A Dream of Red Mansion

by Cao Xueqin

  “No-one.” Mingyan grunted. “Nobody knows we’re here.”

  This worried Xiren again and she protested, “You’re quite impossible. What if you ran into someone? What if Lord Zheng saw you? The streets are jammed with people and carriages, and if your horse bolted you could quite easily have an accident. This is no joke. You two really have a nerve. You’re the one to blame, Mingyan, and when I get back I shall tell the nurses to give you a good hiding.”

  Mingyan pulled a face. “Why shove the blame on to me? The young master cursed me and beat me to make me bring him. I told him not to come. Well, we’d better go back.”

  “Never mind,” interposed Zifang quickly. “Since you’re here, there’s no point in complaining. It’s just that our shabby place is so cramped and dirty, we don’t know where to ask the young master to sit.”

  By now Xiren’s mother had come out to greet him too, and Xiren led Baoyu in. He saw four or five girls inside, who lowered their heads and blushed at his entry. Afraid that the young gentleman might feel cold, Zifang and his mother made him sit on the kang and hastily set out fresh sweetmeats and brewed some choice tea.

  “You’re just wasting your time. I know him.” Xiren smiled. “It’s no use putting out those sweetmeats. He can’t eat just anything.”

  She fetched her own cushion and plumped it on the kang for Baoyu to sit on, then put her own foot-stove under his feet. Next she took two slabs of perfumed incense shaped like plum-blossom from her pouch, slipped them into her handstove, put its lid on again and placed it in Baoyu’s lap. This done, she poured him some tea in her own cup.

  Meanwhile her mother and brother had carefully set out a whole table of tidbits—none of them things he could eat, as Xiren well knew.

  “Since you’ve come, you mustn’t go away without tasting something,” she said gaily. “At least try something to show you’ve been to our house.” She picked up a few pine kernels, blew off the skins, and gave them to Baoyu on a handkerchief.

  He noticed that her eyes were red and there were traces of tears on her powdered cheeks. “Why have you been crying?” he whispered.

  “Who’s been crying?” she retorted cheerfully. “I’ve just been rubbing my eyes.” In this way she glossed the matter over.

  Xiren saw that Baoyu was wearing his red archer’s tunic embroidered with golden dragons and lined with fox-fur under a fringed bluish-grey sable coat. “Surely you didn’t change into these new clothes just to come here?” she said. “Did no one ask where you were going?”

  “No, I changed to go to Cousin Zhen’s to watch some operas.”

  She nodded. “Well, after a short rest you’d better go back. This is no place for you.”

  “I wish you’d come home now,” coaxed Baoyu. “I’ve kept something good for you.”

  “Hush!” she whispered. “What will the others think if they hear?” she reached out to take the magic jade from his neck and turning to her cousins said with a smile, “Look! Here’s the wonderful thing that you’ve heard so much about. You’ve always wanted to see this rarity. Now’s your chance for a really good look. There’s nothing so very special about it, is there?”

  After passing the jade around for their inspection she fastened it on Baoyu’s neck again, then asked her brother to hire a sedan-chair or a small carriage and escort Baoyu home.

  “I can see him back quite safely on horseback,” said Zifang.

  “That’s not the point. I’m afraid of his meeting someone.”

  Then Zifang hurried out to hire a sedan-chair, and not daring to detain Baoyu they saw him out. Xiren gave Mingyan some sweetmeats and money to buy firecrackers, warning him that he must keep this visit secret if he wanted to steer clear of trouble. She saw Baoyu out of the gate, watched him get into the chair and lowered its curtains. Her brother and Mingyan followed behind with the horse.

  When they reached the street where the Ning Mansion stood, Mingyan ordered the chair to stop and told Zifang, “We must look in here for a while before going home, if we don’t want people to suspect anything.”

  Since this made good sense, Zifang handed Baoyu out and helped him to mount his horse, while the boy apologized for troubling him. Then they slipped through the back gate, and there we will leave them.

