The Warning Voice (40 page)

Xi-feng detested Autumn but was glad to have her as a means of ridding herself of Er-jie. She would ‘kill with a borrowed knife' – or rather she would watch the killing from a safe distance, like a traveller reclining on a mountainside who watches two tigers tearing each other to pieces in the valley below. And when Autumn had disposed of Er-jie, Xi-feng herself would take care of Autumn. Once she had settled on this strategy, she lost no opportunity, whenever she found herself alone with Autumn, of stirring her up against her rival.

‘You are so young and headstrong. You ought to be more careful,' she told her. ‘She
is
his second wife, after all. He is very, very fond of her. Even I have to give way to her a bit. It's suicide to go constantly provoking her in the way you do.'

This had the desired effect of releasing a stream of abuse against Er-jie, uttered in a voice that could be heard from one end of the courtyard to the other.

‘You're too soft with people, Mrs Lian. I wouldn't behave so meekly if I was in your place. Where's all your old authority gone to? You can be forgiving if you like, but if I've got a smut in my eye, I like to get it out. You just let me get at that bitch, I'll give her a piece of my mind!'

Xi-feng pretended to be too scared of Autumn to rebuke her; but Er-jie, listening in her room, spent the whole day crying and was too upset to eat. She did not dare to tell Jia Lian what the matter was when he called in to see her, and next morning, when Grandmother Jia noticed that her eyes were red and swollen with weeping and asked her what the matter was, she would not say.

This was just the sort of opportunity that Autumn was waiting for. ‘She's very good at putting on this dying duck
act,' she confided to Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang when Er-jie had gone. ‘We get this from her all the time. It's because she hates sharing. She wishes that Mrs Lian and I were dead so that she could have Mr Lian all to herself.'

‘It's possible to be
too
attractive,' said Grandmother Jia. ‘They say that a jealous nature often goes with it. How contemptible to be like that, though – especially when Feng has gone out of her way to be nice to her! One can see that she has no breeding.'

From that time onwards she appeared to have taken rather a dislike to Er-jie; and the servants, when they sensed that Grandmother Jia did not like her, were only too ready to press forwards and trample on her themselves. Now indeed life for the poor young woman became a burden, only occasionally alleviated when Patience, acting behind her mistress's back and against her wishes, took up the cudgels on her behalf. How could so gentle a soul, one of those whom Nature, in the words of the poet,

‘Sister,' she said, ‘you always were a silly, weak-willed creature. I knew you would suffer for it in the end. Don't trust the honied words of that jealous woman! Outwardly she seems kind and virtuous, but she is treacherous and cunning underneath. She hates you and will never rest until she has brought about your death. If I had been alive, I would never have allowed you to move inside here; or if I had, I would never have allowed her to treat you like this. But
I
was fated to kill myself and
you
were fated to suffer here alone. That is our punishment, because in our past lives our wantonness led
other folk astray. Sister, you must do as I tell you. Take this sword, cut off that jealous woman's head, and come with me to the tribunal of Disenchantment to await her judgement. You will die in any case, but if you do not do as I say, you will have died for nothing and no one will feel sorry for you.'

‘Sister,' said Er-jie, weeping, ‘my whole life has been sinful. You yourself say that my present sufferings are a punishment. Why should I add the crime of murder to my other sins?'

San-jie left her sorrowfully, and Er-jie, waking up with a start, realized that she had been dreaming.

Next time Jia Lian came to see her she had a tearful disclosure to make.

‘This illness I am suffering from will not get better. It is half a year now since I came to you and already I am with child. It might be the son you want, though of course we cannot know that until it comes. If Heaven is merciful, I hope I may live long enough to bear it; but I fear I may die before, and the child with me.'

‘You mustn't worry,' said Jia Lian, weeping himself. ‘I'll get a first-rate doctor to cure this illness.'

