The Red Chamber Page 5

  “Like who?”

  Baoyu shrugs. “The Prince of Beijing, for one.”

  Jia Zheng stops himself from saying something cutting about the Prince of Beijing. The Prince is a very upstanding young man, one of the few of Baoyu’s friends that he approves of. Of course, the younger generation has a different conception of matters. Jia Zheng remembers all the times he had been taken to the Palace as a child. Now that Emperor Kangxi is well over seventy—may he live for ten thousand years—he rarely appears at Court. It is no wonder that he seems a mere figurehead to the younger men, and seems closer to the eunuchs than to his ministers and Bondsmen.

  “His Imperial Highness would never depend on the eunuchs,” he tells Baoyu. “He knows that was what brought down even such a glorious dynasty as the Ming.”

  “What makes you think his successor will feel the same way?”

  Jia Zheng flinches at the allusion to Emperor Kangxi’s eventual death. He has been fortunate enough to live his entire life under Emperor Kangxi’s wise and peaceful rule, and does not like to be reminded of its inevitable end. “Prince Yinti has always been close to the Bondservants, just like his father.”

  “Why do you think Prince Yinti will succeed to the throne?”

  Jia Zheng smiles at Baoyu’s ignorance. “Surely you, with all your Court connections, know that Prince Yinti has always been His Highness’s favorite.”

  Baoyu ignores Jia Zheng’s sarcasm. “Then why doesn’t he make Prince Yinti Heir Apparent? What if something happens while Prince Yinti is still away at the Tibetan front?”

  Jia Zheng is taken aback. Usually, Baoyu listens to him in sullen silence. This is the first time he has dared to challenge Jia Zheng directly. A memory of his older son, Zhu, flashes into his mind: Zhu asking Jia Zheng to read his practice essays for the Exams, fidgeting in suspense while waiting to hear his father’s judgment.

  The carriage comes to a stop before Baoyu’s school. The forecourt is deserted, and the schoolroom doors are shut.

  He thrusts Baoyu out of the carriage. “Hurry! You’re late.” To his fury, Baoyu saunters across the courtyard as if he has not a care in the world.

  6

  Baochai has never seen her brother so frightened. He has come to their mother’s apartment before dinner, his ruddy face haggard. “The usher from the district magistrate’s office came to me this afternoon. He said Zhang Hua died late last night, and his father wrote out a complaint for murder. What am I going to do? I could be arrested at any moment. And the sentence for murder is execution!”

  “We’ll have to send Zhang Hua’s family more money. Perhaps they will withdraw the charge,” Mrs. Xue cries.

  “No!” Baochai cuts sharply through their voices. “We can’t send any more money. It will look as if we have something to hide.”

  Both of them turn to look at her. “Then what should we do?”

  She must distance herself from her mother’s and brother’s agitation, trying to stay calm so she can think clearly. “Is there any evidence of what Zhang Hua died of, Pan? Could it have been from something else?”

  “The usher said he’d been coughing up blood, so they suspected internal injuries.”

  “We must find the doctor and raise the possibility that it could have been something else. And we must find a good scrivener, someone who knows all the legal terminology, to help us write a petition. We’ll argue it was an accidental death. Pan, you must find one this afternoon.”

  “All right,” he says, scared into submission.

  “And whatever you do, don’t go home. Tell your servants to say you’re out of town, and go stay in an inn somewhere. In the meantime someone must speak to the district magistrate on Pan’s behalf.”

  Her mother turns to her with a worried frown. “Do you mean offer him a bribe? If we were to be caught, that would be a serious offense.”

  Baochai shakes her head. “If someone with sufficient influence vouches for Pan, he may simply drop the charges as a favor. That would be far better than offering money.”

  “Should we send down to Nanjing to your father’s brother?”

  “There isn’t time to send to Nanjing. I think we must ask Uncle Zheng.”

  “Jia Zheng?” her mother exclaims. “He’s only a relative by marriage.”

  “Yes, but the Jias are one of the most prominent families in the Capital. Uncle Zheng knows everyone from all his years in the Civil Service.”

  Her mother demurs. “I don’t like to ask him. It’s not as if he’s a close relation.”

