The Crab-Flower Club

by Cao Xueqin

  ‘There! and I’m already a useless old woman,’ said Grandmother Jia. ‘Poor eyesight, poor hearing, memory going – I can’t even remember the names of old kinsfolk like yourself any longer. I’m scared to meet them when they come visiting, for fear they might laugh at me. There’s not much I can do nowadays except eat – what I can get my teeth into – and sleep. Apart from that, I share a joke or two with these young people when I need a bit of diversion, and that’s about all.’

  ‘Your Ladyship is lucky,’ said Grannie Liu. ‘I couldn’t have such a life if I wanted it.’

  ‘Lucky? No!’ said Grandmother Jia. ‘I’m just an old crock!’

  The others all laughed.

  ‘Our Feng has been telling me that you’ve brought a lot of fruit and vegetables with you,’ said Grandmother Jia. ‘I’ve asked the servants to bring them over. I’m so looking forward to some nice, fresh farm vegetables. The stuff we buy outside isn’t as tasty as your home-grown stuff, you know.’

  ‘That’s the countryman’s idea of a treat,’ said Grannie Liu. ‘He can’t afford meat and fish, so when he fancies a little luxury, he likes to eat his food fresh from the ground.’

  ‘Now that you’re one of the family,’ said Grandmother Jia, ‘I hope you will stay long enough to enjoy your visit. Don’t go hurrying back again. Stay here a couple of days or so, if you can put up with us. We’ve got a garden too, you know, and we grow a certain amount of fruit in it. Tomorrow you must try some of our stuff – and you must take some back home with you when you go. It will seem more like a proper visit to relations if you stay a bit, instead of popping in and popping straight out again.’

  Xi-feng could see that Grandmother Jia took pleasure in the old woman’s company and added her own persuasion.

  ‘It’s probably not as roomy here as your farmyard, but I expect we’ll manage to tuck you in somewhere. And you’ll be able to tell our old lady all the village gossip.’

  ‘Feng!’ said Grandmother Jia, laughing in spite of herself. ‘Don’t make fun! She’s a simple countrywoman. You can’t expect her to stand up to your teasing in the way that we can.’

  She gave orders for Ban-er to be given some sweetmeats. He was unwilling to eat in front of so many people, however, so she told them to give him some money instead, and to get some of the younger pages to take him outside to play.

  After Grannie Liu had taken tea, she regaled Grandmother Jia with some anecdotes of village life, thus further endearing herself to her new acquaintance. She was still holding forth when Xi-feng, who had slipped out some time previously, sent someone round to invite her back for dinner. Grandmother Jia selected some food from her own dishes and sent them to Xi-feng’s place for Grannie Liu to try in addition to what Xi-feng was giving her.

  Xi-feng could see that Grandmother Jia had taken a fancy to the old woman, so after dinner she sent her back to Grandmother Jia’s apartment. As soon as she arrived, Faithful ordered some of the older domestics to conduct her to a bath. She herself went off to fetch her a change of clothes. She selected two fairly modest items from her own wardrobe and sent them to the bathroom with instructions that Grannie Liu should change into them after her bath. Such goings-on were outside even the old grannie’s extensive experience, but she took them all in good part, and having submitted to the ordeal of the bath, quickly dressed herself in the proffered clothes and went in to take her place once more beside the couch and resume her role of raconteuse. In this she was eminently successful, since Bao-yu and the girls, now seated on all sides around her, found her simple country talk much more fascinating than any of the fictions told by the blind ballad-singers who sometimes visited the house.

  Indeed, there was more than an element of fiction in what she told them: for Grannie Liu, though born and bred in the country, was a shrewd old soul to whom the years had given a pretty good understanding of human weakness, and when she sensed the old lady’s pleased excitement and the avid attention of her younger listeners, she did her best not to disappoint them by supplying from her own invention whatever memory and experience were inadequate to provide.

  ‘We country-folk working out there on the land – year in, year out, rain or fine, spring, summer, autumn and winter – we never get any time off,’ she told them. ‘If we rest, it’s only as you might say “napping in harness”, like the old post-horse in the story. And many a strange happening do we see, out there on the land.

