Every second or third night the ugly neighbor would drop by. Vesperus could not very well reject her totally and would occasionally pay her some superficial attention. Although he was unable to satisfy her fully, he could not afford to let her become resentful.
Several other neighbors had an inkling of what was going on, but they all thought it was the Knave who was the adulterer; they never imagined he would consent to act for anyone else. For fear he would get angry and retaliate, they shut their doors before dark and ignored everything that went on outside. Thus the two lovers slept together for over ten nights without the least apprehension until Honest Quan's return, at which point Vesperus's visits came to an abrupt end.
The Knave was afraid Vesperus's youthful passions would get him into trouble, so he forbade him to go near her door even in the daytime to spy out the situation. Instead he himself would play the part of Hongniang. [56] On the pretext of buying silk, he was constantly carrying messages back and forth between the lovers. On several of these occasions Honest Quan was at home, but he took the Knave for a businessman accustomed to dealing with his wife and stood aside to let them talk. Quan was a completely honest and straightforward man who never played anyone false, which is why he was known as Honest-a fact that inspires a certain faith in nicknames. After all, even Xu Shao [57] used to pin an apt label on his neighbors at the beginning of each month. Nicknames differ from sobriquets, which we select ourselves and for which we pick the most flattering combinations. When we choose our friends, we don't need to look at their character or conduct to know if they will be suitable; we need only ask what their nicknames are.
CRITIQUE
What a pity that a secret lost since antiquity, a formula that could not be purchased for a thousand taels, has been revealed to the public!
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Poem:
When Fragrance had been sleeping with Vesperus for ten nights or more and their passion was at its height, the affair was abruptly terminated by her husband's return. Her frustration was indescribable.
I used to think, she said to herself, that talent and looks in a man never went together with performance. That was why I passed them both up and regarded that coarse, stupid creature of mine as such a treasure, letting myself in for a life of constant hardship to help him earn a living. I never dreamed there might be anyone who combined all three qualities. If I'd not met this genius, my beauty would have been wasted, and I'd have been no better off than the ugly woman across the way! It's no good regretting what's past, but I'm not going to waste any more of my life! As the maxim says, "An upright person doesn't do underhand things." If a woman does not lose her honor, fine. But if she does, she might as well be bold and resolute enough to leave her husband for her lover and so avoid having to divide herself between them. I've often said that you can only afford to take a lover if you have Red Whisk's eye for a hero and Zhuo Wenjun's boldness. And provided you take just one lover during your whole life and stick with him, even the words take a lover will be rectified in due course. Eventually you'll receive honors and a title and qualify as a true heroine.
Those weak, useless creatures who scarcely manage to consummate their love and then waste the rest of their lives on their lovers, in some cases never seeing them again and even pining to death-aren't they ridiculous? The formula for taking a lover is composed of two terms, adultery and elopement, which are inseparable. If you're going to commit adultery, you have to elope. If you think you'll never be able to elope, you'd do far better to remain faithful to your husband and so escape retribution for your sins! Why batter away your honor and even your life for a moment of joy?
Having made her decision, she wrote a letter to Vesperus proposing that they elope. As a girl in her mother's household, she had loved reading and writing, but on becoming a merchant's wife she had neglected her skills and now wrote as she spoke, without any literary flavor at all. But although she was ill versed in the art of composition, she wrote straight from the heart, unlike those talented young ladies whose letters submerge all trace of feeling under a welter of subtle implication, forcing people to read them as literary texts rather than as letters.
Her letter ran,
To my lover, Scholar Vesperus:
Ever since you stopped coming to see me, I have spent all day in front of my food unable to swallow it. If I force myself to eat some, it is only a third at best. Obviously my heart and other organs must have shrunk to a fraction of their former size; it is not just my face and body that have withered until they scarcely look human. Not having seen me, how would you know the state I'm in? I have now made up my mind to spend the rest of my life with you, and you must arrange it at once. Either trouble the Knave to come and abduct me or I'll do a Red Whisk and run away to join you. Just settle the date and the place where you'll be waiting, lest we miss each other and I be lost to the fisherman who gets the profit. [58] This is very important, so take note! If you are worried about the consequences and hesitate to run the risk, then you are a faithless wretch. You may write and tell me, but from that moment on I'll break with you and never see you again. If I should see you, I have sharp teeth and they'll take a bite out of my false-hearted lover and eat it as I would pigmeat or dogmeat!
As for all those lovers' oaths sworn on pain of death, they are just cynical ploys used by heartless women to deceive men, and I cannot bear to utter them.
Respectfully, Fragrance, the concubine you favored with your love.
After finishing the letter, she stood by the door until she saw the Knave walking by. But upon giving it to him, she began to worry that Vesperus would be too timid for such a dangerous venture, and she conceived the idea of picking quarrels with Honest Quan until he couldn't stand her and would be willing to follow the precedent of Zhu Maichen and let her go. [59]
Feigning constant illness, she gave up her spinning. Her husband even had to make the tea and do the cooking. If the tea was a little cold, she would accuse him of not boiling the water, and if the food was a little tough, she would complain that he had not cooked it properly. She got up every morning at dawn and nagged steadily until evening, stopping only when she went to bed. He had to be ten times as diligent as before if he was to get safely through the night; otherwise she would order him out at midnight to make tea or prepare medicine, and that would be the end of his uninterrupted sleep.
When they had sex, she used the same means by which she had disposed of her first husband, hoping to send Quan on his way and leave herself free to marry someone perfect in all three respects. Faced with her scorn and loathing in the daytime, Quan did his utmost to serve her at night, to atone for his misdeeds. To his dismay, however, his nocturnal efforts did nothing to make up for his daytime delinquencies. She had scarcely gotten out of bed than her whole attitude changed, striking fear into his heart before she opened her mouth. In less than two months she had so worn down her tiger of a husband that his bones stood out like matchsticks and he barely clung to life.
[56] The maid in