  Pan cuts in, “But you’ve been staying with the Jias for nearly two years.” His expression is hopeful, as if he, too, realizes that asking the Jias for help is his best chance to escape his predicament.

  “But I’ve never spoken to them about—” Mrs. Xue breaks off.

  Baochai understands. Her mother shrinks from the shame of revealing Pan’s troubles to the Jias. “Mother, we must act as quickly as possible, before the lawsuit goes any further.”

  Still her mother hesitates. “But we will be so beholden to the Jias. I don’t know how we will ever repay Zheng for this.”

  “Surely he can’t want his own nephew to go to prison, or worse.”

  So it is settled that her mother will speak to Uncle Zheng that evening. Pan leaves to look for a scrivener. Instead of staying and comforting her mother, Baochai goes to her own apartment in the Garden. She wants to be alone, to wash her hands and change her clothes. She feels dirty, sullied by the fact that she is the one instructing Pan and her mother how to make sure he is not convicted. She is ashamed of her knowledge of the court system, which years of dealing with Pan’s scrapes have given her. What do other girls, locked away in the Inner Quarters, know of scriveners and magistrates? She would give anything for the luxury of ignorance.

  When Daiyu asks her grandmother where her mother slept as a child, Lady Jia, barely looking at her, waves her hand towards the northeastern corner of the apartments. At naptime, she walks down the hallway to the room that Granny Jia had pointed out, pushing aside the crimson door curtain. The stark impersonality of the room startles her. It is merely another of the large, opulently furnished rooms that seem to fill the mansion, with a row of locust-wood chairs along the wall, an elaborately carved armoire. Nothing reveals the taste of its former inhabitant: there are no dog-eared rhyming manuals or calligraphy books on the shelves, no brushes or inkstone on the desk.

  On an impulse, she goes to the dressing table and pulls open a drawer. It is empty. She opens another. She doesn’t know what she hopes to find.

  “Miss Lin, what are you doing here?” It is Snowgoose, Granny Jia’s body servant, carrying a duster.

  Daiyu shuts the drawer and jumps back guiltily. “I was just looking. Lady Jia told me this was my mother’s bedroom.”

  Snowgoose nods. Daiyu thinks that she sees sympathy on the maid’s face. “Don’t let me disturb you. I was just making sure the junior maids had dusted properly.”

  “Is it the same as when my mother was here?” Daiyu asks shyly. Of all the maids, she finds Snowgoose, with her air of quiet authority, especially intimidating.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know. That was before I came here. Why don’t you ask Lady Jia?”

  “I did, but she said she couldn’t remember.” Daiyu watches Snowgoose dust the shelves, carefully lifting the vases and screens, and feels awkward about standing there idly while the maid works.

  Snowgoose pauses. “How do you like it here at Rongguo?”

  Daiyu wonders whether Snowgoose will be offended or report to Granny if she tells the truth. She shakes her head. “It seems strange to me.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “It doesn’t seem like a family at all. Everyone lives in their own apartments, and never sees each other except at meals.” She doesn’t know how to describe the endless pomp, the atmosphere of stultifying formality.

  Snowgoose gives a little laugh, beginning to dust the dressing table and chairs. “It is strange, I
suppose. But you should visit the others at their apartments. I suppose it’s easy for you to be left out, since they all live in the Garden, and you are here.”

  “I feel shy going to see them when they haven’t invited me, and they never come see me.”

  “You must overcome your shyness. It isn’t personal, you know.” Snowgoose hesitates. “I suppose Miss Tanchun and Miss Xichun aren’t the type to take the initiative, having been ‘born in the wrong bed,’ as the saying goes.”

  “ ‘Born in the wrong bed’?” Daiyu echoes, afraid that she is revealing her ignorance.

  “It means that they were born to concubines.”

  “Does it matter so much?”

  Snowgoose considers. “Yes and no. Huan is a concubine’s son. He is only Baoyu’s half brother, and you see how differently he is treated. He’s hardly ever allowed in the Inner Quarters, and no one pays much heed to him when he comes. Everyone knows Lady Jia doesn’t care for him.”

  “Who is his mother?”

