The Red Chamber (44 page)

He pauses, and then goes on a little bashfully, not looking at her. “I’d like to get married and have children one day. You know what they say: a thousand meetings, a thousand partings, they are all predestined by the gods. For example, I would never have imagined that I would ever meet someone like you.”

Something catches in her throat, and she begins to cough before she can answer him. It is a bad fit, and he has to pass her the spittoon and give her a drink of tea before it passes.

“I shouldn’t have tired you out by talking so much,” he says. “You’d better rest.”

She gratefully lets him help her back into a lying position. A deep exhaustion wafts over her, and she feels herself drifting into sleep. The next time she wakes, she hears Snowgoose’s voice. She wants to call to her, but her limbs feel so heavy that she can hardly move. She is lying there, trying to gather the strength to speak to Snowgoose, when she realizes that Snowgoose and Shiyin are talking about her.

“How much has she eaten the last few days?” Snowgoose asks.

“Almost nothing. She’s had only a few sips of soup.”

“Has she gone to the bathroom?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Has she gotten out of bed at all?”

“No.”

“What did the doctor say?”

Shiyin’s reply is almost inaudible. “He said that it would be soon.”

She hears Snowgoose sobbing and wants to comfort her. But somehow, she cannot seem to even turn her head. She feels a funny tingling in her fingertips and toes. For a long time, there is no sound except for Snowgoose’s sobbing.

Then she hears Snowgoose say, “I think we should order the coffin and start to make the burial clothes.”

“No!” She hears the vehemence in Shiyin’s voice.

“If we wait too long, we may not have anything ready …” Snowgoose sobs again. “And besides, I’ve often heard that it turns the luck.”

“I’ve heard of that saying, too, but I don’t want to.”

How strange, she thinks, to overhear such a conversation about oneself: to hear one’s funeral arrangements discussed in one’s presence as if one were already dead. She remembers how her mother had lain silently the whole afternoon before she died; maybe she had actually known everything that was going on around her, had felt Daiyu holding her hand. She wants to call out to Snowgoose and Shiyin teasingly, to tell them that she’s not in such bad shape, that it’s not so desperate. But a strange heaviness is overcoming her, and she feels herself sinking under its weight, as if slipping off a shallow ledge into deeper waters.

8

“If we are to have a proper funeral for Qiaojie, we must borrow some money,” Xifeng breaks the dull silence of the apartment. Qiaojie had died two nights ago. Although the family—especially Ping’er—has been prostrated by grief, it is time to see to the practical arrangements.

Only Granny responds. “Borrow money? Why should we?” she says from her corner of the
kang
.

Xifeng looks at her in surprise. She had not expected any resistance on this point. “I’m not sure we have enough money for a proper funeral—”

“What happened to the rest of the jewelry that we had?”

“I had to spend quite a lot of it on rent and food and coal, and then I had to pawn my watch and those hairpins last week to pay for Qiaojie’s medicine and doctor’s bills—”

“What exactly did you spend?” Beneath Granny’s accusatory tone, Xifeng thinks she hears a note of panic.

“I spent twenty
taels
on the rent for the fall and winter. Then we spend about two
taels
a week for food, and about one
tael
a week for coal and candles, and other little things. We had to buy some fabric and needles and thread to make winter clothes. That was about fifteen
taels—
”

“Didn’t you keep proper accounts?” Granny interrupts.

“I didn’t want to waste money buying paper,” Xifeng says, trying to keep her patience. “Besides, I can remember everything. That comes to about seventy-five
taels
or so. We’d already spent five
taels
on that first doctor. But then I had to spend twenty-five
taels
last week for Qiaojie’s medicine and Dr. Wang, and another thirty
taels
for his coming to the house that night.” Xifeng dislikes going through these details, but she forces herself to be as clear as possible, so that Granny will not be able to accuse her of dishonesty or mismanagement. “There was also the bird’s nests, and the food we bought to try to get Qiaojie to eat.”

“You should have managed better,” Lady Jia says. “It was your job to make a budget. You can’t just spend and spend and spend, and expect everything to come out all right!”

“I know, but these were unforeseen circumstances. We could hardly
have just sat by doing nothing, watching her …” She trails off, feeling the tears rising in her throat.

“I don’t say you should have done nothing,” says Granny Jia, with the air of one making a concession. “But you could have done less. I said so at the time, but no one listened to me. Why did you have to get the best doctor in the city? And then you went and sent for him in the middle of the night!”

