The Crab-Flower Club

by Cao Xueqin

  ‘Does your head feel hot?’ Bao-yu asked Skybright.

  Skybright coughed a few times.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘I’m not that delicate!’

  Just then the chiming clock that hung on the partition in the outer room struck twice and they heard the old woman on night duty cough a couple of times and call out:

  ‘Go to sleep, young ladies! There’ll be plenty of time for talking in the morning.’

  Bao-yu gave a subdued chuckle.

  ‘Better not talk any more,’ he said. ‘We don’t want them talking about us.’

  After that the three of them settled down and went to sleep again.

  When Skybright got up next morning, her nose was stuffed up, her voice was hoarse, and the slightest movement cost her an effort.

  ‘We’d better keep this dark,’ said Bao-yu. ‘If my mother gets to hear of it, she’s sure to insist on your going back home until you’re better; and however nice it may be at your home, I’m sure it won’t be so warm as here, so you’ll be better off with us. I’ll get a doctor in through the back gate to have a look at you on the quiet.’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ said Skybright, ‘but at least let Mrs Zhu know what you’re doing. Otherwise, when the doctor comes, what are you going to say if they start asking questions?’

  Bao-yu knew that she was right and instructed one of the old nannies to go to Li Wan with a message.

  ‘Tell Mrs Zhu that Skybright has got a bit of a chill. Say it’s nothing very serious, and with Aroma away we shall be even more short-handed if she goes back home to get better, so we’d like to get a doctor in quietly through the back gate to have a look at her and not tell Her Ladyship about it.’

  The old nannie was gone for quite a long time. When she did return it was with the following answer.

  ‘Mrs Zhu says all right, as long as she’s better after one or two doses of medicine, otherwise she thinks it would really be better to send her home. She says there’s so much danger of infection at this time of year. She’s particularly worried that one of the young ladies might catch something.’

  All this time Skybright had been lying in the closet-bed inside, coughing. She stopped coughing when she heard this message and called out angrily.

  ‘Anyone would think I’d got the plague! I suppose I’d better go, if she’s so scared that I might infect somebody. It would be just too terrible if any of you lot were to get a headache or a sore throat as long as you live!’

  She actually began getting up as she said this, but Bao-yu rushed in and made her lie down again.

  ‘Now don’t start getting angry. She is, after all, responsible for the girls and she’s probably terrified that Lady Wang might get to know about this and grumble at her. I’m sure that’s the only reason she says this: to cover herself in case it’s found Out. You’re inclined to be quick-tempered at the best of times. Now, with so much extra heat inside you, you are even more inflammable!’

  At this point the doctor was announced and Bao-yu barely had time to conceal himself behind a bookcase as he entered the outer doorway, conducted by two or three old women from the gate. The maids had all fled as soon as the arrival of a male visitor was announced, leaving only three or four old nannies in charge of the apartment. The old nannies quickly let down the closet-bed’s red embroidered curtains and Skybright stretched forth her hand through a join in them.

  This hand held out for the doctors inspection had nails two or three inches long on two of its fingers, stained with balsam juice to a delicate shade of pink. The doctor averted his eyes from this inflaming sight and would not proceed with the examination until one of the old nannies had covered it up with a handkerchief. When he had finished feeling the pulses, he got up, went into the outer room, and announced his diagnosis to the nannies.

  ‘The young lady is suffering from inner congestion caused by exposure. In view of the severe weather we have been having we should probably not be far wrong in calling it a minor case of cold-fever or grippe. Fortunately your patient is a young lady and therefore probably fairly modest in her diet; and the exposure does not appear to have been a very serious one. What we have, then, is no more than a mild infection picked up by someone whose stamina is normally rather low. One or two doses of something to disperse the congestion should be sufficient to put her right.’

  Having pronounced this diagnosis, he went off, conducted once more by the women who had brought him in.

  Li Wan had sent warning of the doctor’s arrival both to the servants on the gate and the maids in the various apartments, so that his passage through the Garden, both coming and going, was through an empty landscape in which not a single female was to be seen. After passing through the Garden gate, he sat down in the outer lodge which the pages occupied and wrote out his prescription.

