Five Spice Street

1. MADAM X'S AGE AND MR. Q'S LOOKS

When it comes to Madam X’s age, opinions differ here on Five Spice Street. One person’s guess is as good as another’s. There are at least twenty-eight points of view. At one extreme, she’s about fifty (for now, let’s fix it at fifty); at the other, she’s twenty-two.

The one who says she’s about fifty is a much-admired forty-five- year-old widow, plump and pretty. Her husband died years ago. It’s said that she often sees Madam X making herself up in her room, applying ‘‘powder an inch thick’’ that ‘‘completely masks the wrinkles in her neck’’-a neck ‘‘almost without flesh.’’ What is the widow’s vantage point for spying? She indignantly ‘‘refuses to divulge it.’’ The writer would like to interject something about this lovely widow. She’s classy, a cut above others, and plays a pivotal role in this story. She’s influenced the writer his whole life, and he, in turn, has always paid her special respect.

The one who says Madam X is twenty-two is himself twenty-two. In his words, one foggy morning, he ‘‘chanced to meet’’ Madam X by a well; ‘‘unexpectedly, she gave him a winsome smile,’’ ‘‘revealing a mouthful of white teeth.’’ And from the ‘‘uninhibited melody’’ of her laughter, ‘‘the sturdiness’’ of her teeth, the ‘‘sexiness’’ of her appearance, and various other factors, he concluded that Madam X couldn’t be a day over twenty-two. This guy works in a factory that produces coal briquettes, and that’s what he said to a neighbor as he squatted in the public toilet after getting off work and washing away the coal dust. ‘‘Hmmm,’’ the neighbor wondered. On closer examination, why did he say precisely twenty-two, and not twenty-one or twenty-three? Neighbors see each other all the time, so why hide behind this ‘‘chance meeting’’? There must be something shameful. Not to mention words that always mean trouble, like ‘‘foggy’’ and ‘‘sexiness.’’ Clearly, we must discount much of what he said.

And then there are the twenty-six other opinions, each with some validity. One respectable middle-aged man is worth mentioning. He’s a good, loyal friend of Madam X’s husband. Whenever someone mentions his good friend’s wife, he pulls at the person’s sleeve and solemnly proclaims that Madam X is thirty-five, because he’s ‘‘seen her ID card with his own eyes’’ (X’s family were outsiders on Five Spice Street). His voice would quaver. He would grow livid, but no one appreciated his chivalry. Instead, they thought he was ‘‘poking his nose into other people’s business’’; he was a ‘‘hypocrite’’; maybe he had even ‘‘tasted the sugarplum as well.’’ The man ‘‘grew thinner by the day’’ from this vilification. Dyspepsia gave him bad breath. The one who divulged this was the widow’s good friend, a graceful and charming forty-eight-year-old woman.

Once at twilight, these longtime doubts and suspicions seemed to reach a resolution, but it was short-lived. In fact, there were two resolutions. The crowd was split into contending factions. No conclusion could be reached.

It was dusk on a sultry summer day. After dinner, everyone was sitting out on the street to enjoy the cool breeze when suddenly ‘‘two balls of white light,’’ like meteors, streamed in the air and Madam X’s white silk skirt that ‘‘shone all through with light’’ flashed in front of them. The little boy was also dressed in white, but no one could tell what the material was. When their astonishment subsided, people clamored. The faction of young and middle-aged men led by the young coal worker asserted that Madam X was about twenty-eight. And judging from her ‘‘graceful, slender’’ figure, the ‘‘smooth softness’’ of her arms and legs, and various other factors, they decided that indeed she was ‘‘even younger.’’ But the crowd of young and middle-aged women led by the much-admired widow asserted that Madam X was ‘‘more than forty-five.’’ Through close inspection, they discovered that her neck had been disguised. Indeed, in several places there were ‘‘pores as large as grains of rice’’ and ‘‘layer upon layer of flabby skin.’’ They accused the men of ‘‘shamelessly peeking under the woman’s skirt.’’ Enlightened, the men inquired with great delight into the particulars of the women’s ‘‘close inspection.’’ The commotion went on for about two hours. Madam X’s husband’s good friend constituted a faction by himself: he took on the whole crowd, and several athletic young men knocked him to the ground. He ‘‘burst into tears.’’ When it was over, the widow hopped onto a stone table and, thrusting out her full breasts, shouted that she wanted ‘‘to uphold the values of traditional aesthetics.’’

Madam X’s age became a major issue on our street. When anyone left a group, he stood his own ground, and so at least twenty- eight different views flourished. No one wanted to argue continuously anymore. Madam X’s husband, a thirty-eight-year-old stud, also-without rhyme or reason-simply accepted the young coal worker’s view that his wife was twenty-two and not thirty-five, as his good friend had insisted on the basis of her ID card. Weighed down by habit and inertia, he was always tender and affectionate toward his wife. It’s said that from the very beginning he ‘‘couldn’t see a single blemish in her.’’ Consequently, we judged his opinion the most unbelievable, because ‘‘it seemed that he didn’t use his eyes to look at the truth; he let his imagination run wild. His head was filled with optimism.’’ (These are the widow’s words; the facts narrated later bear out the brilliance of her perception.)

The mystery of Madam X’s age wasn’t resolved, and later, more and more doubts arose. The day after hearing that Madam X and a certain Mr. Q, an office clerk, were involved in a furtive, sneaky way, the much-admired widow secretly entered her room and stole a look at her ID card. She noticed that the column with her age had been artfully altered, but the evidence left by the alteration not only confirmed the widow’s estimate, it ‘‘proved it precisely.’’ At the same time, another of X’s husband’s friends-a young man with sideburns — declared that Madam X wasn’t thirty-five, but thirty-two, because he and Madam X had been born in the same year and had been childhood sweethearts. Their parents had even considered betrothing them. As for X, in her youth, she had always been shy and tender with him. It was only because he hadn’t yet understood male- female relationships that he hadn’t allowed their relationship to develop. How could X suddenly have become three years older than he? Several other guys also tried to muddy the waters. Apart from the twenty-eight opinions already noted, one said she was thirty-seven and a half, another said forty-six and a half, another said twenty-nine and a half, and the last claimed twenty-six and a half. With the addition of a half-year’s difference, the issue became very profound and philosophical.

Though the matter remains unresolved, let’s take her husband’s good friend’s investigation into her ID card and postulate that she’s thirty-five. This is expedient for a number of reasons: we don’t have to consider her a young girl (after all, her son is already six years old), nor do we have to consider her an older woman (even though some, like the widow, calculate she was about fifty, which didn’t necessarily mean that she was an ‘‘older’’ woman-a subtle difference. The widow is precise and knows the nuances of language). As for her husband, he’s free to think she’s twenty-two if he likes. No one has the right to interfere. We can only wait for him to ‘‘wake up’’ on his own (the widow’s words). The stream of drivel from the young coal worker and the guys who deliberately muddied the waters is worth even less. They were merely satisfying their own needs without offering an ounce of sincerity.

The controversy about her age was part of a generally vague and contradictory image of Madam X. She is a middle-aged woman, very thin, with white teeth, a neck that’s either slender or flabby, skin that’s either smooth or rough, a voice that’s either melodious or wild, and a body that’s either sexy or devoid of sex. When this obscure image takes us by surprise and ‘‘discloses its true face,’’ everything unfathomable becomes clear, but only for an instant. Let’s put it aside for now.

We can’t approve of her husband’s impression, because it raises the most questions. Although he’s tall and sturdy, and knows how to handle himself around other people, when talk turns to his wife he acts in a feminine, even servile way. Indeed, when he talks, he suddenly becomes stupefied, as if having a seizure. He forgets the thread of the conversation and suggests that you play ‘‘hopscotch’’ with him. Right away he finds some chalk to draw a grid on the ground. If you refuse, he just forgets about you and throws himself into hopscotch.

The image of Madam X’s adulterer (that’s the way everyone referred to Mr. Q) was the most shocking of all. Out of a sense of duty, the much-admired widow had torn open a letter of his to Madam X. The letter revealed that the first time Mr. Q looked at X’s face, he saw only one immense continuously flickering saffron- colored eyeball. Then he swooned and couldn’t see a thing. To the very end of the scandal, he never got a good look at Madam X. He didn’t because he couldn’t. When Madam X was in front of him, all he could see was one saffron-colored eyeball, and when that eyeball flickered, hot tears welled up in his eyes. How could he see clearly? Perhaps his letter was deliberately mystifying, designed to win favor with Madam X’s odd, shadowy mentality. Maybe it was code or double-talk.

The odd thing is that Madam X’s confession echoed his, and it preceded their acquaintance. (This information is supplied by Madam X’s colleague. Madam X loved unburdening herself in nonsensical ways and could hold nothing back. She was uninhibited with this woman, whose temperament was diametrically opposed to hers. If it had been possible, she would have ‘‘unburdened herself to the whole world.’’) Back then, she sat in her gloomy room, happily preening and boasting, ‘‘The reason my eyeballs are so exceptional is that I pay them close attention. I’m not kidding. I observe them constantly in a mirror-even when walking, I always carry a small round mirror and constantly take it out for a look. I’d really love to see what they’re like when I’m sleeping. It’s impossible, but I just wonder what they’re up to. What is so hard at work behind these lenses? I’ve done research on their excretions. I have a microscope, which I bought especially for this purpose. I’m simply fascinated and have made a lot of headway. I’ve also collected some mirrors for my little darling Bao (note: her only son). When he gets a little older, I want to get him interested in his own eyeballs. Everyone says that eyes are windows to the soul, but no one thinks about this window. They forget this window and let it collect dust until it’s changed beyond recognition.’’ She blinked as she talked, and kept raising her eyebrows for emphasis.

Although she stressed this often, her colleague saw no proof of her supernatural ability, nor did anyone else on the whole of Five Spice Street-including her husband, who cherished his wife very much. Was Mr. Q the only person who recognized Madam X’s supernatural power? Maybe this isn’t exactly right, because the world is a lot larger than Five Spice Street. Moreover, judging by the coal worker’s statement, didn’t X have a certain indefinable ‘‘sex appeal’’? Who could guarantee that men outside Five Spice Street wouldn’t notice her supernatural sexual power when smitten by her? How could you dismiss this possibility just because her husband didn’t see it?

Or-another take on it: we certainly aren’t suggesting that Mr. Q’s perception of Madam X’s supernatural power amounts to understanding her completely and profoundly. Rather, he understands her only superficially, in a one-dimensional way. Q has one major failing: he doesn’t like to inquire into another person’s background and never asks about anyone’s business. He prefers to be alone, where he can speak his thoughts out loud and fancy himself a passionate lover. Mr. Q and Madam X became acquainted by chance and later consorted with each other for six months, but he’s never known her real age. In this respect, Mr. Q isn’t like Madam X’s husband, who assumes she’s twenty-two, but probably is closer to the truth in postulating that she’s twenty-eight or twenty-nine. Of course, this is partly out of selfishness and desire, but we won’t go into this for the moment.

Speaking of Mr. Q’s superficial understanding of Madam X and the absurdity of their relationship, we can illustrate this with a dialogue supplied by Madam X’s colleague.

X: I don’t have to look for you intentionally. You’ll surely come. (X playfully affected a drowsy expression.)

Q: Through the crowds of people, I’ve always walked toward your eyes. I’m confused and muddled, seeing nothing, including you. (Q was acting like an idiot, like a dolt.)

X: We’ll meet each other every Wednesday at a certain intersection. Even if we wanted to avoid this, we couldn’t.

Q: Perhaps I’ll turn into a long-tailed pheasant; then I’ll be able to perch on a high tree limb.

The colleague reinforced this dialogue with the following information: every time they met, their talk seemed a continuation of their last conversation; it was also completely meaningless nonsense, always on the same topic. What’s more, each time, neither greeted the other, as if they were continuing their previous encounter. But when they talked, it was as if-apart from crazy talk-any- thing else (for example, greetings, introductions, remarks about the things around them) was superfluous, discordant. At this point, the colleague covered half her mouth and said in a thin voice, ‘‘Is this a sort of ‘concealed person’-‘The Invisible’?’’ With that, her hair stood on end, and she didn’t dare continue.

As for Mr. Q’s looks, although there aren’t as many opinions about it as about Madam X’s age, opinions do differ here on Five Spice Street. We need to stress a little something: our people don’t really like talking about a man’s appearance, because they embrace the proverb: There’s no such thing as an ugly man. So what does Mr. Q look like? All we have to rely on is the odd adjective and a few unintentional changes in the tone of people’s conversations.

The first to produce an impression of Mr. Q’s looks was the widow’s forty-eight-year-old friend. She thought ‘‘there was nothing remarkable’’ about Mr. Q (she curled her lip and spat). She ‘‘couldn’t even remember what he looked like,’’ ‘‘he seemed to be a big dumb guy,’’ ‘‘anyhow, he couldn’t be more ordinary.’’ After saying this, she felt she’d lost some dignity and immediately changed the subject. She began talking of the miraculous effects of qigong.

[1] As she spoke, she tossed her head, as if to rid her mind of ‘‘disturbing thoughts.’’

On the surface, the women of Five Spice Street had no interest in Mr. Q’s looks, never mind observing him in detail. If you put the question to them directly, they would answer in three words: he is ugly. Did the women of Five Spice Street never make eye contact with Mr. Q? Actually, that’s not the case. After all, those adjectives and the strange tone of voice used to describe him were almost all produced by these women. Speaking of Q, they hedged and evaded, talking lightly and indirectly. Doesn’t this show tremendous interest and sensitivity? Sometimes they affected indifference. One might raise the topic, circle all around it, and then return to sounding out a second person so that this second person would bring up what the first had wanted to say. Thus, they enjoyed a sense of satisfaction.

All of Five Spice Street’s women were masters of this conversational art. For example, the widow’s female friend, after talking at length about qigong, touched on ethnography, leading to a line from a folk song: ‘‘Southern Women and Northern Men.’’ When the other person fully understood this line, she would shift the topic from northern men to a man of big stature. Then, both would come around to the issue of Q’s looks. Through suggestive language they bounced this topic back and forth until dark, when each happily exclaimed, ‘‘I had a really good time today!’’