  During Baoyu’s absence, the maids in his apartments had amused themselves as they pleased at draughts, dice and cards, until the floor was strewn with melon-seed shells. Nanny Li chose this moment to hobble along with her cane to call on Baoyu and see how he was. She shook her head over the way the maids were carrying on behind his back.

  “Since I’ve moved out and don’t come so often, you’ve grown quite out of hand,” she scolded. “The other nurses don’t dare take you to task either. As for Baoyu, he’s like a ten-foot lampstand that sheds light on others but none on itself. He complains that other people are dirty, yet leaves you to turn his own rooms topsy-turvy. Disgraceful, I call it.”

  The maids knew quite well that Baoyu would not mind, and since Nanny Li had retired and left the house she had no further authority over them. They went on amusing themselves and simply ignored her. Asked how much Baoyu are at each meal and what time he went to bed, they just answered at random.

  “What an old pest she is!” one muttered.

  “Is that a bowl of junket?” asked Nanny Li. “Why didn’t you send it over to me? I’d better eat it here right now.” She picked up a spoon and started eating it.

  “You leave that alone!” cried one girl. “That’s for Xiren. He’ll be annoyed when he comes back, and unless you own up you’ll get all of us into trouble.”

  “I can’t believe it of him.” Nanny Li was both indignant and embarrassed. “What is this, after all, but a bowl of milk? He shouldn’t begrudge me that—or more costly things either. Does he think more of Xiren than of me? Has he forgotten who brought him up? It’s my milk from my own heart’s blood that he was raised on, so why should he be angry if I have a bowl of his milk? I declare I will, just to see what he’ll do. You seem to think the world of Xiren, but who is she? A low-class girl. I should know, I trained the creature.” With that, in a huff, she finished off the junket.

  “They’ve no manners,” said another maid soothingly. “I don’t wonder you’re cross, granny. Baoyu often sends you presents. This isn’t going to upset him.”

  “You don’t have to humour me in that sly way,” Nanny Li snorted. “Do you think I don’t know how Qianxue was dismissed, all because of a cup of tea? I’ll come back tomorrow to hear what my punishment’s to be.” She went off then in a temper.

  Presently Baoyu came home and sent someone to fetch Xiren. He saw Qingwen lying motionless on her bed.

  “Is she ill?” he asked. “Or did she lose some game?”

  “She was winning,” Qiuwen told him. “But then Grandame Li came along and raised such a rumpus that she lost the game. She went to bed to sulk.”

  “You mustn’t take Nanny Li so seriously.” Baoyu smiled. “Just leave her alone.”

  He turned then to welcome Xiren who had only just come in. After asking where he had dined and what time he had reached home, she gave the girls greetings from her mother and cousins. When she had changed out of her visiting clothes, Baoyu called for the junket.

  “Granny Li ate the lot,” his maids reported.

  Before he could make any comment Xiren interposed with a smile, “So that’s what you kept for me—thank you. The other day I enjoyed it, but it gave me a bad stomachache afterwards until I’d brought it all up. So it’s just as well she’s had it. Otherwise it would have been wasted. What I’d fancy now are some dried chestnuts. Will you peel a few for me while I make your bed?”

  Taking this for the truth, Baoyu thought no more of the matter but started peeling chestnuts by the lamp. And since the others had left he asked with a smile, “who was that girl in red this afternoon?”

  “My mother’s sister’s child.”

  Baoyu heaved a couple of admiring sighs.

  “W
hy are you sighing?” asked Xiren. “I know how your mind works. You think she isn’t good enough to wear red.”

  “What an idea! If a girl like that isn’t good enough to wear red, who is? I found her so charming, I thought how nice it would be if we could get her here to live with us.”

  “Nice, you call it?” Xiren snorted. “Nice to be a slave here?”

  “Don’t be so touchy,” he retorted with a smile. “Living in our house doesn’t have to mean being a slave. Couldn’t she be our relative?”

  “We’re too far beneath you for that.”

  When Baoyu went on peeling the chestnuts in silence, Xiren laughed. “Why don’t you say anything? Have I offended you? All right, tomorrow you can buy her for a few taels of silver.”

