The Red Chamber (6 page)

She takes a cake and leans back, shutting her eyes again. “I hope Min’s funeral wasn’t too much of a disgrace.”

He pauses, uncertain what to say. For twenty years his mother has grown angry at the mention of his younger sister. When Jia Zheng received Min’s letter saying that she was dying and that she wished for her daughter to know her family, his mother said little, but had agreed to his suggestion that he go south to fetch Daiyu. He had hoped his mother was at last repenting of the long estrangement. Now he is surprised by her spiteful tone.

“It was a little modest, but—”

“Modest! I know what that means.” She begins to eat the cake, her jaws moving busily. “What sort of place did they live in?”

“They had a small apartment—”

She snorts. “Any servants?”

“A maid, I believe.”

“No wonder Min died. And Lin Ruhai expects to raise a young girl in conditions like that.”

“He seems a devoted father.”

“He hasn’t done a very good job with her manners.” She pops the second cake in her mouth and hands the plate back to Snowgoose.

He pauses. While Daiyu is shy and a little gauche, he does not find her ill-mannered. Unable to contradict his mother directly, he changes the subject. “I’m going to the Ministry today and won’t be home for lunch.”

“The Ministry? But you’ve barely been home one day.”

“I have been gone for over three months. There are sure to be questions they wish to consult me on …”

“Surely they can do without you for a few more days.”

It is typical of his mother to belittle his role at the Ministry; this reminds him of his annoyance that she let Baoyu stay home from school yesterday. “How many days of school did Baoyu miss while I was away?”

She stares at him, as if offended by the question. “How should I know?”

“I’m simply asking for a rough estimate.”

“I have no idea.”

He takes a deep breath, trying to control his anger. “I told Baoyu before I left that he must stop missing school. The Exams are barely six months away.”

“What a fuss about missing a few days of school! Didn’t the schoolmaster tell us that when Baoyu sets his mind to it, not one of the boys in the whole school can match him in quickness?”

“He told us that years ago, and Baoyu has apparently still not seen fit to ‘set his mind to it.’ ”

“He still has all of the fall and winter to study.”

“I’m afraid you don’t understand, Mother. It takes years of hard work to prepare for the Exams. He can’t just cram for a few months. Don’t you remember how hard Zhu studied before he passed—”

He sees that she is not even looking at him, apparently absorbed in thought, and breaks off.

After a moment, she says, “There is something about Baoyu I want to talk to
you
about. You know Baoyu’s body servant Pearl?”

“Yes, but—”

“She’s a good girl, and very devoted to him. I’ve been thinking of making her his chamber wife.”

“Chamber wife! What does he need a chamber wife for?” He raises his voice despite himself.

“He is nearly nineteen. He has natural desires, like any other man. Why not give him a chamber wife, so he can—”

“We can betrothe him after he passes the Exams, like we did for Zhu.” Unfortunately Zhu died of a sudden illness before the wedding could take place.

“Zhu passed when he was sixteen. Baoyu is already a grown man. It’s wrong to expect him not to feel attracted to girls, especially living in the Inner Quarters with them—”

He pounces on this, interrupting her. “I’ve never thought that he
should continue to live inside. It’s improper, and people are beginning to gossip about it—”

“It’s just like you, to want to deprive me of the company of my favorite grandson, just because of what people say. He’s the only one who keeps me amused now that I’m too old to be of use to anyone.”

The West Ocean clock in the outer room bongs, giving him an excuse to cut off the familiar argument. “I must go. I said that I would drop Baoyu off at school on the way to the Ministry. We’ll talk of this another time.”

When he arrives at the stable yard, his already frayed temper is tried further when he finds Baoyu is not there. He sends a page to call him, and waits in the carriage for several minutes before Baoyu appears.

“Hurry up! You’ll be late for school!” he cries, as Baoyu climbs in beside him. It is the first time since he arrived home that he has been alone with his son. “What did you study while I was gone?” he asks, as the coachman whips up the horses and the carriage finally trundles out through a side gate into the streets.

“Mencius.”

“Tell me what Mencius says about dutifulness and self-preservation.”

