The Red Chamber

by Pauline A. Chen

  “How are you?” Mrs. Xue says. She settles him on the kang and bustles about to get him a snack.

  “All right.”

  “Look.” Mrs. Xue uncovers pickled turnips fried in gluten batter. “Your favorite.”

  “Thank you.” Pan picks up the chopsticks, then sets them down.

  “What’s the matter? Aren’t you hungry?”

  Pan does not speak.

  “What’s the matter?” Mrs. Xue repeats.

  “Jingui wants me to go south again,” he says.

  “But you just came back! Why?”

  “There are some repairs that have to be made on one of the Xias’ estates outside Hangzhou. Also, she says that there’s a shortage of stationery and perfumed goods in the Capital. She wants me to go down south and buy up as much as I can, and bring them up here. She says we should be able to make several hundred percent profit.”

  “If she wants it done, surely she can send some of their clerks. And it’s so much closer for them to send someone from Nanjing,” Mrs. Xue cries indignantly. “Surely there is no reason for you to go, when you have just made the trip.”

  “She says she doesn’t trust servants with such important work.”

  “That’s a fine way to treat a husband. You’ve barely been married a month, and now she is sending you away. Why don’t you tell her ‘no’?”

  Pan looks down, saying nothing. Baochai stares at him, reading the shame and defeat on his face. Who knows what battles are waged between the married couple? She thinks of how Pan had beaten a man to death, and how frightened she had been at the thought of his brutality. But in that case Pan had been emboldened to attack a single opponent by the presence of three or four servants. Perhaps the truth is that Pan is neither a strong nor a brave man.

  “When does she want you to go?” Mrs. Xue says.

  He pauses again, knowing that the answer will infuriate his mother even more. “In two or three weeks,” he says in a low voice.

  “Two or three weeks! Tell her you won’t go then.”

  “How can I tell her that?” he says helplessly.

  “Make some excuse! Tell her we have to consult an almanac for a lucky date.”

  “She won’t listen.”

  “I won’t stand for this. I’ll go and speak to her myself.”

  “No, no. She’ll be so angry … It’s better if you—I mean, we—don’t say anything …” Pan loses himself in a tangle of words.

  Baochai cannot tell whether he is afraid that Jingui will be angry at him for involving his family, or whether he is afraid of how Jingui will treat Mrs. Xue. She has wanted to stay silent, but now she feels inevitably drawn into the crisis.

  “It’s no use, Mama.” She puts her hand on her mother’s arm.

  “What do you mean?” Her mother turns to her, her eyes uncomprehending in her anger and grief.

  “It’s best if we don’t interfere. It will only make things worse for Pan.”

  “For Pan? What about us?”

  But Baochai sees from her mother’s eyes that she understands that if Pan is caught between them and Jingui, he will be the one to suffer. Her mother starts to cry, and Baochai puts her arms around her. She understands the peculiarly bitter twist to her mother’s pain. After all these years of sacrificing herself for Pan’s sake, she had expected one day to be rewarded by having a good son to care for her in her old age. Instead, she is being asked to sacrifice herself once again, this time to facilitate his relationship with Jingui.

  Over her mother’s shoulders she meets Pan’s eyes. His face wears the doltish, stubborn expression in which he takes refuge when he is pained or uncomfortable. With a quick jerk of the chin, she tells him to leave, and he slips out of the room. She feels that she is caught in an elaborate web. She is trapped between her mother and Pan, who is caught between them and Jingui, who is perhaps in turn caught between the rest of the Xias and the Xues. So many people, many of whom have never seen one another, bound together by the invisible, sticky filaments that form the social fabric of the Empire’s elite. She cannot move a muscle without feeling the pull of the tiny clinging threads.

