The Dreamer Wakes

by Cao Xueqin

  ‘Stupid incompetents!’ cried Jia Lian. ‘I’ll deal with you when I’m finished. Hurry up and let those carts in!’

  When Jia Lian went in he said nothing to Lady Xing. He went to Lady Wang’s apartment, knelt before her and kowtowed:

  ‘It is thanks to your foresight, Aunt Wang, that my daughter has returned safely. I shall say nothing of Cousin Huan’s conduct in this matter. I hardly need to. But so far as that creature Yun is concerned, the last time he was left in charge there was trouble, and now, in the few months that I’ve been away, he has allowed the rot to set in. In my opinion he should be sent packing and never given a job of any kind here again.’

  ‘What about your own brother-in-law, Wang Ren?’ exclaimed Lady Wang. ‘What induced him to behave in such a despicable manner?’

  ‘Don’t waste your breath on him,’ replied Jia Lian. ‘I shall deal with him later.’

  Suncloud came in to announce the arrival of Qiao-jie. When Lady Wang saw her, although the separation had not been a long one, the agonizing suspense of the days leading up to her escape flooded back into her mind, and she broke down and wept profusely. Qiao-jie cried a great deal herself. Jia Lian came over to thank Grannie Liu. Lady Wang bade her be seated, and together they discussed the whole adventure. When Jia Lian saw Patience again, he was overcome with gratitude for what she had done, and although he could hardly express his true feelings at such a family gathering, he could not help shedding a few tears. From this day on he held Patience in greater and greater esteem and resolved to promote her to the position of proper wife as soon as his father returned. But we anticipate.

  Lady Xing had been sure there would be trouble as soon as Jia Lian learned of Qiao-Jie’s disappearance. When she heard that he was at Lady Wang’s she became most anxious and sent a maid to eavesdrop, who returned to inform her that Qiao-jie and Grannie Liu were both there talking, having just arrived back together. It suddenly dawned on Lady Xing what had happened. She knew that she had been hoodwinked and felt very peeved with Lady Wang:

  ‘Stirring up trouble between me and my son! I wonder who it was that told Patience our secret in the first place!’

  At that moment she saw Qiao-jie and Grannie Liu come in, accompanied by Patience. Lady Wang followed them and spoke to her, laying the blame for everything on Jia Yun and Wang Ren:

  ‘You were taken in by what they said, Sister-in-law. You only meant the best. How could you have known the tricks and schemes they were up to!’

  Lady Xing felt truly ashamed of herself. She saw that Lady Wang had acted rightly, and respected her for it. From now on relations between the two sisters-in-law became less strained.

  Patience spoke to Lady Wang, and then took Qiao-jie to say hello to Bao-chai. The two of them exchanged commiserations.

  ‘With the Emperor’s favour now restored,’ said Qiao-jie, ‘our family is sure to prosper once more. And surely Uncle Bao will come back.’

  As they were talking, Ripple came running into the room in a great lather, crying:

  ‘Help! Aroma’s been taken poorly!’

  But for the outcome, you must read the next chapter.

  Chapter 120

  Zhen Shi-yin expounds the Nature of Passion and Illusion

  And Jia Yu-cun concludes the Dream of Golden Days

  As soon as she heard from Ripple that Aroma had been taken seriously ill, Bao-chai hurried in with Qiao-jie and Patience to see her. They found her lying unconscious on the kang, having had what seemed to be a heart seizure. They forced some cool boiled water through her lips and eventually she came round, whereupon they settled her down to sleep and sent for the doctor.

  ‘How could Aroma have been taken like this so suddenly?’ asked Qiao-jie.

  ‘The other evening,’ replied Bao-chai, ‘she wept herself into a terrible state and had a sudden giddy spell. Mother told one of the maids to help her up from the ground and in the end she went to sleep. There was so much else happening at the time that we never sent for a doctor. That must be what has brought this on.’

  The doctor arrived presently, and the ladies withdrew. When he had taken Aroma’s pulses, he diagnosed her condition as the consequence of undue excitement and anger, wrote out a prescription accordingly and took his leave.