“ ‘Fish is what I want; bear’s paw is what I want,’ ”
Baoyu begins.
“ ‘If I cannot have both, I would rather take bear’s paw than fish. Life is what I want; dutifulness is also what I want. If I cannot have both, I would rather take dutifulness than life. On the one hand, though life is what I want, there is something I want more than life …’ ”

The glibness with which Baoyu rattles off the passage nettles him. Even he cannot deny that Baoyu’s memory is exceptional, enabling him to recite a poem after one or two readings; but the boy takes excessive pride in his aptitude. He interrupts, “You’re not taking your studies seriously.”

Baoyu breaks off with an innocent face. “But I am, Father. I know the Mencius passage backwards and forwards—”

“You promised me you wouldn’t miss school.”

“I only missed it a few times—”

“You should be setting an example for the other boys, not making excuses.” Again he tries to explain the special responsibility he feels as an Imperial Bondsman, the same responsibility that he wants Baoyu to feel. “My grandfather, your great-grandfather, was one of the first settlers in Mukden. He was captured by the Manchus when they conquered Mukden, and made a Bondsman—”

“A slave to the Manchus! You act as if that were something to be proud of,” Baoyu mutters.

He ignores the interruption, continuing, “Then, when the Manchus conquered China, your great-grandfather, and all the other Bondservants of the Plain White Banner, were made into the Imperial Household.

“So our family has always had a special tie with the Imperial family. My father—your grandfather—was practically raised in the Palace. His mother was His Majesty’s wet nurse. My father was five or six at the time, and he would tell stories of being allowed to hold His Majesty’s rattle when he was an infant.”

Baoyu makes an impatient movement, but Jia Zheng goes on, “All through the years, my father served His Imperial Highness with a singular devotion. You must understand we are not like most people who become officials just because they have passed the Exams. We owe His Highness not just the ordinary duty of an official, but a—a personal loyalty.” He struggles to find the right words to express the deep-held convictions that give him his sense of purpose. “For as long as the Manchus have ruled China, we have been the ones His Highness turns to when he needs someone he trusts.”

Baoyu’s eyes shift away. “Most people don’t even want the Manchus in China in the first place. Besides, the Bondsmen don’t have any real power these days. The eunuchs control what goes on in the Palace.”

“Who told you that?” Jia Zheng thunders.

“They don’t say it in public, of course, but everyone thinks so.”

“Like who?”

Baoyu shrugs. “The Prince of Beijing, for one.”

Jia Zheng stops himself from saying something cutting about the Prince of Beijing. The Prince is a very upstanding young man, one of the few of Baoyu’s friends that he approves of. Of course, the younger generation has a different conception of matters. Jia Zheng remembers all the times he had been taken to the Palace as a child. Now that Emperor Kangxi is well over seventy—may he live for ten thousand years—he rarely appears at Court. It is no wonder that he seems a mere figurehead to the younger men, and seems closer to the eunuchs than to his ministers and Bondsmen.

“His Imperial Highness would never depend on the eunuchs,” he tells Baoyu. “He knows that was what brought down even such a glorious dynasty as the Ming.”

“What makes you think his successor will feel the same way?”

Jia Zheng flinches at the allusion to Emperor Kangxi’s eventual death. He has been fortunate enough to live his entire life under Emperor Kangxi’s wise and peaceful rule, and does not like to be reminded of its inevitable end. “Prince Yinti has always been close to the Bondservants, just like his father.”

“Why do you think Prince Yinti will succeed to the throne?”

Jia Zheng smiles at Baoyu’s ignorance. “Surely you, with all your Court connections, know that Prince Yinti has always been His Highness’s favorite.”

Baoyu ignores Jia Zheng’s sarcasm. “Then why doesn’t he make Prince Yinti Heir Apparent? What if something happens while Prince Yinti is still away at the Tibetan front?”

Jia Zheng is taken aback. Usually, Baoyu listens to him in sullen silence. This is the first time he has dared to challenge Jia Zheng directly. A memory of his older son, Zhu, flashes into his mind: Zhu asking Jia Zheng to read his practice essays for the Exams, fidgeting in suspense while waiting to hear his father’s judgment.