  “Lord Jia’s concubine Auntie Zhao, a very disagreeable woman. She is Miss Tanchun’s mother as well. Everyone hates her, so Miss Tanchun avoids her as much as possible, but Huan is always going to her for attention.” Snowgoose breaks off abruptly with a laugh. “But enough gossiping. There’s too much gossiping around here, anyway. I only told you because you are new to the household. The important thing is to overcome your shyness and visit your cousins.” Snowgoose nods at her in a friendly fashion, before moving towards the door. “I know you must miss your mother and home, but you should try to enjoy your time here.”

  She follows the maid to the door, wanting to talk longer. “How about you, Snowgoose? Where is your family?” She suddenly recalls that many girls who become maids have been orphaned, or sold by their families as little girls, and regrets her question; but Snowgoose seems pleased at her interest.

  “I grew up here in the Capital, and was sold when I was twelve. My mother is a cook in another household, and my father is a groom. But my older brother is a blacksmith. He finished his apprenticeship last year, and just opened his own shop, in Flowers Street.”

  Daiyu sees the pride and happiness glowing on Snowgoose’s face, and envies Snowgoose for having a brother. “Do you ever get to see them?”

  “Lady Jia lets me visit them on holidays sometimes, if she can spare me. Sometimes my brother comes to the back gate and sends a message, and I go out to meet him. But I’m afraid I must go now. Lady Jia will be waking up soon, and will want me.” With another friendly nod, she leaves the room.

  Daiyu feels a pang of loneliness. In this household full of people she spends far more time alone than she did at home. Her talk with Snowgoose is the first real conversation she has had since coming to Rongguo.

  7

  The district magistrate’s office is a small airless room off a dusty courtyard. When Jia Zheng passes through the doorway, he sees a young man in shabby official’s robes sitting behind the desk editing a closely written document with a writing brush. Because the magistrate is younger than he expects, probably only in his early twenties, Jia Zheng asks in some surprise, “Excuse me, am I addressing Jia Yucun?”

  The young man finishes drawing a neat line through a column of text before he looks up. His face is fine-boned, with clever, almond-shaped eyes, but his hairless cheeks are marred by a few pockmarks.

  “Yes, I’m Jia Yucun,” the young man says, but he neither offers a greeting nor rises from his seat, continuing to look coolly at Jia Zheng.

  Taken aback, Jia Zheng says, “I beg pardon for intruding on you. I am Jia Zheng, Duke of Rongguo, and Under-Secretary of the Ministry of Works. I wrote you a note yesterday that I would be coming to see you.”

  “Ah, yes.” Jia Yucun leans back in his chair, putting his fingertips together meditatively, still without offering his visitor a seat. “Who doesn’t know the Rongguo Jias? As a matter of fact, I am a kinsman of yours.”

  “Is that so? I wondered, when I heard your surname.”

  “Only a very distant one. Our grandfathers were second cousins, I believe.”

  “What was your grandfather’s name?”

  “Jia Dairui, of Huzhou.”

  “Oh, yes. I’ve heard the name.” Jia Zheng feigns recognition.

  “I doubt it,” the district magistrate says, with a shrug.

  Jia Zheng forces himself to say, with an assumption of pleasure, “I had no idea we had another kinsman in the Capital. We must have you over to Rongguo sometime.”

  Jia Yucun’s smile is unmistakeably malicious. “The Rongguo Jias have ignored the Huzhou Jias for more than thirty years. Are you sure you wish to change that?”

  Jia Zheng grows flustered. If the young man feels snubbed by the Jias, he is unlikely to help Xue Pan. He vaguely remembers hearing his father complain years ago about a distant branch of the family in Huzhou. “We never hear from them unless they want money,” his father would say.

  “Really, I had no idea you were in the Capital,” he says, flushing. “Otherwise, I would have—”

  The young man bursts into laughter, as if delighted by Jia Zheng’s discomfiture. “Don’t worry! I’m not offended.” He rises from his seat and walks around the desk to Jia Zheng. “I’m not so thin-skinned! I would never have gotten this far if I were. My father died when I was two, and my mother died ten years later. She took in sewing to support the two of us. Now, what brings you here?”

  Caught off balance by the direct question, Jia Zheng stammers, “Perhaps you remember among your cases one involving a young man named Xue Pan.”

  “Xue Pan? Yes, I’m hardly likely to forget a murder case.”

