The Warning Voice

by Cao Xueqin

  ‘“Lai” is the surname,’ he said. ‘Put “Brightie Lai was principal agent of the accused.” You can say that everything Mr Lian did he was put up to doing by me.’

  What Brightie was now proposing seemed to Zhang Hua much less risky than what he had suggested previously, and after some preliminary discussion about the exact form that the indictment should take, he wrote it out and went along with it next morning to the Court of Censors to ‘cry injury’ on the steps outside. An usher came out to relieve him of it and take it inside to their lordships, and in due course the court came into session and the presiding Censor found himself reading a bill of indictment in which a certain ‘Brightie Lai, servant of the above’ appeared as chief accomplice of the accused. Under the circumstances it seemed most expedient to have ‘Brightie Lai, servant of the above’ summoned before the court.

  Somewhat overawed by the prospect of making an arrest in Rong-guo House, the blackcoats sent one of their number ahead of them with a message; but Brightie, who was expecting the summons, intercepted the messenger and was outside in the street waiting for them when they arrived. He stepped forward and offered himself to them with a disarming smile.

  ‘I’m afraid you have been troubled on my account, gentlemen, for I think I must be the person you have come for. Here you are: slip your chain on!’

  He stretched his neck out in readiness; but the blackcoats declined.

  ‘That’s all right, brother. You just come along quietly. Nobody’s going to put any chains on you!’

  When Brightie arrived in the court he knelt down facing the tribunal, side by side with Zhang Hua but at a little distance away from him. The Censor ordered him to be shown the indictment, and Brightie, although he had virtually dictated it himself, affected to study it very carefully. When he had finished doing so, he handed it back again and kotowed.

  ‘I know all about this, my lord. It’s true what it says there about my master, but it wasn’t really anything to do with me. Zhang Hua has only dragged me into it because he has a personal grudge against me. The person who put my master up to all this was someone else. Your Lordship ought to ask him about this other person.’

  It was Zhang Hua’s turn now to kotow.

  ‘There is another person involved, my lord, but I didn’t dare to accuse him, so I put one of the servants’ names instead.’

  Brightie pretended to be indignant.

  ‘Tell his lordship who it is, you fool! This is a court of law we are in and one of the Emperor’s judges you are speaking to. You’ve got to tell him the name of the person, no matter who it is.’

  Zhang Hua admitted that Jia Rong was the person in question, whereupon the Censor, very much against his inclination, had to issue a summons for Jia Rong.

  Xi-feng had secretly sent her page Cheerful to the court to see if the case was going forward. When he came back to her with this news, she hastily sent for a member of her father’s household called Wang Xin, explained to him what had been happening, and told him to see the Censor on her behalf. He was to persuade the Censor to give Jia Rong a good scare, but not to proceed to any damaging judgement against him. She also gave him three hundred taels with which to strengthen his persuasion.

  That night Wang Xin saw the Censor in his private chambers and obligingly supplied him with a little ‘background information’ to the case. The Censor had a pretty good idea of what was expected of him. He took the proffered bribe without demur and agreed that at the next hearing it would almost certainly be discovered that Zhang Hua was a thoroughly worthless character who had brought these trumped-up charges against the Jias because he owed them money and could not pay it back.

  Wang Xin also obtained a brief interview with the President of the Court of Censors at his private residence. The President was an old friend of Xi-feng’s uncle, Wang Zi-teng. He had observed that the defendants in this case were all members of the Jia family and was most anxious that it should be disposed of as expeditiously and with as little fuss as possible. He had made no recommendation for special action against the defendants as holders of commissions under the Crown, but merely confirmed what the Censor of the day had already decided: that Jia Rong should be summoned and should be required to answer the indictment.

  By this time Xi-feng’s discovery and Er-jie’s removal into Prospect Garden were already known about in Ning-guo House, and Jia Rong and his father were anxiously discussing this latest development in Jia Lian’s affairs when someone arrived to give warning of the impending summons and urge them to think quickly what they would do. Jia Rong, who had gone into the front part of the mansion to receive the messenger, came rushing back in a panic to tell his father.

  ‘The man has an infernal nerve!’ said Cousin Zhen. ‘I thought I’d taken sufficient precautions against anything like this happening.’

