The Crab-Flower Club

by Cao Xueqin

  She began to cry again.

  ‘Aren’t you satisfied yet?’ said Jia Lian. ‘Just think a bit: who was most to blame yesterday? Yet today I was the one who had to kneel down in front of everyone and apologize. You’ve come out of this pretty well. So what are you yammering at me now for? Do you want me to kneel down again? Here? It doesn’t do to be too greedy, you know.’

  Xi-feng, unable to think of a reply to this, fell silent. Patience giggled.

  ‘There, it’s all over!’ said Jia Lian, laughing himself. ‘It’s no good. I just can’t help myself.’

  Just then a woman came to the door to report.

  ‘Bao Er’s wife has hanged herself.’

  Jia Lian and Xi-feng were both profoundly shocked; but the look of fear on Xi-feng’s face was of only momentary duration.

  ‘Well,’ she said harshly, ‘what of it?’ Why make such a fuss about it?’

  Shortly after this Lin Zhi-xiao’s wife came in and spoke to Xi-feng on the side.

  ‘Bao Er’s wife has hanged herself. Her family are talking about taking it to court.’

  Xi-feng laughed scornfully.

  ‘Good! I was thinking of doing the same thing myself.’

  ‘I’ve just been trying to talk them out of it,’ said Lin Zhi-xiao’s wife. ‘I tried frightening them a bit to start with, then I promised them some money if they would drop it. They seemed to be willing.’

  ‘I’ve got no money to give them,’ said Xi-feng, ‘and I wouldn’t give it to them if I had. Let them go ahead and sue. I don’t want you to talk them out of it, or to try frightening them out of it either. Just let them go ahead and sue. If they lose their case, I shall bring a suit against them for ex morte blackmail!’

  As she stood there in some perplexity to know what to do, Lin Zhi-xiao’s wife noticed that Jia Lian was signalling to her with his eyes. She understood his meaning and went off to wait for him outside.

  Jia Lian followed soon after.

  ‘I’m just going out to have a look – see what’s going on,’ he said on his way out.

  ‘You’re not to give them any money!’ Xi-feng shouted after him.

  Jia Lian went straight off to discuss the matter with Lin Zhi-xiao himself. As a result of their discussion, someone was sent to haggle with the family and promise whatever seemed necessary, and the family eventually agreed to keep quiet in return for a payment of two hundred taels ‘towards funeral expenses’. Terrified that they might change their minds, Jia Lian sent someone to talk to the local magistrate and invited the police inspector and two or three of the constables in to ‘help with the funeral’. Seeing the way things were, the family now dared not pursue the matter any further even if they wanted to, and were obliged to digest in silence whatever they might feel of grief or anger.

  Jia Lian told Lin Zhi-xiao to account for the two hundred taels by adding a bit here and a bit there on to various items in the Current Expenses account. He also slipped Bao Er some money of his own and consoled him with a promise that he would pick a good wife for him at the earliest opportunity to replace the one he had just lost. Flattered by all the attention he was receiving and grateful for the money, Bao Er was only too willing to do as he was told and continued to serve Jia Lian with no less devotion than before. But that is no part of our story.

  Whatever internal uneasiness Xi-feng may have felt about these developments, outwardly she affected complete indifference. Finding herself alone with Patience when Jia Lian had gone, she smilingly inquired after her injuries.

  ‘I was terribly drunk yesterday,’ she said. ‘I hope you won’t hold it against me, what I did then. Where did I hit you? Let me have a look.’

  ‘You didn’t hit me very hard,’ said Patience.

  Just at that moment they were interrupted by an announcement from outside.

  ‘Mrs Zhu and the young ladies are here.’

  If you want to know what they had come for, you will have to read the following chapter.

  Chapter 45

  Sisterly understanding finds expression in words of sisterly frankness

  And autumnal pluviousness is celebrated in verses of autumnal melancholy

  As we were saying at the end of the last chapter, Xi-feng had just begun expressing her concern for Patience when Li Wan and the cousins walked in. She broke off and invited them to be seated, and Patience went round and served them all with tea.

  ‘What a crowd!’ said Xi-feng. ‘Anyone would think I’d sent out an invitation for something!’

  ‘There are two things we wanted to see you about,’ said Tan-chun. ‘One is my affair; the other concerns Xi-chun but also includes instructions from Grandmother.’

