The Crab-Flower Club Read online

  ‘I shouldn’t have taken her up on that “gold and jade” business,’ he thought. ‘I’ve got her into this state and now there’s no way in which I can relieve her by sharing what she suffers.’ As he thought this, he, too, began to cry.

  Now that Bao-yu and Dai-yu were both crying, Aroma instinctively drew towards her master to comfort him. A pang of pity for him passed through her and she squeezed his hand sympathetically. It was as cold as ice. She would have liked to tell him not to cry but hesitated, partly from the consideration that he might be suffering from some deep-concealed hurt which crying would do something to relieve, and partly from the fear that to do so in Dai-yu’s presence might seem presumptuous. Torn between a desire to speak and fear of the possible consequences of speaking, she did what girls of her type often do when faced with a difficult decision: she avoided the necessity of making one by bursting into tears.

  As for Nightingale, who had disposed of the handkerchief of vomited tisane and was now gently fanning her mistress with her fan, seeing the other three all standing there as quiet as mice with the tears streaming down their faces, she was so affected by the sight that she too started crying and was obliged to have recourse to a second handkerchief.

  There the four of them stood, then, facing each other; all of them crying; none of them saying a word. It was Aroma who broke the silence with a strained and nervous laugh.

  ‘You ought not to quarrel with Miss Lin,’ she said to Bao-yu, ‘if only for the sake of this pretty cord she made you.’

  At these words Dai-yu, ill as she was, darted forward, grabbed the jade from Aroma’s hand, and snatching up a pair of scissors that were lying nearby, began feverishly cutting at its silken cord with them. Before Aroma and Nightingale could stop her, she had already cut it into several pieces.

  ‘It was a waste of time making it,’ she sobbed. ‘He doesn’t really care for it. And there’s someone else who’ll no doubt make him a better one!’

  ‘What a shame!’ said Aroma, retrieving the jade. ‘It’s all my silly fault. I should have kept my mouth shut.’

  ‘Go on! Cut away!’ said Bao-yu. ‘I shan’t be wearing the wretched thing again anyway, so it doesn’t matter.’

  Preoccupied with the quarrel, the four of them had failed to notice several old women, who had been drawn by the sound of it to investigate. Apprehensive, when they saw Dai-yu hysterically weeping and vomiting and Bao-yu trying to smash his jade, of the dire consequences to be expected from a scene of such desperate passion, they had hurried off in a body to the front of the mansion to report the matter to Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang, hoping in this way to establish in advance that whatever the consequences might be, they were not responsible for them. From their precipitate entry and the grave tone of their announcement Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang assumed that some major catastrophe had befallen and hurried with them into the Garden to find out what it was.

  Their arrival filled Aroma with alarm. ‘What did Nightingale want to go troubling Their Ladyships for?’ she thought crossly, supposing that the talebearer had been sent to them by Nightingale; while Nightingale for her part was angry with Aroma, thinking that the talebearer must have been one of Aroma’s minions.

  Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang entered the room to find a silent Bao-yu and a silent Dai-yu, neither of whom, when questioned, would admit that anything at all was the matter. They therefore visited their wrath on the heads of the two unfortunate maids, insisting that it was entirely owing to their negligence that matters had got so much out of hand. Unable to defend themselves, the girls were obliged to endure a long and abusive dressing-down, after which Grandmother Jia concluded the affair by carrying Bao-yu off to her own apartment.

  Next day, the third of the fifth month, was Xue Pan’s birthday and there was a family party with plays, to which the Jias were all invited. Bao-yu, who had still not seen Dai-yu since his outburst – which he now deeply regretted – was feeling far too dispirited to care about seeing plays, and declined to go on the ground that he was feeling unwell.

  Dai-yu, though somewhat overcome on the day previous to this by the sultry weather, had by no means been seriously ill. Arguing that if she was not ill, it was impossible that he should be, she felt sure, when she heard of Bao-yu’s excuse, that it must be a false one.