  10

  Xifeng waits for Yucun in the loft of the big storeroom on the edge of the Women’s Quarters. She sits in the usual place, among the hulking shapes of the unused furniture, hidden behind the back of a large armoire and an old dusty screen. She has brought a fur-lined cloak to spread over the rough boards of the floor. It is a cold day, so she wraps herself in it, absently rubbing her cheek against the softness of the fox collar. There is only a small round window at the near end of the loft. She clasps her knees before her and dreamily watches the dust motes float in the dim sunlight. These times are the happiest moments of her week, when she waits for him, poised between the past and the future: allowing her mind to skip and drift over the time she has spent with him, at the same time her whole body glowing in anticipation of being with him again.

  She hears the scrape of the door opening downstairs.

  “Hello?” he calls.

  “I’m up here.”

  She hears his quick, light steps crossing the floor below. Then he is at the ladder. She rushes out to meet him. As soon as he has climbed up, he gathers her in his arms and kisses her. He stops to pull up the ladder and shut the trapdoor. He spreads out the fur cloak and he lies down on it, putting his arms out to her. She lowers herself onto his chest, sighing.

  “How was your week?” he says.

  “All right,” she tells him. “They are talking of betrothing Baoyu to Baochai.”

  “How will that affect you?” he says, lifting his head a few inches to look into her face.

  She shrugs. “I don’t think they will actually be married for a while. It won’t make much difference to me.”

  “Maybe she will be able to help out with some of the work.”

  “Maybe,” she agrees, nestling the top of her head into the space below his chin. Even a few months ago, she would have been worried by the betrothal: afraid that Baochai would quickly bear Baoyu a son, further undercutting her own status in the household, afraid that Baochai would vie with her for control of the household. Now she no longer cares.

  “And you?” she says, turning her face so she whispers into Yucun’s neck.

  “I heard a rumor the Emperor’s health is getting worse. I don’t know how much longer he can last.”

  “Do you think His Highness will finally appoint Prince Yinti as the Heir Apparent?”

  “I don’t know. He hasn’t made any mention of it so far.”

  She nods, knowing that he is deeply concerned about the succession, hoping he can use the ascension of a less favored prince to advance his career. Locked up in the Inner Quarters, she has little sense of the political situation beyond what he tells her. Uncle Zheng almost never mentions official matters. Lian, with his fraternity of bon vivants, neither cares for nor knows much of politics. She herself feels an instinctive interest in the rivalries and intrigues among the various Princes and eunuchs and officials. Yucun, unlike other officials, has befriended the eunuchs as a means of keeping abreast of Palace affairs. Far from despising him for this, she respects him for his ambition and pragmatism.

  “I missed you,” he says, pulling her to him. They would talk for hours if they could, but always there is the awareness of time slipping away, the sense that she must return before someone misses her. They begin to kiss, more passionately this time. They kiss for a long time with her lying on top of him. Then slowly, when they have grown warmer, they begin to undress each other.

  She watches their bodies in the soft, dim light, entwining their limbs, pushing and pulling. She lifts her head to kiss him, and then lets it loll back, looking at her leg, wrapped around his trunk, and at her arm, draped over his shoulder, as if they belong to another person. He runs his hand up her thigh, passing it over her buttock. Sometimes his touch is gentle, sometimes rough; but always he watches her, noticing her pleasure or her discomfort, quick to adjust to her moods. I
t is totally unlike being with Lian. She is relaxed, her mind filled with the strangest fancies. As she looks at their bodies, soft and gray in the dim light, she thinks of underwater creatures, giant blunt-nosed catfish wrestling and surging in the muddy depths of a river.

  After they are done, they lie and talk, piecing together each other’s lives. By now, she has described to him in detail the twin mansions where she grew up in Chang’an. One mansion belonged to her father, the other to his younger brother, and all the children of the family grew up running back and forth between the two houses. Of the twenty cousins of her generation, she was the leader, a regular tomboy. Ping’er had been her sidekick and constant companion. Together the two of them could take on any of their cousins, older or younger, boy or girl, in any sport, any game. Sometimes it gives her pleasure to speak about Ping’er when they were children. More often, the pain at their present estrangement makes her break off. “Everything changed after I got married,” she tells him, sighing and shaking her head.

