Chapter 41

贾宝玉品茶栊翠庵

刘老老醉卧怡红院

Grannie Liu is afraid of breaking her porcelain cup, and asks for a wooden one. Faithful fetches ten boxwood cups, the size and detail of which astonish Grannie Liu. Xifeng jokes that she has to drink from all of them, she is given one of the largest in the end, and some food to accompany it. She is astonished further by the exquisite and complex recipe. When asked, she concludes the cups to be pine, causing further laughter. The music starts, and the drinking continues apace all round – Grannie Liu is particularly enjoying the music, and is consequently mocked by Daiyu. After the music, Grandmother Jia walks with Liu, who admires the flora and birds, but cannot name them. They eat some snacks, including some delicately fashioned pastries which further enchant Grannie Liu. She and Baner eat a lot of them, and the rest are sent to the actresses. A nurse arrives with Xifeng’s daughter, who swaps a grapefruit with Baner for a Buddha’s hand.

Adamantina welcomes Grandmothers Jia and Liu et al to the hermitage. Jia declines to enter the meditation hall, staying in the garden to take tea. Baoyu studies Adamantina attentively, and whilst the others take tea, he spots her take Baochai and Daiyu to her own room and gatecrashes. Adamantina tells a lay-sister to leave the cup Grannie Liu used outside – she considers it contaminated. They drink tea and discuss the value of cups. Adamantina is very eccentric about the water she uses for her tea. Baoyu suggests giving Grannie Liu’s cup to her, and getting his boys to clean her floor.

Grandmother Jia leaves the party to rest, along with Xifeng and Li Wan, and others also take the opportunity to excuse themselves. Faithful is instructed to show Grannie Liu more of the garden, and the cousins join. She kowtows at a stone arch, causing laughter, before her bowels rumble and she is quickly escorted to a privy by a servant who then leaves her to find her own way back. Her business takes some time. She is disorientated on exiting – not to mention still very drunk - walking into a Western-style painting with perspective and then being confused first by a mirror, and secondly by the automatic latch on the door on which the mirror is. She passes through the door and out on a bed. The cousins meanwhile are concerned, and send someone to the privy to check on her. Aroma thinks it through and hurries to Green Delights, where she finds Grannie Liu on a bed surrounded by a heady funk of wine and fart. She wakes and apologises, Aroma gestures to her not to speak, covers up the smell with fragrance and leads her out to the junior maids’ quarters. She asks whose room it was, and on discovering it is Baoyu’s, is horrified by the enormity of her trespass. Aroma escorts her back to the cousins, saying that she had fallen asleep on the grass; Grandmother Jia wakes and heads back to her own apartment, and everyone else goes back to the garden.