  ‘He usually enjoys drinking and watching plays,’ she thought. ‘If he’s not going, it must be because he is still angry about yesterday; or if it isn’t that, it must be because he’s heard that I’m not going and doesn’t want to go without me. Oh! I should never have cut that cord! Now he won’t ever wear his jade again – unless I make him another cord to wear it on.’

  So she, too, regretted the quarrel.

  Grandmother Jia knew that Bao-yu and Dai-yu were angry with each other, but she had been assuming that they would see each other at the Xues’ party and make it up there. When neither of them turned up at it, she became seriously upset.

  ‘I’m a miserable old sinner,’ she grumbled. ‘It must be my punishment for something I did wrong in a past life to have to live with a pair of such obstinate, addle-headed little geese! I’m sure there isn’t a day goes by without their giving me some fresh cause for anxiety. It must be fate. That’s what it says in the proverb, after all:

  ’Tis Fate brings foes and lo‘es tegither.

  I’ll be glad when I’ve drawn my last breath and closed my old eyes for the last time; then the two of them can snap and snarl at each other to their hearts’ content, for I shan’t be there to see it, and “what the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve”. The Lord knows, it’s not my wish to drag on this wearisome life any longer!’

  Amidst these muttered grumblings the old lady began to cry.

  In due course her words were transmitted to Bao-yu and Dai-yu. It happened that neither of them had ever heard the saying

  ‘Tis Fate brings foes and lo’es tegither,

  and its impact on them, hearing it for the first time, was like that of a Zen ‘perception’: something to be meditated on with bowed head and savoured with a gush of tears. Though they had still not made it up since their quarrel, the difference between them had now vanished completely:

  In Naiad’s House one to the wind made moan,

  In Green Delights one to the moon complained,

  to parody the well-known lines. Or, in homelier verses:

  Though each was in a different place,

  Their hearts in friendship beat as one.

  On the second day after their quarrel Aroma deemed that the time was now ripe for urging a settlement.

  ‘Whatever the rights and wrongs of all this may be,’ she said to Bao-yu, ‘you are certainly the one who is most to blame. Whenever in the past you’ve heard about a quarrel between one of the pages and one of the girls, you’ve always said that the boy was a brute for not understanding the girl’s feelings better – yet here you are behaving in exactly the same way yourself! Tomorrow will be the Double Fifth. Her Old Ladyship will be really angry if the two of you are still at daggers drawn on the day of the festival, and that will make life difficult for all of us. Why not put your pride in your pocket and go and say you are sorry, so that we can all get back to normal again?’

  But as to whether or not Bao-yu followed her advice, or, if he did so, what the effect of following it was – those questions will be dealt with in the following chapter.

  Chapter 30

  Bao-chai speaks of a fan and castigates her deriders

  Charmante scratches a ‘qiang’ and mystifies a beholder

  Dai-yu, as we have shown, regretted her quarrel with Bao-yu almost as soon as it was over; but since there were no conceivable grounds on which she could run after him and tell him so, she continued, both day and night, in a state of unrelieved depression that made her feel almost as if a part of her was lost. Nightingale had a shrewd idea how it was with her and resolved at last to tackle her:

  ‘I think the day before yesterday you were too hasty, Miss. We ou
ght to know what things Master Bao is touchy about, if no one else does. Look at all the quarrels we’ve had with him in the past on account of that jade!’

  ‘Poh!’ said Dai-yu scornfully. ‘You are trying to make out that it was my fault because you have taken his side against me. Of course I wasn’t too hasty.’

  Nightingale gave her a quizzical smile.

  ‘No? Then why did you cut that cord up? If three parts of the blame was Bao-yu’s, I’m sure at least seven parts of it was yours. From what I’ve seen of it, he’s all right with you when you allow him to be; it’s because you’re so prickly with him and always trying to put him in the wrong that he gets worked up.’

  Dai-yu was about to retort when they heard someone at the courtyard gate calling to be let in. Nightingale turned to listen:

  ‘That’s Bao-yu’s voice,’ she said. ‘I expect he has come to apologize.’

  ‘I forbid you to let him in,’ said Dai-yu.

  ‘There you go again! ’ said Nightingale. ‘You’re going to keep him standing outside in the blazing sun on a day like this. Surely that’s wrong, if nothing else is?’

