The Red Chamber (56 page)

Now Lian says, smiling at Baochai across the table, “Cousin, we were wondering if we could hire another nanny for the boys. Taking care of them is wearing Autumn out.”

“Of course,” Baochai says. “Should I increase your allowance by two
taels
a month?”

“That should be plenty,” Lian says gratefully.

Autumn cuts in, “Make sure you give it to me, not Lian. Every copper he gets his hands on, he spends on gambling and drinking.”

Lian turns on his wife. “Will you be quiet?”

“Why should I? I’m only telling the truth.”

“Oh, so I’m the only one who gambles? What about you?”

The two of them often engage in this kind of wrangling, undeterred by the presence of others. Baochai is always embarrassed by it, not only because of their evident discord, but also because of the private details
each blurts about the other. Strangely, despite their bickering, they seem a closely united couple. Lian is more affectionate to Autumn than he had been to either Xifeng or Ping’er; and, as far as Baochai knows, he has never mentioned getting another concubine.

Probably in order to change the subject, Jia Zheng turns to Baochai. “Didn’t you say that Tanchun was coming to visit today?”

“No,” Baochai says. “She had planned to, but her daughter isn’t feeling well. She sent a message that she would come tomorrow afternoon.”

“Good. I’ll come back from the Ministry early to see her,” Jia Zheng says, rising to go.

“Tomorrow?” Huan says, rising also. “I’ll try to be back early, too.”

Since Lady Jia’s death two years ago, all the petty rivalries that once divided the household have dissipated, and Tanchun and Huan now treat each other with affection. Perhaps Baoyu’s disappearance also made Tanchun more appreciative of her only remaining brother. Baochai has always been grateful for the fact that Tanchun lives close enough to visit frequently. When the time had come for Uncle Zheng to make a match for Tanchun, he had refused an advantageous offer from a Chang’an official in favor of a more modest proposal from a Capital family. Granny Jia had resisted strenuously, but Baochai had supposed that he did not wish to be parted from his only daughter.

“Is Xichun coming from the Priory too?” Uncle Zheng asks.

“She said that she would come when the Abbess could spare her, but I don’t know when that will be.”

At the mention of Xichun, Baochai sees Lian frown. Xichun had begged for years to be allowed to shave her head and take the vows of a Buddhist nun. Although Uncle Zheng put off making a match for her for nearly seven years, he had consented to her becoming a nun only last year, when Lady Jia was no longer alive to oppose it. Xichun had given away all her possessions and moved out to the Water Moon Priory. To Baochai, she seems quite content, but Lian has never become reconciled to his half sister’s choice.

Uncle Zheng and Huan gather up their papers as they prepare to set off for their Ministries. Huan, in particular, straightens his official’s robes and shuffles his papers with an air of importance. Watching them, Baochai is filled with pride. Two generations of Jias in the Civil Service! she thinks triumphantly. How proud Uncle Zheng must be to attend Court accompanied by his son! No one can say that the Jia family is not thriving now. It occurs to her that if Baoyu had only come back, there
would have been three Jia men in the bureaucracy. The thought makes her feel faintly wistful, but it does not otherwise pain her. Baoyu has been gone so long that he scarcely seems real to her.

While Hushi says good-bye to Huan, Baochai goes to her father-in-law.

“How about your mother? Is Mrs. Xue coming today?” Uncle Zheng asks.

“No, she said that she’d come tomorrow when Tanchun comes,” Baochai answers. This is the greatest source of sadness in her life: that after everything they have been through together, her mother has elected to live with Pan. There is a good reason for her mother’s decision, Baochai knows. For two years Jingui had not become pregnant, and Pan had bought a concubine. Eventually, Jingui gave birth to a daughter, while the concubine had two sons, who were now six and five. Neither Jingui nor the concubine had paid the least attention to the children, and none of the servants were able to keep them from running wild. Finally, Pan asked Mrs. Xue to come to his house to help teach the children properly. Her mother had been reluctant to leave Baochai. Still, it had been obvious that it made sense for her to go to Pan’s. Her grandchildren needed her there, while there was little for her to do at Rongguo. Baochai misses her mother terribly. She comes to visit, often with Pan, once or twice a week, but still, it is not the same as living with her.

