原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
十三年前
The King's Lament
國王聞言，滿眼垂淚道：「自十三年前不見了公主，兩班文武官也不知貶退了多少，宮內宮外大小婢子、太監也不知打死了多少；只說是走出皇宮，迷失路徑，無處找尋。滿城中百姓人家，也盤詰了無數，更無下落。怎知道是妖怪攝了去。今日乍聽得這句話，故此傷情流淚。」国王闻言，满眼垂泪道：「自十三年前不见了公主，两班文武官也不知贬退了多少，宫内宫外大小婢子、太监也不知打死了多少；只说是走出皇宫，迷失路径，无处找寻。满城中百姓人家，也盘诘了无数，更无下落。怎知道是妖怪摄了去。今日乍听得这句话，故此伤情流泪。」
逐句解 Line by line
國王聞言，滿眼垂淚道：「自十三年前不見了公主，兩班文武官也不知貶退了多少，宮內宮外大小婢子、太監也不知打死了多少；只說是走出皇宮，迷失路徑，無處找尋。
国王闻言，满眼垂泪道：「自十三年前不见了公主，两班文武官也不知贬退了多少，宫内宫外大小婢子、太监也不知打死了多少；只说是走出皇宫，迷失路径，无处找寻。
Hearing this, the king's eyes brimmed over, and he said, 'Since the princess vanished thirteen years ago, I know not how many officials, civil and military, I have demoted and dismissed, nor how many maids and eunuchs, within the palace and without, I have had beaten to death. We supposed only that she had wandered out of the palace and lost her way, and there was nowhere left to search.
The lament has a body count, and the novel does not look away from it. 兩班文武官 are the two files of officers, civil and military; 貶退 is to demote and dismiss; 婢子 (子 = zi) and 太監 are the maidservants and eunuchs he has had beaten to death, "he knows not how many" of them. Thirteen years of grief, discharged downward onto people who could not possibly have known anything.
滿城中百姓人家，也盤詰了無數，更無下落。怎知道是妖怪攝了去。今日乍聽得這句話，故此傷情流淚。」
满城中百姓人家，也盘诘了无数，更无下落。怎知道是妖怪摄了去。今日乍听得这句话，故此伤情流泪。」
Throughout the city, too, I interrogated the common households beyond all number, and still there was no trace. How was I to know that a demon had carried her off? Only today, hearing these words all at once, am I so wounded in heart that I weep.'
滿城中 (中 = zhōng) is "throughout the whole city"; 盤詰了無數 (數 = shù) is "interrogated past counting." 乍聽得 (得 = de) is to hear something all at once. He had exhausted every ordinary explanation and every ordinary method; the true answer was never on the list of things a king can investigate.
總評 Commentary
The king's lament opens a darker seam under the courtly decorum. His grief has not been passive: for thirteen years it has fallen on whoever was nearest, on ministers demoted past counting and on maids and eunuchs beaten to death, whole households punished for a disappearance nobody could explain. The novel reports this without editorial comment, but the report is itself the judgement — the same despotic temper that will shortly offer Tripitaka a seat on the dragon-couch is shown here venting itself, blindly and lethally, on the powerless.
The passage also turns on the pain of an answer arriving too late. The king had assumed the ordinary explanations, a girl wandered off, a road lost, and had used up every human means of searching; the one true cause lay entirely outside what he could investigate. It is the suddenness that undoes him. Only today, hearing the words all at once, does thirteen years of grief find its object and overflow.