I’ve said my mind returns to you, always to you. Yet the more I watch Clerval as I watched Claire, the more you start to fade, sometimes for whole hours at a time. When I dream I dream of the leper’s eyes, not yours. I dream of those who’ll never dream of me.
I say their names as I walk or watch or sleep: Claire. Clerval. (I carry my clapper, don my hood.) Claire. Air. Care. Clerval. Clear. Err.
Claire: Care:
I’ve learned that care has more meanings than I thought. It’s another name for the tree called Mountain Ash, though I never thought that care could be a tree. It’s an archaic term for a textile used for cloaks. It means to sorrow and to grieve, to mourn and to lament. It’s mental suffering, and the expression of that suffering. Mourning dress is called the cloth of care. A care-bed is a bed of grief.
Yet care means less sad things as well: it’s the “charging of the mind with anything,” and is “regard arising from desire, inclination.”
One gives care, takes care of. The shepherd “tends his fleecy care.” A man stands guard “with watchful Eye Fix’d on his youthful Care.”
As I fix mine on Clerval and Claire and Clerval’s friend …
In the name Clerval, I also hear: to “err,” from the Latin errare, which means to wander, stray, roam, ramble.
(How would I even have come to know their faces if I hadn’t been forced to wander from the start?)
Birds “err upon their course.” And: “He erred so ferre by strange londes that he passed the flood of Ganges.” Clerval would like that line, having come to live so far from where he started. Men “erre Within the wildernesse.” You erred within a wilderness of mind as I did, and still do.
When you first began to make me, didn’t you set out on a course you couldn’t possibly understand? Then I opened my eyes and you pulled back, became a rigid, frightened man. You found yourself in another wilderness where everything was frozen, and then it froze in me.
the delicate tissue of the vulnerability of
If I could know your name
XXX
Baoyu’s name means that which is most precious and solid. It’s said to protect him.
“You referred to him by name,” a woman from outside the mansion’s gates accuses Baoyu’s faithful servant, Qingwen.
“You should call him ‘Young Master.’ Using his name shows lack of respect.”
“So I called him by his name, did I?” Qingwen replies, flushed with anger … “As for using his name, we’ve done that since he was a child— on the Empress Dowager’s orders. At his birth didn’t they have his name written out and posted up everywhere so that everybody would use it, for fear that otherwise he might die young? Why, even the water-carriers, night-soil collectors, and beggars use it. The more it’s said the more he’s protected. You don’t have any business here—go back to mucking about outside the gate where you belong.”
But I call you no name, I call you My Friend, I call you … I don’t know … there’s no name to protect you …
I want to say your name as Cao Xueqin said “Red Inkstone” and the two looked into each other’s eyes
TRANSLATION OF CAO XUEQIN’S 7th NOTE:
Sometimes I start to get very cold. I fear for Baoyu. He has no interest in status, honors, official advancement. How will he protect himself? It’s not up to me to protect him. I have to take him down this path. But sometimes I just want to stop, pull back, close my eyes, shut out his fevers, his wounds, the way he has to walk with a cane. His family’s crumbling, their money and luck’s running out. The dynasty’s corrupt. Red Inkstone says I have to be accurate, not pull back from what I see. Daiyu will die because there’s no place for her in this world—she won’t be allowed to marry Baoyu, it’s not in the family’s interest. She won’t marry out of duty her spirit refuses to be fettered—there’s no one else she loves. She’ll burn all her manuscript books. But sometimes I just don’t want to write it, don’t want to see it in front of my eyes
I remember preparing for the state examinations. Of course I was expected to become an official like my father. I read and read. But one day when I looked up my mind went black, then I saw in that blackness Zhuangzi’s words, white as