The Red Chamber (3 page)

Ping’er loosens Xifeng’s hair from the “lazy knot” that Xifeng has slept in. Then she gathers Xifeng’s hair like a skein of silk and begins to comb it, catching it in her hand between each stroke. When at last the comb slides through Xifeng’s hair without the least resistance, Ping’er scoops up a handful of hairpins.

“Allowances are due today. Did you remember?” Xifeng asks, looking at Ping’er in the large West Ocean glass mirror mounted on the dressing table. Ever since her mother-in-law, Lady Xing, died three years ago, Xifeng has run the household.

“Mmm,” Ping’er grunts. She has put the hairpins in her mouth, and plucks them out, one by one, as she coils Xifeng’s hair into a knot. She jerks her chin at the cloth-wrapped packets lined up neatly on a side table, and Xifeng counts them to make sure they are all there: two large ones for Baoyu’s and Lady Jia’s apartments; two small ones for the Two Springs; and then three even smaller ones: one for Uncle Zheng’s concubine Auntie Zhao, and two for Baochai and her mother, Mrs. Xue. Mrs. Xue is, of course, more than rich enough to pay the salaries of both her own and her daughter Baochai’s maids. The allowances they receive are purely symbolic, meant to indicate that they remain at Rongguo as honored guests, and are thus considered part of the household.

“See that the allowances are delivered this morning,” Xifeng says. “And did you hear? A messenger from Uncle Zheng came last night. Their boat is only twenty
li
from the Capital. He and Miss Lin Daiyu should be here by this evening. Have a room prepared.”

“Which one?”

“How about that little room behind Granny Jia’s?”

Xifeng sits back and looks at herself in the mirror. She catches up a loose tendril with a turquoise-blue kingfisher pin, and then reaches for her carved ivory box of face cream. With practiced fingers she smooths it over her face, working it over her eyelids and into the creases beside
her nostrils, before dusting her whole face with a fine layer of jasmine-scented powder. Then she pulls the outer corner of her eyelid taut with her left index finger, and begins to line her eyes with sure, confident strokes. It is the shape of her eyes more than any other feature, she knows, that distinguishes her face, giving her the reputation for beauty. They are rounded at the inner corner, but long and tapered near her temples, like a teardrop, or a tadpole: “phoenix eyes,” they are called. Now that she has become a matron and it is permissible to wear heavy makeup, she always exaggerates their shape by lining them boldly with kohl and extending their outer corners into long points reaching nearly to her temples.

Ping’er reappears at her elbow. She holds a steaming cup of the medicine Dr. Wang had prescribed to help Xifeng conceive.

“But it’s been barely a week since my period.”

“It can’t hurt to start taking it early, especially since you and he … you know … last night.”

“Oh, all right.” Xifeng begins to sip it. When she is halfway through, the West Ocean clock on the wall bongs six times. Breakfast is served at seven, but if the table is not set by the time Granny Jia emerges from her bedroom, Xifeng will be blamed. She gulps the rest of the bitter-tasting brew down, and hurries towards the door.

“Wait. Have a few mouthfuls,” says Ping’er, intercepting her with a small bowl of rice porridge. “It isn’t too hot.”

“I don’t have time.” Xifeng waves it aside.

Ping’er blocks her path. “Dr. Wang said you have to take better care of yourself. You can’t stand for hours on an empty stomach. No wonder you miscarried last time—”

To stop Ping’er from saying more, Xifeng takes the bowl. There is a sleepy shout from the bedroom. Lian must be waking up.

“I’ll go see what he wants,” Ping’er offers, hurrying down the hallway.

After Xifeng has eaten half the bowl, she notices that there is no sound from the bedroom. Even though she knows she should go to Lady Jia’s, she slips down the hallway and pushes aside the door curtain. Ping’er is standing next to where Lian is still lying near the edge of the
kang
. He is smiling and reaching up a sinewy brown arm to grasp her by the hand, as if to pull her down to the bed. Ping’er blushes and pulls away, giggling. Xifeng is suddenly struck by how pretty Ping’er is, the tail of hair hanging down her back glossy and black, her fair skin set off by her apricot gown.

“Excuse me for disturbing you,” she says in a brittle voice she can hardly recognize as her own.

Lian and Ping’er jerk apart, Ping’er turning a stricken face to her mistress.

