上項事情 She Knew It All Already
那婦人就將一個素的劈開，遞與師父。師父將個囫圇葷的遞與那婦人。婦人道：『怎不劈破？』師父道：『出家人不敢破葷。』那婦人道：『既不破葷，前日怎麼在子母河邊飲水高，今日又好吃鄧沙餡？』師父不解其意，答他兩句道：『水高船去急，沙陷馬行遲。』我在格子上聽見，恐怕師父亂性，便就現了原身，掣棒就打。他也使神通，噴出煙霧，叫『收了御弟』，就掄鋼叉，與老孫打出洞來也。」沙僧聽說，咬指道：「這潑賤也不知從那裡就隨將我們來，把上項事情都知道了。」那妇人就将一个素的劈开，递与师父。师父将个囫囵荤的递与那妇人。妇人道：『怎不劈破？』师父道：『出家人不敢破荤。』那妇人道：『既不破荤，前日怎么在子母河边饮水高，今日又好吃邓沙馅？』师父不解其意，答他两句道：『水高船去急，沙陷马行迟。』我在格子上听见，恐怕师父乱性，便就现了原身，掣棒就打。他也使神通，喷出烟雾，叫『收了御弟』，就抡钢叉，与老孙打出洞来也。」沙僧听说，咬指道：「这泼贱也不知从那里就随将我们来，把上项事情都知道了。」
逐句解 Line by line
“The woman broke one of the fast ones open and passed it to our master.
將 is the handling word jiāng. Pilgrim's account of the bun exchange follows the original narration closely — which makes the one word he changes worth watching for.
“Our master passed her a meat one whole and unbroken.
囫圇 is whole, unsplit — the same contrast with the splitting verb that the earlier passage drew.
“The woman said, ‘Why will you not break it open?’
The inner quotation gets its own pair of marks in the source, nested inside the outer pair around Pilgrim's own speech, and the English uses single quotation marks for the inner level. Nothing here needs a ruling.
“Our master said, ‘One who has left the household life dare not break meat.’
破葷 keeps both its senses here, exactly as in the original exchange.
“That woman said, ‘Since you dare not break meat, how was it that the other day beside the Motherhood River you drank the high water, and today you are glad enough to eat a filling of sweet bean paste?’
子母河 takes 子 as the full zǐ, being part of a name. Now compare the verbs: the demon herself said 吃水高, and Pilgrim reports her as saying 飲水高. The verb shifts between the two tellings; the thing drunk, 水高, does not.
“Our master did not take her meaning, and answered her with a couplet: ‘When the water runs high the boat goes swiftly; where the sand silts deep the horse travels slow.’
不解其意 takes 解 as jiě, to understand. Note that the judgement is Pilgrim's, not the narrator's, and the reader is free to disagree — see the commentary.
“I heard it all from the latticework, and fearing that our master's nature would be thrown into disorder I showed my own form and struck out at once with my rod.
格子 takes the light zi. 亂性 names the same danger the narration gave as 亂了真性 when the scene was played out.
“She too worked her powers, spat out smoke and mist, called ‘Take the royal brother away,’ then swung up her steel trident and fought old Monkey out of the cave.”
The inner quotation carries no verb of its own; the single 叫 does duty for both levels. 了 is the completed-action marker.
When Sha Monk heard this he bit his finger and said, “There is no telling where this vile creature can have followed us from, but she knows the whole of that earlier business already.”
從那裡 is a question — from where — so 那 is nǎ, not the pointing nà. Sha Monk is asking, not indicating. 隨將 slips 將 in to mark the action as under way. 上項事情 means the matters mentioned above, which is to say the Motherhood River business.
The retelling reaches the bun exchange and reproduces it almost word for word, which makes the one substitution stand out. Where the demon asked how he came to 吃水高 at the Motherhood River, Pilgrim's report of her has her say 飲水高. Both verbs mean taking something into the mouth, and the object is unchanged across both tellings. The phrase itself remains obscure, but the variation is evidence about it: 水高 behaves like a fixed thing that one drinks, which fits both its pointing back to that river and Tripitaka's answering couplet, where the water is high and the boat runs fast.
More interesting is Pilgrim's gloss: 師父不解其意, our master did not take her meaning. The reader watched that exchange and may well have judged it differently. Tripitaka, hit with a charge of hypocrisy, answered with a boatman's proverb that lifted both her nouns clean out of the argument — which looks less like failing to understand than like declining to engage. The novel does not adjudicate. It simply lets Pilgrim, who thinks his master slow, report as dimness what may have been the neatest thing his master did all evening.
Sha Monk supplies the conclusion, and it is the one that matters for the plot. The demon knows about the Motherhood River. She has therefore been following the party for some time, and the snatch on the road was not opportunism but the end of a stalk. He bites his finger as he says it — the gesture of someone who has just worked out something unwelcome — and the reader is left to reckon up how long they have been watched.