  She was moving outside, even as she said this, regardless of her mistress’s injunction. Sure enough, it was Bao-yu. She unfastened the gate and welcomed him in with a friendly smile.

  ‘Master Bao! I was beginning to think you weren’t coming to see us any more. I certainly didn’t expect to see you here again so soon.’

  ‘Oh, you’ve been making a mountain out of a molehill,’ said Bao-yu, returning her smile. ‘Why ever shouldn’t I come? Even if I died, my ghost would be round here a hundred times a day. How is my cousin? Quite better now?’

  ‘Physically she’s better,’ said Nightingale, ‘but she’s still in very poor spirits.’

  ‘Ah yes – I know she’s upset.’

  This exchange took place as they were crossing the forecourt. He now entered the room. Dai-yu was sitting on the bed crying. She had not been crying to start with, but the bittersweet pang she experienced when she heard his arrival had started the tears rolling. Bao-yu went up to the bed and smiled down at her.

  ‘How are you, coz? Quite better now?’

  As Dai-yu seemed to be too busy wiping her eyes to make a reply, he sat down close beside her on the edge of the bed:

  ‘I know you’re not really angry with me,’ he said. ‘It’s just that if the others noticed I wasn’t coming here, they would think we had been quarrelling; and if we waited for them to interfere, we should be allowing other people to come between us. It would be better to hit me and shout at me now and get it over with, if you still bear any hard feelings, than to go on ignoring me. Coz dear! Coz dear! —’

  He must have repeated those same two words in the same tone of passionate entreaty upwards of twenty times. Dai-yu had been meaning to ignore him, but what he had just been saying about other people ‘coming between’ them seemed to prove that he must in some way feel closer to her than the rest, and she was unable to maintain her silence.

  ‘You don’t have to treat me like a child,’ she blurted out tearfully. ‘From now on I shall make no further claims on you. You can behave exactly as if I had gone away.’

  ‘Gone away?’ said Bao-yu laughingly. ‘Where would you go to?’

  ‘Back home.’

  ‘I’d follow you.’

  ‘As if I were dead then.’

  ‘If you died,’ he said, ‘I should become a monk.’

  Dai-yu’s face darkened immediately:

  ‘What an utterly idiotic thing to say! Suppose your own sisters were to die? Just how many times can one person become a monk? I think I had better see what the others think about that remark.’

  Bao-yu had realized at once that she would be offended; but the words were already out of his mouth before he could stop them. He turned very red and hung his head in silence. It was a good thing that no one else was in the room at that moment to see him. Dai-yu glared at him for some seconds – evidently too enraged to speak, for she made a sound somewhere between a snort and a sigh, but said nothing – then, seeing him almost purple in the face with suppressed emotion, she clenched her teeth, pointed her finger at him, and, with an indignant ‘Hmn!’, stabbed the air quite savagely a few inches away from his forehead:

  ‘You—!’

  But whatever it was she had been going to call him never got said. She merely gave a sigh and began wiping her eyes again with her handkerchief.

  Bao-yu had been in a highly emotional state when he came to see Dai-yu and it had further upset him to have inadvertently offended her so soon after his arrival. This angry gesture and the unsuccessful struggle, ending in sighs and tears, to say what she wanted to say now affected him so deeply that he, too, began to weep. In need of a handkerchief but finding that he had come out without one, he wiped his eyes on his sleeve.

  Although Dai-yu was crying, the spectacle of Bao-yu using the sleeve of his brand-new lilac-coloured summer gown as a handkerchief had not escaped her, and while continuing to wipe her own eyes with one hand, she leaned over and reached with the other for the square of silk that was draped over the head-rest at the end of the bed. She lifted it off and threw it at him – all without uttering a word – then, once more burying her face in her own handkerchief, resumed her weeping. Bao-yu picked up the handkerchief she had thrown him and hurriedly wiped his eyes with it. When he had dried them, he drew up close to her again and took one of her hands in his own, smiling at her gently.

  ‘I don’t know why you go on crying,’ he said. ‘I feel as if all my insides were shattered. Come! Let’s go and see Grandmother together.’

