The Golden Days

by Cao Xueqin

In the inner room Bao-yu took up a book and reclined on the kang to read. For a considerable while he remained engrossed in his reading. When eventually he did look up, intending to ask someone for some tea, he saw two little maids waiting there in silence, one of whom – evidently the older by a year or two – was an attractive, intelligent-looking girl. He addressed himself to her:

  ‘Isn’t your name “Nella” something or other?’

  ‘Citronella.’

  ‘Citronella? Who on earth gave you that name?’

  ‘Aroma, sir. My real name is “Soldandla” , but Miss Aroma altered it to “Citronella” .’

  ‘I don’t know why she didn’t call you “Citric Acid” and have done with it,’ said Bao-yu. ‘Citronella! – How many girls are there in your family, Citronella?’

  ‘Four,’ said Citronella.

  ‘And which of the four are you?’

  ‘I’m the youngest.’

  ‘Right!’ said Bao-yu. ‘In future you will be called “Number Four”. We’re not going to have any more of these floral fragrances around here. It’s an insult to decent scents and flowers to give their names to you lot!’

  Then he asked her to pour him some tea.

  Listening attentively in the outer room, ‘Flowers’ Aroma and her Musky ally – for whose ears this gibe was intended -were nearly bursting themselves in their efforts not to laugh.

  All that day Bao-yu stayed in his own room, seeing no one. It was gloomy on his own, with nothing but reading and a little writing for amusement, but he refused to make use of any of his usual attendants and would have only “Number Four” to wait on him. Though he did not realize it, she was a designing little minx and endeavoured by every artifice at her command to get her hooks into him while she had the chance.

  After dinner Bao-yu came back flushed and slightly tipsy, having taken a few cups of wine with his meal. Normally this would have been the occasion for an evening of hilarity with Aroma and the rest, but today he would have to sit by his lamp alone in cheerless isolation. The prospect was a depressing one. Yet if he were to go running after her, it would seem too much like a capitulation, and her nagging would thenceforth become insufferable. On the other hand, to frighten her into some sort of compliance by asserting his mastery over her would be heartless. There was nothing else for it: he would just have to grin and bear it.

  ‘Suppose they were all dead,’ he said to himself. ‘I should have to make do on my own somehow or other!’

  The thought was strangely comforting. He was able to stop worrying. He even began to feel quite cheerful. Having instructed Number Four to trim up the lamp and brew him a pot of tea, he settled down to a volume of Zbuang-zi. Presently he came to the following passage in the chapter called ‘Rifling Trunks’:

  Away then with saints and wise men, and the big thieves will cease from despoiling. Discard your jades, destroy your pearls, and the little thieves will cease from pilfering. Burn your tallies, smash your seals, and the common people will revert to their natural integrity. Break all the bushels and snap all the steelyards, and they will have no further grounds for dispute. Obliterate those ‘sacred laws’ by which the world is governed, and you will find yourself at last able to reason with them. If you confuse the pitch-pipes, break up the organs, unstring the zithers and stop up Shi Kuang’s ears, people will begin to make proper use of their own hearing. If you abolish all intricacy of design and brilliancy of colouring and glue up Li Zhu’s eyes, people will begin to make proper use of their own eyesight. And if you destroy your arcs and lines, throw away your compasses and set-squares and break the fingers of Chui the Cunning, people will begin to make proper use of their own skill…

  The words wonderfully suited his present mood. He read no further. Impulsively picking up a writing-brush, and with the inspiration lent him by his tipsiness, he added the following lines in the margin:

  Away then with Musk and Aroma, and the female tongue will cease from nagging. Discard Bao-chai’s heavenly beauty, destroy Dai-yu’s divine intelligence, utterly abolish all tender feelings, and the female heart will cease from envy. If the female tongue ceases from nagging there will be no further fear of quarrels and estrangements; if Bao-chai’s heavenly beauty is discarded there will be no further grounds for tender admiration; and if Dai-yu’s divine intelligence is destroyed there will be no further cause for romantic imaginings. These Bao-chais, Dai-yus, Aromas and Musks spread their nets and dig their pits, and all the world are bewitched and ensnared by them.

