The Warning Voice

by Cao Xueqin

  ‘Why don’t you get dressed, all of you?’ she said. ‘It won’t be so funny if you catch cold.’

  At that moment Casta came in.

  ‘Mrs Zhu thinks she left a handkerchief here last night. Have any of you seen it, please?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Swallow. ‘I picked it up off the floor, but I didn’t know whose it was. I’ve only just washed it and hung it out to dry. I’m afraid it won’t be dry yet.’

  Casta was greatly amused by the four figures struggling on the kang.

  ‘You’re certainly a lively lot here, larking about like this so early in the morning!’

  Bao-yu disengaged himself to talk.

  ‘Don’t you lot ever play, then? There are enough of you.’

  ‘Mrs Zhu isn’t much of a one for playing,’ said Casta, ‘and she keeps a pretty tight rein on the others – Miss Qin and the two Miss Lis. It’s very quiet there now that Miss Qin is sleeping over at Her Old Ladyship’s again. It will be quieter still next winter when the two Miss Lis go back to their own home. Look how quiet it’s become at Miss Bao’s place since Caltrop went back to Mr Pan. It’s as though several people had left. Poor Miss Shi is quite lost without her!’

  By coincidence it was Xiang-yun’s maid Kingfisher who walked in just at that moment. She had a message for Bao-yu.

  ‘Miss Shi says come quickly, Master Bao. They’ve, got a very good poem for you to look at.’

  ‘Who have?’ said Bao-yu. ‘What sort of poem?’

  ‘The young ladies. They’re all together in the Drenched Blossoms Pavilion. You’ll see when you get there.’

  Bao-yu rushed through his toilet and hurried outside to join them. He found Dai-yu, Bao-chai, Xiang-yun, Bao-qin and Tan-chun clustered round the sheet of paper on which the poem was written.

  ‘Have you only just got up?’ the girls jeered when they saw him coming. ‘We’ve all been up for hours!’

  ‘It’s more than a year now since our Poetry Club met,’ said one of them, ‘yet in all that time no one seems to have felt the urge to get it going again. Springtime, when everything in nature is renewing itself, seems an appropriate time for reestablishing it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Xiang-yun. ‘We founded it in the autumn, which is a time of decay. Perhaps that’s why it didn’t thrive. If we re-establish it now, when everything is burgeoning, it is bound to flourish! And this “Flower of the Peach” is such a splendid poem: I think we ought to rename our club “The Peach-flower Club“. What do the rest of you think?’

  ‘I think it’s an excellent idea,’ said Bao-yu. ‘May I see the poem?’

  ‘Let’s all go and see Farmer Sweetrice and discuss this business of reviving the Poetry Club with her,’ said the others.

  They got up in a body and began to go, Bao-yu reading the poem as he went.

  The Flower of the Peach

  Peach pink the tender flowers outside the window blow;

  Peach pink on sleepy face the morning colours glow.

  Tree-flowers outside the room and lady-flower inside:

  Only a few short steps the flowery forms divide.

  Slyly the conspiring wind tugs at the blind below:

  Tree-flowers would peep inside if they could do so.

  *

  Outside the window tree-flowers are blooming still;

  Inside the window lady-flower looks ill.

  If the flowers could understand, surely they would grieve?

  The anxious wind flaps the blind against the window-sill.

  *

  The anxious wind flaps the blind; spring crowns the courtyard trees;

  Spring sights fill the lady’s eyes, but bring her heart no ease.

  In her closed, untrodden court the moss grows green on the stones:

  She leans there at the sunset hour, in the soft evening breeze.

  *

  In the soft breeze the lady’s face is wet with many a tear.

  Her silken peach-skirt billows out, the peach-trees to be near.

  The peach-flowers and the peach-leaves nod in a rich array:

  The leaves, against the peach-pink, dark emerald appear.

  A thousand trees, ten thousand trees, crowding close together,

  Walls and buildings everywhere in a red mist smother.

  *

  Heaven’s new bed-spread is burning on the dawn loom of the skies:

  It’s time now for sleeping lady-flower from dreams of spring to rise.

  Her maid comes in with a golden bowl as she leaves her coral bed,

  And the peach-pink stain from her sleepy face the chilly water dyes.

  *

  If with the water’s rosy hue comparison be made,

  Carmine tears and dewy flowers seem of the self-same shade.

  Yet lady’s tears and flowers in this unalike I find,

  That the flowers are still and smiling, but the tears flow unallayed.

  As she gazes on the smiling flowers, her tears at last grow dry;

  But as they dry, the springtime ends and the flowers fade.

  *

  The flowers fade, and an equal blight the lady’s fair cheek palls.

  The petals drift; she is weary; and soon the darkness falls.

  A nightingale is singing a dirge for the death of spring,

  And moonlight steals through the casement and dapples the silent walls.

  Bao-yu uttered no word of praise when he had finished reading it, he simply went on staring stupidly at the paper. He wanted to cry, but was ashamed that the girls should see his tears and brushed them away with a hurried movement of his hand.

  ‘How did you get hold of this poem?’ he asked them.

  ‘First guess who wrote it,’ said Bao-qin mischievously.

  ‘River Queen,’ said Bao-yu. ‘Who else?’

  ‘Really?’ said Bao-qin. ‘Well, as a matter of fact, I did.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ said Bao-yu, smiling back at her. “The tone of voice is entirely different from yours.’

  “That just shows how little you know about poetry,’ said Bao-qin. ‘Not all of Du Fu’s poems have the complexity of “Autumn Thoughts“. He is equally capable of lines like

  Rain-fattened plum-buds crimson splashed,

  or

  The wind’s green duckweed-trails on the water bright.’

  ‘That’s as may be,’ said Bao-yu, ‘but I don’t believe Cousin Chai would allow you to write such melancholy verses. And in any case, though I am sure you have the talent to write verses like this if you wanted to, I don’t believe you would want to. Cousin Lin writes like this because she has had actual experience of grief.’

  The girls all laughed.

  They had now reached Sweet-rice Village. Li Wan was shown the poem and – it goes without saying – was full of praise. After some discussion it was decided unanimously that the first meeting of the revived Poetry Club should be held the very next day, which as it happened, would be the second of the third month. The club was to be renamed ‘The Peach-flower Club’ and Dai-yu was to be its president.

  Next day, as soon as lunch was over, everyone met in the Naiad’s House and began discussing the question of a subject. Dai-yu proposed that each of them should compose a hundred couplets on ‘Peach-blossom’.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ said Bao-chai. ‘Even if we succeeded in writing so many, there have been such a lot of poems written on this subject in the past that we should be sure to find ourselves repeating what has been said before; and we couldn’t in any case do anything to equal your “Flower of the Peach“. Think of something else.’

  But just at that moment a servant came in from outside and summoned them away.

  ‘The elder Lady Wang is here. Will you all come over to pay her your respects, please.’

  So off they trooped to talk to Wang Zi-teng’s wife. They had to stay and have dinner with her and after that show her over the garden. It was lighting-up time before she went.

  Next day was Tan-chun’s birthday. Yuan-chun had sent tw
o little eunuchs well in advance of the date with her presents (various ornaments for Tan-chun’s room). There were presents from all the other members of the family as well, of course, but we will spare the reader a list. After lunch Tan-chun had to change into her most formal clothes and go around all the apartments making her kotows.

  ‘My poetry club seems to have got off to rather a bad start,’ said Dai-yu ruefully. ‘I’d forgotten about her birthday. Today and tomorrow will be completely taken up with it. Even though there will be no formal birthday with players and so forth, we are sure to have to spend all day in the front with Grandmother and Aunt Wang. There’s sure not to be any time left for a meeting.’

  She postponed the meeting until the fifth.

  On the morning of the fifth, after lunch, while the girls stood talking with Grandmother Jia, letters from Jia Zheng arrived. Bao-yu brought them with him when he came to make his regular morning call. He opened the one addressed to his grandmother and read it out to her. Most of it was taken up with greetings and inquiries about her health, but there was also something about returning to the capital some time in the sixth month. There were other letters in the same packet dealing with personal or domestic matters which were opened and read by Jia Lian and Lady Wang. Everyone was of course delighted to hear that he was coming back so soon.

  But once again the Poetry Club was fated to be unlucky. Not long before this date the betrothal had been announced of Wang Zi-teng’s daughter to the Marquis of Bao-ning’s son (the wedding to be in the fifth month) and Xi-feng had lately taken to spending three or four days in a row at the Wang residence, helping her aunt with the entertaining occasioned by this important event. As ill luck would have it, when Wang Zi-teng’s lady called to collect Xi-feng on the fifth, she insisted that all her other nephews and nieces should come too and spend the day ‘enjoying themselves’ at her place. Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang decreed that Bao-yu, Tan-chun, Dai-yu and Bao-chai should go as a representative selection. It was out of the question to object that they had better things to do; the four of them had to go back to their own rooms and change into their most formal clothes before accompanying Wang Xi-feng and their aunt to the Wang family residence. It was lighting-up time before they returned.

  As soon as he got back to Green Delights, Bao-yu threw himself down to rest. Aroma seized the opportunity to offer him a little serious advice. He really must try and pull himself together, she said, and apply himself whenever possible to his books, so as to be ready for his father’s return. Bao-yu did some rapid calculations on his fingers.

  ‘It’s a bit early for that yet,’ he said.

  ‘It isn’t only the books,’ said Aroma. ‘Your calligraphy is even more important. Even if you can get by on the books, what are you going to show him when he asks to see your calligraphy?’

  Bao-yu smiled unconcernedly.

  ‘I’m always doing calligraphy. There must be masses of it. Surely you keep it for me, don’t you?’

  ‘Certainly we keep it for you,’ said Aroma. ‘I got it out to have a look at only yesterday, while you were away. Five hundred and sixty sheets: for all the years since you first started, that’s all you’ve got to show. If you ask me, I think that from tomorrow onwards you ought to concentrate all your energies on copying. If you could copy two or three sheets of calligraphy a day, then by the time he gets back, even though you won’t be able to show him a sheet for every day, you should have enough to get by with.’

  Bao-yu heard her with some alarm. He had a look at the collected sheets himself. It was true. There simply wasn’t enough there to convince anyone that he had been practising calligraphy every day.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Beginning from tomorrow, I’ll write a hundred characters every morning.’

  He was still discussing this when they went to bed.

  Next morning, as soon as he had washed and combed his hair, he sat down at the window and began painstakingly copying kai-shu characters out of a sample-book. Grandmother Jia thought he must be ill when he did not appear with the others for his duty-call, and sent someone over to inquire. Bao-yu returned with the messenger to wish her good morning and explain.

  ‘I’ve been practising calligraphy,’ he told her. ‘That’s what’s made me late.’

  Grandmother Jia was delighted.

  ‘Keep it up, my boy! When you are studying or practising your calligraphy, it doesn’t matter if you don’t come here at all. You may tell your mother I said so.’

  Bao-yu went round to Lady Wang’s apartment to do so. His mother was unimpressed.

  ‘It’s too late to begin sharpening your weapons on the field of battle,’ she said. ‘Getting in a panic now will do you no good. Even if you work all day and all night, you won’t be able to make up for all the time you have wasted. More likely all you will succeed in doing is making yourself ill.’

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ said Bao-yu.

  Bao-chai and Tan-chun, who happened to be present, reassured her.

  ‘We can’t memorize his texts for him,’ they said, ‘but we could at least help him out with his calligraphy. If each of us copied a sheet of characters for him every day to add to what he has done himself, he ought to have enough calligraphy to get by with. That’s one hurdle at least he’d be over. It would save Sir Zheng from getting angry and Bao-yu from making himself ill.’

  Lady Wang smiled and nodded.

  When Dai-yu heard that Jia Zheng was coming home, she knew that he would be sure to ask Bao-yu about his lessons and that anything which distracted him from them would be merely adding to his troubles. Because of this she deliberately made no more mention of the Poetry Club, and in order that he should not suspect her real reason for dropping it, pretended that she was beginning to find the whole thing rather a bore.