  ‘They must be very important things for a turn-out like this,’ said Xi-feng.

  ‘We started a poetry club recently,’ said Tan-chun, ‘and the very first time we had a regular meeting, somebody didn’t turn up. As the rest of us are too soft to apply the rules ourselves, we want to invite you, as someone we could trust to apply them for us with iron impartiality, to be our Disciplinary Officer. That’s the first thing. The second thing concerns this painting of the Garden that Xi-chun has been asked to do. There are all sorts of things she’ll need for it that she hasn’t got. We spoke to Grandmother about it and she said that there might still be some things that would do in the downstairs store-room at the back. She said we ought to have a look, and if there are, we can use them. Otherwise, anything we haven’t got ourselves we should send outside for and buy.’

  ‘I know nothing about poetry,’ said Xi-feng. ‘I couldn’t compose a poem to save my life. I could come along to eat and drink with you if you like.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have to compose poems,’ said Tan-chun. ‘That’s not what we want you for. All you have to do is keep an eye on the rest of us, and if you find anyone slacking or playing truant, decide how they ought to be punished.’

  ‘Don’t try to fool me,’ said Xi-feng. ‘I’ve already guessed. It’s not iron impartiality you’re after, it’s financial backing. If you’ve got a club, you’re sure to have some arrangement for taking it in turns to pay the bill, and as you’re short of money, you’ve thought of this as a means of roping me in so that you can get some out of me. That’s the real reason for your invitation, isn’t it?’

  The others laughed.

  ‘Too bad! You’ve guessed.’

  ‘You’re like the original Crystal Man, Feng,’ said Li Wan.

  ‘A heart of crystal in a body of glass.

  You can see through everything!’

  ‘Fancy!’ said Xi-feng, mockingly. ‘The respected elder sister-in-law! The one who’s put in charge of these young ladies to guide their studies and teach them needlework and good manners! You encourage them to start a poetry club, but as soon as the question of money arises (and incidentally, how much money is involved? – it can’t surely be very much), you’re not interested: it has nothing to do with you! Now, you have a monthly allowance of ten taels. Excluding Grandmother and Aunt Wang – and they are, after all, ladies of rank and title – that’s twice as much as any of the rest of us gets. Yet Grandma and Auntie go on about how poor you are: “poor young widow!” “no means of her own!” Oh yes, and because you’ve got a son, you get another ten taels a month on top of that, which actually makes you equal with Grandma and Auntie Wang. And you’ve got your land in the Garden, the best plot there. It’s down in the tithe-book for the highest tithing. And you haven’t got a big establishment. I doubt there are ten of you there altogether, counting you and Lan and all the servants, so your outgoings can’t come to very much. And in any case your food and clothing is all found out of common funds. If one were to add it all up together, I think your real income must be somewhere in the region of four or five hundred taels a year. Even if you were to spend one or two hundred a year out of that on amusements for the girls like this poetry thing, it wouldn’t be for many years. Another year or two from now and they’ll all be getting married. And it’s not as if you were sa
ving up for their dowries, either. That’s hardly likely to be your responsibility. No, you’re frightened of spending that money of yours, that’s why you’ve set these girls on to me. I’m supposed to go along like an innocent and eat and drink myself silly so that next day I can be made to foot the bill. That’s your little game, isn’t it?’

  ‘Listen to her, all of you!’ said Li Wan, laughing. ‘I make a single, inoffensive remark to her, and in return I get this cartload of ill-bred abuse! Really, Feng, what a mercenary creature you are! You’re just like one of those muddy-legged wretches who stand haggling in the market-place with a little abacus up one sleeve to do their calculations on. It’s a good job you were born a girl and brought up in an educated, upper-class family and that you married into a family of the same sort. If you’d been born a boy and your family had been poor and uneducated people, I dread to think what sort of a calculating monster you would have grown up into! Everyone in the world has to become the object of your calculations. Yesterday it was Patience’s turn. It’s a wonder you have arms to strike her with, for I’m sure it was a dog’s stomach you poured all that wine into. None but a dog would have turned on Patience the way you did. I tell you, I was so angry, I felt like coming straight over and giving you a piece of my mind. Then I thought it over for a bit and decided not to. After all, it was your birthday, and as we know, “every dog must have his day”. Also I was afraid that if I made a fuss I might upset Grandmother. And because I didn’t have it out with you yesterday, I was still feeling angry about it when I came here to see you just now. Yet you have the gall to start on me – you who aren’t worthy to pick up Patience’s shoes! You ought to change places, you two. I’m sure Patience would make the better mistress.’

