The Warning Voice (26 page)

‘Who took delivery of this note?' he asked, jumping up excitedly.

Assuming, from the degree of agitation, that the note must be from a person of some consequence, Aroma and Skybright took up the question. In response to their shouted inquiry, a smiling Number Four came running into the room.

‘I did. From Adamantina. She didn't bring it herself, she sent one of the old women with it. I put it down somewhere in here. I meant to tell you about it, but with all that drinking last night I forgot.'

‘So
that's
who it's from,' said the other maids. ‘What a fuss about nothing!'

But Bao-yu evidently did not think so.

‘Fetch me some paper,' he said, still in some agitation, and himself began grinding the ink. But when the ink was ground and he sat with moistened brush poised in readiness over the virgin paper, he found that he did not know how to begin.
What was the correct response to ‘Dweller Beyond the Threshold'? For a long time he sat thinking, but no inspiration was forthcoming.

‘It's no good asking Bao-chai,' he thought. ‘She'd only say something critical about Adamantina being too “fanciful”. I'd better ask Dai-yu.'

Slipping Adamantina's note into his sleeve, he set off in the direction of the Naiad's House. He was just stepping off the Drenched Blossoms bridge when he caught sight of Xing Xiu-yan bustling along in a very purposeful manner from the opposite direction.

‘Where are you going?' he asked her.

‘I want to have a talk with Adamantina.'

Bao-yu was surprised.

‘Adamantina is such a strange, contrary person. There are very few people she can get on with. If she thinks highly of you, it proves that you must be made of finer stuff than the rest of us.'

‘I don't know whether she thinks particularly
highly
of me,' said Xiu-yan, ‘but we were neighbours for ten years. When she was serving her novitiate at the Coiled Incense Temple, there was only a party wall separating her from the place where my family lived. My family was too poor to own a house and for ten years lived in rented accommodation in her temple. Whenever I had nothing else to do, I used to go inside the nuns' courtyard and spend my time with Adamantina. It was she who taught me to read and write. In fact, everything I know, practically, I owe to her. So you see, she's not only my “hard times friend'; she is also in a sense my teacher. When my parents finally came here to throw themselves on the generosity of your family, we learned that Adamantina, too, had found a home here. She had evidently found this a place where her eccentricities would be tolerated and where she would be safe from molestation by those having the power to persecute her. It seemed as if our destinies must be linked. And I was glad to find, when I went to look her up here, that her friendship for me was unaltered. In fact, I think that if anything she is even nicer to me now than she was before.'

As if by a flash of lightning, the mystery of Xiu-yan's utter alienness from her appalling parents was revealed.

‘I
see'
! he said. ‘That ethereal, crane-in-the-clouds quality one notices in everything you do or say – I see now where you get it from. As a matter of fact it's something to do with Adamantina that has brought me out. Something she wrote has been puzzling me and I was on my way to ask someone else's advice about it when I ran into you. It's an extraordinary bit of luck that I did, because you are obviously much better qualified to advise me than the person I had been intending to ask.'

He took the piece of paper from his sleeve and showed it to her. Xiu-yan ran her eye over it and laughed.

‘She'll never change. The same whimsical, preposterous Adamantina as always! Who but Adamantina would use her nom-de-plume in a birthday greeting? Talk about “a monk no monk and a maid no maid”! What sort of etiquette is that?'

‘I don't agree,' said Bao-yu, smiling. ‘Adamantina is above etiquette. She doesn't subscribe to the conventions of our mundane world. Her writing to me in this way shows that she must credit me with some intelligence. Unfortunately I haven't the faintest idea in what terms I ought to reply. I was on my way to ask Cousin Lin's advice when I was fortunate enough to bump into you.'

For some moments Xiu-yan ran her eyes up and down Bao-yu appraisingly. Finally she broke into a laugh.

‘“The sight of it exceedeth the report thereof.” I see now what they mean. I'm not surprised she sent you this. And I'm not surprised she gave you all that plum-blossom last year. Well, if even Adamantina has succumbed, I suppose I shall have to do my little bit by explaining what this means.

‘Adamantina is fond of saying that out of all the poems by all the poets of the Han, Jin, North-and-South, Tang and Song dynasties, a couple of lines in Fan Cheng-da's “Walk in the Cemetery” are the only decent verses ever written:

The scriptures tell us that the revelation of the Buddhatruth comes ‘like ghee poured upon the head'. Bao-yu must have had some such feeling as he listened to Xiu-yan, for he first of all gave a gasp of discovery and then laughed out loud.

‘I see!
That
'
s
why our family temple is called the “Temple of the Iron Threshold” I Thank you very much. Now I can go and write my reply.'

Xiu-yan continued on her way to Green Bower Hermitage and Bao-yu went back to write his note. He wrote:

He carried the note to the Hermitage himself and posted it through the crack between the double doors.