The second to come up with an impression of Q was a lame woman who hadn’t been able to get out of bed for years. She was twenty-eight, all bones. A kind of ray emanated from her sunken, jet- black eyes. That ray at any moment could force young men to ‘‘retreat thirty feet’’ (the widow’s words). The first day that Q came to Five Spice Street, she saw him once. At the time, she was opening the curtains next to her bed (of course, her bed was next to the window). When Q walked by, their eyes met. Summoning all her strength, the woman fixed him with her gaze for a full twenty-five seconds (her estimate). At first, Mr. Q was flustered, and with one hand warded off the ray from her eyes, but then, instead of ‘‘retreating thirty feet,’’ he reluctantly smiled and walked on. The woman opened her window with a peng and shouted shrilly at Mr. Q’s receding figure, ‘‘A wolfhound! A wolfhound! Please look out for thunder!’’ Later, feeling sentimental, the lame woman said, Mr. Q certainly wasn’t like a wolf, but rather like a catfish instead: he had a barbel-like mustache. When he shaved, he got rid of it, but if you looked carefully, you could still see it. The one who looked like a wolfhound was the scoundrel who had taken her virginity years earlier. Q merely resembled him in certain ways. Precisely because of this, as soon as she set eyes on him, she was incensed and launched an attack. That’s the only way she could express her hatred.

Still, Q wasn’t the first who looked like him. Over the years, she had cussed out countless people. That’s the only way she could maintain her equanimity. She added that she hated the wolfhound most-well, not for taking her virginity, but for daring after just one night to ‘‘take off without a word of farewell.’’ This was enough to torment a woman with regret for a lifetime. If only he would repent, she said, and then kneel before her and beg forgiveness, she could consider forgiving him for deflowering her. This, however, didn’t mean that she wanted even a hint of a relationship, because after ‘‘having her heart broken’’ that night, she became ‘‘clear-headed and methodical.’’ Had she with great difficulty vanquished external and internal pressures and become an iron woman who wanted to suffer all over again? No! All the guys harboring this illusion were wrong. The lame woman’s description of Q certainly couldn’t be taken as true, because she thought Q resembled her former lover, whose very existence was doubtful. Never mind that she hadn’t gotten a good look at Q. No one had seen her lover either, and even she couldn’t say for sure what he looked like. Was there any chance that she had pulled this out of thin air? Or was it possible that she was deliberately spreading misinformation and taking the opportunity to raise her own status? Why didn’t she even have a photo or two of her lover? (If she had, wouldn’t she have shown it around a long time ago?!) Even worse, perhaps there’d been no lover, and that’s why she had stared at Q and picked a quarrel. Was this merely her way of flirting and vamping? (When foxes can’t eat grapes, they say grapes are catfish.) If this was so, then we on Five Spice Street should congratulate Q for not falling into her trap. When all is said and done, it would have been ten thousand times worse to be seduced by her than by X.

The third to notice Q’s looks was a woman who claimed she was X’s younger sister and also that she herself was twenty-nine. (Nobody could prove this.) When Q first arrived on Five Spice Street, she and her older sister had been together the whole day ‘‘from beginning to end.’’ She had ‘‘carefully taken stock of Q for a long time’’ and noticed that Q’s appearance looked ‘‘very familiar.’’ Even though ‘‘there was not the slightest similarity’’ to her sister’s appearance, it seemed as if ‘‘there was a kind of invisible connection to it.’’ But as to any special characteristics of Q’s looks, she weaseled and said, “You’ll know when you see him,’’ ‘‘It’s something you feel but can’t describe,’’ ‘‘Anyhow, there’s something a little bizarre,’’ “You can’t judge him by traditional aesthetics,’’ and so forth. You knew she was covering up for her sister. Her words revealed neither intelligence nor clear-headed analysis. She’s muddle-headed and obstinate; her biased views are worthless.

We have one more piece of information for the readers: this younger sister, or anyhow the one who called herself a younger sister, abandoned her simple and tolerant husband later on to take up with another man. It was an ‘‘amicable settlement,’’ and they are still on ‘‘good terms with each other.’’ This made everyone realize: a person like X is certainly not an immortal set apart from the world. Careful analysis shows that she carries a malignant disease (affected people don’t realize they’re sick). She also can manipulate people behind their backs. Isn’t she the one who sent the whole of Five Spice Street into foolish turmoil, making everyone wild with lust? Without setting foot outside her house, she stirred things up as if mustering an army, made it impossible for all the people the length of the street to defend themselves, and created bedlam. Where did her power come from? Why were people close to her (including her husband, younger sister, son, and Q) completely taken in and changed until they did odd and inexplicable things-and moreover did them brazenly without a thought? Was this all caused by X’s supernatural ability? Doesn’t this sound dubious? What kind of education had X received to grow up like this? It’s a riddle. In any case, all it took was for her to move her eyeballs and people on Five Spice Street would break out in a rash. When she talked to herself in the middle of the night, everyone on the street listened intently in their dreams. According to the writer’s tally, at least two persons wanted to sacrifice their lives for her under any circumstances. Eventually, they moved to roadside work sheds and lived tragic lives filled with hardship, all because of X.

The fourth person who noticed Mr. Q’s appearance was a widow so old she looked like dry bamboo. She wore a little black felt hat on her little bald head, and she nodded all day long, like a chicken pecking rice. It was quite by chance that she noticed Mr. Q. At dusk on a winter day, a deliveryman was unable to pull his load of coal to her home because of the steep grade. The old dame looked all around for assistance. Only one person came to help: Q. Afterwards, she grabbed the front of Q’s coat by the buttons to steady herself. She looked him all over and then finally exclaimed, ‘‘What a large face-broad enough to hold mountains and rivers!’’ A fleeting impulse caused her to make this remark. Before long, she forgot the incident, even Q. If someone mentioned Q, she confused Q with one of her cousins from long ago (whether this cousin actually existed was extremely doubtful) and thought of them as one and the same. She talked at length of how marvelous her cousin’s ‘‘square face’’ was. All the while, she nodded, pecking rice. She was very old and began hallucinating easily. Later, she hallucinated almost continuously. Her eyes would cross and she’d swallow saliva while she talked. Once begun, there was no end to it-gudong gudong. It was distressing. Someone raised doubts: had the old woman hallucinated what happened at twilight on that winter day? She was so old and her vision so blurry, could she have been mistaken about who it was? Suppose that the one who helped lug the coal was in fact her nephew (she insisted that this nephew hadn’t entered her house for more than twenty years), and that because of the grudge she’d felt toward him for more than twenty years, she had purposely concealed his benevolence and instead had given the credit to a certain Q, who was then being talked about: this was entirely possible and reasonable. From her wild talk about his face being ‘‘roomy enough to hold mountains and rivers,’’ you could spot the flaws in her statement. Her impression of Q’s looks boiled down to one point: he had a very broad face. But ‘‘holding mountains and rivers,’’ this shocking image-applied so impulsively-must have some other meaning.

Had the old woman been rejuvenated in a trance and hallucinated that she’d run into a sweetheart from the past, clung fast to him, and persisted in a passionate daydream? Did this have anything to do with ‘‘hallucinogens’’? Someone raised another doubt: was she pretending to be crazy in order to monopolize Q? Q dominated everyone’s conversations-everyone was interested in him- and now through chicanery this old woman had appropriated him for herself, and insisted that he was some old lover from thirty years ago, even though it was clear that Q was young. She brooked no disagreement. If this world conformed to her wishes, who knew what might happen?

The fifth who noticed Q’s appearance was a man, the husband. As the saying goes, Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. But in today’s world, that isn’t quite right, because even rivals in love see the beauty in each other. Madam X’s husband is unusually handsome (the widow, the widow’s female friend, and everyone living on Five Spice Street think so). Too bad he was completely in the dark about it: even if someone told him, he’d be surprised and then immediately forget it. He was uninterested in his own appearance and cared nothing about other people’s opinions of him. Perhaps it can be said that he was ‘‘self-confident.’’ His feelings were like a baby’s-innocent and good, but a little stubborn. As a cuckold, he probably drew more attention than anyone else on Five Spice Street, but he acted just the same: letting well enough alone, calmly going about his business, as if nothing were happening. The women led by the widow had thoroughly researched his attitudes and finally produced a physiological explanation ‘‘inappropriate to explain’’ in front of others. (When she mentioned the ‘‘reason,’’ the widow poked her female friend in the waist and flushed a deep red.) The husband had only one word for Q’s appearance: handsome. Once he unintentionally mentioned this to his good friend (the one who had looked into Madam X’s age), and after his friend’s wife heard this, it spread fast. This was a great revelation for Five Spice Street residents, who had been speculating, but without much to show for it; now all their doubts vanished. They greatly admired the widow’s genius for probing, especially when they went a step further and came up with the term ‘‘eunuch’s psychology’’ to describe the husband. What joy they felt at having come up so spontaneously with this diagnosis.

Everything happened behind his back. Indifferent, Madam X’s husband shut the door as usual and went on with his days, and as usual was haughty and cold toward other women. He walked with his head high and his chest thrust out, making it clear that he didn’t look at any woman except X. It really drove the women of Five Spice Street crazy. True, they couldn’t all be considered beautiful, but there were some who were sophisticated and elegant, and others who were warm and affectionate. The widow, for example. In no respect could Madam X-this skinny monkey-compare with her. And she herself said that although she was more than forty-five years old, she ‘‘had never been defeated by any man,’’ ‘‘she wouldn’t mind if as many as two hundred men showed up at once.’’ She whispered all this to X’s colleague, who broadcast it to all the residents of Five Spice Street. She made so much noise that all the middle-aged and young men (and even some of the old men) were squinting and itching to try. The widow also said (in a loud voice this time) that his haughtiness was a pose; she didn’t think it was genuine but rather showed his desperate inner struggle to keep his lust under control. Whenever-with her full breasts thrust out-she encountered him, she ‘‘saw with a sidelong glance’’ that he was ‘‘shaking all over’’ and ‘‘twitching as if insane.’’ Just ‘‘one look from her’’ would cause his line of defense to ‘‘collapse.’’ But, as everybody knew, she had always been an honest, straightforward woman. Ever since her husband died, she had cultivated herself through meditation, so now she had few desires and no interest in this sort of game. Consequently, his longing for her was nothing more than a hopeless dream. She would ‘‘never be moved by it.’’

There were many other opinions about Q’s appearance, but for reasons of space, we won’t mention them. The opinions of these five people produce a blurred, mutually conflicting impression: Q is a large man, either ugly or handsome, or with nothing remarkable about him, with a broad square face and an odd expression-he looks a little like a catfish.

We still haven’t mentioned the opinion of an extremely important person: X. How does X view Q? How could we forget her? Without her, there would be no story! Her image of Q was simple: ‘‘I’ve never laid eyes on him.” Someone doubted this: wasn’t X joking — playing with words? No, ‘‘what she said was sincere’’ (the female colleague’s words). In truth, X didn’t look at people with her eyes. (Here, she was much different from Q. Q wanted to look at people with his eyes, but some obstacle always prevented him. For example, when he looked at X, his tear glands turned into a major obstacle. Thus, Q’s disposition wasn’t nearly as clear-cut as X’s, but was always hovering between seeing and not seeing, always ambiguous.) Someone else suggested: maybe X has never laid eyes on her hus- band-this handsome man-either, and so she has no idea that he’s so handsome and therefore she mistakenly cast him off and got hung up on ‘‘the ugly’’ Q? Wasn’t this the most regrettable thing she’d ever done in her whole life? Not necessarily. You have to realize that X hasn’t always been like this. When she was young, she chose this handsome man only with her eyes; she reeled him in and they became husband and wife. X’s personality grew ever more eccentric and inappropriate since she began her occult practices (about this, later). After she bought the mirrors and the microscope from the junk shop, she even announced that her eyes ‘‘had retired.’’ That is, except for things in the mirror, she looked at nothing. Some people were unconvinced, for this presumed that X hadn’t seen Q and didn’t know what he looked like, and thus she didn’t have any way of knowing if he even existed. How could she have a relationship with him? Here something is worth emphasizing: that is, X definitely knows what Q looks like, though without seeing Q with her eyes. Instead, she senses him by means of a supernatural ability. This is ten thousand times truer than seeing. (X’s own words.) This only seems absurd. According to the colleague’s report: on a certain fine morning, she saw X-as usual-walking along the crowded main street, looking in her mirror and taking bold strides, as if she had some sure plan in mind. The colleague swooped down. Scurrying up, she seized hold of X’s shoulders and carefully took stock of her eyes. Her appraisal of X’s eyeballs left her ‘‘speechless’’: ‘‘all the life had gone out of them, and they had lost any ability to see.’’ The colleague sighed sympathetically. ‘‘It’s self-glorification and a hairsplitting mentality that have poisoned her. If she were a little more objective, she would have noticed a long time ago another woman right next to her who was in fact much more remarkable than she, though she had never openly entered into a contest with her. X wouldn’t have ended up this way if she’d been aware of it.’’ (From this, we can also infer: in his letter, Q’s strange description of X’s eyeballs was probably something he imagined.)

Okay, since X did not see Q with her eyes but ‘‘sensed’’ him, we’ll take a look at what this ‘‘Q’’ she sensed was all about. X’s younger sister divulged that X had said that Q was the man she would meet at the intersection on Wednesdays: he wore a woolen overcoat (actually, Q didn’t even have a woolen overcoat), his voice was deep (this was essentially true), and his eyes possessed at least five different colors. (How could this be?!) She had no interest in men with sonorous voices and monochromatic eyes. Now she had met Q, and his eyes were precisely the eyes she had ‘‘sought in her dreams.’’ She didn’t have to mention his deep voice. With Q it was ‘‘the second time she fell in love.’’ When she said this, X lost control, ripping a sheet of white paper into scraps with her long, slender fingers and then tossing them into the air, where they flew up like butterflies. Such behavior suggests ‘‘hallucinatory drugs.’’

‘‘Hallucinatory drugs’’ also suggests another of X’s strange hobbies. Anyone who looks for X knows that X hides in the bedroom to engage in some kind of activity involving the sounds of jumping and other noises whose cause is unknown. At such times, through a crack in the door, she sometimes tells people, ‘‘Please wait a moment.’’ The wait might be long or short, sometimes ten minutes and sometimes more than half an hour. While she engaged in this secret activity, it didn’t matter who it was; no one-not even her husband or her darling son-could go in. Because of the curtains, no one knew what she was doing. It’s to the widow’s credit that Five Spice Street’s residents aren’t still fretting over this. It was a rainy night when the much-admired widow obtained first-hand information. (She announced that her method was a secret.) It was dark outside the window. Listening to the rain, the widow reported to several residents that what X was concealing inside the room was ‘‘downright dull’’ and she ‘‘couldn’t figure out what possible pleasure lay in it.’’ Her activity was nothing more than skipping naked back and forth in front of the mirror like a little child (she had a large full-length mirror, bought second-hand; the image was unusually clear and true). Then she kicked, bent over, and turned around and around to appraise her waist, her breasts, her rear end, her legs, and other spots. ‘‘She struck a flirtatious pose’’ and ‘‘was unbearably vulgar.’’ In fact, you couldn’t say her breasts were the least bit full; at most, they weren’t any better than a teenage girl’s. A mature woman naturally ought to have mature beauty-a lingering, winning charm in order to bewitch men. What did such childish breasts and a tiny wasp-like waist count for? Could this world be upside down? Why was Madam X so happy with herself, going so far as to look at her reflection for an hour or two every day? Did she behold a non-existent phantom? It’s said that this is a symptom of hysteria. After finishing her report, the widow told the residents: Madam X’s inner world is arrogant, narcissistic, and selfish. She attaches so much importance to her body: every day, she closes the door and looks at it, and yet to the people all around, she claims ‘‘not to use her eyes to see them,’’ her eyes were ‘‘retired,’’ she ‘‘didn’t have any feelings’’ because she had ‘‘grown a plate of steel on her body.’’ After hearing the widow’s report, Five Spice Street’s residents felt a load had been lifted from their shoulders.

