by Cao Xueqin
Normally when Grandmother Jia took her meals it was the junior maids who stood with spittoons, fly-whisks and napkins in their hands behind the chairs. Faithful had long since graduated from such menial duties. On this occasion, however, she borrowed a fly-whisk from one of the younger girls and did some whisking herself. This was a signal for the other maids, who knew that something was afoot, to melt discreetly away, leaving the stage clear for Faithful. Fly-whisk in hand, Faithful took up a position on her own and darted a questioning glance at her victim.
‘All right, Miss, don’t worry!’ said Grannie Liu, and having settled herself in her place, picked up her chopsticks. She found them extremely heavy and unwieldy. They were a pair of old-fashioned, square-handled ivory ones inlaid with gold, which Xi-feng and Faithful had planted on her in furtherance of their plan.
‘What’s this you’ve given me?’ said Grannie Liu. ‘A pair of tongs? These are heavier than one of our iron shovels. I shall never be able to manage with these.’
The others all laughed.
A woman-servant now entered carrying one of the luncheon-boxes and stood in the middle of the room holding it while a maid removed the lid. There were two dishes inside. Li Wan took out one of them and set it down on Grandmother Jia’s table. The second, a bowl of pigeon’s eggs (deliberately chosen for their mirth-provoking possibilities) was taken out by Xi-feng and set down in front of Grannie Liu.
‘Please!’ said Grandmother Jia, waving her chopsticks at the food as a polite indication that they should begin. At once Grannie Liu leaped to her feet and, in ringing tones, recited the following grace:
‘My name it is Liu,
I’m a trencherman true;
I can eat a whole sow
With her little pigs too.’
Having concluded, she puffed out both her cheeks and stared in front of her with an expression of great determination.
There was a moment of awestruck silence; then, as it dawned on them that they really had heard what they thought they had heard, the whole company, both masters and servants, burst out into roars of laughter.
Shi Xiang-yun, unable to contain herself, spat out a whole mouthful of rice.
Lin Dai-yu, made breathless by laughter, collapsed on the table, uttering weak ‘Aiyos’.
Bao-yu rolled over, convulsed, on to his grandmother’s bosom.
Grandmother Jia, exclaiming helplessly ‘Oh, my heart!’ ‘Oh, my child!’, clung tightly to her heaving grandson.
Lady Wang pointed an accusing finger at Xi-feng, but laughter had deprived her of speech.
Aunt Xue exploded a mouthful of tea over Tan-chun’s skirt.
Tan-chun planted a bowlful of rice on the person of Ying-chun.
Xi-chun got up from the table and going over to her nurse, took her by the hand and asked her to massage her stomach.
The servants were all doubled up. Some had to go outside where they could squat down and laugh with abandon. Those who could control themselves sufficiently helped the casualties to mop up or change their clothes.
Only Xi-feng and Faithful remained straight-faced throughout this outburst, politely urging Grannie Liu to begin. Manipulating the unwieldy chopsticks with considerable difficulty, the old woman prepared to do so.
‘Even your hens here are special,’ she remarked. ‘Such pretty little eggs they lay! I must see if I can’t get one of these under me belt!’
Under the impact of these remarks the company’s composure, which it had only just recovered, once more broke down. Grandmother Jia, abandoning any attempt at self-control, was now actually weeping with laughter. Amber, who feared a seizure, pounded her energetically on the back.
‘That wicked devil Feng is behind this,’ said Grandmother Jia. ‘Don’t believe a thing she tells you!’
‘They cost a silver tael apiece,’ said Xi-feng, as Grannie Liu continued to praise the diminutive ‘hen’s’ eggs. ‘You should eat them quickly, while they’re still hot. They won’t be so nice when they’re cold.’
Grannie Liu obediently held out her chopsticks and tried to take hold of one, but the egg eluded her. After chasing it several times round the inside of the bowl, she did at last succeed in getting a grip on it. But as she craned forward with open mouth to reach it, it slipped through the chopsticks and rolled on to the floor. At once she laid down the chopsticks, and would have gone down on hands and knees to pick it up, but before she could do so one of the servants had retrieved it and carried it off for disposal.
‘That’s a tael of silver gone,’ Grannie Liu said regretfully, ‘and we didn’t even hear the clink!’
The others had by now lost all interest in eating, absorbed by the entertaining antics of their guest.
