Subject: Re: waking and sleeping
From: Nikola Chubrich <[email-masked]>
To: Ernst Meyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2020 08:36:20 -0500

I'm afraid I may have missed my yesterday letter. I'm still adjusting to a
new pattern, but it has been getting much better. A good night's sleep
brings along perspective and ties loose ends. I no longer dream, but I do
not much miss it.

I'm afraid that I did not treat myself very well yesterday. I used to
listen to music casually (as so many people do), even though I *thought *I
was listening to it seriously. The coming of the Pastorale on the radio, on
the way to that demented inn in Exeter, was the end of that possibility.
Once the sky becomes Beethoven, you are under Beethoven's auspices, and
Beethoven will not allow you to shirk.

Ever since the weekend *Die Frau ohne Schatten *has been playing through my
head, and I thought I needed to propitiate it. I had worked my way through
the first act, where I first discovered the turning point of my life *Sie
aus dem Hause*. It was Strauss, I think, who through *Sie aus dem Hause *first
put me on notice that I would be obliged to start a family, and pointed the
way to the resolution of my Uranian interlude (knowing I am speaking into
discretion, but by no means wishing to be over-intimate: but it seems to me
that I am better off treating the elephants in the room like the human
beings and known persons they are): pointed out that I would have to find
Meg (my beloved who hung herself), and lay her to rest; pointed out that I
would have to love my mother anew. Once I knew these things then matters
proceeded as smoothly as such matters can.

I was therefore ready to tackle the second act. But I had forgotten that I
was living under the aegis of Beethoven. When I reached the
Orchesterzwischenspiel, and heard the Falcon, I was in my car and somewhat
lost. I had reached a dead end. The music was penetrating everything I had
and everything I thought I knew. That music: the first that had caught me
in *Die Frau*: so simple, a falling half-step: now seemed to be a dark
prophecy: no longer merely beautiful, its beauty being only, so to speak, a
carrier frequency for what it wished to say: a dark prophecy of emptyness
and death. A prophecy of things that *had *happened, under the aegis of the
Falcon: and of things that may yet happen.

I no longer had the ability to turn off the music. I brought my car to a
parking lot and simply sat there, and at one point collapsed in tears. I
had no idea what I could possibly do. My parents are in Florida. Should I
fly down tomorrow? What would I do tonight?

(*Falke, Falke, du Wiedergefundener*. I'm listening to it now. And in the
midst, for some reason, is Shah Jahan's mausoleum to his beloved wife: I
suppose on the scale of the Taj Mahal, a sapphire engagement ring for
Meg----one cannot give emeralds to the living----is quite reasonable.

Why will Strauss not give me an hour at the Taj Mahal? He will only rest on
it for five seconds before he destroys it in war. And why is it that I am
unable to resist checking the paper right now to see if it is still there?

I got up early to make sure I was the first there. When I walked under
those archways: a prayer inscribed with the 99 names of Allah; I burst into
quiet tears. I made my way quickly to the place under the dome. Around the
two coffins, there are in marble and made of lapis and malachite and
whatever the orange stones are, two kinds of flowers: one wilting and one
standing erect.)

Fortunately I had eight hours of sleep. I made some plans. Not in the way
that Elizabeth Warren makes plans, thank God. I cannot in good conscience
vote for anyone who believes in human beings as chess pieces, and I am
unable to determine that she does not.

But let us return to the problem of Beethoven possessing the sky. It seems
to me that ever since the *Grosse Fuge*, the sky has been rangichangi torn.
{I am here using a Nepali word meaning *colorful*.} It is in need of
repair.

I have had too much music. Allow me to return to my literary home:

Long ago, when the goddess Nü-wa was repairing the sky, she melted down a
great quantity of rock and, on the Incredible Crags of the Great Fable
Mountains, moulded the amalgam into thirty-six thousand, five hundred and
one large building blocks, each measuring seventy-two feet by a hundred and
forty-four feet square. She used thirty-six thousand five hundred of these
blocks in the course of her building operations, leaving a single odd block
unused, which lay, all on its own, at the foot of Greensickness Peak in the
aforementioned mountains.

Now this block of stone, having undergone the melting and moulding of a
goddess, possessed magic powers. It could move about at will and could grow
or shrink to any size it wanted. Observing that all the other blocks had
been used for celestial repairs and that it was the only one to have been
rejected as unworthy, it became filled with shame and resentment and passed
its days in sorrow and lamentation.

One day, in the midst of its lamentings, it saw a monk and a Taoist
approaching from a great distance, each of them remarkable for certain
eccentricities of manner and appearance. When they arrived at the foot of
Greensickness Peak, they sat down on the ground and began to talk. The
monk, catching sight of a lustrous, translucent stone – it was in fact the
rejected building block which had now shrunk itself to the size of a
fan-pendant and looked very attractive in its new shape – took it up on the
palm of his hand and addressed it with a smile:

‘Ha, I see you have magical properties! But nothing to recommend you. I
shall have to cut a few words on you so that anyone seeing you will know at
once that you are something special......

There you have it! In the Merck manual to life, no less. The cure for
greensickness is
1) being addressed with a smile and 2) having a resume. Now I *can *address
myself with a smile; and I have. A resume takes some more work: for one
thing I have not found a monk or a Taoist to do so.

Shall I ask Zhen Shi-yin where to find the Monk and the Taoist? Shall I ask
Liu Xiang-lian? But I believe they have already gone far away, and left the
Land of Illusion.

I need a break today, and I have an insatiable urge to inscribe poetry on
everything I see. (I am an in ecumenical mood, or else I should have, and
did had written, "every beautiful thing". But on looking over it I found
the saying of it tiresome, having ever so much the hint of a sneer: my
escape from the aforementioned gulags being not quite yet complete, one
supposes.)

I will pay a visit to Bao-yu in Prospect Garden:

One day Cousin Zhen came to Jia Zheng with his team of helpers to report
that work on the new garden had been completed.