He lost no time in sending for one. Unfortunately the Dr Wang of the Imperial College who had attended Grandmother Jia and other members of the family in the past was at present with the Imperial Army in the field (he had some hopes of a baronetcy on his return) and the pages sent out to summon him ended up by calling in a colleague of his called Hu Jun-rong – that same doctor, in fact, who had been called in to attend Skybright a year or two previously. After taking Er-jie's pulses he informed Jia Lian that her trouble was ‘irregularity of the menses caused by anaemia'.

‘But are you sure she isn't pregnant?' said Jia Lian. ‘It's three months now since she had a period, and she is suffering all the time from morning-sickness.'

When he heard that, Hu Jun-rong asked the old women in attendance if he might have Er-jie's arm again. It was thrust out through the curtain and he spent a long time feeling the pulses in it a second time.

‘It's true that in a case of pregnancy the pulse from the
liver would be a strong one,' he said finally. ‘On the other hand wood in the ascendant generates fire, which can by itself cause the drying up of the menstrual fluid: so a strong liver pulse may be indicative only of an irregularity in the menses and not of pregnancy. I wonder if I might have a look at the lady's face? Before I finally decide on the right treatment, I should like to see what sort of colour she has.'

The request was an unusual one, but Jia Lian felt he had no choice but to grant it. The bed-curtains were drawn back a few inches and Er-jie thrust her head out through the slit. The vision thus presented to him seemed to deprive the doctor temporarily of his senses, so that it is doubtful whether he was able to make any observations of diagnostic value while he was goggling at it. After a moment or two the curtains were drawn to again and Jia Lian accompanied the doctor outside and once more asked him for his opinion.

‘It isn't pregnancy,' said the doctor. ‘There is some clotted blood which is holding back the natural discharge. The important thing is to disperse the clot and get her menstruating again.'

He wrote a prescription out and took his leave. Jia Lian sent someone to pay him and also to purchase the drugs named in his prescription. The medicine was made up, infused and taken. From about midnight Er-jie began to suffer from continuous abdominal pain, and after what seemed hours of agony, produced a foetus already sufficiently developed to be recognizable as a male child. This was followed by continuous bleeding in the course of which she fainted away.

Jia Lian cursed Hu Jun-rong bitterly when they told him. He sent someone immediately to call another doctor. He also sent someone to look for Hu Jun-rong; but Hu Jun-rong, having got wind of what had happened, had already packed his bags and disappeared.

The new doctor was not encouraging.

‘Obviously your lady's constitution was not very robust to start with. It looks to me as if in the course of her pregnancy she must have been subjected to some sort of emotional distress resulting in a congestion of the pneuma. By mistakenly attacking this with a far too drastic dispersant, I am afraid the
previous consultant has done a lot of damage. The vital essence has been eighty or ninety per cent impaired. As things look at present, I am afraid I really cannot guarantee a cure. I propose a treatment using both liquid and solid medicines simultaneously. If you can make quite sure that she neither sees nor hears anything likely to upset her during the treatment, there might be some hope of improvement.'

Having given his diagnosis he departed, but not before writing out two prescriptions, one for an infusion and one for some pills.

Jia Lian was beside himself. He insisted that the culprit responsible for calling in Hu Jun-rong should be discovered, and had him beaten within an inch of his life. But Jia Lian's distress was as nothing compared with the transports of grief displayed by Xi-feng.

‘It is beginning to look as if we are fated not to have a son,' she lamented. ‘To think that a doctor's incompetence should ruin everything, just as we were so near to having one!'

She had a little ‘altar to Heaven and Earth' set up on which she burned incense and in front of which she knelt down and prayed with the utmost fervency for Er-jie's recovery.

‘Let me be ill instead of her,' she prayed. ‘Only let You-shi's sister get well again and bear us a man-child, and I vow to spend all my remaining days in prayer and fasting.'

Jia Lian and all the others who saw her and heard her pray were filled with admiration.

