The Warning Voice (54 page)

‘If Her Old Ladyship's rice is all finished, you can get the rice that Miss Tan would have eaten if she hadn't been eating with us and bring it here for Mrs Zhen.'

‘No need,' said You-shi. ‘What I've got here is quite enough for me.'

‘I dare say it is,' said Faithful, ‘but what about me?'

The women hurried off to fetch the rice.

Presently Lady Wang went off to have dinner in her own apartment, leaving You-shi to entertain Grandmother Jia. The time passed quickly, with much good-humoured teasing and laughter, and the first watch had already begun before Grandmother Jia noticed how late it was getting.

‘You'd better be getting back now,' she told You-shi.

You-shi took her leave. Outside the inner gate she got into her waiting carriage. Her women pulled the blind down, then, taking all the maids with them except Butterfly, who was riding in the carriage with her mistress, hurried on ahead so that they could be waiting for You-shi when she arrived in the other mansion. The men from both gates walked some way along the street to keep it clear of pedestrians while six or seven pages pushed and pulled the carriage (it seemed too short a distance and too late an hour for mules) as far as the interior of the Ning-guo gateway. There the pages retired, old women came forward and raised the blind, and Butterfly dismounted and helped out her mistress. You-shi noticed that there were four or five large carriages waiting below the stone lions which flanked the gate and commented to Butterfly on their presence.

‘I wonder how many horses there are in the stables? If this number came by carriage, you may be sure that a much greater number will have come on horseback.'

As she and Butterfly entered the outer courtyard, Jia Rong's wife at the head of a party of maids and older women carrying lanterns advanced to meet them.

‘I've been dying for I don't know how long to have a look at the men while they are gambling,' said You-shi, ‘but so far I haven't had an opportunity. Tonight is the best chance I shall ever get. Let's go along the wall in front of the windows so that we can peep in at them.'

The women with lanterns made a detour towards the building in which the men were congregated. One of them went ahead and warned the pages waiting outside not to announce their arrival to the men or make any other noise that would warn those inside of their coming. You-shi and her party were thus able to steal right up to the windows and could hear everything that was going on inside. Among the medley of sounds that met their ears, numbers seemed to predominate, some uttered exultantly and with raucous shouts of laughter, others angrily or despairingly and to the accompaniment of curses and profanities.

Cousin Zhen had found the ban on amusements during the seemingly interminable period of mourning for Jia Jing which convention imposed on him extremely irksome. Archery, for some reason, was permitted, and a few months previously he had hit on archery as a means of getting round the ban. A number of young men from the wealthy and aristocratic households of his acquaintance were invited round to the Ning-guo mansion to participate. Shooting was to be competitive.

‘Random shooting is quite useless,' he explained to them. ‘You not only don't make any progress; it actually spoils your form. You've got to have incentives of some kind to keep you on your toes, and the best way of doing that is to bet on something.'

Butts were set up in the shooting gallery below the Celestial Fragrance Pavilion and every day after lunch the young men came along to compete. Since, as Bereaved Son, it would have been unseemly for Cousin Zhen himself to have been named in this connection, the nominal convenor and organizer of these gatherings was Jia Rong. All those invited were rich, profligate, dashing young fellows, accustomed to spending their time in cock-fighting, dog-racing and even more questionable amusements. After some discussion it was
decided that the responsibility for providing dinner after the day's archery should fall to each one of them in turn. It became a point of honour to make these dinners as lavish as possible, so that the daily junketings at Ning-guo House came more and more to resemble the Diet of Lintong in the well-known play of that name, except that whereas Duke Mu's princely guests competed in the bravery of their commanders and the magnificence of their regalia, it was in the skill of their chefs and in masterpieces of culinary art that the members of the Ning-guo archery club strove to outdo each other.

When this had been going on for a couple of weeks or so, Jia Zheng and Jia She got to hear about it. The report that reached them cannot have been a very accurate one, however, for, far from being critical of these goings-on, they spoke of them with approval.

