by Cao Xueqin
By the time his idiotic discourse had ended, Aroma did not know whether to laugh or groan.
‘You really make me angry,’ she said, ‘comparing Sky-bright with all those famous people! What sort of creature do you think she is anyway? And even if she is so wonderful, you seem to forget that I have precedence over her among your maids. If the crab-apple is connected with any of us, it ought to be me. It must mean that I am going to die.’
Bao-yu clapped his hand over her mouth.
‘Now, now, that’s enough of that! I’m already worried enough about her as it is, I don’t want to have to worry about you as well. Let’s say no more about it. Three people is quite enough to lose in one day!’
Aroma was secretly glad to hear him say this.
‘If I hadn’t said that to stop him,’ she thought, ‘heaven knows where this nonsense would have ended!’
‘There’s something else I want to discuss with you,’ said Bao-yu. ‘I’m not quite sure whether you’ll agree to this or not. Couldn’t we somehow, without letting any of the family know about it, contrive to let her have her things? Perhaps we could also send her a few strings of whatever money we have managed to save, so that she has got something to buy medicines with. Could you, for the sake of all your years together, do this for her?’
Aroma laughed.
‘Do you really think I need asking? What a mean, inhuman sort of person you must think I am! I’ve got her clothes and all her other things piled up over there, ready to send her. I can’t send them now, in broad daylight. With so many prying eyes about it would be simply asking for trouble. But as soon as it’s evening I shall get Mrs Liu to take them to her. I’ve got several strings of cash that she can take to her as well.’
Bao-yu nodded.
‘I am a, paragon of all the virtues, don’t forget,’ said Aroma teasingly. ‘It’s worth spending a bit of money to keep up my reputation!’
Bao-yu smiled and said a few words to comfort her. He was afraid that she might have taken what he said earlier to heart.
That evening, when things had quietened down a bit, he slipped out on his own to the rear corner gate of the Garden and begged one of the old women there to take him to Sky-bright’s house. At first she refused absolutely to help. She was too scared, she said. What would become of her rice-bowl if Lady Wang got to hear of it? In the end, after he had pleaded with her very insistently and also promised her some money, she agreed to take him.
*
Skybright was in the first instance purchased, when she was barely ten years old, by the Chief Steward Lai Da as a little slave-girl for his wife, who often took Skybright with her when she went to work in Rong-guo House. It was in this way that she first came to the attention of Grandmother Jia. Grandmother Jia took a great fancy to the beautiful, intelligent little girl, and when Lai Da’s wife noticed this, she gave Skybright to the old lady as a present. It was because the old lady thought so highly of Skybright that she later on gave her as a maidservant to her beloved grandson.
Skybright had no recollection of her parents or of the place where she was born. The only relation she knew of was a cousin somewhat older than herself, said to be her father’s sister’s son, who was in bondservice elsewhere. After her instalment at the mansion she begged Lai Da’s wife to have this cousin purchased too and find him some employment with the Jias. The stewardess was touched by the gratitude and respect that Skybright continued to show her after her advancement. At her insistence Lai Da purchased the cousin, gave him a small job as a buyer, and even provided him with a wife.
Unfortunately Skybright’s cousin was a timorous, poor-spirited creature, whereas the wife Lai Da had chosen for him was a lively and rather attractive young woman. Finding her husband unable to provide her with what she wanted, she soon took to going out every day, dressed up to the nines, to exercise her charms on the other servants. She was aided in this by a highly expressive pair of eyes which seldom failed to convey their message. The men were drawn towards her irresistibly, like flies towards carrion, so that there was seldom any lack of volunteers to fill the gap left by her neglectful husband.
The couple lived in an apartment not far from the rear side gate of the Garden, and it was to this place that Skybright was taken after her dismissal. The cousin’s young wife had little stomach for nursing a sick relation, and as soon as she had eaten, was off on her customary rounds, leaving Skybright alone and untended in the outer room.
When Bao-yu arrived at the house, he told the old woman who had brought him to wait at the gate and keep a look-out while he went inside. Raising the cotton door-curtain he looked into the room. He could see Skybright at once, lying on an old rush mat on the kang (fortunately she still had her own bedding) but no one else appeared to be at home, and he wondered for a moment what he should do; then, going over to the kang, he plucked timidly at the quilt in which she was wrapped and gently called her name. His eyes were full of tears.
Skybright, who had been ill to start with, had been made even more so by the detestable things said to her by her cousin and his wife since her arrival. After coughing through most of the day, she had recently dozed off into a fitful sleep, and it was not until Bao-yu had called her name for the second time that she opened her eyes. What surprise, delight, sorrow, anguish all mixed in one when she saw who it was! She gripped his hand tightly in hers, but for a long time she could only sob. At last she managed to speak.
‘I didn’t think I should ever see you again.’
After that she coughed and coughed. Bao-yu was sobbing now himself.
‘Holy Name, it’s a good job you’ve come!’ she said. ‘Could you get me half a cup of tea? I’m so thirsty, but though I’ve called and called, no one ever comes.’