By the time he got back to Green Delights, Parfumée had just completed her toilet. She had gone back to the elaborate feminine coiffure which she normally favoured, complete with kingfisher-feather hair-ornaments; but Bao-yu said he would prefer to see her permanently got up like a boy. He had her fringe and side-pieces cut off and the remaining short bits shaved away from her forehead round to the back of her neck, so that only the long hair growing from the crown of her head remained.

‘We'll get you a big fur cap with ear-flaps to wear in the winter,' he said, ‘and big tiger-boots for your feet, or white socks and thick-soled, stitch-patterned padded shoes, to go with loose-bottomed trousers. And we'd better change your
name. “Parfumée” won't do for a boy. What about “Honey Boy”? We can call you “Honey” for short.'

Parfumée was delighted.

‘Now you'll be able to take me with you when you go outside,' she said. ‘If anyone asks about me, you can tell them that I'm one of your pages, like Tealeaf.'

Bao-yu smiled at the idea, but seemed rather doubtful.

‘I think sooner or later they'd be able to tell that you weren't.'

‘You have no imagination!' said Parfumée. ‘Tell them I'm a
foreign
page. Your family's got several foreign pages.
*
Anyway a pigtail suits me; everyone says it does. What about it? Don't you think it's a brilliant idea?'

Bao-yu was quite won over.

‘It's a very good idea. I've often seen officials with little foreign servants – mostly Tartars or Tibetans captured in the wars. People like to have them as grooms because they are good at handling horses and don't mind waiting about in the cold. We'll have to give you a foreign name then. What about “Yelü Hunni”? “Yelü” is an old Kitansurnameand” Hunni” is what the Xiong-nu used to call themselves.'

Parfumée was very satisfied with this, so it was agreed that in future she would always be referred to as Yelü Hunni.

After lunch Patience's messenger arrived to say that, as the summerhouse in the Peony Garden was thought to be too hot, her return party had been laid out in the Shady Elm rooms. You-shi came over well in advance, bringing two of Cousin Zhen's little concubines, Lovey and Dove, with her from Ning-guo House. They were very young and wild and had seldom been taken to the neighbouring mansion before. Today, meeting such lively members of the Garden's society as Caltrop, Xiang-yun, Parfumée and tamine for the first time, they were in their element, quickly proving the truth of the old saying about ‘birds of a feather' by chattering nineteen to the dozen with their new-found friends and dashing off with them on an exploratory tour of the Garden. You-shi was left to the company of her own maids.

Presently, when they were visiting Green Delights, Caltrop, Lovey and Dove were very much amused to hear Bao-yu addressing Parfumée as ‘Yelü Hunni'. Having elicited from her how she came to have acquired so extraordinary a name, they began to try using it themselves; but in their unpractised mouths the foreign sounds soon degenerated into ‘Yellow Honey'; and even this was soon abandoned in favour of ‘Yellow Belly'. The maids, hearing them call her this, were all in stitches. Bao-yu feared that Parfumée would be wounded by their hilarity and proposed yet another change of name.

‘There is a land in the West called “Fran-see-ya” where they make a kind of golden glitter-glass called “aventurin”. You are such a bright and glittering person yourself: I think the name Aventurin would suit you very well.'

Parfumée was delighted with it. But it was still no good: the others found ‘Aventurin' too difficult; and having estab
lished that it was the name of some kind of foreign glass, soon took to calling her ‘Glassy' or ‘Glass-eyes' instead.

But we digress.

The party in the Shady Elm rooms had now begun. Once more wine was made an excuse for much unrestrained hilarity. The blind ballad-singers were asked to drum for them and Patience broke off a spray of peonies to play ‘passing the branch' with. There must have been near enough twenty people taking part in the game. Just as the fun was at its height, it was announced that two women had arrived delivering things from the Zhen family in Nanking and Tan-chun, Li Wan and You-shi had to go off to the jobs room to receive them. The others decided to make a little break in the party while they did so, in which those who wanted to could take some exercise outside. Lovey and Dove decided to have a swing.

‘You get up as well,' Bao-yu said to Lovey, who was pushing. ‘I'll push you both.'

‘Oh no you don't!' said Lovey. ‘I know your kind of pushing! Yellow-belly can push us.'

‘Please,'
said Bao-yu exasperatedly,
‘don't
call her by that horrible name! You'll have all the others calling her by it as well.'

Dove was giggling helplessly on the swing.

‘Stop it, you two! I can't work this thing properly if you make me laugh. I shall fall off, if you're not careful, and knock all the gravy out of you!'

While they were in the midst of their diversions, a group of servants from the Ning-guo mansion came rushing up in a state of great agitation.

