The Crab-Flower Club Read online

  ‘Can I, that these flowers’ obsequies attend,

  Divine how soon or late my life will end?’

  and, a little later,

  ‘One day when spring has gone and youth has fled,

  The Maiden and the flowers will both be dead.’

  he flung himself on the ground in a fit of weeping, scattering the earth all about him with the flowers he had been carrying in the skirt of his gown.

  Lin Dai-yu dead! A world from which that delicate, flowerlike countenance had irrevocably departed! It was unutterable anguish to think of it. Yet his sensitized imagination did now consider it – went on, indeed, to consider a world from which the others, too – Bao-chai, Caltrop, Aroma and the rest – had also irrevocably departed. Where would he be then? What would have become of him? And what of the Garden, the rocks, the flowers, the trees? To whom would they belong when he and the girls were no longer there to enjoy them? Passing from loss to loss in his imagination, he plunged deeper and deeper into a grief that seemed inconsolable. As the poet says:

  Flowers in my eyes and bird-song in my ears

  Augment my loss and mock my bitter tears.

  Dai-yu, then, as she stood plunged in her own private sorrowing, suddenly heard the sound of another person crying bitterly on the rocks above her.

  ‘The others are always telling me I’m a “case”,’ she thought. ‘Surely there can’t be another “case” up there?’

  But on looking up she saw that it was Bao-yu.

  ‘Pshaw!’ she said crossly to herself. ‘I thought it was another girl, but all the time it was that cruel, hate—’

  ‘Hateful’ she had been going to say, but clapped her mouth shut before uttering it. She sighed instead and began to walk away.

  By the time Bao-yu’s weeping was over, Dai-yu was no longer there. He realized that she must have seen him and have gone away in order to avoid him. Feeling suddenly rather foolish, he rose to his feet and brushed the earth from his clothes. Then he descended from the rockery and began to retrace his steps in the direction of Green Delights. Quite by coincidence Dai-yu was walking along the same path a little way ahead.

  ‘Stop a minute!’ he cried, hurrying forward to catch up with her. ‘I know you are not taking any notice of me, but I only want to ask you one simple question, and then you need never have anything more to do with me.’

  Dai-yu had turned back to see who it was. When she saw that it was Bao-yu still, she was going to ignore him again; but hearing him say that he only wanted to ask her one question, she told him that he might do so.

  Bao-yu could not resist teasing her a little.

  ‘How about two questions? Would you wait for two?’

  Dai-yu set her face forwards and began walking on again.

  Bao-yu sighed.

  ‘If it has to be like this now,’ he said, as if to himself, ‘it’s a pity it was ever like it was in the beginning.’

  Dai-yu’s curiosity got the better of her. She stopped walking and turned once more towards him.

  ‘Like what in the beginning?’ she asked. ‘And like what now?’

  ‘Oh, the beginning!’ said Bao-yu. ‘In the beginning, when you first came here, I was your faithful companion in all your games. Anything I had, even the thing most dear to me, was yours for the asking. If there was something to eat that I specially liked, I had only to hear that you were fond of it too and I would religiously hoard it away to share with you when you got back, not daring even to touch it until you came. We ate at the same table. We slept in the same bed. I used to think that because we were so close then, there would be something special about our relationship when we grew up – that even if we weren’t particularly affectionate, we should at least have more understanding and forbearance for each other than the rest. But how wrong I was! Now that you have grown up, you seem only to have grown more touchy. You don’t seem to care about me any more at all. You spend all your time brooding about outsiders like Feng and Chai. I haven’t got any real brothers and sisters left here now. There are Huan and Tan, of course; but as you know, they’re only my half-brother and half-sister: they aren’t my mother’s children. I’m on my own, like you. I should have thought we had so much in common – But what’s the use? I try and try, but it gets me nowhere; and nobody knows or cares.’

  At this point – in spite of himself – he burst into tears.

  The palpable evidence of her own eyes and ears had by now wrought a considerable softening on Dai-yu’s heart. A sympathetic tear stole down her own cheek, and she hung her head and said nothing. Bao-yu could see that he had moved her.