  Aroma had in fact overheard (or thought she had overheard) someone saying that if Bao-yu failed to return all of his maids would be dismissed. It was the shock of hearing this that had upset her and aggravated her illness. When the doctor had departed, and when Ripple went out to prepare her medicine, Aroma was left lying alone on her bed, and in her confusion she thought she could see Bao-yu standing before her. Then the dim figure of a monk appeared before her eyes, holding the pages of an album open in his hand and saying:

  ‘You are not destined to be mine. In days to come another will claim you for his own.’

  Aroma was about to speak to him, when Ripple returned.

  ‘Your medicine’s ready,’ she said. ‘You’d better take it now.’

  Aroma opened her eyes and knew that it had all been a dream. She did not confide in Ripple, but swallowed her medicine and lay there brooding to herself:

  ‘Bao-yu must have gone away with that monk. I remember that day when he tried to take the jade out and give it to the monk, he seemed bent on escaping. When I tried to stop him he wasn’t his normal self, pushing and shoving me off like that. He didn’t seem to care about me any more. And ever since then, he has been so cool with Mrs Bao, and quite indifferent towards the rest of us.

  ‘I suppose you think this is enlightenment. But what sort of enlightenment is it, for you to abandon your own wife? Her Ladyship asked me to serve you, but although my monthly pay has been that of a chamber-wife, I have never been officially recognized as one. Now if the Master and Her Ladyship dismiss me and I insist on staying, out of respect to your memory, people will think me ridiculous. But how can I bear to leave, remembering how things were between us?’

  She agonized over her dilemma, and recalling the ominous words Bao-yu had spoken to her in her dream she vowed to herself that if her destiny could not be shared with Bao-yu she would rather not live at all.

  With the medicine, however, the pain in her heart gradually subsided. She felt guilty to be lying down all the time, but forced herself to rest and struggled through the next few days until she was able to get up and about again and wait on her mistress. Bao-chai herself, although she was constantly thinking of Bao-yu and shed many a tear in private over her own unhappy fate, was kept busy helping her own mother to arrange for the payment of Xue Pan’s commutation fine, by no means an easy task. But of this no more.

  Jia Zheng had arrived in Nanking with Grandmother Jia’s coffin, accompanied by Jia Rong and the coffins of Qin-shi, Xi-feng, Dai-yu and Faithful. They made arrangements for the Jia family members to be interred, and then Jia Rong took Dai-yu’s coffin to her own family graveyard to be buried there, while Jia Zheng saw to the construction of the tombs. Then one day a letter arrived from home, in which he read of the success achieved by Bao-yu and Jia Lan in their examinations – which gave him great pleasure – and of Bao-yu’s disappearance, which disturbed him greatly and made him decide to cut short his stay and hurry home. On his return journey he learned of the amnesty decreed by the Emperor, and received another letter from home telling him that Jia She and Cousin Zhen had been pardoned, and their titles restored. Much cheered by this news, he pressed on towards home, travelling by day and night.

  On the day when his boat reached the post-station at Piling, there was a sudden cold turn in the weather and it began to snow. He moored in a quiet, lonely stretch of the canal and sent his servants ashore to deliver a few visiting-cards and to apologize to his friends in the locality, saying that since his boat was due to set off again at any moment he would not be able to call on them in person or entertain them aboard. Only one page-boy remained to wait on him while he sat in the cabin writing a letter home (to be sent on ahead by land). When he came to write about Bao-y
u, he paused for a moment and looked up. There, up on deck, standing in the very entrance to his cabin and silhouetted dimly against the snow, was the figure of a man with shaven head and bare feet, wrapped in a large cape made of crimson felt. The figure knelt down and bowed to Jia Zheng, who did not recognize the features and hurried out on deck, intending to raise him up and ask him his name. The man bowed four times, and now stood upright, pressing his palms together in monkish greeting. Jia Zheng was about to reciprocate with a respectful bow of the head when he looked into the man’s eyes and with a sudden shock recognized him as Bao-yu.

  ‘Are you not my son?’ he asked.

  The man was silent and an expression that seemed to contain both joy and sorrow played on his face. Jia Zheng asked again:

  ‘If you are Bao-yu, why are you dressed like this? And what brings you to this place?’

  Before Bao-yu could reply two other men appeared on the deck, a Buddhist monk and a Taoist, and holding him between them they said:

  ‘Come, your earthly karma is complete. Tarry no longer.’

  The three of them mounted the bank and strode off into the snow. Jia Zheng went chasing after them along the slippery track, but although he could spy them ahead of him, somehow they always remained just out of reach. He could hear all three of them singing some sort of a song:

  ‘On Greensickness Peak

  I dwell;

  In the Cosmic Void

  I roam.

  Who will pass over,

  Who will go with me,

  Who will explore

  The supremely ineffable

  Vastly mysterious

  Wilderness

  To which I return!’

  Jia Zheng listened to the song and continued to follow them until they rounded the slope of a small hill and suddenly vanished from sight. He was weak and out of breath by now with the exertion of the chase, and greatly mystified by what he had seen. Looking back he saw his page-boy, hurrying up behind him.

  ‘Did you see those three men just now?’ he questioned him.

  ‘Yes, sir, I did,’ replied the page. ‘I saw you following them, so I came too. Then they disappeared and I could see no one but you.’

  Jia Zheng wanted to continue, but all he could see before him was a vast expanse of white, with not a soul anywhere. He knew there was more to this strange occurrence than he could understand, and reluctantly he turned back and began to retrace his steps.

  The other servants had returned to their master’s boat to find the cabin empty and were told by the boatman that Jia Zheng had gone on shore in pursuit of two monks and a Taoist. They followed his footsteps through the snow and when they saw him coming towards them in the distance hurried forward to meet him, and then all returned to the boat together. Jia Zheng sat down to regain his breath and told them what had happened. They sought his authority to mount a search for Bao-yu in the area, but Jia Zheng dismissed the idea.

  ‘You do not understand,’ he said with a sigh. ‘This was indeed no supernatural apparition; I saw these men with my own eyes. I heard them singing, and the words of their song held a most profound and mysterious meaning. Bao-yu came into the world with his jade, and there was always something strange about it. I knew it for an ill omen. But because his grandmother doted on him so, we nurtured him and brought him up until now. That monk and that Taoist I have seen before, three times altogether. The first time was when they came to extol the virtues of the jade; the second was when Bao-yu was seriously ill and the monk came and said a prayer over the jade, which seemed to cure Bao-yu at once; the third time was when he restored the jade to us after it had been lost. He was sitting in the hall one minute, and the next he had vanished completely. I thought it strange at the time and could only conclude that perhaps Bao-yu was in some way blessed and that these two holy men had come to protect him. But the truth of the matter must be that he himself is a being from a higher realm who has descended into the world to experience the trials of this human life. For these past nineteen years he has been doted on in vain by his poor grandmother! Now at last I understand!’

  As he said these words, tears came to his eyes.

  ‘But surely,’ protested one of the servants, ‘if Mr Bao was really a Buddhist Immortal, what need was there for him to bother with passing his exams before disappearing?’

  ‘How can you ever hope to understand these things?’ replied Jia Zheng with a sigh. ‘The constellations in the heavens, the hermits in their hills, the spirits in their caves, each has a particular configuration, a unique temperament. When did you ever see Bao-yu willingly work at his books? And yet if once he applied himself, nothing was beyond his reach. His temperament was certainly unique.’

  In an effort to restore his spirits, the servants turned the conversation to Jia Lan’s success in the exams and the revival of the family fortunes. Then Jia Zheng completed and sealed his letter, in which he related his encounter with Bao-yu and instructed the family not to brood over their loss too much, and despatched one of the servants to deliver it to Rong-guo House while he himself continued his journey by boat. But of this no more.

  When Aunt Xue heard of the general amnesty pronounced by the Emperor she sent Xue Ke to borrow money from wherever he could, to add to what she herself had collected for Xue Pan’s commutation fine. The Board of Justice finally gave its approval and agreed to receive the money in settlement, whereupon an official document was issued authorizing Xue Pan’s release. When he was reunited with his family, there was a great deal of news for him to catch up on, some of it sad, some more cheerful. But this we can safely leave to the reader’s imagination. Xue Pan for his part uttered a solemn vow:

  ‘If I ever behave like that again, may I be hacked to death piece by piece!’

