The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P'ing Mei
Page 35
The next day, the two go-betweens, after ascertaining the proposed dates, went to Hsi-men Ch’ing’s household to report back to Wu Yüeh-niang and Meng Yü-lou on their mission. Truly:
Marriage affinities are determined
in one’s former life;28
During which jade has been planted
in the Indigo Field.29
On the eighth day of the fourth month, in the district yamen, on the young squire’s behalf, there were prepared sixteen trays of preserved fruit, tea and pastries, a headdress of gold filigree, a set of gold head ornaments, a girdle with an agate buckle and seven tinkling pendants, gold and silver bracelets and bangles, and the like. In addition, there were two robes of palace-style crimson brocade, four outfits of figured clothing, and thirty taels of silver as a bride-price. What with all the muslin, cotton, and silk fabrics, there were more than twenty loads of gifts. The two go-betweens accompanied them, and Ho Pu-wei from the yamen staff took charge of the procession, as they made their way to Hsi-men Ch’ing’s residence and performed the ceremony of presenting the betrothal gifts.
On the fifteenth, the district yamen dispatched a bunch of couriers and idlers who had been hired for the purpose to carry Meng Yü-lou’s beds and curtains along with the trunks in which her trousseau was packed. Yüeh-niang looked on and directed them to remove all the furnishings from her quarters. Originally, when Hsi-men Ch’ing was still alive, he had taken one of the gilt lacquer beds with retractable steps that had been part of Meng Yü-lou’s dowry and given it to Hsi-men Ta-chieh as part of her trousseau. Yüeh-niang now took the bedstead of inlaid mother-of-pearl from P’an Chin-lien’s quarters and turned it over to her to make up for it. Meng Yü-lou proposed to take her maidservant Lan-hsiang with her, while leaving Hsiao-luan behind to assist Yüeh-niang in looking after Hsiao-ko.
Yüeh-niang objected to this, however, saying, “How could I be justified in retaining one of the maidservants from your quarters? After all, Hsiao-ko already has Chung-ch’iu, Hsiu-ch’un, and the wet nurse to take care of him, which is more than enough.”
Meng Yü-lou merely chose to leave behind a pair of silver flasks of Mohammedan manufacture for Hsiao-ko to play with, and to serve as a keepsake, while taking all the rest of her belongings with her.
That evening, the district yamen dispatched a large sedan chair borne by four bearers and four pairs of red silk lanterns encased in networks of steel wires, accompanied by eight lictors, to come fetch Meng Yü-lou. She was wearing a gilt-ridged cap:
Her head was adorned with pearls and trinkets,
along with pearl earrings, her body was clad in a scarlet full-sleeved robe, fastened at the waist by a girdle with an agate buckle in a gold setting and seven tinkling pendants, over a willow-yellow skirt sprigged with flowers. She first performed a farewell obeisance before Hsi-men Ch’ing’s spirit tablet and then kowtowed to Yüeh-niang.
“Third Sister Meng,” said Yüeh-niang, “you are cruel. Once you have gone, I will be left alone, all by myself, with no one to keep me company.”
The two of them held hands and wept together for a while, after which, the members of the household, both high and low, accompanied her to the front gate, where she donned her bridal veil of gold-flaked red gauze with the help of the two go-betweens and took the golden “precious vase”30 in her arms. Since Yüeh-niang was preserving her widowhood, she did not feel that she should venture abroad but invited Meng Yü-lou’s elder sister, the wife of Han Ming-ch’uan, to escort her to the district yamen, riding in a large sedan chair, wearing a gown of figured scarlet material, over a kingfisher-blue skirt, while:
Her head was adorned with pearls and trinkets.
The people along the street remarked to each other, “This is the Third Lady of the official Hsi-men Ch’ing’s household, who is marrying the son of His Honor the district magistrate. Since this is a propitious day and hour for the wedding, she is on her way to be carried over his threshold.”
