“She has been in this house only a few years,” Ximen Qing said, “and she has never harmed anyone, whether of high or low degree. And so sweet is her nature that she has never spoken an unkind word about anyone. I cannot bear to lose her.” He cried, and Yueniang cried with him.
* * *
Li Ping’er asked Yingchun and the nurse to place her so that she faced the wall. Then she said: “What is the time?” The nurse told her:
“The cock has not yet crowed: it is the fourth night watch.”
Yingchun put some new paper beneath her, and they helped her over till she faced the wall. Then they pulled the bedclothes over her. Everybody had been up all night. Old woman Feng and Nun Wang at last went to sleep. Yingchun and Xiuchun put something on the floor and slept there. In less than an hour, Yingchun dreamed that Li Ping’er got out of bed and touched her. “Look after my room,” she said, “I am going now.” Yingchun woke up with a start. The lamp was still burning on the table. She looked at the bed. Li Ping’er was there, facing the wall, but, when Yingchun put her hand over her mistress’s mouth, she could feel no breath. She could not say when her lady had died.
So this beautiful and charming lady became a dream of the Spring.
Yingchun quickly woke the others. They saw that Li Ping’er was dead. She was lying in a pool of blood. They were greatly excited and ran to the inner court to tell Ximen Qing. He and Yueniang hurried to the room as fast as they could. They lifted the bedclothes. The Sixth Lady’s face had not changed and there was still a little warmth in her body. There was a red stomacher about her. Ximen Qing did not trouble about the blood. He gathered her in his arms and kissed her.
“Oh, my ill-fated sister, my dear sweet sister! How could you leave me like this? I will die too. I know I have not long to live.” He cried and threw himself into the air in his grief. Wu Yueniang cried; Li Jiao’er, Meng Yulou, Pan Jinlian, and Sun Xue’e, and the household, maids and nurse and all cried, so that the sound of their crying shook the earth.
“We did not know when she was going to die,” Yueniang said, “so we never dressed her properly.”
“Her body is warm,” Yulou said, “I think she must have just gone. We must wait no longer but dress her now, while her body is limp.”
Ximen Qing still held Li Ping’er in his arms. “Heaven wills my death,” he was crying. “You have been in this house three years and not a single day’s real pleasure have you had. It is all my fault.”
This made Yueniang a little impatient with him. “Cry if you will, but put her down,” she said. “You must not cry face to face with her like that. If the foul air from her mouth comes to you, it will make you ill. And what do you mean by saying that she never had a single happy day? If she did not, who did? We ourselves cannot decide how long we shall live. We shall all have to go the same way.” She bade Yulou and Li Jiao’er take the key and get some clothes so that they might dress her. She told Jinlian to help dress her hair.
“Get the clothes she used to like best,” Ximen Qing said.
Yueniang said to Li Jiao’er and Yulou: “Get that new scarlet silk gown, and the satin skirt of willow yellow, the clove-colored silk dress and the light blue skirt she used to wear when she went to visit Mistress Qiao, and the dresses that were made for her lately.”
Yingchun took a light and Yulou the key, and they went to the room and opened a chest. After searching a long time, they found the three dresses, a purple silk vest, a white silk underskirt and a scarlet undergarment, with white silk socks and a pair of drawers. Li Jiao’er carried them to Yueniang who, with Jinlian, was dressing the dead woman’s hair. They used four gold pins to keep in place a green kerchief.
“What kind of shoes must she have?” Li Jiao’er asked.
“She used to like that scarlet pair with high heels,” Jinlian said. “She did not wear them more than twice. Let us have those.”
“No,” said Yueniang, “I will not have red shoes put on her. It would look as though we wished her to jump into the fire of Hell. Bring the violet shoes with high heels that she wore when she went to her sister-in-law’s place.” Li Jiao’er told Yingchun to bring those shoes. They all worked together dressing Li Ping’er.
Meanwhile, Ximen Qing sent the boys to the great hall. They took down the pictures and covered the screens. They got a large piece of board and carried it to the hall, then put a silken coverlet on the board and a paper cover over that. Then they prepared a table for incense and a lamp to be kept lighted continually. Ximen Qing appointed two boys to be with the body all the time, one to beat the gong, the other to keep paper offerings burning. Then he sent Daian for Xu, the Master of the Yin Yang.