‘Sir Jing is dead!'

‘Dead?'
Everyone hearing them was incredulous. ‘But he hadn't been ill. How can he have died so suddenly?'

‘He spent all his time looking for the secret of immortality.' said one of the servants. ‘Perhaps he found it and went off to heaven.'

You-shi heard the news with dismay. There would be so much to do, and with Cousin Zhen, Jia Rong and Jia Lian all three away, no dependable male around to help her. The
first thing she did, of course, was to remove all her jewellery and the ornaments from her hair. Then, having ordered some of the household to go on ahead and put all the Taoists there under lock and key pending her husband's return, she got into her carriage and drove with all speed to the Dark Truth Monastery outside the city, accompanied by the Chief Steward Lai Sheng's wife and several of the senior stewardesses. Meanwhile other servants were dispatched to various members of the faculty requesting their attendance at the monastery.

The physicians duly arrived. As the patient was already dead, there was little scope for their customary methods of diagnosis; but they knew that Sir Jing had gone in for breath-control and various other kinds of Taoist hocus-pocus, some of which, like the worship of the Seven Stars, the keeping of ‘ghostworm' vigils and the swallowing of mercuric ‘elixirs', must have gravely weakened his constitution and may well have hastened his death; and when they saw the purple face and cracked and shrivelled lips of the corpse and felt the iron-hard abdomen, they had little difficulty in forming their collective opinion, which their spokesman delivered forthwith to the waiting women: ‘That death was due to edema and corrosion following ingestion by the deceased of some toxic metallic substance in pursuance of his Taoist researches.'

‘It
wasn't
toxic,' protested the Taoists, alarmed for their own safety. ‘It was an infallible secret formula, but it needed to be taken in the right conditions. We
told
him he wasn't ready for it, but he wouldn't believe us. He must have taken it during the vigil last night, when he was meditating on his own and there was nobody around to stop him. He will have gone straight to heaven, of course: such faith is sure to be rewarded. We must rejoice that he has cast off the corrupt garment of flesh and left this sea of misery behind him.'

But You-shi had no intention of getting drawn into an argument. Her only reply was to give orders that they should all be locked up again and remain so until Cousin Zhen could deal with them when he got back. Riders were dispatched post-haste to inform him of his father's death.

You-shi could see at a glance that the monastery's accommodation was far too cramped for the lying-in-state; on the
other hand there could be no question of her taking the corpse back with her into the city. She therefore had it wrapped up and carried in a curtained chair to the Temple of the Iron Threshold. And as she calculated that it would probably be at least half a month before Cousin Zhen got back, by which time, as this was the hottest part of the year, the process of decomposition would already be well advanced, she decided, acting on her own initiative, to consult an astrologer and find out the earliest date on which the body could be encoffined. The coffin was conveniently to hand, having been deposited in the Temple of the Iron Threshold when it was purchased some years previously. The formal going into mourning and its attendant ceremonies were scheduled to take place three days later. Staging was put up in readiness for the Taoists and Buddhists, but their requiems were to be deferred until Cousin Zhen should have returned.

While You-shi and the already depleted staff were attending to these matters outside the city, no one with authority was left in the two mansions able to deal with callers from outside. On the Rong-guo side Xi-feng was still unable to see people because of her illness, Li Wan was fully occupied in looking after the young people, and Bao-yu was too lacking in savoir-faire to be trusted. It was necessary to call in a number of obscure junior clansmen who had done occasional odd-jobs for the family in the past: Jia Bin, Jia Guang, Jia Heng(I), Jia Chang and Jia Ling. On the Ning-guo side even the internal running of the household was a problem, since You-shi was for the time being unable to get back at all. She had to call on her step-mother, old Mrs You, to keep an eye on things for her. As Mrs You had two young unmarried daughters by a previous marriage, the most sensible arrangement seemed to be to bring the girls with her and install herself in temporary residence at Ning-guo House.

At this point our story moves elsewhere. As soon as the news reached him of his father's death, Cousin Zhen made an urgent application for leave of absence to the Board of Rites. He included Jia Rong's name in the petition, since Jia Rong was, nominally at any rate, the holder of a commission. The officials of the Board of Rites, bearing in mind His
Imperial Majesty's devotion to the Late Emperor and determination to give fullest expression to it in these obsequies of the Late Emperor's favourite Consort, dared not grant leave of absence on their own initiative and referred the matter to the Emperor himself in a memorial. But the Son of Heaven, with that godlike compassion that is so typical of him, far from making his own bereavement an objection, saw it as all the more reason for sympathizing with the bereavement of a subject – particularly one whose ancestor had performed such great and signal services for the Crown. His immediate reaction on reading the memorial was to ask for particulars of Jia Jing's official rank. The Board of Rites memorialized back as follows: