枕邊冷暖 Warmth and Cold at the Pillow
娘娘見說，魂飄魄散，急下亭抱起，緊摟在懷，眼中滴淚道：「孩兒，我與你久不相見，怎麼今日來宮問此？」太子發怒道：「母親有話早說；不說時，且誤了大事。」娘娘才喝退左右，淚眼低聲道：「這樁事，孩兒不問，我到九泉之下，也不得明白。既問時，聽我說：娘娘见说，魂飘魄散，急下亭抱起，紧搂在怀，眼中滴泪道：「孩儿，我与你久不相见，怎么今日来宫问此？」太子发怒道：「母亲有话早说；不说时，且误了大事。」娘娘才喝退左右，泪眼低声道：「这桩事，孩儿不问，我到九泉之下，也不得明白。既问时，听我说：
逐句解 Line by line
At these words the lady's soul took flight and her spirit scattered; she hastened down from the pavilion, caught him up, and clasped him tight to her breast, tears falling from her eyes as she said: 'My child, you and I have long been kept apart — why do you come to the palace today to ask me this?'
The shock lands in her body before it reaches her voice. 魂飄魄散 — 'the hun-soul takes flight, the po-soul scatters' — is the standard phrase for being knocked sideways by news; Chinese tradition gave a person two kinds of soul, one that rises at death and one that stays with the body, and the idiom sends both of them running at once. 眼中: 中 = zhōng. 相見: 相 = xiāng. 孩兒: 兒 = ér.
The prince said in a temper: 'Mother, if you have something to tell, tell it now;
發怒, to lose his temper. The boy has stopped being deferential; he wants it now. 太子: 子 = zǐ.
if you will not speak, you will spoil a great matter.'
誤了大事, to ruin a great undertaking. He invokes the stakes without saying what they are — the oldest way of forcing a confidence.
Only then did the lady shout her attendants away and, with tearful eyes and a low voice, say: 'This affair — had you not asked, I should have gone down to the Nine Springs without ever making it clear.
喝退左右: she barks at the attendants to get out, and the stage clears for a secret. 九泉之下, 'below the Nine Springs,' is the land of the dead — the Chinese underworld imagined as water far underground, and a phrase still reached for in formal condolences. She would have carried this to the grave. 孩兒: 兒 = ér; 不得明白 takes 得 as dé.
But since you have asked, then hear me:'
既問時, 'since you have asked.' She gives way — and the next thing out of her mouth is verse, which is what this novel switches into whenever feeling runs past what plain speech can carry.
Three years ago and more, warm was he and tender; / in the three years since, cold as ice.
Three years of a marriage measured in two words: warm, then cold. The couplet balances 三載之前 against 三年之後 and 溫又暖 against 冷如冰, and the pairing is deliberately plain — no metaphor beyond temperature. 載, read zǎi, is simply another word for 'year,' set opposite 年 for variety. This coldness is the demon's tell: he has the king's face and not his love.
On the pillow, softly, I put the question to him; / he said age had come, his body was spent, and such things were past all rousing.
枕邊 is 'at the pillow-side,' and the phrase does all the work of placing us in the bedchamber. 切切 is qiè qiè — softly and urgently, the voice you use lying next to someone in the dark; Bai Juyi uses it exactly so in 琵琶行, where the small strings sound 小弦切切如私語, 'like whispered confidences.' It is not qiē, 'to cut.' 將 is jiāng, the little hinge-word that puts the words to him. 事不興 means 'the matter would not rise,' with 興 read xīng, to be roused or to flourish: he pleaded age and a failing body. The tone of 不 shifts to bù before it. Whether the excuse is true is precisely what the prince came to find out.
The queen's shock registers in the body first — soul and spirit scattering, a headlong scramble down from the pavilion, the child crushed against her — and only then in speech. When feeling crosses that threshold the novel changes gear from prose into verse, and it does so here: the disclosure arrives as a pair of rhymed couplets, set apart from the narration around them.
The revelation is startling for how intimate it is. The prince asked whether the conjugal love was the same; she answers with the bedchamber. Warmth turned to ice, and a husband who, pressed softly on the pillow, pleaded age and a failing body. In this book's logic that settles it. A demon can steal a throne and copy a face, but he cannot reproduce the private tenderness of a marriage, and the cooling is the seam where the costume shows.
The scene also gives the plot a heart. The drowned king's cause has so far been argued in dreams and by monks; here it is felt by the woman who shared his bed, and three years of unexplained coldness acquire a sudden and grievous meaning. The chapter's abstractions — crooked and upright — take on the texture of a real marriage gone strange.