  Having written these lines, he threw down the brush and went straight to bed.

  He was asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow and remained dead to the world throughout the whole of that night. Waking with the first light next morning, he sat up in bed to find Aroma lying fully clothed beside him outside the covers. He roused her with a gentle shake, all yesterday’s unpleasantness now quite forgotten:

  ‘Go to bed properly! You’ll get cold, sleeping like that!’

  Aroma had not, on the day previous to this, openly criticized Bao-yu for disporting himself at all hours of the day and night with his girl cousins because she knew from experience that criticism was powerless to change him. To alert him to the error of his ways she had instead adopted a more passive approach. She had confidently expected this new method to produce a speedy repentance, followed by a swift return to normal relations; so that when, contrary to her expectation, a whole day went by without his having manifested the looked-for change of heart, she was left with no further resources, and as a consequence had been too worried to sleep properly for the greater part of that night.

  But now here he was addressing her normally once more. He must have undergone a change of heart during the night. She forced herself to ignore him still, in order to drive the lesson home.

  Meeting with no response, Bao-yu reached out his hand to help her get undressed; but he had got no further than undoing the first button when she pushed his hand away and did it up again. He was at a loss to know what to do with her. With a gentle smile he took her by the hand:

  ‘Now – what’s the matter?’

  He had to repeat the question several times. She fixed her eyes on him angrily:

  ‘Nothing’s the matter. But now you’re awake, hadn’t you better hurry over to the other place to get washed ? If you delay much longer, you might not be in time.’

  ‘What other place?’ said Bao-yu.

  Aroma smiled coldly.

  ‘Why ask me ? How should I know ? Go wherever you like for your toilet! Let’s make a clean break from now on, you and I, and perhaps we’ll have a bit less of all this bickering and making ourselves ridiculous in front of the others. I mean to say, even if you get tired of going there, you’ve always got your Number Fours and Number Fives back here to wait on you.

  But as for the rest of us: even our names are “an insult to decent scents and flower?”!’

  Bao-yu laughed:

  ‘Do you still remember that?’

  ‘I’ll remember that if I live to be a hundred!’ said Aroma. ‘I’m not like you: treating everything I say like so much wind and forgetting in the morning what you said yourself the night before!’

  There was something about her pretty face suffused with anger that Bao-yu found infinitely touching. He snatched up a jade hairpin that was lying beside the pillow and snapped it in two.

  ‘So be it with me if I ever fail to listen to you again!’ he said.

  ‘What a way to carry on at this hour of the morning!’ said Aroma, hurriedly picking up the pieces. ‘Whether you listen to me or not is up to you. There’s no need to get into such a state about it!’

  ‘You don’t know how worried you make me,’ said Bao-yu.

  ‘So you feel worried, do you?’ said Aroma smiling. ‘Now perhaps you’ll have some idea what I feel like most of the time! – Come on, let’s get washed!’

  With that the two of them got up and began their toilet.

  Later, after Bao-yu had gone off to t
he front apartment, Dai-yu looked in unexpectedly, and not finding Bao-yu in, began idly turning over the books that were lying on his desk. Chancing to light on the volume of Zhuang-zi that he had been reading the night before, her eye was drawn to the lines he had written in the margin. They both vexed and amused her, and she could not resist picking up a writing-brush and adding the following quatrain on the remaining blank space:

  What wretch would here, with scurrile pen,

  The text of Zhnang-zi plagiarize,

  And, heedless of his own great faults,

  Fright others with his wicked lies ?

  That done, she went to the front apartment to see Grand-mother Jia, and from there on to Lady Wang’s.

  ∗

  She found everyone at Lady Wang’s in a great to-do. Xi-feng’s baby daughter was ill. The doctor had been called and had just finished taking her pulses.

  ‘Convey my congratulations to Her Ladyship and Mrs Lian’ – the doctor’s diagnosis was couched in the strange language which custom decrees in such cases – ‘I am happy to inform them that the little girl’s sickness is the smallpox!’

