The Red Chamber

by Pauline A. Chen

  Daiyu jerks her hand away. “My father would never have gotten a concubine.”

  “Maybe he’ll get one now.”

  Daiyu is jolted from her shyness by anger. “My father has no intention of remarrying. He loved my mother—”

  Lady Jia gives a bark of laughter. “That shows how much you know about men.”

  Xifeng intervenes swiftly, taking Daiyu’s hand with a smile. “Why don’t we introduce you to everyone?”

  Baochai comes up to make her bow, followed by the other two girls on the kang. “We call these two the ‘Two Springs,’ ” Xifeng says. Even though their gowns are of different colors, the cut and design of their clothes, and the jewelry and ornaments they wear, are nearly identical. The elder, who is tall with sloping shoulders and a pretty oval face, looks to be about Daiyu’s age. The younger one, who had criticized the cape, is shorter and plumper, with an upturned nose like a kitten’s.

  The older girl, who closely resembles the boy in the “peacock gold” cape, smiles at Daiyu. “I’m Tanchun, ‘Exploring Spring.’ ” She points at the other girl. “She’s Xichun, ‘Cherishing Spring.’ ”

  “They were named for our great-aunt Her Highness the Imperial Concubine,” Baochai explains. “Her name was Yuanchun, because she was born on the first day of spring.”

  And now the boy who was trying on the cloak comes up. He cannot be anyone but Baoyu. He is so handsome that all the light in the room seems to shine on him. Low over his brow he wears a gold headband shaped like two dragons playing with a large pearl. He is dressed in a jacket of slate-blue silk with tasseled borders and medallions down the front, over a pair of ivy-colored embroidered trousers. He does not kowtow, but looks at her as if he and she are the only two people in the world.

  “Haven’t I met you before?” he says. She expects him to be arrogant, but the tone in which he addresses her is gentle, almost courtly.

  “No, I’ve lived in the south for my whole life.” Although she has almost never spoken to a boy her own age before, she does not feel shy with him.

  “That’s odd. I feel as if I’ve seen you before. What are the characters in your name?”

  “The ‘yu’ is jade, like in your name, and the ‘Dai’ is the kohl that women use to darken their eyebrows.”

  She senses him staring at her long, straight eyebrows, without the hint of an arch, something that the neighborhood children back in Suzhou teased her about.

  He laughs. “It suits you. Do you have a nickname?”

  She shakes her head.

  “Then I’ve got one for you: Pinpin.” It is a diminutive form of the word for “frown.” Baoyu continues teasingly, “Your given name refers to a kohl that women put on their brows. And your own brows are puckered together in a little frown. It’s a perfect name.”

  She feels her cheeks start to redden, half in embarrassment, half in annoyance.

  “It’s the first time you’ve met and already you’re giving her a nickname,” Baochai murmurs. “Don’t you think you’re being a little too familiar?”

  “Baoyu, where are your manners?” Uncle Zheng says, but the boy ignores him.

  “Can you read?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you mean girls’ reading, like The Classic for Women,” he speaks scornfully, “or real books?”

  She draws herself up. “I’ve read the Four Books. That is, I’ve read Confucius, and Mencius, and the Great Learning, but I’m still in the middle of the Doctrine of the Mean. My father taught me himself.”

  “What poets do you like?”

  Daiyu hears Lady Jia click her tongue disapprovingly. “Isn’t it enough that girls receive a basic education, enough for them to be able to run the household? It’s a waste of time for them to be educated like men.”

  Ignoring her grandmother, Daiyu says, “I like Li Qingzhao’s song lyrics. I used to like Li Shangyin when I was younger, but now I find him rather vulgar—”

  “Li Shangyin?” Baoyu interrupts her. “But most people consider his poems very difficult. They’re filled with references to lots of obscure ancient texts. Are you sure you understand them?”

  “What do you know about ancient texts, Baoyu?” Jia Zheng interrupts dryly.

  “I read what interests me,” Baoyu replies. Now it was time for his cheeks to redden.