“What dirty business you get up to while I’m not here is none of my affair,” she tells Ping’er. “But you’d better watch out, or he’ll give you some nasty disease he’s picked up at a whorehouse.”

“Be quiet!” Lian says threateningly, but of course, he can’t think of a retort. What could he say? What she says is true, after all. He started staying out all night within three months of their wedding.

He gets up out of the bed, raising his hand. Though he has never hit her, she moves instinctively towards the door. Then he lets his arm drop, looking sullen and defeated. “It’s not like that—” he begins.

“I don’t want to hear it,” she says, and turns on her heel to go to Lady Jia’s.

3

“What do you think?” Oriole asks.

Xue Baochai looks at her reflection in the West Ocean mirror, trying to hide her disappointment. Oriole had promised that doing Baochai’s hair in the newest style would be far more becoming, but the two heavy buns on either side of her head make her face look broader and flatter than ever. Her small, single-lidded eyes, lacking in any expressivity, stare back at her in the mirror. She turns away from her reflection.

“Don’t you like it?” the maid says. “Or, I can do it with the front combed up and—”

“Do it the usual way. I’m in a hurry. My mother had a headache last night and I have to go see how she is,” Baochai says curtly. She waits impatiently as Oriole re-dresses her hair. It is always the same each time she tries a new gown or hairstyle. The promised transformation never occurs, and she is forced yet again to confront the disappointment of her appearance: the plain uninflected expanse of her face, the solid, almost matronly figure, even though she is not yet nineteen.

After Oriole is done, Baochai hurries from her apartments across the Garden to see her mother. Like Baoyu and her unmarried female cousins at Rongguo, Baochai lives in one of the apartments clustered around the lake in the Garden, while the matrons—her mother, Granny, Xifeng—live in more imposing and formal apartments in the front part of the Inner Quarters. Skirting the lower end of the lake, she makes her way to her mother’s apartments and goes straight to the bedroom. She finds Mrs. Xue sitting before the dressing table while her maid Sunset combs her hair. There are heavy bags under her mother’s eyes.

“You don’t feel any better?” she asks.

Mrs. Xue shakes her head, putting a hand to her temple. “I had a bad night. I can’t find my pills. Do you know where I put them?”

“Perhaps you left them at Granny’s last night at dinner. Why don’t I go check?”

She hurries to the principal apartment of the Inner Quarters, occupied by Lady Jia. As she passes through the small reception hall into the
large courtyard, she sees Jia Huan using a straw to tease a cockatiel in one of the cages hanging along the verandah. She tries to slip by unnoticed. Jia Huan is Baoyu’s half brother, born to Uncle Zheng by his concubine Auntie Zhao. Though almost seventeen, he has not outgrown his fondness for tormenting his sister and cousins.

He catches sight of her. “What are you doing here so early?”

“I came to look for my mother’s pills. Why don’t you help me?”

He follows her into Granny’s front room, empty at this hour. She climbs onto the
kang
, rummaging beneath pillows and bolsters.

A moment later he holds up an embroidered drawstring purse from the other side of the
kang
. “Is this it?”

“Yes,” she says, relieved. She crawls towards him, putting out her hand. “Thank you.”

He puts it behind his back. “What will you give me for it?”

She hates how he always tries to take advantage of another person’s weakness. She looks at his receding chin, his rodent-like eyes, so unlike Baoyu’s. Her temper rises, but she says pleasantly, “Please, Huan. My mother has a headache.”

“All the more reason you should be willing to give me something for it.”

“Come on, Huan,” she says, more sharply. She usually makes a special effort to be kind to him, to show that she does not hold his birth against him, but today she has no patience for his teasing.

Baoyu comes in, with his light step. Huan tries to conceal the purse in his sleeve.

Seeing the situation at a glance, Baoyu puts out his hand. “Give it to me, Huan.”

“Why should I?”

“Because I’ll make you if you don’t.” Baoyu probably outweighs Huan by six or seven
jin
, and is as graceful as Huan is awkward.

After a moment, Huan flings the purse at Baoyu and slinks out of the room.

She tries to hide her rush of pleasure at being alone with Baoyu. She notices that, unlike Huan, he is wearing stay-at-home clothes, a slightly worn blue gown, and thick-soled red slippers instead of boots. “Aren’t you going to school today?”