  ‘I know I’m not much use nowadays,’ he continued, ‘but however bad you may think me, I would never wittingly do anything in your presence to offend you. If I do ever slip up in some way, you ought to tell me off about it and warn me not to do it again, or shout at me – hit me, even, if you feel like it; I shouldn’t mind. But you don’t do that. You just ignore me. You leave me utterly at a loss to know what I’m supposed to have done wrong, so that I’m driven half frantic wondering what I ought to do to make up for it. If I were to die now, I should die with a grievance, and all the masses and exorcisms in the world wouldn’t lay my ghost. Only when you explained what your reason was for ignoring me should I cease from haunting you and be reborn into another life.’

  Dai-yu’s resentment for the gate incident had by now completely evaporated. She merely said:

  ‘Oh well, in that case why did you tell your maids not to let me in when I came to call on you?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know what you are referring to,’ said Bao-yu in surprise. ‘Strike me dead if I ever did any such thing!’

  ‘Hush!’ said Dai-yu. ‘Talking about death at this time of the morning! You should be more careful what you say. If you did, you did. If you didn’t, you didn‘t. There’s no need for these horrible oaths.’

  ‘I really and truly didn’t know you had called,’ said Bao-yu. ‘Cousin Bao came and sat with me a few minutes last night and then went away again. That’s the only call I know about.’

  Dai-yu reflected for a moment or two, then smiled.

  ‘Yes, it must have been the maids being lazy. Certainly they can be very disagreeable at such times.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure that’s what it was,’ said Bao-yu. ‘When I get back, I’ll find out who it was and give her a good talking-to.’

  ‘I think some of your young ladies could do with a good talking-to,’ said Dai-yu, ‘– though it’s not really for me to say so. It’s a good job it was only me they were rude to. If Miss Bao or Miss Cow were to call and they behaved like that to her, that would be really serious.’

  She giggled mischievously. Bao-yu didn’t know whether to laugh with her or grind his teeth. But just at that moment a maid came up to ask them both to lunch and the two of them went together out of the Garden and through into the front part of the mansion, calling in at Lady Wang’s on the way.

  ‘How did you get on with that medicine of Dr Bao’s,’ Lady Wang asked Dai-yu as soon as she saw her, ‘– the Court Physician? Do you think you are any better for it?’

  ‘It didn’t seem to make very much difference,’ said Dai-yu. ‘Grandmother has put me back on Dr Wang’s prescription.’

  ‘Cousin Lin has got a naturally weak constitution, Mother,’ said Bao-yu. ‘She takes cold very easily. These strong decoctions are all very well provided she only takes one or two to dispel the cold. For regular treatment it’s probably best if she sticks to pills.’

  ‘The doctor was telling me about some pills for her the other day,’ said Lady Wang, ‘but I just can’t remember the name.’

  ‘I know the names of most of those pills,’ said Bao-yu. ‘I expect he wanted her to take Ginseng Tonic Pills.’

  ‘No, that wasn’t it,’ said Lady Wang.

  ‘Eight Gem Motherwort Pills?’ said Bao-yu. ‘Zhang’s Dextrals? Zhang’s Sinistrals? If it wasn’t any of them, it was probably Dr Cui’s Adenophora Kidney Pills.’
<
br />   ‘No,’ said Lady Wang, ‘it was none of those. All I can remember is that there was a “Vajra” in it.’

  Bao-yu gave a hoot and clapped his hands:

  ‘I’ve never heard of “Vajra Pills”. If there are “Vajra Pills”, I suppose there must be “Buddha Boluses”!’

  The others all laughed. Bao-chai looked at him mockingly.

  ‘I should think it was probably “The Deva-king Cardiac Elixir Pills”,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, yes, that’s it!’ said Lady Wang. ‘Of course! How stupid of me!’

  ‘No, Mother, not stupid,’ said Bao-yu. ‘It’s the strain. All those Vajra-kings and Bodhisattvas have been overworking you!’

  ‘You’re a naughty boy to make fun of your poor mother,’ said Lady Wang. ‘A good whipping from your Pa is what you need.’

  ‘Oh, Father doesn’t whip me for that sort of thing nowadays,’ said Bao-yu.

  ‘Now that we know the name of the pills, we must get them to buy some for your Cousin Lin,’ said Lady Wang.