‘Uncle She has already had a look,’ said Cousin Zhen. ‘Now we are only
waiting for you to look round it to tell us if there is anything you think
will need altering and also to decide what inscriptions ought to be used on
the boards everywhere.’

Jia Zheng reflected a while in silence.

‘These inscriptions are going to be difficult,’ he said eventually. ‘By
rights, of course, Her Grace should have the privilege of doing them
herself; but she can scarcely be expected to make them up out of her head
without having seen any of the views which they are to describe. On the
other hand, if we wait until she has already visited the garden before
asking her, half the pleasure of the visit will be lost. All those
prospects and pavilions – even the rocks and trees and flowers will seem
somehow incomplete without that touch of poetry which only the written word
can lend a scene.’

‘My dear patron, you are so right,’ said one of the literary gentlemen who
sat with him. ‘But we have had an idea. The inscriptions for the various
parts of the garden obviously cannot be dispensed with; nor, equally
obviously, can they be decided in advance. Our suggestion is that we should
compose provisional names and couplets to suit the places where
inscriptions are required, and have them painted on rectangular paper
lanterns which can be hung up temporarily – either horizontally or
vertically as the case may be – when Her Grace comes to visit. We can ask
her to decide on the permanent names after she has inspected the garden. Is
not this a solution of the dilemma?’

‘It is indeed,’ said Jia Zheng. ‘When we look round the garden presently,
we must all try to think of words that can be used. If they seem suitable,
we can keep them for the lanterns. If not, we can call for Yu-cun to come
and help us out.’

‘Your own suggestions are sure to be admirable, Sir Zheng,’ said the
literary gentlemen ingratiatingly. ‘There will be no need to call in
Yu-cun.’

Jia Zheng smiled deprecatingly.

‘I am afraid it is not as you imagine. In my youth I had at best only
indifferent skill in the art of writing verses about natural objects –
birds and flowers and scenery and the like; and now that I am older and
have to devote all my energies to official documents and government papers,
I am even more out of touch with this sort of thing than I was then; so
that even if I were to try my hand at it, I fear that my efforts would be
rather dull and pedantic ones. Instead of enhancing the interest and beauty
of the garden, they would probably have a deadening effect upon both.’

‘That doesn’t matter,’ the literary gentlemen replied. ‘We can all try our
hands at composing. If each of us contributes what he is best at, and if we
then select the better attempts and reject the ones that are not so good,
we should be able to manage all right.’

‘That seems to me a very good suggestion,’ said Jia Zheng. ‘As the weather
today is so warm and pleasant, let us all go and take a turn round the
garden now!’

So saying he rose to his feet and conducted his little retinue of literary
luminaries towards the garden. Cousin Zhen hurried on ahead to warn those
in charge that they were coming.

As Bao-yu was still in very low spirits these days because of his grief for
Qin Zhong, Grandmother Jia had hit on the idea of sending him into the
newly made garden to play. By unlucky chance she had selected this very day
on which to try out her antidote. He had in fact only just entered the
garden when Cousin Zhen came hurrying towards him.

‘Better get out of here!’ said Cousin Zhen with an amused smile. ‘Your
father will be here directly!’

Bao-yu streaked back towards the gate, a string of nurses and pages
hurrying at his heels. But he had only just turned the corner on coming out
of it when he almost ran into the arms of Jia Zheng and his party coming
from the opposite direction. Escape was impossible. He simply had to stand
meekly to one side and await instructions.

Jia Zheng had recently received a favourable report on Bao-yu from his
teacher Jia Dai-ru in which mention had been made of his skill in composing
couplets. Although the boy showed no aptitude for serious study, Dai-ru had
said, he nevertheless possessed a certain meretricious talent for
versification not undeserving of commendation. Because of this report, Jia
Zheng ordered Bao-yu to accompany him into the garden, intending to put his
aptitude to the test. Bao-yu, who knew nothing either of Dai-ru’s report or
of his father’s intentions, followed with trepidation.

As soon as they reached the gate they found Cousin Zhen at the head of a
group of overseers waiting to learn Jia Zheng’s wishes.

‘I want you to close the gate,’ said Jia Zheng, ‘so that we can see what it
looks like from outside before we go in.’

Cousin Zhen ordered the gate to be closed, and Jia Zheng stood back and
studied it gravely.

It was a five-frame gate-building with a hump-backed roof of half-cylinder
tiles. The wooden lattice-work of the doors and windows was finely carved
and ingeniously patterned. The whole gatehouse was quite unadorned by
colour or gilding, yet all was of the most exquisite workmanship. Its walls
stood on a terrace of white marble carved with a pattern of passion-flowers
in relief, and the garden’s whitewashed circumference wall to left and
right of it had a footing made of black-and-white striped stone blocks
arranged so that the stripes formed a simple pattern. Jia Zheng found the
unostentatious simplicity of this entrance greatly to his liking, and after
ordering the gates to be opened, passed on inside.

A cry of admiration escaped them as they entered, for there, immediately in
front of them, screening everything else from their view, rose a steep,
verdure-clad hill.

‘Without this hill,’ Jia Zheng somewhat otiosely observed, ‘the whole
garden would be visible as one entered, and all its mystery would be lost.’

The literary gentlemen concurred. ‘Only a master of the art of landscape
could have conceived so bold a stroke,’ said one of them.

As they gazed at this miniature mountain, they observed a great number of
large white rocks in all kinds of grotesque and monstrous shapes, rising
course above course up one of its sides, some recumbent, some upright or
leaning at angles, their surfaces streaked and spotted with moss and lichen
or half concealed by creepers, and with a narrow, zig-zag path only barely
discernible to the eye winding up between them.

‘Let us begin our tour by following this path,’ said Jia Zheng. ‘If we work
our way round towards the other side of the hill on our way back, we shall
have made a complete circuit of the garden.’

