A Dream of Red Mansion

by Cao Xueqin

  Xue Pan hung his head throughout this diatribe, but Jingui who had been eavesdropping called through the window:

  “You can sell anyone you want, but why drag in other people? Am I such a jealous shrew that I can’t tolerate a flesh? Who finds her a pest? Who thinks her a thorn in the flesh? If I were the jealous kind, I wouldn’t have allowed him to have my maid.”

  Aunt Xue nearly choked, trembling with anger. “What manners are these?” she spluttered. “When the mother-in-law is talking, how dare her daughter-in-law wrangle with her through the window? Imagine the daughter of a respectable family raising such a row! Outrageous, I call it!”

  Xue Pan stamped his foot frantically. “Do be quiet! Think how people will laugh if they hear us!” Determined to go the whole hog, Jingui went on ranting more wildly. “I’m not afraid if people laugh!” she shrieked. “Why should I be, when your concubine is trying to do me in? You’d better keep her and sell me instead. Everyone knows that you Xues have pots of money for bribes, as well as powerful relatives who’ll shut people’s mouths. So go ahead! What are you waiting for? If you think I’m no good, what blinded you before? Why keep running to our home to beg for my hand? Now you’ve got me as well as all the gold and silver in my dowry. And my maid, who’s not bad-looking, you’ve even grabbed her too. So it’s time to get rid of me!”

  Screaming, she slapped herself and rolled on the ground. Xue Pan was too frantic to know what to do—remonstrate, reason and plead with her, or beat her. He stumped in and out of the room, sighing and fuming, cursing his own-bad luck.

  Meanwhile Baochai had persuaded her mother to go back to her own room, but she insisted that Xiangling must be sold.

  “Our family only buys maids, never sells any,” Baochai pointed out. “Your anger’s making you talk foolishly, mother. If outsiders come to hear of this, how they’ll laugh! If my brother and sister-in-law dislike her, why not keep her to wait on me? I need another maid.”

  “If she’s kept it’ll cause more trouble. Far simpler to throw her out.”

  “If she’s with me that will be the same anyway. I won’t let her go to their quarters in the front, so she’ll be entirely cut off from them, just as if she’d been sold.”

  Xiangling had already run up to Aunt Xue and tearfully begged her not to drive her away but to let her wait on Miss Baochai. So finally Aunt Xue relented.

  After that, Xiangling moved into Baochai’s quarters and had no more to do with the young couple; still, she could not help bewailing her fate to the moon and sighing before the lamp. Though she had lived with Xue Pan for several years, because of irregular menses she had never conceived a child. Now anger and grief further undermined her health, and these upsets aggravated her anaemia. She fell into a consumption and lost her appetite. Doctors were called in, but their medicines failed to cure her.

  Meanwhile Jingui continued to make scenes, upsetting Aunt Xue and Baochai; but all they could do was to shed tears in secret as they lamented their fate. Two or three times Xue Pan, emboldened by wine, stormed at his wife and threatened her with a stick, but Jingui simply dared him to beat her. When he threatened her with a knife, she stretched out her neck and challenged him to kill her. Then, unable to bring himself to it, he could only rage for a while. When this had happened several times, Jingui became even more over-bearing and Xue Pan even more spineless.

  With Xiangling still in the house, Jingui could never be fully at ease; however, she let her be for the time being, as she was no longer an annoyance to her.

  It was now with Baochan that she started finding fault. But Baochan, unlike Xiangling, had a fiery temper and as she was on good terms with Xue Pan she felt she could afford to ignore her mistress. When Jingui tried to bully her she refuse to give ground. At first they simply wrangled. Then Jingui, when in a temper, would curse and beat her. Though Baochan could not strike back she would throw a tantrum, roll on the ground and threaten to kill herself, searching for knives or Xue Pan, unable to cope with the two of them, could only pace to and fro between both women, watching. If they became too rowdy, he would go out and keep away from the house.

  When Jingui happened to be in a good mood, she would gather a party together to play cards, dice and make merry. All her life she had loved gnawing bones, so she had chickens or ducks killed every day and the meat given to others while she herself chewed the fried bones to go with her wine. When she tired of this, or when anything offended her, she would flare up and begin scolding again.

