by Cao Xueqin
Maids now came in carrying the basin and other things for his toilet.
‘Thank you all very much for last night’s party,’ said Bao-yu. ‘We’ll have another one tonight and this time you shall all be my guests.’
‘Oh no!’ said Aroma. ‘Not again! If we make another rumpus tonight, people will start complaining.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Bao-yu. ‘It’s only twice. Anyway, we’re all seasoned drinkers. Just think, we got through a whole two-gallon jar of wine last night! Just as it was beginning to get interesting, we found that we’d run out.’
‘That’s how it should be,’ said Aroma. ‘It’s much better to end a party when the fun is at its height than to go on until everyone is exhausted. I must say, everyone was in very good form last night. Skybright was being quite abandoned. She even sang a song, if I remember rightly!’
‘But don’t you remember?’ said Number Four. ‘You sang one too. We all did.’
A fit of uncontrollable giggles possessed the maids as they remembered, and they hid their blushing faces in their hands. While they were still giggling, a smiling Patience arrived. She had come to invite her hosts of the previous day to a return party.
‘No excuses!’ she said.’ I shall expect every one of you to be there.’
They made her sit down and somebody fetched her some tea.
‘What a pity we didn’t have her with us last night!’ Skybright commented.
Patience pricked up her ears.
‘Why, what were you doing last night?’
‘I don’t know whether I ought to tell you,’ said Aroma. ‘We had a high old time, I can tell you that. Even the high jinks Her Old Ladyship gets up to with the young ladies and Master Bao are nothing compared to last night. We got through a whole two-gallon jar of wine. We drank so much that we forgot our shame, singing songs until after two o’clock, then lying around with our clothes on and sleeping where we lay until morning.’
‘Charming!’said Patience with pretended indignation. ‘You come and ask me for wine, you don’t invite me to your party, and now you have the nerve to tell me what a wonderful time you had. I feel really angry!’
‘He’s giving a return party tonight,’ said Skybright. ‘He’s sure to ask you to that. I expect he’ll be going over himself shortly to invite you.’
‘“He” is who? Who is “he”?’ said Patience.
‘Oh, sharp-ears!’ Skybright coloured and pretended to strike her. ‘Trust you to pick on a little thing like that!’
‘Well, I can’t stay here talking, I’ve got something to attend to,’ said Patience. ‘I’ll be sending someone over later to tell you when it’s ready. Mind you all come now, or I’ll have the troops out to come and get you!’
Bao-yu and the maids tried to detain her, but she was already on her way.
Bao-yu now completed his interrupted toilet and took his early morning tea. While he sat sipping it, his eye chanced to light on a sheet of paper underneath the inkstone.
‘I wish you girls wouldn’t use my inkstone as a paperweight,’ he said.
Aroma and Skybright were immediately on the defensive.
‘Oh dear! Who’s at fault this time?’
Bao-yu pointed towards the offending paper.
‘Look. Under the inkstone. Someone’s pattern, I expect, that she forgot to put away.’
Skybright lifted the inkstone and picked up the paper from underneath. It was not an embroidery-pattern but some kind of writing. She handed it to Bao-yu. It was a sheet of pink, patterned letter-paper. A single column of characters ran down the centre of it:
From Adamantina, the Dweller Beyond the Threshold: Respectful Anniversary Greetings.
‘Who took delivery of this note?’ he asked, jumping up excitedly.
Assuming, from the degree of agitation, that the note must be from a person of some consequence, Aroma and Skybright took up the question. In response to their shouted inquiry, a smiling Number Four came running into the room.
‘I did. From Adamantina. She didn’t bring it herself, she sent one of the old women with it. I put it down somewhere in here. I meant to tell you about it, but with all that drinking last night I forgot.’
‘So that’s who it’s from,’ said the other maids. ‘What a fuss about nothing!’
But Bao-yu evidently did not think so.
‘Fetch me some paper,’ he said, still in some agitation, and himself began grinding the ink. But when the ink was ground and he sat with moistened brush poised in readiness over the virgin paper, he found that he did not know how to begin. What was the correct response to ‘Dweller Beyond the Threshold’? For a long time he sat thinking, but no inspiration was forthcoming.
