the crowd below the platform fall heavily to their knees as a din arose from their depths, and only a single utterance:
“Free him . . . free him . . .”
Powerful emotions surged through my heart. People, I sighed, you do not know what is happening up here. You cannot know what is in Sun Bing’s mind. All you see is how he suffers physically, but you do not realize that by swallowing the tonic, he has shown us that he is not ready to die. Nor is it life he seeks. If he had wanted to live, he could have made his escape from the prison and gone to a place where no one could find him. But the way things were now, I could do nothing but wait and see what happened. Sun Bing’s suffering had already transformed him into a saint, and I could not defy the will of a saint. So I signaled for several of the yayi to come up, where I quietly told them to carry Sun Meiniang down off the platform. She fought and cursed me in the vilest of language, but the result was never in doubt, not when she was up against four men who managed to drag her down off the platform. My next order was for two shifts to stand guard on the platform, while the other two rested, trading places every hour. They were to take their rest in an empty Tongde Academy room facing the street. On the platform I said, “Permit no one but Zhao Jia and his son to come up the plank. You are also to ensure that no one attempts to climb onto the platform from any side. If anything happens to Sun Bing—if he is put out of his misery or taken away, Excellency Yuan would begin by having my head lopped off. But I’d see that yours already lay on the ground before that happened.”
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3
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The next two days and nights passed with agonizing slowness.
After making my inspection of the Ascension Platform at dawn on the third day, I returned to the Academy room and lay down on the mat-covered brick floor, fully dressed, to rest. Yayi between shifts filled the room with their thunderous snores; some even talked in their sleep. Mosquitoes on that summer morning were a true scourge, attacking silently, drawing blood with each bite. Covering my head with my lapel to keep them away offered no help. From outside came the sounds of shifting bits and halters on German horses that were being fed under the poplars to which they were tied, that and the impatient pawing of their hooves and the desolate chirps of autumn insects in weedy spots at the bases of walls. The intermittent sound of rushing water entered my consciousness, and I entertained the thought that the Masang River was singing a melancholy song. With depressing thoughts rippling through my mind, I fell into a fitful sleep.
“Bad news, Laoye, bad news!” Startled out of my sleep by that frantic cry, I was immediately chilled by a cold sweat. There before me was the face of Xiaojia, his dull eyes harboring the threat of treachery. “Laoye, Laoye,” he stammered, “bad news. Sun Bing Sun Bing is going to die!”
Without a second’s hesitation, I jumped to my feet and raced out of the room. The bright early autumn sun was high in the southeastern sky, spreading its light all across the land, so intense that I was momentarily blinded. Shielding my eyes with my hand, I followed Xiaojia up to the platform, where Zhao Jia, Meiniang, and the men on duty were crowding around Sun Bing. A foul stench struck me in the face before I’d even gotten close, and I was confronted by the sight of flies swarming around Sun’s head. Zhao Jia was shooing them away with a horsetail whisk, sending many of them crashing to the floor; but their places were taken by newcomers, thudding against Sun’s body in suicidal waves. I did not know if they were drawn to him by a smell emanating from his body or were being spurred on by some dark, mystical force.
Meiniang cared not a bit about the filth she was encountering as she wiped away the eggs deposited on her father’s body, soiling her white silk handkerchief. As feelings of disgust rose up inside me, I followed the movements of her fingers: from Sun Bing’s eyes down to his mouth; from his nose over to his