  It made the girls laugh to hear Li Wan speaking with such unaccustomed heat.

  ‘Oh, now I understand!’ said Xi-feng, joining in their laughter. ‘It wasn’t about poetry or painting that you came to see me: it was revenge for Patience you were after. I didn’t realize that she had so powerful a protector. Now that I do, I shall never dare to strike her again – not if all the devils in hell are tugging at my elbow! Here, Patience! Miss Patience! Let me apologize to you in front of Mrs Zhu and the young ladies. I “did evil in my cups”. Please forgive me.’

  The others laughed.

  ‘There you are!’ said Li Wan to Patience. ‘I told you I’d stick up for you, didn’t I?’

  ‘It’s all very well for you ladies to joke about it,’ said Patience, ‘but you make me feel very uncomfortable.’

  ‘You’ve no cause to feel uncomfortable,’ said Li Wan. ‘I’ll look after you. You just get that key and tell your mistress to unlock the store-room and find those things for us.’

  ‘My dear good Wan, please take these girls back to the Garden,’ said Xi-feng. ‘I’ve got the rice accounts to go over; I’ve got to see Lady Xing about something (I don’t know what, but she’s just sent over to say that she wants me); and I’ve got the New Year’s clothes to see about. I have to find out what everyone wants and get the orders placed —’

  ‘I don’t care in the least about these things,’ said Li Wan airily. ‘You just settle my business first so that I can go back home and rest and not have these girls pestering me any more.’

  ‘Give me a little time!’ said Xi-feng pleadingly. ‘You’re so considerate towards me as a rule; I don’t know why I’m so out of favour with you today. I suppose it must be because of Patience. Often in the past you’ve said to me, “Now I know how busy you are, Feng, but your health is important: you ought to find means somehow or other of taking a rest.” That’s what you would normally say in a situation like this; but today you seem more intent on driving me into an early grave! Incidentally, you may not think it matters very much if the arrangements for other people’s winter clothing get put off, but what about the clothing for the girls? Strictly speaking that’s your responsibility. Don’t you think Grandmother would feel that you were taking non-interference just a little far if she discovered that the girls were going without winter clothes simply for want of a word from you? You know, of course, that I would rather get into trouble myself than involve you in trouble …’

  ‘Listen to her, all of you,’ said Li Wan. ‘Marvellous, isn’t it? I’d like to get hold of that clever tongue of yours, Feng, and –! Just tell me this one thing, then: are you going to keep an eye on our poetry club for us or aren’t you?’

  ‘What a question!’ said Xi-feng. ‘If I refused to join your club and spend my money in it, I should be declaring myself in open rebellion against the Prospect Garden Residents’ Association, and heaven help me then! – my life wouldn’t be worth living! I shall be round first thing tomorrow to report for duty, and the first thing I shall do will be to pay down fifty taels to be spent as and when you wish on the club’s entertainment. I can’t write poetry – or anything else, for that matter – and I’m a very common, ignorant sort of person to be joining a poetry club; and as for taking on this disciplinary business: well, whether I do or whether I don’t, I don’t suppose there’ll be much danger of your expelling me once you’ve seen the colour of my money.’

  The others laughed.

  ‘I’ll open the store-room presently,’ she continued, ‘and I’ll get them to put out anything that looks as if it might be of use for you to have a look at. If you can use it, keep it. Anything you’re still short of after that, I’ll tell them to buy for you outside. I can get the pongee cut for you straight away. The architect’s drawing isn’t at Lady Wang’s, by the way; it’s at Cousin Zhen’s place. I’m telling you this to save you a wasted journey. I can get it for you, if you like; then I can have it taken with the pongee to Sir Zheng’s gentlemen and ask them to do the sizing for you.’

  Li Wan nodded approvingly.

  ‘That would be very kind. If you’ll really do all that for us, we shall have nothing more to say. Come on then, everybody! Let’s go home and see what happens. If she doesn’t send the stuff, we can come back and deal with her later.’