  “If ponces and strumpets can enjoy themselves, why shouldn’t I?” she would clamour.

  Aunt Xue and Baochai paid no attention to her. And by now Xue Pan too was helpless, only regretting day and night that he had married this monster. They were all at their wits’ end. High and low in the Ning and Rong Mansions knew of this, and none of them but deplored it.

  By this time Baoyu’s hundred days’ confinement was up and he was allowed out of doors. Coming over to call on Jingui, he found nothing outrageous in her looks or behaviour—she seemed just as lovely as the other girls—so he was mystified and amazed by her bad reputation.

  One day when he went to pay his respects to his mother, he found Yingchun’s nanny there too, telling Lady Wang what a reprobate Sun Shaozu was.

  “All our young lady can do is to cry in secret,” she said. “She’s longing to be fetched home, to have a few days’ respite.”

  “The last couple of days I’ve been thinking of sending for her,” answered Lady Wang. “But so many troubles cropped up that it slipped my mind. The other day Baoyu called there, and when he came back he made the same suggestion. Well, tomorrow’s an auspicious day; we’ll send to fetch her.”

  Just then a servant arrived from the Lady Dowager to tell Baoyu to go first thing the next day to Tianqi Temple, in order to offer thanks for his recovery. As Baoyu was only too eager for any outing, these instructions so delighted him that he could hardly close his eyes all night as he waited for day to break.

  The next morning after he had washed and dressed, accompanied by two or three old nurses he went by carriage out of the West Gate to burn incense and offer thanks in Tianqi Temple, where all the preparations for this had been made the previous day. Baoyu, being naturally timid, kept away from the fierce-looking images of gods and demons there. For this magnificent temple had been built in an earlier dynasty but then neglected for so many years that all the clay sculptures there struck him as monstrous and left him aghast.

  After hastily burning the sacrificial paper, Baoyu retired to a quiet room to rest. When he had been served a meal, the old nurses, Li Gui and others strolled with him through the temple grounds till he was tired, when they took him back inside for another rest. Not wanting him to go to sleep, the nurses fetched Old Wang, the Taoist priest in charge of the temple, to divert him.

  This old Taoist, formerly an itinerant vendor of medicine, had made a considerable profit out of his nostrums; and outside the temple hung a notice to the effect that pills, salves, plasters and powders of every kind were obtainable here. This priest also frequented the Ning and Rong Mansions, where he had come to be known as One-Plaster Wang; for he claimed that his plasters were so efficacious that each could cure all manner of different ailments.

  When One-Plaster Wang entered the room, Baoyu was lying drowsily on the kang while Li Gui and the others were urging him not to sleep.

  At sight of the priest they cried, “You’ve come just at the right time, father! You’re so good at spinning yarns, won’t you tell our young master some story?”

  One-Plaster Wang laughed.

  “Quite right. You mustn’t fall asleep after eating the gluten in that vegetarian meal, or it’ll play tricks in your belly!”

  The whole room laughed, Baoyu too, as he got up and straightened his clothes. Then One-Plaster Wang ordered his acolytes to make them some good, strong tea.

  Mingyan interposed, “Our master won’t drink your tea. Even sitting in this room he’s half choked by the smell of your
plasters.”

  “We never keep plasters in here,” said the priest with a grin. “A few days ago, when I learned that Master Bao would be coming today, I scented this room with incense again and again.”

  “I’m always hearing how good your plasters are,” remarked Baoyu. “Just what diseases do they cure?”

  “It would take too long to tell you that in full. I use one hundred and twenty different ingredients which complement each other just as do a prince and his ministers, and co-operate with each other just as do a host and his guests. Some of them are heating, some cooling, some costly, some cheap. Inwardly, they fortify the humours, build up the patient’s strength, improve the appetite, increase resistance, tranquillize the nerves, expel cold and heat, and eliminate indigestion and phlegm. Outwardly, they regulate the blood, relax the muscles, remove dead tissues and help new ones to grow, cure chills and act as an antidote to poison. They are marvellously effective, as you’d know, sir, if you’d tried one.”

  “I can hardly believe that one plaster cures so many different ailments,” Baoyu answered. “I’d like to know if it’s any good for a malady I have in mind.”

  “It cures all diseases,” One-Plaster Wang asserted. “If it does you no good, you can tweak my beard, slap my old face and pull down my temple—how’s that? Just tell me the symptoms of this malady.”

  “Have a guess. If you guess right, I’ll believe in your medicine.”

  One-Plaster Wang thought for a while.

  “This is quite a poser,” he said at last with a smile. “I’m afraid my plaster may not work in this case.”

  Then Baoyu told Li Gui and the other servants, “Go out and have a stroll. There are too many people in here, it’s getting stuffy.”

  The servants withdrew, leaving only Mingyan in attendance. After he had lighted a stick of Sweet-Dream Incense, Baoyu told him to sit down beside him so that he could lean against him. At this point, One-Plaster Wang had a sudden idea. Smiling all over his face, he drew closer to whisper:

  “I’ve guessed it! Now that the young gentleman is growing up, I suppose he wants some drug to increase his virility—right?” Cutting him short, Mingyan snapped, “Shut up, you idiot!”

  “What did he say?” asked Baoyu in bewilderment.

  “Never mind. He was talking rot.”

  One-Plaster Wang was appalled and dared not ask any more questions.

  “Better tell me outright, sir,” he said.

  “What I wanted to know was this: have you a prescription to cure a jealous shrew?”

  The priest clapped his hands and laughed.

  “I give up! Not only have I no such prescription, I’ve never even heard of one either.”

  “In that case,” Baoyu teased, “your plaster doesn’t amount to much.”

  “Though I’ve no plaster to cure a shrew, there is a potion which might. Only it takes time—it doesn’t work overnight.”

  “What potion is that? And how should it be taken?”

  “It’s called Cure for Jealousy. Take one top-quality pear, one fifth of an ounce of crystal sugar, one tenth of orange peel and three bowls of water. Boil these till the pear is soft, and let the shrew take one does first thing each day. Then in due course she’ll be cured.”

  “That wouldn’t cost much, but I doubt whether it would work.”

  “If one dose doesn’t do the trick, give ten. If she’s not cured today, repeat the treatment tomorrow. If it doesn’t work this year, go on with it next year. At any rate, these ingredients aren’t injurious but good for the lungs and digestion. This sweet potion cures coughs and tastes delicious too. If she takes it for a hundred years she’ll die in any case, and once dead how can she go on being jealous? So in the end it will prove efficacious.”

  By now Baoyu and Mingyan were roaring with laughter. “You oily-mouthed ox!” they cried.

  “What does it matter?” chuckled One-Plaster Wang. “I was just whiling away the time to stop you from felling sleepy. It’s worth money, making you laugh. To tell you the truth, even my plasters are bogus. If I had some really good medicine, I’d take it myself so as to become an immortal instead of coming here to fool around.”

  By this time it was the hour for the sacrifice, and they asked Baoyu to go out to bum sacrificial paper, pour a libation of wine and distribute alms. The sacrifice ended, he went back to the city.

  By now Yingchun had already been home for some time. When the women from the Sun family who had come with her had been entertained to dinner and sent home, Yingchun, shedding tears in Lady Wang’s room, described her wretchedness.

  “Sun Shaozu cares for nothing but women, gambling and drinking,” she sobbed. “He’s had affairs with practically all our maids and young servants’ wives. When I remonstrated mildly two or three times, he cursed me for being jealous, saying I must have been steeped in vinegar. He also says he put five thousand taels in father’s safe-keeping and he shouldn’t have spent it. He’s come here several times to ask for it back, and when he fails to get it he points at me and scolds. ‘Don’t put on those ladified airs with me! Your old man has spent five thousand taels of mine; so he’s sold you to me. If you don’t behave yourself, I’ll beat you up and send you to sleep with the servants. When your grandfather was alive, seeing how rich and influential our family was, he went to great trouble to get connected with us. Actually, I belong to your father’s generation. It was a mistake my marrying you because that’s made me step down one generation, as if I were the one chasing after power and profit.’“

  She wept as she spoke, and Lady Wang and all the girls shed tears too.

