閉眼亂摸，明杖何在 Groping in the Dark
八戒解包袱，展開鋪蓋，請行者安置。行者閉著眼亂摸。八戒笑道：「先生，你的明杖兒呢？」行者道：「你這個饢糟的獃子，你照顧我做瞎子哩。」那獃子啞啞的暗笑而睡。行者坐在鋪上，轉運神功，直到三更後方才睡下。八戒解包袱，展开铺盖，请行者安置。行者闭着眼乱摸。八戒笑道：「先生，你的明杖儿呢？」行者道：「你这个馕糟的呆子，你照顾我做瞎子哩。」那呆子哑哑的暗笑而睡。行者坐在铺上，转运神功，直到三更后方才睡下。
逐句解 Line by line
Bajie untied the bundles, spread out the bedding, and invited the Pilgrim to lie down. The Pilgrim, with his eyes shut, groped about him at random.
展開鋪蓋: here 鋪 is the verb pū, "to spread out." 閉著眼 takes 著 as zhe. Bajie is doing a servant's work for his brother, and doing it kindly, which lasts exactly one sentence.
Bajie laughed. "Fortune-teller," he said, "and where is your blind man's staff?"
The word Bajie picks is 先生, and it is doing precise work. Fortune-telling was the trade traditionally left to blind men in China, so 先生 addressed to somebody groping about is the diviner's honorific — and the man carries a 明杖兒, a "brightness-staff," the stick by which a blind man sees. Dictionaries still cite this very line for the word. It is emphatically not 師父, which is what the Pilgrim calls Sanzang. Note that the chapter has used 先生 once already, of the eye-doctor the Pilgrim was hoping to find; it is a title for a professional man, and Bajie has just assigned his brother the wrong profession. The joke is cruel and it is very good.
Said the Pilgrim, "You swill-swallowing Idiot! So you would have me play the blind man, would you?"
饢糟, "swill-stuffing," is abuse aimed squarely at Bajie's appetite. 照顧我做瞎子 is literally "to look after me as a blind man," meaning: you are casting me in the part. 哩 takes li.
The Idiot laughed to himself with a stifled cackle and went to sleep. The Pilgrim sat up on the bed, turning his spiritual power within him, and it was past the third watch before he lay down.
啞啞的暗笑, laughing under his breath with the last word for once. 鋪上 takes 鋪 as the noun pù, "the bed" — the same character as the verb in the first line of this passage, and a different reading. 三更 is the third night-watch, around midnight, with 更 read gēng.
Eighty-one characters, and an entire relationship inside them. Bajie lays out the bedding for a brother who cannot see, and then cannot resist the blind-man joke; the Pilgrim, who has been insulting Bajie steadily since the day he joined them, is for once the one insulted and can manage nothing better than calling him a glutton. Then the Idiot laughs into his pillow, which is the sweetest small victory anybody has had in this book so far.
The character 鋪 turns up twice in this short passage with two readings — pū, the verb, in 展開鋪蓋, and pù, the noun, in 鋪上. It is a useful reminder of where the Pilgrim actually spends the night. He does not sleep. He sits up on that bed until past midnight turning his 神功 inward, trying to heal his own eyes by force of cultivation — and it is the farmer's ointment that works.