The Crab-Flower Club

by Cao Xueqin

  ‘Bao-yu gave me a message for you just now. He said that though he saw you briefly when he arrived, with so many other people around, he didn’t have a chance of talking to you properly. He’s most anxious that you should stay on so that he can talk to you afterwards. If you are really set on going, wait while I call him out and you can have a word with him now. What you do after that is your own affair: I certainly shan’t try to detain you.’ He called a waiter to him: ‘Look inside and get hold of one of the old women. Tell her to have a quiet word with Master Bao to say that he’s wanted here outside.’

  After about the time it would take to drink a cup of tea in, Bao-yu appeared.

  ‘Here you are, Uncle Bao!’ said Lai Shang-rong when he had joined them. ‘I leave Xiang-lian in your hands. I’ve got to go and look after my guests now.’

  With that he left them.

  Taking Xiang-lian by the hand, Bao-yu led him into a study at the side of the hall where they sat down together.

  ‘Have you visited Qin Zhong’s grave recently?’ said Bao-yu.

  ‘Certainly I have,’ said Xiang-lian. ‘The other day I was out hawking with a few of the others and happened to notice that we were only half a mile or so away from it. It occurred to me that it might not have stood up to all that heavy rain we had in the summer, so I left the others and went off to have a look. As a matter of fact it had been washed away a bit; so the day after I got back I scraped a few hundred cash together, went back first thing next morning, hired a couple of labourers, and got it patched up again.’

  ‘That explains it,’ said Bao-yu. ‘Last month, when the pods were beginning to form on the lotuses in Prospect Garden, I picked ten of them and sent Tealeaf to offer them at his grave. When he got back, I asked him if the rains had damaged it at all, and he told me that not only had it not been damaged, but that it was in even better condition than it had been the time before. I knew from that that some friend must have been there recently and restored it. I wish I weren’t so cooped up all the time at home. I can never do anything I want to by myself. The slightest move I make is sure to be seen and reported, and either I’m physically prevented from going where I want to or else lectured at until I promise not to go. It’s useless for me ever to say that I’m going to do anything, because I know that I shan’t be allowed to. I can’t even spend my own money in the way I want.’

  ‘This thing at least is something you don’t need to worry about,’ said Xiang-lian, ‘with me outside to look after it for you. Anyway, it’s the thought that counts. It’s enough to know that you would do it yourself if you could. I’ve already put aside the money for his anniversary on the first of next month. You know how broke I always am. I never have any savings because as soon as I’ve got any money I spend it all. Well, this time I thought I’d better not take any chances, so I put some by well in advance, so as not to have to stretch my hands out helplessly when the time comes.’

  ‘I was going to send Tealeaf round to see you about that,’ said Bao-yu, ‘but you never seem to be at home; and you’re such a rolling stone that no one ever knows where to look for you.’

  ‘Don’t bother to try,’ said Xiang-lian. ‘This is a matter in which each of us does what he can. Anyway, I shall be going away quite soon. It will probably be three or four years before I come back again.’

  ‘Why?’ said Bao-yu in some agitation.

  ‘That’s something you’ll know soon enough when the time comes. I must be going now.’

  ‘Must you?’ said Bao-yu. ‘I so seldom get a chance of seeing you. Can’t we leave together in the evening?’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s that cousin of yours,’ said Xiang-lian. ‘The usual problem. If I stay any longer, there’s sure to be some kind of trouble. I’d much better go now and avoid it.’

  Bao-yu reflected for some moments.

  ‘Yes, I suppose in that case you’d better. Only, if you really and truly are going away for a long time, do please let me know before you start. Please don’t just slip away without telling me.’

  His eyes brimmed over with tears.

  ‘Of course I’ll come and say good-bye to you,’ said Xiang-lian. ‘As long as you promise not to tell anyone.’ He stood up to go. ‘You go in again now. Don’t try to see me out.’

  He left the study and made his way to the main gate: but there, unfortunately, was the very person he was trying to avoid.

  ‘Who’s let my little Liu get away?’ Xue Pan bawled.