  “Let’s see how far that gets you on the Civil Service Exams.” Uncle Zheng sets down his cup of tea. “I was under the impression that before I left we agreed you wouldn’t miss any school while I was gone. Yet I find you quite at your leisure.”

  “I said he could stay home to meet his cousin,” Granny Jia puts in. “Besides, he wasn’t feeling well these last few days.”

  “Well, Baoyu, are you fully recovered now?” Uncle Zheng’s tone is sardonic. “Would it be reasonable to expect you to go back to school tomorrow?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And if I speak to the schoolmaster in a few months and find that you haven’t made any progress, I’ll beat you. Actually, I feel I owe him an apology for sending him such a hopeless case.”

  “How can you talk like that?” Lady Jia says. “Baoyu is exceptionally talented.”

  “Is he? I have yet to see evidence of any extraordinary talents, except for laziness and obstinacy.”

  “I don’t understand you, Zheng,” Lady Jia says. “So eager to put down your own son. It’s almost as if you were jealous.”

  “Jealous! What could I possibly be jealous of?” Uncle Zheng’s incredulity strikes Daiyu’s ears as overdone. She remembers her mother’s words: Uncle Zheng had been jealous of her as well.

  “I’m sure I don’t know, but I seem to recall the schoolmaster beating you for not learning your lessons when you were Baoyu’s age.”

  Her uncle’s face flushes with anger.

  Once again, Xifeng is swift to intervene. “Surely our cousin is tired after her long journey.” She pats Daiyu’s hand fondly. “Why don’t I take her to wash up so we can all have dinner?”

  The dinner is as extravagant as Daiyu could have imagined. A procession of maids brings an endless supply of dishes, while others stand at attention holding fly whisks and napkins. Often she cannot tell what she is eating. Even ordinary ingredients are prepared in elaborate, unfamiliar ways, like the eggplant, which seems to have been cut into thread-fine strips, before being fried and smothered in a sauce with minced chicken. She is unused to such rich food, and would have liked to fill up on rice, but even the rice is of an exotic sort, lacking the comforting blandness she craves, the grains such a dark purple that they are almost black. She tastes and nibbles, hoping no one will notice how little she eats.

  Two new young men are present at dinner. The older one introduces himself as her Cousin Lian before taking his seat. He is good-looking, somewhat more thickset than Baoyu, and carries himself with an easygoing air. The other one, a skinny boy about her own age, sidles in as if he half expects to be thrown out. He does not say a word but stares fixedly at her from his seat on the other side of the long table. She hears the others call him “Huan.” She herself is seated between Tanchun and Xichun, across from Baoyu and Baochai. Uncle Zheng and Lady Jia sit at the head of the table.

  Uncle Zheng is telling his mother about the flooding on the Jia estates he had visited during his trip south. “The damage was worse than I expected. They say the water reached all the way to Hankou.”

  He proceeds to describe the necessary repairs, but Lady Jia hardly looks up from her dinner. Daiyu is surprised by the greedy way she attacks a drumstick of roast duck.

  Xifeng, as the xifu, or daughter-in-law, does not eat with the others, supervising the serving of the meal from behind Lady Jia. “That piece looks tough for you, Granny.” She chooses a breast piece, cutting the meat off the bone.

  Around Daiyu, Baochai and the Two Springs chatter about how they have spent the afternoon copying sutras.

  “Ow,” Tanchun says. “My hand is so sore that I couldn’t write another word.”


  Baochai turns to Daiyu. “Granny wanted us to do it so the family would accumulate merit,” she explains.

  “I liked copying the sutras,” Xichun says, her small face serious. “I never understood them so well before. Have you read any sutras, Cousin Daiyu?”

  “Only the Heart Sutra,” Daiyu says, pleased to be included in the conversation.

  On the other side of the table, Jia Lian asks Baoyu, “What are you doing tonight?”

  Baoyu sighs. “I suppose I have to go to the Prince of Beijing’s birthday party. I’d rather stay home and spend time with our cousin.”

  “What is the Prince doing for his birthday?”

  “The usual. An opera troupe, some singing girls.”

