The Warning Voice (55 page)

‘The master wants to know if you are going out today, madam. He says we can't keep Mid-Autumn properly on the fifteenth because we are in mourning still, but there would be no harm in having a little family party tonight.'

‘I don't
want
to go out,' said You-shi, ‘but with Mrs Zhu and Mrs Lian both ill in bed, I don't see how I can refuse to go next door and lend a hand.'

‘The master says, if you
have
to go out, will you at any rate try to get back as early as you can?' said Lovey.

‘Better hurry up with the lunch then,' said You-shi. ‘The sooner I can get away, the sooner I'll be back.'

‘The master's having lunch in the front today, madam. He says please have your lunch here without him.'

‘Who's he got there?' said You-shi.

‘Somebody told me it's two people just arrived from Nanking,' said Lovey, ‘but I don't know who they are.'

Jia Rong's wife came in while Lovey was talking. Shortly after that lunch was served. After lunch, You-shi changed into her going-out clothes and went over to Rong-guo House. She did not return until evening.

While she was away, Cousin Zhen went ahead with arrangements for an intimate family party. He had a whole pig boiled, a whole sheep roasted, and an infinite number of vegetable dishes and entremets prepared. When You-shi got back that evening, he conducted her and the little concubines and Jia Rong and Jia Rong's wife to the Bosky Verdure Pavilion where it was all laid out. This was in the All-Scents Garden, as they continued to call the little remnant still left them after the main part was incorporated in Prospect Garden.

They had dinner first. The wine was brought in after they had finished eating, so that they could apply themselves singlemindedly to games and mirth and the enjoyment of the Mid-Autumn moon, which now (for by this time it was already the beginning of the first watch) shone brightly in a clear, fresh sky, filling the world above and below with its silver light. Cousin-Zhen invited the four little concubines to sit at the same table as him and You-shi and join with them in games of Plumstones and Guess-fingers. Presently – for
the drink was beginning to make him sentimental – he called to them for some music, and Flower sang for them in a clear, sweet voice, accompanied by Lovey on the vertical bamboo flute. Everyone was deeply moved by the performance. After it was over the games continued.

The hours slipped by. Soon it was nearly midnight. Cousin Zhen was by now more than a little drunk. They had all just put on some extra clothes and had some hot tea; the wine-cups had been cleared and clean ones put in their place and a fresh lot of newly heated wine was just being poured, when suddenly a long-drawn-out sigh was heard from the foot of one of the garden walls. It was heard by all of them, quite clearly and unmistakably, and they could feel the hair on their scalps rise as they listened to it.

‘Who's there?' Cousin Zhen shouted in a voice that he tried to make fierce and challenging. But though he repeated the question several times, there was no reply.

‘It's probably one of the servants,' said You-shi.

‘Nonsense!' snapped Cousin Zhen. ‘There are no servants living behind any of these walls. In any case, that's the Hall of the Ancestors over there. What would anyone be doing behind
that
wall?'

A rustle of wind passed, at that very moment, along the foot of it and a distant sound like the opening and closing of a door could be heard from inside the ancestral temple. An oppressive feeling of dread came over them; the night air seemed suddenly to have grown colder; the moon appeared less bright than it had been a few minutes before; and they could feel their skins crawling with terror.

Shock had made Cousin Zhen almost sober; but though he managed to keep better control of himself than the others, he was very much shaken and had lost all appetite for enjoyment. Nevertheless he forced himself and the others to sit a little longer before retiring finally to bed.

He rose quite early next morning. It was the fifteenth, one of the two days in each month on which offerings have to be made to the ancestors. Entering the ancestral temple with the other male members of the family, he took the opportunity of looking round inside it very carefully; but everything
was as it should be; there was no sign whatever of anything untoward having happened. He put down the previous night's terror to the effects of drunkenness – a mild attack of the horrors – and resolved to make no further mention of it. When the service was over, he shut the temple up again and made sure that the doors were securely locked and barred.

‘How is your Cousin Bao's archery these days?'

Cousin Zhen jumped to his feet to reply.

‘Greatly improved, Lady Jia. It isn't only his form that is better; he is beginning to handle the bow with much greater strength.'

‘That's the point at which to stop then,' said Grandmother Jia. ‘We don't want him straining himself.'

‘No, no, certainly not,' said Cousin Zhen. ‘I quite agree.'

‘Those mooncakes you sent yesterday were very good,' said Grandmother Jia. ‘The melons
looked
all right, but there's not much inside them when you cut them open.'

‘Those mooncakes
are
good, aren't they?' said Cousin Zhen. ‘They were made by our new pastry-cook. I tried them myself to make sure they were all right before venturing to send you any. As for the melons: we've been lucky in previous years, but for some reason none of them this year seem to be any good.'

‘I think we must blame the weather,' said Jia Zheng. ‘The rains this year were excessive.'

‘The moon must be up by now,' said Grandmother Jia. ‘Let's go and make our Mid-Autumn offering.'

She got up and, leaning on Bao-yu's shoulder, led the way
into the Garden. The main gate was wide open and hung with great horn lanterns. When they reached Prospect Hall, they found servants with lighted lamps waiting for them on the terrace and a table on which incense smoked in a square container and on which offerings of melons and other fruit and mooncakes had been set out on dishes. Lady Xing and all the other female members of the family were waiting inside the hall.

‘The best place for enjoying the moon from is the top of a hill,' she told them when they had finished. She suggested the pavilion on the summit of the ‘master mountain' behind Reunion Palace (of which Prospect Hall was a part) as the place to have their party. The servants at once went off to make it ready. Meanwhile Grandmother Jia sat talking with the others inside Prospect Hall, resting and drinking tea. Presently the servants came back to report that the mountain-top pavilion was now ready. The old lady stood up again and, supported on either side by her maids, prepared to make the ascent.

‘I'm afraid the moss on the steps might make them rather slippery,' said Lady Wang. ‘Wouldn't it be better if you went up in a chair?'

‘The servants sweep them every day,' said Grandmother Jia. ‘How can there be any moss? They are good, level steps and not too steep. The exercise will be good for me.'

Jia She and Jia Zheng led the way, followed by a couple of old women with horn lanterns. Faithful, Amber and You-shi supported the old lady on either side, and Lady Xing, Lady Wang and all the others followed in a close procession behind.
It was only a hundred or so steps up the zig-zag path to the summit.

The pavilion was a rectangular building with one completely open side looking onto a terrace. Because it was situated on the convex grassy summit of the little ‘mountain', it was called Convex Pavilion. Two tables with chairs round them had been set out on the terrace, separated from each other by a large screen. The tables and chairs, like the moon and melons and mooncakes, were all round, in honour of the occasion. Grandmother Jia sat at the head of one of the tables with Jia She, Cousin Zhen, Jia Lian and Jia Rong on her left hand and Jia Zheng, Bao-yu, Jia Huan and Jia Lan on her right. Between them they filled only about half the places round the table.

‘I never felt in the past on these occasions that we were a small family,' Grandmother Jia commented. ‘Looking at us today, though, I must say we do make a very miserable turnout. I can remember Mid-Autumns when there were thirty or forty of us sitting down together. Ah, what times we had then! We shan't ever have numbers like that again. Let's have the girls to sit with us. See if we can't fill up that gap!'

Someone went over to the table presided over by Lady Xing on the other side of the screen to fetch Ying-chun, Tan-chun and Xi-chun. Jia Lian, Jia Rong, Bao-yu and the other boys got up while the chairs were rearranged and the girls were installed at the table. Then they reseated themselves in their proper order, Jia Lian and Jia Rong with Ying-chun and Xi-chun between them, and Bao-yu and Jia Huan on either side of Tan-chun.

Grandmother Jia asked someone to fetch a spray of cassia and made one of the women sit behind the screen and drum for them, so that they could play Passing the Branch. Anyone whose hand the branch was in when the drumming stopped had first to drink a cup of wine and then tell a funny story. The drumming started and the branch passed from Grandmother Jia to Jia She and so on round the table. It stopped just as the branch had reached Jia Zheng's hand on its second time round. He raised the winecup to his lips to the accompaniment of much secret nudging and pinching among the
younger folk, to whom the notion of Jia Zheng telling a joke was in itself unbelievably funny.

Jia Zheng could see how much the old lady was enjoying herself and was anxious not to spoil her pleasure. Before he could begin his story, however, she saw fit to give him notice that he must expect to be punished if he did not make her laugh.

