“I’m sorry.” Yucun shakes his head, and tries to smile. “I can’t come now. I just saw Minister Nian in the crowd, and I want to ask him about a petition I am drafting.”
“Are you sure you are all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“Then you’ll come another time?” Jia Zheng wonders whether Yucun, having found other senior officials to mentor him, no longer needs his help.
“Yes, another time,” Yucun agrees, already backing away.
7
When Daiyu hears the tapping on her bolted window, she lies still, resolutely not moving or making a sound. Baoyu taps again. Then comes his voice, “Daiyu! Daiyu!”
She does not answer. He calls louder, starting to rattle the window in its frame.
Finally, he starts to shout, “What’s wrong? Are you sick?”
After a minute of this she jumps out of bed and rushes to the window, unable to keep her resolve. “For goodness’ sake, will you be quiet? Someone will hear you.”
“Why won’t you open the window?”
“Go away. I don’t want to speak to you.”
“Why not?”
“I said, ‘Go away’!”
“Not until you tell me what’s wrong.”
She walks back to her bed and climbs under the covers.
“Daiyu! Daiyu! Will you please open the window so we can at least talk?”
She pulls the covers over her head.
“If you don’t open the window, I’ll just break it.”
She still does not move.
“All right. Have it your way.”
She hears a crashing sound as he tries to knock the window out of its frame. She rushes to the window and opens it. “Stop it!”
The moment she opens the window, he sticks his head through so she can no longer close it. “What’s the matter?”
She does not answer.
He climbs quickly inside and shuts the window. “Tell me.”
Now that he is actually standing in front of her, the picture of bewildered innocence, instead of being coolly sarcastic, as she had intended, she blurts out, her voice shaking with anger, “Why didn’t you tell me you were betrothed to Baochai?”
He stands silent and motionless before her. She tries to see his face, but all she can make out is the pale gleam of his forehead and nose in the moonlight.
“So you’ve heard about that,” he says at last.
“Yes. Huan told me.” She crosses her arms over her chest and climbs back into bed, turning her back towards him.
There is a long silence. She can sense him standing there awkwardly near the window. She hears him approaching the bed. She pulls the covers protectively about herself as he sits down on the kang next to her. She thinks about telling him to get off, but decides that it is more dignified to preserve her silence.
“I should have told you.”
She does not answer.
After another pause, he says, “At first I wasn’t sure, you know. No one actually said anything to me. But I sensed it, from the way Baochai was acting.”
When he says the name Baochai, she is possessed by an unreasoning flame of jealousy, and huddles more tightly into herself.
“I don’t want to marry her. I’ve been thinking of a way to get out of the betrothal.”
She lies there without moving. Then she says over her shoulder, as nastily as she can, “I don’t know why you wouldn’t want to marry her. She’s rich, and well connected, and well behaved. You’ll make a lovely couple, the perfect caizijiaren, ‘beauty and scholar,’ like in all the romances—”
He bends over her and takes her ungently by the shoulders, turning her to face him. “Why are you doing this, Dai? Don’t you know how I feel about you?”
“No, I don’t,” she says, turning her face away. “How would I know anything? You’ve been betrothed for all these months and I haven’t known it!”
“I don’t want to marry her. I was just figuring out how to get out of the match—”
“Well, and what did you figure out?” She is pleased at how sardonic her voice sounds.
“It’s not so simple. I was trying to figure out whether you cared for me—”
“But why didn’t you tell me? Why did you leave me in the dark?” She wrenches herself so violently out of his grip that her shoulders hurt.
“How could I tell you? You would have been angry and wanted nothing to do with me—”
He tries to hold on to her again, but she shoves his hands away. “Don’t try to defend yourself. I should have listened to all those rumors about you.”
“What rumors?”
“About Silver.” She hurls the name at him.
He stares at her. “What about Silver? I told you what happened.”
“No, you didn’t. You never told me anything! You were vague and mysterious, just like you are about everything! She killed herself, did you know that? She killed herself and it was your fault!”