  In turn, he tells her of his bitter childhood: how his mother scraped together a living by doing other people’s sewing and sent him to the village school. He talks of being filled with envy because the other boys devoured meat and vegetables at lunch, whereas he had plain rice without even a sprinkling of salt to make it more palatable. He tells her how, after attending the school for three years, he had advanced beyond the teacher, and was ready to study himself. He stayed up late at night with a single candle at his desk, both in order to save money and so as not to wake his mother, snoring a few feet away. He learned to immerse himself in the Classics so thoroughly that a whole day would go by, and then he would realize that he had forgotten to eat or drink or even go to the bathroom. This ability to disappear into texts helped him through the death of his mother when he was twelve. But his hard work and suffering had paid off, and here he was, Under-Secretary to President of the Board of War.

  Whenever he describes his childhood to her, she cannot help thinking how he must resent the Jias in their arrogant, spoiled luxury. She fears he must resent her as well, but he always says that he considers her as much a victim of their wealth and power as any servant. Despite the luxury of her own life, she agrees with him. Even he does not understand the way that the favoritism and gossip, the petty rivalries, of the household have warped her.

  As always, a glance at the West Ocean watch that Granny had given her tells her that she has stayed too long. She sits up and starts to pull on her underclothes. “I have to go now.”

  He reaches out to stroke her bare arm. “Just a little bit longer.”

  “No, I really have to go. Lady Jia is going to the Marquise of Nan’an’s birthday party tonight, and needs me to find something for her to bring as a present.”

  With a groan, he sits up, too, and starts to dress. In the light from the window, she notices how his robes are fraying at the elbows and cuffs. His underwear is so worn from repeated washings that the fabric is as delicate as old gauze. She is filled with a sudden tenderness, and has to stop herself from putting her arms around him and kissing him again.

  “Your robes are getting old. Let me get you a new set.”

  “These? They’re not too bad,” he says, tightening his sash.

  She has an urge to see him smart and handsome, like Baoyu or Lian. She smiles to herself, deciding she will surprise him with some new clothes.

  “What are you smiling at?” he says.

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “Yes, something. What is it?”

  “I’m thinking about when I will see you again.”

  “When?”

  “Not for a few days. It’s too dangerous. I don’t want anyone to miss me.”

  “The day after tomorrow, then,” he says, putting his arms around her.

  She laughs, and kisses him. She knows that they are taking crazy risks, but the joy that fills her leaves no room for caution.

  Baochai slips out of her mother’s bedroom, careful not to make a sound. Worried about Pan’s departure for the south in only ten days, Mrs. Xue had not been able to fall asleep last night until the third watch. After lunch, Baochai coaxed her to lie down for a nap. She was so tense and restless that Baochai had had to rub her legs for nearly an hour before her eyelids finally began to flutter shut. Now Baochai is stiff and tired. She recalls that she has been neglecting her social obligations lately because she has been busy attending to her mother. Shaking off her sleepiness, she decides to skip her own nap and sit with Lady Jia, who has probably awoken from her sleep by now.

  She finds Granny sitting against her backrest in the front room while Snowgoose pounds her legs. She seems to be in a fretful mood, and barely acknowledges Baochai’s greeting.

  “How was your nap, Granny?” she says.

  Instead of answering, Granny waves Snowgoose off, and says, “Now, where’s Xifeng got to?”

  “She is probably still napping,” Snowgoose says.

  “I told her to find me that alabaster Buddha’s hand that the Shis gave me last year. I’m going to the Marquise of Nan’an’s birthday party tonight, and I was going to bring it as a present.”

  “You don’t have to leave until after dinner. There is still plenty of time to get it,” Snowgoose says soothingly.

  “Xifeng shouldn’t have forgotten,” Lady Jia complains. “Go tell her to get it now.”

  “She is probably still resting.”

  “Then wake her.”

  “Mrs. Lian needs her rest, too,” Snowgoose tries to reason with her. “She has been complaining of a headache for the last few weeks.”

  Baochai also has noticed that Xifeng has not seemed herself lately. She seems absentminded and distracted and, more than once, Baochai has heard Granny scold her for some trivial mistake in the household routine.

  “She is just pretending, to get out of work,” Lady Jia says. “Where does she keep disappearing to, anyway? Any time I want her, I can’t find her.”

  “It’s these headaches. We really should send for a doctor,” says Snowgoose.

  “She is just faking it, I tell you!”

  While Baochai is mindful of the respect she owes Lady Jia, sometimes she is surprised by the old woman’s capriciousness and eagerness to find fault even in those whom she claims to favor. “Why don’t I go look for the Buddha’s hand?” she offers, trying to spare Granny from working herself into a rage.

  Lady Jia looks at her. “You don’t know where it is.”

  “It’s in the storerooms, isn’t it? Why wouldn’t I be able to find it?”

  “The storerooms are enormous. You’ll never be able to find it without knowing where it is beforehand.”

  “Well, if I can’t find it, then we can ask Xifeng,” Baochai says, smiling.

  “We don’t have the keys. We’ll have to wake Xifeng anyway,” Granny says, apparently determined to disturb her.

  “No,” Snowgoose says, unhooking a key from the large bunch that she carries around her waist. “I have an extra set. You had better take a lantern,” Snowgoose adds, lighting one for Baochai. “It’s pretty dark in there.”

  When Baochai arrives at the storerooms, she is startled to find the door unlocked. She stands there for a moment, staring at the opened lock. As she swings the door gently open, she hears a tiny scuffling somewhere in the building. She wonders if someone is there already, or whether there are mice or rats. It is not like Xifeng to leave it unlocked by mistake—perhaps she really is becoming absentminded. Leaving the door wide open, she advances a few steps, wondering whether to call out. Squinting into the dimness, she can see no trace of a light and concludes that the place must be empty.

  Something about the quiet, shadowy space frightens her, and she must force herself to go in. She thinks the Buddha’s hand must be in the back of the storeroom, where she has seen many shelves of objets d’art. Wishing she had never offered to come, she weaves between the hulking wardrobes and bedsteads, darker and darker now that she has left the stream of light from the door
. At every step, she is convinced that cobwebs are clinging to her face, and waves her hand to brush them away. Looking around, holding the lantern high, she feels like the darkness is filled with whispering voices. She has never been superstitious before, but it is almost as if the place is haunted.

  She gets to the shelves at the back and runs the lantern hurriedly over the rows of vases and tea trays and table screens. She spies the Buddha’s hand on the second shelf. As she reaches for it, she hears a woman’s voice moaning, and realizes that it is not her imagination after all. There is someone here, in the loft of the storeroom. She sees that the ladder leading to the second floor is gone. Then she hears a man’s voice, and understands that some couple is using the place to meet secretly.

  She grabs the Buddha’s hand, careful not to bump against anything, and begins to walk quickly back to the entrance. Her first thought is that some maid has smuggled her lover in and is meeting him here. But that cannot be right. A maid would not dare to sneak a man in. The thought flashes into her mind that it is Xifeng.

  She catches her breath at the risk, the danger. She is too frightened to even think about who Xifeng could be meeting. She stumbles the final few steps and bursts out into the sunlight.

  11

  “Baochai, dear. Can I talk to you about something?”

  Baochai jumps. She has been sitting with her embroidery on her lap in her mother’s front room. As she looks down, she realizes that she has not sewn a stitch for the past half hour. She has been too preoccupied by what she had heard in the storerooms two days before. Her thoughts have gone around and around the event until it feels like they have worn a groove in her mind. Could Xifeng really be so reckless? She wants to go to Xifeng, to test her somehow in order to confirm her suspicions. But what would be the point, except to put Xifeng on guard and make her treat Baochai as an enemy? Baochai cannot imagine what man could be sneaking into the Inner Quarters, nor what would happen if Xifeng were discovered. A divorce? A court case? Xifeng would be sent back to her family and neither the Jias nor the Wangs would be able to hold their heads up for shame. She knows that Xifeng is in her power; yet she does not wish for such power, and fears Xifeng all the more now knowing what she is capable of.