He ordered Cousin Zhen to lead the way, and leaning on Bao-yu’s shoulder,
began the winding ascent of the little mountain. Suddenly on the
mountainside above his head, he noticed a white rock whose surface had been
polished to mirror smoothness and realized that this must be one of the
places which had been prepared for an inscription.

‘Aha, gentlemen!’ said Jia Zheng turning back to address the others who
were climbing up behind him. ‘What name are we going to choose for this
mountain?’

‘Emerald Heights,’ said one.

‘Embroidery Hill,’ said another.

Another proposed that they should call it ‘Little Censer’ after the famous
Censer Peak in Kiangsi. Another proposed ‘Little Zhong-nan’. Altogether
some twenty or thirty names were suggested – none of them very seriously,
since the literary gentlemen were aware that Jia Zheng intended to test
Bao-yu and were anxious not to make the boy’s task too difficult. Bao-yu
understood and was duly grateful.

When no more names were forthcoming Jia Zheng turned to Bao-yu and asked
him to propose something himself.

‘I remember reading in some old book,’ said Bao-yu, ‘that “to recall old
things is better than to invent new ones; and to recut an ancient text is
better than to engrave a modern”. We ought, then, to choose something old.
But as this is not the garden’s principal “mountain” or its chief vista,
strictly speaking there is no justification for having an inscription here
at all – unless it is to be something which implies that this is merely a
first step towards more important things ahead. I suggest we should call it
“Pathway to Mysteries” after the line in Chang Jian’s poem about the
mountain temple:

A path winds upwards to mysterious places.

A name like that would be more distinguished.’

There was a chorus of praise from the literary gentlemen:

‘Exactly right! Wonderful! Our young friend with his natural talent and
youthful imagination succeeds immediately where we old pedants fail!’ Jia
Zheng gave a deprecatory laugh:

‘You mustn’t flatter the boy! People of his age are adept at making a
little knowledge go a long way. I only asked him as a joke, to see what he
would say. We shall have to think of a better name later on.’

As he spoke, they passed through a tunnel of rock in the mountain’s
shoulder into an artificial ravine ablaze with the vari-coloured flowers
and foliage of many varieties of tree and shrub which grew there in great
profusion. Down below, where the trees were thickest, a clear stream gushed
between the rocks. After they had advanced a few paces in a somewhat
northerly direction, the ravine broadened into a little flat-bottomed
valley and the stream widened out to form a pool. Gaily painted and carved
pavilions rose from the slopes on either side, their lower halves concealed
amidst the trees, their tops reaching into the blue. In the midst of the
prospect below them was a handsome bridge:

In a green ravine
A jade stream sped.
A stair of stone
Plunged to the brink.
Where the water widened
To a placid pool,
A marble baluster
Ran round about.
A marble bridge crossed it
With triple span,
And a marble lion’s maw
Crowned each of the arches.

Over the centre of the bridge there was a little pavilion, which Jia Zheng
and the others entered and sat down in.

‘Well, gentlemen!’ said Jia Zheng. ‘What are we going to call it?’

‘Ou-yang Xiu in his Pavilion of the Old Drunkard speaks of “a pavilion
poised above the water”,’ said one of them. ‘What about “Poised Pavilion”?’

‘“Poised Pavilion” is good,’ said Jia Zheng, ‘but this pavilion was put
here in order to dominate the water it stands over, and I think there ought
to be some reference to water in its name. I seem to recollect that in that
same essay you mention Ou-yang Xiu speaks of the water “gushing between
twin peaks”. Could we not use the word “gushing” in some way?’

‘Yes, yes!’ said one of the literary gentlemen.

‘“Gushing Jade” would do splendidly.’

Jia Zheng fondled his beard meditatively, then turned to Bao-yu and asked
him for his suggestion.

‘I agreed with what you said just now, Father,’ said Bao-yu, ‘but on second
thoughts it seems to me that though it may have been all right for Ou-yang
Xiu to use the word “gushing” in describing the source of the river Rang,
it doesn’t really suit the water round this pavilion. Then again, as this
is a Separate Residence specially designed for the reception of a royal
personage, it seems to me that something rather formal is called for, and
that an expression taken from the Drunkard’s Pavilion might seem a bit
improper. I think we should try to find a rather more imaginative, less
obvious sort of name.’

‘I hope you gentlemen are all taking this in!’ said Jia Zheng
sarcastically. ‘You will observe that when we suggest something original we
are recommended to prefer the old to the new, but that when we do make use
of an old text we are “improper” and “unimaginative”! – Well, carry on
then! Let’s have your suggestion!’

‘I think “Drenched Blossoms” would be more original and more tasteful than
“Gushing Jade”.

’Jia Zheng stroked his beard and nodded silently. The literary gentlemen
could see that he was pleased and hastened to commend Bao-yu’s remarkable
ability.

‘That’s the two words for the framed board on top,’ said Jia Zheng. ‘Not a
very difficult task. But what about the seven-word lines for the sides?’

Bao-yu glanced quickly round, seeking inspiration from the scene, and
presently came up with the following couplet:

‘Three pole-thurst lengths of bankside willows green,
One fragrant breath of bankside flowers sweet.’

Jia Zheng nodded and a barely perceptible smile played over his features.
The literary gentlemen redoubled their praises.

They now left the pavilion and crossed to the other side of the pool. For a
while they walked on, stopping from time to time to admire the various
rocks and flowers and trees which they passed on their way, until suddenly
they found themselves at the foot of a range of whitewashed walls enclosing
a small retreat almost hidden among the hundreds and hundreds of green
bamboos which grew in a dense thicket behind them. With cries of admiration
they went inside. A cloister-like covered walk ran round the walls from the
entrance to the back of the forecourt and a cobbled pathway led up to the
steps of the terrace. The house was a tiny three-frame one, two parts
latticed, the third part windowless. The tables, chairs and couches which
furnished it seemed to have been specially made to fit the interior. A door
in the rear wall opened onto a garden of broad-leaved plantains dominated
by a large flowering pear-tree and overlooked on either side by two
diminutive lodges built at right angles to the back of the house. A stream
gushed through an opening at the foot of the garden wall into a channel
barely a foot wide which ran to the foot of the rear terrace and thence
round the side of the house to the front, where it meandered through the
bamboos of the forecourt before finally disappearing through another
opening in the surrounding wall.

