The Red Chamber (39 page)

The men have been taken to prison; she does not know when she will hear from them again. Rongguo no longer belongs to the family, and the women must leave the mansion by nightfall. She can think of nowhere to go to sleep tonight but Cousin Rong’s two-room apartment. Before they leave she must go back to her own apartment. They need diapers and clothes for Qiaojie, and she must check whether her secret cache of money has somehow escaped discovery. They need cash urgently: to bribe the prison guards, to send messengers to friends and relatives begging for their intervention. If only she can get her hands on some silver, she will not feel so helpless.

She has heard of people hanging themselves during confiscations. Now she understands why. At first, she had thrown herself onto the
kang
, terrified that the police would grab her. They did not do so, but had simply ordered her out into the courtyard. However, the few moments before she helped Granny out of the room were enough for her to see what they were doing: the lock on the
tansu
had been smashed, wardrobes jerked open, drawers upended. Watching the police paw over the objects of her daily life, she felt a burning sense of violation, as if they had dared to touch her own body. As she had tended to Granny, making a pillow out of her vest and settling her in the shade of the verandah, she noticed a stream of Embroidered Jackets coming out of the apartment, carrying trunks opened to reveal jumbles of scrolls and antiques and jewelry. She caught sight of a pair of solid gold Buddhas—so heavy that two policemen were needed to lift the trunk—strings of pearls, “mutton-fat” white jade girdles, West Ocean clocks and watches, tiger skins and fox furs and Tibetan yak’s serge, all the treasures that Granny Jia had hoarded over her lifetime. As the Embroidered Police continued to stream out, some of them carrying trunks of silver and copper, she calculated that sixty or seventy thousand
taels’
worth of property was being taken in one fell swoop. She held on to a wild hope that her own stash, better hidden, would somehow escape the search.

Now she hurries towards her own apartments, struck by the eerie silence. That morning, there had been more than one hundred and fifty servants in the Inner Quarters. The Embroidered Jackets had rounded up the forty or so most senior maids and stewards and stewardesses for “questioning.” The rest of the servants, she suspects, have run away in the panic. As she walks, she calls out to see if anyone is there. Her voice sounds weak and small in the empty spaces. All her life, she has had to take great pains to avoid servants whenever she wished to be alone. Now she could scream and no one would come.

Through the dimness she sees the front gate of her apartments padlocked and sealed over with strips of white paper proclaiming them State Property, their loose ends fluttering in the wind. The small door in the back wall, probably unnoticed, has not been locked and sealed. She unlocks it with one of the keys at her waist, and makes her way down a short alley to a side entrance to the apartments. As she tries to swing the door open, it catches on the piles of clothing and broken crockery on the floor. She forces the door wider, stepping across the debris to the front room. The cupboards have been emptied, drifts of tea and rice spilling across the floor. Books lie facedown underfoot. Even the pillows and quilts have been slashed open, as if the Embroidered Jackets had suspected that something was secreted inside them. Her face powder has been dumped out on the dressing table, all the pots of creams and lotions opened and gouged with some sharp object to make sure nothing was hidden at the bottom. Everything valuable is gone: the West Ocean clock, the scrolls on the wall, the mother-of-pearl screen.

She flounders over the debris to her bedroom. The wardrobe door swings open. The false bottom of the wardrobe has been removed and her hiding place lies revealed. Still she throws herself to her knees and scrabbles her fingers over every inch of the recess, breaking a fingernail on the rough brick. Nothing. The rug has been torn off the
kang
. She pries up the loose brick under which she had hidden a bag of her most precious jewelry. It is all gone. There is one last place: the bottom of a flowerpot where she kept some gold and jade rings. She finds the uprooted plant and shards of porcelain on the floor.

She cannot stop from going back to the wardrobe and searching it one last time. She plunges her torn and bleeding hands into the hiding place, digging her fingers into the crevices. Then she remembers. Besides the money, she had hidden the loan agreements there as well. With the loan agreements confiscated, she will never be repaid the thousands of
taels
she has lent. Moreover, because the agreements specify illegally high
interest rates, Jia Lian, whose name is on the documents, will be charged with usury. A cold finger of fear touches her heart at the thought of Lian’s fury. The fact that he is in prison and cannot vent his anger on her is a relief. But what will his anger, unable to find its object, drive him to do? Will he tell Uncle Zheng? Will he testify against her in court? She pushes such thoughts away, stooping to gather some of Qiaojie’s clothing from the floor.

Mechanically, her hands sort though piles of debris, picking out diapers, trousers, a jacket, blankets, and piling them on a wrapping cloth. What a long, terrible day it has been. Was it really just this morning that she had been sitting on the
kang
with Granny and Uncle Zheng and Baoyu talking about his betrothal? What were they saying when the Embroidered Jackets arrived? They had just realized that Baoyu’s jade was lost, the same moment this terrible calamity befell them. A fear sharper than any she has felt all day grips her. She has never believed in coincidence. How can anyone doubt that the family’s fate is bound up with Baoyu’s jade? And now that the jade is gone, the family’s luck has run out, too.

PART FOUR

Eighth Month, 1722

Spring flowers, the autumn moon, when will they end?

How much can we know of the past?

Last night in the little tower, again an east wind,

I can’t bear to look back at my old kingdom in the moonlight.

The carved railings, the jade steps, must still be there;

It’s only the rosy faces that have changed.

I ask you: how much grief can there be?

As much as a spring river flowing east.

Li Yu, Last Emperor of the Southern Tang, song
lyric to the tune “The Beautiful Lady Yu”

1

Xifeng arrives at the
yamen
nearly an hour later than she intended. The new apartment that they are renting is farther south than Rongguo, and she had underestimated how long it would take for her to walk to the center of the city. Breathless and sweaty from exertion, despite the autumn cold, she hurries to the courtroom. It is deserted but for a young clerk shuffling through a pile of papers near the judge’s bench.