  Tan-chun and Bao-chai each produced a sheet of characters a day to add to his collection, and Bao-yu himself, by doubling the time he spent on calligraphy, managed to produce two hundred or sometimes as much as three hundred characters a day. By the end of the third month he had already added considerably to his stock of sheets.

  One day towards the end of the month he was going over this stock and had just estimated that fifty or sixty more sheets would probably be enough, when Nightingale arrived with a roll of something from Dai-yu. On opening it out he found it to consist of several sheets, all of the same dark-yellow bamboo paper, covered with tiny ‘fly’s-head’ kai-shu characters which she had copied, in a hand very similar to his own, from sample-books of Zhong Yu’s and Wang Xi-zhi’s calligraphy. Bao-yu was so pleased that he clasped his hands and made Nightingale a bow before hurrying over to thank her mistress in person.

  Shortly after that he received some more sheets of calligraphy that Xiang-yun and Bao-qin had been copying for him. Now, when he put the whole lot together, he found that, though there was nothing like a sheet a day for every day since he first started, there was already a sufficient quantity to get by with. This was a great relief. He could now forget about calligraphy for the time being and concentrate on revision. His aim was to go three or four times over each of the texts.

  While he was still busily engaged in this revision, a tidal wave hit a certain part of the coast, causing damage and loss of life in a number of neighbouring communities. After reading the reports sent in by the local authorities, the Emperor issued a Rescript commanding Jia Zheng to visit the area on his way back in order to supervise relief. It now seemed unlikely that he would be able to reach home before the end of the seventh month. When he heard this, Bao-yu threw aside his books and reverted to the drifting, aimless way of life that was customary with him.

  Spring was now almost over. Xiang-yun, feeling rather bored, had been watching the drifting willow-floss and amusing herself by composing a little poem about it. It was a song-lyric, in the form of a Ru-meng-ling’.

  ‘Not chewed-off ends of the sky’s embroidery?

  ‘What are they?’ – ‘Raise the blind a bit and see.’

  ‘A
white hand snatches some and draws it in,

  Pursued by the swallows’ chiding din.

  Oh stay, oh stay!

  The lovely spring drifts after you away.

  Xiang-yun was rather pleased with her little poem and wrote it out on a slip of paper to show Bao-chai. After that she went to look for Dai-yu and showed it to her. Dai-yu read it and smiled.

  ‘It’s good. Both charming and original.’

  ‘We’ve never done song-lyrics at any of our poetry meetings,’ said Xiang-yun. ‘Why don’t you call a meeting for tomorrow and we’ll all do some? It would make a nice change.’

  Dai-yu was becoming infected by Xiang-yun’s enthusiasm.

  ‘It’s a good idea,’ she said. ‘I will.’

  ‘It’s a lovely day today,’ said Xiang-yun. ‘Why not have the meeting today?’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Dai-yu.

  She told the servants to prepare some suitably dainty things to eat, while a couple of them went off to summon the other cousins to the meeting. Meanwhile Dai-yu and Xiang-yun agreed that ‘Willow Floss’ should be the subject of the poems and decided on the stanza-patterns that they should conform to. All this was written down on a sheet of paper which was pasted up on the wall. When the cousins arrived, they first of all read the notice on the wall and then read Xiang-yun’s poem. Some little time after that was devoted to praising it.

  ‘I’m not much good at song-lyrics,’ said Bao-yu, ‘but I suppose I had better do what I can.’

  Everyone drew lots then to see which stanza-forms they were to use. Bao-chai lit a stick of Sweet Dreams incense, and then everyone settled down to think. Dai-yu was the first to have something ready and write it down. Just as she had finished, Bao-qin began hurriedly writing hers.

  ‘I’ve thought of mine,’ said Bao-chai, ‘but I’d like to look at yours first before I show it to you.’

  Tan-chun laughed.

  ‘Why does the incense seem to be burning so quickly today? I’ve only done the first half of mine.’ She turned to Bao-yu. ‘How about you? Have you done yours yet?’