There were some who had favorable things to say about it,
As well as those who had critical things to say about it.
Those who had favorable comments to make said, “Originally, His Honor Hsi-men Ch’ing had a position in society to maintain, and now that he is dead, his First Lady is the only one of the women in his household who is determined to preserve her widowhood, which is truly admirable. She has given birth to a son, and her household is no longer able to support such a large number of people, so she has allowed the others to go their own way, which is an appropriate attitude to take.”
Those who had critical comments to make, when:
Gossiping in the streets and discoursing in the alleys,
pointedly remarked, “This is the third concubine from the household of Hsi-men Ch’ing who is now about to remarry. Originally, while that rascal was still alive, he was:
Defiant of both Heaven and principle,31
Covetous of wealth and given to lust,
and guilty of seducing other peoples’ wives, and now that he is dead, the women in his household are absconding with his property.
Some are marrying other people,
Some are plundering his wealth,
Some are taking furtive lovers,
Some are resorting to thievery.
The feathers of the pheasant are being
plucked one by one.
As the saying goes:
Retribution may take place as much as
thirty years hence;
But here, retribution is taking place
before our very eyes.”
The people on the sidelines all expressed their uninhibited views along these lines.
When Meng Yü-lou’s elder sister had escorted the bride to the district yamen and seen that the beds and curtains and so forth in her trousseau were properly displayed, she remained there to enjoy the wedding feast before returning home. The bridegroom Li Kung-pi then summoned Auntie Hsüeh and Old Mother T’ao before him and rewarded each of them with five taels of silver and a length of festive red silk, before sending them on their way. That night the bride and groom consummated their marriage:
Emulating the pleasures of fish in the water, and
Exhausting the felicities of connubial bliss.
The next day, Wu Yüeh-niang sent the ritually prescribed gifts of tea and food to celebrate the consummation of the marriage. Aunt Yang was already dead, but Meng the Elder’s wife, Meng the Second’s wife, and Meng Yü-lou’s elder sister also sent ritual gifts of tea to the district yamen. Li Kung-pi, for his part, sent replies to his newly acquired female relatives, inviting them all to come and participate in the “third-day celebrations,” including the erection of a tower of variegated bunting in the shape of a mountain, and a feast where they were to be entertained by musicians and singing girls from the licensed quarter, who would greet them with martial music, and perform pieces from the southern-style plays known as hsi-wen.
On that day, Wu Yüeh-niang went to the district yamen in a large sedan chair to participate in the “third-day celebrations” and attend the feast.
Her head was adorned with pearls and trinkets,
while her body was clad in a scarlet full-sleeved robe, a flower-sprigged skirt, and a gilded girdle. As she was drinking wine in the rear hall, the district magistrate’s wife came out to keep her company.
On Yüeh-niang’s return home after this event, she remembered the way the company had enjoyed themselves:
Amid clustering blossoms and clinging brocade;
whereas, when she arrived home, the courtyard in the rear compound was deserted, and there was no one to welcome her. This reminded her of how she and her sister wives had enjoyed things together in former days, when Hsi-men Ch’ing was still alive. In those days, when she came home from a social engagement, they would all come out to welcome her, and even a long bench would prove insufficient to seat them all; whereas now, there was nobody there. Happening to bump into Hsi-men Ch’ing’s spirit tablet, she was overcome with
grief before she knew it and started to weep out loud. Only after she had wept for some time did her maidservant Hsiao-yü succeed in persuading her to stop and dry her eyes. Truly:
The innermost feelings of one’s life32
are known to no one else;33
Only the bright moon shining through
the window discerns them.34
We will say no more, for the moment, about Yüeh-niang’s grief.
To resume our story, Li Kung-pi and Meng Yü-lou, being:
A woman of beauty and a man of talent,
enjoyed each other:
Like fish sporting in the water.