  “Well, it so happens that Xue Pan is the son of my widowed sister-in-law—”

  “Your nephew, is he?” Jia Yucun interrupts. “I wondered to what I owed this unexpected honor.”

  At Jia Yucun’s sarcasm, Jia Zheng falls silent. But Jia Yucun looks at him expectantly, and he forces himself to speak the words he had rehearsed before coming. “I have come to ask for leniency on Xue Pan’s behalf. He is an upstanding young man, and has never been in trouble with the law before. While he did lose his temper and try to throw Zhang Hua out of his house, he had no intention of inflicting serious injury. In fact, he was so shocked when he heard Zhang Hua had died that he could not speak.” He sees the incredulity on the magistrate’s face, and breaks off, feeling foolish.

  Jia Yucun seats himself behind the desk again and looks through a sheaf of papers. “Yes, he has already submitted a petition asking that the charge be reduced from ‘intentional homicide’ to ‘fatal bodily harm by mischance.’ Although I issued a warrant for his arrest, he is nowhere to be found.”

  Though Jia Yucun’s expression is openly contemptuous, Jia Zheng forces himself to continue. “I came to ask if there is anything you can do to help my nephew. He is truly contrite. That is why, when he heard how seriously Zhang Hua was injured, he returned the girl at once, and even paid for the medical expenses—”

  “Tried to pay him off, you mean,” Jia Yucun cuts in. “The case looks serious. Look at the list of injuries that Zhang Hua sustained: a broken arm, teeth knocked out, several serious cuts on his face. I find it hard to believe that his death was accidental.”

  “I see,” Jia Zheng says slowly. “In any case, I thank you for taking the time to speak to me.” Secretly he is relieved that his mission has been unsuccessful. When Mrs. Xue came to him, his first impulse was to have nothing to do with the matter. However, when she begged and pleaded, and said that Xue Pan was in danger of his life, he had agreed to help, in part because he feared the scandal would redound upon the Jias, and also because he could not stand by coldheartedly while his nephew ran the risk of execution. He is a man who has always followed rules to the letter. He had slept badly the night before, hounded by a sense of wrongdoing and also by a fear that his misdeed would somehow be discovered and punished.

  “Just a minute,” Jia Yucun says as he reaches the door.

  He st
ops and turns. The magistrate is leaning back and putting his fingertips together, just as he was doing when Jia Zheng introduced himself. “I said it was a serious case, but not that it was hopeless.”

  Jia Zheng takes a step back, wondering whether Jia Yucun has been feigning reluctance to fish for a bribe. “What do you mean?”

  Jia Yucun shuffles through his papers again. “The testimony is far from conclusive. I can see some potential weaknesses in the prosecution’s case. Over the next few days, I will be calling witnesses in for questioning: those who were present at the fight—”

  “The only people there were my nephew’s servants,” Jia Zheng says.

  Jia Yucun continues as if he had not spoken, “I will question the eyewitnesses as to who struck the first blow—there may be some question as to whether your nephew acted in self-defense. I’ll ask for an examination of Zhang Hua’s body and a coroner’s report. Finally, I’ll question Zhang’s doctor about his injuries, and his general state of health.” He looks up from the papers. “I’ll let you know if something comes up. Why don’t you come back in a few days?”

  Not knowing what to make of the magistrate’s about-face, Jia Zheng hesitates. “You are taking so much trouble on our behalf. Surely there is something we can do for you—”

  Jia Yucun cuts him off sharply, drawing himself up. “I am simply doing my duty. There is absolutely no need to offer me anything. I should not accept it in any case.”

  While no one would accept a bribe outright, Jia Yucun’s response seems unequivocal enough to be a true refusal. Jia Zheng gives him credit for being sufficiently shrewd not to risk his career for a few thousand taels.

  Jia Yucun returns to the examination of the documents before him. He nods dismissal to Jia Zheng. “Remember what I said. Come back in a few days.”

  8

  When Xifeng falls behind on household tasks, she works without resting through the period after lunch when everyone else naps. Even Ping’er, who has a headache, is lying down in her small bedroom behind Xifeng’s apartments. Xifeng sits at her desk, piled high with cloth-covered ledgers, adding up household expenditures on coal for the last month, her fingers swiftly clicking the wooden beads of her abacus. There is a cough at the door. She looks up.