  He sealed two hundred taels up in a packet and sent it as a sweetener to the Censor. At the same time he ordered one of his senior domestics to go and answer the summons. He and Jia Rong were still discussing this new crisis when a cry went up that ‘Mrs Lian of Rong-guo House’ had arrived. This was a most unpleasant surprise. Father and son both attempted to make a getaway, but Xi-feng was already inside the courtyard before they could disappear.

  ‘Ah, the head of the family!’ she called after the elder of the two retreating backs. ‘You’ve been putting your cousin up to some nice tricks lately, haven’t you?’

  Jia Rong, as a junior, was obliged to go back and greet her. She seized him by the hand and marched on, with him in tow, towards the interior of the mansion.

  ‘Take good care of your aunt, Rong,’ Cousin Zhen called out after them. ‘Tell them to slaughter some fresh meat for her dinner.’

  He called for his horse and went off to hide himself elsewhere.

  Xi-feng walked through into the main sitting-room inside. You-shi came out of the inner room to greet her.

  ‘What is it, Feng?’ she asked, observing Xi-feng’s ugly expression. ‘Something has upset you.’

  Xi-feng spat in her face.

  ‘Nobody else wanted that precious sister of yours, so you had to foist her onto our family. Anyone would think all the other men in the world had died and only our Jia ones were left! But even if you’d set your heart on marrying her to a Jia, at least you might have done it properly, with go-betweens and witnesses and everything open and above-board. At least we should all have known where we were then and been able to keep up some sort of appearances. I can’t think what could have come over you. Was it some phlegm that got into your heart? Was it rouge you’d swallowed, clogging up your thinking-tubes? Just what was it that made you think you could marry her to him at a time like that – a time when he was in double mourning: state mourning and family mourning? Now, thanks to you, we’ve got someone suing us: so even the people in the law-courts know what a jealous shrew I am and I have to sit by as helpless as a crab with no legs while total strangers discuss my character and wonder why my husband doesn’t divorce me. What have I done wrong since I came to this place that you should want to treat me like this? Is it something that Grandma or Aunt Wang said that has made you set this trap for me, to get me out of the way? Let’s go to court together, the two of us, and state our cases; and after that, let’s come back here and ask for a family council so that we can have it all out into the open, face to face. You can give me a bill of divorce then if you want to, and I shall go back to my own people.’

  She began to cry noisily, tugging at You-shi’s arm and insisting that she should go with her to court. Jia Rong, in a desperate attempt to dissuade her, threw himself down on his knees and knocked his head repeatedly on the floor, entreating his aunt to ‘control her rage’. Xi-feng let go of You-shi and rounded savagely on Jia Rong.

  ‘Black-hearted villain! May God’s lightning strike you and the devils tear your carcase! You’re as stupid as mud, and yet you are forever meddling and interfering in what doesn’t concern you, forever busybodying away at your dirty, scoundrelly li
ttle plots that in the end will ruin your family and destroy the lot of us. Nobody wants you – even the ghosts won’t want you when you die, your own mother’s ghost or the ghosts of your ancestors. Don’t you dare tell me what I ought to do!’

  And she began beating him. Jia Rong redoubled the frequency of his kotows.

  ‘Please, auntie, please! Don’t give way to anger. Don’t think only of what has just happened: try to remember the good things as well as the bad. I may be very wicked, but surely in a thousand days there must have been one day when I was good! I know you have every reason to be angry with me, but there is no need for you to punish me yourself. I will gladly do it for you if it will help you to overcome your anger.’

  He spread his arms out to left and right of him and began to deal himself hefty slaps upon both cheeks, prefacing each blow with an interrogation, thus:

  ‘Are you going to go on doing these stupid, meddlesome things in future?’ (slap!)

  ‘Are you going to go on listening to Uncle instead of doing what Auntie tells you?’ (slap!)

  ‘How can you bear to be so cruel and unnatural to Auntie, when Auntie has always been so good and kind to you?’ (slap!)

  The others felt like telling him to stop playing the fool. They also felt like laughing, but did not dare to. Xi-feng threw herself upon You-shi’s bosom, weeping and wailing in a fine display of histrionic grief.

  ‘I don’t mind your finding him another wife, but why was it necessary to make him break the law? Why did you let him do it without his father knowing? And why did you have to destroy my reputation while you were about it? You and I must go to the court together before the blackcoats come here and arrest us. After that we can go next door and have it all out in front of Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang and all the rest of the clan. If it’s found that I am an undutiful wife who refuses to let her husband take a concubine, you can give me a bill of divorce and I shall leave without a murmur. As a matter of fact I have invited your sister here myself. I haven’t dared tell Grandmother and Lady Wang about her yet because I was afraid they would be angry. At the moment she is living in the Garden, like a princess, with nothing but the best to eat and servants to wait on her hand and foot every minute of the day. Meanwhile I’ve been getting an apartment ready for her at home which will be exactly the same as my own. I’d been meaning to move her in there as soon as Grandmother had been told about her. I was prepared to live in peace and harmony with her and Lian and to let bygones be bygones. But now it turns out that all the time she was betrothed to somebody else! What a mess you’ve made of things! Of course, I knew nothing about this before. When they told me yesterday that I was being sued, I was panic-stricken. I knew that even if I appeared in court to answer the charge myself, it was the Jia family that would be disgraced. So I’m afraid I took five hundred taels of Lady Wang’s money without telling her, to bribe the Censor with. And even after that, he still has my servant there in custody.’

  All this was spoken not as continuous discourse but punctuated by fits of weeping. In her final outburst the weeping turned almost into a scream as she began invoking her parents and her ancestors and threatening to hang or drown herself or batter her brains out against a wall. You-shi, whom all this time she had not let go of, was so mauled and crumpled that she was beginning to take on some of the aspects of a piece of well-kneaded dough and various parts of her clothing had become damp and discoloured with the moisture from Xi-feng’s eyes and nose. As there was nothing much she could say in answer to Xi-feng, she shouted at Jia Rong instead.

  ‘Stupid little fool! A fine mess you and your father have made of things between you! I said at the time that no good would come of this.’

  Xi-feng took You-shi’s head in both her hands and, drawing her face close to her own, pretended to inspect the inside of her mouth.

  ‘Who’s stupid? There isn’t an aubergine in here. I see no sign of a gag. Why couldn’t you have come and told me? If you had told me about it at the time, none of this would ever have happened. But no, you have to wait until it has got into the law-courts and the whole household is in an uproar, and now you start blaming them! There’s a very old saying: “A good lining gives a garment strength and a husband with a good wife has few calamities.” If you’d been a good wife to Zhen, he and the others would never have got up to this mischief. You haven’t the wit to do anything useful; and as for saying – for all the good sense that ever comes out of your mouth you might as well be a bottle! You seem to think that you have only got to sit tight and do nothing and people will praise you for your virtue!’

  She spat two or three times in quick succession.

  ‘I did try,’ said You-shi tearfully. ‘The others here will tell you, if you don’t believe me. I tried very hard to dissuade them. It’s not my fault that they wouldn’t listen. What was I supposed to do? But I don’t blame you for being angry. It’s just one more thing that I shall have to bear.’

  All the Ning-guo concubines, maids and womenservants were by now silently entreating for their mistress, so that the room seemed suddenly to have filled with row upon row of kneeling figures. The most senior of the servants now smilingly addressed Xi-feng on her mistress’s behalf.

  ‘You’re generally such a wise, understanding person, Mrs Lian: even though our mistress is at fault, you ought not to be too hard on her – leastways, not in front of us servants. You and our mistress have always been such good friends. Leave her a bit of face now, please!’

  She handed her a cup of tea, but Xi-feng dashed it to the floor. After a bit she did, however, stop crying and rolled up her hair, which had come undone. But the tone in which she addressed Jia Rong was still an angry one.

  ‘Go and fetch your father. There’s something I want to ask him to his face. I want to ask him about this new rule which says that a man may marry when he is in mourning, barely thirty-five days after his uncle’s death. It’s something I’ve never heard of before. I should like him to tell me about it so that I shall be able to teach it to the younger generation.’

  Jia Rong kotowed and remained upon his knees.