“I asked Granny to let me stay home so I could greet our new cousin.”

“Huan is going.”

He gives her a look, which clearly says that if Huan is too stupid to get
out of going to school, it isn’t his fault. He climbs onto the
kang
to give her the purse.

“Thank you.” She reaches out her hand, but just as she is about to take the purse, he puts it behind his back.

She laughs. “Now don’t you start!”

His brilliant black eyes are alight with mischief.

She lunges at him. Quickly, he transfers the purse to the other hand. She tries to grab it from the other side, and he switches it back. As she tussles with him for possession of it, sometimes her hand or shoulder brushes against his chest. This kind of contact, even between cousins, is highly improper. She glances nervously towards the door to make sure no one is coming. She lunges again, laughing and out of breath, more and more wildly. Finally, rather than dodging her, he lets her crash full into his chest, and puts his arms around her.

She cannot breathe. She feels a hot blush rising to her face, and lowers her eyes. She feels his arms around her, his chest against hers. She knows she should push him away. She has known him ever since she and her mother would visit from Nanjing when she was a little girl. But when she and her mother moved to the Capital for good last year, he was no longer the naughty bright-eyed little boy she remembered. He had grown so handsome and poised that it made her catch her breath.

“Let me go,” she says, but he only holds her tighter. “Give me the purse.” She glances shyly up at him. His face, with its bold, laughing eyes, is only inches from hers.

“What will you give me for it?” he whispers.

“You’re as bad as Huan!”

“What will you give me for it?” he repeats.

“Nothing,” she whispers back.

He holds her tighter, lowers his head. Is he going to kiss her?

There is the scuffle of feet on the verandah outside the door curtain. They jump apart.

Xifeng comes in, and Baochai can tell from the mockery in her brilliant eyes that she has guessed, if not seen, what was going on.

“Now, Baoyu, what have you been doing to make your cousin blush like that?” Xifeng says, stooping to unlock the heavy
tansu
in the corner. She begins to take out the silver ladles and bundles of ivory chopsticks for serving breakfast. Baochai has always feared Xifeng’s sharp tongue, for which she is notorious in the household. Today she detects an added note of malice.

Baoyu gives Baochai the purse. Not daring to glance at him in Xifeng’s presence, Baochai hurries out. She is halfway to her mother’s rooms before she recovers her complexion. Beneath her shame at being caught in such a predicament by Xifeng, of all people, she feels an unfamiliar euphoria. Baoyu has always been good-natured and charming to her, but this was the first time he had ever shown that he might regard her with more than cousinly affection. She feels herself blushing again at the thought of how he had held her and looked at her. When Baochai was a baby, Mrs. Xue had joked with her sister, Baoyu’s mother, that they should make a match between Baochai and Baoyu, just six months younger. Whenever Baochai heard this story, she was secretly pleased, and hoped that it would come to pass. However, while she is aware that her birth and fortune make her an excellent match, she has never dared to hope that she could attract Baoyu’s attention.

When she enters her mother’s room with the pills, she is pulled up short by the sight of her older brother, Xue Pan, slouched on the edge of the
kang
. “What is it?” she asks, her eyes going swiftly from her mother, whose hair is still only half done, to her brother, who looks shamefaced.

Her mother waves the pills away, looking at Pan. “Go ahead. Tell your sister the mess that you’ve gotten us into this time.”

“Don’t, Mama. It isn’t that bad—” Pan protests.

Baochai cuts him off. “Let Mama take one of her pills before we talk any further.” As Mrs. Xue swallows her medicine, Baochai steels herself. “Now, why don’t you tell me what happened, Pan?”

“Two days ago I bought a beautiful girl, barely sixteen years old, at the slave market. I paid three hundred
taels
, and had her sent to my place that afternoon,” Pan begins in an aggrieved tone. “Barely an hour later a man called Zhang Hua turned up claiming that
he
had already bought her, and had not taken her home because he was arranging a wedding for the following day. A fight broke out.” Avoiding Baochai’s eyes, Pan admits that Zhang had been beaten pretty badly. “And then, early this morning, Zhang’s family went to the magistrate to ask about bringing charges for assault and battery.”

“How badly did you hurt him?”

“I told you it wasn’t me. It was the pages.”