  Dai-yu flung off his hand.

  ‘Take your hands off me! We’re not children any more. You really can’t go on mauling me about like this all the time. Don’t you understand anything – ?’

  ‘Bravo!’

  The shouted interruption startled them both. They spun round to look just as Xi-feng, full of smiles, came bustling into the room.

  ‘Grandmother has been grumbling away something awful,’ she said. ‘She insisted that I should come over and see if you were both all right. “Oh,” I said, “there’s no need to go and look, Grannie; they’ll have made it up by now without any interference from us.” So she told me I was lazy. Well, here I am – and of course it’s exactly as I said it would be. I don’t know. I don’t understand you two. What is it you find to argue about? For every three days that you’re friends you must spend at least two days quarrelling. You really are a couple of babies. And the older you get, the worse you get. Look at you now – holding hands crying! And a couple of days ago you were glaring at each other like fighting-cocks. Come on! Come with me to see Grandmother. Let’s put the old lady’s mind at rest.’

  As she said this, she seized Dai-yu’s hand and began marching off with her. Dai-yu turned back and called for her maids, but there was no response.

  ‘What do you want to call them for?’ said Xi-feng. ‘You’ve got me to wait on you, haven’t you?’

  She continued to walk away, still holding Dai-yu by the hand. Bao-yu followed a little way behind. They went out of the Garden and through into Grandmother Jia’s apartment.

  ‘I told you they could be left to themselves to make it up and that there was no need for you to worry,’ said Xi-feng to Grandmother Jia when they were all in the old lady’s presence; ‘but you wouldn’t believe me, would you? You insisted on my going there to act the peacemaker. Well, I went there; and what did I find? I found the two of them together apologizing to each other. It was like the kite and the kestrel holding hands: they were positively locked in a clinch! No need of a peacemaker that I could see.’

  There was a burst of laughter from all present. Bao-chai was among these, but Dai-yu slipped past her without speaking and took a seat next to Grandmother Jia. Bao-yu, rather at a loss for something to say, turned to Bao-chai.

  ‘I’m afraid I wasn’t very well on your brother’s birthday; so apart from not giving him a present,
I couldn’t even make him a kotow this year. I’m afraid he may not have realized I was ill and thought that I was merely making excuses. If you can spare a moment next time you see him, I do hope you will explain to him for me.’

  Bao-chai looked amused.

  ‘That seems a trifle excessive. I am sure he would have felt uncomfortable about your kotowing to him, even if you had been able to come; so I’m quite sure he wouldn’t have wanted you to come when you weren’t feeling well. It would be rather unfriendly, surely, if cousins who see each other all the time were to start worrying about trifles like that?’

  Bao-yu smiled.

  ‘Well, as long as you understand, that’s all right – But why aren’t you watching the players?’

  ‘I can’t stand the heat,’ said Bao-chai. ‘I did watch a couple of acts of something, but it was so hot that I couldn’t stay any longer. Unfortunately none of the guests showed any sign of going, so I had to pretend I was ill in order to get away.’

  ‘Touché!’ thought Bao-yu; but he hid his embarrassment in a stupid laugh.

  ‘No wonder they compare you to Yang Gui-fei, cousin. You are well-covered like her, and they always say that plump people fear the heat.’

  The colour flew into Bao-chai’s face. An angry retort was on her lips, but she could hardly make it in front of company. Yet reflection only made her angrier. Eventually, after a scornful sniff or two, she said:

  ‘I may be like Yang Gui-fei in some respects, but I don’t think there is much danger of my cousin becoming a Prime Minister.’

  It happened that just at that moment a very young maid called ‘Prettikins’ jokingly accused Bao-chai of having hidden a fan she was looking for.

  ‘I know Miss Bao’s hidden it,’ she said. ‘Come on, Miss! Please let me have it.’

  ‘You be careful,’ said Bao-chai, pointing at the girl angrily and speaking with unwonted stridency. ‘When did you last see me playing games of this sort with anyone? If there are other young ladies who are in the habit of romping about with you, you had better ask them.’