The Warning Voice

by Cao Xueqin

  ‘Oh well, in that case we’ll let her go,’ said Tan-chun smiling. ‘Obedience is the best obeisance, as they say.’

  She went with the others to escort her aunt to the jobs room and personally supervised the arrangement of various pillows and cushions by the junior maids.

  ‘Now,’ she said to these junior maids when Aunt Xue had been comfortably settled, ‘if you will stay here and massage Mrs Xue’s legs for her and fetch her tea or anything when she asks you without making up all sorts of wonderful excuses, I shouldn’t be surprised if later on, when we send some nice things for her to eat, she doesn’t give some of them to you. So mind you don’t go away!’

  The girls all promised that they would stay.

  When they got back, Tan-chun made Bao-qin and Xiu-yan sit at the head of the top table and Patience and Bao-yu at right-angles to them on the left and right ends. She and Faithful sat shoulder to shoulder on the fourth side, facing Bao-qin and Xiu-yan. At the table parallel to the west wall Bao-chai, Dai-yu, Xiang-yun, Ying-chun and Xi-chun sat in order of seniority on the two longer sides and Caltrop and Silver on the shorter sides, one at either end. You-shi and Li Wan sat at the longer sides of the table parallel to the east wall, with Aroma and Sunset to left and right of them on the shorter sides. The fourth table was occupied by the remaining maids, Nightingale, Oriole, Skybright, Periwinkle and Chess, sitting around it in no particular order.

  No sooner were they all seated than Tan-chun rose to her feet again, wine-kettle in hand, intending to drink toasts with each of the four ‘birthday people’; but the birthday four, realizing that if they allowed one of their hosts to do this, a dozen or more would follow, objected strenuously.

  ‘If you are going to start this nonsense,’ said Bao-qin, ‘we shall none of us get settled until evening.’

  The point was taken and Tan-chun sat down again, whereupon the blind ballad-singers, who had tagged along with the others, began tuning their instruments for a birthday ode. This time everyone objected.

  ‘None of us like that old stuff. Why don’t you go to the jobs room and entertain Mrs Xue?’

  While they were about it, they made a selection from the various dishes on the table for the people conducting the blind women to take with them to Aunt Xue.

  ‘Just sitting here making polite conversation is not going to be much fun,’ said Bao-yu when the singers had been disposed of. ‘We ought to play a drinking game.’

  Various suggestions were made, but none met with everyone’s approval.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Dai-yu. ‘Why not write the names of different games down on slips of paper and put it to the draw?’

  ‘Good idea!’ said the others, and sent for an inkstone and writing-brush and some slips of fancy paper.

  To Caltrop, who in addition to writing poetry had lately been learning some calligraphy, the opportunity of exercising her new skill proved irresistible and she jumped up and insisted on doing the writing. After thinking for a bit, the company managed to produce some ten or more names of drinking games which Tan-chun dictated one by one to Caltrop to write down on the slips. The slips were then folded up small, doubled over, and thrown into a jar. Tan-chun asked Patience to draw. She did so with a pair of chopsticks, stirring the slips around with them before fishing one out for her inspection. Tan-chun unrolled it and read it out.

  ‘Cover-ups.’

  ‘Cover-ups?’ said Bao-chai, laughing. ‘Why, that’s the grandfather of them all! They played “cover-ups” in ancient times. Admittedly, we don’t know exactly how they played it then and our modern “cover-ups” is a comparatively recent invention; but it’s still very, very difficult. I should think at least half the people here wouldn’t know how to play it. We’d much better set that one aside and pick something a little less literary that everyone can understand.’

  ‘We can’t set it aside now that it’s been drawn,’ said Tan-chun. ‘I suggest that we draw again, and if it’s the sort of game that everyone can enjoy, those who want to can play that game while the rest of us are playing cover-ups.’

  This time she got Aroma to draw. The name on the slip she picked out was ‘guess-fingers’. Xiang-yun greeted it with approval.

  ‘Now there’s a nice, simple, lively game! There’s a game that suits me down to the ground! None of your stuffy old cover-ups for me! The very thought of it gives me a headache! I’m for guess-fingers!’

  ‘Isn’t it just like her to reduce the entire party to anarchy before we have even begun!’ said Tan-chun. ‘Cousin Chai, you must sconce her for me.’

  Bao-chai forthwith obliged by forcing a whole cupful of wine down Xiang-yun’s throat.

  ‘Now,’ said Tan-chun, herself gulping down a little wine, ‘I’m your M.C. I take it you don’t need me to read the rules out. You just have to do as I tell you. We’ll get someone to fetch dice and a cup and each of us will throw in turn, beginning with Cousin Qin. Anyone who throws the same number as someone else will pair with that person for cover-ups.’

  Bao-qin threw a three. The others on the top table each threw a different number. Caltrop on the second table was the first to throw another three.

  ‘We’d better confine ourselves to objects inside this room, don’t you think?’ Bao-qin suggested. ‘Otherwise the range of possibilities will be too large.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Tan-chun. ‘And whoever hasn’t given the right answer after three guesses must drink a cup of wine as a penalty. You begin.’

  Bao-qin thought for a bit.

  ‘Market.’

  Caltrop, who was new to this game, could see nothing in the room which could combine with ‘market’ to make a quotation; but Xiang-yun, whose eyes had been darting busily around from the moment the clue was announced, happened suddenly to catch sight of the inscription that hung up over the door:

  PEONY GARDEN

  She guessed at once that Bao-qin must be thinking of the passage in the thirteenth book of the Analects where Confucius tells a person who wanted to study horticulture that he would ‘much better go to some old fellow who kept a market garden and learn about it from him’. As Caltrop could still not guess what the ‘market’ indicated and the others were beginning to drum her for an answer, Xiang-yun, who had already thought of a matching quotation from a line in one of Wang Wei’s poems

  Sometimes I to my herb garden repair

  leaned over and whispered to Caltrop to give ‘herb’ as her reply. But Dai-yu had spotted her and was quick to tell the others.

  ‘You’ll have to sconce her again. She’s been telling her how to answer.’

  Xiang-yun was obliged to down another cupful of wine. She was so vexed that she rapped Dai-yu on the knuckles with a chopstick. Caltrop, too had to drink a sconce.

  The next pairing occurred when Bao-chai threw the same number as Tan-chun. Tan-chun’s clue was ‘man’.

  ‘Isn’t that a bit wide?’ said Bao-chai.

  ‘All right,’ said Tan-chun. ‘I’ll give you another clue. That should narrow it down a bit. “Shut”.’

  Bao-chai thought for some moments. There was certainly plenty of chicken-meat on the table. Tan-chun must be referring to ‘cock-man’ from Wang Wei’s

  The red-capped cock-man has proclaimed the dawn

  and ‘cock-shut’ from Luo Yin’s

  At cock-shut still upon my book to pore.

  She therefore countered with ‘niche’, basing herself on a line from the sixty-third poem in the Poetry Classic:

  The cock roosts in his niche.

  The two girls smiled at each other and each took a sip of wine in celebration of a successful turn.

  Xiang-yun, unwilling to wait longer, was already in the midst of a game of guess-fingers with Bao-yu. The two of them were both shouting at the tops of their voices. At the other side of the room You-shi and Faithful were also shouting at each other ‘Five-a, five-a!’ ‘Seven-a, seven-a!’ ‘Eight-a, eight-a!’ from their separate tables, while Patience and Aroma, sitting at adjacent ends o
f the same two tables, made up another pair and contributed to the noise. To the racket made by their shouting was added, in the case of the five female players, the clashing of bracelets every time they gestured. Soon Xiang-yun had beaten Bao-yu and Aroma had beaten Patience. It was agreed that the losers should drink a cup of wine each and do something before and something after drinking it: the question was, what? Xiang-yun had plenty of suggestions for Bao-yu.

  ‘Before drinking you must give a well-known quotation in prose, a well-known quotation in verse, a dominoes threesome, a song-title, and the day’s forecast from an almanac, all five to hang together so that they make continuous sense. After drinking you must give the name of some food you see here on the table which can be used in more than one sense.’

  The others laughed.

  ‘No one but her could think up such a rigmarole,’ they said. ‘Still, it should be interesting.’

  They began urging Bao-yu to start.