‘This must be a pleasant enough place at any time,’ said Jia Zheng with a
smile. ‘But just imagine what it would be like to sit studying beside the
window here on a moonlight night! It is pleasures like that which make a
man feel he has not lived in vain!’
As he spoke, his glance happened to fall on Bao-yu, who instantly became so
embarrassed that he hung his head in shame. He was rescued by the timely
intervention of the literary gentlemen who changed the subject from that of
study to a less dangerous topic. Two of them suggested that the name given
to this retreat should be a four-word one. Jia Zheng asked them what four
words they proposed.

‘“Where Bends the Qi”’ said one of them, no doubt having in mind the song
in the Poetry Classic which begins with the words

See in that nook where bends the Qi,
The green bamboos, how graceful grown!

‘No,’ said Jia Zheng. ‘Too obvious!’

‘“North of the Sui”,’ said the other, evidently thinking of the ancient
Rabbit Garden of the Prince of Liang in Suiyang – also famous for its
bamboos and running water.

‘No,’ said Jia Zheng. ‘Still too obvious!’

‘You’d better ask Cousin Bao again,’ said Cousin Zhen, who stood by
listening.

‘He always insists on criticizing everyone else’s suggestions before he
will deign to make one of his own,’ said Jia Zheng. ‘He is a worthless
creature.’

‘That’s all right,’ said the others. ‘His criticisms are very good ones. He
is in no way to blame for making them.’

‘You shouldn’t let him get away with it!’ said Jia Zheng. ‘All right!’ he
went on, turning to Bao-yu. ‘Today we will indulge you up to the hilt.
Let’s have your criticisms, and after that we’ll hear your own proposal.
What about the two suggestions that have just been made? Do you think
either of them could be used?’

‘Neither of them seems quite right to me,’ said Bao-yu in answer to the
question.

‘In what way “not quite right”?’ said Jia Zheng with a scornful smile.

‘Well,’ said Bao-yu, ‘This is the first building our visitor will enter
when she looks over the garden, so there ought to be some word of praise
for the Emperor at this point. If we want a classical reference with
imperial symbolism, I suggest “The Phoenix Dance”, alluding to that passage
in the History Classic about the male and female phoenixes alighting “with
measured gambollings” in the Emperor’s courtyard.’

‘What about “Bend of the Qi” and “North of the Sui”?’ said Jia Zheng.
‘Aren’t they classical allusions? If not, I should like to know what they
are!’

‘Yes,’ said Bao-yu, ‘but they are too contrived. “The Phoenix Dance” is
more fitting.’

There was a loud murmur of assent from the literary gentlemen. Jia Zhong
nodded and tried not to look pleased.

‘Young idiot! – A “small capacity but a great self-conceit”, gentlemen –
All right!’ he ordered: ‘now the couplet!’ So Bao-yu recited the following
couplet:

‘From the empty cauldron the steam still rises after the brewing of tea.
By the darkening window the fingers are still cold after the game of Go.’

Jia Zheng shook his head:

‘Nothing very remarkable about that!’

With this remark he began to move on, but thought of something just as they
were leaving, and stopped to ask Cousin Zhen:

‘I see that the buildings in this garden have their proper complement of
chairs and tables and so forth. What about blinds and curtains and
flower-vases and all that sort of thing? Have they been selected to suit
the individual rooms?’

‘As regards ornaments,’ Cousin Zhen replied, ‘we have already got in quite
a large stock, and when the time comes we shall naturally select from it
what is suitable for each individual room. As regards drapes and hangings,
Cousin Lian told me yesterday that there are quite a lot yet to come. What
we did was to take the measurements from the plans drawn up for the
carpenters and put the work in hand straight away, even before the
buildings buildings were finished. As far as I know, up to yesterday we had
received about half of what was ordered.’

>From the way Cousin Zhen spoke, Jia Zheng gathered that this was not his
responsibility and sent someone to summon Jia Lian. He arrived within
moments, and Jia Zheng questioned him about the types and quantities
ordered and the figures for what had already been received and what was
still to come.

In response to his inquiry Jia Lian extracted a wallet from the leg of his
boot, and glancing at a folded schedule inside it, summarized its contents
as follows:

‘Curtains, large and small, in various silks and satins – flowered,
dragon-spot, sprigged, tapestry, panelled, ink-splash: one hundred and
twenty. – Eighty of those were delivered yesterday. That leaves forty to
come. – Blinds: two hundred. – Yes. They all arrived yesterday. But then
there are the special ones. – Blinds, scarlet felt: two hundred. Speckled
bamboo: one hundred. Red lacquered bamboo with gold fleck: one hundred.
Black lacquered bamboo: one hundred. Coloured net: two hundred. – We now
have half of each of those four kinds. The other half is promised by the
end of autumn. – Chair-covers, table-drapes, valances, tablecloths: one
thousand two hundred of each. – Those we already have.’

They had been moving on as he spoke, but were presently brought to a halt
by a steeply sloping hill which rose up in front of them. Having negotiated
its foot, they could see, almost concealed in a fold half-way up the other
side of it, a dun-coloured adobe wall crowned with a coping of rice-straw
thatch. Inside it were several hundred apricot trees, whose flowering tops
resembled the billowing rosy clouds of some vegetable volcano. In their
midst stood a little group of reed-thatched cottages. Beyond the wall, with
a barred gate dividing it in the middle, a loose hedge of irregular shape
had been made by weaving together the pliant young shoots of the mulberry,
elm, hibiscus, and silkworm thorn trees which grew outside it. Between this
hedge of trees and the lower slope of the hill was a rustic well, furnished
with both well-sweep and windlass. Below the well, row upon row of
miniature fields full of healthy-looking vegetables and flowers ran down in
variegated strips to the bottom.