  ‘This business had nothing to do with either of my parents,’ he said. ‘I was the one who put Uncle up to it. I don’t know what came over me; I must have been out of my mind. My father knows nothing about it. If you insist on having it out with him, he will undoubtedly kill me. I’d rather you punished me yourself – in fact, I should welcome it. As for the lawsuit, I’m quite incapable of handling a big thing like that myself. One “hides a broken arm inside one’s sleeve”: surely you, of all people, know that, Auntie? You’ve got a very silly nephew, I’m afraid, and he has done a very silly thing. There’s nothing for it, you will just have to deal with the matter for us, as you would if your cat or your dog had done something naughty and you had to clear up after it. Imagine you had a good-for-nothing son like me who had got himself into terrible trouble: wouldn’t you still go on caring for him, in spite of all the suffering he had caused you?’

  He concluded by kotowing again and looked as if he might go on doing so indefinitely. His pathetic abjectness soon melted Xi-feng; but she could not change her tune too abruptly when there were so many pairs of eyes watching her. She did not answer him, therefore, but merely raised him up with a sigh and, wiping her eyes, addressed herself once more to You-shi.

  ‘You must forgive me, kinswoman. It’s because I am so young and inexperienced. When I heard that there was someone suing us, I simply lost my head. That’s why I have been behaving so badly. As Rong says, “One hides a broken arm inside one’s sleeve”: I must ask you to forget all those nasty things I was saying just now and have a word with Zhen on my behalf to see if he can’t get this lawsuit settled out of court.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Of course.’

  In their eagerness to reassure her, You-shi and Jia Rong answered her simultaneously.

  ‘Whatever happens, Auntie,’ said Jia Rong, ‘I promise you that Uncle Lian won’t be involved. You men
tioned just now that you had already had to spend five hundred taels on this case. Mother and I will certainly find some way of making that good. We can’t possibly allow you to be out of pocket because of this. That would be unthinkable. We must ask one thing of you, though. Do, please, cover up for us at the other house. Please don’t let Grandma and Lady Wang get to know about this!’

  Xi-feng answered him scornfully.

  ‘You were willing enough to go over my head when you planned this thing in the first place. Now that it’s gone wrong and you need someone to cover up for you, you’ve decided that you need me after all. I may be stupid, but I’m not that stupid!’ Again she ignored him and addressed herself to Youshi. ‘Your Cousin Lian is my husband, don’t forget. You all say that you acted as you did out of your concern that he should have an heir. Well, don’t you think I share in that concern myself? I look on your sister as if she were my own. I was so happy when I first heard about her and Lian that I couldn’t sleep all night. I wanted the servants to start decorating a room for her immediately, so that I could have her to come and live with us. But you know what servants are. They told me I was too hasty and that I ought to tell Grandmother and Lady Wang first. I certainly wasn’t going to take that advice, and I threatened them with all sorts of pains and penalties if they said anything about it to anyone themselves. Unfortunately my threatening was of no avail. Just as I thought I’d succeeded in hushing the matter up, the very worst thing happened: a person called Zhang Hua suddenly popped up out of nowhere and brought a lawsuit against us. I was so scared that for two nights I didn’t sleep a wink. I didn’t dare tell anyone else about it. All I could do was to get the servants to try to find out who this Zhang Hua was and what it was that had made him so bold. After two days investigating they came back and told me. It seems that he is a thoroughly worthless character – a down-and-out. “Mrs Er is this man’s betrothed,” they said. “At the present moment he is so hard up that sooner than the of hunger and cold, he is prepared to do almost anything. This lawsuit is simply a last desperate attempt to make some money. He reckons that even if he dies in the attempt it will be a better death than starving. Anyway,” they said, “you can hardly blame him for trying. The master really has been a bit hasty: marrying during a period of national mourning is one offence; marrying in a period of family mourning is another; marrying without parental consent is a third; and marrying bigamously is a fourth. They say that the man sentenced to death by a thousand cuts will dare to pull the Emperor off his horse. A man like this Zhang Hua who is crazed by poverty will do anything. With such good arguments in his favour, he’d be a fool not to sue!” Well now, I ask you! Even if I’d been a forensic genius, which I’m not, hearing them say that would have been enough to shut me up. What could I do? Lian was away. There was no one at hand to advise me. All I could think of was to try and buy him off. But the trouble is, the more you give to people like that, the more they twist the knife in you and think up more and more pretexts for getting money out of you. And I am like a boil on a mouse’s tail: there’s a limit to what can be squeezed out of me. It was because I was feeling so desperate that I –’