  Lady Wang and Xi-feng at once sent back to inquire whether the child was in any danger. The doctor made the following reply:

  ‘Variola is, of course, a dangerous disease, but provided there are no complications, most cases of it are recuperable. Let the ladies lay in a plentiful supply of sanguis caudae, or pig’s tail blood, and plenty of essence of mulberry-worm. Applied externally these will ensure a satisfactory development of the pustules.’

  Xi-feng immediately became very busy. A room had to be swept out and prepared for the worship of the Smallpox Goddess. Orders had to be given to the servants to avoid the use of all fried and sautéed cookery. Patience had to be told to move Jia Lian’s clothes and bedding to a room outside -for sexual abstinence, too, was enjoined on the parents of the sufferer. A length of dark-red cloth had to be procured and made up into a dress for the child by the combined labours of the nurses, maids and female relations most closely associated with it. Finally, a ritually purified room had to be made ready for the two doctors who would take it in turns to examine the little patient and make up her medicines, and who would not be permitted to return to their own homes until the customary period of twelve days had elapsed. These arrangements having been completed, Jia Lian went off to the outer study which was from now on to be his bedroom, while Xi-feng and Patience joined Lady Wang in the daily worship and propitiation of the Smallpox Goddess.

  Jia Lian was the sort of man who will begin getting up to mischief the moment he takes leave of his wife. After only a couple of nights sleeping on his own he began to find abstinence extremely irksome and was reduced to slaking his fires on the more presentable of his pages. But other relief was at hand.

  Among the domestic staff at the Rong-guo mansion was a certain drunken, dilapidated cook, by surname Duo, who, because of his weakness of character and general uselessness, had acquired the nickname of ‘Droopy Duo’. Two years previous to this date Droopy’s father had provided him with a wife. She was now just turned twenty, a fine, good-looking young wanton, always eager to throw herself at whatever partners opportunity might place in her way. Droopy Duo raised no objection to her infidelities. As long as he had meat to eat and wine to drink and money in his pocket he saw no reason to concern himself about anything else. Consequently there was scarcely an able-bodied male in the Ning-guo and Rong-guo mansions who had not at one time or another sampled her wares. Because of her pneumatic charms and omnivorous promiscuity this voluptuous young limmer was referred to by all and sundry as ‘the Mattress’.

  Jia Lian, now separated from the wife of his bosom and fairly frying with unsatisfied desires, had for some time past been aware of the Mattress’s charms; but though his mouth had long watered to enjoy them, what with fear of his jealous young wife on the one hand and fear of his fancy boys on the other, he had so far found no opportunity of approaching her.

  The Mattress, too, had for some time past had her eye on Jia Lian, and it was a source of regret to her that he had so far proved unapproachable. Learning that he had now moved to his study outside, she managed to find excuses for passing by that way three or four times in a day, provoking Jia Lian to a pitch of frantic eagerness only to be compared with that of a starving rat confronted by some food. He was obliged to seek the advice of his pages and to promise them rich rewards if they could procure her for his pleasure. The pages were ready enough to oblige – the more so as they were themselves old customers of hers – and the request for an assignation was no sooner made than granted.

  At about ten o’clock that night, when all were abed and Droopy Duo lay collapsed on the kang in drunken slumbers, Jia Lian slipped noiselessly into the room for his pre-arranged meeting with the Mattress. The mere sight of her proved so potent a stimulant that without wasting any time on tender preliminaries, he took down his trousers and set to work at once.

  Now this wife of Duo’s had a physical peculiarity which was that as soon as the man’s body came into contact with her own she felt a delicious melting sensation invading her limbs, rendering her body soft and yielding to that of her partner, so that he had the impression of lying on a heap of down; and in addition to this natural endowment she knew more tricks of posture and more ways of exciting a man with murmured lewdnesses and amorous cries than a professional prostitute.

  As Jia Lian lay on top of her, wishing he could melt into her body from sheer excess of pleasure, she began to exercise this last accomplishment.

  ‘Your little girl’s got the smallpox,’ she murmured. ‘While they’re worshipping the Goddess, you are supposed to keep yourself pure. Naughty man! You’re making yourself unclean because of me. You must leave me! Go away!’

  Jia Lian’s movements became more violent.

  ‘You are my only goddess!’ he said, panting heavily. ‘I care for no other goddess but you!’

  At this the Mattress began to grow even more reckless in her incitements and Jia Lian to reveal the more disgusting of his sexual accomplishments.

  They lay a long time together when it was over, exchanging oaths and promises, unable to break apart. From that day onwards there was a secret understanding between them.

  A day arrived when the smallpox poison had spent itself and Baby’s pustules showed signs of drying up. After the twelfth day the Smallpox Goddess was ceremoniously ushered off the premises, the entire family joined in a service of thanksgiving to Heaven and the ancestors, and there was much burning of incense in discharge of vows made on the child’s behalf by various of its members, and much exchanging of congratulations and paying out of rewards. When all this was over, Jia Lian returned once more to the matrimonial couch. ‘A night after absence is better than a wedding night’ as the proverb crudely puts it, and certainly the affection shown that night by Jia Lian for his lady was of more than usual intensity.

  Early next morning, when Xi-feng had gone off to Grandmother Jia’s, Patience began putting away the clothes and bedding that had been brought in from the outer study. To her surprise she felt something strange in the cover of Jia Lian’s head-rest, and after groping inside it, fished out a black, silky tress of woman’s hair. Quick to understand its significance, she hid it in her sleeve and going across to the other room, showed it to Jia Lian and asked him what it was.

  As soon as he saw the hair, Jia Lian rushed forward to snatch it from her. She darted away, but he seized hold of her, and forcing her on to the kang, attempted to wrest it from her grasp.

  ‘Mean thing!’ said Patience. ‘After I’ve gone to the trouble of asking you about it behind her back, you have to start being rough!’

  Just at that moment they heard Xi-feng coming. Jia Lian didn’t know whether to let go of Patience or make a final effort to obtain the hair. Finally, with a muttered entreaty, he released her:

  ‘Angel! Don’t let her know!’

  Patience managed to get up just as Xi-feng was entering.


  ‘Quick!’ said Xi-feng. ‘Open up the chest and find that pattern for Her Ladyship!’

  ‘Yes madam,’ said Patience.

  While Patience was looking for the pattern, Xi-feng caught sight of Jia Lian and suddenly thought of something else.

  ‘Have we got the things back from the outer study yet?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Patience.

  ‘Was there anything missing?’

  ‘No,’ said Patience. ‘I went through them very carefully, but there was nothing missing.’

  ‘Was there anything there that shouldn’t have been?’

  Patience laughed.

  ‘Isn’t it enough that there was nothing missing? Why should there be anything extra?’

  Xi-feng laughed, too.

  ‘He was nearly a fortnight outside. I wouldn’t bank on his having kept himself clean all that time. There might have been something left behind by one of his little friends: a ring or a sash or something.’

  Jia Lian turned pale with fright. He grimaced piteously at Patience from behind Xi-feng’s back, and drawing a finger across his throat, silently entreated her to keep her discovery hidden.

  Patience affected not to notice him.

  ‘It’s funny you should say that, Mrs Lian. Exactly the same thought occurred to me; but though I went through his things very carefully, I didn’t find anything suspicious. If you don’t believe me, you can have a look yourself.’

  ‘Silly girl!’ said Xi-feng. ‘Do you imagine that if there were really anything there he would let us look?’

  And taking the pattern from her she went out again.

  Patience pointed a finger at her own nose and wagged her head from side to side.

  ‘How are you going to thank me for that?’

  ‘You’re a sweet little darling!’

  He beamed delightedly and lunged forward to embrace her. Patience dangled the hair in front of him:

  ‘You’ll have to watch your step from now on,’ she said. ‘Now I’ve got something to keep you in order with. If you misbehave…!’