The Red Chamber (30 page)

Xifeng moves around the newly emptied space of her apartments, deciding what to do with the now unoccupied rooms. She opens the wardrobe in Ping’er and Lian’s old bedroom; it is empty. If there were anything left, she would throw it out into the middle of the courtyard, where the two of them could see it from their new rooms on the other side. She decides to use this room for the baby and wet nurse. She goes back to the wardrobe in her own bedroom. Inside it, besides her own clothes, are the baby clothes and diapers she has had made, not as elaborate as the ones Ping’er has sewn, but solidly stitched from the best materials nevertheless.

When she had realized that she, as the principal wife, was entitled to take charge of Ping’er’s baby, she nearly laughed out loud. Here was the way to punish Lian and Ping’er for the way they have treated her: when the baby is born, she will take it from Ping’er’s arms and bring it back
here. Humming a little, she carries the piles of baby clothes to the wardrobe in the other bedroom. Then she goes to the linen chest and selects the softest bedding she can find.

Hearing a sound in the front room, she hurries out and finds a roughly dressed young woman with rosy cheeks.

“Mrs. Lian?” the young woman says in a singsongy Shandongese accent. “They told me you were looking for a wet nurse.”

“What’s your name?”

The girl gives a jerky bow. “They call me Zhang’s wife. I’m married to Zhang He, over in the stables.”

“Don’t you have a name of your own?”

“When I was a child, my family called me ‘Number Five.’ ”

“I can’t call you ‘Number Five.’ ” In some lower-class families, girls are held so cheap that the parents do not even bother to name them, simply addressing them by their birth order. “We’ll have to think of something else.”

“Just as you please.”

“How many children do you have?”

“A little boy, six months old.”

“How will you nurse another child?”

Zhang’s wife smiles and jerks a thumb at her plump bosom, straining against the coarse blue cotton of her shirt. “I’ve got plenty for two.”

“Are you in good health?”

“Strong as an ox. I was scrubbing the floors three days after I gave birth.”

“Do you ever drink?”

“So help me, never.”

“Gamble?”

Zhang’s wife laughs as if Xifeng has cracked a very funny joke, revealing a mouthful of uneven teeth. “What do I have to gamble with?”

“That’s your own concern, as long as you don’t get into bad company. You’ll live here, with me and the baby. I’ll pay you three
taels
a month. You’ll get your meals here, too. You’ll be responsible for the child: feeding it, changing it, bathing it, sleeping with it at night.”

Zhang’s wife nods. Xifeng can tell that she is pleased by the amount of the salary.

“You can bring your own son here with you, as long as he behaves himself.”

Zhang’s wife smiles broadly now, bowing again. “There’s just one thing.”

“What is it?”

“Er—when exactly is the baby due?”

“In about two weeks.”

Xifeng notices the woman eyeing her own flat stomach, but all she says is, “Yes, ma’am.”

After the wet nurse is gone, Xifeng sits down in her bedroom with a brush and paper to calculate the interest on her latest loans. Someone is always wanting to borrow money, and when she has finished she realizes that when she is repaid she will have nearly seven thousand
taels
at her disposal. It is not much compared to what Lady Jia probably has, yet it is a significant sum, enough to make her feel a little safe.

Hearing another sound from the front room, she hurriedly folds the paper up and goes out to see who it is. Yucun is standing there inside the door curtain. In the last week of daily battles with Lian, she had almost forgotten about him.

“What are you doing here?”

He looks surprised. “You were supposed to meet me in the storerooms four days ago, but you didn’t show up. I came to see what was wrong.”

“Something is wrong,” she tells him. “Lian is back.”

“Yes, I know. I saw him yesterday, but—”

“You knew he was back and you still have the nerve to come here looking for me? Are you crazy? He could walk in here any minute!”

“Then meet me at the storerooms.”

“It’s too dangerous.”

He steps closer to her. “Or we can find someplace to meet outside the mansion. Say you want to burn incense at the temple.”