While Jia Lian and Autumn were alone together, Xi-feng had all sorts of soups and invalid slops made specially for Er-jie. She even sent the characters of Er-jie's nativity to a fortune-teller to have her fortune told. The fortune-teller sent word back that Er-jie's stars were temporarily in collision with those of some other female born under the sign of the Rabbit. A rapid investigation revealed that Autumn was the only person in the household born under that sign. It was her astral influence that was harming Er-jie.

The sight of Jia Lian rushing agitatedly about, calling for doctors, ordering medicines, dispensing curses and floggings among the servants, and in general showing a most singular devotedness to Er-jie, had already caused Autumn's system to
secrete several gallons of vinegar. Her jealous fury when she was informed that Er-jie's illness was due to her influence and when she was urged by Xi-feng to move elsewhere for a few days in Er-jie's interest can be imagined.

‘Who pays any attention to what those beggarly swindlers tell you?' she said. ‘It's all rubbish anyway. How can I have any influence on her? I have nothing to do with her.

The servants hearing her were at some pains not to laugh.

It happened that Lady Xing had come over that day to pay her respects to Grandmother Jia. Autumn took the opportunity of complaining to her.

‘Mr and Mrs Lian are trying to drive me out of here. I don't know which way to turn. Put in a good word for me, Your Ladyship, I beg of you!'

This led Lady Xing to give Xi-feng a severe telling-off, after which she proceeded to give a piece of her mind to Jia Lian.

‘Ungrateful wretch! Whatever the girl's like, she
was
given to you by Sir She. Fancy trying to turn her out for the sake of an outsider! Have you no respect for your father at all?'

She walked off in a huff, giving him no opportunity to explain. Autumn, now thoroughly cock-a-hoop, stood outside Er-jie's window and favoured the world at large with an expanded and even more abusive version of what she had said
earlier to Xi-feng. Er-jie, lying inside, heard every word of it, as she was meant to, and was deeply distressed.

That night, when Jia Lian and Autumn were in bed together and Xi-feng was asleep in her own room, Patience went to see Er-jie and tried to comfort her.

‘You must try to get well,' she said. ‘Don't take any notice of that animal.'

Er-jie clutched her hand. She was crying weakly as she replied.

‘Sister, you have been so good to me, ever since I came to this place. I don't know how much unpleasantness you haven't had to put up with on my account. If I come out of this alive, I promise I shall do my best to repay your kindness. I fear I shan't, though. I shall have to try and repay you in another life.'

Patience could not help crying too.

‘All these things that have happened to you – it's all my fault. I was so stupid. I always told myself that I'd never deceive my mistress, and so when I heard about you and Mr Lian living together outside, I thought I had to tell her. I never thought it would all turn out like this.'

‘You're wrong to blame yourself,' said Er-jie. ‘She would have found out sooner or later, even if you hadn't told her. It was only a question of time. And anyway, I
wanted
to come here. I wanted so much to be respectable. It really had nothing to do with you.'

The two young women wept a while in silence. Once more Patience tried to comfort her and urged her to get better; then, because it was long past midnight, she left her to go and get some sleep.

After Patience had gone, Er-jie lay thinking.

‘This illness seems to have got its grip on me. I'm losing rather than gaining all the time. It doesn't look as if I shall ever get better. And now that I've lost the baby, there's nothing much left for me to live for. I don't
have
to put up with all this hatred and malice. Why don't I just die and get it over with? They say you can die by swallowing gold. It would be a better way of dying than hanging oneself or cutting one's throat.'

She struggled out of bed, opened one of her boxes, and hunted out a nugget of raw gold. Then she wept a little. It was four o'clock in the morning. Summoning up all the will-power she could muster, she forced herself to swallow it. She had to hold her head back and swallow many times before it would go down; but in the end it did. Then she dressed herself hurriedly in her best clothes, put on her jewellery and ornaments, laid herself down upon the kang, and sank at once into unconsciousness.