They fit together as closely as the
lid on a lamp-oil jar.35
Every day, he:
Enjoyed himself with his new wife,
remaining with her in the nuptial chamber, and:
Not straying a step from her side.36
When he contemplated Meng Yü-lou’s face, it seemed to him that:
Such a vision is not exhaustible;
Such a view exceeds comprehension.
The more he gazed at her the more he was enamored by her. He also appreciated the fact that she had brought with her as part of her dowry two maidservants, one of whom, Lan-hsiang, was seventeen years old and could play musical instruments and sing, while the other, Hsiao-luan, was fourteen years old, and beautiful as well. He was:
Delighted in his heart,
by this to such an extent that he scarcely knew what to do with himself. There is a poem that testifies to this:
How praiseworthy are this woman of beauty
and this man of talent;
Heaven has devised this marriage affinity37
as propriety dictates.
Amid the twelve peaks of Witch’s Mountain38
clouds and rain mingle;39
Their mutual feelings will surely sustain
a lifetime of bliss.40
It so happens that Li Kung-pi’s deceased wife had left him with a senior maidservant, about thirty years of age, named Yü-tsan, who was given to:
Putting on makeup and applying powder,
and was a past master at mischief making. She did up her hair in two curled knots on either side of her head but covered it with a kerchief, held in place with a gold lamé headband so that it looked like a gentlewoman’s fret, and studded it with brass pins and waxen ornaments that looked like fallen leaves and withered flowers. Her ears were adorned with a pair of muskmelon-shaped pendants. Her body was clad in a skirt and jacket of an off-shade of green and a strange shade of red that revealed glimpses of her undergarments in front and her posterior behind, so that she appeared to others like nothing so much as a rat dressed in lotus leaves. On her feet she wore a pair of cut-velvet moccasins that were:
Oil-stained inside and out,
Mortifying even to Liu Hai,41
Resembling a pair of boats,
Manifesting four apertures,
and as much as a foot and two inches in length. She smeared her face with lead powder so that it displayed:
A spot of white on the east,
A blotch of red on the west,
looking for all the world like the surface of a fresh winter melon. In front of people, she gave vent to:
Simpleminded and officious foolishness,
Putting on airs and assuming attitudes.
Before the young squire took Meng Yü-lou into the household as his wife, she devoted herself every day to boiling his soup and cooking his rice, waiting upon him assiduously.
Though not spoken to, she forced herself to speak,
Though not smiled at, she forced herself to smile;
exhibiting a wealth of feeling. But after he married Meng Yü-lou, and she observed that he slept with her every night, that he was so close to her that they were:
Like glue and like lacquer,
and that he no longer paid any attention to her, this maidservant began to give vent to fits of anger.
One day, when the young squire was in his study reading a book, this Yü-tsan prepared a cup of fine tea, flavored with fruit kernels, brought it to his study on a tray which she held with two hands, and smiled ingratiatingly as she lifted aside the portiere and took it inside to present to him. Who could have anticipated that the young squire, after reading his book for a while, had lain his head down on his desk and fallen asleep.
“Father,” Yü-tsan called out to him, “who else is as fond of you as I am? I have taken the trouble to prepare this cup of fine tea for you, while that new wife of yours is still fast asleep under her bedclothes. Why has she not bothered to get one of her maidservants to bring you a cup of tea?”
On seeing that the young squire was taking a nap, she went up to him and called out again, but he did not respond, whereupon she exclaimed, “You old beggar! You labored so hard on your nocturnal business last night that you wore yourself out, did you? And now, you are dozing and nodding off in broad daylight. You had better get up and drink your tea.”
She managed to wake him up, and when he saw who it was, he blurted out at her, “You crazy uncouth slave! Put the tea down, and get out of here.”
Yü-tsan’s face turned red with humiliation, and she dumped the tea down on the desk in a fit of pique and left the room, saying,
“You wouldn’t know a favor if you saw one.
