The Red Chamber (49 page)

He sits up in bed. “Maybe you could have told the truth, and let the judge decide whether I should be convicted—”

“You would have been arrested anyway, just like Uncle Zheng and Baoyu and Huan. What good would it have done for both of us to be in jail?”

“Don’t make me sick with your excuses. The truth is that you just wanted to save your own skin, and didn’t give a damn if I was rotting in prison for a crime that I didn’t even know anything about. I don’t know how you got your hands on my chop in the first place—”

“I told you I was sorry. I used your chop because I thought it would make the loans more official. And I wouldn’t have made those loans if you hadn’t been so irresponsible about money in the first place—” She knows she should not bring this up, but somehow she cannot sit there listening to him without trying to defend herself.

“Money! Money! Money! It all goes back to money with you. And I should have known that you would twist it around and try to blame me!” It is turning into a repetition of an argument that they have had dozens of times before. She feels trapped, because she no longer feels like that person who used to argue with him so passionately about money. As she tries to find the words to tell him, he breaks off in frustration, letting himself flop back onto the bed. For a minute or two, he is silent.

Then he says, “And that isn’t even what I’m most upset about.”

He stops, and she listens to his quick, angry breathing. He seems to be struggling to get his temper under control. When he speaks again, his voice is unsteady with suppressed fury. “I suppose I should have realized that you’d use this opportunity to get rid of Ping’er.”

“Get rid of her!” she cries. She sits still in the darkness, speechless for a moment. She should have expected this, she supposes. “How could you think that I wanted to get rid of her, when I loved her—”

“You were always jealous of her!”

How like him, she thinks, to be blind to the love that had revived between her and Ping’er after Qiaojie’s birth. When she thinks of how she and Ping’er had struggled side by side nursing Qiaojie, she cannot bear to defend herself.

“To lose Ping’er, on top of Qiaojie …” Lian says, beginning to sob in the dark.

“I lost them. You didn’t even care about Qiaojie.” The words slip out without her intending to say them out loud.

He rises up quickly from the bed. Even in the darkness, she can see his upraised right arm.

“Go ahead and hit me,” she hisses, rising up onto her knees to meet his blow. “I’ve always expected you to. I’m just surprised that you haven’t done it before, that’s all.”

His arm drops. For a long time they are both motionless, only their breathing audible. It seems to her that with each breath, they exhale an invisible poison into the room, the atmosphere growing more and more toxic as the seconds tick by, so that she can hardly breathe. She feels herself grow a little lightheaded. These dizzy spells come oftener these days; she needs to take better care of herself. She does not want to live like this anymore, not after all that she has been through. She crawls closer to him on the
kang
and puts her arms around him. She can feel how tense his body is beneath her embrace.

“I don’t want to fight about these things anymore.” She puts her head on his shoulder. “Isn’t that all in the past?”

He does not answer.

“Why don’t we put our energy into working hard to help the family get back on its feet, instead of fighting?” She grabs his hands. “We can save money, start again. Maybe one day we can even have another child.” In her heart she does not believe that this will happen, but she wants to conjure up a rosy vision of the future to inspire him to work with her.

He jerks himself away from her. “Don’t touch me!”

She is surprised and hurt by his vehemence, and stares at him.

“I wanted to tell you something else that came out at the trial,” he says. His voice is different now, casual, almost conversational. For some reason, this makes her more uneasy than when he had spoken angrily. She tries to read his expression, but it is too dark. “You know, by the end of the trial, I had almost convinced the magistrate that I really knew nothing about those loans. The obvious solution was that you had made them. But in the end, he simply couldn’t understand how a woman from one of the best families, who was supposed to be sequestered in the Inner Quarters, could possibly be making loans to people all over the city. So he decided that it must have been me, after all. That’s why I was convicted.”

“It was the Abbess at the Water Moon Priory who helped me set up the loans,” she explains quickly, licking her dry lips. “She knows everyone, and goes everywhere. She told me when someone wanted a loan and—”

He cuts her off, his tone still pleasant. “I have to admit, I wondered myself how you managed it. Then they showed me a note they had found among the loan agreements. What did it say?” He feigns absentmindedness, groping for the words.

Her heart starts to pound. Could she have been so careless as to have kept one of Yucun’s notes?