The people of Five Spice Street had bitterly despised and feared X’s behavior behind closed doors, and they’d come up with a lot of strange ideas: one said that X was manufacturing dynamite in the house and getting ready to set it off in the public toilet; one said she was raising scorpions and planning to retaliate against the people who had talked about her; one said she was practicing certain ‘‘arts’’ and could force a person into the grave using only her idiodynamics; and still another, who thought himself clever, said that X was working on ways to make herself invisible, because he had once peeped inside, and no one was there, yet he had heard scuffling and kicking. Of course, the widow later refuted this. After learning what Madam X was doing inside, some gossips thought that people would want to drill holes in the wall of Madam X’s home and wait to feast their eyes. What would they wait for? What would they get from it? Nothing. Not only did crowds of people not drill holes but they never brought this matter up again.

2. MADAM X'S OCCUPATIONS

Madam X and her husband manage a small snack shop located on the corner. They sell sauteed broad beans, fried broad beans, five spice melon seeds, plain melon seeds, sauteed peanuts, fried peanuts, and so on. They employ no workers. Every day the husband goes somewhere and hauls back fresh broad beans, peanuts, and melon seeds. Then they wash, cook, and sell them. Generally, they’re extremely busy, and all year long, aromas waft from this corner. We’ve mentioned that Madam X and her family are outsiders. Before coming here, what kind of work did they do? They never want to talk about this. Only when forced will they reply, with a smile, ‘‘We made our living by searching garbage heaps for odds and ends.’’ Finally, when there was a general survey of the residents, in the column on the form having to do with their prior work, they wrote ‘‘party cadres.’’ The neighbors were greatly surprised: if they had been ‘‘government employees’’ before coming here, then how had they sunk so low as to be running a snack shop, totally unrelated to the government? From being government employees to selling broad beans was like dropping from heaven into hell: had they caused some trouble in their office and been driven out? The residents of Five Spice Street believed that something terribly shocking was being covered up. Day and night, they felt uneasy. For example: why couldn’t these two ever just be like the others on Five Spice Street and become part of the community? Certainly no one had stopped them from doing this! Why did they always have to engage in secretive activity, causing others to be doubly wary and suspicious?

On the surface, they seemed urbane and ordinary, but the people of Five Spice Street sniffed out something not quite right-completely unusual-from their reserved manner and distracted demeanor. They intuitively sensed that they were dissidents, and on this basis excluded them from the Five Spice Street community. But these two not only continued their snack stand with a clear conscience, they gloried in it, as if this were some high-class livelihood worth flaunting. They also indoctrinated their son, Little Bao: if someone asked him what-ideally-he would choose to do when he grew up, he answered without hesitation, ‘‘Work in a snack shop.’’ The snack shop is Madam X and her husband’s public occupation. Madam X also has a secret business that everyone knows about; she chose a complicated name for it: ‘‘diversion to dispel boredom- or mischief-making.’’ Nobody can say for sure what this is: when others investigate, they learn nothing. If you question those who take part in it, it’s even more tangled and unclear, for they explain things in double-talk: ‘‘If you close your eyes, you’ll see the spectacle of spaceships and the Earth colliding,’’ ‘‘a twig poked through a red heart and a blue heart and hanging in midair,’’ ‘‘ten articles of clothing are hanging in the closet; if you take one out, you can sense the body heat in it.’’

From the first day that X came to Five Spice Street, she stealthily pursued this ‘‘diversion to dispel boredom.’’ Most who seek her out are boys and girls in their early teens. Her activity continues smoothly when they are present, but she doesn’t take any fee. (To tell the truth, Madam X’s expression is unfathomable; it’s still debatable whether she even sees these people who show up in her room.) Once, her activity was investigated by the authorities; then, because of insufficient evidence, she got away with paying a 100-yuan fine and spending a week being forced to study relevant regulations. After this incident, Madam X became even more aggressive and reckless. She didn’t mind being degenerate. What kind of activity is Madam X engaged in? What does her activity lead to, and does it have any influence? Why-as if possessed-do young boys and girls go to her small room? What lures them? It isn’t just the government’s investigative unit but also the much-admired widow who can’t answer these questions.

The widow broke into Madam X’s inner room numerous times at night, using her admirable spirit of exploration, and spent several nights with Madam X and her young confederates. She left no stone unturned in her questioning. She even placed a stethoscope, cold, on the napes of their necks to listen from behind their backs. She took great pains but learned very little indeed.

The widow discovered they were in a kind of helpless state. They sat next to each other, propped against the wall, staring into little mirrors taken from Madam X’s table, unmoving-like porcelain dolls. They kept this up all night long: it was deadly boring. The widow stood in the middle of the room, feeling an immaterial blast. Weird multi-colored flames seemed to leap from the mirrors into midair and broiled her until she perspired. She thought of leaving, but felt uneasy, so, gritting her teeth, she stood and stared: there wasn’t any fire, and the porcelain figures sat leaning against the wall, unmoving, as always. Her expression tense and absorbed, Madam X was observing things on the glass plate with her microscope. At last, she said, ‘‘That’s all.’’ Then everyone’s face glowed red. (Clear-eyed people could see that actually Madam X was talking to herself when she said ‘‘That’s all.’’) On the way home, these kids were high as kites, chasing and teasing each other, all of a sudden climbing trees and leaping down, and at the same time loudly cursing Madam X as a ‘‘scoundrel,’’ ‘‘making fun of people when she has nothing better to do,’’ ‘‘experimenting with our nerves.’’ ‘‘She thinks she’s a fantastic genius, but in fact she’s no better than dog shit.’’ ‘‘What would happen if everyone played this kind of game?!’’ ‘‘Should the government restrict such activity?’’ And so on and on. It seemed difficult for them to supply any information, because they couldn’t grasp what they had experienced. They were indifferent to its significance. Perhaps we can say that they went into Madam X’s home because of a mysterious summons which often appeared on a starlit night. At the time, they didn’t analyze it carefully and quickly forgot the intermittent disturbing sound. Now the strange sound is particularly intense, like bees singing. It comes from the demonic mirrors Madam X is fiddling with. Each mirror is a wonder that sends indescribable things into those numb eardrums, thus causing young people unwittingly to open their mouths wide as if inspired. We can also say that they go to Madam X’s home because they mistakenly believe that she is one of them; they want to advance with her hand in hand. But after entering her room and seeing Madam X’s numb expression and her deliberately superior act, they can’t help but feel indignant. And then how can they still remember the original notion?

The widow was very disappointed. But she didn’t believe in demons and had to get to the bottom of this. One after another, she took each by the scruff of the neck and shook the truth out. They were as if in a trance, all vague about the matter: ‘‘My body felt as if it wasn’t my own-I was speechless with happiness.’’ ‘‘I became confident of my lungs and heart.’’ ‘‘Starlight blazed overhead; I was flying.’’ ‘‘Secretly getting revenge, but abhorring the one who goaded me into it’’-and other strange talk like this. They might as well have said nothing. So, did the widow draw a blank? Could she think of no other way to get to the essence of this business? Hardly. Our widow did not back away from difficulties. After several days of painful vacillation, she had a brainstorm. She made up her mind to find another way to break through. She gave chase for a long time. In a corner of a remote alley, she nabbed Madam X’s husband-this strapping guy, this virginal and handsome man. Rubbing her breasts against his arms, she brought her face close to his arm and caught him completely off guard. Below is their conversation:

The widow: Which part of a woman’s body is the most attractive? (She repeatedly hinted with her breasts and blushed with excitement.)

Madam X’s husband: Why are you blocking my way?

The widow: I’m asking: What part of a woman’s body does a man look at first? What causes his blood to boil until he can’t control himself? Answer this question or I won’t let you go.

Madam X’s husband (looking embarrassed): It’s complicated.

I’m not an expert. It depends on the man, and there are all kinds of men with different standards… The most attractive? Hey, why won’t you leave me alone? Do you take me for a fool?

The widow (despairing): There’s no single criterion? Is there no justice in this world? If demons control men, what’s the meaning of life? You guys really are pathetic!

Madam X’s husband: Don’t be unreasonable. You’re asking for trouble.

The widow: What do you know? You mama’s boy: have you ever experienced overwhelming joy? Have you ever been excited by a mature woman? You’re afraid even to try, aren’t you? You must be suffering from a disease! Is your wife’s ‘‘dispelling boredom’’ connected to your illness? Answer me. Don’t think I’m interested in you. All my life I’ve abhorred baby-like men, androgynous men like you! Can such a person kindle anyone’s desire? I’ve always looked down on you. Sorry, what did I just ask? Oh yes, what does your wife do at night?

Madam X’s husband: None of your business! You’re crazy! (He withdrew from her ample breasts and left, swinging his arms.)

The widow (as if waking from a dream): Ah!

Our widow had been humiliated. Should she retreat and distance herself from Madam X’s family? Of course not. Did she represent only her own bias? In fact, these blows only strengthened her belief, and consequently, she grew even more obdurate. Moreover, before long, the situation took a turn for the better. This time, the widow didn’t act as usual: she didn’t announce the results of her investigation. She didn’t say even one word. The inside situation she understood was exclusively in her mind, and that world was rich and colorful. When someone impatiently asked about the inside situation, she narrowed the spidery lines around her eyes and squeezed out a significant sort of smile. Hands behind her back, she circled around that person a few times and then slapped him on the butt and laughed out loud. She laughed and laughed until the one who had asked the question flushed purple and didn’t dare look up. Then she came up to him slowly and whispered in his ear, ‘‘Which do you prefer-a malnourished young girl or a healthy grown woman?’’ At the same time, she leered and pinched him until he was scared out of his wits. Finally, she shouted, ‘‘What do you take me for? Get out of here!’’

At the same time, all the passersby saw a strange design on the whitewashed wall of Madam X’s home. It was a charcoal drawing of a penis, a crude and childish work. Below it was a postscript: an illustration of a certain person’s second occupation. Madam X gave no evidence she was angry; instead it was as if she’d found a treasure. She was excited for several days and recited these words to herself over and over: had she finally met a kindred soul in the darkness? Where was this person whose feelings struck a chord with her own? Why did he (she) contact her in this odd way? She thought and thought and finally had an inspiration: she decided to go ahead regardless. She placed a long table in the doorway and, light as a swallow, jumped onto the table and lectured to the air. The Five Spice Street crowds thronged there to watch the show. Everything she said seemed to be about sex, including ‘‘sexual intercourse’’ and other matters offensive to their ears. She sobbed as she lectured, and her throat quivered in a few key places. She said a friend would arrive soon; she thought about him or her day and night. She also said the thing she was involved in was the best, most wonderful, lofty thing: one day, it would all be clear. To make this happen, she had lived through her microscope for a long time. ‘‘This thing is so powerful!’’

‘‘Her speech made us want to try it; I think she’s a great psychologist,’’ the coal worker said earnestly, sighing with admiration.

‘‘This kind of woman is so hot!’’ Old Meng, the fortune-teller from the pharmacy, was a little intoxicated as he narrowed his eyes. ‘‘I’m more than eighty years old-been with a lot of women in my time. Nowadays, some young people are quite unreasonable and don’t have any respect for their elders, and even say we’re just old rubbish. In fact, we might be better at it. One day, I’ll prove it: sexual prowess isn’t affected by aging. Not only isn’t it affected, but it gets even better with age. I can go on forever, but they can’t-these young sons-of-bitches!’’ He raised his skinny fist to show off his strength to the coal worker and the other young guys. ‘‘I’m much tougher than they are! If you don’t believe it, just try me! Madam X’s speech has made me feel young again. But her talking about this in public shows she has a problem. It’s okay if a woman is horny, but flaunting it in public is too much! How can that be acceptable? Have we all gone crazy?’’

‘‘She meant these words for me,’’ Madam X’s first youthful love said. ‘‘She’s been repressed a long time. I used to sympathize with her. Now she’s a complete mess-talking nonsense all the time, no matter what the occasion. This has totally ruined my impression of her. What does she mean by this publicity stunt? When I saw her standing there, I felt only hatred in my heart: all at once, my wild love for her vanished without a trace. Although everything began because of me, from this point on, I swear I am her enemy: she’s wounded my pride too much. How can a woman talk in public of her private affairs? Let’s say a woman’s lust is heating up and it’s hard for her to control herself-still, she should do things in secret. This woman is just the opposite: ordinarily she pretends to be decent. If you proposition her, she turns you down cold, holds you at arm’s length, and you would never imagine that she could pull something like this! I really can’t stand it!’’

The audience was growing larger: realizing that something was amiss, Madam X’s husband worked his way anxiously through the crowd, intent on reaching Madam X’s side. He was sweating profusely. At last, he shoved his way to a spot behind her and tugged at a corner of her clothing, trying to warn her of the growing danger. The other men thought he was going to monopolize Madam X and shouted angrily. They tripped him, and he fell over.

Madam X’s emotions ran high, her daydreams came one on top of another, and she paid no attention to anything around her. She had no idea that someone was tugging at her, nor did she know who was in the audience. In fact, she hadn’t expected anyone to listen to her lecture; she was talking to the people she only imagined. Flickering waves of light, radiated from her eyes and changed the people’s faces into grotesque shapes. But from her own point of view, her shining eyes were blind-a sorry state of affairs indeed. If we could have chosen, we’d have preferred a pair of ordinary eyes to eyes shining with this strange light. Madam X herself wasn’t sorrowful: she said she was accustomed to being blind; nothing suited her better. She also exulted over now being so ‘‘free and unfettered,’’ ‘‘taking to the water like a duck’’! She kept talking like this, bubbling over with sentiment and wit. As she talked, she sometimes interrupted herself to say, ‘‘I’m so moved by my own words, I could almost die.’’ This was indeed a strange sort of consciousness: who could be so ‘‘moved’’? Even ‘‘moved to death’’?

Madam X was unaware that the crowd was squirming: things were coming to a head. Madam X’s husband saw the danger signs and prepared to risk his life to protect his wife. He stopped trying to dissuade her, for he knew her nature and understood this wouldn’t have the least effect. He watched tensely, waiting.

A crowd’s emotions are always subtle, like the colored glass in a kaleidoscope. The audience had listened in a confusing mist to her nonsense for more than half an hour, straining to ponder the significance of her words. The men in the front row stretched out their arms, longing to pinch this young woman’s cheeks or thighs; the men in the back were filled with indignation, wishing they could take the places of the ones in front. Suddenly, someone threw the first melon peel from the back (someone said it was from the widow’s window). It scored a lucky hit and stuck to Madam X’s left cheek. And then stones and tiles rained down on her. Her husband risked his life to protect her, and the two of them fled into their little house. They didn’t even dare breathe. Yet their window was smashed, leaving a huge hole, and Madam X’s calf was so badly hurt that ‘‘for two weeks, she couldn’t work in the snack shop.’’ It appeared that Madam X had lost: maybe she could pretend to be blind and not look at others, but the eyes of the public were fixed on her every movement. She was forced to recognize that the crowd’s emotions were dangerous and volatile, and this left her even more dispirited. Her husband was so distressed that he sighed and groaned continuously and ran all over the city as if he were crazy, in search of ‘‘an herbal cure for the injury.’’

After two weeks, Madam X’s leg wound was healed, but she hadn’t recovered from the trauma to her soul. She had to work in the snack shop for her livelihood, but the rest of the time, Madam X was in a stupor: sometimes after she woke up, she didn’t even recognize the people close to her (her husband and son) but called them ‘‘those people.’’ The game of ‘‘dispelling boredom’’ naturally was also done away with. In her stupor, she ate almost nothing. She was on the way to becoming a transparent ghost, wandering back and forth in silence. Every day, when it was time to turn on the lights, the people of Five Spice Street saw the handsome husband leading his darling son, Little Bao, by the hand and supporting a pallid transparent shadow with the other hand for a leisurely walk along the crow-black river. They walked a few steps and then stopped, listening intently to the billowing river. Their son kept skipping along and throwing stones into the water: he was happy. People gathered together and remarked: ‘‘Look, ‘the Invisible!’’’ ‘‘This is what trying to please the public leads to.’’ ‘‘It’s all over for her.’’

People were too optimistic: this situation didn’t last long. Suddenly one day, the husband’s second good friend (the one who said he’d been in love with Madam X as a teenager) saw him walking on the street in high spirits with a large cardboard box clutched to his chest. Curious, he went up to him and, despite resistance, brazenly opened the box: inside was a microscope. That night Madam X’s room was brightly lit, as if it were a holiday. The widow goaded her good friend to go in and look around; she saw that she had ‘‘polished all the mirrors and placed them in a conspicuous spot.’’ Her face was glowing ‘‘orange,’’ her hair was ‘‘as black as lacquer,’’ the husband was even more ‘‘jubilant,’’ and ‘‘every other minute, he jumped up uneasily and hugged her around the shoulders,’’ as if afraid that she was about to lose her human shape and change into something unfathomable, but also as if ‘‘giddy with good fortune.’’ His sickening sweetness was enough to ‘‘make a person throw up.’’ Once again, the demonic mirrors issued a summons, and at night teenage boys and girls tossed and turned anew and grew moody. For reasons yet unknown, a few stood naked at the side of the street, and each was fined five yuan by the police. The next day at dusk, one after another, they made their way into Madam X’s small room and sat there for two hours like imbeciles. Then, as before, they cursed Madam X as ‘‘boring’’ and ‘‘dull’’ and taunted her mercilessly. One even vowed that the next time he would steal her shoes. (But the next time, as soon as he went in, despite himself, he calmed down and became just like a porcelain doll. Then, after he left, he once more vowed that the next time he would steal her shoes for sure.)

Apparently only one person knew what Madam X did at night: her husband. Under his first good friend’s close questioning, he divulged a little. From what he said, you could tell that Madam X must have explained everything she was doing, but this stud-be- cause of his perpetual innocence-always perceived his wife’s deeds with a child’s mind, even its imagination and logic, and added some sweet images and obfuscations. When asked about Madam X’s nighttime activities, he answered, ‘‘Observing the stars.’’ Blushing, he added, ‘‘Just imagine: all the mirrors fly out the window, huhuhu, and enter outer space, and then with another huhuhu they fly back — isn’t this work absolutely noble? It’s precisely because this work draws away all her energy that the microscope is her lifeblood.’’

Along with his own peculiar way of thinking, each person develops a few small hobbies. For example, the husband was really interested in hopscotch: indeed, he could hopscotch any time of the day or night. His wife’s hobby was no different, and nobody should make a big fuss about it. His good friend was listening patiently to his drivel and thinking: this guy has gone mad. Then he reflected that everyone close to Madam X acted a little like a lunatic; even their son, Little Bao, had shown symptoms of ‘‘being addicted to looking in the mirror.’’ Although he tried hard to pull father and son back to reality in order to restrain Madam X’s extreme inclinations, it was always futile. The husband finally summed up his views: ‘‘My wife is a most ordinary person.’’ His friend shook his head. He could do nothing about the husband’s infantile feelings. He could only watch the developments and await a turn for the better. Was Madam X really involved in astronomy? Was everything as simple as this? The handsome husband’s intellect was highly questionable. There was proof that his eyes were deceived, that he could never distinguish right from wrong. Imagine turning a blind eye to the widow’s bewitching figure and missing his chance without knowing it! A good-for-nothing like this: could he figure out what those demonic mirrors were for? Could he see the things in the mirrors at a glance? By all appearances, his talk was nothing more than an attempt to muddle along. To gloss over everything laughable about him, he posed as a stalwart husband, fooling even himself, while remaining smugly ignorant of reality.

Outsiders had no way to resolve this question, so we could appeal only to the superior knowledge of others. Another with inside information is Madam X’s younger sister, who claims she’s twenty-eight or twenty-nine. It just takes someone asking about Madam X’s nighttime occupation, and this sister becomes emotional for no reason, sniveling and sobbing until her eyes are tiny and swollen. Let’s listen to her incoherent narrative: ‘‘My sister used to be a charming, gentle little girl. The peach blossoms were brilliantly red. Then, suddenly, she threw Mother’s spectacles into the mountain stream. Afterwards, we ran and ran until she leapt into the air, and I heard only her footsteps-tita, tita-overhead. In private, Papa and Mama said she had two calcium carbide lamps for eyes. Sometimes, her slender fingers would turn into a hawk’s talons-very sharp and truly frightening. Mama was always grabbing her and cutting her nails until her fingers bled.’’ She told us her older sister was the first person she’d heard of who could leap into the air and fly. Consequently, everything she did was utterly correct and unquestionable. She frequently went several days without eating or drinking, and after becoming as light as a feather, she flew out the window. She flew so high that when her younger sister saw her solitary silhouette drifting to and fro, she couldn’t hold back tears. As she spoke, this sister left reason further and further behind, and the more unreasonable she became, the more excited she was and the more blind was her faith and adoration. Her thoughts were a mess, a hodgepodge; she was completely spineless. (This also leads us to think of her divorce case many years later: you could see that this woman’s sole motivation was to keep up with the fads-she was a clumsy copycat.)

Although we didn’t get anywhere close to the nub of the issue with Madam X’s sister, we did obtain bits and pieces about Madam X’s youth that were helpful in analyzing her temperament. It seems that ever since childhood, Madam X had fostered a deep-seated hatred not unrelated to her parents’ neglect, for which, in truth, she had to bear much responsibility. (Some fathers-well-intentioned old papas-have romantic views of their children; they have a relaxed attitude and don’t take charge of anything. The old mamas merely remember little things like cutting their children’s fingernails.) In later years, the toxin of this hatred must have penetrated every capillary and hardened her heart. She became strange and saw everyone as her enemy. She slipped down a muddy slope into an incurable condition. Not only was she very complacent, but she also kept trying to drag everyone else down with her. Her means of alluring and abetting were unique: in the end, those who had been affected appreciated her greatly, as if they’d won new leases on life. We may well ask: if a person has had a murderous bent since childhood (to a child, throwing her mother’s spectacles into a stream would be the same as murder), what kind of destructive instincts would she have as an adult? If these destructive instincts were constrained by objective conditions (Madam X has unfortunately never been able to freely act out her exceptionally strong lust), what kind of bizarre transformation would occur?

The circumstances we’ve analyzed make us increasingly pessimistic about Madam X’s gloomy future. We have to say that on the rainy night years ago, it would have been better if her mother hadn’t given birth to this ball of flesh so incompatible with the natural environment, world order, and peace. Although Madam X’s parents have already passed away and are silent inside their urns in a graveyard, we couldn’t help but curse them whenever we discussed this. If they hadn’t irresponsibly brought Madam X into this world and fostered her murderous inclination through their unrealistic, utopian worldview, how could she have caused such a series of events? (Here, the writer inserts a sentence: the writer is characterizing Madam X in much the same manner as the people of Five Spice Street at the beginning of the story. This description wasn’t immutable, as we’ll see later.) There were reasons for the guarded mentality of the crowds on Five Spice Street. They were all sharp-eyed, sober, and capable people. Before anything occurred, they could instinctively sniff out any danger and take precautions. So we needn’t worry too much about them: they have their own ways to deal with outside menaces. Although at present they haven’t made any headway in their investigation, they have perfect preventive measures in reserve: when the time comes, they will certainly bring them out in full force. And so we can rest easy and wait quietly for things to develop.

This is how the younger sister explained her sister’s activity, each time so distressed that she wanted to die. Once, after finishing up, she entangled a listener and asked him to find a sharp knife to ‘‘dig out her heart and examine it.’’ He broke into a cold sweat. This sort of woman loves to stir up the waters and find a theoretical basis for future scandals. Nothing such a shameless piece of work could do would surprise us. She was capable of anything, and afterwards would act crazy, diddling with the cheap sympathy of others. After hearing that her older sister’s scandals had come to light, she rushed to her sister’s home. Having comforted her grieving, despairing, infantile brother-in-law, she made off with their biggest mirror, took it home, and beamed sunlight on the earthen wall on the other side of the street while letting out a sharp and piercing scream. An ink- black tramp walking past identified the light on the wall and stood stock-still. He squatted down and didn’t move. At nightfall, he lit a fire with wastepaper and firewood. Leaning against the wall, he entered into a deep stupor. After three days and three nights, she packed up her belongings to join the tramp, and the two of them ‘‘eloped’’! Isn’t this the most fantastic thing? What does it mean when people stare openmouthed? Before long, word came about this tramp: ‘‘one ink-black slap left her deaf in both ears.’’ Thinking of the words ‘‘ink-black slap,’’ the crowds on Five Spice Street vented their disgust. This woman deserved a slap-the more, the better. We couldn’t do it but were glad someone else had. Whenever she came to Five Spice Street, everyone’s palms grew sweaty in anticipation. Everyone was sure that she came simply to provoke and incite, to instigate evil winds and stir up trouble. She was confused, but lewd and stubborn by nature. She particularly enjoyed novelty and deviant ideas. No one could deal with her.

No one could produce reliable information; even the shortcuts we tried all failed. We could only ‘‘sit and wait’’ for Madam X to betray herself. From our experience on Five Spice Street, no matter how shady and crooked one’s conduct, as soon as the right time came, the truth would see the light of day. One mild spring morning, Old Woman Jin, who sold used books for a living next to the grocery store, struggled to wake up from a whole winter’s lethargy: shuffling in old cotton shoes, her hair disheveled as a lion’s mane, she stood under the eaves, pounding her chest and cursing herself. She remembered that before the winter, her hair was really glossy: you could almost call it ‘‘beautiful.’’ Sleep had made a mess of it. After she finished cursing, she gazed around and saw the young coal worker swaying toward her. She dragged him inside, pushed him down on a worn-out cane chair, and whispered to him quietly. Stockpiled for a winter, her words poured out like a river. Every time he wanted to get up, she pushed him down again. Her old hands were like iron clamps; even the vigorous young coal worker could do nothing about it. Didn’t people say, ‘‘The older the ginger, the hotter’’? This is the secret that she had stored away like a treasure:

‘‘I’ve been strangely confident all along. Sometimes when I wake up, I can’t avoid being annoyed for a moment, as if my brain is empty. But that doesn’t amount to anything: all I have to do is look at my palms for a minute and my strength returns. I’ve had this confidence ever since I was a young girl; at the time, I vowed I would poke an opening in the wall with an iron drill. And, sure enough, I did this later. When I walked on the street, I never gave way to the people I encountered. I am a strong person. One time, an old fart rushed up at me head-on. I rammed him with my hipbone and he fell over. My fiance (unfortunately, I had a fiance; fortunately, though, I didn’t get married) stood nervously next to the door and said, ‘Don’t do that.’ I glanced at him and persisted. Later, I thought I would test his endurance, so I kicked him in his thin chest. The beautiful kick killed him. How joyfully everything ended. What spunk. This is my unique spiritual temperament. The people of Five Spice Street might think I’m broke and down-and- out with no meat to eat. They look at me as they would a power pole. But they’re wrong! One day I’ll control everything, and everyone’s welfare will be in my hands. This day will come. Things will occur that they can’t imagine.

‘‘It isn’t that I don’t understand self-reflection. I’ve asked myself countless times: Is my faith a product of my imagination? If I persist, will I dream my life away? I’ve already experienced a lot of trials, but none was life-threatening. Just this one time was unique, a time of wondrous glory. Only after this did I feel a fresh and flowering vigor-all my abjectness was swept away-like an old tree in early spring. No, like bearing a child at the age of one hundred. I mean a great mind maturing slowly! All along, I had a premonition that this uncommon life of mine held an opportunity; I told my poor mother this three times. I said this under a pine tree on a hill in the suburbs. There were two birds’ nests in the tree. Looking at the nests, I spat the words out one by one from the cracks between my teeth: ‘There will always be an opportunity.’ That’s how I said it! Everything that happened later proved this true. Even I was greatly surprised, and it’s too late to analyze it! What striking potential I had! What a dazzling blossom came from the silent seed of my childhood! If I had talked of this with people in the past, who would have believed me? The opportunity finally arrived, arrived so swiftly and ferociously that it almost caused me to lose my head: I looked on helplessly as it rolled away, my response as futile as fetching water in a bamboo basket. Of course, this was only ‘almost.’ In fact, I reacted quickly and grasped my opportunity for all I was worth. I saw the new situation clearly, adjusted my pace, and took action. I grabbed as much as I could, and all at once changed the prejudices of the people of Five Spice Street and established a new image in their minds. Here’s an example. Have you noticed Zhou Sanji at the grocery store next door? The same one who every day for several decades, after having a bowel movement, purposely blocked my doorway while he fastened his dirty trousers? He engaged in this indelicate behavior to keep emphasizing that he-Zhou Sanji-is thousands of times more brilliant than I; he thinks the whole world should know this, and if some people still don’t know, then it’s his responsibility to publicize it. I endured the humiliation and-like a mouse-drew back into the room. How many years went by like this? Years without justice. Not until this one time when the clouds parted and the fog vanished did this situation reverse itself. This one time was brilliant, epoch-making, pioneering work.’’

Having said this, Old Woman Jin held her tongue to keep the listener in suspense. Shaky, she hobbled to the stove, picked up a poker, and wildly stoked the fire until coal dust flew all around the room and choked them, all the while hanging on to the young coal worker with her other hand. By now, the coal worker had figured out what she was intending and was twisting back and forth on the worn-out cane chair, breathing heavily, and blushing. All at once, he was sexually aroused. Though he had no object for his arousal, he couldn’t control himself: it was unbearable. Old Woman Jin seemed to want to dig a hole in his flesh with her long fingernails. Every few minutes, she chanted in a low voice the name that made people quake: ‘‘X?’’ She felt that the secret hopes of her life, the remote and beautiful or gorgeous illusions, would all be realized. This reality was a reaction to the stirring name X, so she repeated this name over and over. It was like a lunatic’s game. While she stared hard at the coal worker, her old eyes gradually lost focus and then turned into two fluctuating blood-red orbs, all at once bulging out of her eye sockets and then all at once drawing back in. The young man felt an irresistible pressure. In the grip of self-contempt and a confusion of unreal emotions, he quickly reached the most astonishing decision of his life: he would ‘‘fool around’’ with this witch.

When they finished fooling around, the door of the house suddenly opened. The two bare-assed people on the bed saw the respectable Zhou Sanji. He stuck his head inside and then stood hesitating for some time next to the door, looking very excited. When he left, he said something hard to figure out: ‘‘A new era has begun. The worries of winter have been swept away.’’

Still bare-assed, Old Woman Jin left the bed (she didn’t let the young coal worker put his pants on, either), spat at Zhou Sanji’s receding figure, and cursed him for being ‘‘unbearably vulgar.’’ Then she started strolling around the room, around and around. Suddenly she stopped and exclaimed, ‘‘X and I will fight to the death!’’ Naked from the waist down, the young coal worker stood nervously on the bed, unable to figure out what was happening; he felt used. He became dejected and full of remorse. Why was this witch exploiting him? What was her motivation? His poor brain could never get a handle on it. We can assume that after repeated hints and inducements, his train of thought led from the name X to the body of this person who had always been his idol, and eventually to a certain spot in that body. As a consequence, he instinctively felt a sexual urge, and-confusing one object with another-he began fooling around recklessly and became a victim. Throughout the process, Old Woman Jin was absolutely calm and collected; we can say it was premeditated, that she had a plan all along, and that she manipulated the proceedings and easily achieved her immoral goal. The strange thing was that she didn’t want any pleasure from the young coal worker’s body. To tell the truth, she had long since passed the age for enjoying sex. Maybe we should say she ‘‘had no interest in fooling around,’’ or that she even felt it was rather ‘‘repulsive.’’ This incident became really complicated. Can we say that Old Woman Jin’s traps and schemes were merely to vanquish one or two imaginary enemies? What sort of realm did she and the coal worker seek in that muddled life of theirs? Could an intrepid person like her sometimes make mistakes in her predictions? We couldn’t figure this out. On our Five Spice Street, there’s a rule of thumb: don’t worry about what you can’t understand; just wait quietly and things will work out. And if they didn’t, then something was clearly wrong with you. Maybe the flaw was in your head, maybe it was in your toes-anyhow, it was incurable.

After this, Old Woman Jin changed greatly. Sometimes when she got up in the morning, she felt a tremendous confidence in her body. She looked at herself in the mirror, assumed various winning poses, and then decided to get rid of the outer clothing that veiled her body. She wanted to achieve a ‘‘complete revelation of her soul.’’ She felt that all the conditions for this were already in place. And so she started going naked above the waist in order to bring about this ‘‘revelation.’’ It’s too bad the aesthetic judgment of the people of Five Spice Street wasn’t receptive to this kind of ‘‘revelation.’’ Their reaction was completely cold; all did their best to avert their gaze and pretend not to see this old woman’s naked body. There was another major change in Old Woman Jin’s life: she made trouble during Madam X’s nighttime activities. If anyone had the guts to ask about this, she would raise her fist toward the sky and say, ‘‘Bah! It was a great mistake! I’ve been contemptibly robbed of my achievement! X? Who’s X? Isn’t it simply me? Of course it is. Who besides me has her demonic power? But you all blindly believe the deception that has turned pretense into reality. I proclaim loudly, I am X and X is I!’’ At dusk, she always fidgeted; unable to sit still at home, she ran into Madam X’s home and made off with one of her mirrors. She boasted she had mastered all the minutest details about Madam X and had long since ‘‘defeated’’ her, claiming Madam X was now on the point of ‘‘retiring’’ from Five Spice Street. When she said this, naturally she didn’t forget to jiggle her breasts for the enjoyment of others and then call out the coal worker’s name, asking him to ‘‘give evidence.’’ Everyone on Five Spice Street surrendered to her awesome presence.

And how about our young coal worker? It was really sad and hopeless to talk about him. Why on earth had he been born in the first place? And, since he had been, why had he suffered so many trials? Would this young guy who had suffered so much ever be able to recover? But let’s not worry about his future; let’s return to the present. All of a sudden, he’s become a schizophrenic: apart from going to Old Woman Jin’s, he stays behind closed doors all day and doesn’t go out. Sometimes he could produce a blurry image in his blank brain: the image had a lot of mist-like lace, in the center of which was something resembling Madam X’s silhouette or something that led people to think of her silhouette. It was only when he stepped into Old Woman Jin’s home and ‘‘fooled around’’ with her that this image was produced. At such times, he often trembled with joy and crowed like a rooster. So it was as if bewitched that he made his way into Old Woman Jin’s home every day, as if addicted to opium. No one could have imagined that this half-dead old hag who sold used books would suddenly flourish! That she would stand above the people of Five Spice Street! And then there was Zhou Sanji. Every day he watched helplessly as the coal worker walked into the home next door. Sometimes he went outside bare-assed, peed, and then went back in. The pleasure he’d had for decades was completely gone. Would he lose his mind and act like a lunatic?

Madam X wasn’t the least aware of Old Woman Jin’s wild ambush. As usual, she took it easy, was unconcerned, and remained precise in her manner. A case in point was a conversation with her husband:

Husband: If the crazy old woman comes back for another heist, should I beat her up?

Madam X: For twenty minutes today, I once again experienced a feeling of supreme tranquility. I think we should buy some more mirrors and put them away in boxes to use later.

Husband: I’m a little perturbed by what that woman is doing. How come you’re indifferent to it?

Madam X: Just listen carefully to your pulse. A cloud will pass slowly before your eyes and then everything that’s bothering you will vanish. And the next time, your eyes will be cloudy and your teeth will sparkle like stars, and you won’t even be aware of some old lady arriving. We can hide the mirrors.

It seems we said above that Madam X not only affected people intimately related to her but also could secretly control others. Although she had never been aware of this ability, and had not deliberately made use of it, it was effective. After their talk, her handsome husband was of course a little confused, and he had to blunt his annoyance whenever Old Woman Jin intruded. As time passed, he even forgot what the old woman looked like, and once when they ran into each other, he asked in surprise, ‘‘Who are you?’’ Then, as if nothing had happened, he went about his own business. He wasn’t at all angry when he caught her turning things upside down in his home. This sort of thing happened often. When he was clearheaded, he still argued with the old woman, even striking her once. At those times, he grumbled that his wife turned a deaf ear, but soon he was on the same wave length with her again.

After ‘‘sitting and waiting’’ for some days, a chance opportunity allowed our likable widow to get hold of another letter from Mr. Q to Madam X. The letter referred to Madam X’s nighttime occupation. Although it was filled with innuendo and secret codes, the widow-relying on her ample experience and her astonishing ability to ferret out sexual relationships-seemed to discover a little something. The letter was like all the others between Mr. Q and Madam X: there was neither salutation nor signature, nor even beginning or end. The whole letter was artificial-hypocritically friendly, enough to turn your stomach. (At this point, the widow again raised doubts she’d been harboring for a long time: were these letters plagiarized, paragraph by paragraph, from the classics? This would save a lot of trouble and at the same time it would be unconventional and cater to the other’s vanity, something the two idiots were happy to do.) Below are some excerpts: i. ‘‘I hear your eyes are inflamed. I’m so worried that I’m on pins and needles-really, really afraid. If you go blind, then what? Of course you have your reasons to be unconcerned. You don’t think vision is any good for you. On nights when the cool wind gently blows, you gaze sedately into those mirrors, a slight smile on your face, mysterious and sexy. I can’t do this. I’ve tried. Even if I close my eyes tight, my vision still penetrates my eyelids and takes in the outside world, filled with dense fog. I become delirious and panicky, and when I walk, I bump along and stumble, acting like a buffoon. At such times, I can always see your sprite-like smile, and so I hate you, and struggle with all my might to resist something.’’

2. ‘‘… Last night, you once again flew from the mirror to the night sky. At the time, I was lost in thought when suddenly I heard a hu and knew it was you. I pricked up my ears and followed you with my imagination. Your bare feet stirred up a puff of cool wind that blew against my face. During the day, I heard that someone wanted to retaliate against you. (One of the teenage boys or girls?) He might lurk under the bed or behind the cupboard. You have to carefully check the places in the room where someone could hide, and sweep those spots with the broom I gave you. You’ll ridicule me again for being nervous. I know you’ll say, ‘I can’t sense that person. Generally it’s hard for me to sense other people. How can he hurt me?’ I can imagine how you’ll look as you say this. No matter what, I’ll patrol outside your room all night tonight. I’m afraid of that person-that desperado.’’

3. ‘‘You say you can ‘see clearly with your sensory organs’ for a long time: that’s because you know how to use those mirrors. When you sit down, you can immediately ‘enter a meditative state.’ I can only occasionally experience that state (for example, when I see you in the morning). Most days, I’m utterly confused…’’

From this letter, the widow drew several important conclusions: (1) She realized that Madam X had been faking all along; she hadn’t achieved anything at all. It was only a cheap trick played over and over again to fool people. She longed to monopolize all the world’s men (and even some women) and was keenly aware of their interest in novelty as well as their fragile nature, so she pretended to be learned and profound in order to hoodwink them until they were confused. (2) She confirmed one fact: a lot of people in the world were just like Madam X’s husband-a virgin with stunted sexual competence. For such people, the less reliable a woman was, and the more able she was to arouse their fleeting, misty daydreams, the more interested they were in her, and the easier it was for them to be ‘‘enchanted.’’ They were utterly ignorant of sex, yet always obstinately considered themselves right. It was easy to cure this mental illness: if a real woman entered their lives and they had a sexual relationship with her, then their fragile connection with Madam X would fall apart at once. Of course, she didn’t mean to say that this absurdity existed only because there was no real woman in the world. There were real women (the widow frowned), but they were few and far between and weren’t interested in sinking their claws into the kinds of virgins or androgynous trash who ‘‘were inept’’ and ‘‘unspeakably awkward.’’ Only because of these strange circumstances could our Madam X play her tricks; everyone could only watch helplessly as she carried out her deceptions.

Something else happened while we were waiting quietly: it was directly related to Madam X’s speech about sex. At that time, during the bedlam created by watermelon and cantaloupe rinds flying all over, a pair of hawk-keen eyes followed Madam X from start to finish. Indeed, that person was prepared to throw himself into the breach and-along with Madam X’s husband-protect her, but before it was his turn to do so, the event concluded. Was he the scoundrel who drew the picture on the wall? Or was he a stranger? Three months later, this ‘‘ardent’’ (the female friend’s word) young man walked into Madam X’s home, and without even stating his name, he ‘‘calmly but firmly’’ sat down and ‘‘covetously’’ looked Madam X up and down. Then he came straight to the point about Madam X’s lecture. After two hours, of which about an hour was spent in the silence of tacit understanding, the young man stood up and asked, ‘‘Do you think I’m right for you?’’ Madam X woke with a start from her dream, her gaze as limpid as water, and shook her head slowly: ‘‘No. Your eyes aren’t soft enough, and they are only tricolored; they can’t change color. As for me, it’s been a long time since I was a girl glowing with youth. We wouldn’t be able to satisfy each other.’’ The youth left, utterly discomfited. From the window, Madam X watched his solitary silhouette. She fell unhappily into bed and lay there a long time. It didn’t end then. Starting from an inner fanaticism from which he couldn’t disentangle himself, the young man still desired Madam X. He said this wasn’t a ‘‘sexual’’ temptation, but something he ‘‘couldn’t explain.’’ As he saw it, Madam X didn’t have enough ‘‘sex appeal’’; he could find plenty of women with ‘‘sex appeal,’’ but none of them could hold his interest for long. Was it possible that something was wrong with his body? Or was his very idea defective? He was never able to think this through. He frequently still went to Madam X’s home and sat for an hour, continuing their ‘‘spiritual communication.’’ Hot tears brimmed in their eyes. But when he raised more demands or expressed something with his body, he met with Madam X’s firm, unambiguous resistance. Once, shaking her by her thin shoulders, he asked:

‘‘Why?’’

Sadly but calmly Madam X replied, ‘‘We aren’t right for each other.’’

‘‘What isn’t right?’’

‘‘To have a sexual relationship with you.’’

‘‘How can you know?’’

‘‘I can sense this with my body.’’

‘‘Damn mirrors!!’’ Out of control, he smashed one of Madam X’s mirrors with his fist and dashed out the door, dripping with blood. Because of this, Madam X felt unsettled for a long time. She wasn’t unaffected by the youth’s charms, nor was she constrained by ideas of chastity or abstinence; it’s better to say she was willfully reckless, for if she felt something was right, nothing would stop her. This time, she really liked him, and was frequently moved by a certain charm of his, but in truth, in his presence she wasn’t sexually aroused. Nor could she fake it. That’s just the way it was. If he straightened out his thinking, she would even like to maintain a ‘‘subtle’’ relationship: such a relationship would make them both feel natural and sensible. Too bad he was stubborn, old-fashioned, and rigid, and so her only option was to break off their friendship.