Bao-yu hurriedly wiped his eyes.
‘Where’s the tea?’
‘It’s over there on the stove,’ said Skybright.
Bao-yu looked at the brick-and-mud-built stove against the wall. There was only a sort of blackened earthenware skillet on it that bore no resemblance to a tea-pot. He found a teacup on the table whose greasy, rancid odour reached his nostrils even before he picked it up. Having located some water, he washed it twice, rinsed it twice, dried it with his handkerchief, sniffed it (it still smelt) and half filled it with a dusky, reddish liquid from the skillet. Was it tea? He tasted it dubiously. It had a bitter, acrid taste with only a slight suggestion of tea about it.
‘That’s tea,’ said Skybright, who had raised herself on the pillow. ‘Please let me have it. You can’t expect it to be as good as ours.’
Bao-yu handed it to her and she gulped it down greedily as if it were the most delicious nectar. He watched her with tears running down his cheeks, suddenly ashamed of his own fastidiousness.
‘If there’s anything you want to tell me,’ he said, ‘you’d better tell me now, while there’s nobody else about.’
‘What have I got to tell?’ said Skybright. ‘I’m living now from day to day and from hour to hour. I know I’m done for: it can’t be more than four or five days now at the most. If it weren’t for one thing, I could die content. I know I’m a bit better-looking than the others, but I’ve never tried to make up to you. Why will they insist that I am some sort of vampire? It’s so unfair. And now I have so little time left. I ought not to say this, but if I’d known in advance that it would be like this, I might have behaved rather differently.’
She began to cry again.
Bao-yu took her hands in his own. They felt like bundles of dried twigs, so wasted had she become. She was still wearing a pair of silver bangles on either wrist.
‘Better take these off,’ he said (he was crying himself as he spoke). ‘You can put them on again when you are better.’
He took them off for her and put them under the pillow.
‘It’s a pity about these nails,’ he said. ‘It took you such a long time to grow them. By the time you are better, I expect you’ll find that quite a lot of them will have broken off.’
> She wiped her eyes, curled the third and fourth fingers of her left hand back against the side of her mouth and with a supreme effort half bit half tore off the two two-inch lengths of scallion-like nail that projected from them.
‘Here!’ She put the pieces into his hand. ‘To remind you of me.’
Then she reached down inside the bedding and managed, after a great deal of struggling, to take off the old red chemise she was wearing and hold it out to him. Because of her weakness, the effort of doing this made her pant so much that she could not speak; but Bao-yu understood what she wanted. He removed his outer garment, took off the shirt he was wearing underneath it and laid it over her, and put on the chemise she was holding out to him. He did not bother to do the buttons up, since it would be hidden anyway beneath his outer garment. While he was fastening his belt on again, he noticed that she was staring at him, trying to say something.
‘Help me up!’
Even with Bao-yu’s assistance it cost her a good deal of effort to sit fully upright. Once she was sitting up, she stretched one of her arms out and tried drawing the shirt on herself. Bao-yu draped it over her shoulders and eased each of her arms in turn into the sleeves, then gently laid her down again.
‘If anyone sees that when you get back and asks you whose it is,’ said Skybright, weeping, ‘there’s no need to tell them any lies. Tell them it’s mine. Since I’ve got such a bad reputation anyway, I might as well have something to show for it when I’m gone!’
At that moment the door-curtain was lifted and the cousin’s wife came into the room, all dazzling smiles.
‘Very nice! I’ve heard all that you two have been saying. ‘She directed a bold look at Bao-yu. ‘And what are you doing, a young master like you, coming to see us servants in our quarters? Bet you heard I was young and good-looking and came here to flirt with me!’
‘Please, I beg of you, don’t speak so loud!’ said Bao-yu entreatingly. ‘I shouldn’t really be here, but your cousin was with me for many years: I came here to see her because she is ill.’
The young woman smiled and nodded approvingly.
‘That’s right. They say you have a good heart.’
She took him by the hand and pulled him after her into the inner room.
‘If you don’t want me to make a noise, you can easily stop me. You have only to do one little thing.’
She got her backside up onto the kang and drawing him down on top of her, put up her legs and gripped him tightly between them. This was something totally outside Bao-yu’s experience. His heart started pounding wildly, his face turned scarlet, and his whole body began to tremble. It would have been hard to say what feeling was at that moment uppermost in his mind: embarrassment, shame, fear or annoyance. All he could manage to say was:
‘Don’t fool about, please!’
The young woman leered up at him through half-closed eyes.
‘Get away with you! From what I’ve been told, you’ve had plenty of practice with other girls. What makes you so bashful today all of a sudden?’
Bao-yu became even redder.
‘Please let me go. If you’ve got anything to talk about, let’s discuss it like reasonable human beings. There’s an old woman outside there listening. What do you think you are doing?’
‘There’s no old woman out there,’ she said. ‘I saw her when I got back and told her to wait for you at the Garden gate. Come on! I’ve waited a long time to get my hands on you. If you won’t do what I ask, I’ll call out. You’re a bold one, aren’t you, coming here! What will Her Ladyship say if she finds out? I was listening to you two outside the window for quite a while. From what I could make out, you and she have nothing between you. Well, more fool she, if that’s the case! You needn’t expect me to be so daft!’