‘Ah, now here is a place with a purpose!’ said Jia Zheng with a pleased
smile. ‘It may have been made by human artifice, but the sight of it is
none the less moving. In me it awakens the desire to get back to the land,
to a life of rural simplicity. Let us go in and rest a while!’

They were just on the point of entering the gate in the hedge when they
observed a stone at the side of the pathway leading up to it which had
evidently been put there in order that the name of the place might be
inscribed upon it.

‘What a brilliant idea!’ the literary gentlemen exclaimed. ‘If they had put
a board up over the gate, the rustic atmosphere would have been completely
destroyed, whereas this stone actually enhances it. This is a place which
calls for the bucolic talent of a Fan Cheng-da to do it justice!’

‘What shall we call it, then?’ asked Jia Zheng.

‘Just now our young friend was saying that to “recall an old thing is
better than to invent a new one”,’ said one of the literary gentlemen. ‘In
this case the ancients have already provided the perfect name: “Apricot
Village”.’

Jia Zheng knew that he was referring to the words of the fainting traveller
in Du Mu’s poem:

‘Where’s the tavern?’ I cry, and a lad points the way
To a village far off in the apricot trees.

He turned to Cousin Zhen with a smile:
‘Yes. That reminds me. There’s just one thing missing here: an inn-sign.
Tomorrow you must have one made. Nothing fancy. Just an ordinary inn-sign
like the ones you see in country villages outside. And it should hang from
a bamboo pole above the tree-tops.’

Cousin Zhen promised to see this done and added a suggestion of his own:
‘The birds here, too, ought to be ordinary farmyard ones – hens, ducks,
geese, and so on – to be in keeping with the surroundings.’

Jia Zheng and the rest agreed enthusiastically. ‘The only trouble with
“Apricot Village”,’ said Jia Zheng, ‘– though it would suit the place very
well – is that it is the name of a real village; so we should have to get
official permission first before we could use it.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said the others. ‘That means we still have to think of something
for a temporary name. Now what shall it be?’

While they were all still thinking, Bao-yu who had already had an idea, was
so bursting with eagerness that he broke in, without waiting to be invited
by his father:

‘There is an old poem which has the lines

Above the flowering apricot
A hopeful inn-sign hangs.

For the inscription on the stone we ought to have

“The Hopeful Sign”.’

‘“The Hopeful Sign”,’ echoed the literary gentlemen admiringly. ‘Very good!
The hidden allusion to “Apricot Village” is most ingenious!’

‘Oh, as for the name of the village,’ said Bao-yu scornfully, ‘ “Apricot
Village” is much too obvious! Why not “Sweet-rice Village” from the words
of the old poem:

A cottage by the water stands
Where sweet the young rice smells?’

The literary gentlemen clapped their hands delightedly; but their cries of
admiration were cut short by an angry shout from Jia Zheng:

‘Ignorant young puppy! Just how many “old poets” and “old poems” do you
think you know, that you should presume to show off in front of your elders
in this impertinent manner? We let you have your little say just now in
order to test your intelligence. It was no more than a joke. Do you suppose
we are seriously interested in your opinions?’
They had been moving on meanwhile, and he now led them into the largest of
the little thatched buildings, from whose simple interior with its paper
windows and plain deal furniture all hint of urban refinement had been
banished. Jia Zheng was inwardly pleased. He stared hard at Bao-yu:

‘How do you like this place, then?’

With secret winks and nods the literary gentlemen urged Bao-yu to make a
favourable reply, but he wilfully ignored their promptings.

‘Not nearly as much as “The Phoenix Dance”.’

His father snorted disgustedly.

‘Ignoramus! You have eyes only for painted halls and gaudy pavilions – the
rubbishy trappings of wealth. What can you know of the beauty that lies in
quietness and natural simplicity? This is a consequence of your refusal to
study properly.’

‘Your rebuke is, of course, justified, Father,’ Bao-yu replied promptly,
‘but then I have never really understood what it was the ancients meant by
“natural”.’

The literary gentlemen, who had observed a vein of mulishness in Bao-yu
which boded trouble, were surprised by the seeming naïveté of this reply.

‘Why, fancy not knowing what “natural” means – you who have such a good
understanding of so much else! “Natural” is that which is of nature, that
is to say, that which is produced by nature as opposed to that which is
produced by human artifice.’

‘There you are, you see!’ said Bao-yu. ‘A farm set down in the middle of a
place like this is obviously the product of human artifice. There are no
neighbouring villages, no distant prospects of city walls; the mountain at
the back doesn’t belong to any system; there is no pagoda rising from some
tree-hid monastery in the hills above; there is no bridge below leading to
a near-by market town. It sticks up out of nowhere, in total isolation from
everything else. It isn’t even a particularly remarkable view – not nearly
so “natural” in either form or spirit as those other places we have seen.
The bamboos in those other places may have been planted by human hand and
the streams diverted out of their natural courses, but there was no
appearance of artifice. That’s why, when the ancients use the term
“natural” I have my doubts about what they really meant. For example, when
they speak of a “natural painting”, I can’t help wondering if they are not
referring to precisely that forcible interference with the landscape to
which I object: putting hills where they are not meant to be, and that sort
of thing. However great the skill with which this is done, the results are
never quite…’

His discourse was cut short by an outburst of rage from Jia Zheng.
‘Take that boy out of here!’
Bao-yu fled.
‘Come back!’
He returned.
‘You still have to make a couplet on this place. If it isn’t satisfactory,
you will find yourself reciting it to the tune of a slapped face!’

Bao-yu stood quivering with fright and for some moments was unable to say
anything. At last he recited the following couplet:

‘Emergent buds swell where the washerwoman soaks her cloth.
A fresh tang rises where the cress-gatherer fills his pannier.’

Jia Zheng shook his head:

‘Worse and worse.’