‘Since Rong obviously has no aptitude for book-learning,' Jia Zheng observed, ‘Cousin Zhen does right to encourage him in the martial arts. The boy does, after all, hold a military commission.'

They even made Bao-yu, Jia Huan, Jia Cong and Jia Lan participate. The four of them had to go over every day after lunch and not return until each of them had taken his turn at the butts.

But it was not of course in the archery that Cousin Zhen was interested. On the grounds that resting the muscles was an important part of one's training, he was soon advocating a little cards or dice in the evenings as a means of relaxation. At first they played only for drinks, but soon they were playing more and more for money; the time spent on gaming gradually encroached on the time devoted to archery; betting became more open; and finally, with the formal opening of a ‘bank' some three or four months previously, regular, organized gambling for heavy stakes had become a daily routine. The Ning-guo servants, who grew fat on the pickings, were delighted with these new arrangements and, anxious that they should go on, if possible, for ever, took very good care that no one outside the mansion should get to hear about them.

Lady Xing's brother, Xing De-quan, himself a keen gambler, had lately become a frequenter of this establishment; so, inevitably, had Xue Pan, who was never so happy as when he was throwing away his money.

Xing De-quan was very unlike his sister. Drinking, gambling and debauchery were his only interests; consequently whenever any money came into his hands, he spent it like water. The singular obtuseness he showed in all his dealings had earned him the nickname of ‘Uncle Dumbo'. And since Xue Pan was already known to all and sundry as ‘the Oaf King', the two of them when they were together were referred to by the young men as ‘Uncle Dumbo and Cousin Oaf'.

The situation when You-shi peeped inside was as follows. Cousin Oaf and Uncle Dumbo, each with a partner, were playing six-dice Grabs on the kang in the outer room. Simultaneously another dicing game, Driving the Sheep, was being played by several players sitting round a large table on the floor below. The inner room, where a slightly more intellectual group were playing Tin Kau, was devoted to dominoes. The servants were all pages of fifteen or under. There was also a pair of male prostitutes, powdered, overdressed youths of seventeen or eighteen, whose duty was to ply the guests with drink. It was this pair who first caught You-shi's eye when she looked in.

Xue Pan had been having the sulks earlier on because he was losing, but then his luck had changed: he had not only recouped his losses but made a lot of extra money. He was therefore in a very good mood indeed. Cousin Zhen suggested that this might be a good point at which to stop and have dinner. They could go on playing afterwards if they wanted to.

‘What about the two other lots?' he inquired.

It transpired that the Tin Kau players in the next room were in process of settling up after finishing the game and were in fact beginning to think about their dinner, but that the group at the big table playing Driving the Sheep had not yet reached a suitable point at which to break off. Cousin Zhen ordered dinner to be served for all those, himself
included, who were ready. Jia Rong was to wait and have dinner with the other players when they had finished.

Xue Pan, elated by his success, sat with a cup of wine in one hand and his arm round the shoulders of one of the pretty pot-boys. With a victor's expansive generosity he ordered the other boy to pour some wine ‘with his compliments' for Uncle Dumbo. But Uncle Dumbo was thoroughly out of temper at having lost the game, and the two cupfuls he drank now in rapid succession served merely to make him tipsily aggressive. He vented his anger on the two young ganymedes, who, he claimed, had treacherously withdrawn their favours from him and transferred them to the winner.

‘Heartless brood of unnatural little whore's gits!' he grumbled. ‘You've had plenty of favours off me in the past – and off everyone else here. Now, just because I've lost a few taels, I'm not good enough for you. What makes you so certain you won't ever need my help again in the future?'

The other guests all knew that he was drunk. Those of them who were losers themselves smiled wryly and said nothing, but one or two of the winners magnanimously expressed their sympathy.

‘That's right, Uncle. Rotten little bastards! That's just the way they
do
behave.'

‘Why don't you pour Uncle a drink and tell him you're sorry?' said another of them.

The two young ganymedes, practised professionals in every trick of the trade, were on their knees at Uncle Dumbo's side in a moment, offering him wine, fondling his thigh, and gazing with simpering archness into his eyes.