She hears his sharp intake of breath. “What do you mean?”
“Her mother came and said she had thrown herself in the well.”
“When?”
“More than two months ago, at the Grave Sweeping Festival. Your precious Baochai told everyone not to tell. She didn’t want you to be upset by what you’d done.”
He is silent. Instead of defending himself, he buries his face in his hands. “How could it have gone so far?” he says. She can tell from his voice that he is crying. “It was nothing, but Granny got so angry. How could it have gone so far?”
She is slightly mollified by his tears but still she challenges him. “What do you mean, it was nothing?”
He lifts up his face from his hands, and she can see the gleam of tears on his cheeks. “My father assumed that I raped her. All I did was kiss her, and she was perfectly willing! Then Granny got angry and dismissed her. That’s all that happened, though Heaven knows I blamed myself afterwards for getting her in such terrible trouble.”
She had never really believed that he was capable of forcing himself on anyone, but the phrase that he uses cuts her to the quick. “Is that what you’re going to say about me, that all you did was kiss me?”
“You think this is the same as Silver?”
“What am I supposed to think, when you didn’t even tell me about your betrothal—”
“I was just flirting with Silver—”
“Just like you flirted with me!”
“I haven’t been flirting with you. I love you, and I want to marry you!”
She feels a rush of joy, but then she remembers how meaningless such words are when he is already betrothed to Baochai. “Why should I believe you? You—you insult me by coming here and sneaking into my bedroom and”—she cannot bring herself to say the word “kiss” after what he said about Silver—“and all along you knew that you were going to marry someone else!”
He looks at her with narrowed eyes for a moment, apparently unable to speak for his fury. Then he turns away, and before she can understand what he is doing, he has looped the cord of his jade from around his head and is pressing the cool, hard stone into her palm.
Instinctively she recoils. “What are you doing?”
“What do you think I’m doing? I’m giving you my jade.”
“Are you crazy?” She thrusts it back at him.
“No, I’m saner than I’ve ever been in my life. I want you to have it.” He takes her hand and forces her fingers around the stone.
“Why?” She tries to pull her hand away.
“As a promise. I want you to wear it until I manage to break my betrothal.”
She starts to tremble. “But that’s impossible. How on earth will you do that? Granny will never consent—”
“I’ll speak to my father first. And then if that doesn’t work, I’ll ask Xifeng to speak to Granny for me. And if that doesn’t work, I will beg Granny myself.”
“But I don’t know if they’ll agree. Granny doesn’t like me, nor Xifeng either—”
“Never mind. I won’t rest until they agree. Until they do, I want you to wear this.”
“You can’t give this away.” She tries to give it back again. “It’s your good luck charm. It’s almost a part of yourself.”
He does not answer. Instead he loops the cord over her own neck, careful not to let it catch in her hair. “Wear it inside your collar. You don’t want anyone else to see it.”
“You don’t even like it,” she says, half crying, half laughing.
“I do like it now.” He pulls her to him and buries his face in her hair. “I like it because it is the only thing that I can give you that is truly mine.”
8
Even though the unlit kang has been covered with cool bamboo mats, Baochai wakes up sticky and uncomfortable from her nap. Summer’s heat has begun to gather, and her mouth and lips feel dry from the close, still air. She glances towards her mother, asleep beside her. Mrs. Xue had had a bad headache last night, and Baochai sat up with her until one in the morning. She herself feels heavy and drowsy, but she rises from the kang and dresses and does her hair. She goes out to the front room, and sits on the kang with her embroidery. She sews for several minutes, but feels so hot and dull that she is tempted to go back to sleep. Trying to shake off her lethargy, she decides to walk to Tanchun’s to see what the other girls are doing.