Attempting to quiet her noisy breathing, she advances between the empty seats. “Excuse me, has the Jia trial been held yet?”

The clerk looks up. “It was over a quarter of an hour ago.”

She composes her features into a smile, and stops only a few feet from him. “Can you tell me what the sentences were?” She had prepared a bribe of a few silver
taels
in her sleeve, but money is so tight that she hopes that she will not be forced to use it. To that end, she had washed and pressed her gown the day before, and had gone to Cousin Rong’s to borrow makeup from his mother. She had smeared the cheap lead powder, which she would not ordinarily touch, over her face, and brightened her cheeks with the sticky rouge. She feels the clerk’s gaze on her, both curious and admiring.

He consults the papers before him. “The first charge was treason. Jia Zheng got seven years—”

She stifles a gasp. How will Uncle Zheng survive seven years in prison? He will be an old man by the time he is released.

The clerk continues, “Jia Baoyu, Jia Lian, and Jia Huan each got three years.”

Three years! Everyone knew that Lian and Huan had nothing to do with politics; even Baoyu was no more than a dabbler. The court must be making an example of them. With a growing feeling of dread, she asks, “Were there any other charges?”

“Jia Lian was also sentenced to two years for usury.”

The pit of her stomach grows cold with shock. So the loan agreements had been used against him. She imagines how furious he must be at her—and Lian’s anger is the type that instead of dissipating with time
only grows stronger without a vent. She is abjectly grateful that she will be spared from his anger for five years. But when he returns from prison, what then? Blindly she turns away from the clerk towards the courtroom door.

“There was one more charge.” The clerk’s voice stops her.

She is surprised. “What is it?”

“Jia Zheng and Jia Baoyu were charged with obstruction of justice, and each got sentenced to two more years.”

“Obstruction of justice?” she repeats. “What for?”

The clerk consults his papers once again. “Jia Zheng’s nephew Xue Pan was involved in a murder case last fall—”

“A murder case! I didn’t know anything about that.”

The clerk continues, “Jia Zheng was charged with illegally approaching the district magistrate and getting him to drop the charges.”

A dart of suspicion enters her mind. Jia Yucun had been a district magistrate before he was promoted. Was it possible that he had been the one overseeing Xue Pan’s case? She had never known how Uncle Zheng and Yucun had become acquainted in the first place. Could Yucun have given evidence against Uncle Zheng?

Another clerk enters the courtroom and begins to gossip in an under-voice with the first one. “Did you hear that he’s actually going to marry the Marquis of Donghou’s daughter? Pretty well for a nobody from the country!”

She has never met the Marquis of Donghou’s daughter, but has heard of her spoken of as beautiful and accomplished, someone who would have been considered a good match for Baoyu before the confiscation, had he not been betrothed to Baochai. She wonders who they are talking about.

“And now he’s been promoted from Under-Secretary to the President of the Board of War to Minister of Rites,” the first clerk says. “Whoever heard of such a young man being made Minister of Rites?”

A wave of sourness comes over her as she realizes that they are talking about Yucun. Only a few months ago he had wanted to marry her, and had told her that he would not marry to further his career.

“Don’t you know why he’s been promoted so fast?” the second clerk asks maliciously.

“I’ve always heard he was hand in glove with the eunuchs.”

“Yes, but there’s another reason.” The second clerk leans down and begins to whisper in the first one’s ear. She is close enough to catch some of the words: “… gave evidence against other officials about their ties to other Princes.” Her earlier suspicion hardens into bitter certainty: Yucun
had betrayed them. When she had thought of the arrests and confiscation as the blows of impersonal fate, she had been able to endure them philosophically. How had Yucun hated her, to turn against them like this? Was it because she had broken off the affair? Or was it simply his ambition?

Slowly she goes towards the door.

Again the clerk’s voice stops her. “Is there anything else you want to know?”

She sees from his face that he is hoping to be paid for his trouble, but she turns away. “No, nothing else.”

Even the long walk through the gathering dusk does not blunt the fear and ache of betrayal in her heart. She turns onto Drum Street and enters the low-ceilinged, cluttered apartment, lit by a single lamp. On the narrow
kang
, Lady Jia, Tanchun, and Xichun all turn towards her eagerly, asking for news of the sentences. Ping’er, who is giving Qiaojie loquat syrup for her cough, looks up, her face anxious. Xifeng is struck anew by Daiyu’s absence. She had disappeared during the chaos of the confiscation, and none of Xifeng’s inquiries has yielded a clue as to her whereabouts. Mrs. Xue and Baochai come out from the single bedroom. The apartment is so crowded that she often wonders why they continue to live with the Jias, rather than moving in with Pan’s wife.

“What’s the news?” From her backrest, Lady Jia’s imperious voice cuts through the babble of the others.

When she tells them the treason sentences, they are all stunned into silence. Lady Jia falls back with her eyes shut, as if she cannot bear to face the news. The others begin to weep. Even Qiaojie, infected by the others’ tears, whimpers in Ping’er’s arms.

“Seven years,” Tanchun says. “How will we ever manage without Father for so long?”

Xifeng wonders herself. She has collected all the jewelry they were wearing the day of the confiscation and sewn it into the padding of a quilt. Ordinarily all of their jewelry should have amounted to thousands of
taels
. However, because of national mourning, everyone was wearing fewer and more modest pieces. Nevertheless, there were more than a dozen pieces, including less valuable items such as hair ornaments and her West Ocean watch. She has been pawning them one by one, to pay for their rent and living expenses, but even with the strictest economy, the jewelry will not be able to keep them for more than a few years.