The Warning Voice (25 page)

‘Cousin Lin can sit there, against the partition,' said Bao-yu, while the guests were still arranging themselves on the kang. ‘She'll be better able to keep warm there.'

He made her a little nest of pillows there, into which, though it was somewhat inconveniently distant from the table, she settled herself very comfortably. From this cosy vantagepoint she looked across at Li Wan, Bao-chai and Tan-chun with a teasing smile.

‘You are always grumbling about the gambling and drinking of the servants, yet here are we proposing to do precisely the same thing ourselves. How will you have the face to tell them off for this sort of thing in future?'

‘This doesn't count,' said Li Wan, smiling back at her. ‘There's all the difference in the world between doing this once in a while on a birthday or a holiday and doing it every night of one's life.'

Skybright now produced a cylindrical bamboo box containing a set of ivory drinking-cards, each with a different kind of flower painted on it. After giving it a good shake, she put it down in the middle of one of the tables. Then she took four dice, put them inside a dice-box, shook it, opened it, and looked inside. The pips on the faces uppermost made a total of five. Counting herself as ‘one', the fifth along in an anticlockwise direction was Bao-chai.

‘I draw first then,' said Bao-chai, smiling. ‘I wonder what it will be.'

She gave the cylinder another shake and pulled out a card. The others craned over to look. It had a picture of a peony on it with the caption ‘Empress of the Garden' in large red characters. This was followed by a line of smaller black characters from a poem by the Tang poet Luo Yin:

The others laughed delightedly.

‘The peony suits you perfectly. What a splendid choice!'

When they had all drunk the cupful, Bao-chai drank a little wine herself and said that she would like Patfumée to sing her a song. Parfumée began:

‘Stop! Stop!' said the others. ‘We don't want birthday odes at this time of night. Sing us something nice.'

Parfumée began again, this time putting all she had into the performance:

Meanwhile Bao-yu, who had taken temporary possession of the card, continued to turn it this way and that between his fingers, muttering to himself the line of verse that was inscribed on it:

When Parfumée had finished, he gazed at her fixedly, saying nothing. Xiang-yun snatched the card from him rather impatiently and handed it back to Bao-chai. Bao-chai threw the dice. Sixteen. This time the count went right round both tables, ending at Tan-chun, who was sitting next to her.

‘I wonder what
I
shall be,' said Tan-chun, and reached out
to draw a card. But she blushed when she had looked at it and threw it on the table with an embarrassed laugh.

‘I don't think we ought to play this game,' she said. ‘It's really a game for men to play, outside. There are all sorts of objectionable things in the directions.'

The others were puzzled, until Aroma picked the card up and held it out for them to see. The picture was of a spray of almond blossom with the caption ‘Spirit of the Afterglow'. The line of verse which followed it was by Gao Chan:

‘So that's what upset you? Well, it's true there are a few like this which are amusing at the expense of us girls, but there's no real harm in them. Anyway, what's wrong with the prognostication? We've already got one royal consort in the family, why shouldn't we have another? Congratulations!'

They raised their cups and drank a toast to the marriage. Tan-chun herself refused to drink, but Xiang-yun, Caltrop and Li Wan seized hold of her and forced the wine down her throat. Even then she continued to insist that they ought to abandon the game and play something else. Xiang-yun had to take hold of her hand, clamp her fingers to the dice-box, and force her to throw the dice. The number thrown in this way was nineteen. This time the count was more than the number of players and ended, the second time round, at Li Wan. Li Wan shook the cylinder and drew out a card. She smiled when she saw what she had got.

‘Very good! Look at this, all of you! This is rather a nice one.'

The picture was of a winter-flowering plum with the rubric ‘Beauty of the Snow'. The verse that followed was by Wang Qi:

‘There, isn't that nice!' said Li Wan. ‘
You
have to throw the dice for me and
I
just sit back enjoying myself and let the world go by!'

She sipped her wine and passed the dice-box to Dai-yu. The eighteen which Dai-yu threw brought the count round to Xiang-yun.

‘Ha ha!' said Xiang-yun, rolling up her sleeves. She stretched her arm out and drew a card. The others looked at what she had drawn. It was a picture of crab-apple blossom with the caption ‘Sweet Drunken Dreamer'. The quotation following was a line from Su Dong-po:

‘For “at dead of night” read “on a stone bench”,' said Dai-yu.

The others laughed, remembering Xiang-yun's inebriation earlier in the day; but Xiang-yun smiled unconcernedly and pointed to the self-propelling toy boat on Bao-yu's shelf.

