‘What are you doing here?’ There was an expression of pleased surprise on her face. ‘Don’t let Skybright get me! She’s trying to hit me.’
Inside the room there was a clatter of numerous tiny objects striking the floor and a moment later Skybright burst through the doorway in pursuit.
‘Where are you, you little wretch? If you’ve lost, you have to have a slap. It’s no good running to Bao-yu to protect you: he isn’t here today.’
Bao-yu laughingly intercepted her.
‘She’s only little. I don’t know how she’s offended you, but won’t you forgive her for my sake?’
Bao-yu’s sudden appearance at that moment was so unexpected that Skybright found it comical.
‘Parfumée must be a little witch! I wouldn’t have thought even magic spells could bring someone so quickly! Well, I don’t care!’ she said, having recovered somewhat from her surprise. ‘Magic or no magic, I’m going to get her!’
She wrested the arm free that Bao-yu was holding and darted at Parfumée; but Parfumée dodged behind Bao-yu’s back and clung to him. Bao-yu took Skybright by one hand and Parfumée by the other and walked with them into the room. There, on the kang under the west wall, Musk, Ripple, Emerald and. Swallow sat playing dibs: melon-seeds for winners and slaps for losers. Parfumée had lost to Skybright and run out to avoid the slap. The clattering noise that Bao-yu had heard was the sound of dib-stones falling from Sky-bright’s lap when she got up to chase her. Bao-yu surveyed the scene approvingly.
‘I thought you’d be a bit quiet here with me away,’ he said. ‘And as the days are so long now, I was afraid you might be going to sleep after lunch and making yourselves ill. I’m glad you’ve found a way of keeping yourselves amused – Where’s Aroma?’ he asked, suddenly noticing that she was not with them.
‘Oh, Aroma,’ said Skybright. ‘Aroma’s gone religious. She’s sitting on her own in the next room like Bodhidharma with her face to the wall. I haven’t dared disturb her so I haven’t the least idea what she’s doing. Whatever it is, she’s being very quiet about it. You’d better go in and have a look: perhaps she’s attained Enlightenment!’
Bao-yu laughed and went into the inner room. He found Aroma sitting on the couch by the window making knots in a length of grey silk cord. She rose to her feet as he entered.
‘What lies has that wretch Skybright been telling about me? I wanted to get on with this knotting, that’s what I came in here for. I hadn’t got time to fool about with the others, so I pretended that I wanted to take advantage of your being away by sitting here quietly on my own and meditating for a bit. Bodhidharma, indeed! I’ll pinch that girl’s mouth!’
Bao-yu laughed and sat down beside her to watch her knot.
‘The days are so long now, you ought to take a break of some kind. If you don’t fancy playing with the others, why not come with me to see Cousin Lin? Surely it’s much too hot for knotting?’
‘I noticed that you’re still wearing that old black fan-cover we made for you when you went into mourning for Mrs Rong. As long as you were only wearing it once or twice a year, it didn’t seem worth the trouble of replacing it; but now that you have to wear summer mourning every day at the other House, I thought it was high time I made you a new one. As soon as I’ve finished this cord for it, you can take the old one off and put it on. I know you don’t care very much about this sort of thing, but if Her Old Ladyship were to see you wearing the old one when she got back, she’d be sure to blame me for neglecting you. She’d say I was too lazy even to notice what you were wearing.’
Bao-yu smiled.
‘It’s very nice of you to have thought about it. But don’t drive yourself too hard. You don’t want to give yourself a heat stroke.’
At that moment Parfumée came in carrying a cup of water-cooled tea for him on a tray. Because as a little boy he had been delicate, Bao-yu was never given ice-cold tea to drink in summer. To cool his tea they plunged the tea-pot into a basin of water freshly drawn from the well. The water was changed several times until the tea inside the pot, though not chilled, had reached a pleasant freshness. He drank half the contents of the cup while Parfumdé held it to his lips, then turned his head back again to address Aroma.