Yueniang took all the clothes that were to go with the dead woman into the coffin, and locked up the rooms that had belonged to her. Only the bedroom was left unlocked. The maids and the nurse were placed in charge of it.
When old woman Feng saw that her mistress was dead, tears rolled down her nose like a river. Nun Wang muttered texts for the soul of Li Ping’er. There was the Duoxinjing, the Yaoshijing, the Jieyuanjing, the Lengyanjing and incantations to invoke the compassion of the Blessed One, that he might receive the dead lady’s soul and set her on the right way in the realm of the dead.
In the great hall, Ximen Qing was beating his breast. He cried so much that he had no voice left, saying: “My kind, sweet sister!” It was nearly dawn.
Then the Master of the Yin Yang came. “I am sorry to hear of your lady’s death,” he said. “At what hour did she die?”
“We cannot say exactly,” Ximen Qing told him. “I only know that she went to sleep about the beginning of the fourth night watch. Everybody was tired. There was no one awake when she died.”
“It does not matter,” the Master of the Yin Yang said. He asked a servant to give him a light. Then he lifted the paper coverlet. The fingers of Li Ping’er indicated the hour of the Ox.* “She died,” he said, “two degrees after the fifth night watch. We may say that she died at the hour of the Ox.” Ximen called for ink and brushes and asked Master Xu to write the certificate. Xu asked for the dead lady’s name and her eight characters. Then he wrote:
The deceased lady Li, the wife of Ximen, was born at noon on the fifteenth day of the first month in the year Xinwei of the reign Yuanyu, and died at midnight on the seventeenth day of the ninth month in the year Dingyu of the reign Zhenghe. This was a Bingzi day, and the order of the month Wuzu, Her spirit is ten feet high. It will be useless to wail for her until the mourning dress has been worn. And, when she is put into her coffin, none should be present whose animal is the Dragon, the Tiger, the Cock, or the Snake, unless he is a kinsman.
Yueniang told Daian to ask Master Xu to look into his black book and tell them the destiny of Li Ping’er. The Master of the Yin Yang opened his secret book and said: “This was the hour of the Ox on a Bingzi day. If the departed goes to Heaven, she will go to the Palace of the Precious Vase, but if to the world again, then to the land of Qi. In a former existence she was born as a man named Wang in Binzhou. As this man she killed a ewe with child, and, for that reason, her animal was the sheep. Though she married a rich man, she suffered much from illness and the backbitings of others. Her child lived for a very short time, and she has died from a combination of disease and anger. Nine days ago her soul went to a family named Yuan in Kaifengfu to be reborn as a girl. There she will suffer poverty, but, when she is twenty years old, she will marry a rich man, much older than herself. She will have an easy life and die when she is forty-two, again as the result of anger.” He ended his reading of the black book. The ladies all sighed.
Yueniang inquired what would be a suitable day for the funeral. Xu asked how long they wished to keep the body at the house.
“I cannot let her go yet,” Ximen Qing said, crying. “She must not be buried for thirty-five days, at least.”
“If you keep her thirty-five days,” Xu said, “there will be no day suitable. But after twenty-eight days there is one. I suggest that y
ou have her grave dug about noon on the eighth day of the tenth month and bury her on the twelfth, about the hour of two. Both those days are suitable from every point of view.”
“Very well,” Ximen said, “we will have the funeral on the twelfth day of the tenth month.”
The Master of the Yin Yang wrote out his certificate and placed it on the dead woman’s body. Then he said to Ximen Qing: “About the hour of the Dragon† on the nineteenth, we will put her in her coffin. Please have everything ready.” Then he went away. It was now broad daylight.