She shakes her head. With Lian’s return, her sense of the impossibility and danger of being with Yucun has come rushing back to her. How could she have allowed herself to be caught up in such a foolish dream for the past months? When she realized how easily she might have been caught if Lian had come looking for her, she had come to her senses. As much as she may dream about escaping from it, her life, her future, is contained within the confines of this mansion. Unhappy as she may be, what would be left for her if she were discovered? She would be sent back to her family in Chang’an, dishonored and despised, to be a hanger-on, like Daiyu, with no standing or security in the household. No, she cannot throw away the position she has consolidated over the years by some foolish misstep.

She pushes him towards the door. “You have to leave.”

“No, we have to talk.”

“Don’t you understand? Lian is back. I can’t see you anymore.”

“So you were just looking for some amusement while he was away—” he says bitterly.

His expression pains her, and she allows herself to be drawn into a discussion instead of sending him away immediately as she had intended. “What more do you want from me? You’ve slept with me. Isn’t that enough? Why don’t you go away and leave me alone?”

He takes her roughly by the hands. “Is that what you think I wanted from you? If that’s all I wanted, do you think I would have come sneaking in here at all hours, risking my career—”

She jerks her hands away. “And what do you think I’m risking? Don’t you know what will happen to me if anyone finds out?”

He is silent for a moment. Then he says, “Lian will divorce you, and I will marry you.”

She stares at him. The way he says it, quite calmly, not as a rhetorical flourish, but as a simple fact, strikes her silent. “You couldn’t marry me. I would be disgraced, a fallen woman.”

“Why not? I don’t have a family to care what I do.”

“But what about your career? You need to make a good marriage so that you will have influential in-laws, a patron—”

“I don’t care about that. I’ve made it this far without a patron—”

“Yes, but you’ll be able to go still farther if you have one. One day it will make all the difference in your career—”

He grips her by the shoulders. “You keep on talking about me, but what about you? Would you be willing to marry me?”

She wrenches herself away, angry that they have spent so much time discussing something so ridiculous. “Why are we talking about this? It’s impossible! How can you ask me to—”

She catches a faint sound outside the door and instinctively springs away from him.

Baochai enters, saying, “I’m sorry to bother you, but Granny wants to know what you did with the tribute satin that Her Highness gave us—” She breaks off, her eyes widening in shock at the sight of Yucun, even though he and Xifeng are by now several feet apart. She quickly backs out of the apartment.

Seized by panic, Xifeng runs after her, calling, “No, Baochai, wait!” She rushes out the door, but Baochai is already hurrying out of the courtyard. She goes back inside and vents her anger on Yucun. “Now see what you’ve done! What if she tells someone?”

“What does it matter? We have to talk, decide what to do. Don’t you see we may not have many chances to see each other again?”

At his words it sinks in for the first time that this may be the last time she sees him. For an instant she remembers the wild sweetness she had felt in his arms, but she thrusts the memory away. “Go away and don’t come back,” she cries, fear giving violence to her words.

3

Daiyu suddenly feels that her robes are wet. She raises herself up on her elbows to look around, and discovers that she is lying on a raft in an endless, surging ocean. The raft is of thin boards, stitched together with string and vines. The waves are lapping over it and seeping through the cracks. She wants to tighten the string and vines, yet she fears that undoing any of them would simply cause the raft to disintegrate. She scans the four directions for help. There is nothing, just miles of empty, restless sea. She kneels and looks over the edge, glimpsing the limitless depths beneath her. She is overtaken by a strange dizziness, almost vertigo, as if she is perched not on a raft but on the top story of a pagoda. She squats down and clings to the edge of the raft with her eyes shut, feeling the uneasy heaving as she tries to stop herself from being sick.