“Oh, yes,” Lian says, as if pleased with himself for remembering. “It said, ‘I can’t go another day without seeing you. Meet me at the storeroom at two.’ It was unsigned, of course. But I recognized the handwriting. You see, he had written me a few little notes as well. So it wasn’t hard to put two and two together. Just a few words, but they explained so much!” He laughs, as if amused by the irony.

“I was only meeting him because he was helping me out with the loans,” she lies desperately.

Lian laughs again, unpleasantly. “I thought you said that the Abbess helped you make the loans.”

“She did, but so did he!”

“Spare me your lies,” he says. He pauses for a moment, before continuing, “Unfortunately, since there was no evidence that he had been involved in the loans, it was no use bringing it up at trial. You should be grateful to me. I didn’t even say anything to Uncle. But I knew from that moment what you were.”

She is silent, cold with shame and fear. It is no use trying to lie or make excuses. It is far, far worse than when it was just the loans. All she can do is sit there, with her head bowed, waiting to hear what he will do to her.

“I had decided to sue you for divorce when I got out of prison,” he
says. “But now that I have been released early, I’m not sure. We’ve been through enough scandal as it is, and it wouldn’t be fair to Granny and Uncle to put them through any more.”

He suddenly sounds more tired than angry. “Don’t worry. I won’t even tell anyone. But don’t expect me to treat you like a wife.”

She does not move, still kneeling there with her head bowed submissively. Inside, her thoughts are rebellious. He has never treated her like a wife, she thinks bitterly, not even at the very beginning.

“By the way,” he adds, and she can tell from his voice that he is going to say something malicious, “you’ve heard the rumors about Jia Yucun, haven’t you?”

She does not answer, knowing that he wants to rub in the fact that it was her lover who had betrayed the family.

“You really chose a good one, didn’t you?” he says jeeringly. “He must really have loved you. So much that he testified against Uncle Zheng!”

His words strike her like physical blows, and she instinctively flings up her arms to ward them off. She crouches there in the dark, sick with humiliation, waiting for him to taunt her again. Fortunately, he does not say any more. She hears him lying down and turning over in the darkness. Still she crouches there, not daring to move. Eventually she hears his breathing deepen, and realizes that he is asleep. She crawls shivering across the
kang
and climbs into the bedding on the other side. She pulls the quilt over her head and wraps her arms around her body. She feels cold, so cold that she wonders whether she will ever be warm again.

4

Everyone else in the family has gone to bed. Throwing his robe on over his nightclothes, Jia Zheng rises from his bed on the
kang
in the front room and goes to the back bedroom to look in on Baoyu. The room is dark except for a small lantern casting a circle of dim light on Baoyu’s head and shoulders. Since their release from prison four days earlier, the boy has refused both food and drink. He has lain all day on the
kang
, either asleep or in a stupor, Jia Zheng cannot tell. Sometimes his body draws in on itself and shivers as if he is lying on a bed of ice. At others, sweat starts out on his lip and brow, and he flings off his blankets, trying to claw open his tunic. No matter how they call his name or shake him, he does not respond. When they prop his head up to give him his medicine, he twists out of their grip, refusing to open his mouth. When Dr. Wang first came four days ago, he had predicted that Baoyu would be on his feet in a week or two. This morning, however, he had said that Baoyu’s pulse was tumultuous, and his
qi
dangerously attenuated. He was dehydrated, and as a result his fevers were spiking higher and higher. If Baoyu did not begin to drink and take his medicine, Dr. Wang could not answer for the consequences.