She notices a worn spot on Uncle Zheng’s sleeve. “This robe is getting a little shabby. I’d better make you a new one.”

“That’s all right.”

“It’s looking a little overcast. Don’t forget to take your umbrella.”

In the absence of Baoyu, or a child of her own, he is the only one left for her to fuss over.

After breakfast is cleared, Baochai always spends two hours teaching her two elder nephews to read from the
Three-Word Classic
. With one boy on either side of her, she draws her index finger beneath the characters, and reads the endless series of rhyming three-word aphorisms.
“ ‘If you don’t teach, then nature becomes weak. When teaching the way, concentration is key …’ ”
Lian’s son only pretends to listen, playing with the colorful tassel that she uses as a bookmark. Huan’s son is slightly more attentive, and can recognize a few of the more common characters.

Sometimes when she is teaching them, she imagines what it would be like to have her own child at her knee. She had miscarried in the seventh month of her pregnancy. Her son—for she had been able to tell
that it would have been a boy—would have been twelve years old by now. She pictures what he would be like: with Baoyu’s grace and handsome features, and her own steadiness and patience. When she lost the baby, she had felt that her life was over, and that, with neither husband nor child, there was no source of either happiness or hope left to her. But then Granny had had a stroke and needed to be waited on hand and foot. Tanchun had been betrothed, and the details of her trousseau and wedding needed to be arranged. The demands of running the household had dried her tears and forced her out of bed. They had saved her from despair and given purpose to her life.

After the boys’ lessons, she usually has an hour or two to herself before lunch. She makes her way towards the Garden with her sewing basket. Taking the small path that runs around the foot of the mountain, she walks to the lake. Several years after Baoyu’s disappearance, after they had given up hope of his ever returning, Jia Zheng had hired gardeners to clear out the long-neglected Garden. Even though it seemed an extravagance, Baochai was glad. As long as the Garden was overrun by brambles and thistles, she felt cut off from that period of her girlhood, as if it were a path she could no longer take, even in memory. Now, although the old apartment she shared with Daiyu had long ago fallen into disrepair, peach and plum blossoms arch like fluffy clouds over the walk along the shore.

She comes to the nine-angled bridge, and walks out to the pavilion in the middle of the lake. It is a windy day, and she settles herself in a sheltered corner to sew. She is embroidering a pillowcase for her father-in-law. She sews slowly, placing each stitch precisely, enjoying the long, swooping glide of the thread through the fabric. After a few minutes, she is distracted by the sound of laughing and shouting. She puts down her sewing and goes to the railing of the pavilion. Freed from their lessons, the children are standing on the shore near the rose pergola flying kites. There is a scarlet crab, a “beautiful lady,” and a greenish-gold centipede. A butterfly, caught in an updraft, soars high into the air. She is pierced, quite suddenly, with longing for Daiyu.

Epilogue

In the glare of the noon sun a tall monk in ragged robes goes from stall to stall begging for his lunch. Working his way through the crowds of customers, he presents his begging bowl, worn smooth by long use, with his head bowed. Most of the vendors turn him away. One even calls him a lazy good-for-nothing and knocks the bowl out of his hands. He bends and picks it up, his expression unchanged.

One of the vendors gives him half a bowl of rice and a few cubes of scorched tofu. As he throws himself down to eat in the shadow of a wall, he sees two stone lions at the far end of the street. A scurry of memory, like a mouse in the ceiling. He forces himself to look down, wiping his hands on his robe. Without raising his eyes, he blows on his food and uses his fingers to push it into his mouth. For years he has wandered as randomly as a leaf borne on the wind, never knowing the direction he travels, or the names of the cities he passes through.