  ‘Take what happened last winter, for instance. It had been snowing for several days without a stop and the snow was two or three feet thick on the ground, and this particular morning I rose up early, and while I was still indoors, I heard the sound of something stirring outside in the woodpile. I thought to myself, “That’ll be someone stealing the firewood.” So I put my eye to the hole in the shutter, and sure enough there was someone there; but it wasn’t anyone from the village –’

  ‘It was probably some traveller,’ Grandmother Jia interrupted. ‘He was feeling cold and helped himself to a bit to make a fire with, so that he could get warm.’

  ‘Ah, but it wasn’t a traveller,’ said Grannie Liu. ‘That was the strange thing about it. Now who do you think it was, my old soul? ‘Twas a young woman, seventeen or eighteen years of age seemingly, pretty as a picture, and with no more on her but a red dress and a white satin skirt, and the hair on her bare head combed as sleek and shining as black lacquer paint –’

  At that point her story was interrupted by a confused hubbub of voices outside. One of them could be heard above the rest saying, ‘It isn’t serious. There’s no point in frightening Her Old Ladyship.’

  ‘What is it?’ the old lady asked in some alarm.

  ‘A fire has broken out in the South Court stables,’ said one of the maids. ‘It isn’t serious, though. They’ve already got it under control.’

  Always the most timorous of mortals where fire was concerned, Grandmother Jia struggled to her feet, and supported by the maids, led the others out onto the loggia to see what was happening. Somewhere beyond the south-east corner of the courtyard the glare of flames was still distinctly visible. Terrified out of her wits, she began calling on the names of the Buddha, and hurriedly sent someone to burn incense before the image of the Fire God.

  By now Lady Wang had arrived with the younger women, and added her voice to the others’ in assuring the old lady that the fire was well under control and urging her to go indoors; but Grandmother Jia insisted on staying outside until the last of the flames had been extinguished.

  As soon as they were all inside again, Bao-yu began questioning Grannie Liu about her interrupted story.

  ‘Why was the girl out in all that snow stealing firewood?’ he asked her. ‘She might have caught her death of cold.’

  ‘For goodness’ sake don’t ask about that!’ said Grandmother Jia. ‘It was talking about firewood that started that fire just now. Think of something else to talk about for goodness’ sake!’

  Though privately far from satisfied, Bao-yu was obliged to let the matter rest while Grannie Liu turned her inventive faculties in another direction.

  ‘In a farmstead east of ours there was an old dame of more than ninety who had fasted and prayed to the Buddha every day of her life. At last the Blessed Guanyin was moved by her prayers and appeared to her one night in a dream. “It was to have been your fate to be cut off without an heir,” the Blessed Mother told her, “but because of your great piety, I have petitioned the Jade Emperor to give you a grandson.”

  ‘Now this old dame had an only son, and the son, too, had an only son who in spite of all their care had died when he was only seventeen or eighteen, to their sore and bitter grief. But after she had this dream a second grandson was born. He’d be thirteen or fourteen now – a very handsome lad, with skin as white as snow, and that sharp and clever you’d hardly credit it. So you see there are gods and Buddhas watching over us, whatever folk may say!’

  The circumstances of this tale so perfectly accorded with the idea they had pri
vately formed of their own situation, that both the senior ladies in her audience – Lady Wang no less than Grandmother Jia – were quite captivated by it. But Bao-yu, whose thoughts were still on the beautiful pilferer of firewood, looked glum and preoccupied. His sister Tan-chun observed this and sought to distract him.

  ‘We’ve got to make some sort of return for Cousin Shi’s party, Bao. Why don’t we go back now and discuss when the next poetry meeting is to be? We can have our party for Cousin Shi at the same time, and Grandma will be able to come and look at the chrysanthemums.’

  ‘Grandma’s already promised to give a return party for Cousin Shi herself,’ said Bao-yu, ‘and we are all invited. We’d better wait until that’s over before putting on anything of our own.’

  ‘The longer we delay, the colder the weather will be,’ said Tan-chun. ‘It won’t be much fun for Grandma if it’s too cold.’