He led them out of the ‘village’ and round the foot of the hill:

through flowers and foliage,
by rock and rivulet,
 past rose-crowned pergolas
and rose-twined trellises,
through small pavilions
embowered in peonies,
where scent of sweet-briers stole,
or pliant plantains waved –

until they came to a place where a musical murmur of water issued from a
cave in the rock. The cave was half-veiled by a green curtain of creeper,
and the water below was starred with bobbing blossoms.

‘What a delightful spot!’ the literary gentlemen exclaimed.

‘Very well, gentlemen. What are you going to call it?’ said Jia Zheng.

Inevitably the literary gentlemen thought of Tao Yuan-ming’s fisherman of
Wu-ling and his Peach-blossom Stream.

‘“The Wu-ling Stream”,’ said one of them. ‘The name is ready-made for this
place. No need to look further than that.’

Jia Zheng laughed:
‘The same trouble again, I am afraid. It is the name of a real place. In
any case, it is too hackneyed.’

‘All right,’ said the others good-humouredly. ‘In that case simply call it
“Refuge of the Qins”.’ Their minds still ran on the Peach-blossom Stream
and its hidden paradise.

‘That’s even more inappropriate!’ said Bao-yu. ‘

“Refuge of the Qins” would imply that the people here were fugitives from
tyranny. How can we possibly call it that? I suggest “Smartweed Bank and
Flowery Harbour”.’

‘Rubbish!’ said Jia Zheng. He looked inside the grotto and asked Cousin
Zhen if there were any boats.

‘Four punts for lotus-gathering and one for pleasure are on order,’ said
Cousin Zhen, ‘but they haven’t finished making them yet.’

‘What a pity we cannot go through!’ said Jia Zheng.

‘There is a very steep path over the top which would take us there,’ said
Cousin Zhen, and proceeded to lead the way.

The others scrambled up after him, clinging to creepers and leaning on
tree-trunks as they went. When, having descended once more, they had
regained the stream, it was wide and deep and distorted by many
anfractuosities. The fallen blossoms seemed to be even more numerous and
the waters on whose surface they floated even more limpid than they had
been on the side they had just come from. The weeping willows which lined
both banks were here and there diversified with peach and apricot trees
whose interlacing branches made little worlds of stillness and serenity
beneath them.

Suddenly, through the green of the willows, they glimpsed the scarlet
balustrade of a wooden bridge whose sloping ramps led to a flat central
span high above the water. When they had crossed it, they found a choice of
paths leading to different parts of the garden. Ahead was an airy building
with roofs of tile, whose elegant surrounding wall was of grey-plastered
brick pierced by ornamental grilles made of semicircular tiles laid
together in openwork patterns. The wall was so constructed that outcrops of
rock from the garden’s ‘master mountain’ appeared to run through it in
several places into the courtyard inside.

‘This building seems rather out of place here,’ said Jia Zheng.

But as he entered the gate the source of his annoyance disappeared; for a
miniature mountain of rock, whose many holes and fissures, worn through it
by weathering or the wash of waters, bestowed on it a misleading appearance
of fragile delicacy, towered up in front of him and combined with the many
smaller rocks of various shapes and sizes which surrounded it to efface
from their view every vestige of the building they had just been looking
at.

Not a single tree grew in this enclosure, only plants and herbs:

some aspired as vines,
some crept humbly on the ground;
some grew down from the tops of rocks,
some upwards from their feet;
some hung from the eaves in waving trails of green,
some clung to pillars in circling bands of gold;
some had blood-red berries,
some had golden flowers.

And from every flower and every plant and every herb wafted the most
exquisite and incomparable fragrances.

Jia Zheng could not help but admire:

‘Charming! But what are they all?’

‘Wild-fig’ and ‘wistaria’ was all the literary gentlemen would venture.

‘But surely,’ Jia Zheng objected, ‘wild-fig and wistaria do not have this
delectable fragrance?’

‘They certainly don’t,’ said Bao-yu. ‘There are wild-fig and wistaria among
the plants growing here, but the ones with the fragrance are pollia and
birthwort and – yes, I think those are orchids of some kind. That one over
there is probably actinidia. The red flowers are, of course, rue, the “herb
of grace”, and the green ones must be green-flag. A lot of these rare
plants are mentioned in Li sao and Wen Xuan, particularly in the Poetical
Descriptions of the Three Capitals by Zuo Si. For example, in his
Description of the Wu Capital he has

agastache, eulalia,
and harsh-smelling ginger-bush,
cord-flower, cable-flower,
centaury and purplestrife,
stone-sail and water-pine and sweet-scented eglantine…

And then there are
amaranth, xanthoxylon,
anemone, phellopteron…

They come in the Description of the Shu Capital. Of course, after all these
centuries nobody really knows what all those names stand for. They apply
them quite arbitrarily to whatever seem to fit the description, and
gradually all of them –’

Once more an angry shout from his father cut him short:

‘Who asked for your opinion?’

Bao-yu shrank back and said no more.

Observing that there were balustraded loggias on either side of the court,
Jia Zheng led his party through one of them towards the building at the
rear. It was a cool, five-frame gallery with a low, roofed verandah running
round it on all sides. The window-lattices were green and the walls freshly
painted. It was a building of quite another order of elegance from the ones
they had so far visited.

‘Anyone who sat sipping tea and playing the qin to himself on this verandah
would have no need to burn incense if he wanted sweet smells for his
inspiration,’ said Jia Zheng dreamily. ‘So unexpectedly beautiful a place
calls for a specially beautiful name to adorn it.’

‘What could be better than “Dewy Orchids”?’ said the literary gentlemen.

‘Yes,’ said Jia Zheng. ‘That would do for the name. Now what about the
couplet?’

‘I have thought of a couplet,’ said one of the gentlemen. ‘Tell me all of
you what you think of it:
A musky perfume of orchids hangs in the sunset courtyard.
A sweet aroma of galingale floats over the moonlit island.’

