letting them have their way, I opined. But the Germans are hard-hearted, the Imperial Guards an impressive cadre, and if I break for the gate, the holes in my body would be of their design. In the distance stand the lockup and Main Hall, both with roofs of green. My tears fall—tin tin tine tine. I think of my dieh suffering in his prison cell, and of our kinship. I think of how you taught me to sing an opera feline, trained me to be an acrobat and martial artist. I followed you from village to town, from temple to shrine, singing in roles female, major and minor, to Little Peach, all truly divine. On mutton buns and beef noodles, flatbreads fresh from the oven we dined. My dieh’s cowardice purged from my mind, his virtues of a heroic kind. To save his life, his daughter to bold action is resigned. Calling up nerves of steel, I rush the gate, leaving shouts of protest far behind.
—Maoqiang Sandalwood Death. A soliloquy
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A crowd of people in vivid dress, faces painted all the colors of the rainbow, some tall and some short, emerged from Rouge Lane, southwest of the county yamen. The leader had powdered his face the white of a handsome young actor and painted his lips the bright red of a ghost of someone hanged. His upper body was covered in a red satin unlined robe (almost certainly appropriated from a corpse) that fell below his knees and revealed a pair of greasy black legs and bare feet. A live monkey was perched on his shoulder, enjoying its bumpy ride as the man hopped along, brass gong in