She wakes up, blinking, from the nightmare. She had slept badly the night before, and slipped into a heavy slumber when she lay down after lunch. The familiar dream had come to her again, leaving her dull and dispirited. She gazes around the empty room, tempted to spend the afternoon in bed. Then she recalls Snowgoose’s injunctions that she take better care of herself: faithful Snowgoose, who comes over before Granny wakes to make sure that Daiyu gets out of bed. Sighing, she puts on her shoes.

She decides to visit Baochai, and begins to walk along the shore of the lake towards Mrs. Xue’s apartments. Baochai has visited her only once since her return to Rongguo, and she continues to be baffled by Baochai’s coldness. Doesn’t Baochai understand how lonely Daiyu is at Rongguo? Why doesn’t she show any sympathy for Daiyu’s loss? Could she have inadvertently offended Baochai?

She hears someone calling, and looks up to see a punt in the middle of the lake, Baoyu poling it from the stern, Huan seated in the bow. Her spirits rise at the sight of the half brothers together. She hardly sees Baoyu these days. He is busy until ten o’clock every night working with a “crammer” to prepare for the Exams. Sometimes he slips into her bedroom to see her afterwards, as he had on her first night back, but he stays
for only a few minutes. She clambers down the bank to the water’s edge. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

“The schoolmaster wasn’t feeling well. He let us out early, so we thought we’d take out one of the boats,” Huan says, as Baoyu pilots the boat in her direction. “We wanted to ask you to come, but were afraid that you were still napping.”

“I was. I just woke up,” she calls back, smiling. She has come to like Huan since her return to Rongguo. He has been kind to her, asking about her father’s illness and death, saying how sorry he was. He has grown taller, almost as tall as Baoyu, and no longer teases his cousins. She has heard Tanchun say that he was making good progress in his studies.

“My turn,” Huan says.

“All right.” Baoyu passes him the pole, and squats down to change positions. The boat rocks wildly and nearly tips as Huan scrambles to the back of the boat.

“Do you think you should come so near the shore?” Daiyu calls. “You might scrape the bottom.”

“We’re coming to get you,” Baoyu says, as Huan thrusts the boat nearer.

“Me? Do you think it can hold three people?”

“It’s supposed to hold four.”

“I’m not sure I trust you not to tip me over.”

“Don’t worry. Huan here is a good boatman. Besides, the lake isn’t supposed to be very deep.”

“That’s comforting.”

The punt is only a few feet away now. Baoyu holds out his arm to help her aboard. She hesitates, then puts her hand out to take his. His strong grip pulls her towards him and in an instant she is standing in his arms on the bobbing boat.

“Sit down before we tip over!” Baoyu says.

Laughing, she crouches down in the bow as Baoyu sits down beside her.

“Where do you want to go?” Huan asks from behind them.

She gazes around, at the pavilion perched over the rippling waters, the lotuses in bloom, and the snowy froth of the waterfall as it bursts out of the mountain. For the first time since returning to Rongguo, she is overcome not by the bitterness of missing home, but by a sense of wonder and beauty.

4

“Who wants to sit rattling around in a carriage the whole day?” Xifeng cries gaily. “We’ll have a better time here at home! Why don’t we have a picnic of our own, in the pavilion in the Garden?” As Xifeng orders the servants to prepare a picnic lunch, Baochai looks at her, wondering what other secrets she hides beneath her gleaming eyes and smiling lips.

It is the Grave Sweeping Festival, when families must visit the graves of their ancestors and offer sacrifices. Granny Jia, Mrs. Xue, and all the men in the family, from Uncle Zheng down to Jia Huan, have driven out to the Jia family burial grounds in the suburbs of the Capital. Baochai, Daiyu, and the Two Springs are staying behind, because Lady Jia disapproves of unmarried girls going on excursions outside the mansion. Ping’er, too, is staying at Rongguo, as her pregnancy is too far advanced for her to sit jolting in a wagon for two and a half hours. Xifeng was to have gone with the rest, only, at the last minute, as the carriages were setting out, she changed her mind, telling Granny, with a roguish wink, that she would stay home and look after the girls.