We can also listen to her friend’s account. On the day when the youth arrived, she happened to be at Madam X’s home. After he sat down, she ‘‘purposely stayed to one side and didn’t leave,’’ so she saw the whole scene from start to finish. Overcome by desire, they completely forgot she was there: they paid attention only to exchanging debauched vulgarities and to faking a kind of false solemnity. In fact, they could hardly contain themselves and wished they could ‘‘hop into bed at once.’’ The funniest thing was that their conversation went on intermittently for more than ten minutes. During this time, neither looked at the other, neither moved, and ‘‘there were tears in their eyes.’’ This all made her wonder if they might be practicing some kind of qigong. She decided to tease them by laughing out loud, but they ‘‘didn’t hear’’! They actually didn’t hear anything. At that moment, Madam X had been wandering in a peaceful wonderland filled with sunshine and was unaware of any worldly annoyances. The young man’s ears, however, shook from the sound of his crazy heartbeat, and he temporarily lost his vision. So the friend’s prank came to nothing. Finally, she stood up, ‘‘kicked the door ferociously,’’ and, filled with scorn, left the house.

Was Madam X very solemn in sexual relationships? From this incident, it seems she was, but people who know her well know otherwise. For example, she not only ‘‘doesn’t turn male visitors away,’’ she welcomes them-the more, the merrier. Sometimes she also ‘‘tries to seduce them,’’ even ‘‘dropping in on them.’’ While she’s consorting with those people, naturally she has to be furtive. In particular, she has to fool her husband (even if he’s such a ‘‘good husband’’). People would probably have trouble believing that none of those men had a sexual relationship with her. In addition, Madam X surely doesn’t want people to believe this. It’s better to say that ‘‘she doesn’t give a damn.’’ She just keeps her mouth shut, and so do all the men she consorts with. Someone actually saw a man (definitely not Mr. Q) kiss Madam X on the main street in broad daylight, but this onlooker-out of ‘‘disgust and bashfulness’’-was unable to see the expression on Madam X’s face. He could verify, though, that Madam X offered no resistance. Maybe she was already limp with joy! Or maybe she’d had sexual relations with him all along! One day, the first good friend of Madam X’s husband had also seen Madam X holding hands with an extremely young guy and then go off to spend a night with him on a barren hillside in the suburbs. She didn’t return home until nine the next morning. The two of them were ‘‘wan and sallow’’ and ‘‘in high spirits.’’ With bitter hatred and a heavy heart, the good friend admonished Madam X. Madam X just giggled.

‘‘Nothing happened,’’ she said. ‘‘He wanted to, but I finally prevailed. We’re still good friends.’’

‘‘Didn’t it occur to you that he might use force? Perhaps you secretly hoped he would?’’

‘‘Of course it occurred to me. If he had, I would have felt bad for him. But thank God, it didn’t come to that. I persuaded him with my perception.’’

‘‘Did he kiss you?’’

‘‘So what if he did?’’ Madam X was thoroughly exasperated. ‘‘So what if he did?! So what? So what!’’

Step by step, she forced her husband’s friend to the wall. Whenever he recalled his embarrassment, he felt like crawling into a hole. Could such a wanton woman ever be solemn? We can only say that since she has lost all credibility, she must be acting.

We can’t help but think of her demonic instinct to control. Madam X had countless completely different faces. She would disguise her face and brilliantly keep people from seeing any trace of affectation. Around the young man who, as we’ve said, had listened respectfully to her lecture, Madam X surely was relying on her rich experience to sense that if she put on an unusually solemn face and maintained a certain distance, never taking the last step, she would finally be able to tame that crazy, wild, unbridled horse, thereby satisfying her abnormal sexuality. Objectively, this wasn’t premeditated: it was only her nature. So: Madam X is instinctively a good actor-she is always acting. We can also say that she isn’t acting, because it is her nature to be a witch-toying with men is the most enjoyable part of her life. She doesn’t hesitate to hurt people, but she also seems to consider other people. By temperament, she’s cold and severe, but she also seems ebullient. It’s impossible to sum up Madam X’s character. Consider the energy we expended determining her age, and finally, irresponsibly, we had nothing to show for it. It was just a blur. How can we be sure about ‘‘character’’-this infinitely more complicated issue? If we can’t be clear about it, we won’t try. As always, let’s ‘‘wait quietly.’’ But we have confirmed something: she is prone to willful recklessness. Although the residents of our Five Spice Street aren’t ascetics and make a lot of allowances for people, we’re all rather disciplined and orderly. Madam X’s unruliness set our teeth on edge and we wished she would die. Of course we don’t forget the few sordid, vulgar ones among us who wanted to take advantage of the opportunity. At the same time as they cursed her, they also secretly sounded her out and were generally rebuffed. Thus, they abhorred her even more than we did, and cursed her even more. Naturally, this scum cannot be considered part of our community.

Two examples would illustrate Madam X’s shameless ways, but they would provide too much of a digression, because what we want to talk of now is Madam X’s nighttime occupation. We’ve said so much but haven’t come close to the true picture. It’s all a mist. Of course we can also assert that there isn’t a true picture, because it’s all merely smoke and mirrors. Putting it this way is expedient, saves trouble, and eliminates difficulties and annoyances. But the effect of Madam X’s nighttime occupation is also clearly present. You can’t see it, you can’t touch it, but every resident of Five Spice Street can feel it. Sometimes it’s like a radioactive substance or shock waves, and sometimes like insect bites. It’s said that after one night of conditioning at Madam X’s home, the son of Madam X’s colleague suffered a sudden worsening of his temperament: he became an alcoholic and a tramp, loitering and sleeping in the street and imperiling public safety. He boasted to everybody: begging (in fact, it was plundering) was wonderful, as if ‘‘the whole body is alight.’’ Before this, he had thought of suicide. But now he wanted ‘‘to live forever, walk everywhere, look around, fight with anyone he wanted to fight with, fall in love with and have sex with any young woman he happened to run into.’’ Driven to distraction, Madam X’s colleague chased after this ‘‘unworthy son’’ with a long bamboo pole; the result was that he hit her with it and broke her arm. It was too horrible to look at. This brat is now in a barbaric region to the north.

With nothing to eat, he ‘‘ate the raw flesh of birds and beasts’’ and even drank a dead man’s brains. He was living ‘‘very comfortably’’ and planned ‘‘never to return.’’ After he left, his mother fell ill for a short time and was taken care of by Madam X. Madam X not only didn’t try to save this son but, on the contrary, advised her female colleague to ‘‘move on with her life,’’ ‘‘just act as if she’d never had this son.’’ She said ‘‘this would be best for him.’’ After the colleague recovered, she fought this malicious woman like a mother tiger. If Madam X hadn’t been light and agile, her colleague would have ‘‘broken her legs.’’ Over time, however, though the colleague didn’t acknowledge it publicly, inwardly she realized the advantages of her son’s running away, because at home he had never been on good terms with the family. He had threatened to ‘‘kill them’’ over trifling incidents, and even when his parents were making love at night, he would kick the door open and barge in and make some teasing, cynical remarks. Because of him, the family lived in fear and trembling, always on the verge of a nervous breakdown. With him gone, they were ‘‘free of worries.’’

The colleague had reaped benefits, yet not only was she not grateful to Madam X, she also rushed to the police station to report that Madam X ‘‘corrupted the youth,’’ engaged in ‘‘prostitution,’’ and ‘‘had grown rich from this.’’ The trouble she caused was the talk of the town for quite a while, but finally the investigation ended for lack of evidence. Our Five Spice Street’s view was that ‘‘you had to catch adulterers with their pants down!’’ But no one had caught Madam X ‘‘with her pants down.’’ And the so-called ‘‘prostitution’’ was merely private guesswork, an individual judgment. So, as you can see, in general our people were not as presumptuous and impulsive as the colleague. When all is said and done, people in general are quite even-tempered and defer to the facts. They would rather ‘‘wait and see.’’

They had some views about the colleague’s impatience. Beginning in May of that year, after she used a microphone to air the widow’s secrets on the street, everyone had some unfavorable things to say about her, especially the middle-aged and young men, who privately called her ‘‘a black-headed housefly.’’ Now she had suddenly rushed to the police station to make an indiscreet report: she wanted to be the first to take the credit, to be in the limelight. Everyone was even more disgusted. She created the whole mess. Had anybody asked her to do so? No! She had to put her finger in the pie because she thought she was clever! Had she gone crazy? If it went on like this, maybe she’d even want to centralize power in her hands, ride roughshod over the crowd on Five Spice Street, and lord it over them! Since when was she given the right to speak for our crowd? You have to realize that ‘‘nobody had ever respected her’’ (the widow’s words)! Just think of how much harm she caused our respected widow, whose reputation still hasn’t recovered. What a painful lesson. Should we still refuse to come to our senses and tolerate her continued troublemaking?

3. MADAM X'S AND THE WIDOW'S DIFFERING OPINIONS ABOUT "SEX''

It seems we’ve hinted that the much-admired widow was both frigid and chaste. However, don’t think that just because of this, she was some sexless saint. In fact, we’d better state just the opposite. She herself thinks so. She’s always been confident about this, and with good reason. First, there’s her figure. In the eyes of male connoisseurs, it’s ‘‘steamy hot.’’ Her breasts and buttocks are ‘‘uncommonly ample’’ and ‘‘provocative.’’ (These were a certain middle-aged man’s words, which the widow had noted down.) She was so innately stunning that even a dry stick would sense its male lust. (Of course, those androgynous pieces of garbage aren’t included.) The widow’s sexual power puts her in an awkward position. That is to say, she attracts numerous men, but keeps her chastity and can’t ‘‘go beyond friendship with anybody.’’ Therefore, she has never fully displayed her charms. We’ll illuminate this below with some excerpts from her speech. i. ‘‘I’ve always been irresistible. Men from twenty to fifty are all crazy about me. Sometimes I’m awakened at midnight by these hungry ghosts rapping on the lattice: it sounds like thunder. Sometimes I feel it’s all nonsense. Too much sex appeal is disastrous for a woman. I want to live quietly, but they won’t let me. Some handsome men have beautiful, charming wives (not as hot as I am, of course), but if they see me even once, they start pining away, they actually fall ill from wanting me. I actually wish I weren’t so sexy; it doesn’t do me any good, and it causes other people great pain. But a person can’t choose. This is how I am, and there’s something gratifying about it: I can lead admirers down the right path and thus cleanse society and improve people. So even if it’s a calamity to be ‘hot,’ it’s also a woman’s good fortune: sex is powerful, and with it women can dominate society.’’

2. ‘‘Most men are brainless and indulge in fantasies. They need us strong women to lead them. Especially today, when traditional aesthetic sentiments are under fire, we can see their cowardly nature even more clearly. In the end, some deviants pursue a kind of nihilistic, monstrous stimulant that is profoundly toxic and incurable, similar to homosexuality: both are unhealthy and abnormal. I think one reason for this phenomenon is women’s frailty. Because they lack confidence in their sexuality and are never active, they’ve lost control over men. They’ve surrendered to men’s tyranny and ended up with nothing but self-pity. In fact, it could have been quite different. We should have understood the function of our own bodies and attracted and controlled men that way and then tamed them. Although weirdos like Madam X live in this world, she’s certainly not omnipotent. This much I know. I could reel in every man she’s had a relationship with whenever I want. Each of them would drool over me. If my nature were different, I might become another Scarlett O’Hara, but this is my nature, and it’s only because of this that a misfit like X can prevail for so long-and carry on with her occult activities. It’s because X knows my nature so well that she can act like this without worrying. She puts me in an untenable position. I look ‘hot,’ but decades of self-cultivation dissipated my lust a long time ago. The result is that I can’t act to prove her deceit and weakness. Nor will I stoop to fight with her for affection. I can’t degrade myself by doing that…’’

3. ‘‘Men’s sexual power is useless; it has no impact on life. Yet, a woman’s sex is her magic weapon for defeating the outside world and revealing the significance of her existence. I simply can’t imagine men with sexual power. Maybe women see all men-ugly, handsome, old, young-as basically the same as long as their organs are functioning. They all exert themselves in action. Maybe some are a little stronger than others, but there’s no essential distinction among them. Sexual power is unique to women: it is a kind of selfconsciousness about one’s bodily functions. When this consciousness sharpens, a woman becomes like a goddess. At that moment, each of her movements-each frown, each smile-makes men weak: they are shaken to the depths. (From these few words, it’s clear our widow has reached a high level of philosophical understanding. We can’t but admire this: she has dug deeply into the science of sex, and has done so on her own.) Under such conditions, if a woman can control herself and abstain from sex, her mysterious sex appeal will become fuller and riper until it sweeps all before her. (These words outraged the young and middle-aged men on Five Spice Street; they were unanimous: ‘If a woman exists just for the sake of this nutty idea, isn’t she just a ‘‘flower vase’’?’ They also said if there were a woman like this in their family, they’d ‘beat the shit out of her.’) Society these days is so prurient, and all the blame lies with us women: we’re too lax, too lethargic.’’

The widow had a lot more to say, but we can’t go into it all here. It’s worth mentioning that while she was researching the science of sex, she sometimes also engaged in fieldwork. Without a thought for the hard work and slanderous gossip about her, she formulated a unique method that enabled her to get hold of credible original materials without being noticed. The guilty had no idea how their secrets had leaked out. They all wondered if the walls had eyes. Ever since Madam X and her husband moved to Five Spice Street, the widow made their sex life an important part of her investigation and employed various approaches. Sure, she couldn’t fly over walls and walk on cliffs, nor was she ‘‘an invisible person.’’ She completed her investigation using rigorous logic alone. The result was: Madam X and her husband’s sex life was ‘‘particularly anguished,’’ and their relationship was ‘‘filled with hatred.’’ You could say that ‘‘there was no sex life’’ between them, just a kind of ‘‘abnormal sexual psychology.’’ She said, “You can see the problem just by looking at the huge difference in their physiques: one is so strong, the other so frail. How could their sex be any good? Of course, the man is impotent, but the more impotent he is, the more he hangs on to unrealistic daydreams: he thinks he’s strong, but when he really starts doing it, he shows once more that he’s sheer rubbish. As for the woman, she’s a tease, tantalizing all the men, while in fact she never follows through. These two were made for each other: they’re a couple of jokes. Normal people can’t figure out what kind of sexual relationship they have.’’ She continued, ‘‘Where sex is concerned, they’re as cold as ice. Maybe they’re still ‘virgins’! Their son, Little Bao, bears no physical resemblance to them. Maybe they brought him home from an orphanage — we don’t know. Let’s have a look at Madam X’s buttocks and breasts-I’ve always suspected that she’s still a virgin. This is entirely possible. I think it’s in order to cover up this shameful reality that she purposely projects a wild, lascivious image. All the men who consort with her suffer, yet-as if bones were stuck in their throats-they can’t speak out. Otherwise, why wouldn’t even one man say a word about X’s private life? Isn’t this strange?’’ Now, with a ‘‘brazen’’ person-Mr. Q-appearing in Madam X’s private life, the situation is becoming even more significant. The widow decided to carry out a thorough investigation and finally expose Madam X’s ‘‘unsavory background,’’ so that people would recognize the danger at last and would voluntarily ‘‘maintain the traditional aesthetic consciousness.’’

