The Red Chamber (50 page)

“Still, it was all my fault! I can’t forgive myself,” Baoyu cries.

“You can’t forgive yourself?” Jia Zheng stares at his son’s haggard face. “Do you think I don’t know what it’s like to have caused terrible suffering to those I love most?”

Baoyu’s eyes, bright with fever and tears, gaze up at him, and Jia Zheng sees that Baoyu understands.

“You, Lian, and Huan all had to go to prison for my sake. My own mother had to live in conditions worse than a servant, and had to watch her great-granddaughter die—”

“I never blamed you for that—”

“No—but Lian and Huan and Granny have! Even when you didn’t say anything, I knew I was to blame. And I feel the most guilty towards you.”

“But why?”

“Don’t you remember? You warned me about Jia Yucun. ‘A dangerous man’—you used those very words. And I laughed at you!”

“You couldn’t have known what he would turn out to be.”

“You knew, and you warned me. But I didn’t listen.” He shakes his head, burying his face in his hands. “How could I have been so naïve? He made me feel awkward and foolish, and so I would say things about the Princes and the Court to show him how much I knew, and how little he did.” He understands now how his pride had made him vulnerable to Jia Yucun. “I was a conceited fool. And all of you, the whole family, had to pay for it.”

Baoyu reaches out and pats Jia Zheng’s hand weakly. “Let it go, Father. It’s all in the past.”

Jia Zheng takes his face out of his hands and looks at his son. “Then you must let it go, also.”

Baoyu’s head moves restlessly on the pillow. “It’s different. You had to deal with Jia Yucun in the first place, so everyone else would have the luxury of never worrying about unpleasant things. Before the confiscation, I never thought of where the fine life I had came from. It was only afterwards that I understood that you, and Xifeng, were doing all the dirty work so I could fancy myself above it all.” Baoyu gives a hopeless, bitter little laugh. “So, you see, you were right about me after all. I am a useless good-for-nothing.”

“But you can change.” Jia Zheng grips Baoyu’s hot, dry hands. “All you have to do is study and pass the Exams, and you can make up for all the trouble that you caused in the past.”

“I can’t make anything up.” Baoyu shuts his eyes as if he is exhausted.

“Yes, you can. If you really regret what you did to Daiyu, isn’t the best way to make up for it by pulling yourself together and taking the Exams? Everyone depends on you.”

Baoyu does not open his eyes, but he gives a long sigh. Reading acquiescence in the sigh, Jia Zheng feels a glimmer of hope.

Suddenly, Baoyu’s feverish eyes open, blazing into Jia Zheng’s. “The
betrothal,” he rasps. “Surely I can break the betrothal. Isn’t it enough that I take the Exams?”

Jia Zheng is silent. He wishes he could say yes, but then he shakes his head. “How can we break the betrothal, when Pan did so much to get us the Imperial Pardon? And now he’s lending us money.” He sighs, too. “I understand that it’s hard for you, but look at it this way: If you can’t marry Daiyu, it might as well be Baochai.”

Baoyu does not speak. He bursts into a passionate storm of tears. He turns himself onto his stomach, burying his face in his hands. His whole body is racked with hacking sobs that rend the silence of the room. Jia Zheng stares at him, wondering how to comfort him. He realizes that Baoyu is sobbing like this because he is acquiescing to Jia Zheng’s words. Whatever his feelings, he will not let himself die when the whole family’s future depends on him. He will even marry Baochai. Wanting to act quickly in case Baoyu changes his mind, Jia Zheng hurries to the side table where there is a dose of the medicine that Xifeng had brewed earlier. He brings it to Baoyu, waiting for him to be calm enough to swallow it.

Baoyu continues to sob for a long time, until, eventually, his emotions appear to exhaust him, and he lies still. Jia Zheng waits a few minutes before bending over him and propping him up against some cushions.

“Take this.” He holds the cup to Baoyu’s lips.

Baoyu pulls away.

“Please, Baoyu, take it. I promise that things will look better tomorrow.”