Xifeng looks down to hide her anger. One of the only things that has given her any comfort over the last two days is that she and Ping’er had done everything possible to save Qiaojie. “It’s difficult to know in hindsight what we should or shouldn’t have done,” she says, trying to be conciliatory. “What we must think about now is how to arrange the funeral and burial. We need at least seventy-five
taels
.”

“Seventy-five
taels
! Whatever for?”

“Even the simplest coffin is twenty-five
taels
. And we must make her burial clothes, and arrange to take her to the Temple of the Iron Threshold to keep vigil over her. We must hire a few nuns to chant sutras, and then we’ll need a carriage to take her out to the family burial grounds—”

“The Temple of the Iron Threshold! What are you thinking of? You act as if we were back at Rongguo, and had all the money in the world! We can keep vigil for her right here. As for nuns chanting sutras—that’s hardly necessary, is it? She’s a newborn infant. What sins could she possibly have to expiate?”

“Well, even if we keep vigil here, we will still need at least sixty
taels
for the burial clothes and coffin—”

“Surely we can dispense with burial clothes, for such a young child! You should be able to manage it with forty
taels
.”

“Forty
taels
!” Xifeng remembers that she had given fifty
taels
to Silver’s mother to bury Silver, a common servant. She had hoped to comfort Ping’er by arranging as dignified a funeral as they could manage under the circumstances. She does not care much for pomp and ritual, but recoils at the idea that Qiaojie will be dumped into a hole without the proper ceremonies to mourn her. She controls herself. “Well, even if it is forty
taels
, we’ll have to pawn the coral earrings. After that, we’ll have only a bracelet and a hairpin left. That won’t last us more than a few months.” Once she has borrowed the money, she tells herself, she will be able to divert more of it to Qiaojie’s funeral.

“Are you telling me we have enough money for only a few more months?” The note of panic in Lady Jia’s voice, once submerged, comes
to the surface. “What were you thinking when you spent all that money on doctors’ bills? You should have asked me first. And it was all a waste. Qiaojie would have died anyway.”

The thought that it had all been futile, that they might have spared Qiaojie all the suffering and discomfort of the medical treatments, hurts her. If they had known she was destined to die, they would have spent more of her last weeks just holding her and playing with her. “Let’s not talk about it. What’s done is done.” Her voice shakes.

“That’s easy for you to say, after you’ve gotten us into this fix.”

“I’ve done the calculations and thought it over again and again. I can’t think of anything to do but borrow the money.”

“You think it’s so easy to borrow money? Who were you proposing to borrow from?”

Xifeng answers slowly, “Well, I had thought of asking Cousin Rong.” In fact, she has intended to ask Mrs. Xue to borrow money from Jingui, but does not want to put Mrs. Xue on the spot by making the request before all the others.

“Cousin Rong! He barely has enough money to keep body and soul together himself.”

“Well, then, I’ll ask Cousin Yun.”

“Didn’t you ask him to petition for an appeal on our behalf, but he refused to see you?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then why would you think you could borrow from him? There isn’t anyone—”

“Actually,” Xifeng is forced to admit, “I was thinking of asking Mrs. Xue if she might ask her daughter-in-law for a loan for us.” She looks at Mrs. Xue and catches on her face an unmistakable expression of dismay.

“Why, yes, I would be happy to ask Jingui, but …” Mrs. Xue trails off.

Xifeng understands that relations between Mrs. Xue and Pan’s wife are so strained that even in this extremity, she does not feel confident of her ability to get a loan.

Baochai speaks up, flushing, “When Pan comes back from the south, he’ll be happy to lend you anything you need. Only we’re not quite sure when he’ll be back …”

“No, that isn’t right,” Lady Jia intervenes suddenly. “We shouldn’t ask our kinsmen to loan us money when we haven’t done everything possible ourselves.”

“What do you mean we haven’t done everything possible?” Xifeng says. “What else can we do?”

“The solution’s obvious, isn’t it?” Lady Jia smiles as if pleased by her own cleverness. “We can sell Ping’er, of course.”

Xifeng recoils. How cruel to think of selling Ping’er at a time like this! “Impossible! She’s Lian’s wife!” She wants to dissuade Lady Jia before Ping’er, who is in the bedroom with Qiaojie’s body, overhears anything to frighten her.

“She’s only a concubine. Concubines are often resold. Lian certainly has no use for her now.”

“What will he say when he gets back?”

“He’ll have no right to complain. What does he expect us to live on while he’s in prison?”

Xifeng tries another tack. “It’s hardly worth the trouble to sell her. A good maid goes for only forty
taels
at most.”