‘Don't be angry with us, dear old friend. We are only children. We have to do as we are told. Our teacher always tells us, “It doesn't matter what they are like or what your own feelings are, the person who at any moment has the most money is the one you must be nice to.” Just win a lot of money later on this evening, old friend, and you'll see how nice we shall be to you!'

The disarming frankness of this made everyone laugh. Even Uncle Dumbo, though he tried hard not to, was forced to join in.

‘All right, I forgive you,' he growled as he took the proffered winecup. ‘Though I don't mind telling you, if I hadn't been so fond of you two, I'd have kicked the stuffing out of your little tum-tums!'

He shot his foot up as he said this, by way of demonstration. The two boys scrambled to their feet in mock alarm. Each of them carried a long woman's handkerchief of flowered silk. With mincing gestures, still holding their handkerchiefs in their hands, they guided the winecup towards his lips. Uncle Dumbo's loud gurgles of delight were briefly interrupted while he threw his head back and drained the cup. Then, still laughing, he pinched their cheeks.

‘Little dears!' he said. ‘How I loves them!'

His mood changed abruptly as he remembered a grievance. He smote the table angrily and glared at Cousin Zhen.

‘I had a quarrel with your Uncle She's wife yesterday, did you know that?'

‘With Aunt Xing?' said Cousin Zhen. ‘No, I hadn't heard that.'

Uncle Dumbo sighed self-pityingly.

‘About damned money, as usual. You don't know the history of our Xing family, dear boy. When my old mother died, I was still too young to know what was going on. I have three elder sisters. The eldest is your precious aunt. When your aunt married, she took everything we had with her. Everything. My second sister had to marry without a dowry. She and her husband are paupers. My third sister is still unmarried. She lives on a pittance paid out to her by that old bitch, Wang Shan-bao's wife, who has charge of all our money. Well, I went along yesterday to ask her for a few coppers. Not Jia money, mind you: our Xing money is good enough for me. But would she give me any? Not she! And that's the reason why I get treated by you lot like a poor relation.'

Cousin Zhen knew that he was drunk, but as it was embarrassing that these unsavoury details of family history should be paraded in front of outsiders, he did his best to mollify Uncle Dumbo and get him onto another tack.

All this was clearly audible to You-shi outside.

‘Did you hear that?' she whispered to Butterfly, who was
standing beside her. ‘That's Lady Xing they're talking about. If her own brother talks about her in that way, you can hardly wonder that other people complain about her.'

She would have said more, but checked herself in order to attend to what was going on inside. The group playing Driving the Sheep had now broken off and were calling for wine.

‘Who was upsetting Uncle Dumbo just now?' asked one of them. ‘We couldn't quite catch what it was about. Tell us what happened, Uncle, and we'll see you get fair play.'

Uncle Dumbo proceeded to tell them how the two boys had forsaken him because he had no money.

‘Good grief!' said the young man who had asked the question. ‘I don't blame you for being angry. – What do you mean by it?' he asked the boys. ‘He's only lost a bit of money, hasn't he? He hasn't lost his prick!'

The company roared with laughter. Uncle Dumbo's mouthful of rice was spattered over half the floor.

‘You dirty bugger!' he said. ‘Can't you open your mouth without being crude?'

You-shi gave a little snort of disgust.

‘Just listen to those animals! By the time they've swilled a few more cups of wine, heaven knows what filth they'll be coming out with!'

She moved on her way – having seen and heard quite as much as she wanted to – returned to her apartment, undressed, and went to bed. Cousin Zhen did not get to bed until after two. He spent what remained of the night in Lovey's room.

As soon as he was up next morning, someone came in with a message to say that the melons and mooncakes he had ordered were now ready and it only remained for him to say who they were to be sent to.

‘Ask your mistress to see to it,' said Cousin Zhen. ‘I have got other business to attend to.'

Lovey took this message to You-shi, who proceeded to go through the list deciding how much should go to whom and making arrangements for the delivery. She had barely finished doing this when Lovey came back again with another message.