‘I told Tealeaf when I left that if anyone important turns up at Cousin Zhen’s, he is to let me know immediately; otherwise I shan’t be going back there.’
He got up to go. As he was leaving the house, he called back to Emerald and the others in the outer room:
‘If I’m wanted for anything, you’ll find me at Miss Lin’s.’
On his way there, just as he was about to cross Drenched Blossoms Bridge, he came upon Snowgoose followed by two old women carrying an assortment of caltrops, melons and lotus-roots.
‘What are they for?’ Bao-yu asked her. ‘I know your mistress never eats that sort of thing. Is she expecting Mrs Zhu or someone?’
‘If I tell you, you mustn’t let on when you see her,’ said Snowgoose.
Bao-yu nodded.
‘You can go on ahead and give that stuff to Miss Nightingale,’ Snowgoose said to the two women. ‘If she asks you why I’m not with you, tell her I’m doing something and I’ll be back directly.’
The women made some reply and continued on their way. Snowgoose waited until they were out of earshot.
‘The Mistress has been feeling a bit better this last day or two. But when Miss Tan looked in after lunch today and wanted her to go with her to call on Mrs Lian, she wouldn’t go. She appeared to be thinking about something and had a little cry. Then presently she picked up her writing-brush and did a lot of writing – poetry I think. She told me to send out for some melons and things. While I did that, she said, Nightingale was to clear the qin-table in the inner room, move it into the outside room, and put the dragon incense-burner on it. She said she’d tell us what to do with the melons when I got back. If she’s planning to entertain someone, I don’t see what she wants the incense-burner for – certainly not for burning incense in, because she doesn’t like incense as a rule. She likes to have fresh flowers and fruit and gourds about her but not incense because she doesn’t like the smell of it in her clothes. Anyway, if she does want to burn some, why not in the inner room, where she spends all her time? Unless it’s because the old women have made the outer room a bit smelly and she’s burning it to get rid of the smell. The fact is, I really don’t know. You’ll have to go and find out for yourself.’
While she was speaking, Bao-yu had unconsciously lowered his head.
‘From what Snowgoose says,’ he thought, ‘there must be some other reason for this. She wouldn’t have things put out specially if she were merely entertaining one of the girls. Perhaps today is the anniversary of Aunt Lin’s death. No, just a bit: it can’t be. When it is, Grandma always sends her the stuff for the offering and she’s done that already this year. Perhaps it’s for a seasonal offering. Perhaps she’s been reading the Doctrine of the Mean:
In each season of the year… offer things seasonable.
It’s possible. If I go and see her now, when she is feeling upset, I am sure to want to talk her out of it and shall probably only succeed in causing her to suppress her grief. On the other hand, if I don’t go, then with no one there to stop her, she may simply go on getting more and more upset. Either way will be bad for her. The best thing will be for me to go and see Cousin Feng first, sit with her for a bit, and look in at Cousin Lin’s on my way back. Then, if she is still upset, I shall try to find some means of consoling her. In that way I shall be able to prevent her grief from getting out of hand, though at the same time she will have had a chance of giving it expression, so that there will be no danger of its being unhealthily repressed.’
Having come to this decision, he let Snowgoose go on to the Naiad’s House alone and made his way out of the Garden to Xi-feng’s place. He arrived just as a number of women-servants who had been reporting on household matters were leaving. Xi-feng herself was leaning inside the gateway tal
king to Patience. She smiled at Bao-yu as she saw him come.
‘You’ve come back, then? I’ve just this moment been telling Lin Zhi-xiao’s wife to send someone over to the other place to tell your pages that if you don’t appear to be doing anything they ought to slip in and ask you to come back here for a rest. I was afraid that in this hot weather with so many people milling around there, you might find the sweaty smells a bit too much for you. But you’ve come back anyway, so I needn’t have bothered.’
‘Thank you for the kind thought, though,’ said Bao-yu. ‘I decided to come back here partly because there was nothing there for me to do, but also because I noticed that you haven’t been over there for some days and I wanted to see if you were all right. How are you feeling lately?’
‘Oh, still pretty much the same,’ said Xi-feng. ‘Still up one day and down the next. Now that Grandmother and your mother are away, those senior women are getting quite out of hand, fighting or quarrelling about something or other every day. We’ve even had cases of gambling and thieving recently. Of course, your sister is a great help; but she’s a young unmarried girl and there are certain things she can’t be told about. When they crop up, I have to struggle out of bed and deal with them myself. So I don’t really get a lot of rest. Under the circumstances there’s not much prospect yet of getting better: all I can hope is that I shan’t get any worse!’
‘I know. But you’ve got to look after yourself,’ said Bao-yu. ‘You must try not to worry so much.’
He chatted with her a little longer before going back into the Garden. Arriving at the Naiad’s House, he could see the remains of incense smoke as he entered the courtyard gate. In the outer room there was a wet patch on the flagstones where a libation had been poured, and Nightingale was supervising the removal of the qin-table to the inside room and the replacement of various other objects and bits of furniture. Concluding that the little service (if that is what it had been) must just be over, he went inside. Dai-yu was lying down with her face to the wall. She looked ill and exhausted. At the sound of Nightingale’s ‘Master Bao, Miss’, she raised herself wearily, though with a smiling face, and invited him to sit by her.
‘How have you been these last few days, coz?’ he said. ‘You look a bit calmer than you did, but something seems to have been upsetting you.’
‘I can’t imagine why you should say so,’ said Dai-yu. ‘I am perfectly all right.’
‘How can you expect me to believe that?’ said Bao-yu. ‘The tears are still wet on your face. You should learn to take things a bit easier. It is bad for a person who has so much illness to be constantly indulging in grief. If you end up by undermining your health, I –’
The realization that what he was about to say was probably something that ought not to be said caused the words to stick in his throat. For although, from the fact that he and Dai-yu had grown up together, there existed a most perfect sympathy between them, although there was nothing in the world that either of them wanted more than to live and die in each other’s company, the understanding that this was so was a wordless one which had never been expressed. In the past, because Dai-yu was so sensitive, words had all too often proved a stumbling-block. And now today, when the whole point of his coming here was to comfort her, here he was again, on the point of saying something that would offend her! Finding that he could not go on, a sort of panic gripped him. He feared he was going to make her angry; and yet he so desperately wanted to help her. As he thought about it, the panic gave way to a feeling of helpless sadness and he began to cry.
Dai-yu, sensing that he was about to make one of those extravagant statements that she always found so irritating, had indeed been on the point of getting angry; but when she saw his internal struggle and the tears which followed it, she felt not angry with him but moved, and being herself of a tearful disposition, was soon sitting there in silence and weeping with him for company. To Nightingale, who came in at that moment with some tea, it appeared as if they must have been having a quarrel.
‘Just when Miss Lin is getting along nicely,’ she said to Bao-yu with some asperity, ‘what do you mean by coming along here and upsetting her?’
Bao-yu laughed and wiped his eyes.
‘I’ve done no such thing.’
To cover up his embarrassment, he got up and began pacing about the room. In doing so, he caught sight of a sheet of paper sticking out from underneath Dai-yu’s inkstone. The temptation to reach out and pick it up proved irresistible, and before Dai-yu could get up and snatch it from him, he had put it in the bosom of his gown.
‘Let me read it, Dai!’
‘Whatever you come here about,’ said Dai-yu, ‘you always seem to end up by nosing through my papers.’
Bao-chai came in while she was speaking.
‘What is it you want to read, cousin?’ she asked Bao-yu.
Bao-yu still had no idea what the piece of paper contained, and because he was uncertain what Dai-yu’s feelings would be about his reading it, he hesitated to answer Bao-chai’s question for fear of giving Dai-yu offence. He therefore smiled and said nothing, while all the time his eyes rested on Dai-yu questioningly. Dai-yu smiled at Bao-chai and invited her to be seated.
‘I’ve been looking at some lives of famous women,’ said Dai-yu, ‘all of them women who are famous in history for their beauty or intelligence. There was so much I found moving – heartening and admirable in some cases, tragic and deplorable in others – that after lunch today, having nothing better to do, I decided to make a selection of them and try writing poems about them in which some of those feelings could be expressed. Then Tan-chun came in and asked me to go with her to see Cousin Feng, but I didn’t feel up to it. After doing only five of the poems I had planned, I suddenly felt too tired to go on and left them lying there on the table, little thinking that Master Bao would come along and discover them. I wouldn’t really mind his seeing them if it weren’t for the fear that he might go copying them out and showing them to other people.’
‘When did I ever do such a thing?’ said Bao-yu indignantly. ‘If you’re referring to the White Crab-flower poems on that fan, I wrote them on it myself in small kai-shu characters merely for the convenience of always having them by me when I wanted to look at them. I fully realize that poems written in the privacy of the women’s quarters are not lightly to be passed around outside. Ever since you spoke to me about it, I have been careful not to carry that fan with me anywhere but inside the Garden.’
‘Cousin Lin is right to be worried,’ said Bao-chai. ‘Now that the poems are written on that fan, there is always the possibility that you might one day forget and carry it with you to your room outside. Suppose Uncle’s literary gentlemen were to see it there, they would be sure to ask you who the poems were by. If as a result of that they were to become public property, it would be extremely unpleasant for us. “A stupid woman is a virtuous one”: that is what the old proverb says. A girl’s first concern is to be virtuous, her second is to be industrious. She may write poetry if she likes as a diyersion, but it is an accomplishment she could just as well do without. The last thing girls of good family need is a literary reputation.’ She paused and gave Dai-yu a smile. ‘There would be no harm in letting me see them of course. The important thing is not to allow Cousin Bao to go off with them.’
‘In the light of what you have just been saying,’ said Dai-yu drily, ‘I’m not at all sure that I ought to let you look at them either. Anyway,’ she pointed to Bao-yu, ‘he’s already got them.’
Bao-yu assumed from her tone that he might read them. Extracting the paper from the inside pocket of his gown, he drew up close to Bao-chai so that the two of them could peruse it together. This is what they read.
Xi Shi
That kingdom-quelling beauty dissolved like the flower of foam.
In the foreign palace, Xi Shi, did you yearn for your old home?
Who laughs at your ugly neighbour with her frown-and-simper now,
Still steeping her yarn
at the brook-side, and the hair snow-white on her brow?
*
Yu ji
The very crows are grieving as they caw in the cold night air.
She faces her beaten Tyrant King with a haggard look of despair:
‘Let the others wait for the hangman, to be hacked and quartered and rent;
‘Better the taste of one’s own steel in the decent dark of a tent.’
*
Lady Bright
To a loveliness that dazzled, the palace of Han showed the door;
For ‘the fair are mostly ill-fated’, as has been said often before.
Yet it seems strange that an emperor – even one with such tepid views –
Should abandon his eyes’ own judgement and let a painter choose!
*
Green Pearl
Pebble or pearl – to Shi Chong it was only a rich man’s whim:
Do you really believe your undoubted charms meant so very much to him?
It was fate, from some past life preordained, that made him take his rash stand,
And the craving to have a companion in death’s dark, silent land.
*
Red Duster
She marked the firm, courteous protest, the well-phrased confident plan,
And, under the unsuccessful clerk, saw the essential Man. The great Yang Su in her eyes was finished from that hour: He could not hold a girl like her for all his pomp and power.
*
After praising the poems enthusiastically, Bao-yu suggested that, as there were five of them, a good collective title would be ‘Songs for Five Fair Women’; and without waiting for Dai-yu’s approval, he picked up her writing-brush and wrote it on the left-hand side of the sheet after the poems.