‘It’s no good asking Bao-chai,’ he thought. ‘She’d only say something critical about Adamantina being too “fanciful”. I’d better ask Dai-yu.’
Slipping Adamantina’s note into his sleeve, he set off in the direction of the Naiad’s House. He was just stepping off the Drenched Blossoms bridge when he caught sight of Xing Xiu-yan bustling along in a very purposeful manner from the opposite direction.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked her.
‘I want to have a talk with Adamantina.’
Bao-yu was surprised.
‘Adamantina is such a strange, contrary person. There are very few people she can get on with. If she thinks highly of you, it proves that you must be made of finer stuff than the rest of us.’
‘I don’t know whether she thinks particularly highly of me,’ said Xiu-yan, ‘but we were neighbours for ten years. When she was serving her novitiate at the Coiled Incense Temple, there was only a party wall separating her from the place where my family lived. My family was too poor to own a house and for ten years lived in rented accommodation in her temple. Whenever I had nothing else to do, I used to go inside the nuns’ courtyard and spend my time with Adamantina. It was she who taught me to read and write. In fact, everything I know, practically, I owe to her. So you see, she’s not only my “hard times friend’; she is also in a sense my teacher. When my parents finally came here to throw themselves on the generosity of your family, we learned that Adamantina, too, had found a home here. She had evidently found this a place where her eccentricities would be tolerated and where she would be safe from molestation by those having the power to persecute her. It seemed as if our destinies must be linked. And I was glad to find, when I went to look her up here, that her friendship for me was unaltered. In fact, I think that if anything she is even nicer to me now than she was before.’
As if by a flash of lightning, the mystery of Xiu-yan’s utter alienness from her appalling parents was revealed.
‘I see’! he said. ‘That ethereal, crane-in-the-clouds quality one notices in everything you do or say – I see now where you get it from. As a matter of fact it’s something to do with Adamantina that has brought me out. Something she wrote has been puzzling me and I was on my way to ask someone else’s advice about it when I ran into you. It’s an extraordinary bit of luck that I did, because you are obviously much better qualified to advise me than the person I had been intending to ask.’
He took the piece of paper from his sleeve and showed it to her. Xiu-yan ran her eye over it and laughed.
‘She’ll never change. The same whimsical, preposterous Adamantina as always! Who but Adamantina would use her nom-de-plume in a birthday greeting? Talk about “a monk no monk and a maid no maid”! What sort of etiquette is that?’
‘I don’t agree,’ said Bao-yu, smiling. ‘Adamantina is above etiquette. She doesn’t subscribe to the conventions of our mundane world. Her writing to me in this way shows that she must credit me with some intelligence. Unfortunately I haven’t the faintest idea in what terms I ought to reply. I was on my way to ask Cousin Lin’s advice when I was fortunate enough to bump into you.’
For some moments Xiu-yan ran her eyes up and down Bao-yu appraisingly. Finally she broke into a laugh.
‘“The sight of it exceedeth t
he report thereof.” I see now what they mean. I’m not surprised she sent you this. And I’m not surprised she gave you all that plum-blossom last year. Well, if even Adamantina has succumbed, I suppose I shall have to do my little bit by explaining what this means.
‘Adamantina is fond of saying that out of all the poems by all the poets of the Han, Jin, North-and-South, Tang and Song dynasties, a couple of lines in Fan Cheng-da’s “Walk in the Cemetery” are the only decent verses ever written:
Though you hide behind a threshold of indestructible iron,
The mound shaped like a wheat-cake will claim you for its own.
That’s why she calls herself “The Dweller Beyond the Threshold”. Her favourite prose-writer is Zhuang-zi, so sometimes she calls herself “The Outsider”, after Zhuang-zi’s “outsider… wandering beyond the realm”. The way to please her is to refer to yourself modestly as someone still trapped in the toils of the wicked world while she is floating freely somewhere above them. If she’d called herself “The Outsider” in this note she’s sent you, the right response would have been to call yourself “The Worldling” in your reply. As she’s called herself “The Dweller Beyond the Threshold”, you should refer to yourself in answering as” The Dweller Behind the Threshold”, to indicate that you have understood the reference to Fan Cheng-da.’
The scriptures tell us that the revelation of the Buddhatruth comes ‘like ghee poured upon the head’. Bao-yu must have had some such feeling as he listened to Xiu-yan, for he first of all gave a gasp of discovery and then laughed out loud.