‘Not bad,’ said the others. ‘But why “sunset courtyard”?’ ‘I was thinking
of that line in the old poem,’ said the man:

‘The garden’s gillyflowers at sunset weep.

After all, you have already got “dewy” in the name. I thought the “sunset
weeping” would go with it rather well.’

‘Feeble! Feeble!’ cried the rest.

‘I’ve thought of a couplet, too,’ said one of the others. ‘Let me have your
opinion of it:

Down garden walks a fragrant breeze caresses beds of melilot.
By courtyard walls a brilliant moon illumines golden orchises.’
Jia Zheng stroked his beard, and his lips were observed to move as though
he was on the point of proposing a couplet of his own. Suddenly, looking
up, he caught sight of Bao-yu skulking behind the others, too scared to
speak.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ he bellowed at the unfortunate boy. ‘You are
ready enough with your opinions when they are not wanted. Speak up! – Or
are you waiting for a written invitation?’

‘I can see no “musk” or “moonlight” or “islands” in this place,’ said
Bao-yu. ‘If we are to make couplets in this follow-my-leader fashion, we
could turn out a couple of hundred of them and still have more to come.’

‘No one’s twisting your arm,’ said Jia Zheng. ‘You don’t have to use those
words if you don’t want to.’

‘In that case,’ said Bao-yu, ‘I suggest “The Garden of Spices” for the
name; and for the couplet:

Composing amidst cardamoms, you shall make verses like flowers. Slumbering
amidst the roses, you shall dream fragrant dreams.’ ‘

We all know where you got that from,’ said Jia Zheng:

‘Composing midst the plantains
Green shall my verses be.

We can’t give you much credit for an imitation.’

‘Not at all!’ said the literary gentlemen. ‘There is nothing wrong with
imitation provided it is done well. After all, Li Bo’s poem “On Phoenix
Terrace” is entirely based on Cui Hao’s “Yellow Crane Tower”, yet it is a
much better poem. On reflection our young friend’s couplet seems more
poetical and imaginative than the original.’

‘Oh, come now!’ said Jia Zheng. But they could see he was not displeased.

Leaving the place of many fragrances behind them, they had not advanced
much further when they could see ahead of them a building of great
magnificence which Jia Zheng at once identified as the main reception hall
of the Residence.

Roof above roof soared,
Eye up-compelling,
Of richly-wrought chambers
And high winding galleries.
Green rafts of dark pine
Brushed the eaves’ edges.
Milky magnolias
Bordered the buildings.
Gold-glinting cat-faces,
Rainbow-hued serpents’ snouts
Peered out or snarled down
>From cornice and finial.

‘It is rather a showy building,’ said Jia Zheng. But the literary gentlemen
reassured him:

‘Although Her Grace is a person of simple and abstemious tastes, the
exalted position she now occupies makes it only right and proper that there
should be a certain amount of pomp in her reception. This building is in no
way excessive.’

Still advancing in the same direction, they presently found themselves at
the foot of the white marble memorial arch which framed the approach to the
hall. The pattern of writhing dragons protectively crouched over its
uppermost horizontal was so pierced and fretted by the sculptor’s artistry
as to resemble lacework rather than solid stone.

‘What inscription do we want on this arch?’ Jia Zheng inquired.

‘“Peng-lai’s Fairy Precincts” is the only name that would do it justice,’
said the literary gentlemen. Jia Zheng shook his head and said nothing.

The sight of this building and its arch had inspired a strange and
unaccountable stir of emotion in Bao-yu which on reflection he interpreted
as a sign that he must have known a building somewhat like this before –
though where or when he could not for the life of him remember. He was
still racking his brains to recall what it reminded him of, when Jia Zheng
ordered him to produce a name and couplet for the arch, and he was quite
unable to give his mind to the task of composition. The literary gentlemen,
not knowing the nature of his preoccupation, supposed that his father’s
incessant bullying had worn him out and that he had finally come to the end
of his inspiration. They feared that further bullying might once more bring
out the mulish streak in him, thereby provoking an explosion which would be
distasteful for everybody. Accordingly they urged Jia Zheng to allow him a
day’s grace in which to produce something suitable. Jia Zheng, who was
secretly beginning to be apprehensive about the possible conquences of
Grandmother Jia’s anxiety for her darling grandson, yielded, albeit with a
bad grace:

‘Jackanapes! So even you have your off moments it seems. Well, I’ll give
you a day to do it in. But woe betide you if you can’t produce something
tomorrow! And it had better be something good, too, because this is the
most important building in the garden.’
After they had seen over the building and come out again, they stopped for
a while on the terrace to look at a general view of the whole garden and
attempted to make out the places they had already visited. They were
surprised to find that even now they had covered little more than half of
the whole area. Just at that moment a servant came up to report that
someone had arrived with a message from Yu-cun.

‘I can see that we shan’t be able to finish today,’ said Jia Zheng.
‘However, if we go out by the way I said, we should at least be able to get
some idea of the general layout.’

He conducted them to a large bridge above a crystal curtain of rushing
water. It was the weir through which the water from the little river which
fed all the pools and watercourses of the garden ran into it from outside.
Jia Zheng invited them to name it.

‘This is the source of the “Drenched Blossoms” stream we looked at earlier
on,’ said Bao-yu. ‘We should call it “Drenched Blossoms Weir”.’

‘Rubbish!’ said Jia Zheng. ‘You may as well forget about your “Drenched
Blossoms”, because we are not going to use that name!’

Their progress continued past many unexplored features of the garden, viz:

a summer lodge
a straw-thatched cot
a dry-stone wall
a flowering arch
a tiny temple nestling beneath a hill
a nun’s retreat hidden in a little wood
a straight gallery
a crooked cave
a square pavilion
and a round belvedere.