  “How do you expect anyone to answer you?” Baoyu grinned. “All I meant was that she looks just the person to live in a mansion like this, much more so than some of us clods who were born here.”

  “She may not have your luck but she’s her parents’ darling, the apple of their eye. She’s just turned seventeen and all her dowry is ready. She’ll be married next year.”

  The word “married” made Baoyu exclaim in dismay and feel put out.

  Xiren Observed with a sigh, “These last few years, since I came here, I haven’t seen much of my cousins. Soon I’ll be going home, but they’ll all be gone.”

  Shocked by the implication of this, he dropped the chestnuts. “What do you mean—going home?”

  “Today I heard my mother discussing it with my brother. They told me to be patient for one more year and then they’d buy me out of service.”

  “Why should they do that?” Baoyu was flabbergasted.

  “What a strange question! I wasn’t born a slave in your family. I have my own people outside. What future is there for me if I stay on here alone?”

  “Suppose I won’t let you go?”

  “That wouldn’t be right. Why, even in the Palace they make it a rule to choose new girls every few years. They can’t keep them for ever either, so how can you?”

  He decided upon reflection that she was right. None the less he objected, “Suppose, though, the old lady won’t let you go?”

  “Why shouldn’t she? If I were somebody special or had so won the hearts of the old lady and Lady Wang that they couldn’t do without me, they might give my people a few extra taels so as to keep me. But I’m no one out of the usual: there are plenty much better than me. When I came here as a child I was with the old lady; then I waited on Miss Shi for a couple of years, and now I’ve been waiting on you for quite a time. If my people come to redeem me, your family is bound to let me go. They may even be generous enough not to ask for any money. If you say I look after you well, there’s no merit in that—it’s my job. And my place will be taken by someone else just as good. I’m not indispensable.”

  By now it did indeed sound to Baoyu as if she had every reason to leave and none at all to stay. Yet in desperation he argued, “Well, but if I insist the old lady will speak to your mother and pay her so much that she won’t like to take you away.”

  “Of course my mother wouldn’t dare refuse. Even if you didn’t talk nicely to her or pay her a cent, so long as you insisted on my staying how could she stand out? But your family has never thrown its weight about like that in the past. This isn’t like offering ten times the usual price for something you happen to like, when the owner finds it worth his while to sell. If you kept me for no reason, it would do you no good and would break up my family. The old lady and Lady Wang wouldn’t dream of such a thing.”

  Baoyu remained sunk in thought for several minutes.

  “So this means you’ll be going for certain?”

  “Yes.”

  “How can she be so heartless?” he wondered. Aloud, he said with a sigh, “If I’d known that you’d be going, I shouldn’t have taken you on in the first place. I shall be left all alone here, a poor forsaken ghost.” And he retired sulkily to bed.

  Now it so happened that when Xiren went home and heard her mother and brother talk of buying her out, she had assured them that Baoyu would never let her go so long as he lived.

  “When you had nothing to eat and your only way of raising a little money was by selling me, I couldn’t stop you,” she said. “What girl can see her parents starve to death? I was lucky to be sold to this family, where I’m fed and clothed like a daughter of the house, not beaten all day long and scolded all night. Besides, even though father’s dead, you’ve got the family back on its feet and are as well-off again as you ever were. If you were still hard up, there might be some reason for redeeming me and re-selling me at a profit. But since there’s no need, why do it? Just pretend I’m dead and stop thinking of buying me back.”

  She wept and stormed until her mother and brother realized that she was adamant and would never leave. In any case she had been sold for life and although they thought the Jia family might be generous enough to let her go without asking for any money, they also knew that the servants there were not ill-used but shown more kindness than severity. Indeed, the girls who were personal attendants of members of the family, old or young, were generally treated more handsomely than servants in other jobs. In fact, they were even better off than daughters of ordinary humble households. So Mrs. Hua and her son did not press the point.

  Baoyu’s unexpected visit and the apparent intimacy between maid and master opened their eyes to the true situation, leaving them much reassured. In fact, this was something they had not even hoped for. So they abandoned all thought of buying her freedom.