Hearing no call from her next morning, the maids – Xi-feng and Autumn having gone off to Grandmother Jia's place for their morning duty – were only too pleased to get on with their toilets undisturbed. Patience was disgusted by their callousness and reproached them bitterly.

‘What you girls need is a really hard-hearted mistress – one who would curse you and beat you every day. There's a sick woman in there: can't you feel any sympathy for her at all? Even though she's so easily put upon, I'm surprised you don't show her a little consideration, if only for appearance's sake. “Everyone helps to push over a falling wall” they say; but don't you think you carry it a bit too far?'

Shamed by her reproaches, the maids pushed open Er-jie's door and went inside to look. They found her dressed up in all her finery and stretched out dead upon the kang. Their frightened screams brought Patience running in as well. She could not help weeping out loud when she saw the cause. The other servants, too, when they remembered how sweet and gentle Er-jie had been and how unfailingly kind to her inferiors, were moved to tears by her death, but they were all so scared of Xi-feng that they dared not let her see their tears.

Soon everyone in the household had heard the news. When Jia Lian arrived he clung to the corpse and wept uncontrollably. Xi-feng made a show of weeping too and hypocritically reproached Er-jie for her ‘cruelty'.

‘Hard-hearted sister!' she wailed. ‘How could you bear to leave me like this when you knew how much I cared for you?'

You-shi and Jia Rong also came and wept a while, after which they urged Jia Lian to cease his lamentations and begin to perform his duties. The first of these was to report Er-jie's
death formally to Lady Wang and ask if he might lay out the body in Pear-tree Court for five days and after that move it to the Temple of the Iron Threshold. Lady Wang gave her permission, whereupon he at once sent servants to open up Pear-tree Court and make the principal room in it ready to receive the corpse.

Jia Lian did not like the idea of Er-jie's leaving the mansion for the last time by way of the rear gate and into the back streets beyond. He therefore opened up the gate in the outer wall of Pear-tree Court giving on to the passage-way between the two mansions which led into Two Dukes Street. A wnings were put up on either side of this gate to accommodate s
Å«
tra-chanting monks.

A beautifully-embroidered satin pall was draped over a camp-bed and Er-jie's body laid on it and covered over with a sheet. On this it was carried by eight pages, followed by a number of married womenservants, along the foot of the inside walls and all the way to the room in Pear-tree Court which had been made ready for it. The official geomancer had been summoned and was waiting there in readiness. He lifted the coverlet back to look at Er-jie's face. She looked almost alive – if anything even more beautiful than in life. The sight provoked a fresh outburst of grief from Jia Lian. Once more he clung to her and wept.

‘My poor wife!' he sobbed. ‘You should never have died. I blame myself for allowing this to happen.'

Jia Rong nervously urged restraint.

‘There, there, Uncle! Take it easy! She was unlucky, poor Auntie. That's all you can say about it.'

He pointed in the direction of the wall separating Pear-tree Court from the mansion. Jia Lian, understanding his meaning, lowered his voice, though he continued to reproach himself.

‘I was too careless. I should have noticed what was going on.' He addressed himself to the dead woman. ‘One of these days I shall get to the bottom of this and you shall be revenged.'

At last the coverlet was replaced and the geomancer made his pronouncement.

‘I am assuming that she died at the end of the fifth watch. In
that case you won't be able to take her out of here on the fifth day, I'm afraid. It will have to be either the third or the seventh. For the encoffining, the best time would be four o'clock tomorrow morning.'

‘The third day is much too soon,' said Jia Lian. ‘It will have to be the seventh. I couldn't keep her here much longer than that, because my uncle and my cousin are both away and I should need to have their permission; but I am planning to do much more for her when we get her to the temple outside. I'd like to keep her there for the full thirty-five days and give her a really decent funeral with a requiem and so forth at the end of it. We can take her south to Nanking and bury her in the family graveyard next year.'