  Xiang-lian’s eyes flashed angrily. In other circumstances he would have laid him out there and then with a single blow of his fist; but reflecting that to do so now would be interpreted by the others as drunken brawling and would moreover be embarrassing to his host, he restrained himself with some effort.

  Xue Pan, in whose besotted eyes he appeared as a coveted treasure that was moving at last within his grasp, lurched towards him, smiling happily, and gripped him firmly by the arm.

  ‘Where are you off to, little pal?’

  ‘Just going out for a stroll,’ said Xiang-lian. ‘I’ll be back again directly.’

  ‘It won’t be any more fun here without you,’ said Xue Pan. ‘Do stay a bit longer – just to show me that you care for me, eh? If it’s business that’s taking you away, don’t worry, leave it to me! I don’t care how important it is – whether it’s a career you’re after or making a pile – with me for a pal you’ll have no more to worry about!’

  Angered and revolted by his odious intimacy, Xiang-lian quickly thought of a plan for disposing of him. Drawing him aside to a spot where they could not be overheard, he pretended to question his sincerity.

  ‘Are you really so fond of me, or are you just pretending?’

  Xue Pan was almost beside himself. His eyes became tiny slits of pleasure:

  ‘How can you ask such a question, my dear? Pretending? May I die this instant if I am!’

  ‘Good. This place here is not convenient. We’d better go in again now and sit with the others for a bit. Then I’ll leave, and you can leave a bit after me and follow me back to my place. We’ll make a night of it. I’ve got a couple of very nice little boys there who’ve never been “out” before; so you needn’t bring anyone with you: all the service we’ll need is there already.’

  Xue Pan was by now so delighted that his drunkenness had already half left him.

  ‘Do you mean this?’

  ‘What a person!’ said Xiang-lian. ‘One opens one’s heart to you and you don’t trust them.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ said Xue Pan hurriedly. ‘I trust you. I’m no fool. There’s only one thing, though: I don’t know where you live. If you leave before I do, where am I to look for you?’

  ‘My place is outside the North Gate,’ said Xiang-lian. ‘Do you think you can tear yourself from home and spend a whole night outside the city?’

  ‘What do I need a home for if I’ve got you?’ said Xue Pan.

  ‘All right,’ said Xiang-lian. ‘I’ll wait for you on the bridge then, outside the North Gate. We’d better get back to the party now. Don’t forget: wait a bit after I’ve gone before going yourself; then no one should suspect anything.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Xue Pan, ‘yes.’

  The two of them then went in again and resumed their places. Xue Pan found waiting difficult and kept his eyes constantly on Xiang-lian, watching for him to go. At the same time he began, in joyous anticipation of the pleasures in store, to drink with greater and greater abandon, not waiting for the wine to be offered, but stretching out rudely to left and right of him and plying himself from the wine-kettles of his neighbours. Soon he was very drunk indeed.

  Xiang-lian now rose to go and succeeded in slipping out of the main gate unobserved. First he gave an order to his page Almond, who was waiting there:

  ‘You go home now. I have some business outside the city to attend to. I’ll be back later.’

  Then he vaulted into the saddle and rode off until he came to the North Gate of the city. Passing through, he rode on till
he came to the bridge, where he halted and took up his station to wait for Xue Pan’s arrival.

  After the time it would take to eat a meal, he caught sight of Xue Pan hurrying along in the distance. His mouth was open, his eyes were staring, and his head turned from side to side as he looked anxiously about him, for all the world like one of those little clapper-drums that children twirl upon a stick. So intent was he on scanning the remoter parts of the landscape that he failed to take note of what was nearer at hand and rode right past Xiang-lian without seeing him. Xiang-lian, who for all his loathing could not but laugh at this, gave his horse rein and followed after. Presently Xue Pan began to notice that he was getting into the open country and brought his horse round about. As he did so, he found himself almost face to face with Xiang-lian.

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t fail me,’ he cried delightedly.

  Xiang-lian smiled back.

  ‘Let’s go on a bit further – just in case anyone is tracking us.’

  He trotted on ahead and Xue Pan followed, keeping as close to him as he could. Presently, having satisfied himself that the country ahead was quite deserted, Xiang-lian dismounted near the edge of a reed-filled dyke and tied his horse up to a tree.

  ‘You get down too,’ he called pleasantly to Xue Pan. ‘Let’s first swear an oath that if either of us is unfaithful to the other or betrays our secret to anyone, it shall happen to him as the oath shall say.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Xue Pan. ‘Good idea!’

  He dismounted eagerly, tied his horse to another tree, and straightway knelt down and began his oath:

  ‘If ever, in the days to come, I prove unfaithful or betray this secret to another, may Heaven and Earth destroy –’

  He got no further. At that point there was a great thump! and the sensation of being hit on the back of the neck by an object like a large iron hammer. Everything became suddenly black, except that the darkness was filled with a confusion of flying stars, and he collapsed forwards helplessly upon the ground.

  Xiang-lian stepped up and surveyed him from above. Someone not used to taking punishment, he concluded. It would be unwise to use too much force on him. Turning him over, he performed, with a few deft flicks over Xue Pan’s face, the operation which is described in the profession as ‘opening up the fruitshop.’

  At first Xue Pan struggled to get up, but Xiang-lian lashed out with his foot and sent him sprawling once more upon his back.

  ‘You were willing, just as much as I was,’ Xue Pan muttered plaintively. ‘You had only to say so if you weren’t. Why fool me into coming out here with you and then beat me up?’

  He began cursing him obscenely.

  ‘You blind iniquity!’ said Liu Xiang-lian. ‘You don’t know who you’re dealing with. You should be begging for mercy right now, not swearing at me. You’re not worth killing, though. I’ll just give you a little lesson.’

  He picked up his horsewhip and turning Xue Pan on his face once more, proceeded to deal him thirty or forty cuts along the length of his body, from his shoulders down to his calves. Xue Pan was by now half sober, and finding the pain unbearable, began to roar.

  ‘Look at you!’ said Xiang-lian contemptuously. ‘I should have thought you could take your medicine a bit better than that.’

  He took him by the left leg and dragged him a few steps to where the reeds began, in the stagnant ooze of the dyke, so that he was coated from head to foot with the liquid mud.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘do you know who I am?’

  As Xue Pan merely lay in the mud whimpering and made no reply, he threw away his whip and gave him a few thumps with his fist. Xue Pan rolled about and bellowed:

  ‘You’ve broken my ribs. I know you’re straight. It was the others who told me you weren’t. I shouldn’t have listened to them.’

  ‘Leave the others out of this,’ said Xiang-lian. ‘I’m talking about now.’

  ‘Now?’ said Xue Pan. ‘Now I know you’re straight. I know I was wrong. What more can I say?’

  ‘You’ll have to talk a bit prettier than that before I’ve finished with you,’ said Xiang-lian.

  ‘Old pal –’ Xue Pan began, whimpering.

  Xiang-lian dealt him another thump with his fist.

  ‘Ow! Old chap –’

  Two thumps this time.

  ‘Ow! Ow! Sir, then. Please sir, forgive me for being so blind. From now on I shall honour you and fear you.’

  ‘Now drink some of this water,’ said Xiang-lian.

  Xue Pan knitted his brows with disgust:

  ‘But this water is really filthy. I couldn’t get it down.’

  Xiang-lian raised his fist threateningly.

  ‘I’ll drink,’ said Xue Pan hurriedly. ‘I’ll drink.’

  He bent down and drank a mouthful of the water at the base of the reeds; but before he could swallow it, there was a great retching noise and he vomited up all that he had recently eaten and drunk.

  ‘Filthy pig!’ said Xiang-lian. ‘Now eat that up and I’ll let you off.’

  Xue Pan began kotowing to him.

  ‘Please, for your soul’s sake, earn a bit of merit: don’t try to make me do that! I couldn’t do that if you killed me.’

  ‘This stench is poisoning me,’ said Xiang-lian; and leaving Xue Pan, he unfastened his horse, led it off a few paces, vaulted into the saddle, and galloped away.