  Aunt Xue held her hand over his mouth:

  ‘Just make your mind up to mend your ways! There’s no need for all these blood-curdling oaths! But what are you going to do about Caltrop? Jin-gui died by her own hand, and though we may be poor, you can still afford to fill her place. After all Caltrop has been through on your account, I think you owe it to her to make her your proper wife. What do you think?’

  Xue Pan nodded his head in consent, while Bao-chai gave Aunt Xue’s suggestion her full support. Caltrop herself seemed overwhelmed and flushed a deep crimson:

  ‘It’s the same to me if I continue to serve Mr Pan,’ she said. ‘There’s no need to change things.’

  From then on all the servants began calling her Mrs Pan, and looked up to her with great respect.

  Xue Pan next went to call on the Jias and offered them his thanks for all that they had done. He was accompanied by his mother and Bao-chai, and there was quite a family gathering at Rong-guo House. Greetings were exchanged, and they were still chatting when a messenger arrived and presented the letter which Jia Zheng had written on the boat.

  ‘The Master will be arriving in a matter of days,’ he reported.

  Lady Wang told Jia Lan to read the letter out aloud. When he reached the passage where Jia Zheng described his encounter with Bao-yu, they all wept bitterly, Lady Wang, Bao-chai and Aroma most bitterly of all. Then they listened as Jia Lan read out Jia Zheng’s words of advice, that they were not to grieve but to understand that this was Bao-yu’s destiny, that he was the reincarnation of a Buddhist Immortal.

  ‘If he had ever risen to become an official and his career had then ended in disaster, it would have been much worse,’ they consoled themselves. ‘That would have meant public condemnation and ruin. Better that we should at least enjoy the honour of having had a holy man in the family. After all, it was his own father’s and mother’s karma, their virtue, that enabled him to be born into this family. Without wishing to be disrespectful, even Sir Jing from Ning-guo House who practised yoga all those years failed to become an Immortal. Bao-yu’s is no mean achievement. If you think of it in this light, Auntie’ (referring to Lady Wang), ‘it should be possible to have an easier mind.’

  ‘Do you think I hold it aga
inst Bao-yu that he has abandoned me?’ sobbed Lady Wang to Aunt Xue. ‘No, what grieves me is the thought of his wife’s unhappy fate. After little more than a year of marriage, how could he be so unfeeling as to desert her like this?’

  Aunt Xue found this quite heart-rending, while Bao-chai had already wept herself into a faint. Since all the menfolk had adjourned to the front hall, Lady Wang continued to pour her heart out to her sister:

  ‘After all the alarms and excursions I had to endure on his behalf, I finally had the comfort of seeing him marry and pass his exams, and could even look forward to the birth of a grandchild. And now this! If I’d known it would end like this I would never have let him marry in the first place! I would never have let him bring such unhappiness on the poor girl!’

  ‘These things are all decreed by fate,’ Aunt Xue consoled her. ‘What else could we possibly have said or done in the circumstances? We must count ourselves blessed that my daughter is with child, and that you will have a grandchild. I am sure that he at least will do well and bring some good out of all this. Look at Li Wan: her son has passed his Provincial examination, and no doubt next year young Lan will go on to become a Palace Graduate and an official. After all that his mother has suffered, now at last she can reap her reward. As for my daughter, you know that she is not a fickle or flighty girl. You have no cause to worry on her account.’

  Lady Wang found her sister’s words convincing and reassuring.

  ‘Bao-chai was always so demure and restrained as a child,’ she reflected to herself. ‘Always fond of plain, simple things. Perhaps that is why she has ended up in this predicament. Perhaps everything in this world really is fated! Though Chai has wept a great deal, she has never lost her sense of dignity. In fact she has even on occasion tried to comfort me. What a rare girl she is! So unlike her poor husband, who clearly was not meant for any joy in this world.’

  Comforted somewhat by these thoughts, Lady Wang turned her mind to Aroma: