借物不還 A Gentleman Returns What He Borrows
行者笑道：「嫂嫂勿得慳吝，是必借我使使，保得唐僧過山，就送還你。我是個志誠有餘的君子，不是那借物不還的小人。」羅剎又罵道：「潑猢猻！好沒道理，沒分曉。奪子之仇，尚未報得；借扇之意，豈得如心？你不要走，吃我老娘一劍。」行者笑道：「嫂嫂勿得悭吝，是必借我使使，保得唐僧过山，就送还你。我是个志诚有余的君子，不是那借物不还的小人。」罗刹又骂道：「泼猢狲！好没道理，没分晓。夺子之仇，尚未报得；借扇之意，岂得如心？你不要走，吃我老娘一剑。」
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim said with a laugh, 'Sister-in-law, don't be so grudging. I must borrow it and use it; and once I have got the Tang Monk safely over the mountain, I'll send it back to you.'
慳吝 is stingy, grudging. 還 is the verb huán, to give back. Both 得 are dé, fixed by their position: 勿得, "do not," and 保得, "succeed in protecting."
'I am a gentleman with sincerity to spare — not one of those small men who borrow a thing and never return it.'
君子 keeps the dignified zǐ against the 小人 it is set opposite; the pair — the gentleman and the small man — is the oldest ethical contrast in the language, straight out of the Analects, and Pilgrim is deploying it on behalf of a man asking a bereaved mother for her only defence. 還 is again the verb huán.
The Rākṣasī cursed him again: 'You wretched macaque! What an outrageous want of reason — no sense of what is fitting at all.'
沒分曉, "without discernment, no idea of what is proper"; 分 is fēn. 猢猻 is the macaque, and as an insult it is a shade coarser than the 潑猴 she has been using — she has moved from calling him an ape to calling him a monkey.
'The wrong of my stolen son is not yet requited — and you expect to borrow my fan and have your heart's wish?'
The source runs the two halves together and they are rejoined here: they are strictly parallel, four characters against four, X之Y followed by a rhetorical negative, twice over. Both 得 are dé and fixed by position. 奪子之仇, "the grudge of the seized son," puts her whole case in four characters.
'You shall not go. Take a stroke of your old mother's sword!'
老娘, "your old mother," is a woman's belligerent way of naming herself, and it answers Pilgrim's 老叔, "your old uncle," from the previous fight. The mock-kinship insults are now going both ways.
Pilgrim's claim to be a 君子 with sincerity to spare, as against the 小人 who borrows and does not return, deploys the oldest ethical contrast in the language on behalf of a man asking a bereaved mother for her only defence. The formal correctness of the appeal is what makes it maddening, and she says so.
Her answer refuses the terms altogether. 奪子之仇，尚未報得 — the wrong of my stolen son is not yet requited — and against that a promise about returning borrowed property is not an argument at all. She is not disputing his honesty; she is pointing out that honesty was never the question.
The insults have now gone symmetrical. He called himself her old uncle before hitting her; she calls herself his old mother before striking. Both are claiming seniority in a family neither of them belongs to, and the mock-kinship Pilgrim introduced as a negotiating position has degenerated into a way of trading blows.