by Cao Xueqin
After reflecting thus, Yu-cun spoke:
‘Venerable Sir, I understand that you are reluctant to reveal your former condition. But can you not vouchsafe your disciple some sign of recognition?’
He was about to prostrate himself when his attendants came to announce that it was getting late and he should cross the river at once. Yu-cun was hesitating, when the Taoist spoke to him again:
‘Cross with all speed to the other side, Your Honour. We will meet again. Delay now, and a storm may arise. If you really deign to come again, I look forward to seeing you here by the ford another day.’
He closed his eyes and was lost once more in his meditations. Yu-cun, with some reluctance, bade him farewell and made his way out of the temple. He had reached the bank of the river and was preparing to board the ferry and make the crossing, when he saw a man running towards him at full pelt.
To learn who it was, please turn to the next chapter.
Chapter 104
Drunken Dime at large again – a small fish whips up a mighty storm
Our Besotted Hero in agony once more – a chance thrust quickens a numbed heart
‘The temple you visited has just caught fire, sir!’
Jia Yu-cun turned round, to see flames leaping from the ground and a cloud of whirling ashes darkening the sky.
‘How extraordinary!’ he thought to himself. ‘I left the place only minutes ago, and have walked but this little distance. How could such a fire have started? What if old Mr Zhen has perished in it?’
To return and investigate would almost certainly make him late for the ferry. On the other hand he felt a little uneasy about not going back at all. After a moment’s thought, he asked the man:
‘Did you notice whether the old Taoist managed to escape or not?’
‘I was not far behind you, sir. I had a stomach-ache, and went for a bit of a stroll. That was when I looked back. When I saw the blaze and realized it was the temple that was on fire, I came here as fast as I could to let you know. I certainly didn’t see anyone coming out of the flames.’
His twinge of conscience notwithstanding, Yu-cun was at heart a man who put his career first, and he felt insufficient concern to involve (and inconvenience) himself any further.
‘Wait here until the fire has died down,’ he told the servant. ‘Then go back and see if you can find any trace of the old man. Report to me directly.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Reluctantly the man stayed behind to carry out these instructions.
Jia Yu-cun crossed the river and continued his tour of inspection, putting up for the night, a few stops later, at the official lodgings provided. Next morning, his duties were completed and he was greeted at one of the city gates by the usual throng of runners, who then escorted him through the streets with a great deal of noise and pomp. On the way, he heard from within his sedan one of the criers having some kind of altercation in the street, and asked what the trouble was. A man was dragged forward and deposited kneeling at the foot of the sedan. The crier himself then fell to his knees and gave the following account of the incident:
‘This drunkard, instead of keeping out of Your Honour’s way, came lurching right in front of your chair, sir. I told him to get off the road, but he answered back in a drunken and insolent manner, threw himself down on the ground in the middle of the street, and accused me of hitting him.’
Jia Yu-cun addressed the offender directly:
‘This entire district, as you know, is in my charge, and every one of its residents falls under my jurisdiction. You, sir, must have known this only too well, and must also have been aware of my presence in these parts. In your drunken state the very least you could have done was to keep out of my way. But instead you have polluted the highway with your obnoxious person, and have then had the effrontery to slander one of my men! Explain yourself!’
‘Paid fir the wine meself, din I?’ grumbled the man. ‘An’ the ground’s ’is Majesty’s, innit? ’is Majesty never said I couldn’t sleep on it if I’d adda few! Can’t see what it’s gorra do with you, yerroner!’
‘Why, this fellow seems to consider himself completely above the law!’ snapped Jia Yu-cun angrily. ‘What’s his name?’
‘Ni Er,’ replied the man. ‘But they calls me the Drunken Diamond.’
Jia Yu-cun was not amused.
‘Give this precious rogue a good thrashing,’ he ordered grimly, adding by way of a vicious pun: ‘That should soon cut him down to size!’
His attendants pinned Ni Er to the ground and administered a few hefty cracks of the whip. The pain soon cleared Dime’s head, and he began begging abjectly for mercy. Yu-cun laughed loudly at him from his chair:
‘Diamond, indeed! All right, leave him alone for the present. Take him back to the yamen. We can question him at leisure there.’