  ‘But she loves parties when it’s raining or snowing,’ said Bao-yu. ‘Why don’t we wait until the first snowfall and have it then? Call it a snow-viewing party. Think how romantic: chanting poems in the falling snow!’

  ‘It would be more romantic still,’ said Dai-yu drily, ‘if instead of chanting poems we had a big bundle of firewood and took it in turns to tiptoe through the snow and pull out sticks from it.’

  Bao-chai and the other girls all laughed, but Bao-yu stared at Dai-yu rather crossly and said nothing.

  After the company had dispersed, Bao-yu finally managed to get Grannie Liu into a corner and question her in detail about the mysterious snow maiden. Grannie Liu’s inventiveness was once more put to the test.

  ‘On the embankment that runs along the north side of our land,’ she said, ‘there is a little shrine. The image inside it is not a god or a Buddha, though. There used at one time to be a gentleman living in our parts —’

  She broke off at this point and appeared to be trying to remember a name.

  ‘Never mind his name,’ said Bao-yu. ‘Don’t try to remember it. Just tell me what happened.’

  ‘This gentleman had no son, but he had an only daughter called – I think it was Ruo-yu. She could read books as well as any scholar, this Ruo-yu, and the gentleman loved her more than all the treasure in the world. But sad to say, she took sick and died when she was only seventeen years old — ’

  Bao-yu groaned and stamped his foot.

  ‘So what happened then?’

  ‘Because the gentleman loved her so dearly, he had this shrine built for her out in the fields and had a likeness of her made out of wood and clay to put inside it; and he arranged for someone to burn incense there and always keep a spark of fire going inside the burner. But as the years went by, both the gentleman and the people who used to tend the shrine for him all died, and now the shrine is falling into ruin and the statue has come to life and started haunting people.’

  ‘No, no,’ Bao-yu interrupted hurriedly, ‘that wouldn’t be the statue coming to life. People like that are never really dead, even after they have died.’

  ‘Holy Name!’ said Grannie Liu. ‘Fancy that now! And me thinking all along it was the statue. Well, whatever it is, every so often it takes on human shape and goes wandering broad troubling people. And that’s what I saw when I looked out that time and saw someone taking our firewood. The people in our village are talking of breaking up the image and knocking the shrine down so as to put a stop to the haunting.’

  ‘Good gracious! they mustn’t do that!’ said Bao-yu. ‘That’s a terrible sin, knocking a temple down!’

  ‘Now I am glad you told me that,’ said Grannie Liu gravely. ‘When I get back, I shall do my best to stop them.’

  ‘My grandmother and Lady Wang and in fact just about everyone in this family is terribly keen on good works,’ said Bao-yu. ‘There’s nothing they like better than repairing temples and restoring things. Tomorrow I’ll write out an appeal and collect some subscriptions for you. You can be the fund’s Treasurer, and when we’ve got enough money together, you can supervise the restoration. And I’ll get them to send you some money every month for incense. How would that be?’

  ‘Statue or spirit or whatever she is,’ said Grannie Liu, ‘I shall certainly be grateful to her for the money.’

  Bao-yu pressed her for the names of the nearest farms and villages and the exact location of the shrine in relation to them as well as the distance to it and the general direction in which it lay. Answering all these questions with whatever came first into her head, Grannie Liu supplied a set of fictitious directions which Bao-yu, believing them to be genuine, carefully committed to memory and carried back to his room, where he lay awake half the night planning what he would do for the beautiful wood-thief in the days ahead.

  He went out of the Garden first thing next morning, and handing Tealeaf a few hundred cash, told him the directions for getting to the shrine as given him by Grannie Liu the night before, and instructed him to follow them, inspect the shrine, and report back on what he saw. He would await Tealeaf’s report before deciding what to do next.

  But once Tealeaf had gone he found the waiting very tedious, and as the day wore on and Tealeaf still failed to return, he became as fidgety as a worm on hot earth. He was obliged to wait until sundown before Tealeaf finally came back. When he did, however, he was looking extremely pleased with himself.