  ‘None of those things are any good,’ said Bao-yu. ‘You give me three hundred and sixty taels of silver and I’ll make up some pills for Cousin Lin that I guarantee will have her completely cured before she has finished the first boxful.’

  ‘Stuff!’ said Lady Wang. ‘Whoever heard of a medicine that cost so much?’

  ‘No, honestly!’ said Bao-yu. ‘This prescription is a very unusual one with very special ingredients. I can’t remember all of them, but I know they include

  the caul of a first-born child;

  a ginseng root shaped like a man, with the leaves

  still on it;

  a turtle-sized polygonum root;

  and

  lycoperdon from the stump of a thousand-year-old

  pine-tree.

  – Actually, though, there’s nothing so very special about those ingredients. They’re all in the standard pharmacopoeia. For “sovereign remedies” they use ingredients that would really make you jump. I once gave the prescription for one to Cousin Xue. He was more than a year begging me for it before I would give it to him, and it took him another two or three years and nearly a thousand taels of silver to get all the ingredients together. Ask Bao-chai if you don’t believe me, Mother.’

  ‘I know nothing about it,’ said Bao-chai. ‘I’ve never heard it mentioned. It’s no good telling Aunt to ask me.’

  ‘You see! Bao-chai is a good girl. She doesn’t tell lies,’ said Lady Wang.

  Bao-yu was standing in the middle of the floor below the kang. He clapped his hands at this and turned to the others appealingly.

  ‘But it’s the truth I’m telling you. This is no lie.’

  As he turned, he happened to catch sight of Dai-yu, who was sitting behind Bao-chai, smiling mockingly and stroking her cheek with her finger – which in sign-language means, ‘You are a great big liar and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.’

  But Xi-feng, who happened to be in the inner room supervising the laying of the table and had overheard the preceding remarks, now emerged into the outer room to corroborate:

  ‘It’s quite true, what Bao says. I don’t think he is making it up,’ she said. ‘Not so long ago Cousin Xue came to me asking for some pearls, and when I asked him what he wanted them for, he said, “To make medicine with.” Then he started grumbling about the trouble he was having in getting the right ingredients and how he had half a mind not to make this medicine up after all. I said, “What medicine?” and he told me that it was a prescription that Cousin Bao had given him and reeled off a lot of ingredients – I can’t remember them now. “Of course,” he said, “I could easily enough buy a few pearls; only these have to be ones that have been worn. That’s why I’m asking you for them. If you haven’t got any loose ones,” he said, “a few pearls broken off a bit of jewellery would do. I’d get you something nice to replace it with.” He was so insistent that in the end I had to break up two of my ornaments for him. Then he wanted a yard of Imperial red gauze. That was to put over the mortar to pound the pearls through. He said they had to be ground until they were as fine as flour.’

  ‘You see!’ ‘You see!’ Bao-yu kept interjecting throughout this recital.

  ‘Incidentally, Mother,’ he said, when it was ended, ‘even that was only a substitute. According to the prescription, the pearls ought really to have come from an ancient grave. They should really have been pearls taken from jewellery on the corpse of a long-buried noblewoman. But as one can’t very well go digging up graves and rifling tombs every time one wants to make this medicine, the prescription allows pearls worn by the living as a second-best.’

  ‘Blessed name of the Lord!’ said Lady Wang. ‘What a dreadful idea! Even if you did get them from a grave, I can’t believe that a medicine made from pearls that had been come by so wickedly – desecrating people’s bones that had been lying peacefully in the ground all those hundreds of years – could possibly do you any good.’

  Bao-yu turned to Dai-yu.

  ‘Did you hear what Feng said?’ he asked her. ‘I hope you’re not going to say that she was lying.’

  Although the remark was addressed to Dai-yu, he winked at Bao-chai as he made it.

  Dai-yu clung to Lady Wang.

  ‘Listen to him, Aunt!’ she wailed. ‘Bao-chai won’t be a party to his lies, but he still expects me to be.’

  ‘Bao-yu, you are very unkind to your cousin,’ said Lady Wang.

  Bao-yu only laughed.

  ‘You don’t know the reason, Mother. Bao-chai didn’t know a half of what Cousin Xue got up to, even when she was living with her mother outside; and now that she’s moved into the Garden, she knows even less. When she said she didn’t know, she really didn’t know: she wasn’t giving me the lie. What you don’t realize is that Cousin Lin was all the time sitting behind her making signs to show that she didn’t believe me.’

  Just then a maid came from Grandmother Jia’s apartment to fetch Bao-yu and Dai-yu to lunch.

  Without saying a word to Bao-yu, Dai-yu got up and, taking the maid’s hand, began to go. But the maid was reluctant.

  ‘Let’s wait for Master Bao and we can go together.’

  ‘He’s not eating lunch today,’ said Dai-yu. ‘Come on, let’s go!’

  ‘Whether he’s eating lunch or not,’ said the maid, ‘he’d better come with us, so that he can explain to Her Old Ladyship about it when she asks.’

  ‘All right, you wait for him then,’ said Dai-yu. ‘I’m going on ahead.’

  And off she went.

  ‘I think I’d rather eat with you today, Mother,’ said Bao-yu.

  ‘No, no, you can’t,’ said Lady Wang. ‘Today is one of my fast-days: I shall only be eating vegetables. You go and have a proper meal with your Grandma.’

  ‘I shall share your vegetables,’ said Bao-yu. ‘Go on, you can go,’ he said, dismissing the maid; and rushing up to the table, he sat himself down at it in readiness.

  ‘You others had better get on with your own lunch,’ Lady Wang said to Bao-chai and the girls. ‘Let him do as he likes.’

  ‘You really ought to go,’ Bao-chai said to Bao-yu. ‘Whether you have lunch there or not, you ought to keep Cousin Lin company. She is very upset, you know. Why don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, leave her alone!’ said Bao-yu. ‘She’ll be all right presently.’

  Soon they had finished eating, and Bao-yu, afraid that Grandmother Jia might be worrying and at the same time anxious to rejoin Dai-yu, hurriedly demanded tea to rinse his mouth with. Tan-chun and Xi-chun were much amused.

  ‘Why are you always in such a hurry, Bao?’ they asked him. ‘Even your eating and drinking all seems to be done in a rush.’

  ‘You should let him finish quickly, so that he can get back to his Dai-yu,’ said Bao-chai blandly. ‘Don’t make him waste time here with us.’

  Bao-yu left as soon as he had drunk his tea, and made straight for the west courtyard where his Grandmother Jia’s apartment was. But as he was passing by the ga
teway of Xi-feng’s courtyard, it happened that Xi-feng herself was standing in her doorway with one foot on the threshold, grooming her teeth with an ear-cleaner and keeping a watchful eye on nine or ten pages who were moving potted plants about under her direction.

  ‘Ah, just the person I wanted to see!’ she said, as soon as she caught sight of Bao-yu. ‘Come inside. I want you to write something down for me.’

  Bao-yu was obliged to follow her indoors. Xi-feng called for some paper, an inkstone and a brush, and at once began dictating:

  ‘Crimson lining-damask forty lengths, dragonet figured satin forty lengths, miscellaneous Imperial gauze one hundred lengths, gold necklets four, – ’

  ‘Here, what is this?’ said Bao-yu. ‘It isn’t an invoice and it isn’t a presentation list. How am I supposed to write it?’

  ‘Never you mind about that,’ said Xi-feng. ‘As long as I know what it is, that’s all that matters. Just put it down anyhow.’

  Bao-yu wrote down the four items. As soon as he had done so, Xi-feng took up the paper and folded it away.

  ‘Now,’ she said, smiling pleasantly, ‘there’s something I want to talk to you about. I don’t know whether you’ll agree to this or not, but there’s a girl in your room called “Crimson” whom I’d like to work for me. If I find you someone to replace her with, will you let me have her?’

  ‘There are so many girls in my room,’ said Bao-yu. ‘Please take any you have a fancy to. You really don’t need to ask me about it.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Xi-feng, ‘I’ll send for her straight away.’

  ‘Please do,’ said Bao-yu, and started to go.

  ‘Hey, come back!’ said Xi-feng. ‘I haven’t finished with you yet.’

  ‘I’ve got to see Grandma now,’ said Bao-yu. ‘If you’ve got anything else to say, you can tell me on my way back.’

  When he got to Grandmother Jia’s apartment, they had all just finished lunch. Grandmother Jia asked him if he had had anything nice to eat with his mother.