  She began to leave the room as she said this, the cousins following in her wake.

  ‘I know of only one person who could have stirred all this up,’ said Xi-feng as they were going, ‘and that’s Bao-yu.’

  The mention of his name stopped Li Wan in her tracks. She came back into the room.

  ‘I’d completely forgotten: it was Bao-yu that I came about in the first place. He was the one who failed to turn up at our first meeting. We’re all too soft to know what to do with him. How do you think we ought to punish him?’

  Xi-feng thought for a bit.

  ‘The only thing I can suggest is that you should make him go round to each of your apartments in turn and sweep the floors for you.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said the others, laughing. ‘The very thing!’

  They were just about to leave for the second time when Lai Da’s mother, old Mrs Lai, came in, leaning on the shoulder of a little maid. Xi-feng and the rest rose to greet her. They begged her to be seated and offered her their congratulations. The old woman sat down on the edge of the kang and smiled round at them with pleasure.

  ‘The way I see it, since you are our employers, our good fortune is really yours. If it weren’t for your family, how would the likes of us ever have come by a piece of good fortune like this in the first place? Yesterday when you sent young Sunshine round with those presents, my grandson “kotowed upwards” in the doorway to show his gratitude.’

  ‘When will he be leaving to take up his post?’ said Li Wan.

  Old Mrs Lai sighed, as though the thought made her melancholy.

  ‘Oh, I don’t concern myself with their affairs. I just let them get on with it. When he came round to me to kotow the other day, I didn’t have a good word for him. I said to him, “Young man, don’t tell me you’re a mandarin now, because it’s just plain ridiculous. Thirty years it is since you were born,” I said, “and all that time, in actual fact, you’ve been a bondservant. Yet through the kindness of
our Masters you were set apart from the moment you came out of your mother’s womb. Thanks to the Masters and your parents,” I said, “you were taught to read and write like a gentleman’s son and fussed over by a parcel of maids and nannies and wet-nurses as if you was some sort of young phoenix. I doubt you know how the word ‘bondservant’ is written. You’ve known nothing but soft living since you were born,” I said. “You don’t know the bitterness your father and your grandfather had to go through. You don’t appreciate the generations of hardship that went into the making of a fine gentleman like you. And the money they spent on you,” I said, “nursing you through all the fevers and calamities of youth (for you were a sickly, ailing child): it would have been enough to have made you anew out of silver! Then, when you were twenty, the Master, out of the kindness of his heart, undertook to buy you a place in the Service, so that your future would be assured. Think how many freeborn members of the clan go hungry,” I said, “yet he did this for you, that was born a slave. Such great fortune should make you fearful. And now, after ten years of fooling around, you’ve talked the Master – by what jiggery-pokery I do not know – into getting you selected for a posting. A district magistrate may not be very high in the scale,” I said, “but the mandarin who goes to a district to be its magistrate is supposed to be the father and mother of all the people who live there. So mind you don’t go getting above yourself,” I said. “Do all in your power to show that you are worthy of the trust. And always let the Master see how much you appreciate what he has done for you. Otherwise Heaven will surely cast you off.’

  Li Wan and Xi-feng both laughed.

  ‘You worry too much, Mrs Lai,’ said Xi-feng. ‘He’s all right. It’s true we don’t see much of him nowadays. He used to come in once in a while, but these last few years all we’ve seen of him has been his visiting-card at New Years and birthdays. He did come in the other day, however, to kotow to Her Old Ladyship and Lady Wang. We saw him in Her Old Ladyship’s courtyard, dressed in his new uniform. He looked very imposing. A little bit fatter than he used to be. You ought to be happy now that he’s a mandarin, not making yourself miserable with all this worrying about him. Even if he doesn’t behave himself, I should leave his parents to do the worrying. All you have to do now is sit back and enjoy yourself. If ever you’re at a loose end, you can always jump in your chair and have yourself carried round here for a game of cards and a chat with Her Old Ladyship. I’m sure no one here would dream of making you feel uncomfortable. After all, you’ve got upstairs and downstairs and halls and reception-rooms back home just the same as we have. You’re as good as any lady in the land now, you know. I’m sure you will be respected as such.’