Nearby, two small boys are playing a game of marbles. Sunlight falls on a round stone, catching a milky gleam. He puts his hand to where the jade used to rest against the base of his throat, and all of a sudden he is back at Rongguo. He remembers waking each morning to the sound of dripping, the neroli-scented oil being dribbled by a maid into the basin in which he would wash his face and hands. He remembers the long still afternoon naps lying beside his mother, the slide of satin against his cheek as he burrowed his face into her back. He is sitting beside Zhu as the tutor drones on about the “Golden Mean,” watching the flies blunder against the gauze windows. From outside he could hear the shrill, piping voices of the Two Springs, and couldn’t stop fidgeting. He would be almost mad with joy when he could finally run outside to join them.

What has become of them, his sister and cousin, with whom he had spent his childhood? Are they married now, with children? And his father—even if Granny must be dead, surely his father is still alive. As for Baochai—she had been pregnant when he left. Perhaps even now he has a son himself. How old would he be, eleven or twelve? His heart begins to beat faster. He could walk down the street to the triple gates.
He wouldn’t identify himself, could simply watch and perhaps ask the lackeys at the gate for news. He rises to his feet.

He does not move, looking down at the boys’ game. The old regret, which he has tried to run away from for twelve years, wrings his heart with its old bitterness. He, who loved Daiyu, had been responsible for her death and suffering. He had destroyed the one person on earth who understood and loved him. It had been that thought which had driven him from home, goading him on through the driving spring rains. Her name had been on his lips when he flung himself down at dusk, so exhausted that, even in those first days, he had been able to sleep soundly on stone doorsteps. In the morning, even before he opened his eyes, he was aware of the weight of sadness crushing his breast. Each day he had dragged that weight farther and farther, until he came to regions where people spoke with accents he could barely understand.

He cannot go back. To go back would be to confront the enormity of his crime, the emptiness of life without her. He picks up his begging bowl and continues on his way.

A gleam of white catches Daiyu’s eye at the jeweler’s stall. She is holding her younger son, Adou, and a basket filled with vegetables hangs from her arm. Still, she can’t help stopping to take a look. There it is, lying in a silk-lined box, Baoyu’s jade, or something very like it. She tells her older daughter, Shushu, to take the baby, and picks the stone up. It lies in her hand, the size and shape of a sparrow’s egg, with the suppressed, milky radiance of a sunlit cloud.

It can’t really be the jade. After all, how could it have made its way all the way down here to Suzhou from the Capital? Still, she does not want to put it down, and stands looking at it far too long, so long that Adou gets restless and starts to whimper. It comes back to her, that terrible year when both her parents died and she went to live at Rongguo with her mother’s relatives. She sees her adolescent self, both awkward and defiant, her nerves so raw that she was offended by trivialities. She was so lonely and needy after the death of her parents that she had fallen a little in love with both her cousins, Baochai as well as Baoyu.

The jeweler breaks in on her reverie. “Forty
taels
,” he says. “Take it or leave it.”

She jumps, and puts the jade down. “No, thank you,” she says. She
takes the baby from her daughter, and they weave their way through the market stalls towards home, but still, her mind is filled with the past. Even though it was so many years ago, her anger at Baoyu has not quite died. Had he really loved her? Had he just been pretending? She asks herself the questions, but they no longer seem urgent. She adjusts the basket on her shoulder, tells Shushu not to stray too far from her in the busy streets.

Their way home takes them near the banks of the Grand Canal. She lets Shushu run ahead. The girl skips along the shore, shouting and laughing, as she points out a snapping turtle or the silver flash of a fish. The water glints lazily in the sunlight, so powerful beneath its deceptively silken surface. She can never pass the canal without thinking how it had saved her life. That final week in Flowers Street, two weeks after Baochai’s visit, she had become so ill that she hadn’t been able to keep food or water down for three days.