‘Just get on that boat and go home, will you? You have too much to say for yourself, my girl!'

Amidst further laughter they looked at the instructions:

‘Holy Name!' said Xiang-yun, clapping her hands delightedly. ‘What a kind,
thoughtful
card!'

Xiang-yun's neighbours, it so happened, were Dai-yu and Bao-yu. Others filled their cups for them in readiness. Bao-yu drank half of his and gave the rest to Parfumée, who threw her head back and emptied it at a gulp; Dai-yu, under cover of talking to someone, emptied the whole of hers into a spittoon. Xiang-yun picked up the dice. The total this time was nine, which meant that Musk was to draw. The card she
drew portrayed a rose under the caption ‘Summer's Crowning Glory'. The black-letter verse was another line from Wang Qi:

‘What does it say?' Musk asked.

Bao-yu frowned and quickly hid the card.

‘We are all to drink something,' he said.

As a compromise they drank three sips each instead of the three cupfuls prescribed.

Musk threw nineteen with the dice, which made it Caltrop's turn to draw. The flower she drew was a purple skullcap with the caption ‘Three Springs' Harbinger'. The line of verse was by Zhu Shu-zhen:

Caltrop threw six. Dai-yu to draw.

‘I wonder if there are any nice ones left,' Dai-yu thought as she reached out to draw a card. ‘I hope I shall pick one of them if there are.'

She looked at the card she had taken. It was a hibiscus flower. ‘Mourner of the Autumn Mere' the caption said, and the line of verse was by Ou-yang Xiu:

‘This one sounds interesting,' said the others, laughing, and at once began working out which of them belonged to these categories. Caltrop, Skybright and Bao-chai were all the same age as Aroma; Dai-yu's birthday was on the same day; but there appeared to be no one present with the same surname – until Parfumée pointed out that her surname, like Aroma's, was ‘Hua' and claimed the right to drink a cup as well.

While the others were pouring out the wine, Dai-yu looked mischievously at Tan-chun:

‘As both Almond and someone who is destined to marry royalty,
you
had better begin.'

‘What's that?' said Tan-chun. She turned to Li Wan. ‘Oblige me by leaning over and giving that girl a back-hander, would you?'

‘Oh, that seems rather hard!' said Li Wan.
she
'
s
not getting a royal husband and now she is to be beaten as well!'

Aroma was about to throw the dice when they heard someone calling outside the gate. One of the old women hurried out to see who it was and came back to tell them that it was some people from Aunt Xue's come to collect Dai-yu.

‘What time is it?' they asked the old woman.

‘Long past second watch,' she said. ‘It struck eleven some time ago.'

Bao-yu, refusing to believe that it could be so late, asked to see his watch. He found on inspecting it, however, that it was in fact five and twenty minutes past eleven. Dai-yu rose to her feet.

‘I can't, in any case, keep going much longer,' she said. ‘And I have to take my medicine when I get back.'

‘Perhaps we'd all better break off now,' said the others.

Aroma and Bao-yu tried to dissuade them, but Li Wan and Tan-chun were insistent.

‘It's terribly late. We've already broken enough rules for one day.'

‘Very well,' said Aroma. ‘All of you just drink one more cup of wine then, and we'll let you go.'

Skybright, assisted by one of the junior maids, was already filling their cups. The others drank up and called for their lanterns to be lit. When they were ready, Aroma and the rest of the maids accompanied them all the way to the far side of Drenched Blossoms Bridge before returning to Green Delights. There, having once more barred the gate, they continued for a while with the game. Aroma filled some extra large cups with wine and put a selection of the delicacies on the little dishes on to a large plate to give to the old women who had been all this time on duty.

Everyone was by now beginning to be a little drunk. Soon they were playing guess-fingers and singing solos. By two o'clock the old women, who had been supplementing what the maids, in their kindness, had given them by surreptitiously helping themselves, had made such formidable inroads into the wine-supply that the two-gallon jar was suddenly found to be empty. On hearing that there was no more wine, the maids began to clear the things away and to wash and prepare themselves for bed.

Parfumée, who had drunk so much that her cheeks were flushed and her eyes glittered with an unnatural brightness, was incapable of moving. She leaned inertly against Aroma's shoulder, murmuring plaintively in her ear.

‘Oh, Aroma! My heart is beating so!'

Aroma laughed.

‘You shouldn't have drunk so much!'

Swallow and Number Four had long since succumbed and were lying asleep on the kang. Skybright tried unsuccessfully to wake them; but Bao-yu stopped her:

‘Leave them alone. It doesn't matter if we all sleep here for once.'

