Xichun and Mrs. Xue rush to get the washcloths. Now Qiaojie is lying limply in her arms. Her complexion looks slightly blue, but at least she can hear Qiaojie’s stertorous breathing again. She and Ping’er hover over Qiaojie, wiping her face and neck with the cool cloths, until Xichun brings a basin of warm water. They dip the cloths into the basin and sponge Qiaojie’s chest and back and legs with them. She now appears to be asleep, still breathing heavily.
“I am going to bed,” Lady Jia announces, as if the others have created this disturbance for the sole purpose of preventing her from going to sleep. Xifeng does not even glance at her. After a moment, Mrs. Xue, who has been watching them sponge Qiaojie, helps Lady Jia to the back bedroom.
“Where’s the doctor?” Ping’er says.
Xifeng glances at her watch. She is shocked to see that only forty minutes have passed since Baochai and Tanchun set out for the doctor.
She sees that Qiaojie’s eyes are open. Ping’er calls to her, patting her hand and kissing her cheek, but Qiaojie goes into another convulsion. This time Xifeng holds her firmly, trying to stroke her hot forehead. Gradually, the spasmodic movements of her arms and legs quiet, and she falls into a heavy stupor, breathing noisily.
A little after ten thirty, the doctor arrives with Baochai and Tanchun. He feels Qiaojie’s wrist, his face intent. “Her pulse is extremely rapid and powerful. Her body is suffering from an excess of heat, to the point of toxicity, and the congestion of her lungs is very severe.”
“What can be done?” Ping’er cries.
“I’ll make a plaster for her chest for the congestion. The toxicity can be combated with a combination of bitter-cold drugs, such as huanglian, huangqin, and zhizi. Usually I am cautious about using these drugs, because they can be very damaging to the stomach, but in this case, I believe the benefit outweighs the risks.”
He opens his case filled with various vials and papers of herbs and begins to weigh them out and crush them together. When Xifeng tells him about the convulsions and using water to cool Qiaojie, he looks stern. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why not?”
“The patient must sweat to dispel the toxicity.”
While Dr. Wang ties a flat gauze bag of herbs and ointments across Qiaojie’s chest, he orders Xifeng to mix the medicine he has just compounded with hot water. She goes to the stove, reassured by his air of calm authority. He tells the others that Ping’er’s and Xifeng’s help will be sufficient, and that the rest of them might as well go to sleep. He has Xifeng blow out all the lamps except the one near the stove. In the quiet dimness, Xifeng feels her panic start to recede. When she has mixed the medicine, Dr. Wang tells Ping’er to wake Qiaojie so he can give it to her. Ping’er calls Qiaojie, jiggling her hands and tugging her feet, until she finally opens her eyes. To Xifeng’s relief, her eyes no longer move restlessly and unseeingly in their sockets. She lies there calmly. Her black eyes, looking now at Ping’er’s face, now at her own, have never seemed so clear, so lucid. Giddy with relief, she leans over, kissing Qiaojie’s cheek, patting her head and dear little hands.
She moves aside to allow Dr. Wang to administer the medicine. Skillfully he pours it down a narrow tube inserted into the corner of Qiaojie’s mouth, and she swallows it unresistingly.
“Let’s wait and see if this has any effect,” Dr. Wang says. He makes himself comfortable against a cushion on the kang, and she is glad that he seems ready to stay all night if necessary. She sits down next to Ping’er so she can be as close to Qiaojie as possible. Qiaojie looks quietly at them and about the room. Xifeng takes her hand and sings a lullaby, gently swinging her hand. By the time she has sung the song twice, Qiaojie has again dropped off to sleep.
“How will we tell if the medicine is working?” Xifeng asks.
“Her fever will go down, and perhaps she’ll break out in a sweat.”
They watch her silently for about twenty minutes. Qiaojie’s breathing seems to be growing more and more labored.
“Doctor, isn’t there anything you can do about her breathing?” Xifeng says.
“Yes, I’m worried about that, too. Let me see if I can make a stronger dispersant.” He opens his case and begins to weigh out some more herbs.
Now Qiaojie seems to be struggling for every breath. Sometimes she even seems to stop breathing for a moment before gasping and drawing another breath.
“Doctor, won’t you look at her?” Ping’er cries. “She can hardly breathe!”
Dr. Wang puts down the half-made medicine and hurries over.
“Try to wake her,” he says sharply.
Xifeng and Ping’er call to her, and tug her hands, more and more vigorously, but she does not respond. Her breathing is getting more and more erratic. Xifeng notices, as she slaps Qiaojie’s feet, no longer gently, that her face is no longer flushed but a waxen yellow. She is gasping every few breaths now. After missing a few breaths, she lifts up her chin as if to gasp for air. Her lips part, but no sound comes. She lies there, her mouth positioned for the next breath, but unable to take it. In a frenzy, Xifeng and Ping’er chafe her hands, pat her cheeks, shift her position, but there is no response.
“It’s too late,” the doctor says.
Ping’er bursts into tears, burying her face in her hands. For a moment, Xifeng stares at him, unable to comprehend his words. She falls on Qiaojie, unable to believe she is dead. She catches her to her breast, nestles Qiaojie’s head against her cheek, holds her close, trying to engulf her with her own body, to somehow transfer her own strength and life to the baby. But even as she presses Qiaojie against herself, she can sense a change. Already, beneath her hands, she feels the unhealthy warmth of Qiaojie’s body dissipating. Already she seems to feel a slight rigidity stealing over the soft limbs. The little hands are clenching into loose fists. The head bows forward stiffly. She kisses the little brow, now cooler to her touch, but senses that Qiaojie’s spirit is already gone. So quickly—how quickly—has the flame of her life been extinguished, leaving her body an empty shell. She places Qiaojie’s body gently on the edge of the kang, covering it with a blanket, and falls into Ping’er’s arms.
7
Daiyu lies on the kang at the Zhens’ house, drifting between waking and sleeping. She spends most of her time in this state these days, her dreams and her waking thoughts often flowing indistinguishably together, her mind floating free of its moorings. Her mind feels less clear than even a few weeks ago, dulled by her body’s weakness and lack of nourishment—she can hardly bring herself to swallow a few bites each day—and by her long days lying in the dark apartment. It is like a slow sluggish river sweeping and tumbling the detritus of her life in its turbid flow. Between confused, fragmented dreams, she thinks of her parents’ death, her time at Rongguo, and Baoyu’s and Baochai’s betrayals. Baochai she might have been able to forgive, but her anger against Baoyu runs far deeper. He had won her trust and her love, and then abandoned her, allowing Lady Jia to mistreat her and now leaving her to die alone. Lying there in the dark room, she feels her loneliness and resentment against him running like poison in her veins.
She hears the door open. It is Zhen Shiyin, coming in for lunch. Too tired to turn her head to watch him, she hears him moving around the stove, as quietly as he can, making lunch. Comforted by his presence, she drifts off to sleep. She wakes to find him calling to her, with the gentleness she finds so soothing. He has finished cooking lunch and, as always, has set up a little table on the kang next to her. No matter how little she eats, he always sets out two bowls of rice, two bowls of soup, and two saucers of pickled cabbage. “Miss Daiyu, do you think you can eat anything today?”
“Maybe just a little soup.” She is surprised at how weak and hoarse her voice sounds. She can hardly recognize it as her own.
He props her up against some pillows, blows on the soup to cool it. She tries to take the bowl from him, but he will not let her, and spoons the clear broth into her mouth for her. After a few mouthfuls she shakes her head,
and he puts the bowl down.
“A little rice?” he offers hopefully.
She shakes her head.
“Some tea?”
“No, thank you.”
“Do you want to lie down?”
“No, not yet. Let me sit with you while you eat.”
He sits cross-legged beside the little table, and, hungry after his morning’s work, begins to shovel the rice into his mouth with his chopsticks. She watches him with the envious wonder that the sick feel for the healthy, but also with affection. He reminds her of Snowgoose, especially in the delicate precision of his movements, despite the roughness of his work. Like Snowgoose, he does not express himself easily in words, and yet his generosity and sensitivity are clear in the consideration with which he treats her and everyone else. She has lived with the Zhens for three months, using up his scanty earnings, and requiring his constant care and nursing, yet he has never once made her feel that her presence is anything but an honor.
He finishes his bowl of rice and the pickles. Now he is drinking the soup, sighing a little with enjoyment. She thinks of how tiring and unpleasant it must be for him to work from sunup till sundown in all that noise and soot and heat. And for what? The best he can hope for is to earn enough money to take care of his parents when they are too old to work, and perhaps to provide Snowgoose with a dowry.
“Don’t you ever get tired of it?” she asks abruptly, turning her head on the pillows to look at him.
“Of what?” He looks up from his bowl.
“Of working so hard.”
“Of course I get tired. You’ve seen how exhausted I am at the end of the day, sometimes.”
“But that’s all you do: work day after day. You never even take a day off. Don’t you ever feel frustrated or hopeless?”
“I do sometimes, but then I think of how I can help my family by working hard. You know how my family scrimped and saved so that I could learn a trade—that was when they sold Snowgoose. It always makes me want to do as much as I can to repay them.”
This is what she lacks, she tells herself, a sense of belonging, a sense of someone to work for. If her parents had lived, she also would feel a greater sense of purpose. “But is that enough? Don’t you want things for yourself?”
“For myself?” he says, not knowing what she means.
“I mean, things that make you happy.”
At first he still seems baffled by her words, but then he says, after thinking a moment, “Well, I’d like to learn how to read. You’ve taught me a few words, but I want to learn more, so I can read books and poems and songs for myself. And I’d like to travel. I’ve heard so much about how beautiful the south is that I’d like to go there someday and see it all for myself.”
He pauses, and then goes on a little bashfully, not looking at her. “I’d like to get married and have children one day. You know what they say: a thousand meetings, a thousand partings, they are all predestined by the gods. For example, I would never have imagined that I would ever meet someone like you.”
Something catches in her throat, and she begins to cough before she can answer him. It is a bad fit, and he has to pass her the spittoon and give her a drink of tea before it passes.
“I shouldn’t have tired you out by talking so much,” he says. “You’d better rest.”
She gratefully lets him help her back into a lying position. A deep exhaustion wafts over her, and she feels herself drifting into sleep. The next time she wakes, she hears Snowgoose’s voice. She wants to call to her, but her limbs feel so heavy that she can hardly move. She is lying there, trying to gather the strength to speak to Snowgoose, when she realizes that Snowgoose and Shiyin are talking about her.
“How much has she eaten the last few days?” Snowgoose asks.
“Almost nothing. She’s had only a few sips of soup.”
“Has she gone to the bathroom?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Has she gotten out of bed at all?”
“No.”
“What did the doctor say?”
Shiyin’s reply is almost inaudible. “He said that it would be soon.”
She hears Snowgoose sobbing and wants to comfort her. But somehow, she cannot seem to even turn her head. She feels a funny tingling in her fingertips and toes. For a long time, there is no sound except for Snowgoose’s sobbing.
Then she hears Snowgoose say, “I think we should order the coffin and start to make the burial clothes.”
“No!” She hears the vehemence in Shiyin’s voice.
“If we wait too long, we may not have anything ready …” Snowgoose sobs again. “And besides, I’ve often heard that it turns the luck.”
“I’ve heard of that saying, too, but I don’t want to.”
How strange, she thinks, to overhear such a conversation about oneself: to hear one’s funeral arrangements discussed in one’s presence as if one were already dead. She remembers how her mother had lain silently the whole afternoon before she died; maybe she had actually known everything that was going on around her, had felt Daiyu holding her hand. She wants to call out to Snowgoose and Shiyin teasingly, to tell them that she’s not in such bad shape, that it’s not so desperate. But a strange heaviness is overcoming her, and she feels herself sinking under its weight, as if slipping off a shallow ledge into deeper waters.
8
“If we are to have a proper funeral for Qiaojie, we must borrow some money,” Xifeng breaks the dull silence of the apartment. Qiaojie had died two nights ago. Although the family—especially Ping’er—has been prostrated by grief, it is time to see to the practical arrangements.
Only Granny responds. “Borrow money? Why should we?” she says from her corner of the kang.
Xifeng looks at her in surprise. She had not expected any resistance on this point. “I’m not sure we have enough money for a proper funeral—”
“What happened to the rest of the jewelry that we had?”
“I had to spend quite a lot of it on rent and food and coal, and then I had to pawn my watch and those hairpins last week to pay for Qiaojie’s medicine and doctor’s bills—”
“What exactly did you spend?” Beneath Granny’s accusatory tone, Xifeng thinks she hears a note of panic.
“I spent twenty taels on the rent for the fall and winter. Then we spend about two taels a week for food, and about one tael a week for coal and candles, and other little things. We had to buy some fabric and needles and thread to make winter clothes. That was about fifteen taels—”
“Didn’t you keep proper accounts?” Granny interrupts.
“I didn’t want to waste money buying paper,” Xifeng says, trying to keep her patience. “Besides, I can remember everything. That comes to about seventy-five taels or so. We’d already spent five taels on that first doctor. But then I had to spend twenty-five taels last week for Qiaojie’s medicine and Dr. Wang, and another thirty taels for his coming to the house that night.” Xifeng dislikes going through these details, but she forces herself to be as clear as possible, so that Granny will not be able to accuse her of dishonesty or mismanagement. “There was also the bird’s nests, and the food we bought to try to get Qiaojie to eat.”
“You should have managed better,” Lady Jia says. “It was your job to make a budget. You can’t just spend and spend and spend, and expect everything to come out all right!”
“I know, but these were unforeseen circumstances. We could hardly have just sat by doing nothing, watching her …” She trails off, feeling the tears rising in her throat.
“I don’t say you should have done nothing,” says Granny Jia, with the air of one making a concession. “But you could have done less. I said so at the time, but no one listened to me. Why did you have to get the best doctor in the city? And then you went and sent for him in the middle of the night!”
Xifeng looks down to hide her anger. One of the only things that has given her any comfort over the last two days is that she and Ping’er had done everything
possible to save Qiaojie. “It’s difficult to know in hindsight what we should or shouldn’t have done,” she says, trying to be conciliatory. “What we must think about now is how to arrange the funeral and burial. We need at least seventy-five taels.”
“Seventy-five taels! Whatever for?”
“Even the simplest coffin is twenty-five taels. And we must make her burial clothes, and arrange to take her to the Temple of the Iron Threshold to keep vigil over her. We must hire a few nuns to chant sutras, and then we’ll need a carriage to take her out to the family burial grounds—”
“The Temple of the Iron Threshold! What are you thinking of? You act as if we were back at Rongguo, and had all the money in the world! We can keep vigil for her right here. As for nuns chanting sutras—that’s hardly necessary, is it? She’s a newborn infant. What sins could she possibly have to expiate?”
“Well, even if we keep vigil here, we will still need at least sixty taels for the burial clothes and coffin—”
“Surely we can dispense with burial clothes, for such a young child! You should be able to manage it with forty taels.”
“Forty taels!” Xifeng remembers that she had given fifty taels to Silver’s mother to bury Silver, a common servant. She had hoped to comfort Ping’er by arranging as dignified a funeral as they could manage under the circumstances. She does not care much for pomp and ritual, but recoils at the idea that Qiaojie will be dumped into a hole without the proper ceremonies to mourn her. She controls herself. “Well, even if it is forty taels, we’ll have to pawn the coral earrings. After that, we’ll have only a bracelet and a hairpin left. That won’t last us more than a few months.” Once she has borrowed the money, she tells herself, she will be able to divert more of it to Qiaojie’s funeral.
“Are you telling me we have enough money for only a few more months?” The note of panic in Lady Jia’s voice, once submerged, comes to the surface. “What were you thinking when you spent all that money on doctors’ bills? You should have asked me first. And it was all a waste. Qiaojie would have died anyway.”
The Red Chamber Page 33