‘I see! That’s why our family temple is called the “Temple of the Iron Threshold” I Thank you very much. Now I can go and write my reply.’
Xiu-yan continued on her way to Green Bower Hermitage and Bao-yu went back to write his note. He wrote:
From Bao-yu, Dweller Behind the Threshold, Devout and Humble Thanks.
He carried the note to the Hermitage himself and posted it through the crack between the double doors.
By the time he got back to Green Delights, Parfumée had just completed her toilet. She had gone back to the elaborate feminine coiffure which she normally favoured, complete with kingfisher-feather hair-ornaments; but Bao-yu said he would prefer to see her permanently got up like a boy. He had her fringe and side-pieces cut off and the remaining short bits shaved away from her forehead round to the back of her neck, so that only the long hair growing from the crown of her head remained.
‘We’ll get you a big fur cap with ear-flaps to wear in the winter,’ he said, ‘and big tiger-boots for your feet, or white socks and thick-soled, stitch-patterned padded shoes, to go with loose-bottomed trousers. And we’d better change your name. “Parfumée” won’t do for a boy. What about “Honey Boy”? We can call you “Honey” for short.’
Parfumée was delighted.
‘Now you’ll be able to take me with you when you go outside,’ she said. ‘If anyone asks about me, you can tell them that I’m one of your pages, like Tealeaf.’
Bao-yu smiled at the idea, but seemed rather doubtful.
‘I think sooner or later they’d be able to tell that you weren’t.’
‘You have no imagination!’ said Parfumée. ‘Tell them I’m a foreign page. Your family’s got several foreign pages.* Anyway a pigtail suits me; everyone says it does. What about it? Don’t you think it’s a brilliant idea?’
Bao-yu was quite won over.
* Stone’s Note to Reader:
Both the Rong and Ning branches of the Jia family did in fact employ a number of foreign captives taken by previous members of the family in their various military campaigns and later graciously bestowed on them as bond-slaves by His Imperial Majesty. They were invariably employed as grooms, being useless for any other kind of work. Parfumée’s transvestism was by no means a novelty in the household. The tomboyish Shi Xiang-yun had long since shown a passion for dressing up in military uniform and was frequently to be seen wearing a cavalryman’s belt and tight-sleeved riding habit. When Bao-yu put Parfumée into boy’s clothing, she was quick to follow suit by dressing her own Althée in a page’s costume. As a ‘painted face’ Althée was already in the habit of shaving off the short hair above her forehead and round her ears to facilitate making-up and had acquired a certain masculinity of movement and gesture from the roles she played, so the transformation was in her case a less drastic one. Li Wan and Tan-chun were so taken with the result that they decided to dress Bao-qin’s Cardamome up as a little page as well. Her hair was done up in two knots like horns, one on each side of her head. Dressed in trousers and a short smock and with a pair of red shoes on her feet she looked – except for the make-up – exactly like the scholar’ page, Lute Boy, in the play. Xiang-yun changed Althée’s name to ‘Valiant’ because she thought it suited her. Cardamome was the youngest, liveliest and most mischievous of the little ex-actresses and the majority of the Garden’s inhabitants had already taken to calling her by less flattering sobriquets long before her transformation into a page. After the transformation had been made, Bao-qin rejected ‘Lute Boy’ as too obvious; and since she liked ‘Cardamome’ and thought it a pretty name, she resolved to retain at any rate the middle part of it by calling the new page ‘Damon’.
Stone
‘It’s a very good idea. I’ve often seen officials with little foreign servants – mostly Tartars or Tibetans captured in the wars. People like to have them as grooms because they are good at handling horses and don’t mind waiting about in the cold. We’ll have to give you a foreign name then. What about “Yelü Hunni”? “Yelü” is an old Kitansurnameand” Hunni” is what the Xiong-nu used to call themselves.’
Parfumée was very satisfied with this, so it was agreed that in future she would always be referred to as Yelü Hunni.