Ximen Qing told Qitong to get a horse and ride to tell Uncle Hua. Then he sent servants in all directions to give the news to his relatives, and a man to the office to ask for leave of absence. He sent Daian to Lion Street for twenty rolls of thin white cloth and thirty rolls of coarser material. He told Tailor Zhao to bring a number of assistant tailors and set to work in the rooms beside the hall to make hangings and curtains and tablecloths for the funeral, skirts and gowns for all the ladies, and a long gown of white cloth for every servant. He gave Ben the Fourth a hundred taels of silver and sent him to buy thirty rolls of linen and two hundred rolls of yellow funeral silk. He sent for the arbor builders to make a great arbor in the courtyard.
Ximen never ceased thinking of Li Ping’er, her appearance and her actions. Suddenly he thought of having a portrait of her painted. He summoned Laibao and said to him: “Where can we find a good artist to paint her portrait?”
Laibao said: “Once a man named Han painted some screens for us. He used to be employed in the Imperial Household. He was dismissed but he paints excellent portraits.”
“If you know where he lives,” Ximen said, “bring him here at once.” Laibao went away.
Ximen Qing had not slept all night. What with his grief and what with the strain he had had, he became very irritable about the fifth night watch. He cursed the maids and kicked the boys. Still he remained in the great hall watching his wife’s body. From time to time he sobbed aloud. Daian was there too, and he cried bitterly. Yueniang, Li Jiao’er, Yulou, and Jinlian busied themselves distributing mourning to the maids and serving women behind the curtain. They could hear Ximen Qing still crying though he had no voice left. They asked him if he would take some tea, but he would not answer.
“She is dead,” Yueniang said to him, “and you will not bring her back to life by crying. You have not slept properly for several nights; you have not combed your hair or washed your face. This morning you have worked very hard and have had nothing at all to eat. It would be more than anybody could stand even if he were made of iron. Go and do your hair, and have something to eat. We will attend to things. You are not very strong, and if you have to take to your bed, I don’t know what we shall do.”
“He has not dressed his hair or washed his face,” Yulou said.
“A moment ago,” Yueniang told her, “I sent a boy to ask him to do so, but he kicked the boy out, and I dare not ask him again.”
Then Jinlian spoke. “You may not know it, but a short time ago, I spoke to him quite kindly. I said, ‘If you cry like this, you will lose your flesh and your bones too. You must eat something. You can see about things afterwards.’ He opened his red eyes wide and called me a swine of a woman. I won’t bother about him any more. The unreasonable fellow! There’s nothing swinish about me. And he always talks about others upsetting him!”
“She died so suddenly that he is naturally rather upset,” Yueniang said, “but he should keep the sorrow in his heart and not make such a fuss about it. You saw, dead though she was, he didn’t care. He kissed her and cried so loud. Really, it is not good breeding. She had been here for three years, he said, and had never had a single day’s happiness. I have no recollection of her ever having had to draw water or do any other hard work day by day.”
“He loved her more than any of us,” Yulou said, “but he was right. Such a woman as our Sixth Sister was!”
As they were talking, Chen Jingji came with nine rolls of white silk. “This silk,” he said, “Father tells me, is for kerchiefs and skirts.”
“Ask your father to come and have some food,” Yueniang said to him as she took the silk. “He has had nothing to eat.”
“I dare not,” Jingji said. “When a boy went to ask him, he nearly killed him. I dare not go near him.”
“If you won’t go, I shall have to send somebody else.”
After a while she called Daian and said to him: “Your father has not had anything to eat, and he has been crying so long. Take him some food. Master Wen is there now; try and get your father to have something to eat with him.”
“We have been for Uncle Ying and Uncle Xie,” the boy said. “As soon as they come, we will take some food in. They need only say a word or two, and I promise you, Father will eat something.”
“You cunning young rogue,” Yueniang said. “You are the worm in your father’s stomach. It looks as though we poor old women are not as good as you are. How do you know he will eat when they come?”
“You don’t realize, Mother, what good friends they are with Father. Whenever he gives a party, no matter who else is there, they are sure to be invited. If Father has three qian worth of food to eat, so have they; if he has only two qian worth, they have it just the same. However bad a temper he may be in, they have only to speak a few words, and he is laughing and smiling again.”