‘Who got those chopsticks out?’ said Grandmother Jia. ‘They’re not meant for occasions like this; they’re for using at formal banquets. Whoever it was, I expect it was that wicked Feng who put them up to it. Take them away at once and get her another pair!’
The servants had in point of fact had nothing to do with the chryselephantine chopsticks, which had been smuggled in at the last moment by Faithful and Xi-feng; nevertheless, on hearing the order, they obediently came forward and replaced them with a silver and ebony pair like those that had been provided for the rest.
‘Out goes gold and in comes silver!’ said Grannie Liu. ‘But when all’s said and done, our wooden ones at home are handier.’
‘If there’s any poison in what you are eating,’ said Xi-feng, ‘the silver will tell you by changing colour.’
‘If this food is poisoned,’ said Grannie Liu, ‘then what we eat at home must be pure arsenic. Anyway, I intend to eat it all, come what may!’
Delighted to have found someone who, besides being so amusing, had so evident a relish for her food, Grandmother Jia insisted on making all her own portion over to Grannie Liu and ordered one of the older women to go round with a pair of chopsticks and a bowl and make a selection from all the dishes to give to little Ban-er.
Presently, when they had finished eating, Grandmother Jia and the others moved into Tan-chun’s bedroom for a chat, while in the Paulownia Room the servants cleared away the remains of the meal and hastily relaid a table for Li Wan and Xi-feng. Grannie Liu, who had lingered behind, observed them sitting down at opposite sides of it to begin their meal. She was greatly impressed by this glimpse of the upper-class etiquette which requires young married women to eat on their own when the rest have finished.
‘What I like best of all here,’ she said, ‘is your way of doing things. I’m not surprised they say that “good breeding is to be found in great houses”.’
The compliment was sincerely meant, but Xi-feng understood it in a different sense.
‘I do hope we haven’t hurt your feelings,’ she said. ‘It was only a joke, you know.’
The words were scarcely out of her mouth when Faithful came hurrying in.
‘Please don’t be offended, Mrs Liu. I’ve come in to apologize.’
‘Bless you, I’m not offended!’ said Grannie Liu. ‘We were only cheering up Her Ladyship, dear old soul. What should I be offended for? I knew when you told me to say those things it was only for a laugh. If I’d felt offended, I should never have said them.’
A chastened Faithful turned angrily on the other servants.
‘Come on! why aren’t you pouring Mrs Liu some tea?’
‘That’s all right,’ said Grannie Liu hurriedly. ‘I’ve had some already. I drank the tea that the young woman handed to me a while ago. You get on with your own lunch, Miss. Don’t mind me!’
Xi-feng took Faithful by the hand.
‘Yes, eat now with us. It’ll keep you out of mischief.’
Faithful sat down and one of the old women laid another bowl for her and another pair of chopsticks. When the three young women had finished, Grannie Liu, who had been watching them, remarked on how little they had eaten.
‘None of you here seems to eat more than a bite or two,’ she said. ‘It’s a marvel to me you’re not
famished. No wonder you all look as if the wind could blow you over!’
‘There is a lot left over today,’ Faithful commented. ‘Where are all the others?’ she asked the old serving-woman.
‘They’re still here in waiting, Miss,’ said the old woman. ‘They’re not off duty yet. We can give it to them, if you like, before they go.’
‘They’ll never finish all this lot,’ said Faithful. ‘Pick out a couple of bowlfuls and take them to Patience in Mrs Lian’s room.’
‘No need,’ said Xi-feng. ‘She’s had her lunch already.’
‘If she can’t eat it herself, she can give it to the cat,’ said Faithful.
The old woman put the contents of two of the dishes into a box and carried it off to give Patience.
‘Where’s Candida?’ said Faithful.
‘She’s in there eating with the rest,’ said Li Wan. ‘What do you want her for?’
‘It’s all right,’ said Faithful. ‘Nothing.’
‘Aroma isn’t here,’ said Xi-feng. ‘Why don’t you send her a couple of dishes?’
Faithful gave orders for this to be done. She inquired of the remaining old women whether the boxes for the drinking party were ready yet.
‘I think they’ll be a while yet,’ said one of them.
‘Hurry them up a bit, will you?’ said Faithful, and the old woman went off to do her bidding.
The young women, accompanied by Grannie Liu, now went into Tan-chun’s room, where Grandmother Jia and the others were chatting and laughing together.
This room, a three-frame apartment which Tan-chun, who loved spaciousness, had left undivided, had in the midst of it a large rosewood table with a Yunnanese marble top piled high with specimen-books of calligraphy and littered with several dozen miscellaneous ink-stones and a small forest of writing-brushes standing in brush-holders and brush-stands of every conceivable shape and size. On one side of the table was a bucket-sized ‘pincushion’ flower-vase of Ru ware stuck all over with snow-white pompom chrysanthemums. On the west wall of the room hung a ‘Landscape in Mist and Rain’ by Mi Fei, flanked by a pair of scrolls bearing a couplet written by the Tang calligrapher Yan Zhen-qing:
My heart has discovered true ease amidst the clouds and mists of the mountains;
My life has gained a fierce freedom from the rocks and torrents of the fells.
Against the wall beneath was a long, high table. On it, towards the left, stood a large Northern Song porcelain dish heaped with those ornamental citrus fruits they call ‘Buddha’s hands’, whose brilliant yellow contrasted agreeably with the greenish blue of the glaze. To the right a white jade chime in the form of a two-headed fish hung in a varnished wooden frame to whose side a tiny hammer was attached. Ban-er, whom growing familiarity was making bolder, was with difficulty restrained from unfastening the hammer and striking the fish with it. He then said that he wanted one of the ‘yellow things’ to eat, and Tan-chun selected a Buddha’s hand from the dish and gave it to him.
‘There you are,’ she said, ‘but it’s only to play with. It isn’t good to eat.’
On the opposite side of the room was a large four-poster bed whose silk gauze hangings had a pattern of bright green plants and insects in reversible embroidery. Ban-er ran over to it and began identifying the insects:
‘That’s a cricket. That’s a grasshopper …’
Grannie Liu dealt him a hefty slap:
‘Little varmint! Who said you could go running around putting your dirty hands on everything? Just because you’ve been allowed in to have a look, it doesn’t mean you have to start getting above yourself.’
The blow had been hard enough to make him cry, and it took the combined efforts of the others present to comfort him.
Meanwhile Grandmother Jia had been looking through the gauze-covered windows into the courtyard behind.
‘Those paulownias by the verandah eaves are still very fine,’ she remarked. ‘It’s a pity they’ve begun losing their leaves.’
A little gust of wind blew across the courtyard as she spoke, bearing on it a faint strain of music from outside.
‘That must be a wedding,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realize we were so near to the street here.’
‘You could never hear the street from here, Mother,’ said Lady Wang, laughing. ‘Those are our twelve little actresses rehearsing.’
‘If they’re going to be playing anyway,’ said Grandmother Jia, ‘we may as well have them to play in here. It will be entertainment for us and it will make an outing of sorts for them.’
Xi-feng at once ordered the troupe to be summoned, and made hurried arrangements for a long table to be brought in, that the actresses could sit down to perform at, and covered with a red rug.
‘Much better put them in Xi-chun’s water pavilion,’ said Grandmother Jia. ‘The music will sound even better coming across the water. Later on when we take our wine we can sit in the downstairs of the Painted Chamber. It’s nice and open there and close enough to the pavilion for listening to the music from.’
Everyone agreed that this would be a good idea.
Grandmother Jia now turned with a smile to Aunt Xue.
‘I think we’d better be on our way now. These young people don’t much like having visitors, you know. They are terrified of getting their rooms dirty. We mustn’t be tactless and overstay our welcome. I think we’d better take another little turn in the boats now, and then it will be just about time to go and have our drinks.’
‘How unfair!’ said Tan-chun laughing. ‘When I ask you or Mother or Aunt Xue to come here, you never do.’
‘Oh, my little Tan is all right,’ said Grandmother Jia. ‘It’s those two Yus who are so detestable. We shall go and brawl in their rooms later on when we are drunk!’
The others (including the detestable Yus) all laughed.
Emerging in a single group from the Autumn Studio, they arrived after a short walk at Duckweed Island, where their specially imported Soochow boatwomen were waiting with two elegantly decorated punts. Grandmother Jia, Lady Wang, Aunt Xue, Grannie Liu, Faithful and Silver were handed one by one aboard the first one. They were joined a little later by Li Wan, and finally by Xi-feng, who stood in the bows and said she was going to punt.