  As for Xiren, these years had shown her that Baoyu was no ordinary youth but more high-spirited and wilful than other boys, with some indescribably perverse streaks in his character. Of late he had been so indulged by his grandmother that his parents were unable to control him strictly and he had now become so reckless and headstrong that he was losing patience with all conventions. She had long wanted to speak to him about this, but was convinced he would not listen to her.

  Luckily, by throwing dust in his eyes today, she was able to sound him out and get him into a chastened mood for a good lecture. His silent retreat to bed indicated how upset he was and how wounded.

  As for the chestnuts, she had pretended to hanker after them to make him forget the junket, for fear of a repetition of that incident involving maple-dew tea which had landed Qianxue in trouble.

  Now she gave the chestnuts to the other maids and, coming back, nudged Baoyu gently. She found his face wet with tears.

  “Why take on like this?” she coaxed. “If you really want me here, of course I won’t go.”

  Sensing something behind this, Baoyu quickly rejoined, “Go on. Just tell me what else I must do to keep you. I don’t know how to persuade you.”

  “We needn’t talk now of how well we get on together. If you want to keep me that’s beside the point. I’ve two or three things to ask you. If you agree to them, I’ll take it that you really and truly want me to stay. Then not even a knife at my throat could make me leave you.”

  Baoyu’s face lit up. “Well, what are your conditions? I agree to them all, dear sister, good kind sister. I’d agree to three hundred conditions, let alone three. I only beseech you all to stay and watch over me until the day that I turn into floating ashes—no, not ashes. Ashes have a trace of form and consciousness. Stay until I’ve turned into a puff of smoke and been scattered by the wind. Then you’ll no longer be able to watch over me, and I shall no longer be able to care about you—you can let me go, and I’ll have to let you go wherever you please as well.”

  “Steady on!” Xiren frantically clapped her hand over his mouth. “This is just what I wanted to warn you against, yet here you go, talking more wildly than ever.”

  “All right,” agreed Baoyu promptly. “I promise not to.”

  “This is the first fault you must correct.”

  “Done. If I ever talk that way again, you can pinch my lips. What else?”

  “The seco
nd thing is this. Whether you like studying or not, in front of the old master and other people stop running it down and making sarcastic remarks about it. At least pretend to like studying, so as not to provoke your father and give him a chance to speak well of you to his friends. After all, he thinks: The men of our family have been scholars for generations, but this son of mine has let me down—he doesn’t care for books. As if this wasn’t bad enough, you keep saying crazy things in public as well as in private, sneering at those who study hard so as to get on and calling them career-grubbers. You also say that, apart from that classic on ‘manifesting bright virtue,’ all the rest are trash produced by fools of old who didn’t understand the Sage. No wonder your father gets so angry with you that he keeps punishing you. What sort of impression does that make on people?”

  “All right.” Baoyu laughed. “That was just wild talk when I was too young to know any better. I don’t say such things nowadays. What else?”

  “You must stop abusing Buddhist monks and Taoist priests and playing about with girls’ cosmetics and powder. Most important of all, you must stop kissing the rouge on girls’ lips and running after everything in red.”

  “I promise, I promise. What else is there? Tell me, quick!”

  “That’s all. Just be a bit more careful about things in general instead of getting carried away by all your whims and fancies. If you’ll do all I’ve asked, I promise never to leave you, not even if they send a big sedan-chair with eight bearers to fetch me away.”

  Baoyu chuckled. “If you stay here long enough, you’ll have your sedan-chair and eight bearers some day.”

  “I don’t covet such luck.” She smiled disdainfully. “If I’m not entitled to it what’s the good of riding on one?”

  At this point Qiuwen appeared and said, “It’s nearly the third watch: time you were in bed. Just now the old lady sent round a nurse to ask, and I told her you were asleep.”

  Baoyu asked her to hand him a watch and saw it was twelve o’clock. He washed and rinsed his mouth all over again, then undressed and lay down to sleep.