  Observing with relief that Xiang-lian had really gone, Xue Pan, cursing his folly for having been so egregiously mistaken in his man, attempted to struggle to his feet; but every part of him was hurting so much that it was impossible for him to rise.

  Meanwhile, back at the party, Cousin Zhen and the others, suddenly noticing that the two of them were missing, sought them for a while without success. Someone did say that they thought they might have gone out of the North Gate; but Xue Pan had told his pages not to follow him, and they were all in such dread of their master that none of them dared go out there to look. In the end Cousin Zhen became so uneasy that he sent Jia Rong with some of the boys to track them down.

  Their trail led them through the North Gate and about two thirds of a mile along the road which crosses the bridge outside it. There, suddenly, they caught sight of Xue Pan’s horse, tied up to one of the trees at the side of a reed-filled dyke.

  ‘Good!’ they said. ‘Where the horse is, the rider must be.’ And all of them went over to where the horse was standing.

  As they did so, they heard someone groaning among the rushes; and there, when they went to look, was Xue Pan, his clothes torn, his face cut and swollen almost beyond recognition, and so besmirched with mud from head to foot that he had more the appearance of an old wallowing sow than of a human being.

  Jia Rong had little difficulty in guessing what had happened. Slipping from his horse, he ordered the servants to help Xue Pan to his feet.

  ‘Tireless in the pursuit of love, Uncle!’ he said cheerfully, while they struggled to do his bidding. ‘This time it’s led you into the reeds of the marshes. I suppose the Dragon King must have taken a fancy to you and carried you off to be his son-in-law. To judge from appearances, I should say that you must have got caught up on his horn!’

  Xue Pan wished that the earth would open and swallow up his shame.

  As there was clearly no question of getting him onto his horse, Jia Rong told one of the boys to hurry back to the street outside the North Gate and hire a carrying chair. When Xue Pan had been helped into this, they had him carried into the city, themselves accompanying him on horseback. Jia Rong mischievously proposed that they should take him back to the Lais’ house to rejoin the party: but Xue Pan entreated so piteously and begged him so earnestly not to tell anyone of his plight, that Jia Rong relented and allowed him to go back home alone.

  Jia Rong himself returned to the party to report back to his father. From his account of the state Xue Pan had been in when they found him Cousin Zhen deduced that he must have been beaten up by Liu Xiang-lian but appeared remarkably unconcerned, for he merely
laughed and observed that ‘he could do with the lesson’. It is true that he went to inquire after him in the evening, when he got back home from the party; but Xue Pan was by that time nursing his injuries in bed and declined to see him on the grounds that he was feeling too ill.

  When Grandmother Jia and her party had got back to their several apartments, Aunt Xue and Bao-chai found Caltrop with her eyes all swollen from weeping. On discovering the cause, they rushed in to look at Xue Pan. Fortunately he appeared to have no bones broken, but his face and body had taken a terrible battering. Torn between maternal anguish at his plight and anger at the folly which had occasioned it, Aunt Xue inveighed against Xue Pan and Xiang-lian by turns. She wanted to tell Lady Wang and get her to have Xiang-lian arrested, but was dissuaded from doing so by Bao-chai.

  ‘It’s not important enough for that, Mamma. The two of them had been drinking and fell out over their cups, that’s all there was to it. Whenever that happens, it’s always the drunker of the two who gets the worst of it. Besides, everyone knows what a lawless, ungovernable creature Pan is. It’s only because you’re his mother that you feel differently. If it’s satisfaction you want, that can easily be arranged. Just wait a few days until Pan is better and can get about again. I’m sure Mr Zhen and Mr Lian and the other menfolk will be unwilling to pass over this in silence. Probably they will get up a little party and ask this person to it and make him apologize to Pan in front of everyone and admit that he was to blame. But if you insist on making an issue of it now and telling Aunt about it, you will make it appear that you are so blind to Pan’s faults that you allow him to go around provoking other people, but that as soon as someone stands up to him, you fly up in arms and use our relations’ influence to oppress them.’