The Warning Voice

by Cao Xueqin

  ‘Who pays any attention to what those beggarly swindlers tell you?’ she said. ‘It’s all rubbish anyway. How can I have any influence on her? I have nothing to do with her.

  The water in the well

  And the water in the sea:

  I’ve naught to do with you

  Or you to do with me.

  Precious little darling! She saw plenty of all sorts when she was living outside. She didn’t suffer from any influences then, why should she start suffering from them now, I wonder? Anyway, there’s something I’d like to ask her. I’d like to ask her where she got that child from. She may fool that cotton-eared master of ours. As long as she gave him a child, it would be all one to him whether it was a Zhang or a Wang. But do you really care about that whore’s brat, Mrs Lian? I’m damned if I do! What’s so special about having a baby? Give me a year or ten months and I’ll have one myself – and it won’t have half the city for its father, either!’

  The servants hearing her were at some pains not to laugh.

  It happened that Lady Xing had come over that day to pay her respects to Grandmother Jia. Autumn took the opportunity of complaining to her.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Lian are trying to drive me out of here. I don’t know which way to turn. Put in a good word for me, Your Ladyship, I beg of you!’

  This led Lady Xing to give Xi-feng a severe telling-off, after which she proceeded to give a piece of her mind to Jia Lian.

  ‘Ungrateful wretch! Whatever the girl’s like, she was given to you by Sir She. Fancy trying to turn her out for the sake of an outsider! Have you no respect for your father at all?’

  She walked off in a huff, giving him no opportunity to explain. Autumn, now thoroughly cock-a-hoop, stood outside Er-jie’s window and favoured the world at large with an expanded and even more abusive version of what she had said earlier to Xi-feng. Er-jie, lying inside, heard every word of it, as she was meant to, and was deeply distressed.

  That night, when Jia Lian and Autumn were in bed together and Xi-feng was asleep in her own room, Patience went to see Er-jie and tried to comfort her.

  ‘You must try to get well,’ she said. ‘Don’t take any notice of that animal.’

  Er-jie clutched her hand. She was crying weakly as she replied.

  ‘Sister, you have been so good to me, ever since I came to this place. I don’t know how much unpleasantness you haven’t had to put up with on my account. If I come out of this alive, I promise I shall do my best to repay your kindness. I fear I shan’t, though. I shall have to try and repay you in another life.’

  Patience could not help crying too.

  ‘All these things that have happened to you – it’s all my fault. I was so stupid. I always told myself that I’d never deceive my mistress, and so when I heard about you and Mr Lian living together outside, I thought I had to tell her. I never thought it would all turn out like this.’

  ‘You’re wrong to blame yourself,’ said Er-jie. ‘She would have found out sooner or later, even if you hadn’t told her. It was only a question of time. And anyway, I wanted to come here. I wanted so much to be respectable. It really had nothing to do with you.’

  The two young women wept a while in silence. Once more Patience tried to comfort her and urged her to get better; then, because it was long past midnight, she left her to go and get some sleep.

  After Patience had gone, Er-jie lay thinking.

  ‘This illness seems to have got its grip on me. I’m losing rather than gaining all the time. It doesn’t look as if I shall ever get better. And now that I’ve lost the baby, there’s nothing much left for me to live for. I don’t have to put up with all this hatred and malice. Why don’t I just die and get it over with? They say you can die by swallowing gold. It would be a better way of dying than hanging oneself or cutting one’s throat.’

  She struggled out of bed, opened one of her boxes, and hunted out a nugget of raw gold. Then she wept a little. It was four o’clock in the morning. Summoning up all the will-power she could muster, she forced herself to swallow it. She had to hold her head back and swallow many times before it would go down; but in the end it did. Then she dressed herself hurriedly in her best clothes, put on her jewellery and ornaments, laid herself down upon the kang, and sank at once into unconsciousness.

  Hearing no call from her next morning, the maids – Xi-feng and Autumn having gone off to Grandmother Jia’s place for their morning duty – were only too pleased to get on with their toilets undisturbed. Patience was disgusted by their callousness and reproached them bitterly.

  ‘What you girls need is a really hard-hearted mistress – one who would curse you and beat you every day. There’s a sick woman in there: can’t you feel any sympathy for her at all? Even though she’s so easily put upon, I’m surprised you don’t show her a little consideration, if only for appearance’s sake. “Everyone helps to push over a falling wall” they say; but don’t you think you carry it a bit too far?’

  Shamed by her reproaches, the maids pushed open Er-jie’s door and went inside to look. They found her dressed up in all her finery and stretched out dead upon the kang. Their frightened screams brought Patience running in as well. She could not help weeping out loud when she saw the cause. The other servants, too, when they remembered how sweet and gentle Er-jie had been and how unfailingly kind to her inferiors, were moved to tears by her death, but they were all so scared of Xi-feng that they dared not let her see their tears.

  Soon everyone in the household had heard the news. When Jia Lian arrived he clung to the corpse and wept uncontrollably. Xi-feng made a show of weeping too and hypocritically reproached Er-jie for her ‘cruelty’.

  ‘Hard-hearted sister!’ she wailed. ‘How could you bear to leave me like this when you knew how much I cared for you?’

  You-shi and Jia Rong also came and wept a while, after which they urged Jia Lian to cease his lamentations and begin to perform his duties. The first of these was to report Er-jie’s death formally to Lady Wang and ask if he might lay out the body in Pear-tree Court for five days and after that move it to the Temple of the Iron Threshold. Lady Wang gave her permission, whereupon he at once sent servants to open up Pear-tree Court and make the principal room in it ready to receive the corpse.

  Jia Lian did not like the idea of Er-jie’s leaving the mansion for the last time by way of the rear gate and into the back streets beyond. He therefore opened up the gate in the outer wall of Pear-tree Court giving on to the passage-way between the two mansions which led into Two Dukes Street. A wnings were put up on either side of this gate to accommodate sūtra-chanting monks.

  A beautifully-embroidered satin pall was draped over a camp-bed and Er-jie’s body laid on it and covered over with a sheet. On this it was carried by eight pages, followed by a number of married womenservants, along the foot of the inside walls and all the way to the room in Pear-tree Court which had been made ready for it. The official geomancer had been summoned and was waiting there in readiness. He lifted the coverlet back to look at Er-jie’s face. She looked almost alive – if anything even more beautiful than in life. The sight provoked a fresh outburst of grief from Jia Lian. Once more he clung to her and wept.

  ‘My poor wife!’ he sobbed. ‘You should never have died. I blame myself for allowing this to happen.’

  Jia Rong nervously urged restraint.

  ‘There, there, Uncle! Take it easy! She was unlucky, poor Auntie. That’s all you can say about it.’

  He pointed in the direction of the wall separating Pear-tree Court from the mansion. Jia Lian, understanding his meaning, lowered his voice, though he continued to reproach himself.

  ‘I was too careless. I should have noticed what was going on.’ He addressed himself to the dead woman. ‘One of these days I shall get to the bottom of this and you shall be revenged.’

  At last the coverlet was replaced and the geomancer made his pronouncement.

  ‘I am assuming that she died at the end of the fifth watch. In that case you won�
��t be able to take her out of here on the fifth day, I’m afraid. It will have to be either the third or the seventh. For the encoffining, the best time would be four o’clock tomorrow morning.’

  ‘The third day is much too soon,’ said Jia Lian. ‘It will have to be the seventh. I couldn’t keep her here much longer than that, because my uncle and my cousin are both away and I should need to have their permission; but I am planning to do much more for her when we get her to the temple outside. I’d like to keep her there for the full thirty-five days and give her a really decent funeral with a requiem and so forth at the end of it. We can take her south to Nanking and bury her in the family graveyard next year.’

  The geomancer agreed to all this, wrote out the burial licence, and took his leave.

  Various male kinsmen – Bao-yu was the first – came over to help Jia Lian mourn. When they had gone, he went back to his own apartment to look for Xi-feng and ask her for some money to buy timber for a coffin with and pay for the funeral.

  Now Xi-feng had used her illness as a pretext for not accompanying the others to Pear-tree Court. She claimed that she had received strict instructions from Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang that until she had fully recovered she was to avoid all places connected in any way with birth, sickness or death. She refused to go into mourning for the same reason. The ban did not however prevent her from slipping out into the Garden when everyone else had gone, making her way round it between the rocks and the perimeter wall to the foot of the wall that separated it from Pear-tree Court, and eavesdropping on what was going on inside. She could not hear very much, but enough to send her scurrying back to Grandmother Jia to report on what Jia Lian was up to. Grandmother Jia was indignant.

  ‘I never heard such nonsense! When a consumptive child dies, one just burns it and scatters the ashes. Burying her in Nanking indeed! What can the man be thinking of? If he feels he has to do something special for her because she was his wife, let him observe the Thirty-Five Days. But after that he should either have her carried out and burned or else buried in the common graveyard. Nanking, indeed!’

  Xi-feng laughed.

  ‘That’s what I thought, but it wasn’t for me to say.’

  Just then a maid arrived from Jia Lian, looking for her.

  ‘Mr Lian’s back, madam. He’s waiting for you to give him some money.’

  Xi-feng went back to see him.

  ‘What’s this about wanting money?’ she asked him. ‘Don’t you know how difficult things are lately? Every month now our allowance falls short of our expenditure. I managed to raise three hundred taels yesterday to pay some of the bills with by pawning two of my gold necklaces. There’s still twenty or thirty taels of that left that you can have if you like.’

  She told Patience to get it out and give it to him; then, muttering something about Grandmother Jia having something more to say, she went away again, leaving Jia Lian speechless with resentment. He was obliged to go through Er-jie’s drawers and cupboards looking for the savings he had entrusted to her. But someone seemed to have been through them before him, for all he could find were a few bits of broken jewellery and a few far from new silk dresses. The sight of these clothes which she had worn brought on another outburst of anguished weeping. He felt sure there was something suspicious about her death but dared not utter what he thought. He made the things up into a bundle and was apparently intending to take them outside and sell them, for he had called no servant, and when Patience saw him was carrying the bundle himself. She found the sight of him carrying it both pathetic but also a trifle ludicrous. Hurriedly abstracting a packet containing two hundred taels of miscellaneous bits and pieces of silver from one of Xi-feng’s chests, she drew him into one of the side rooms where no one could see them and gave it to him.

  ‘Psst! Not a word! And by the way, if you want to cry, you can cry as much as you like outside, but for goodness’ sake don’t make an exhibition of yourself here, where everyone can see you!’

  ‘You are right,’ said Jia Lian, taking the money. He handed her a skirt out of the bundle. ‘Here, take this. It’s something she often used to wear. Keep it to remember her by.’

  As he was insistent, she took it from him and put it away wit! her things.

  Now that Jia Lian had some money, he sent someone to buy timber for the coffin. Unfortunately the best planks turned out to be too expensive and the more modestly priced ones did not meet with his approval. In the end he got on his horse and insisted on going to see for himself. The outcome was that a set of planks costing five hundred taels and obtained by him on credit were delivered from the timber-merchant’s that evening. The carpenters were set to work on them immediately and ordered to go on working through the night so that the ccffin should be ready in time.

  He ordered some of the servants to dress in mourning and keep vigil at Er-jie’s side. He himself did not return to his own apartment that evening, but spent that and every other night of the seven at Pear-tree Court. Towards the end of this sojourn he was somewhat surprised to receive a summons from Grandmother Jia.

  The reason for the summons will be revealed in the chapter which follows.

  CHAPTER 70

  Lin Dai-yu resuscitates the Poetry Club And Shi Xiang-yun tries her band at a song lyric

  Each of the seven nights following Er-jie’s death were spent by Jia Lian on his own in Pear-tree Court. Throughout the whole of the seven-day period he had Buddhist monks and Taoist priests chanting and praying outside for her soul’s repose.

  At the conclusion of the last chapter we mentioned the unexpected summons which he received towards the end of this period from Grandmother Jia. It turned out to be for the sole purpose of refusing him permission to convey Er-jie’s body to the family temple outside the city. This was a heavy blow, but one to which he could not but submit. He had to talk to the proprietor of the ground in which San-jie was buried and have another grave opened for Er-jie above her sister’s. Apart from a few Jia males and You-shi and her daughter-in-law, the only other mourners on the day they buried her were Xi-feng’s kinsman Wang Xin and his wife. Xi-feng herself would have nothing to do with the funeral and left Jia Lian to manage everything by himself.

  The New Year was now approaching. Among the multitudinous duties that had now to be attended to was the necessity of finding suitable wives from among the maidservants for those of the menservants who had reached the marriageable age of twenty-five. Xi-feng consulted Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang on this subject and a lengthy discussion of it ensued. Several maids were of an age to marry, but for one reason or another had to be exempted. The first of these was Faithful, who had taken a vow to remain single all her life. Ever since the day on which she took this vow she had refused even to speak to Bao-yu and had taken to using make-up only sparingly, dispensing altogether with jewellery, and wearing only the very soberest clothes. The others respected her determination and did not press her to abandon it. Amber had to be exempted because she was ill. Sunset, too, since her break-up with Jia Huan, had developed an illness that seemed incurable and had to be exempted for the same reason. There remained only a few of the older maids-of-all-work from Xi-feng’s and Li Wan’s apartments. The other maids were all too young. It was decided to allow the young menservants to seek their brides outside.

  *

  Xi-feng’s illness, necessitating their standing in for her as household managers, had for many months deprived Li Wan and Tan-chun of their leisure. That, and the multifarious duties attendant on the New Year festival, had resulted in the indefinite postponement of the Poetry Club. Now spring had come and at last there was time for a meeting. But now it was Bao-yu’s condition that prevented them. Liu Xiang-lian’s conversion and subsequent disappearance, San-jie’s suicide, Er-jie’s hounding to death by Xi-feng, the grave deterioration in Fivey’s health caused by the hardships of her night’s imprisonment – all these shocks and distresses following hard upon one another had eventually reduced him to a state of mental collapse. He was begin
ning to look and act like a halfwit and his speech was frequently disordered and nonsensical. Aroma and the other maids were frightened out of their wits. They dared not tell Grandmother Jia about it; instead they did what they could to distract him by amusing him and making him laugh.

  Early one morning he woke up to the sound of laughter, peals upon peals of it from the neighbouring room. Aroma smiled at him when she saw that he was awake.

  ‘It’s Aventurin,’ she said, giving Parfumée the name that Bao-yu had insisted on. ‘You’d better go and rescue her. She’s got Skybright and Musk holding her down and tickling her.’

  Bao-yu slioped on his squirrel-lined gown and went into the outer room to look. The three girls were on the kang, their bedding still not folded and none of them yet dressed. Sky-bright, wearing only a tunic of leek-green Hangchow silk and a pair of red silk drawers and with her hair hanging loose over her shoulders, knelt above Parfumée’s body, straddling her as if riding a horse; Musk, wearing little but a red breast-binder and an old gown that she had wrapped round herself like a cloak, was tickling Parfumée under the armpits; Parfumée herself, in flower-patterned shirt, red trousers and green stockings, lay on her back drumming her heels on the kang and laughing so much that she seemed in some danger of asphyxiation.

  ‘Two big ones against one little one,’ said Bao-yu, laughing.‘I shall have to see about that!’

  He got on the kang and began tickling Skybright. Skybright, being very ticklish, at once began shrieking and let go of Parfumée in order to tickle him back, which gave Parfumée the opportunity of getting on top of har and holding her down. Aroma stood watching these antics with amusement.