She finds the Two Springs and Daiyu in Tanchun’s front room listening to one of the old nannies telling stories. They have all taken off their robes and sit on the kang in light tunics and undertrousers. She is surprised that Daiyu has made the effort to visit the other girls; she has seemed in better spirits lately. When Baochai climbs onto the kang, Daiyu smiles at her, and makes room for Baochai to sit between her and Xichun. Baochai settles herself and begins to listen to the old woman with her heavy Hubei accent. She looks to be one of the oldest servants in the household, perhaps more than sixty, and she is talking about the Great Fire that destroyed large portions of the Capital more than fifty years ago. The nanny had only been a little girl then, she says, but she remembers everything vividly: the wall of flame, as high as the tallest tree, that came sweeping and crackling through the city, as it leapt from building to building, from lane to lane; the constant roar, so loud that you could not hear a shout from only a few feet away. With lively gestures and dramatic expressions, she tells of the beams cracking above her head, the paper windows suddenly combusting from the intense heat. She tells of people running and screaming to plunge themselves into ponds and rivers, whatever water they could find. Baochai does not enjoy this sort of thing, just as she refuses to listen to ghost stories: she suspects the old woman of taking advantage of her listeners’ gullibility to exaggerate. She listens politely, but allows a slight smile to play on her lips to express her incredulity.
Beside her, Daiyu is silent, utterly absorbed in the story. As she stares at Nanny Chen, her eyes wide with terror, she fingers something small and round beneath her tunic at the base of her throat. It comes to Baochai in a flash: it is the jade. Daiyu has no jewelry of her own. Baoyu must have given it to her as a pledge. She tells herself that she is being fanciful, but she cannot rid herself of the idea.
She cannot sit there any longer, and climbs off the kang. Daiyu tears herself away from Nanny Chen’s story. “Where are you going? Don’t you want to listen to more stories?”
“I must go see if my mother is awake.”
“I wish you would stay. I feel as if I rarely see you anymore.”
Baochai musters a smile. “Then why don’t you come over to see me tomorrow afternoon?”
When Daiyu walks into Granny Jia’s for breakfast, she finds Snowgoose alone in the front room.
Snowgoose smiles. “There you are. Why haven’t you been coming over early to see me like before?”
Daiyu is embarrassed to tell her friend that because Baoyu has been staying so late when he comes to visit her at night, she has not been able to wake up early. Seeing the expression of concern on Snowgoose’s face, she has an urge to share her happiness. “Come into the courtyard with me. I want to tell you a secret,” she whispers.
They go out onto the verandah, and under the cover of the twittering birds, Daiyu tells about Baoyu’s secret visits, about how she had found out about his engagement to Baochai, and how he had reassured her by giving her the jade and promising he would marry her. She is so giddy with excitement that she is almost at the end of her recital before she notices Snowgoose’s grave expression.
“Haven’t I told you to be careful with Baoyu?” Snowgoose says.
“No, I don’t think you have.” Daiyu laughs. “But it’s not like that. He’s given me his jade.” Daiyu looks to make sure no one is around, then steps close to Snowgoose and pulls the jade out of her collar.
Instead of being reassured, Snowgoose stares at the jade as if it is a poisonous snake. “Put that away,” she hisses.
Daiyu tucks it back inside her collar.
“Now listen to me.” Snowgoose takes Daiyu’s hand and looks intently into her eyes. “You must give the jade back, and break things off with Baoyu. He must never, never visit you at night again. I should have realized there would be trouble when they had you live all alone in those apartments with no one to watch over you!”
She has never heard Snowgoose speak with such urgency before. “Don’t you see, Snowgoose? He isn’t just flirting with me. Giving me the jade means that I’m the person he wants to spend his life with—”
“You must give it back to him,” Snowgoose repeats, unheeding. “Don’t you understand how much trouble there will be if anyone finds out—”
“But I want them to find out. Baoyu is going to talk to Uncle Zheng and Granny.”
“Talk to them! Do you really think that will do any good? Of course they want him to marry someone rich and powerful, like Baochai.”
“Why does it matter? They are rich and powerful enough themselves.”
“That’s the very reason that they want him to marry someone else rich and powerful.”
“But don’t you think that Lady Jia cares about Baoyu’s happiness? She loves him so. If he can convince her that the only way he will be happy is with me …”
“The only one Lady Jia loves is herself.”
“But what if he passes the Exams? Won’t they be satisfied then, and let him marry whom he chooses?”
“If he passes the Exams, he’ll need a rich and powerful wife to advance—” Snowgoose breaks off suddenly as if a new thought has occurred to her. “And what about Baochai?”
“Oh, she won’t care,” Daiyu says confidently. “She would just as soon be betrothed to someone else, as long as he was from a good family, too.”
Snowgoose shakes her head. “No one wants to suffer the loss of face and embarrassing questions of a broken betrothal.”
“But she won’t really suffer very badly, because the betrothal was kept secret in the first place. Besides, it’s not as if she loves him.”
“What makes you so sure she doesn’t love him?”
Daiyu only smiles. Snowgoose does not know Baochai as she does. Of course she is only marrying Baoyu because her mother arranged the match. It is inconceivable to Daiyu that Baochai has any feelings for him.
Before Daiyu’s visit, Baochai asks Oriole to heat some water. She has Oriole set out soap, a hair string, fresh towels, and a bottle of Oil of Flowers. Her mother, who has had another migraine, is still sleeping in the back bedroom.
When Daiyu comes in, Baochai greets her warmly, and then says, smiling, “It’s such a nice sunny day. I was about to wash my hair. Do you want to wash yours, too, as long as I have everything ready?”
Daiyu smiles back, apparently pleased by Baochai’s friendliness. “That’s a good idea.”
Baochai tells Oriole to set the basin on a small table in a sunny patch near the open door. She goes to her dressing table to take off her bracelets and roll up her sleeves. “Why don’t you go first?”
“Of course not. You shoul
d go first.”
“There’s no need to be so polite.” Baochai laughs. “You go first.”
Baochai insists, and eventually Daiyu gives in. She drapes a towel over Daiyu’s shoulders, and begins to pluck out her hairpins.
“I can do that myself.”
“Good Heavens, why are you being so polite today? It’s easier when someone else does it for you. Besides, I’m very good at giving head massages, don’t you remember? I’ll wash your hair, then you wash mine.”
Daiyu sits on a stool next to the basin, and Baochai uses her own comb to smooth out the tangles in Daiyu’s hair. She notices how different it is from her own. Thin and fine and inky black, the clinging strands are so delicate that Baochai has to be careful not to tear them. Baochai’s hair is coarse and heavy, with reddish brown tints. When she can finally draw the comb smoothly through the long, silky strands, she asks Daiyu to stand up and lean over the basin. “I am afraid of splashing on your robe. Why don’t you unbutton it a little so it won’t get wet?” she says.
“All right.” Daiyu opens the tight collar of her gown, undoing the top three fastenings, so that she can roll the fabric away from her neck. She bends over the basin, flipping her hair up over the crown of her head so that it hangs into the water. Almost without surprise, Baochai sees the jade, dangling on the familiar black and gold knotted cord around Daiyu’s neck. She is glad Daiyu cannot see her face. How strange, she thinks, that Daiyu is having an affair with Baoyu—for his giving her the jade can mean only that—but is able to face Baochai and receive favors from her, without apparent guilt or shame.
She cups her fingers and splashes water onto Daiyu’s hair, then rubs soap into Daiyu’s scalp, using her fingernails to loosen the oil at the roots. Sometimes she digs her fingernails into Daiyu’s scalp more roughly than she has to. More than once she feels Daiyu wincing a little beneath her hands. When she has subjected Daiyu’s scalp to a merciless scrubbing, she pushes Daiyu’s head into the basin to rinse it. She feels Daiyu relaxing as she scoops the warm water over her head. Below Daiyu’s notched hairline, her skin is snow-white and flawlessly smooth. Her neck is long and slender, curving away from the graceful sweep of her shoulders. Baochai’s own shoulders are fleshy, with a sprinkling of pimples. Her neck is short. Perhaps if she had been as beautiful as Daiyu she would have been able to keep Baoyu’s notice.
The Red Chamber Page 26