  ‘You managed to find it then?’ Bao-yu asked him eagerly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Tealeaf, smiling broadly, ‘but you couldn’t have heard the directions right. I had a terrible job finding it. The place where it is and the way to it are nothing like you said. That’s why I took so long. I was all day looking for it. In the end I found that there is a ruined temple in that area, but it’s not where you said: it’s at the east end of the north embankment, on a corner.’

  Bao-yu’s face beamed with pleasure.

  ‘Grannie Liu’s a very old woman,’ he said. ‘It’s quite possible that she misremembered when she gave me those directions. Anyway, tell me what you saw.’

  ‘The temple was south-facing, like you said,’ Tealeaf replied, ‘and it was in a very tumble-down condition. I’d been searching nearly all day by then, so of course when I saw that, I was very relieved and hurried straight inside. But oh lor! when I looked at the image, I was so scared I hurried straight out again – it was so real!’

  Bao-yu laughed delightedly.

  ‘Of course. If she’s capable of coming to life, you’d expect a certain liveliness in the statue.’

  ‘She?’ said Tealeaf. ‘This was no she. It was an ugly great Plague God with a blue face and red hair!’

  ‘Useless dolt!’ said Bao-yu angrily. ‘You can’t even do a simple little errand like this for me.’

  ‘That’s most unfair,’ said Tealeaf in a deeply aggrieved tone of voice. ‘You send me off on a wild-goose chase to look for something you’ve read about in some book or other or heard about in some old-wives’ tale, and then when I can’t find it (because there’s probably no such thing any way) you start abusing me.’

  Bao-yu saw that he had hurt his feelings, and hastened to comfort him.

  ‘There, there, don’t be upset! Some time when you’re not too busy you shall have another look for it. If the old woman is deceiving us, you naturally won’t be able to find it. But if there really is such a place and you do, then you will have a share in the merit when it’s restored. And of course, I shall give you a very big reward.’

  While he was talking to Tealeaf, one of the pages from the inner gate came up and said that ‘one of the young ladies from Her Old Ladyship’s room’ was at the gate asking for Master Bao.

  Who it was and what she wanted will be revealed in the following chapter.

  Chapter 40

  Lady Jia holds two feasts in one day in the Prospect Garden

  And Faithful makes four calls on three dominoes in the Painted Chamber

  HEARING that he was wanted, Bao-yu hurried to the gate of the inner mansion. Amber was standing in front of the screen-wall waiting for
him.

  ‘Hurry! You’re holding everyone up. There’s something they want to talk to you about,’ she said.

  In fact, when he arrived at his grandmother’s room, she and his mother and the girls were already discussing it – ‘it’ being the question of what arrangements they should make for the return party for Shi Xiang-yun.

  ‘I’ll tell you what to do,’ said Bao-yu. ‘Since there won’t be any outsiders at this party, instead of having a fixed menu and formally-laid tables, why not get them to do one or two of everyone’s favourite dishes, put them in those lacquer food-boxes that have different compartments for the different dishes, and serve them on little individual tables with a “self-service” wine-kettle each, so that everyone can pour their own wine? I’m sure that would be jollier than a formal party.’

  Grandmother Jia was much taken with this proposal and at once sent orders to the kitchen to do as he had suggested.

  ‘Tell them that tomorrow we want them to choose some of the things they know we like and put them in boxes – one box for each of us. And tell them that we shall want lunch served in the Garden tomorrow as well.’

  The lamps had by now been lit. Of the night which followed our record gives no account.

  Rising early next morning, they were delighted to observe that it was going to be a beautiful clear, autumn day. Li Wan was among the earliest up, and at once began to supervise the older women and maids in sweeping up fallen leaves, polishing chairs and tables, and getting ready the sets of teacups, winecups and so forth that would be needed for the party. Xi-feng’s maid Felicity, accompanied by Grannie Liu and little Ban-er, arrived while they were in the midst of this activity.

  ‘You are very busy, Mrs Zhu,’ said Grannie Liu.

  Li Wan smiled.

  ‘I told you you’d never get away! You kept saying yesterday that you had to go, but I knew they wouldn’t let you.’

  ‘It was Her Old Ladyship that kept me,’ said Grannie Liu. ‘She said she wanted me to enjoy meself for a day or two before I went back.’