  ‘Don’t go yet, sir,’ said one of the old women when he had finished writing it. ‘Our young master always likes to have his say about these matters. Like as not he’ll have some question to ask you.’

  The doctor looked startled.

  ‘Did you say “master”? But surely that was a young lady I examined just now? The room was certainly a young lady’s boudoir, and the consultation was made with the patient behind a curtain. Surely it cannot have been a young gentleman?’

  The old woman laughed.

  ‘I see now why the boys said we had a “new doctor” coming in today. You certainly don’t know much about this family, sir! That was our young master’s room you were in just now, but the person you examined was one of his maids – one of the senior ones. That was no young lady’s room. If one of the young mistresses had been ill, you wouldn’t have got into her room that easy – not on your first visit!’

  She took the prescription from him and went back inside to show Bao-yu. Bao-yu glanced through it rapidly. ‘Perilla’, ‘kikio root’, ‘wind-shield’ and ‘nepeta-seed’ appeared among the drugs at the head of the list, and lower down he noticed ‘thorny lime’ and ‘ephedra’. He was appalled.

  ‘He’s prescribing for her as if she were a man. However bad the congestion is, you can’t expect a young girl to stand up to drugs like thorny lime and ephedra. Who sent for this man, anyway? You’d better get rid of him straight away and send for someone we know.’

  ‘We weren’t to know what his prescriptions would be like,’ said the woman defensively. ‘I suppose we could send one of the boys for Dr Wang. The only thing is, as we didn’t tell the Office about this one, we shall have to pay him ourselves.’

  ‘How much?’ said Bao-yu.

  ‘Well, you don’t want to give too little,’ said the old woman. ‘I should think for a single visit a family like ours would give a tael.’

  ‘How much do we give Dr Wang for a visit?’ said Bao-yu.

  ‘Ah, Dr Wang and Dr Zhang are our regular doctors. They aren’t paid by the visit. They get a fixed yearly amount paid to them in quarterly instalments. But this is a new man who’s only ever been here the once, so we have to pay him now.’

  Bao-yu ordered Musk to fetch a tael for him, but Musk said that she didn’t know where Aroma kept her money.

  ‘I’ve seen her taking silver from the little pearl-inlaid cabinet,’ said Bao-yu. ‘I’ll go along with you and have a look.’

  The two of them went into the room that Aroma used as her store-room and opened the cabinet that Bao-yu had referred to. In the top compartment they found nothing but writing-brushes, ink-sticks, fans, incense-pastilles and a wide variety of scarves and sachets. In the lower compartment, however, they found several strings of cash, and there was a drawer in it in which they found a work-basket containing several pieces of silver and even a little balance for weighing it with. Musk picked up the balance.

  ‘Which of these is the one tael mark?’ she said.

  ‘That’s rich,’ said Bao-yu, ‘your asking me! Anyone would think you were new here.’

  Musk laughed. She was about to go outside and ask, but Bao-yu stopped her.

>   ‘Just pick out one of the larger pieces and give her that. There’s no need to bother about the exact amount. We aren’t shopkeepers.’

  Putting the balance back into the basket, Musk picked up one of the pieces of silver and felt the weight of it on her palm.

  ‘I should think this one is about a tael,’ she said. ‘Anyway, it’s better to give too much than too little. A poor creature like that, used to scrimping and scraping himself, would say that it was meanness if we gave him too little. He’d never believe it was because we didn’t know how to use a balance.’

  The woman who had brought the prescription was standing in the doorway, following all this with amusement.

  ‘That piece you’ve got in your hand is half of a five-taelingot,’ she said. ‘It must weigh two taels at the very least. Since you haven’t got any silver-shears, I should keep that piece if I were you and pick out a smaller one.’

  But Musk had already closed the cabinet.

  ‘Oh, I can’t be bothered to look in there again. Just take it. Never mind the weight.’

  ‘And tell Tealeaf to go and get Dr Wang,’ said Bao-yu.