He followed their example by pillowing his head on the
petal-stuffed damask cushion, turning over on his side, and promptly dropping off to sleep.

Aroma could see that Parfumée was extremely drunk. Fearing that any but the slightest movement might make her sick, she lifted her up, very, very gently, and laid her down beside Bao-yu on the kang. She herself lay down on the couch opposite. A gentle oblivion then descended upon all of them and they slept like tops until morning.

It was already broad daylight when Aroma opened her eyes.

‘Oh, it's late!' she said.

She raised her head up to look at the kang opposite. Parfumée was still fast asleep, her head resting on the raised edge of the kang. Aroma hurriedly got up and went across to wake her. Her calling aroused Bao-yu, who sat up, looked around him cheerfully, commented ‘It's late I', and gave Parfumée a prod. Then Parfumée, too, sat up, rubbing her eyes and still only half awake.

‘Shame on you!' said Aroma, laughing at her. ‘Look where you spent last night! You must have been
very
drunk, not to have chosen your place more carefully!'

Parfumée looked around her and saw that she had spent the night at Bao-yu's side. She slipped off the kang hurriedly, with an embarrassed laugh.

‘How did I…?'

‘I
don't know either,' said Bao-yu, laughing. ‘If I had known, I should have rubbed some ink on your face!'

Maids now came in carrying the basin and other things for his toilet.

‘Thank you all very much for last night's party,' said Bao-yu. ‘We'll have another one tonight and this time you shall all be
my
guests.'

‘Oh no!' said Aroma. ‘Not again! If we make another rumpus tonight, people will start complaining.'

‘That's all right,' said Bao-yu. ‘It's only twice. Anyway, we're all seasoned drinkers. Just think, we got through a whole two-gallon jar of wine last night! Just as it was beginning to get interesting, we found that we'd run out.'

‘That's how it should be,' said Aroma. ‘It's much better to
end a party when the fun is at its height than to go on until everyone is exhausted. I must say, everyone was in very good form last night. Skybright was being quite abandoned. She even sang a song, if I remember rightly!'

‘But don't you remember?' said Number Four.
‘You
sang one too. We all did.'

A fit of uncontrollable giggles possessed the maids as they remembered, and they hid their blushing faces in their hands. While they were still giggling, a smiling Patience arrived. She had come to invite her hosts of the previous day to a return party.

‘No excuses!' she said.' I shall expect every one of you to be there.'

They made her sit down and somebody fetched her some tea.

‘What a pity we didn't have
her
with us last night!' Skybright commented.

Patience pricked up her ears.

‘Why, what were you doing last night?'

‘I don't know whether I ought to tell you,' said Aroma. ‘We had a high old time, I can tell you that. Even the high jinks Her Old Ladyship gets up to with the young ladies and Master Bao are nothing compared to last night. We got through a whole two-gallon jar of wine. We drank so much that we forgot our shame, singing songs until after two o'clock, then lying around with our clothes on and sleeping where we lay until morning.'

‘Charming!'said Patience with pretended indignation. ‘You come and ask me for wine, you
don't
invite me to your party, and now you have the nerve to tell me what a wonderful time you had. I feel really angry!'

‘He's giving a return party tonight,' said Skybright. ‘He's sure to ask you to that. I expect he'll be going over himself shortly to invite you.'

‘“He” is who? Who is “he”?' said Patience.

‘Oh, sharp-ears!' Skybright coloured and pretended to strike her. ‘Trust you to pick on a little thing like that!'

‘Well, I can't stay here talking, I've got something to attend to,' said Patience. ‘I'll be sending someone over later
to tell you when it's ready. Mind you all come now, or I'll have the troops out to come and get you!'

Bao-yu and the maids tried to detain her, but she was already on her way.

Bao-yu now completed his interrupted toilet and took his early morning tea. While he sat sipping it, his eye chanced to light on a sheet of paper underneath the inkstone.

‘I wish you girls wouldn't use my inkstone as a paperweight,' he said.

Aroma and Skybright were immediately on the defensive.

‘Oh dear! Who's at fault this time?'

Bao-yu pointed towards the offending paper.

‘Look. Under the inkstone. Someone's pattern, I expect, that she forgot to put away.'

Skybright lifted the inkstone and picked up the paper from underneath. It was not an embroidery-pattern but some kind of writing. She handed it to Bao-yu. It was a sheet of pink, patterned letter-paper. A single column of characters ran down the centre of it: