The Red Chamber (11 page)

Daiyu slips into Lady Jia’s apartments. The front room is empty, the chairs lined up neatly against the wall, all evidence of the lunchtime meal cleared away. She tiptoes down the hallway to Lady Jia’s bedroom. Snowgoose comes out through the door curtain. When she sees Daiyu, she puts a finger to her lips. “Shh. I’ve just gotten Lady Jia to fall asleep,” she mouths.

She leads Daiyu back to the front room. “What is it?”

“Nothing. I was just coming to see you. I never see you now that I live with my cousin Baochai.”

“Really? That’s nice of you,” is all that Snowgoose says, but Daiyu can tell that she is pleased. “Unfortunately, I can’t stay. Lady Jia wanted me to bring this over to Master Baoyu’s. It’s an ointment for his burn that the Abbess of the Water Moon Priory sent over”—she takes a small parcel out of the cupboard—“and then I have to come back and sit with her. Why don’t you come with me?”

“Is Baoyu well enough to see people?” she asks, following Snowgoose out of the courtyard.

Snowgoose nods. “He was in a great deal of pain the first few days, but he is much better now.”

“Was the burn very serious?”

“It looked terrible, covered with blisters and pus. Then a lot of the
skin sloughed off, and it doesn’t look too bad now. Lady Jia wants to keep him home from school until the skin is healed.”

“Was Huan punished?”

“Yes. Lady Jia said he wasn’t allowed in the Garden anymore. He can come into the Inner Quarters to see his mother at Lord Jia’s place, but he isn’t to go anywhere else. She was furious. It was lucky for him she didn’t have him beaten.”

They are walking in the Garden now, amid the leafless trees that fringe the banks of the pond. Instead of the clear azure of the summer, the water is now a fathomless green. On the far side of the lake a gardener in a punt skims dead leaves off the surface with a net.

“Have you heard from your father yet?” Snowgoose asks.

Daiyu shakes her head. “I haven’t gotten anything but that short letter after I arrived. I’m starting to worry.”

“You told me you are going back before New Year’s. Perhaps he isn’t writing because he knows he will see you soon enough.”

“Yes, but I should be getting ready to leave in less than six weeks. I still haven’t heard from him about how I’ll travel, or whether he’ll send someone here to fetch me. It’s not like him to leave such details to the last minute.”

Now they have arrived at Baoyu’s apartments, across the lake from Baochai’s. She has seen them only from the outside. They must walk through a circular opening in a bamboo trellis before they reach the whitewashed walls of the compound, surrounded by weeping willows, now leafless. They pass through the front gate into a forecourt planted with broad-leafed plantains on one side, and Sichuan weeping crab apple on the other. Snowgoose leads her up the verandah and through the front door.

They enter a room of a design that she has never seen before. Some of the walls are paneled with exquisite carvings in the shapes of bats, and clouds, and sunflowers, or the “three friends of winter”—pines, plums, and bamboos—all inlaid with gold and mother-of-pearl and gems. Other walls are pierced with window-like perforations in the shapes of zithers, swords, vases, or screens, through which you could peep into the adjoining rooms. Lying on the
kang
under a gold-embroidered quilt, with his head and shoulders propped up by cushions, is Baoyu. The top right third of his face is covered with a patch of blotchy, scaly skin. He looks pale, and seems to have lost weight, but his eyes are bright, and he speaks in the same lively way.

Jia Lian is sitting on a chair drawn up to the
kang
, talking about a party that Baoyu had missed. “The Prince of Beijing was there. He asked how you were. Shang Pingren sent his regards, too.”

Baoyu grimaces. “Shang Pingren! If ever a person deserved to be called a career worm …”

“A career worm?” Her attention is caught by the unfamiliar phrase. “What’s that?”

“Don’t tell me that you’ve lived in the household for over a month without learning what a career worm is!” says Snowgoose playfully. “It’s what Master Baoyu calls people who study hard for the Exams!”

Daiyu looks at Baoyu, curious. “What else do you expect them to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what else can they do to make a living? Your family is rich and powerful—”

“I never asked for any of that,” he says quickly.

“You are the beneficiary of it, just the same,” she points out, surprised at his thoughtlessness. “You’ll inherit a position, or your father will buy you one. Who are you to criticize people who aren’t so fortunate, who have to work hard to get ahead?”

“Getting ahead!” he cries, seizing on the phrase. “That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? They go on and on about ‘civic duty’ and ‘moral cultivation’ and the ‘love of wisdom,’ when all they want to do is get ahead.”

“It’s on the Exams; that’s why they study it. I don’t think there’s any secret about that.”

“But it’s so hypocritical—”

Lian laughingly intercedes. “Don’t get him started!” he tells Daiyu. “He isn’t supposed to get excited.” He urges Baoyu to rest, and leaves. Snowgoose steps forward with the parcel. “This is from Lady Jia.”

“What is it?”

“It’s supposed to prevent scarring. You’re to put it on twice a day.”

As Snowgoose places the medicine on a table already crowded with ointments and dressings, Baoyu smiles at Daiyu. “So you have finally come to see me.”

She says nothing, embarrassed by his suggestion that he has been eager for her to visit.

“Sit down.” He pats the
kang
.

Instead, she takes the seat Lian has vacated. “How are you feeling?”

“Pretty well. Mostly I’m bored.”

“Can’t you get out of bed?”

“The doctor says I have to stay in bed the rest of the week.”

“I’m afraid I have to go back to Lady Jia’s,” Snowgoose says.

Daiyu rises. “I’ll go with you.”

“No, don’t go,” Baoyu says. “You’ve hardly stayed for five minutes.”

“You’ve just been tired out by another visitor. Why don’t you get some rest?”

“I’ll be so bored and lonely after you go.”

She hesitates. She wants to stay and talk to him, yet feels shy about being alone with him.

He stretches out his hand beseechingly. “Please stay.”

Daiyu looks at Snowgoose, who gives a tiny shrug.

“Oh, all right,” she says, sitting back down. “I’ll stay for a little while.”

There is a brief silence after Snowgoose leaves. Then she asks, “Why did you defend Huan? You know he dropped that candle on you on purpose.”

She half expects him to contradict her, to insist it was an accident, but his eyes meet hers directly, seeming to acknowledge the truth of her words. “Why should I make things harder for him?”

“You know he hates you. Don’t you want to protect yourself against him?”

He seems to consider the question. Then he smiles, and shrugs. “He can’t hurt me.”

“He did hurt you. He burned you.”

“Don’t say that in front of anyone else, will you?”

“Why not?”

“Because he’ll get in even worse trouble. What do you do to amuse yourself all day?”

“Don’t try to change the subject.”

He sighs. “What do you want me to say?”

What does she want him to say? She understands. He follows his own particular code of honor: knowing that the others treat his brother unfairly, he tries to protect him, without necessarily liking Huan or being nice to Huan himself.

“What do you do to amuse yourself?” he repeats, smiling.

“I read a lot. Sometimes I talk to Baochai.”

“What are you reading?”

“
Strange Stories from a Do-Nothing Studio
, by Pu Songling.”

“What stories do you like best?” He pushes himself off his pillows and
sits upright, drawing up his knees and clasping his elbows over them, as if settling in for a long talk.

“I like the one about the man who was a connoisseur of stone.”

“Which one is that?”

“There was a man who was a collector of rocks, who finds a rare and beautiful stone entangled in his fishing net. It was shaped like a small mountain, with all sorts of tunnels and crannies, and had magical powers: whenever it was going to rain, it would emit puffs of mist, just like a real mountain.”

Baoyu wrinkles his brow. “That sounds familiar. I think I read it a long time ago. Then what happens?”

“A powerful official covets it, and accuses the man of a crime he didn’t commit. Then the stone is confiscated and the man is thrown in jail.”

“Oh, yes! I remember! Then the stone comes to the man in a dream, and tells him that it can only belong to one who truly loves it, and that one day it will somehow return to him.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“That’s a good story. I’d almost forgotten it. I really should read it again sometime.”

The story reminds her. “You know, I still haven’t seen that famous jade of yours.”

He says nothing, looking at her gravely over his clasped knees.

“Never mind,” she says quickly, afraid that she has assumed an intimacy that does not exist.

“It’s really not so special.”

“I said I didn’t need to see it. I’m sorry I asked.”

“Everyone who sees it is disappointed,” he continues, as if she had not spoken.

She fidgets uncomfortably, not knowing whether she is supposed to contradict him. He is acting like a spoiled child: pushing people away and demanding reassurance at the same time.

“I hate it,” he adds. “It always makes people think that I’m very special.”

She has to stop herself from smiling, for it is obvious from the way he talks and carries himself that he is fully convinced of his own specialness.

“What are you laughing at?” he demands suspiciously.

“Nothing. You don’t have to show me if you don’t want to.”

But he slips his fingers inside his collar and loops a black and gold silk cord over his head. “Here.”

She stares at it in the palm of her hand, still warm from his skin. It is about the size and shape of a sparrow’s egg, with the suppressed, milky radiance of a sunlit cloud and veined with iridescent streaks of color. Somehow, she had expected a jade found in a person’s mouth to be rough, unpolished; but this is satin-smooth to her touch. He is right: the stone itself is not special. You might find something similar in any jewelry stall for thirty or forty
taels
.

“I hate it,” he says again. “I hate the things people imagine about me because of it.”

“It’s all just stories, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“People make up stories to explain things they don’t understand.”

He looks doubtful. “I suppose so.”

“You should make up your own story, too.”

“Like what?”

She hands the stone back. “Oh, I don’t know. Like … once upon a time, up in the Heavens, by the banks of the River of Immortality, there was a stone who wanted to come down to earth to taste the pleasures of human life. He begged and pleaded with the gods, and finally they granted his wish. They agreed to let him be born into the world of men in the mouth of an infant boy, Jia Baoyu of Rongguo Mansion …”

He laughs, slipping the jade back on. “I like that. What happened to him on earth?”

“How should I know? Perhaps he fell in love with a human girl.”

“And?”

“Well, maybe they got married and lived happily ever after.”

“But the girl would die, wouldn’t she?” he points out. “Because she was only human, whereas he was immortal.”

“Then his heart would break.”

“Then maybe he would ask the gods to turn him back into a stone.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because it would be better to be a stone than to feel the pain of human suffering,” he explains.

“Do you really think so?” she says, thinking about her mother.

“Yes,” he says. “Because he would always be missing her, and the pain would never stop.” He speaks as though the thought of such emotional pain is unbearable to him, even though he has endured the physical pain of his burn without a murmur.

“I don’t think so,” she tells him. “If I lost someone I loved, I would
never want to forget them, even if it gave me pain until the end of my days.”