  The old woman took the silver and went off to deal with the matter.

  Tealeaf must have been quick, for Dr Wang arrived quite soon afterwards. The diagnosis he gave after taking Skybright’s pulses was similar to the other man’s, but there was no ephedra or thorny lime in his prescription: their place was taken by milder drugs such as angelica, bitter-peel and white peony root; and the quantities prescribed were smaller. Bao-yu was pleased.

  ‘That’s more like it!’ he said. ‘She certainly needs treating for congestion, but not in the savage way this other man was proposing. I remember last year when I was suffering from the same thing and Dr Wang came to look at me – in my case I was badly constipated as we – he said that my constitution wouldn’t stand up to harsh decongestants like ephedra, gypsum and thorny lime. Well, if my constitution won’t stand up to those drugs, I’m quite sure that yours or Skybright’s wouldn’t. In comparison with you girls, I’m like one of those old aspens that have stood for half a century or more in some grave-garth in the countryside, while you are like those delicate crab-flowers that Yun brought round for me in the autumn.’

  ‘Aspens aren’t the only trees you find growing in grave-garths,’ said Musk, smiling. ‘What about pines and cypresses? I hate aspens – great, stupid trees! It’s not as if they had more leaves than others, yet at the slightest breath of wind they start making a racket. Why compare yourself to an aspen? How common!’

  ‘I wouldn’t compare myself with a pine or a cypress,’ said Bao-yu. ‘Confucius himself speaks highly of those two trees:

  “When the year is coldest, we see that pine and cypress are the last to fade.”

  That shows you how noble they are. I should need to be a very conceited person to compare myself with them.’

  While he was still discussing this with Musk and Skybright, the old woman who had shown him the prescription arrived back again with the drugs. Bao-yu told one of the maids to find the silver medicine-skillet and brew them on the brazier in his room.

  ‘Now do be sensible!’ said Skybright. ‘Tell them to do it in the tea-kitchen. You’ll stink the place out with the smell of boiling herbs if you do it in here.’

  ‘But the smell of boiling herbs is the finest smell in the world,’ said Bao-yu, ‘– far superior to the perfume of any flower. Even the Immortals are supposed to gather herbs and cook them; and gathering herbs to make medicine with is the favourite occupation of hermits and holy men. The smell of medicine: that is the one aesthetic treat that has so far been missing from this apartment; and now, today, we shall enjoy it!’

  And he insisted that they should prepare the medicine on the spot. Then he told Musk to get some things ready to send to Aroma and commissioned one of the old women to take them to her. She was to see how Aroma was and urge her not to endanger her health by excessive weeping. When all these matters had been attended to, he went off to pay his morning calls on Lady Wang and Grandmother Jia and to have his lunch.

  He found Xi-feng at Grandmother Jia’s place discussing mealtime arrangements with his mother and grandmother.

  ‘Now that it’s so cold and the days are so short,’ she was saying, ‘wouldn’t it be better if Li Wan and the young people were to have their meals in the Garden, to avoid all this trekking to and fro? They can begin coming in for them again when the weather is warmer and the days are not so short.’

  ‘Oh, much better, surely?’ said Lady Wang. ‘Especially when it’s snowing or blowing, as it has been recently. It’s so bad for one to be exposed to the cold immediately after eating. It’s also not good to eat food after being out in the cold with an empty stomach. The empty parts fill up with cold air and then the food presses it down inside one. That big five-frame room inside the back gate of the Garden would make an ideal kitchen. We’ve already got all those women there who keep watch in the Garden at night, so there are plenty of hands for fetching and carrying. All we need are a couple of women from the kitchens here to go over and do the cooking. There are regular allowances for vegetables and so forth, so they can either get the money from Accounts and do their own shop ping themselves, or, if they prefer, they can ask the Office to get the stuff for them. And when we have anything special here, like pheasant or roebuck, we can always arrange for a share of it to be sent over to them.’

  ‘I’d been thinking along these lines myself,’ said Grandmother Jia, ‘but I was afraid that opening another kitchen might mean extra trouble for you and Feng.’

  ‘No trouble at all,’ said Xi-feng. ‘It’s simply a matter of switching allowances – spending a bit less here and a bit more there. And even if it does put our expenses up a bit, we don’t want the girls getting colds. Cousin Lin is particularly susceptible. Even Bao-yu is liable to suffer from the cold; and none of our girls is really strong.’

  How Grandmother Jia replied will be shown in the following chapter.

  Chapter 52

  Kind Patience conceals the theft of a Shrimp Whisker bracelet

  And brave Skybright repairs the hole in a Peacock Gold snowcape

  ‘QUITE SO,’ said Grandmother Jia in answer to Xi-feng’s advocacy of the separate kitchen. ‘I would have mentioned it myself, but you have so many burdens already and I didn’t want to add to them. I know, of course, that you wouldn’t have complained, but you might easily have got the impression that I only care about the younger ones and have no consideration for you busy people who are responsible for running the household. However, now that you have suggested it yourself, I am naturally delighted.’

  It chanced that besides Aunt Xue and Mrs Li, Lady Xing and You-shi were also present on this occasion, having come over some time previously to make their morning calls and not yet gone back again. Grandmother Jia availed herself of their presence to sing Xi-feng’s praises.

  ‘I wouldn’t say this as a rule because I don’t want to make her conceited, and in any case the younger ones might not agree with me: but tell me now – as older married women you have all had a good deal to do with her – have you ever met anyone quite as thoughtful as Feng?’

  Aunt Xue, Mrs Li and You-shi agreed that people with Xi-feng’s virtues were indeed extremely rare.

  ‘Other young married husband’s relations for form’s sake,’ they observed, ‘but she really does seem to care for the young people; and she is plainly devoted to you.’

  Grandmother Jia nodded and sighed.

  ‘I’m very fond of her, but I’m afraid she’s a bit too sharp. It doesn’t do to be too sharp.’

  Xi-feng laughed.

  ‘Now there you are quite wrong, Grannie. The saying is that sharp-witted people don’t live long. Everyone says that and everyone believes it, but you should be the last person to agree with them. Look how long-lived and lucky you are, and yet you are ten times more sharp-witted than me. By rights I should live twice as long as you, if there is any truth in th
e saying. I expect to live until I am at least a thousand. At all events I shan’t die until I have seen you go to heaven!’

  ‘It will be a very dull sort of world when all the rest are dead and only we two old harpies are left alive,’ said Grandmother Jia.

  The others laughed.

  Remembering Skybright, Bao-yu left before the others and hurried back to his apartment to see how she was. The air in it reeked of medicine. Skybright, lying on the kang, her face a dusky red now with the fever, appeared to be completely on her own. He felt her forehead and found it burning to the touch. Quickly warming his hands over the stove, he slipped one of them inside the bedclothes and felt her body. That too was fiery hot.

  ‘I should have thought Musk and Ripple might have stayed with you, if no one else,’ he said disgustedly. ‘I call that pretty heartless, leaving you on your own like this.’

  ‘Ripple’s not here because I made her go and have her lunch,’ said Skybright. ‘And Musk has only just this moment been called outside by Patience. They’re whispering together in the front about something or other – probably about the fact that I didn’t go home to get better.’

  ‘Patience isn’t that sort of person,’ said Bao-yu. ‘She wouldn’t have known that you were ill in any case, so she wouldn’t have come specially about you. Probably she came to talk to Musk about something else, but happening to find you ill, pretended she had come about you out of politeness. It’s the sort of social fib that anyone might tell under the circumstances. Even if you were in trouble for not going home, it’s got nothing to do with Patience; and as you have always been on good terms with her in the past, there’s no earthly reason why she should want to make unpleasantness between you now by interfering in something that doesn’t concern her.’

  ‘I expect you’re right,’ said Skybright. ‘But I don’t understand why she should want to hide things from me.’

  ‘I’ll go and find out what they’re talking about,’ said Bao-yu. ‘If I go out the back door and round the side, I shall be able to listen to them from outside the window.’