‘I can only think of one joke,' said Jia Zheng. ‘If you don't find it amusing, you will just have to punish me.'

‘Very well, tell us your one joke then,' said Grandmother Jia.

‘It is about a hen-pecked husband,' said Jia Zheng.

He got no further. Already his audience were convulsed. It was not that what he had said was the least bit funny, simply that they had never heard him talking about such things before.

‘This is sure to be good,' said Grandmother Jia.

‘In that case,' said Jia Zheng, laughing himself, ‘let me persuade you to drink a cup of wine.'

‘Very well,' said Grandmother Jia.

At once Jia She and Jia Zheng rose to their feet. Jia She held a winecup in both his hands while Jia Zheng poured wine into it from a wine-kettle. Then Jia Zheng took the cup from Jia She and ceremoniously set it down in front of Grandmother Jia. The two men stood in stiffly deferential attitudes beside her while she drank some, then, having completed their little pantomime, resumed their places.

Jia Zheng proceeded with his story.

‘This hen-pecked husband was so afraid of his wife that he never dared stay long away from the house. But one Mid-Autumn Festival he chanced to be out shopping in the street when a friend caught sight of him and insisted on dragging him off to his house for a drink. Without meaning to, the husband became very drunk – so much so that he had to stay at his friend's house for the night. When he woke up the next morning, he was full of remorse. However, there was nothing for it but to hurry back home and apologize. When he got back, his wife was washing her feet.

‘“Very well,” she said when he had finished apologizing, “if you will lick my feet clean, I will forgive you.”

‘The man began to lick, but a feeling of nausea overcame him and he showed signs of wanting to be sick. When his wife saw this, she was furious.

‘“How dare you?” she screamed, and looked as if she was about to give him a beating.

‘The husband knelt down in terror and begged to be forgiven.

‘“Please, my dear! It isn't that I find your feet in the least distasteful. It's just that I drank rather a lot of yellow wine last night and ate lots of very rich mooncakes, so today I am feeling a little
queasy
.”'

Grandmother Jia and the rest all laughed and Jia Zheng poured Grandmother Jia another cup of wine.

‘Someone had better change this yellow wine for samshoo,' she said. ‘We don't want you husbands having this sort of trouble with
your
wives tomorrow!'

This produced another laugh.

The drumming recommenced and the branch, starting from Jia Zheng, began circulating again. This time it stopped with Bao-yu. Bao-yu had been feeling uncomfortable to start with because of Jia Zheng's presence, but became ten times more so when he found himself stuck with the branch.

‘If I tell a joke and it's no good,' he thought, ‘he will say I've no invention. But if I tell a good one, he'll say I have no aptitude for serious things, only frivolous ones, and that will be even worse. I'd much better not tell one at all.'

Having reached this decision, he stood up and asked his father to excuse him.

‘I'm sorry,' he said, ‘I can't tell jokes. May I do something else, please?'

‘You may compose a poem on the theme of “Mid-Autumn Moon”,' said Jia Zheng. ‘If it is good, I shall reward you; if it is not – I shall deal with you tomorrow.'

‘This is a game we are playing,' said Grandmother Jia testily. ‘Do you
have
to make the boy write poetry?'

‘He can do it if he wants to,' said Jia Zheng. He was smiling.

‘Very well, let him do it then,' said Grandmother Jia. ‘Fetch him a brush and paper somebody.'

‘No padding, now!' Jia Zheng told Bao-yu. ‘No “crystal”, “ice”, “jade”, “silver”, “light”, “bright”, “white” – anything of that sort. I want something original that will give me some idea of what you have been doing with your mind during this past year or two.'

Bao-yu found these injunctions by no means uncongenial, and having succeeded, in quite a short time, in thinking of a quatrain, he wrote it out and handed it to his father. Jia Zheng said nothing, but was observed to nod after he had finished reading it, which Grandmother Jia interpreted to mean that he could not have found the poem too bad.

‘Well?' she asked him.

Jia Zheng wanted to make her happy.

‘Not at all bad,' he said. ‘It's a pity he won't study, but his verses are really quite elegant.'

‘Well, that's all right then,' said Grandmother Jia. ‘You ought to encourage the boy, so that next time he tries even harder.'

‘You are quite right,' said Jia Zheng. He turned to one of the old women in attendance. ‘Tell my boys to get out two of the fans I brought back with me from the South, will you, and give them to Bao-yu for me.'

Bao-yu came forward and kotowed. After he had gone back to his seat, the game continued. This time the branch stopped in Jia She's hand. He drank his wine and then told the following story.

‘This one is about a dutiful son whose mother was ill. He tried everywhere to get a doctor for her, but couldn't find one, so in the end he was reduced to calling in an old woman who practised acupuncture. Now this old dame knew nothing of physiology, nevertheless she assured the son that it was inflammation of the heart that his mother was suffering from and that she could cure it instantly with her needle. The son became very alarmed.

‘“If metal in any form comes into contact with the heart,” he said, “it means death. Surely you're not going to put a needle in her heart?”

‘“No, no, I shan't put it in the heart,” said the old woman. “I mean to put it in here, over the ribs.”

‘“But that's too
far
from the heart,” said the son. “Surely if you put it in there, it won't do any good?”

‘“Oh yes it will,” said the old woman. “A mother's heart always inclines towards one side.”'

The others all laughed, and Grandmother Jia was persuaded to drink another half cup of wine. After a long pause she said somewhat wryly,

‘Perhaps I could do with a bit of the old dame's acupuncture myself.'

Jia She realized, too late, that his somewhat tactless choice of story could be interpreted as a criticism of his own mother. Hurriedly rising to his feet, he held up his cup to toast her with and did what he could to change the subject. Fortunately the old lady made no further reference to his gaffe and the game soon continued. This time the branch stopped with Jia Huan.

Jia Huan had lately been making modest progress in his studies. He was even beginning to show a certain interest in verse, though his tastes in it were decidedly peculiar. When Bao-yu's poem was praised earlier on, he had been dying to demonstrate his own talent, but had not dared risk the charge of showing off in his father's presence. Now that the luck of the game had given him free licence, he called for paper and writing-brush and, in a matter of moments, wrote out a quatrain which he handed to his father. Jia Zheng was not impressed. It was a somewhat weird little poem, and whatever advances Jia Huan might lately have made in his schoolwork, they certainly did not reveal themselves in his choice of words.

‘It is easy to see that you and Bao-yu are brothers,' said Jia Zheng. ‘Whether in your ideas or the language you express them in, you show the same distaste for sound classical models. The “Two Incomparables” we should call you, not because you are incomparable in virtue like Chen Yuan-fang and his brother, but because you are incomparably hard to knock any sense into: though whereas Bao-yu seems to think that he has inherited the mantle of the Airy Fairy school and fancies himself as a second Wen Ting-yun, you apparently prefer the Spooks and Spectres style of poetry and see yourself as a latter-day Cao Tang.'

This (not because anyone understood it, but because it
sounded
funny) provoked general laughter.

‘Let me see that poem,' said Jia She. He took it from Jia Zheng and almost immediately began praising it.

‘I like this poem, it's got guts in it. Boys from families like ours don't need to read themselves half blind in order to get started on a career. Provided they've read enough to show that they are better educated than the rabble and are capable of holding down a job, they can hardly fail to get on. Why waste a lot of time and energy on turning the boy into a book-worm? What I like about this poem is that it is just the sort of good amateur, not-too-brainy poem you'd
expect
a young chap of our class to write.'

He sent someone to fetch various objects of his to give to Jia Huan as a reward and smilingly patted him on the head.

‘You go on writing poems like this, young fellow! We'll have no trouble getting you a posting when the time comes, don't you worry!'

Jia Zheng protested.

‘Whatever you think of the poem, it hardly justifies talking in this way about the boy's future.'

Mean while the servants had begun pouring more wine so that the game could continue; but Grandmother Jia intervened.

‘Why don't you two go now? I'm sure your gentlemen must be waiting for you, and it would be discourteous to neglect them. Besides, it must be all of ten o'clock and if you go now it will give the children a chance to enjoy themselves unconstrainedly for a while before they go to bed.'

The two brothers at once got up to go, and after a parting cup offered to them on behalf of all the rest, they went off, taking Cousin Zhen and Jia Lian with them, but leaving Bao-yu and the two younger boys with the womenfolk.

What happened after their departure will be related in the following chapter.