She began to get to work on his clothing, while Bao-yu made frantic efforts to pull himself away. They were still struggling when a voice was heard outside the window asking for Skybright. The young woman gave a start and let go of Bao-yu. Bao-yu was so shaken and confused that he had not heard the voice, and Skybright, listening to what was going on in the next room, was so overcome with shame and anger that she had fainted clean away. This left only the cousin’s wife to answer the caller – or rather callers, for when she went outside to look, it turned out to be Cook Liu and Fivey with a bundle containing Skybright’s things. Cook Liu was also holding several strings of cash.
‘We’ve brought these from Miss Aroma for your young lady,’ she said. ‘Which room is she in?’
The young woman laughed.
‘This room here. Where else would we keep her?’
As Cook Liu and Fivey went into the outer room, a lurking figure dodged into the inner room at the back. Cook Liu knew something of the young wife’s reputation and assumed that it must be one of her lovers. Since Skybright appeared to be asleep, she put the things down beside her and hurried out again. But Fivey had sharper eyes than her mother and had recognized the lurking figure as Bao-yu.
‘Didn’t Miss Aroma say when we were leaving that she’d been looking for Master Bao?’ she asked her mother.
‘Goodness, I nearly forgot!’ said Cook Liu. ‘Mrs Song told me just now that she thought she’d seen him go out of the side gate. And there was someone waiting for him outside the gate too, wasn’t there? They’ll be wanting to close presently.’
She turned back and asked the young woman if she had seen him.
‘No,’ said the cousin’s wife, beginning to feel nervous. ‘What would Master Bao be doing at our house?’
Hearing her say this, Cook Liu began to go again; but Bao-yu, partly because he was afraid of being shut out of the Garden and partly because he feared that the cousin’s wife might return to the attack if he remained after the visitors had gone, threw discretion to the winds and, lifting up the door-curtain, came rushing out after them.
‘Mrs Liu! Wait for me! We’ll go back together!’
Cook Liu was mightily astonished.
‘My dear young master! Whatever has brought you to this place?’
Bao-yu sped on ahead without replying.
‘Call him back, Ma!’ said Fivey. ‘Tell him not to be in so much of a hurry. He’ll, run into someone if he’s not careful and they’ll find out what he’s been up to. There’s no need for him to hurry in any case. That person we saw waiting for him will see to it that the gate’s kept open for him.’
She and her mother ran after Bao-yu to try and catch up with him. The cousin’s wife stared after them disconsolately: her beautiful young gentleman had got away.
Bao-yu did not stop running until he was inside the Garden gate. Only then did he feel safe again, though his heart was still beating wildly. Fortunately no one appeared to have noticed his absence, and when he got back to Green Delights he managed to put Aroma off by saying that he had been visiting Aunt Xue.
Shortly after this, as she was making up his bed, Aroma asked him how they should sleep.
‘Oh, anyhow,’ said Bao-yu. ‘I don’t mind.’
It should be explained that during the year or two that had elapsed since her unofficial promotion by Lady Wang, Aroma had been taking herself very seriously and no longer, either at night or when they were alone together in the daytime, permitted herself those affectionate intimacies that had been customary between her and Bao-yu in the past. A slight distance seemed to have grown up between them since their younger, more carefree days. Partly it was being so much busier that kept her from him: for although the most important matters remained outside her control, it was she who organized the sewing and other maid’s-work, took care of Bao-yu’s and the junior maids’ pocket-money for them, attended to their clothing and other equipment, and assumed responsibility for the general maintenance of the apartment. Partly it was because she had a fear of infecting him: for she still continued, though very infrequently, to cough blood.
It was mainly for this last reason that she had for some time now ceased sleeping in the same room. But Bao-yu was nervous at
night and liked to have someone near at hand whom he could call to when he woke up. Because she knew that Sky-bright was a light sleeper, Aroma entrusted all the night-time duties, like answering him when he called, getting up and making tea for him and so forth, to her, so that it had long since been the custom for Skybright to sleep in the same room with him beside his bed. Now that Skybright was no longer with him, Aroma made her own bed up beside Bao-yu’s in Skybright’s place.
Observing the somewhat dazed manner in which Bao-yu was conducting himself that evening, Aroma urged him to go to bed early, and as soon as she had got him settled, went to bed herself. But he seemed very restless. As she lay in her own bed she could hear him sighing and muttering to himself in his. This went on until well after midnight. Only then did he fall silent and appeared to have gone to sleep. Relieved, Aroma began drifting off herself. But only for a moment. Before she had a chance to get fully off to sleep, she heard him call out:
‘Skybright!’
‘What is it?’ said Aroma, instantly alert again.
Bao-yu said that he wanted some tea, so she got up and poured him out a cup. He sighed as she handed it to him.
‘I’m so used to calling her, I forgot that it was you.’