The carriage comes to a stop before Baoyu’s school. The forecourt is deserted, and the schoolroom doors are shut.

He thrusts Baoyu out of the carriage. “Hurry! You’re late.” To his fury, Baoyu saunters across the courtyard as if he has not a care in the world.

6

Baochai has never seen her brother so frightened. He has come to their mother’s apartment before dinner, his ruddy face haggard. “The usher from the district magistrate’s office came to me this afternoon. He said Zhang Hua died late last night, and his father wrote out a complaint for murder. What am I going to do? I could be arrested at any moment. And the sentence for murder is execution!”

“We’ll have to send Zhang Hua’s family more money. Perhaps they will withdraw the charge,” Mrs. Xue cries.

“No!” Baochai cuts sharply through their voices. “We can’t send any more money. It will look as if we have something to hide.”

Both of them turn to look at her. “Then what should we do?”

She must distance herself from her mother’s and brother’s agitation, trying to stay calm so she can think clearly. “Is there any evidence of what Zhang Hua died of, Pan? Could it have been from something else?”

“The usher said he’d been coughing up blood, so they suspected internal injuries.”

“We must find the doctor and raise the possibility that it could have been something else. And we must find a good scrivener, someone who knows all the legal terminology, to help us write a petition. We’ll argue it was an accidental death. Pan, you must find one this afternoon.”

“All right,” he says, scared into submission.

“And whatever you do, don’t go home. Tell your servants to say you’re out of town, and go stay in an inn somewhere. In the meantime someone must speak to the district magistrate on Pan’s behalf.”

Her mother turns to her with a worried frown. “Do you mean offer him a bribe? If we were to be caught, that would be a serious offense.”

Baochai shakes her head. “If someone with sufficient influence vouches for Pan, he may simply drop the charges as a favor. That would be far better than offering money.”

“Should we send down to Nanjing to your father’s brother?”

“There isn’t time to send to Nanjing. I think we must ask Uncle Zheng.”

“Jia Zheng?” her mother exclaims. “He’s only a relative by marriage.”

“Yes, but the Jias are one of the most prominent families in the Capital. Uncle Zheng knows everyone from all his years in the Civil Service.”

Her mother demurs. “I don’t like to ask him. It’s not as if he’s a close relation.”

Pan cuts in, “But you’ve been staying with the Jias for nearly two years.” His expression is hopeful, as if he, too, realizes that asking the Jias for help is his best chance to escape his predicament.

“But I’ve never spoken to them about—” Mrs. Xue breaks off.

Baochai understands. Her mother shrinks from the shame of revealing Pan’s troubles to the Jias. “Mother, we must act as quickly as possible, before the lawsuit goes any further.”

Still her mother hesitates. “But we will be so beholden to the Jias. I don’t know how we will ever repay Zheng for this.”

“Surely he can’t want his own nephew to go to prison, or worse.”

So it is settled that her mother will speak to Uncle Zheng that evening. Pan leaves to look for a scrivener. Instead of staying and comforting her mother, Baochai goes to her own apartment in the Garden. She wants to be alone, to wash her hands and change her clothes. She feels dirty, sullied by the fact that she is the one instructing Pan and her mother how to make sure he is not convicted. She is ashamed of her knowledge of the court system, which years of dealing with Pan’s scrapes have given her. What do other girls, locked away in the Inner Quarters, know of scriveners and magistrates? She would give anything for the luxury of ignorance.

When Daiyu asks her grandmother where her mother slept as a child, Lady Jia, barely looking at her, waves her hand towards the northeastern corner of the apartments. At naptime, she walks down the hallway to the room that Granny Jia had pointed out, pushing aside the crimson door curtain. The stark impersonality of the room startles her. It is merely another of the large, opulently furnished rooms that seem to fill the mansion, with a row of locust-wood chairs along the wall, an elaborately carved armoire. Nothing reveals the taste of its former inhabitant: there are no dog-eared rhyming manuals or calligraphy books on the shelves, no brushes or inkstone on the desk.