Baoyu nods, starting to cry again. But he takes the cup and begins to drink, the long unused muscles in his throat gathering and shifting as the tears pour down his face.

PART SIX

Tenth Month, 1723

Vain to imagine the warm wind

In a thousand myriad willow threads.

Wang Yisun, “Cicadas,” song lyric to the
tune “Joy Reaching the Heavens”

1

“Now shut your eyes,” Mrs. Xue says.

Baochai, sitting in her wedding clothes in their apartments at Jingui and Pan’s house, closes her eyes and feels the soft strokes of the powder brush rapidly covering her face.

“Hold still,” her mother says. “I’m going to paint your eyes.”

Baochai feels her mother’s finger pulling the corner of her eye, and then the tiny brush tracing her eyelid. Mrs. Xue tells her to look up at the ceiling. Then she feels the brush drawing along her lower lash line.

“Nervous?” Mrs. Xue says.

“No,” Baochai replies, though her heart is fluttering like a bird’s, and her palms are sweaty. She does not understand her agitation. She has thought long and hard about her decision to marry Baoyu, and her mind is made up. Why, then, this unwonted nervousness? Is it eagerness, uneasiness, or some combination of both?

Almost two months ago, Uncle Zheng had proposed to her mother that the long-awaited marriage take place, now that the one-year mourning for His Late Majesty had come to an end. Even though they originally planned that the wedding would not take place until Baoyu passed the Civil Service Exams, after everything that had happened, Jia Zheng thought it best that the match be consummated as soon as possible. Mrs. Xue had found a chance to be alone with Baochai, and had repeated Jia Zheng’s proposal to her. “What do you think, Baochai?”

“What do you mean, Mother? Do you mean, when do I think the wedding should take place?”

“I mean,” her mother said, with a touch of impatience, “do you want to go through with this marriage?”

Baochai gazed at her mother in surprise. “Surely you are not thinking of backing out now?”

Her mother looked at Baochai as if she were being willfully obtuse. “It’s our last chance. After this, it will be too late.”

“But Baoyu is back from jail. I won’t have to wait four more years for him.”

“That’s the very reason that we can break the betrothal now. The Jias are no longer in such terrible trouble. We can back out without looking as if we are abandoning them in their darkest hour. Besides, Pan is back, and I am sure he will be happy to find you a new match.”

Baochai had been silent. Her first reaction was frustration at her mother’s about-face. For so many months, she had felt that she had no choice, and had struggled to resign herself to the match. Now, all of a sudden, on the verge of the wedding, she was being told that she did have a choice after all. How could she make such a choice? All the old reasons she had agreed to the match in the first place still held sway: the two families were now even more closely intertwined, and Mrs. Xue would be welcome to continue living with Baochai at the Jias’.

Her mother had looked at her with a strange expression. “The truth is,” her mother said at last, “I thought
you
wanted to break the betrothal when you saw the way Baoyu reacted to Daiyu’s death.”

At the mention of Daiyu’s name, Baochai had flinched. Baoyu’s questions about Daiyu—almost the first thing he said on arriving back from prison—and his reaction to the news of Daiyu’s death had at first hurt her terribly. As always, she tried to avoid the painful subject. “It doesn’t have anything to do with Daiyu,” she said.

“Yes, that’s what I thought: Daiyu has nothing to do with your marriage. But I thought perhaps you felt she did.” Mrs. Xue had sighed, shaking her head. “You are such a reserved person, Baochai, almost secretive. I understand now that there are many things you don’t tell even me, your mother. I never knew that Daiyu was sick, and that you had gone to see her. Did it ever occur to you that if I had known, I would have wanted to go see her, too?”

Baochai had shaken her head. She did not wish to explain to her mother that because she had tattled on Daiyu, she felt too ashamed to discuss Daiyu’s situation with anyone.

“Given that you are so reserved,” Mrs. Xue said, “I decided that I must make every effort to discuss everything with you as openly as possible. I thought that maybe you were bothered by the way Baoyu reacted to Daiyu’s death. No girl would like it. But you must remember, Daiyu is dead, and far better a dead rival than one who is alive. In fact, now that he is vulnerable from her death, it is a perfect time for you to win him to yourself.”

“Yes, Mother.” In fact, Baochai, after the initial shock of Baoyu’s reaction to Daiyu’s death, had come to the same conclusions herself. Not
that she hadn’t been grieved by Daiyu’s death, but still, she realized that it opened the possibility that Baoyu might come to love Baochai herself. And why wouldn’t he, if she were as tender and gentle as she meant to be? Despite herself, she had felt the faint stirrings of hope. On top of that—and this is something that she could not admit to her mother—since Baoyu’s return, she had felt her old attraction to him more strongly than ever. She wanted to be with him, even though she hated herself for her weakness. Despite his thinness and pallor, he was as handsome as before; yet he was not the same old carefree Baoyu. There was a deeper note of seriousness in his voice, and his bearing had a somber dignity. She used to watch him surreptitiously as he began to study again, sitting in a corner of the front room over his books, with a frown of intense concentration that he had never worn before.

And so, she had reassured her mother that she was not unhappy with the match. A date had been set, and, in order to observe the proper separation from her future bridegroom and in-laws, she and her mother had moved from Drum Street into the Xias’ house with Pan. Pan had reassured them that they were welcome to stay as long as they liked, and had bought a few maids, so that they would not need to depend on the Xias’ servants. In fact, they almost never saw Jingui, who lived in a different part of the house. Pan came to see them almost every day, and they had spent the last two months very comfortably.

“Now purse your lips,” her mother says.

Baochai does so, and Mrs. Xue carefully glosses her upper lip with the thick red carmine.

“Relax your mouth.”

Baochai feels her mother filling in a circle in the center of her bottom lip.

“Now for the rouge, and you’ll be all ready.”

Her mother uses a hairpin to scrape a tiny dab of rouge onto her palm. She softens it with the warmth of her fingers, and then spreads it across Baochai’s cheeks.

“That’s perfect. Now look at yourself!” Mrs. Xue hands Baochai a West Ocean mirror the size of a large platter.

Baochai stares at herself, amazed at her transformation. Gone are the plain, insignificant features that she is used to seeing. Her eyes, emphasized by the kohl, are large and dramatic beneath the delicately arched brows. Her face, already less round from the months of deprivation in Drum Street, has been given definition by the powder and rouge. Even
her nose looks more finely shaped. This is a face that can make Baoyu fall in love, she thinks, with a tremulous sense of triumph. Never before has she had such a sense of her own power.

Then she hears it, the faint sound of drums and gongs perhaps two or three courtyards away.

She looks at her mother. “Am I ready?”

“There’s a smudge on your chin.” Mrs. Xue uses a handkerchief to dab at something. The music is coming closer and closer. Now Baochai can hear the skirling of the
suonas
as well.

“Let me straighten your hair.” With a few deft movements, her mother adjusts the various ornaments.

“Now where is the veil?” Mrs. Xue says, looking around. The music grows suddenly louder as the wedding party enters the courtyard.

Mrs. Xue unfolds the veil and flings it over Baochai’s head.

Now she can see nothing but the folds of red silk. She puts out her hand. Her mother catches it and leads her out into the cacophony.

It is only halfway through the wedding banquet that she notices how strangely Baoyu is acting. At first she had been too caught up in the happiness of the occasion to pay much attention. Pan was so excited that he proposed three toasts to her and Baoyu, despite Jingui’s attempts to restrain him. Even her mother rose and toasted the new couple. Tanchun wrapped her long arms around Baochai, whispering that she had always hoped that Baochai would be her sister. Xifeng made Baochai blush and everyone else laugh by comparing her to the coachman’s wife praised by Yan Ying, who had reproved her husband for his prideful airs. Finally, Jia Zheng had risen to toast the couple, and also to share two pieces of wonderful news: he was to be reinstated to his former post at the Ministry of Works, and Rongguo was to be returned to the family. They would probably be able to move back before the winter. His Highness Emperor Yongzheng seemed to be shaping up as an able administrator, and had turned his attention from purging his enemies to reforming and reorganizing the bureaucracy.