  ‘Have a heart!’ said Bao-yu. ‘I need a bit of time to think if I’m to get through that lot.’

  ‘Drink the wine,’ said Dai-yu. ‘I’ll do the rest for you.’

  Bao-yu drank his cup obediently and listened.

  ‘One. “Scudding clouds race the startled mallard across the water”,’ said Dai-yu. ‘Two. “A wild goose passes, lamenting, across the wind-swept sky.” Three. It must be “The wild goose with a broken wing”. Four. So sad a sound makes “The Heart Tormented”. Five. “The cry of the wild goose is heard in the land.”’

  The others laughed:

  ‘It certainly makes good sense!’

  Dai-yu picked up a hazel-nut.

  ‘This cob I take up from the table

  Came from a tree, not from a stable.’

  The other losers, Faithful and Aroma, were let off more lightly, being required to produce only a single well-known saying which had some bearing on birthdays. In the interest of economy their answers are omitted from this narrative.

  A brief interlude of confusion followed while the next round of pairings was being decided. It was resolved that Xiang-yun should play Bao-qin now at guess-fingers and Li Wan, who had just thrown the same number as Xiu-yan, should play Xiu-yan at cover-ups. Li Wan was to begin.

  ‘Gourd,’ said Li Wan.

  ‘Green,’ said Xiu-yan.

  ‘Green’ was evidently correct, since Li Wan appeared to be satisfied and the two young women simultaneously sipped their wine.

  Meanwhile Xiang-yun had lost to Bao-qin at guess-fingers and was asking what she should do for a forfeit.

  ‘You know what Lai Jun-chen said when he showed Zhou Xing the fiery furnace that Zhou Xing himself had designed,’ said Bao-qin:’ “Please step inside!” I think that’s what I should say to you now. Why don’t you do the forfeit that you designed for Bao-yu?’

  The others apart from Xiang-yun appreciated the aptness of the historical allusion. Xiang-yun began answering without delay.

  ‘One. “A swift-rushing swirl and shock”. Two. “The sky rocks and heaves in the river’s swelling waters”. Three. Better have “The lone boat tied with an iron chain”. Four. And since there is a “Storm on the River”. Five. “This will be a bad day for travelling.”’

  By the time she had finished, the rest of the company were all laughing.

  ‘That sounded a bit contrived!’ they said. ‘She must have thought the forfeit up for the express purpose of getting in her joke. – Come on!’ they said to Xiang-yun. ‘Let’s have the second half.’

  From the dish in front of her Xiang-yun picked out a duck’s head with her chopsticks and pointed it at the maids who were sitting round the fourth table at the other end of the room.

  ‘This little duck can’t with those little ducks compare:

  This one is quite bald, but they all have a fine head of hair.’

  There was even more laughter at this, but the maids pretended to take offence and Skybright and Periwinkle came over to her table to protest.

  ‘It’s all very well for Miss Yun to have her joke, but she ought to leave us out of it. You ought to make her drink another sconce now, as a punishment. And while she’s about it, she might give us a nice bottle of hair-oil each by way of compensation.’

  ‘I dare say she would be glad to,’ said Dai-yu drily. ‘The trouble is that if she starts giving bottles of hair-oil away, she will probably find herself on the carpet for stealing them.’

  The remark passed unnoticed, with two exceptions. The exceptions were Bao-yu, who, assuming that it must refer to his supposed theft of the Essence of Roses, held his head down and said nothing, and Sunset, the real thief, whose face turned red with embarrassment. Bao-chai stared at Dai-yu reprovingly, whereupon Dai-yu, who had intended no more than a mild joke at Bao-yu’s expense, realized too late that Sunset must inevitably have construed it as a spiteful reminder of her guilt. She attempted to distract attention from it by applying herself, with somewhat unnatural vigour, to the game of guess-fingers.

  The next pairing to be determined by the dice was that of Bao-chai and Bao-yu. The clue Bao-chai gave Bao-yu for her cover-up was ‘precious’. After puzzling over it for some moments, Bao-yu felt sure that it was a leg-pull. His own name meant ‘Precious Jade’. No doubt the object she had in mind was the jade he always wore round his neck and she was using his own name for her clue. Very well, he would answer her in kind.

  ‘I take it that you are making free with my name,’ he said. ‘I hope that you won’t be offended then if I make just as free with yours. “Bao-chai” means “Precious Hairpin”, so I shall borrow your “hairpin” for my answer. “Jade hairpin” comes in a line by some Tang poet:

  The candle burnt out and the jade hairpin broken.

  It is “jade”, isn’t it, in your cover-up?’

  ‘I protest,’ said Xiang-yun.’ “Precious jade” isn’t a quotation. You’re supposed to use only quotations in this game. We ought to sconce them both.’

  ‘“Precious jade” does come from a quotation,’ said Caltrop.

  ‘Surely not?’ said Xiang-yun. ‘I’m prepared to admit you might find it on a New Year scroll or something of that sort, but not in any work of literature, surely?’

  ‘I came across “precious jade” only the other day in a poem by Cen Shen,’ said Caltrop:

  ‘Since in that land much precious jade is found.

  I’m surprised you don’t remember it. And not long afterwards I came across “precious hairpin” in a poem too – a poem by Li Shang-yin:

  The precious hairpin gathers dust.

  I remember being very much amused at the time to think that Master Bao’s and Miss Bao’s names are both to be found in poems of the Tang dynasty.’

  ‘So much for your objection!’ said the others to Xiang-yun, laughing. ‘It’s you who must drink the sconce.’

  It was useless to argue: Xiang-yun had to drink another cupful.

  The whole company now paired off for guess-fingers. With Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang away, the girls felt free to make as much noise as they liked. Coloured sleeves flashed, bracelets jangled, earrings shook, hair ornaments nodded in time to the shrieked-out numbers. In such a bedlam almost anything would have passed unnoticed; and it was only when they had tired of playing and broken off for a rest that they suddenly became aware that Xiang-yun was no longer with them. At first they assumed that she must have slipped out to answer a call of nature; but when, after they had waited for quite some time, she had still not reappeared, they sent some of the maids out to look for her. The search proved fruitless. Xiang-yun had vanished without a trace.

  At this point Lin Zhi-xiao’s wife arrived, accompanied by several of the old women under her command. She had come partly out of a genuine desire to be useful but much more because she regarded the maids as young and giddy creatures who would take advantage of Lady Wang’s absence to play their young mistresses up by drinking more than was good for them and behaving riotously. Tan-chun was fully aware of this and let her know that she was.r />
  ‘I see you still don’t trust us, Mrs Lin. I assure you, though, that we haven’t been drinking very much. We’re only enjoying ourselves: the wine has been a very small part of it. You really have no cause to be worried.’

  Li Wan and You-shi added their reassurances.

  ‘Go and rest, Lin. We wouldn’t let them drink too much, I promise you.’

  The women laughed.

  ‘I know you wouldn’t,’ said Lin Zhi-xiao’s wife. ‘Even when Her Old Ladyship encourages them to, the young ladies don’t drink very much, so I know they’d be even less inclined to overdo it when Their Ladyships are away. It wasn’t because of that I came; it was just that I thought there might be something you needed me for. Also, as it’s a long way yet to dinner-time and you’ve been at it quite a long while now, I thought it was time you had a bite of something. I know you don’t normally go in much for snacks between meals, but when you’ve been drinking, you really need to get a bit of food inside you so that it does you no harm.’

  ‘You are quite right,’ said Tan-chun. ‘In fact, we were just thinking of having something when you came.’

  She turned to the maids behind her and told them to fetch some light refreshments from the kitchen. There was an answering cry from all sides and a few of them went off to do her bidding.

  Tan-chun smiled courteously at the women.

  ‘Do please go and rest now. Or perhaps you would like to go and keep Mrs Xue company? We’ll send some wine there presently for you to drink.’

  ‘Oh no, miss, we wouldn’t presume!’

  She and the women stood talking a little longer before finally taking themselves off.

  Patience put her hand to her cheek and laughed.

  ‘My face is so hot, it must be terribly red. I wish they hadn’t seen me like this. I think we ought to stop now. If we give them an excuse for coming back again it will be really embarrassing.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Tan-chun. ‘As long as we don’t do any serious drinking, it’s perfectly all right.’