One day an official-in-waiting took a tour around diaoyutai in
the capital. As a temple fair was being held nearby, he saw many
women coming and going in the street. At nightfall the bustling noise
died down, with only a few carriages on the road. Just then a woman
walked by swaying her hips voluptuously. She was holding a baby in
her left arm and a rattle-drum in her right hand. At the sight of
him she shook her rattle, and they exchanged a smile. An observant
man, he thought to himself, "this woman is dressed like a lady from a wealthy
family, but she walks alone carrying a baby in her arms like a peasant.
Judging by her peculiar behavior, she must be a fox-spirit." When
he went up to talk to her, she said her husband had died a few years before
and she was living alone with her little son. "You do not need to
waste your breath," he said with a smile. "I know who you are, and
I am not afraid. I am rather poor, and people like you are reputedly
good at making money. If you can support me, I will go with you."
The woman smiled. "In that case, let's go home together!" On
his arrival he found his home quite nice and clean though not very spacious.
She was living with her parents, mother-in-law and sisters. By a
tacit agreement the agreed not to exchange names or birth places at the
dinner table. After partaking of enough wine and food, he went to
bed with the fox-woman to enjoy a pleasant night.
He went back to the city the following day to fetch a servant
boy and his bedroll, and then settled down in the woman’s house.
She turned out to be so insatiable in bed that he was hardly her match.
His health began to go downhill. In the meantime she grew more and
more peremptory, telling him to make the bed, attend to her washing and
making up, tidy her clothes, and even serve her tea and the smoking pipe.
After a while her mother-in-law and sisters also began to order him about
like a servant. Greedy after her wealth and her person, he forced
himself to swallow the humiliation. Then came one day when she told
him to sweep the toilet, and he refused. "I have been satisfying
your every wish," she said angrily. "Why don't you give in on such a trivial
matter?" The other women also chimed in to blame and scoff at him.
After that their relationship grew more and more strained. She began
to stay out at night, claiming to have been put up by some relatives.
Visitors said to be her relatives also called at the house frequently.
She always treated the to a feast and flirted with them at the table, while
the official-in-waiting was not allowed to join the company. When
he protested angrily, she glared at him, then relaxed with a snicker.
"How do you expect me to earn money otherwise? I can stop receiving
guests anytime if you agree to support the over thirty members of my family.
Can you do it?" Aware that he was unable to stay on, he went back
to the city with the servant boy to rent a house. On his return the
following day the fox-woman's house had disappeared; not a single utensil
or piece of clothing was left. In its place was a wasteland overgrown
with weeds. The official-in-waiting had come to the capital with
several hundred taels of silver, but had been dressed rather shabbily for
economy's sake. Afterward people had been surprised to find him in
splendid clothes, but he had removed their doubts by telling them that
he had moved in with his parents-in-law. Then he was again shabbily
dressed and would not give any explanation. The servant boy, however,
disclosed the secret. Someone commented, "by human standard it was
not unreasonable for the fox-woman to run away. I have seen people
doing much more outrageous things." |