Qitong brought Ying Bojue and Xie Xida. They went in, knelt down before the body, and wept for a long time. They bewailed their kind sister-in-law. Jinlian said: “The rascally oily-mouthed rogues! So we are not kind!” Then they stood up. Ximen Qing made a reverence to them and they cried again.
“How unhappy you must be, Brother,” they said. They were asked to go to a room in the wing. There they greeted Master Wen and sat down.
“When did my sister-in-law die?” Bojue asked.
“It was sometime about the hour of the Ox,” Ximen told them.
“It was after the fourth night watch when I got home,” Bojue said. “My wife asked after her, and I said: ‘By Heaven’s will, the poor lady is at the point of death.’ As soon as I went to sleep, I dreamed a dream. I dreamed you sent a boy to fetch me. He said you were giving a feast in your house to celebrate your promotion. I came at once. You were wearing scarlet robes. You took two jade pins from your sleeve and showed them to me. ‘One is broken,’ you said. I looked at them for a long time and then I said: ‘It is a pity the broken one is made of jade, while the other is only crystal.’ But you said: ‘No, they are both made of jade.’ I woke up feeling that the dream boded no good. My wife saw me sucking my lips and asked me whom I thought I was talking to. I said: ‘You don’t understand. Wait, and, when the dawn comes, I’ll tell you.’ Then the day broke, and I saw your boy coming dressed in white. It was a shock, but here you are wearing mourning dress.”
“I too had a dream,” Ximen Qing said, “it was rather like yours. I dreamed that my kinsman Zhai of the Eastern Capital sent me six pins. One of them was broken, and I said: ‘What a pity!’ Then I woke up. I was just telling my wife about the dream when she in the front court died. What an unkind Heaven to bring such a calamity upon me. I would rather have died myself. I only lost sight of her for a moment, and at that moment she died. Even in years to come, how shall I think of her without my heart breaking? I have never wronged anyone, why should Heaven snatch my loved ones from me? First my child is taken, now she lies here, dead. What have I to live for in this world? Even if my money reached to the North Star, what use is it to me?”
“Brother,” Bojue said, “it is no use talking like this. You and she were such a perfect couple that, of course, you cannot help feeling miserable now that she has died so suddenly. But you have a fine home; you have an official appointment, and you have a houseful of people dependent upon you. If anything should happen to you, what would become of them? Remember the old saying: If one lives, three live; but if one dies, three die. Brother, you are an intelligent man and I do not need to tell you this. If you
loved your wife dearly and you wish to do justice to that love, send for the Buddhist and the Daoist priests to read their dirges, and give her a splendid funeral. Then you will be easy in your mind because you will know that you have done well by my sister-in-law. I don’t believe that there is anything else you can usefully do. You must see this, Brother.”
Then Ximen Qing realized the situation and stopped crying. The servants brought tea and they drank it. Ximen told Daian to go to the inner court. “Bring some food,” he said, “and I will eat it with your uncles and Master Wen.”
“Haven’t you had anything to eat yet?” Bojue asked.
“I have been busy all the time since you went away, and I haven’t had a bite of anything.”
“It was foolish of you,” Bojue said. The proverb says: ‘It is better to lose money than to be starved.’ The dead are dead; the living must go on living. You must think of yourself.”
Footnotes
* Between 1 and 3 a.m.
† 8 a.m.
CHAPTER 63
The Sixth Lady’s Funeral
His loved one is gone
Darkly, darkly.
He thinks of her so far away
Bitterly, bitterly.
The realms of light and darkness are ten thousand miles apart
Each has its own sun, its own moon.
He seems to see her in the play
But the day is late.
So long have they been parted, he cannot tell
Whether his dream is true
When he dreams of her.
Ximen Qing dried his tears and sent a boy to the inner court to ask for food. The two brothers Wu came. They made obeisance before the body, then greeted Ximen Qing, and expressed their sympathy. Ximen took them to the room in the wing, and they sat down with the others.
Daian, when he came to the inner court, said to Wu Yueniang: “Mother, you ladies would not believe me. Now that Uncle Ying has come, a few words from him have made Father ask for something to eat.”
The Golden Lotus, Volume 2 Page 17