I went out of my way with the best of intentions to bring you a cup of tea early in the morning, only to be railed at this way. As the saying goes:
An ugly woman is a jewel in the household,42
A lovable one is only a source of trouble.
If I am so ugly, you must have been blind from the beginning, since no one had to persuade you to take me on. That better-looking one is hardly worth as much as my juicy cunt.”
When the young squire heard this, he caught up with her and kicked her twice, as hard as he could, with his leather boot.
On leaving his presence, Yü-tsan put on a long face, as high as the rafters. From that time on, she no longer applied makeup to her face, and no longer boiled tea or prepared meals. She refused to address Meng Yü-lou as mistress but insisted on employing the pronouns you and I with her. When no one else was around, she would park her posterior on Meng Yü-lou’s bed just as if it were her own, but Meng Yü-lou simply ignored her.
She also endeavored, behind Meng Yü-lou’s back, to establish her superiority over Lan-hsiang and Hsiao-luan, saying to them, “You should not address me as sister, but as aunt, since I and your mistress are of roughly equal status in the household.”
She also went on to admonish them, “But only address me that way in private, and not in front of your master. You must do as I tell you every day, and perform your tasks conscientiously. If you refuse to obey my instructions, I’ll put you to work with the coal shovel.”
Later on, after she felt that the young squire had pointedly ignored her several times, she began to get lazy, sleeping until the sun was high in the sky before getting up, and refusing to prepare meals or sweep the floor.
Meng Yü-lou, consequently, instructed Lan-hsiang and Hsiao-luan, saying, “You had better not depend on Yü-tsan any longer. The two of you should go to the kitchen yourselves to prepare the meals and serve them to the master.”
This only had the effect of angering Yü-tsan further, and she proceeded to:
Lose her temper and become abusive,
Throwing plates and saucers around.
She would go into the kitchen and strike Hsiao-luan and curse Lan-hsiang, saying, “You lousy little slave, and you little whore:
Even when using the pestle and millstone
to hull grain and grind it,
One must come first and then the other.43
Was it your mistress who came first, or was it me? Since the three of you have usurped my place, I don’t feel like exerting myself any longer. Formerly, that mistress of mine who has passed away never had the discourtesy to address me by my given name as Yü-tsan; but within a few days after the thre
e of you moved in, you have taken to addressing me by my real name. Do you take me to be no more than a servant of yours, or what? Before the lot of you moved in, Father and I enjoyed the pleasure of:
Sharing the same bed and a single pillow;
and there was seldom a day when we did not sleep until breakfast time before getting up. The two of us were so fond of each other, we were:
Like sugar mixed with honey;44
Like honey stirred with butter.
And there was scarcely anything in the household that did not pass through my hands. But ever since you arrived, you have:
Appropriated my honey jar,
And smashed it to pieces.
As a result, my marriage affinity has been forcibly disrupted, and I have been relegated to sleeping in the parlor on a cold bench, as though I were in a public shelter, and am no longer able to get so much as a taste of that thingamajig of my master’s. I have no way of expressing the resentment this has caused me. Originally, when you were in Hsi-men Ch’ing’s household, you were merely his third concubine and were known by your personal name as Yü-lou, as if I didn’t know all about it. Now that you’re here:
You know it and I know it,
and it would be better for everyone if you were to slack off a bit, instead of behaving officiously, putting on meretricious airs, or:
Summoning this one and calling for that.
Since when was I bought by you, and thus subject to your control?”
She did not realize it, but Meng Yü-lou in her room overheard this tirade and nearly fainted with anger, her face changing color and her hands trembling, but she did not venture to protest, or to tell the young squire about it.
One day, when the weather was hot, it turned out to be one of those occasions on which:
Something is destined to happen.
In the evening, the young squire proposed to have Yü-tsan heat some water in the kitchen and bring a bathtub into the bedroom so he could bathe with Meng Yü-lou.
“Have Lan-hsiang heat the water for us,” objected Meng Yü-lou. “Don’t have her do it.”