  Lady Wang said soothingly, “You’ve already married this oaf, so it can’t be helped. Your uncle did advise your father against it, but he wouldn’t listen—he’d set his heart on this match. And now it’s turned out badly. Well, child, this is fate.”

  “I can’t believe I was fated to suffer like this,” sobbed Yingchun. “I lost my mother when I was a child, and was lucky to have a few peaceful years here with you, auntie. But now see what’s become of me!” Lady Wang, trying to console her, asked where she would like to stay. “Being snatched away so suddenly from my cousins, I dream of them all the time,” Yingchun replied. “I long for my old rooms too. If I can spend a few more days in my old quarters in the Garden, then I shall die content. Who knows if I’ll ever have such a chance again.”

  “Don’t talk so wildly,” interposed Lady Wang. “Little squabbles between young couples are quite common. Why speak in that ill-omened way?”

  She ordered the house at Purple Caltrop Isle to be made ready at once, and told the girls to keep Yingchun company and cheer her up.

  To Baoyu she said, “Mind you don’t breathe a word about this to the old lady! If she gets to hear of it, I’ll hold you to blame.”

  Baoyu promised to keep quiet.

  That evening Yingchun stayed in her old quarters, and her girl cousins and the maids lavished affection on her. After three days, however, she had to go to stay with Lady Xing. First she took her leave of the Lady Dowager and Lady Wang. When it came to saying goodbye to the girls, she was prostrated by grief. It was Lady Wang and Aunt Xue who soothed her and finally persuaded her to stop weeping and go over to the other mansion, where she spent a couple of days with Lady Xing. Then Sun Shaozu sent to fetch her back and, though Yingchun dreaded returning, for fear of her cruel husband she had to hold back her grief and take her leave.

  As for Lady Xing, she was so callous that she had not even asked Yingchun how she got on with her husband, or whether her household was difficult to manage, simply entertaining her in the most perfunctory manner.

  To know what the outcome was, read the next chapter.

  Chapter 81

  Four Beauties Fish in the Pond to Try Their Luck

  Baoyu’s Father Orders Him Back to the Family School

  After Yingchun’s departure, Lady Xing behaved just as if nothing had happened. Lady Wang, however, who had brought Yingchun up, was bitterly di
stressed. She was sighing to herself in her room when Baoyu came in to pay his respects. Noticing the tear-stains on her cheeks he did not venture to take a seat, simply standing on one side till she urged him to mount the kang and sit beside her.

  His mother saw from the dazed look on his face that he had something on his mind.

  “What’s worrying you now?” she asked.

  “It’s nothing really. But after hearing yesterday what poor Yingchun has to put up with, I feel it’s truly too much for her to bear! I didn’t dare tell grandmother, but it kept me from sleeping all night. How can girls from a family like ours stand such cruel treatment? Yingchun especially, who’s always been too timid to answer anyone back. Yet now she of all people is up against such an inhuman monster, who has no idea how sensitive a girl is.” As he spoke his eyes brimmed with tears.

  “There’s no help for it,” Lady Wang answered. “As the saying goes, ‘A married daughter—spilt water.’ So what can I do about it?”

  “Last night I had an idea. Suppose we talk grandmother into having Cousin Yingchun fetched back? Then she can go on staying in Purple Caltrop Isle, eating and playing with us just like in the old days, instead of being bullied by that scoundrel Sun. When he sends to fetch her back we won’t let her go, not even if he sends a hundred times! We’ll just tell him this is the old lady’s decision. Don’t you think that’s a good plan?”

  Both amused and exasperated, his mother exclaimed, “There you go again—talking nonsense! Sooner or later a girl has to leave home, and once she’s married off what can her mother’s family do for her? If she happens to get a good husband, fine; if not, there’s no help for it— that’s fate. Surely you know the saying, ‘Marry a cock and follow the cock; marry a dog and follow the dog’? How can every girl be like your eldest sister, chosen as an Imperial Consort? Besides, Yingchun’s newly married; her husband’s still young. People’s temperaments differ, and just at the start she’s bound to feel a bit awkward. A few years from now, when they know each other better and have a child or two, things should work out all right.