After lunch Patience’s messenger arrived to say that, as the summerhouse in the Peony Garden was thought to be too hot, her return party had been laid out in the Shady Elm rooms. You-shi came over well in advance, bringing two of Cousin Zhen’s little concubines, Lovey and Dove, with her from Ning-guo House. They were very young and wild and had seldom been taken to the neighbouring mansion before. Today, meeting such lively members of the Garden’s society as Caltrop, Xiang-yun, Parfumée and tamine for the first time, they were in their element, quickly proving the truth of the old saying about ‘birds of a feather’ by chattering nineteen to the dozen with their new-found friends and dashing off with them on an exploratory tour of the Garden. You-shi was left to the company of her own maids.
Presently, when they were visiting Green Delights, Caltrop, Lovey and Dove were very much amused to hear Bao-yu addressing Parfumée as ‘Yelü Hunni’. Having elicited from her how she came to have acquired so extraordinary a name, they began to try using it themselves; but in their unpractised mouths the foreign sounds soon degenerated into ‘Yellow Honey’; and even this was soon abandoned in favour of ‘Yellow Belly’. The maids, hearing them call her this, were all in stitches. Bao-yu feared that Parfumée would be wounded by their hilarity and proposed yet another change of name.
‘There is a land in the West called “Fran-see-ya” where they make a kind of golden glitter-glass called “aventurin”. You are such a bright and glittering person yourself: I think the name Aventurin would suit you very well.’
Parfumée was delighted with it. But it was still no good: the others found ‘Aventurin’ too difficult; and having estab lished that it was the name of some kind of foreign glass, soon took to calling her ‘Glassy’ or ‘Glass-eyes’ instead.
But we digress.
The party in the Shady Elm rooms had now begun. Once more wine was made an excuse for much unrestrained hilarity. The blind ballad-singers were asked to drum for them and Patience broke off a spray of peonies to play ‘passing the branch’ with. There must have been near enough twenty people taking part in the game. Just as the fun was at its height, it was announced that two women had arrived delivering things from the Zhen family in Nanking and Tan-chun, L
i Wan and You-shi had to go off to the jobs room to receive them. The others decided to make a little break in the party while they did so, in which those who wanted to could take some exercise outside. Lovey and Dove decided to have a swing.
‘You get up as well,’ Bao-yu said to Lovey, who was pushing. ‘I’ll push you both.’
‘Oh no you don’t!’ said Lovey. ‘I know your kind of pushing! Yellow-belly can push us.’
‘Please,’ said Bao-yu exasperatedly, ‘don’t call her by that horrible name! You’ll have all the others calling her by it as well.’
Dove was giggling helplessly on the swing.
‘Stop it, you two! I can’t work this thing properly if you make me laugh. I shall fall off, if you’re not careful, and knock all the gravy out of you!’
While they were in the midst of their diversions, a group of servants from the Ning-guo mansion came rushing up in a state of great agitation.
‘Sir Jing is dead!’
‘Dead?’ Everyone hearing them was incredulous. ‘But he hadn’t been ill. How can he have died so suddenly?’
‘He spent all his time looking for the secret of immortality.’ said one of the servants. ‘Perhaps he found it and went off to heaven.’
You-shi heard the news with dismay. There would be so much to do, and with Cousin Zhen, Jia Rong and Jia Lian all three away, no dependable male around to help her. The first thing she did, of course, was to remove all her jewellery and the ornaments from her hair. Then, having ordered some of the household to go on ahead and put all the Taoists there under lock and key pending her husband’s return, she got into her carriage and drove with all speed to the Dark Truth Monastery outside the city, accompanied by the Chief Steward Lai Sheng’s wife and several of the senior stewardesses. Meanwhile other servants were dispatched to various members of the faculty requesting their attendance at the monastery.
The physicians duly arrived. As the patient was already dead, there was little scope for their customary methods of diagnosis; but they knew that Sir Jing had gone in for breath-control and various other kinds of Taoist hocus-pocus, some of which, like the worship of the Seven Stars, the keeping of ‘ghostworm’ vigils and the swallowing of mercuric ‘elixirs’, must have gravely weakened his constitution and may well have hastened his death; and when they saw the purple face and cracked and shrivelled lips of the corpse and felt the iron-hard abdomen, they had little difficulty in forming their collective opinion, which their spokesman delivered forthwith to the waiting women: ‘That death was due to edema and corrosion following ingestion by the deceased of some toxic metallic substance in pursuance of his Taoist researches.’