But Jia Zheng hurried past every one of them without entering. However, he
had now been walking for a very long time without a rest and was beginning
to feel somewhat footsore; and so, when the next building appeared through
the trees ahead, he proposed that they should go in and sit down, and led
his party towards it by the quickest route possible. They had to walk round
a stand of double-flowering ornamental peach-trees and through a circular
opening in a flower-covered bamboo trellis. This brought them in sight of
the building’s whitewashed enclosing wall and the contrasting green of the
weeping willows which surrounded it. A roofed gallery ran from each side of
the gate round the inner wall of the forecourt, in which a few rocks were
scattered. On one side of it some green plantains were growing and on the
other a weeping variety of Szechwan crab, whose pendant clusters of
double-flowering carmine blossoms hung by stems as delicate as golden wires
on the umbrella-shaped canopy of its boughs.

‘What magnificent blossom!’ exclaimed the literary gentlemen. ‘One has seen
plenty of crab-apple blossom before, but never anything as beautiful as
this.’

‘This kind is called “maiden crab”,’ said Jia Zheng. ‘It comes from abroad.
According to vulgar belief it originally came from the Land of Maidens, and
that is supposed to be the reason why it blooms so profusely. Needless to
say, it is only the ignorant sort of persons who hold this ridiculous
belief.’

‘It certainly has most unusual blossoms,’ said the literary gentlemen. ‘Who
knows, perhaps there is something in the popular belief.’

‘Surely,’ said Bao-yu, ‘it is much more probable that poets and painters
gave it the name of “maiden crab” because of its rouge-like colour and
delicate, drooping shape, and that the name was misunderstood by ignorant,
literal-minded people, who made up this silly story to account for it.’

‘That must be it!’ said the literary gentlemen. ‘Most grateful for the
explanation!’

While they were speaking they were at the same time arranging themselves on
some benches in the gallery.

‘Has anyone an original idea for a name?’ said Jia Zheng when they were all
seated.

One of them proposed ‘Storks in the Plantains’. Another suggested
‘Shimmering Splendour’.

‘“Shimmering Splendour”,’ Jia Zheng and the others repeated, trying out the
words. ‘That’s good!’

‘A lovely name!’ said Bao-yu. But a moment later he added: ‘Rather a pity,
though.’ ‘Why “rather a pity”?’ they asked.

‘Well,’ said Bao-yu, ‘there are both plantains and crab-apple blossom in
this courtyard. Whoever planted them must have been thinking of “the red
and the green”. If our name mentions only one and leaves out the other, it
will seem somehow inadequate.’

‘What do you suggest, then?’ said Jia Zheng.

‘I suggest “Fragrant Red and Lucent Green”,’ said Bao-yu. ‘That takes
account of both of them.’

Jia Zheng shook his head:

‘No, that’s no good!’

He led them inside the building. Its interior turned out to be all
corridors and alcoves and galleries, so that properly speaking it could
hardly have been said to have rooms at all. The partition walls which made
these divisions were of wooden panelling exquisitely carved in a wide
variety of motifs: bats in clouds, the ‘three friends of winter’ – pine,
plum and bamboo, little figures in landscapes, birds and flowers,
scrollwork, antique bronze shapes, ‘good luck’ and ‘long life’ characters,
and many others. The carvings, all of them the work of master craftsmen,
were beautified with inlays of gold, mother-o’-pearl and semi-precious
stones. In addition to being panelled, the partitions were pierced by
numerous apertures, some round, some square, some sunflower-shaped, some
shaped like a fleur-de-lis, some cusped, some fan-shaped. Shelving was
concealed in the double thickness of the partition at the base of these
apertures, making it possible to use them for storing books and writing
materials and for the display of antique bronzes, vases of flowers,
miniature tray-gardens and the like. The overall effect was at once richly
colourful and, because of the many apertures, airy and graceful.

The trompe-l’ail effect of these ingenious partitions had been further
enhanced by inserting false windows and doors in them, the former covered
in various pastel shades of gauze, the latter hung with richly-patterned
damask portières. The main walls were pierced with window-like perforations
in the shape of zithers, swords, vases and other objects of virtù.

The literary gentlemen were rapturous:

‘Exquisite!’ they cried. ‘What marvellous workmanship!’

Jia Zheng, after taking no more than a couple of turns inside this
confusing interior, was already lost. To the left of him was what appeared
to be a door. To the right was a wall with a window in it. But on raising
its portière he discovered the door to be a bookcase; and when, looking
back, he observed – what he had not noticed before – that the light coming
in through the silk gauze of the window illuminated a passage-way leading
to an open doorway, and began walking towards it, a party of gentlemen
similar to his own came advancing to meet him, and he realized that he was
walking towards a large mirror. They were able to circumvent the mirror,
but only to find an even more bewildering choice of doorways on the other
side.

‘Come!’ said Cousin Zhen with a laugh. ‘Let me show you the way! If we go
out here we shall be in the back courtyard. We can reach the gate of the
garden much more easily from the back courtyard than from the front.’

He led them round the gauze hangings of a summer-bed, then through a door
into a garden full of rambler roses. Behind the rose-trellis was a stream
running between green banks. The literary gentlemen were intrigued to know
where the water came from. Cousin Zhen pointed in the direction of the weir
they had visited earlier:

‘The water comes in over that weir, then through the grotto, then under the
lea of the north-east “mountain” to the little farm. There a channel is led
off it which runs into the south-east corner of the garden. Then it runs
round and rejoins the main stream here. And from here the water flows out
again underneath that wall.’

‘How very ingenious!’

They moved on again, but soon found themselves at the foot of a tall
‘mountain’.

‘Follow me!’ said Cousin Zhen, amused at the bewilderment of the others,
who were now completely at sea as to their whereabouts. He led them round
the foot of the ‘mountain’ – and there, miraculously, was a broad, flat
path and the gate by which they had entered, rising majestically in front
of them.

‘Well!’ exclaimed the literary gentlemen. ‘This beats everything! The skill
with which this has all been designed is quite out of this world!’

Whereupon they all went out of the garden.