“Why sell her as a maid, when we’d get so much more for her as a concubine or even a principal wife? She’s still young and pretty. I don’t see why we wouldn’t get two hundred
taels
for her.”

Even though she knows it is unwise to criticize Lady Jia directly, she cannot help saying, “Don’t you think it’s cruel to ask her to serve a new husband after she has just lost her child?” She wishes she had cut out her tongue before mentioning the idea of borrowing money. She would by far rather forgo Qiaojie’s funeral than lose Ping’er.

“How is it cruel? Her job is to serve us. Now the best way for her to serve us is to go to another master. Besides, she is one extra mouth to feed, and she barely lifts a finger around here. How can we ask the Xues to borrow money when we have a lazy servant eating us out of our house and home?”

“She ate more before because she was nursing Qiaojie, and she served us by taking care of your great-granddaughter.” It hurts her the way Lady Jia acts as if Qiaojie were hardly part of the family. How differently she would have behaved if Qiaojie had been a boy. “Now that Qiaojie is gone, she will help out more with the cooking and cleaning.”

“We don’t need her for that anymore. Besides, she is moping around so much that I doubt we’ll get much work out of her.”

Xifeng is about to retort when, to her surprise, Baochai says, “You can’t expect her not to grieve for a while, but she will get back to work eventually.”

It is the first time that Baochai has ever come close to contradicting Lady Jia. Xifeng looks at her with real gratitude. If only Baochai and the other girls side with her, she will be able to save Ping’er.

Lady Jia pauses, gazing at Baochai, as if giving her words a weight that
she no longer gives Xifeng’s. “I think you are forgetting how painful it must be for Ping’er to live here, being reminded of her loss. It will be much better for her to go somewhere new. Perhaps she’ll even have a new baby soon, and that will help her forget.”

Xifeng cannot speak. She is too disgusted by how Lady Jia feigns concern for Ping’er to support her own selfish ends. She remembers how Lady Jia had forced her to accept Lian and Ping’er’s marriage, in the hopes that Ping’er would give the family an heir. That was barely over a year ago, although it seems another lifetime. Now that Lady Jia has been disappointed in her hope, she is ready to discard Ping’er. Xifeng’s old awe of Lady Jia is gone, replaced by something akin to contempt. Perhaps she would have been more tolerant of Lady Jia if she had made some adjustment to the family’s fall—but she still expects to be waited on hand and foot, eating her fill of the best food without noticing whether there is enough for the others.

Yet now Xifeng humbles herself, willing to do anything to save Ping’er. She falls to her knees. “Please don’t sell her. She has served me since I was a little girl.”

Lady Jia looks away, her face like stone. “Don’t bother pleading. My mind is made up.”

9

Over four weeks have passed since Baochai’s visit to Daiyu. More than once she has told herself that she must make an effort to see her cousin again, but too many events have intervened. There had been Qiaojie’s death, then New Year’s. They had still been keeping vigil for Qiaojie, and no one had had the heart to arrange even the simplest celebration. After that had been the funeral and burial. Then came weeks of bitterly cold weather when it was hardly possible to venture outside. The last few days there has been a slight thaw. Still Baochai has found herself making excuses not to go, afraid of what she will find.

At last she tells herself she must go. She has brought Daiyu to this. The least she can do is comfort her if she is still alive, or weep beside her coffin if it is too late. On the fifth day of mild weather, she bundles herself up for her walk to the southern part of the Capital. As she cuts south through the city she thinks about how Ping’er has been debilitated by grief since Qiaojie’s death. She has stopped eating, and spends the whole day sitting listlessly on the
kang
in the bedroom. Sometimes at night, Baochai is woken by the sound of her weeping. By contrast, although Qiaojie’s death had clearly been a devastating blow to Xifeng as well, Xifeng was still struggling to live. When Xifeng wasn’t comforting Ping’er, she was trying to argue Lady Jia into keeping the maid. Many days she disappeared for hours, trying to borrow money from relatives or old friends, Baochai suspects. Baochai pities Ping’er, but is unwilling to ask Jingui for money to keep her. In the first place, Jingui would refuse. On top of that, practically speaking, selling Ping’er is the best solution to the Jias’ financial problems. Finally, some calculating and pragmatic voice inside her, which she does not entirely like, tells her that the sale of Ping’er, while a loss to Xifeng, is a gain to herself. With the gentle and more tactful Ping’er as her delegate among the servants, Xifeng had enjoyed far greater power and popularity than she might otherwise have. If the Jias ever regain their position, Baochai will be able to establish her precedence over the household more easily with Ping’er gone.