At this point, doubts pop up again in the readers’ minds. If we say that this widow has all along kept herself as pure as jade, then perhaps she was also like this with her deceased husband. Maybe it’s she (and not X) who is still a virgin? Is she qualified to prattle on about ‘‘sexual power’’? Could she have tricked us? Did she make monkeys of us? Let’s listen to her explanation. She said that she had had sex with only one man-her husband. Although she was unquestionably open, vibrant, spirited, and extraordinarily charming, she always strictly adhered to our traditional virtues and kept herself pure. As for her years of living as a widow, they were a little lonely and humdrum, yet it was precisely this quiet life, this kind of conscious self-cultivation, that now and then allowed her to reach the highest plane. There, she was sometimes moved to tears. No other enjoyment in the world held the same magnetic appeal, so she never did it with other men. Even if those crazy men broke the glass, prized open the door, and charged in, they wouldn’t get what they wanted.

But this isn’t to say that she’s this way by nature. When she and her husband lived together, she enjoyed worldly pleasures. She doesn’t deny this: she had a singularly fierce sexuality, to the point that ‘‘even seven or eight times a night couldn’t satisfy her,’’ and at any moment she could ‘‘come up with countless variations.’’ Her husband (back then, he was a virile young guy) was no match for her, nor was he as imaginative. And so not long after they were married, he became impotent and grew thinner by the day. Before long, he died. For years, whenever anyone mentioned this, she sobbed convulsively.

‘‘You can’t possibly imagine those marvelous moments. No, there’s no way to describe them. You can’t imagine. Even years later, I still get excited. Whenever I think of him, I wonder whether he was a real person or a god from heaven. Really. In my mind, I’ve deified him. Is there still anyone like him in the world? Just looking at these handsome men all around, these ordinary people, makes me sick to my stomach, and I throw up. How could I possibly be interested in any of them?!’’

Something else occurred to her after she finished weeping. ‘‘Sometimes I’ve thought that maybe there wasn’t anything wonderful about him, that he was mediocre, and that it was only when I had that kind of relationship with him and at the same time bestowed my physical charms on him that he overwhelmed me. If he hadn’t met me, he would have been only an ordinary man, no different from any other. It’s only through a woman that a man can realize his virtues-and the woman must be strong, filled with the charm of sex. Otherwise, because of their fragile nature, men are likely to be corrupted by depraved women and become degenerate troublemakers disturbing the tranquility of the world.’’

We can be sure of this much: although the widow had had a sexual relationship with only one man, she’d had plenty of experience. She was almost a master of sexology. Her experience didn’t come from sexual relationships with a variety of men, but from her clear-headed, precise understanding of this sort of thing. And so the further away she was from men, the more dispassionate she was and the clearer her experience: she had a complete grasp of it. In men’s eyes, this made her even more potent: you could look, but you couldn’t touch. It’s no exaggeration to say: the widow is the ideal incarnation of sex. The men’s conduct on Five Spice Street proves this. Whenever she walks slowly and regally down the street, almost all the men stop in their tracks and idiotically ‘‘look back and smile.’’ They promptly undress her in their minds and keep their eyes on the private parts of her body. They’re intoxicated, flushed, and panting, and it’s a long while before they calm down. They’re distracted all day and continually look for chances to make up erotic stories. They imagine they’re big heroes. They keep it up until nightfall, when they wake up and become despondent. Then they’re deflated, unable even to make it with their wives. They vent. They rage at their wives for ‘‘having no sex appeal,’’ for ‘‘being like dried fish.’’ ‘‘It would be better to screw a hospital mannequin.’’ ‘‘What could you do with this kind of wife?’’ ‘‘If it weren’t for the ball and chain of this family, I’d long ago have become somebody,’’ and so on and on. They can’t help spouting nonsense like this. Some even leap out from the quilts, rashly spend the night naked on the floor, and get so sick they can’t recover for a long time. Our widow understood all of this as well as the palm of her hand: she just calmly observed it and drew these deranged followers to her even more. Never tiring, she hoped to change society by her ‘‘refined influence.’’

The widow’s notions about relations between the sexes always made Five Spice Street’s men angry and unhappy. Naturally, deep down inside, they didn’t believe her lies, but after her pronouncements, they always felt ‘‘a little uneasy,’’ ‘‘as if suspended in midair.’’ This feeling also affected their sex life with their wives. So some of them felt a nameless anger toward the widow. Because of his rising anger, one ‘‘truthful’’ middle-aged man, A, screwed up his courage and charged into the widow’s home one dark night ‘‘in an act of desperation.’’ ‘‘He didn’t reemerge.’’ It was a week before people finally saw him again. By then, he was a cripple, all skin and bones. He spat blood and had night sweats. All day long, he lay in a corner, curled up like an old cat. He had suffered brain damage and thought everyone who approached was a ‘‘panther.’’ He shook from fright. Some curious people wanted to ask him the details of his experience, but they didn’t succeed. His expression left them all in fear and trembling. They felt inside their pockets, afraid they’d lost something. It was plain to see: after ‘‘a night that no one could imagine,’’ the widow was even more ‘‘fresh and tender, radiant and vivacious,’’ ‘‘appearing in all her glory,’’ and even more ‘‘unattainable.’’ This transformation hindered her self-cultivation a little: she was ‘‘a little ill at ease’’ for several days, and her ‘‘memory seemed to slip.’’ After giving it some serious thought, she decided to burn her bridges, ‘‘disclose’’ the facts, and sweep away the people’s doubts about her. She began working on this one day at dusk in the open area in front of Madam X’s door. When the widow sat down on a pile of logs, the men of Five Spice Street rushed up one after another. Their eyes gleamed with evil as they surrounded the widow like stars around the moon. First, the widow gazed at the window with the shades drawn at Madam X’s home, and yawned for a minute or two, making the men fidget, and then she finally cleared her throat and began talking in a mosquito-like voice. As she talked, she shielded her throat with her hands, saying that she’d ‘‘caught a cold and lost her voice.’’ The only thing the men could do was tighten the circle and keep squeezing in toward her. Everyone became small and flat, and their heads became pointed. They were like bream swimming back and forth, filling every bit of space. Two gutsy guys with no place to stand actually perched on the widow’s hair and the tip of her nose. Just then, the curtains moved, and the widow’s spirits rose, but she soon realized it was only the wind. How disappointing! Finally she focused her narrative and came to the main point. Every few sentences, the bream-like men pushed back and forth to get closer to her chest: they rubbed her breasts with their pointed heads and responded to her speech with aha, aha. Those in the back couldn’t take this and squeezed those in the front row to the back while they themselves pressed forward for their share of ‘‘enjoyment.’’ The gist of the widow’s mosquito-like narrative was: she felt she had to clarify what happened that night. She had been ‘‘absolutely innocent’’ in this matter. She definitely wasn’t like ‘‘certain people’’ (when she said this, she raised her voice a little and stared hard at the curtains), teasing the men, pretending to be filled with ardor, but, once the real thing came around, acting as if it hadn’t: she’d take the men by their ears and make them look small while she herself had fun with it. She was a plain, pure-hearted woman: all her behavior grew from her inner desires. She wasn’t seducing anyone, nor was she purposely letting anyone down, nor was she using this to control anybody. Although she had rolled in the hay with A that one night, she hadn’t let him prevail. She concluded that the experience was also good for A. After all, he’d been in contact with a mature woman’s body all through the process; one couldn’t estimate the impact this would have on his life in the future. At least, it profoundly branded him: it was enough to make him resist any future temptation, and maybe because of this he would become disillusioned with the mortal world and-like her-begin cultivating morality. Men are very malleable, as past experience had confirmed for her.

Her sex research made it possible for the widow to reach her own conclusions and form her own system. All of her inspiration comes from deep thought. People admire this. At the same time, Madam X has been exploring the same field, but her attitude is precisely the opposite: she speculates recklessly, resorts to trickery, makes a loud clamor, even lecturing to the crowds when she has nothing to contribute, and confuses people with her evil motivations. One is real gold; the other is rotten copper. The widow’s analogy hits the nail on the head even better: she comes right out and says that Madam X is a ‘‘counterfeit.’’ As to what kind of fake, she won’t say. She just ‘‘giggles’’ constantly, embarrassed to open her mouth. We surmise that she probably has the evidence in hand: clearly it relates to ‘‘sex.’’ In the past, the people on our Five Spice Street no doubt believed that X was a woman, but now even this certainty is gone. We must be prudent about everything having to do with Madam X: we can’t take anything on faith. Let’s listen to the hints the widow dropped:

‘‘Has any man tasted her sugarplum? No. Has any man reaped sensual pleasure from her body? No. Isn’t it impossible for a true woman to be a cloudy, misty thing? As lewd and depraved as she is, she can’t have been above doing the kind of things I did. There must have been some obstacles that prevented her from acting freely. Isn’t this clear if we carefully analyze her behavior?’’

It seems it isn’t so simple. If Madam X isn’t a ‘‘woman’’ and merely attracts throngs of men with witchcraft, then the widow’s hard work in her prolonged fight against her will soon expose her cheap tricks. As for the men, they must also be on guard and won’t easily take the bait. But up to now, there isn’t the slightest evidence that Madam X will fail. Those who consort with her (including a large group of teenagers) not only don’t guard against her, they depend on her more and more with each passing day and run over to her home for unknown reasons. As for the widow’s well-intentioned reminders, it’s as though they’re deaf: they don’t listen. Nor do they respect her. It’s as if the one with a sex problem isn’t Madam X but the widow. As for Madam X, most of them never approve of her conduct, and some spare no effort in tearing her down: they want to suppress her contagious evil influence. The widow evidently knows that only by employing her ‘‘real ability’’ can she achieve her goal. Yet she can’t, for that would destroy the ‘‘selfhood’’ the widow has cultivated for years. It appears that this deadly combat between her and Madam X will end in lasting stalemate. The widow can’t accept this result, because this would be tantamount to admitting that her research wasn’t complete-that it had no real worth, it was all malarkey. Our widow was up against an incalculably perilous future, yet without wavering, she chose the path filled with brambles and snares and pushed ahead. She was essentially a fanatical idealist unable to appreciate the life of philistines. Yearning for a pure and lofty life, she pursued her own goal.

Everyone knows that when our Madam X talks of sex, she is truly eloquent and long-winded. Everything she says is filled with dubious ardor. She never tires. The fact that she made the bizarre speech on the street proves that sex has always been her consuming issue. To put it simply, all of her activities-her work in the snack shop, looking into mirrors, observation of others’ eyes, relations with men-are motivated by this. To reach her goal requires superhuman energy and physical strength, so she lives her life systematically and rigorously. As others see it, except for her nighttime occupation and addiction to looking into mirrors, her daily life is identical to theirs. They don’t know it is a lie. Her real life is in her nighttime occupation and her looking into mirrors, both of which are directly related to sex. These matters consume all her strength: she’s continually high-strung and thin. It seems she can never put on weight.

People were shocked at hearing her opinions of sex: not only could the crowds on Five Spice Street not get it through their heads, but even her husband and her younger sister-even her lover Q- could understand only bits and pieces. What was she thinking? Did she have the same inborn self-confidence as the widow? The answer is definitely yes-and not only that: her self-confidence surpassed the widow’s and became a kind of wild arrogance. But the foundation of her arrogance was exactly the opposite of the foundation of the widow’s self-confidence: she completely ignored ‘‘physiological functions’’ and thought that her ‘‘sexual power’’ originated from the light waves in her sightless eyes. This was preposterous.

‘‘This is sexual power.’’ Blushing, she was drowning in narcissism. ‘‘My attention to my eyes gives me perpetual youth and preserves a high degree of acuity about novel things.’’

She also said that she hadn’t always possessed this power: her sex appeal surfaced gradually after her ‘‘occult’’ activities. Before that, it had been latent, and she was no different from other women. All at once, she towered far above other women. She became singularly graceful, suffused with sexual charm. She was certain she was ‘‘much more alluring now than when she was twenty.’’ ‘‘And would never be decrepit.’’

It’s true that in her affair with Q, the light in her eyes was the determining factor. But whether this constituted sex appeal, even

Mr. Q wasn’t sure: after all, he was not accustomed to such notions. Still, when they were together, under Madam X’s spell, Mr. Q fell into a trance, and he stared tearfully at Madam X’s eyes while certain parts of Madam X’s body kept appearing in his mind. All at once, he was aroused and could think only of ‘‘hopping into bed right away’’ with X. He wished to ‘‘please her in every way’’ to ‘‘ensure simultaneous orgasms.’’ Of course, in the beginning, he just kept these thoughts to himself. Mr. Q-it seems we said this above-wasn’t nearly as straight as Madam X: he always wavered and was weak- minded. He couldn’t bear to hurt anyone. So, although he was aroused, he made every effort to cover it up. He also found reasons to explain himself. Madam X didn’t give a damn what Mr. Q thought of her: with her body, she accepted a certain kind of ‘‘response’’ from him. Although at first they didn’t ‘‘screw,’’ still, from the very beginning, she thought: As far as sex was concerned, she and Mr. Q would be ideal together. Up to now, Q was the only ‘‘sexually’’ attractive man she knew. She had dreamed of this kind of man. Although she was wanton, she knew instinctively: she wasn’t likely to meet another man like Mr. Q. She certainly wouldn’t lightly let him slip away.

What did she really think of men? What made a man attractive? She didn’t deny male sex appeal as the widow did, but rather set a high standard-inconceivably high. It was also simple and absurd. She set two criteria. We’ve already divulged them: the color of his eyes and the sound of his speaking voice. Normal people thought this was crazy. How was it related to the exuberance and actuality of ‘‘sex’’? They doubted she used her eyes and ears. But according to her, it was her body’s response that had led her to this and caused her to cast aside most of the men who’d shown interest in her. A couple were exceptional, but not in a sexual way: this was also determined by her physical response. She couldn’t help it, and she wouldn’t compromise for those men, either-even those she was very fond of. It seemed there was more than one Mr. Q. Someone even said she was a ‘‘nymphomaniac,’’ another that she was ‘‘frigid.’’ Because of this, Mr. Q was sometimes distressed, jealous, and fearful of losing her. He was always yearning to ‘‘make it’’ with her.