‘Feng!’ Grandmother Jia called nervously from inside the cabin. ‘It’s too dangerous to fool about. It isn’t like the open river here, but it’s still quite deep. Come in here with us!’
‘It’s all right, Grannie! Don’t be nervous!’ said Xi-feng, laughing, as she shoved off from the bank. But the punt, being somewhat overloaded, was hard to manage, so that by the time they were in midstream she was already in difficulties and had to hand the pole over to one of the boatwomen and sit down rather abruptly on her haunches.
When their elders were safely away, Bao-yu and the six girls got into the second punt and were poled along in the wake of the first one. The maids and older women proceeded in the same direction on foot along the shore.
‘These raggedy-looking lotus-leaves everywhere are rather ugly,’ said Bao-yu. ‘I can’t think why they haven’t been cleared away.’
‘Now when could they have been?’ said Bao-chai. ‘With parties being held here practically every day this autumn, the Garden has never been free long enough.’
‘I can’t abide the poems of Li Shang-yin,’ said Dai-yu, ‘but there is just one line of his that I am rather fond of:
Leaves but dead lotus-leaves for the rain to play on.
Trust you not to “leave the dead lotus-leaves”!’
‘It is a good line, I agree,’ said Bao-yu. ‘We’ll tell them that in future they are not to remove them.’
They were drifting into Flowery Harbour now, and the dank chill of its creeper-hung grotto seemed to penetrate their bones. Dead reeds and dying caltrop-leaves added to the autumnal melancholy of the scene. A clean, airy-looking building was visible at some distance beyond the bank above.
‘Isn’t that Bao-chai’s place?’ said Grandmother Jia.
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br /> On being told that it was, she asked the women to moor the boats there, and having disembarked, ascended from the landing-stage by a flight of cloud-shaped stone steps and proceeded, with the rest of the party, to the gateway of Allspice Court.
A delectable fragrance assailed their nostrils as they entered. Outside the house the leaves of the mysterious, unnamable creepers had turned an even intenser green in the colder weather, and where before there had been flowers, there now hung trusses of the most beautiful coral-red berries. Indoors, however, it was stark and bare. The only decoration in Bao-chai’s room was a vase of the cheaper kind of Ding ware on the table, with a few chrysanthemums in it. Apart from the flowers there were only a few books and some tea-things on the table. The bed-hangings were of black gauze, and the quilts and covers were of the same forbidding plainness as the hangings.
‘This child is really too self-effacing!’ Grandmother Jia muttered, evidently shocked by what she saw. The tone in which she addressed Bao-chai was a somewhat reproachful one: ‘If you haven’t any things of your own, why ever didn’t you ask your Aunt Wang for some? I’m afraid I never thought about it before. Of course. I realize now. You must have left all your stuff behind in Nanking.’
She at once ordered Faithful to supply Bao-chai with some ornaments, and then turned, with some asperity, on Xi-feng.
‘Really, Feng! I do think it rather stingy of you! Couldn’t you have spared your cousin a few knick-knacks?’
Lady Wang and Xi-feng both laughed.
‘She said herself that she didn’t want any. We gave her some things, but she sent them all back again.’
Aunt Xue corroborated this.
‘She was just the same in Nanking, Lady Jia. She’s never cared much for that sort of thing.’
Grandmother Jia shook her head.
‘That will never do. It saves trouble, no doubt, to keep one’s room so bare. But what would any of our relations think if they were to come here and see this? Besides, it isn’t natural for a young girl to be so austere. If girls are to live so austerely, what sort of a stable ought an old woman like me to live in? Think of the descriptions of young ladies’ boudoirs you find in plays and romances – such exquisite refinement of luxury! I’m not exactly suggesting that you should emulate them – but you shouldn’t fall too far short, all the same. After all, when the things are there for the asking, it seems silly not to use them. Use them sparingly, by all means, if your tastes are on the austere side; but don’t dispense with them altogether! I’ve always had rather a flair for decorating interiors. I don’t exercise it much nowadays, because I’m too old; but I think the girls have inherited a little of it from me. The thing one always has to be on one’s guard against is bad taste – which generally means no more than arranging good things in a bad way. I don’t think any of my girls has bad taste. Now why don’t you let me decorate this room for you? I promise you it shall look both dignified and austere. There are still a few things tucked away in my dowry that Bao-yu doesn’t know about. (I wouldn’t let him see them, or they’d have disappeared long ago!).’