Jia Zheng leans over his son, looking at his face. He has become so thin that his cheek- and jawbones jut through his skin. Tanchun and Xifeng had shaved him the day he got back from prison, but now the long black stubble emphasizes his waxen pallor. They washed his hair as well, but now it fans out, tangled and unkempt, across his pillow. Yet the nobility and beauty of Baoyu’s face seem strangely undiminished by his illness. If anything, the broad sweep of his brow, the fine chiseling of his nose, are emphasized by his thinness. Jia Zheng listens to Baoyu’s stertorous breathing, thinking what remarkable qualities his son has. Even though he did not see Baoyu for the last nine months when they were imprisoned, he had seen a good deal of him during the confiscation and trial, and felt that he had come to understand Baoyu more during that period than he had during all their previous years together. When the Embroidered Jackets had dragged them to the
yamen
, Baoyu alone had neither cried out nor protested his innocence. Other than ascertaining
the nature of the charges and of the evidence, he had confined his remarks to reassuring and comforting the others. During the following weeks, he bore without complaint both his mistreatment at the hands of the jailers and police and the indignity of the trial, answering his interrogators simply and clearly. Never by word or implication did he ever suggest that Jia Zheng, by befriending Jia Yucun, was to blame for their sufferings. Jia Zheng had been used to thinking of his son as spoiled and weak. Now he understands that Baoyu was someone who needed the exigency of circumstances to make him rise to his higher self.

Baoyu stirs and turns away from Jia Zheng, pulling the blanket around himself. Jia Zheng leans over and shakes his shoulder. Baoyu does not respond. Jia Zheng shakes him, more urgently this time. He has a feeling that Baoyu’s mind is only slightly below the surface of consciousness, and that if he speaks forcefully and clearly, he can penetrate the fog.

“Baoyu! Baoyu! I need you to wake up.” He gently slaps Baoyu’s cheeks, which are hot with fever. Baoyu’s eyelids flutter.

“Baoyu, listen to me. You can’t go on like this. You must take your medicine.”

There is no response.

He tries again, slapping Baoyu’s face a little harder. “Wake up and listen to me.” He feels foolish speaking to Baoyu while he is unconscious, but he cannot let Baoyu die without trying to get through to him. “I know you’re upset about Daiyu. But you can’t do this. You must get better.”

At the mention of Daiyu’s name, as if at the incantation of a magic charm, Baoyu’s eyes flutter open. Jia Zheng sees that they are bloodshot and swollen.

He bends over so his face is only a few inches from his son’s. “You can hear me, can’t you? You’re not eating because of Daiyu, aren’t you? You can’t do this. You have a duty to the family—”

“I don’t care,” Baoyu mutters.

“You must care. What do you think will happen to everyone if you die? Our situation is still precarious. I haven’t been reinstated to my old position. With all our property confiscated, the only way for us to survive is for you to pass the Exams so we have some income—” For the first time, he speaks aloud the worries that have begun to consume him since their release from prison.

Baoyu flinches, but Jia Zheng continues, “Maybe Huan can pass in a few years, but he is nowhere near ready. If you put your mind to it, you can pass next spring.”

Baoyu shakes his head.

“You must. If you don’t, how will we make matches for Tanchun and Xichun? How will we send Huan to school? Even Lian and Xifeng depend on you, and Granny …”

“I can’t. I can’t go on.”

“Why can’t you?”

“Don’t you understand? I destroyed Daiyu. I killed her. If not for me, she wouldn’t have died.”

Jia Zheng is taken aback. “You had nothing to do with it.”

“But I did! Granny wouldn’t have gotten so angry at her if I hadn’t said that I wanted to marry her. And when she found out about my betrothal, she didn’t want to see me anymore, but then I gave her the jade, and promised her I would break the betrothal …” Baoyu sobs, almost incoherent in his distress.

Jia Zheng had not known the details, and does not want to know them. Although he feels pity for Daiyu and for Baoyu’s misery, he also feels that Daiyu’s death is almost a relief, a way of putting a tortuous and difficult past behind them. “You acted shamefully. But you must remember that whatever Daiyu did was her own choice.”

“But I led her on, and promised her that I would marry her—”

“If she chose to believe you could marry her when you were betrothed to someone else, that was her own foolishness. And besides, you don’t know that she wouldn’t have died anyway, even if she had stayed here with the others. After all, Min died of consumption. She must have been infected already—”

“If she had been taken care of properly, it wouldn’t have killed her! I’m sure Snowgoose’s family did their best, but they’re poor, and their house must have been cold and damp.”

“I’m not sure things were so much better here,” Jia Zheng says, looking about the shabby, dingy apartment. “After all, Qiaojie died here.” When Xifeng had told him, weeping, about Qiaojie’s illness and death, he had been overcome by remorse at the thought of the helpless creature suffering for his misjudgment. Tears come to his own eyes.