The geomancer agreed to all this, wrote out the burial licence, and took his leave.

Various male kinsmen – Bao-yu was the first – came over to help Jia Lian mourn. When they had gone, he went back to his own apartment to look for Xi-feng and ask her for some money to buy timber for a coffin with and pay for the funeral.

Now Xi-feng had used her illness as a pretext for not accompanying the others to Pear-tree Court. She claimed that she had received strict instructions from Grandmother Jia and Lady Wang that until she had fully recovered she was to avoid all places connected in any way with birth, sickness or death. She refused to go into mourning for the same reason. The ban did not however prevent her from slipping out into the Garden when everyone else had gone, making her way round it between the rocks and the perimeter wall to the foot of the wall that separated it from Pear-tree Court, and eavesdropping on what was going on inside. She could not hear very much, but enough to send her scurrying back to Grandmother Jia to report on what Jia Lian was up to. Grandmother Jia was indignant.

‘I never heard such nonsense! When a consumptive child dies, one just burns it and scatters the ashes. Burying her in Nanking indeed! What can the man be thinking of? If he feels he has to do something special for her because she was his wife, let him observe the Thirty-Five Days. But after that he
should either have her carried out and burned or else buried in the common graveyard. Nanking, indeed!'

Xi-feng laughed.

‘That's what I thought, but it wasn't for me to say.'

Just then a maid arrived from Jia Lian, looking for her.

‘Mr Lian's back, madam. He's waiting for you to give him some money.'

Xi-feng went back to see him.

‘What's this about wanting money?' she asked him. ‘Don't you know how difficult things are lately? Every month now our allowance falls short of our expenditure. I managed to raise three hundred taels yesterday to pay some of the bills with by pawning two of my gold necklaces. There's still twenty or thirty taels of that left that you can have if you like.'

She told Patience to get it out and give it to him; then, muttering something about Grandmother Jia having something more to say, she went away again, leaving Jia Lian speechless with resentment. He was obliged to go through Er-jie's drawers and cupboards looking for the savings he had entrusted to her. But someone seemed to have been through them before him, for all he could find were a few bits of broken jewellery and a few far from new silk dresses. The sight of these clothes which she had worn brought on another outburst of anguished weeping. He felt sure there was something suspicious about her death but dared not utter what he thought. He made the things up into a bundle and was apparently intending to take them outside and sell them, for he had called no servant, and when Patience saw him was carrying the bundle himself. She found the sight of him carrying it both pathetic but also a trifle ludicrous. Hurriedly abstracting a packet containing two hundred taels of miscellaneous bits and pieces of silver from one of Xi-feng's chests, she drew him into one of the side rooms where no one could see them and gave it to him.

‘Psst! Not a word! And by the way, if you want to cry, you can cry as much as you like outside, but for goodness' sake don't make an exhibition of yourself here, where everyone can see you!'

‘You are right,' said Jia Lian, taking the money. He handed
her a skirt out of the bundle. ‘Here, take this. It's something she often used to wear. Keep it to remember her by.'

As he was insistent, she took it from him and put it away wit! her things.

Now that Jia Lian had some money, he sent someone to buy timber for the coffin. Unfortunately the best planks turned out to be too expensive and the more modestly priced ones did not meet with his approval. In the end he got on his horse and insisted on going to see for himself. The outcome was that a set of planks costing five hundred taels and obtained by him on credit were delivered from the timber-merchant's that evening. The carpenters were set to work on them immediately and ordered to go on working through the night so that the ccffin should be ready in time.

He ordered some of the servants to dress in mourning and keep vigil at Er-jie's side. He himself did not return to his own apartment that evening, but spent that and every other night of the seven at Pear-tree Court. Towards the end of this sojourn he was somewhat surprised to receive a summons from Grandmother Jia.

The reason for the summons will be revealed in the chapter which follows.