There was a cry from the runners, who immediately bound Dime and dragged him along behind the chair, ignoring his continued pleas for mercy.
Yu-cun went first to the Palace to report on his tour, and then returned to his yamen, where daily business soon engulfed him. He was too busy to give Dime another thought. But the bystanders who had witnessed the flogging in the street lost no time in telling the story to their friends, and the news soon spread that Ni Er the swank, Ni Er the drunken bully, had fallen foul of Mayor Jia and landed himself in deep water. Rumour of it eventually reached the ears of his wife and daughter, and that night when he failed to come home his daughter, fearing the worst, went to all the gambling-dens in search of him. His cronies only confirmed the story, and Dime’s daughter was reduced to tears at the thought of what might have happened to her father.
‘Don’t take it to heart so, miss!’ they said. ‘That Mayor Jia’s related to the Rong-guo Jias. And isn’t young Jia Yun a buddy of your dad’s? Why don’t you and your mum go and ask him to put in a word for Dime? That should fix it.’
Dime’s daughter thought this over to herself:
‘They’re right. Father has often said how friendly he is with young Mr Jia Yun next door. Perhaps I should go and see him.’
She hurried home and told her mother, and the following morning the two of them went to call on Jia Yun. He happened to be at home that day, and invited them both in, while his mother told the little maid to serve them tea. They related the story of Dime’s arrest, and begged Jia Yun to help them secure his release.
‘Of course!’ agreed Jia Yun without the slightest hesitation. ‘No trouble at all. I’ll drop in at Rong-guo House, mention it to them, and the matter will soon be settled. This Mayor Jia owes everything to his connection with the Rong-guo Jias. One word from them and Dime will be a free man again!’
Dime’s wife and daughter returned home in high spirits and with great expectations. They went to visit Dime in the yamen where he was being held prisoner, and told him the good news, that thanks to the intervention of Jia Yun and the Jia family he would shortly be set free. Dime was greatly relieved.
Unfortunately Jia Yun, having had his previous overtures rebuffed by Xi-feng, had been too cowed to visit her again, and since that day had hardly set foot inside Rong-guo House. The men on the Rong-guo gate treated callers strictly according to their standing with the family. If the family were known to have received a person with cordiality and respect, that person was welcomed and announced immediately; if, on the other hand, a person had once been cold-shouldered, the servants were quick to take their cue. If such a person called again, even if he were a relative, they would refuse to report his arrival and would send him away without more ado. So, when Jia Yun turned up and asked to pay his respects to Jia Lian, he got a very cool reception at the gate:
‘Mr Lian is not in. When he comes home, we will inform him that you called.’
Jia Yun would have persisted and asked to see Mrs Lian, but he was afraid to provoke the gatemen any further, and with some reluctance turned about and went home. He had to face renewed importuning from Dime’s wife and daughter the next day:
‘But Mr Yun
! We thought you said the Jias could get anything they wanted out of anyone! You’re one of the family, and this isn’t a big thing to ask. You can’t have failed! You can’t let us down like this!’
Jia Yun felt thoroughly humiliated, and tried to bluff his way out:
‘Yesterday my relatives were too busy to send anyone. But I’m sure they will do something about it today, and then Dime will be set free. There’s really no need to worry.’
Dime’s wife and daughter waited to see how things would turn out. Jia Yun, having failed to gain access by the front entrance of Rong-guo House, now tried the back, thinking he might be able to get in touch with Bao-yu in the Garden. To his surprise he found the garden gate locked, and was obliged to return home once more, dejected and crestfallen.
‘It was only a few years ago that Dime lent me that money,’ he thought to himself. ‘I used it to buy Mrs Lian a present of camphor and musk, and as a result she gave me the tree-planting job. But this time, just because I can’t afford presents, I get the brush-off. She’s got nothing to be proud of, lending out money – money that’s been handed down in the family – while poor householders like us can’t even borrow a tael when we need it. I suppose she thinks she’s being clever, that this is a nice little nest-egg, a clever way to protect her own future. She doesn’t know what a stinking reputation she’s earned for herself. If I keep my mouth shut, well and good; but if I tell people what I know, she’ll have more than one life to answer for in court!’
He found Dime’s wife and daughter waiting for him when he got back, and this time he had to admit, albeit in a modified form, that his mission had not borne fruit:
‘The Jias did send someone to put in a word for Dime, but I’m afraid Mayor Jia won’t set him free. You might have more luck if you try Mr Leng Zi-xing. He’s related to Mrs Zhou, and she works for the Jias.’
‘What earthly good will a servant be,’ complained Dime’s family, ‘when a respectable member of the family such as yourself can do nothing for us!’
Jia Yun found this highly mortifying. ‘What you don’t seem to realize,’ he protested indignantly, ‘is that nowadays servants can have more pull than their masters!’
Dime’s wife and daughter could see that they were wasting their time with him.
‘We’re much obliged to you for all the trouble you’ve gone to, Mr Yun,’ they muttered sarcastically. ‘When Father gets out he’s sure to want to thank you himself …’
They went their way. Eventually they found somebody else to assist in the extrication of Dime, who was duly acquitted and released, having suffered no more by way of punishment than a few strokes of the rod.
Upon his return to the family hearth, his womenfolk related to Dime how the Jias had failed to intervene on his behalf. Dime had already broached his first bottle, and angrily announced his intention of seeking out Jia Yun and teaching him a lesson:
‘Lousy bastard! Ungrateful, sneaky little sod! When he had an empty belly and needed a job, who did it, who gave him a helping hand? Right first time: yours truly. ’Course, now I’m in a bit of a spot meself, he doesn’t want to know, does he! Bloody marvellous I call it! I’m tellin’ you, if I want to, I can take those Jias and rub their snotty little noses in the mud where they belong!’
The women tried anxiously to forestall any more of his grandiose threats:
‘Drunk again, Dad! You’re out of your mind! The bottle was your undoing a couple of days ago, and you got a good hiding for it. And now hark at you! At it again, before your bruises have even had a chance to heal!’
‘Think a licking’s going to scare me, do you?’ bragged Dime. ‘All I needed was a lead. It was all I needed. And now I’ve got one. Now I can nail ’em! Oh yes, I got pally with some fellers while I was inside, and I learnt a thing or two. Accordin’ to them, this country’s crawling with Jias of one breed or another, and a few days back there was a fair number of Jia servants taken in. I was pretty surprised to hear that. I mean, I knew the younger Jias and their servants were a bad lot, but I’d always thought the older ones were all right. How come they’d got into trouble?
‘In the end, turns out that these Jias they were talking about were all from out of town – course, they’re still related to the ones in town. Anyway, there’s been some sort of hoo-ha, so these servants have been sent here for trying. So now I’ve got my lead! I’m laughing! That little Yun’s an ungrateful beggar, that’s what he is! My mates and I can spread the word on his family’s carry-on, the cheating and bullying, the lending money at wicked rates, the wife-snatching … Oh, if that gets to the top, some heads’ll roll all right then! That’ll learn ’em who Dime is!’
‘Go to sleep, you drunken old pisspot!’ cried Dime’s missus. ‘Snatching whose wife, in the name of heaven? I never heard anything so ridiculous in all my life!’
‘Fat lot you’d know, stuck at home all day!’ retorted Dime. ‘Coupla years back, I was having a throw in one of the dens, met this young feller, name of Zhang, and he told me how his woman was taken off of him by the Jias. Asked me for some advice. I just told him to forget it. Dunno where he is now, haven’t seen him these two or three years. Next time I bump into that Zhang feller, I’ll know what to tell him. Roast that little Yun alive! Make him crawl on his knees! Got my lead now …’
Dime promptly collapsed onto his bed in a stupor, mumbling incoherently to himself, and was soon soundly asleep. His wife and daughter dismissed his threats as the ravings of a drunkard, and early the next morning Dime set off once more for his gambling haunts, where we must leave him.
We return to Jia Yu-cun: the morning after his return home, refreshed by a good night’s sleep, he told his wife (who, it will be remembered, had once been in service with the Zhen family in Soochow) of his encounter with Zhen Shi-yin. She reproached him for his heartlessness:
‘Why did you not go back to look for him? If he has been burnt to death, we will be guilty forever of having done him a great wrong!’
She began to weep, and Jia Yu-cun tried to justify himself:
‘How could I have intervened? A being like that lives on a different plane from people like us. He would only have resented the interference.’
At that moment a message was brought in for Yu-cun:
‘The runner sent by Your Honour yesterday to investigate the fire at the temple has come to deliver his report.’
Yu-cun strolled out to receive the runner, who dropped one knee to the ground and said:
‘I went back as you told me to, sir. I braved the flames and went into the temple to see if I could find the Taoist. His hut was completely razed to the ground, even the wall behind it had collapsed, and there was no trace of the old man. He must have been roasted alive … All that was left was his prayer-mat, and drinking-gourd; somehow they both seemed to have survived intact. I looked all over the place for any human remains, but there was not so much as a bone to be seen. I was going to bring you the prayer-mat and gourd, to show you, in case you didn’t believe me, sir; but when I picked them up they just turned to ashes in my hands.’
Yu-cun deduced from this account that Zhen Shi-yin’s departure from the scene of the fire had been no ordinary death, but rather some miraculous process of etherealization. He dismissed the runner, and went in again to his private apartment, where he made no mention to his wife of Shi-yin’s metamorphosis by fire, thinking she would fail to understand and would only be distressed; instead he simply told her that no trace of the old man had been found, and that he had most probably escaped alive.
Leaving his private apartment, Yu-cun went to his study, and was sitting there pondering the few words Zhen Shi-yin had spoken during their brief encounter, when one of his attendants came in to convey an Imperial summons to the Palace, to peruse certain state papers. Yu-cun hurriedly took a sedan-chair to the Palace. As he arrived he overheard someone say:
‘The Kiangsi Grain Intendant, Jia Zheng, has been impeached, and is at court to plead for clemency!’
Yu
-cun pressed on into the Cabinet Office and greeted the various Ministers of State gathered there. He first performed his duty and glanced through the state papers (which spelled out His Majesty’s displeasure with the state of the coastal defences), and then left the Cabinet Office at once to find Jia Zheng and to commiserate with him on his impeachment, expressing his relief that it was not too serious a charge, and asking if his journey to the capital had been a comfortable one. Jia Zheng replied with a detailed account of his misfortunes.
‘Has your plea for clemency been presented to the throne yet?’ asked Yu-cun.
‘It has,’ replied Jia Zheng. ‘I am expecting to receive the Rescript when His Majesty returns from lunch.’
Even as they were speaking, Jia Zheng was summoned to the Imperial presence, and hurried in. Those senior ministers who were connected with him waited anxiously in one of the antechambers; and when, after a lengthy audience, he finally emerged again, his face beaded with sweat, they all pressed forward to greet him.
‘Well?’ they asked. ‘How did it go?’
‘Frightened the life out of me!’ gasped Jia Zheng, his tongue popping out of his mouth. ‘I must thank you all, gentlemen, for your concern. I am relieved to inform you that I have come out of this business relatively unscathed.’
‘On what subjects did His Majesty question you?’
‘His first question concerned the smuggling of firearms in Yunnan Province. The original memorial on the case identified the ringleader as a member of the household of Jia Hua, the former Grand Preceptor. His Majesty thought he remembered the name as that of my father’s cousin, and asked me if it was indeed the same man. I kowtowed at once and reminded him that my father’s cousin was Jia Dai-hua. His Majesty laughed. Then he went on to ask me if there was not another relative of mine named Jia Hua, who had once been President of the Board of War, but had subsequently been demoted and then appointed Mayor.’
Jia Yu-cun was among those present. His more formal personal name was indeed Hua, Yu-cun being merely a commonly used sobriquet, and he nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard this.