  “Watch out that Uncle doesn’t get angry,” Lian warns him, shooting a glance up the table towards Jia Zheng.

  Baoyu shrugs. “He can’t expect me to stay home and study every night. It would offend the Prince if I didn’t come.”

  “You don’t have to convince me. I’m just telling you to watch yourself now that Uncle is back.”

  At long last the meal is over. When the table is cleared, the maids pour tea into cups of celadon crackle glaze. Daiyu reaches for her cup and drinks thirstily, eager to wash away the greasiness in her mouth.

  A ripple of laughter fills the room. The maids cover their mouths to stifle their giggles. The boy called Huan guffaws. At the head of the table, Lady Jia takes her cup, sips the tea, and gargles with it. Deliberately she spits it into a Ding-ware bowl that a maid holds before her.

  Daiyu has drunk the tea meant for gargling. She feels herself grow hot with embarrassment. Across the table, Baochai, her gaze tactfully averted, daintily gargles and spits out her tea.

  “Hey, Frowner,” Baoyu says. He picks up his tea and downs it to the last drop.

  5

  On his second day back at Rongguo, Jia Zheng goes to his mother’s bedroom, where she has retired after breakfast, to tell her that he is returning to work at the Ministry, and will not come home until evening. She is half reclining on the kang while Silver, one of her senior maids, massages her legs. Even though they finished breakfast barely half an hour ago, Snowgoose is bringing her two little yam cakes with date stuffing on a small lotus-shaped platter. That is an aspect of his mother that never fails to irritate him: despite her sensitive stomach, she refuses to exercise the least restraint over her diet. Lady Jia opens her eyes as Snowgoose offers her the cakes.

  She takes a cake and leans back, shutting her eyes again. “I hope Min’s funeral wasn’t too much of a disgrace.”

  He pauses, uncertain what to say. For twenty years his mother has grown angry at the mention of his younger sister. When Jia Zheng received Min’s letter saying that she was dying and that she wished for her daughter to know her family, his mother said little, but had agreed to his suggestion that he go south to fetch Daiyu. He had hoped his mother was at last repenting of the long estrangement. Now he is surprised by her spiteful tone.

  “It was a little modest, but—”

  “Modest! I know what that means.” She begins to eat the cake, her jaws moving busily. “What sort of place did they live in?”

  “They had a small apartment—”

  She snorts. “Any servants?”

  “A maid, I believe.”

  “No wonder Min died. And Lin Ruhai expects to raise a young girl in conditions like that.”

  “He seems a devoted father.”

  “He hasn’t done a very good job with her manners.” She pops the second cake in her mouth and hands the plate back to Snowgoose.

  He pauses. While Daiyu is shy and a little gauche, he does not find her ill-mannered. Unable to contradict his mother directly, he changes the subject. “I’m going to the Ministry today and won’t be home for lunch.”

  “The Ministry? But you’ve barely been home one day.”

  “I have been gone for over three months. There are sure to be questions they wish to consult me on …”

  “Surely they can do without you for a few more days.”

  It is typical of his mother to belittle his role at the Ministry; this reminds him of his annoyance that she let Baoyu stay home from school yesterday. “How many days of school did Baoyu miss while I was away?”

  She stares at him, as if offended by the question. “How should I know?”

  “I’m simply asking for a rough estimate.”

  “I have no idea.”

  He takes a deep breath, trying to control his anger. “I told Baoyu before I left that he must stop missing school. The Exams are barely six months away.”

  “What a fuss about missing a few days of school! Didn’t the schoolmaster tell us that when Baoyu sets his mind to it, not one of the boys in the whole school can match him in quickness?”

  “He told us that years ago, and Baoyu has apparently still not seen fit to ‘set his mind to it.’ ”

  “He still has all of the fall and winter to study.”

  “I’m afraid you don’t understand, Mother. It takes years of hard work to prepare for the Exams. He can’t just cram for a few months. Don’t you remember how hard Zhu studied before he passed—”

  He sees that she is not even looking at him, apparently absorbed in thought, and breaks off.

  After a moment, she says, “There is something about Baoyu I want to talk to you about. You know Baoyu’s body servant Pearl?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “She’s a good girl, and very devoted to him. I’ve been thinking of making her his chamber wife.”

  “Chamber wife! What does he need a chamber wife for?” He raises his voice despite himself.

  “He is nearly nineteen. He has natural desires, like any other man. Why not give him a chamber wife, so he can—”

  “We can betrothe him after he passes the Exams, like we did for Zhu.” Unfortunately Zhu died of a sudden illness before the wedding could take place.

  “Zhu passed when he was sixteen. Baoyu is already a grown man. It’s wrong to expect him not to feel attracted to girls, especially living in the Inner Quarters with them—”

  He pounces on this, interrupting her. “I’ve never thought that he should continue to live inside. It’s improper, and people are beginning to gossip about it—”

  “It’s just like you, to want to deprive me of the company of my favorite grandson, just because of what people say. He’s the only one who keeps me amused now that I’m too old to be of use to anyone.”

  The West Ocean clock in the outer room bongs, giving him an excuse to cut off the familiar argument. “I must go. I said that I would drop Baoyu off at school on the way to the Ministry. We’ll talk of this another time.”

  When he arrives at the stable yard, his already frayed temper is tried further when he finds Baoyu is not there. He sends a page to call him, and waits in the carriage for several minutes before Baoyu appears.

  “Hurry up! You’ll be late for school!” he cries, as Baoyu climbs in beside him. It is the first time since he arrived home that he has been alone with his son. “What did you study while I was gone?” he asks, as the coachman whips up the horses and the carriage finally trundles out through a side gate into the streets.

  “Mencius.”

  “Tell me what Mencius says about dutifulness and self-preservation.”

  “ ‘Fish is what I want; bear’s paw is what I want,’ ” Baoyu begins. “ ‘If I cannot have both, I would rather take bear’s paw than fish. Life is what I want; dutifulness is also what I want. If I cannot have both, I would rather take dutifulness than life. On the one hand, though life is what I want, there is something I want more than life …’ ”

  The glibness with which Baoyu rattles off the passage nettles him. Even he cannot deny that Baoyu’s memory is exceptional, enabling him to recite a poem after one or two readings; but the boy takes excessive pride in his aptitude. He interrupts, “You’re not taking your studies seriously.”

  Baoyu breaks off with an innocent face. “But I am,
Father. I know the Mencius passage backwards and forwards—”

  “You promised me you wouldn’t miss school.”

  “I only missed it a few times—”

  “You should be setting an example for the other boys, not making excuses.” Again he tries to explain the special responsibility he feels as an Imperial Bondsman, the same responsibility that he wants Baoyu to feel. “My grandfather, your great-grandfather, was one of the first settlers in Mukden. He was captured by the Manchus when they conquered Mukden, and made a Bondsman—”

  “A slave to the Manchus! You act as if that were something to be proud of,” Baoyu mutters.

  He ignores the interruption, continuing, “Then, when the Manchus conquered China, your great-grandfather, and all the other Bondservants of the Plain White Banner, were made into the Imperial Household.

  “So our family has always had a special tie with the Imperial family. My father—your grandfather—was practically raised in the Palace. His mother was His Majesty’s wet nurse. My father was five or six at the time, and he would tell stories of being allowed to hold His Majesty’s rattle when he was an infant.”

  Baoyu makes an impatient movement, but Jia Zheng goes on, “All through the years, my father served His Imperial Highness with a singular devotion. You must understand we are not like most people who become officials just because they have passed the Exams. We owe His Highness not just the ordinary duty of an official, but a—a personal loyalty.” He struggles to find the right words to express the deep-held convictions that give him his sense of purpose. “For as long as the Manchus have ruled China, we have been the ones His Highness turns to when he needs someone he trusts.”

  Baoyu’s eyes shift away. “Most people don’t even want the Manchus in China in the first place. Besides, the Bondsmen don’t have any real power these days. The eunuchs control what goes on in the Palace.”

  “Who told you that?” Jia Zheng thunders.

  “They don’t say it in public, of course, but everyone thinks so.”