Though he couldn’t shake this feeling off, he didn’t dare pursue it. Finally, he ‘‘lost all interest in living.’’

At noon one day in Madam X’s gloomy little room, her colleague asked what she really meant by sex. Was it just a figment of her ‘‘imagination’’? Was it unrelated to the reality of ‘‘going to bed’’? If it was something she had concocted to fool people, then (at this point, she began whispering in Madam X’s ear) she needn’t keep it a secret from her loyal friend of many years: she was more trustworthy than a locked safe. Madam X was taken in and opened the door to her heart.

She confirmed that for her sex was closely related to going to bed. Going to bed was the whole goal and the pinnacle of sex. It was the moment of unparalleled sweetness: you could simply say that it was her ideal come true. It was precisely because it was like this that she was somewhat too serious about it: Even something as tiny as a sesame seed could destroy her mood; she would feel joyless and lose her sexual urge. Madam X said this was her greatest limitation, and because of this she couldn’t behave; she set the standards so high that men could never reach them. Her emotions went up and down, wearying other people. But in the past she hadn’t always thought ‘‘the grass was greener on the other side.’’ It was her ‘‘occult’’ activities that changed her. They kindled her sexual prowess and summoned the demons within her, and from then on she was like a hungry wolf looking everywhere for food and provoking endless trouble. Her colleague noticed that a little girl’s innocent expression appeared on Madam X’s face as she spoke in her self-absorbed way. She despised her even more, and she wished she could kick her under the table and make her scream in pain.

Her interest in a man, she revealed, always derived from the color of his eyes and the tone of his voice, which she had ‘‘the ability to distinguish in detail and concerning which she had a wealth of experience.’’ This wasn’t to say that she preferred romantic love- no, she detested it and thought it contrived. However, any man who measured up to her standards would have overwhelming happiness with her in bed. At such times, she would be uninhibited. She would spare nothing, and her partner would reap satisfaction such as he had never known before. From this, you can also see that she had a high opinion of herself-so high it sounded like boasting. She also divulged that although her standards might change, she could always promptly find the right men. Once she found one, she would pursue him to the end: she wouldn’t give up halfway-never! — unless irrefutable evidence proved her mistaken. Only then would she ‘‘turn back.’’

After all this blustering, her colleague tried every trick in the book to lead her to talk of her ‘‘illicit affair,’’ hoping to experience it vicariously. ‘‘What do you think of men’s physiques?’’ ‘‘Which is better-a big guy or a little one?’’ ‘‘What’s the difference between a married man and a virgin?’’ ‘‘Which is more exciting-a gentle type or a wild one?’’ But Madam X became deadly serious. It was as though she refused to comment on specific individuals and wanted a purely scientific discussion. She remained silent and looked as though she pitied her colleague and wanted to give her a hand. Her attitude provoked her colleague to spring to her feet (taking the opportunity to kick her) and shout that she was ‘‘a whore pretending to be a saint.’’ She was so wanton that, as soon as she was with a man, all she wanted from the first minute was ‘‘to go to bed.’’ ‘‘Going to bed’’ was the only truth. There was not the least reason to believe her self-worship bullshit. Unless her organs were defective, only a fool would believe that she would let the opportunity for such joy slip away. God only knew how many men she’d been with over the years. Otherwise, how could she have ‘‘the ability to distinguish in detail, as well as a wealth of experience with men’’?

Shrugging, Madam X patiently explained that she couldn’t convey her perceptions with words. She was indeed a little different from other people. Something others thought impossible happened to her. She couldn’t help it. Please don’t think she had closed down: actually, the door to her heart was open, and she’d been looking forward to being with people (including ‘‘making it’’ with men), but she hadn’t succeeded, and her experience had ‘‘calmed her’’ long ago.

After the colleague left, she dropped in on Old Woman Jin. As it happened, Old Woman Jin and the coal worker had just gotten it on and were bare-assed. Because the female colleague blew in like a gust of wind (Old Woman Jin never bolted her door), they instantly sat up under the quilt but didn’t move. They chatted with Madam X’s colleague and petted each other affectionately. The colleague brought explosive news: Madam X was going to get married. Old Woman Jin was astonished. After looking all over for her trousers, she covered herself with a chemise and jumped out of bed. Then, she fired off a string of questions: Madam X is already married-how can she ‘‘get married’’? Is this legal? Since she’s going to get married, why didn’t she do it either sooner or later? Why did she have to do it at this point-at the very time when Old Woman Jin was on the brink of success in love and was about to overwhelm Madam X in this arena? If she got married, wouldn’t all of Old Woman Jin’s efforts be wasted and she’d be up a creek? What on earth was Madam X up to? Was it possible that this gossip wasn’t true at all and was meant only to confuse people? The colleague was laughing, urging Old Woman Jin to calm down. She sat her bottom down on the bed and crushed the coal worker’s foot. He pulled back with a grimace. ‘‘Madam X,’’ the colleague said slowly, ‘‘Madam X is really an invincible and mighty person!’’ and Old Woman Jin trembled all over.

She told them that Madam X was her best friend and that she was the strongest woman she’d ever encountered. All she had to do was crook her finger and people would do her bidding. If anyone tried to take advantage of her or set himself against her, he ended up the worse for it. Without turning a hair, she could set a deathtrap for him. As for her, she felt fortunate to have made such a friend, and if she had to exhaust all of her energy to defend Madam X’s reputation, she wouldn’t hesitate in the least. As for Madam X’s power over men, of course she-Old Woman Jin-couldn’t dispute this. Madam X simply didn’t give her a thought. Old Woman Jin might feel she’d triumphed over Madam X by getting into bed with the coal worker. But Madam X didn’t notice this trivial thing at all: she simply wasn’t aware of it, because she was a woman of great talent and bold vision- how could she care about a guy like this? Even if he persisted in thinking he was important to Madam X, this was just unrequited love, and Old Woman Jin’s tactics were based only on misconcep- tions-an immature game, an irrelevant plaything, better not even to deal with. If Madam X can be said to have any real rival, it can only be she-Madam X’s best friend: she’s the only one she’s afraid of. For she’s the one who knows all of Madam X’s secrets, who best understands Madam X’s strange nature, and who has at least as much power to charm men. Who else would Madam X be afraid of? And so, although she is Madam X’s best friend, she’s also the rival that Madam X worries about. After years of observing men falling for Madam X’s charm, she has figured out her trump cards. The most useful is sexual innuendo. In this, Madam X is extremely vulgar: she always talks directly to her partner of her ‘‘desires’’ and then waits for the person to be aroused so she can control him. Of course, she isn’t aroused-and even cruelly mocks her partner for his physiological response. This trump card has withstood the test of time, and it wins every time. This is merely because most men are good-for-nothings; their very birth was a mistake. After she had observed and understood Madam X’s inner steeliness, Madam X was scared to death and sought her out numerous times to explain herself. She said she wasn’t a bystander where men were concerned, that now and then she looked forward to a sexual relationship with an ideal man, but she ‘‘couldn’t find her ideal’’ and so turned out to be the way she is today. The colleague saw through her. Madam X was afraid this weak spot would become public knowledge and she would lose her admirers. Of course the colleague would never stab Madam X in the back. She just wished to make Madam X less arrogant. She isn’t the only woman in the world. Someone else is much better; someone else is calm and modest. Why can’t Madam X be like this? She wasn’t inclined toward riotous passion-why did she have to fake it? Although it satisfied her vanity, what a blow to the men of the world (even if they were just garbage).

The colleague stopped and looked out the door. Then she bolted it securely and turned around. ‘‘Not long ago,’’ she whispered, ‘‘there was a guy-I’m not exaggerating-he used to be one of her admirers, but after discovering me, he finally saw the light: he realized what real feminine charm is. I certainly didn’t intend to steal her business. Not me. Each time, I just stayed off to one side, but men noticed me. This wasn’t my fault; it was the awakening of their inner maleness. Oh my God! The real thing is here! Oh my God! The shimmering pearl is right here! This happened lots of times, too many to count. If I revealed the numbers, she’d be too ashamed to show her face. She completely overlooked me, this crazy person.’’ She suddenly felt empty inside. ‘‘Why don’t you light the stove in your house?’’ she yelled. Then she kicked the stove until it fell over and red coals scattered on the floor. Then, swinging her arms, she took her leave.

Old Woman Jin and the young coal worker looked at each other in despair. ‘‘Should we put our pants on?’’ the coal worker asked hesitantly. ‘‘Fuck off!’’ Old Woman Jin shouted. He misunderstood and ‘‘made it’’ with her again. They rolled onto the coals and wailed like stuck pigs.

To return to Madam X: Had she been born with her notions of sex? Had she ever experienced true success and failure? If not, then we can say only that her idea of sex is nothing but a mannerism. According to Madam X’s younger sister, however, her ideas ‘‘have gone from being blurry to being focused and have changed over time to what they are today.’’ There’s not much chance of getting anything from analyzing what the sister said: we’ve already tried that. We’d be better off reasoning for ourselves: we could scour our eyes and could also think it through logically. From the way Madam X behaves, we can be sure she used to be a desperate slut. She’d ‘‘gone to bed’’ countless times (the proof is in the way her eyes light up when she mentions ‘‘going to bed’’). With such a frightening sexual appetite, she must have destroyed quite a few men’s careers and even caused someone’s death. Sure, some women are a little dissolute-others won’t mind very much when they ‘‘ease up’’ a little now and then- but we’ve never seen a woman like Madam X, who takes people’s lives. It wasn’t until she became notorious and was dismissed from the government office and drifted over to Five Spice Street that she had to exercise a little self-restraint. After a few months, she felt robbed of good times and wanted to make it up to herself. Before long, she showed her true nature. She emphasized that she ‘‘knew herself thoroughly and was very discreet,’’ that she had now entered a ‘‘phase of sober reckoning with herself,’’ and that her ‘‘dispel boredom’’ activities allowed her to ‘‘eliminate all worldly interference.’’ She ‘‘could see her desire directly.’’ From the standpoint of Madam X’s welfare, it would have been better if she’d been mixed up all her life and never had to be awakened. She became so aggressive that she scared men away-who would dare risk his life? At the same time, she indulged in hopeless self-admiration and couldn’t get along with people. (She claimed that men no longer meant anything to her.) Who knows what was in her mind? What did it have to do with men? She shouldn’t have had such a high opinion of herself, because it was all a misconception that counted for nothing. If men meant nothing to her, why did she seek them out? Wouldn’t it have been much more impressive to ‘‘keep herself as pure as jade,’’ as the widow did? Madam X had no answers and stressed that since she started her occult activities, her body had become fresher by the day. Every time the big bell in the city tolled and the first light of morning broke, she leapt lightly from the crook in her husband’s arm to the window, where she stood for a long time, feeling-as she told her sister-that ‘‘her breasts were so full, her buttocks rounded, her thighs long and supple, her whole body like swaying willow branches.’’ One morning, our widow witnessed the entire drama and reported that there was ‘‘no way to describe’’ her reaction. She also said that Madam X’s husband actually ‘‘abetted this behavior.’’ Maybe her precious husband had been ‘‘in cahoots’’ with her all along.

Once aroused, Madam X’s body would stir up endless trouble. She could have displayed her magic power anywhere, but unfortunately chose Five Spice Street, where people had lived in an orderly fashion for generations. No one imagined that a woman like this would ever show up here-not even Old Meng, the eighty-three- year-old fortune-teller at the pharmacy. Madam X had dropped down like an alien from outer space, started a snack shop with her husband, and made it clear they were here to stay. Only after a long time did we become aware of their presence. The ordinary Five Spice Street people were realists: though at first confused, they narrowed their eyes and took the measure of this couple. They accepted the facts and quickly worked out countermeasures. This couple was tolerated as a ‘‘dissident element.’’ All along, the Five Spice Street people had been good at tolerating different ideas and individuals. It wasn’t unprincipled compromise but a gradual assimilation in which over the years others fused into a single unit with themselves. From ancient times onward, this method had generally produced the desirable result. But not with Madam X.

From the day she landed on Five Spice Street to the present (about two or three years), Madam X’s cancer-like stubbornness endangered others. It was as if it wasn’t she who should be assimilated, but everyone else. Wasn’t this what she pursued with clenched teeth? Of course, this was no big deal to a community with such a long tradition. This healthy organism might even benefit from producing antibodies. But, when all is said and done, mosquitoes are loathsome: they buzz and suck people’s blood. Madam X was just such a loathsome spotted mosquito. We just hoped she wouldn’t annoy people too much with her buzzing so that our kind people wouldn’t have to kill her. Her notions were deeply at odds with the traditions of Five Spice Street.

Let’s talk first of cooling off outside: this was the most abhorrent thing this couple did. In the summer, we southerners sit outside to enjoy the cool evening breeze, and we do this next to the main street. Small groups congregate until midnight to talk over all the major events, imagine the future, or criticize society. People had to take part, for important decisions were made here. Beginning with the first summer after they arrived, Madam X and her family showed their lack of breeding. As the crowds were enjoying the breeze, they strolled down the main street, eyes straight ahead. Afterwards, they closed the door of their little house and did not reemerge. The woman fiddled with her microscope, and the man ‘‘did who knows what.’’ The young coal worker once went over to Madam X and ‘‘tactfully broached the subject,’’ inviting her ‘‘to take part in a bit of a social movement,’’ but she ‘‘laughed grimly’’ and bent her head again to look into the microscope, as if afraid that the coal worker might delay her even a minute. It was also as though she didn’t recognize him. The coal worker sat in silence for a while, his inferiority complex mounting. When he went home, ‘‘he couldn’t even walk steadily.’’

‘‘Well,’’ he said, oddly embarrassed, ‘‘she was busy with her own work, which is certainly superior. I was almost moved to tears. Her work is unique; we mustn’t importune her…’’

Before he’d finished, the widow spat in his face, and lambasted him: “You’re shameless. What kind of sugarplum did you get from that monkey spirit?’’

Year after year went by, and Madam X and her husband still didn’t participate in the gatherings; they still closed their door tight. Not only this, they attempted in vain to use their occult activities to break down the Five Spice Street community. Because of her, the number of people who came out for the cool breeze decreased a little, and the number who engaged in occult activities with her increased. This delighted her stupid husband: when he ran into anyone, he would say how wonderful Madam X’s ‘‘unique skill’’ was. Once it was put into practice, no traditional custom could withstand it: it simply swept away all obstacles. This husband boasted like a child. Even so, we could see Madam X’s ‘‘pervasive power’’ that others had overlooked.

Besides enjoying the evening breeze, there was another great interest: photography. Our Five Spice Street people thought taking pictures was grand-like celebrating a festival. In addition to taking pictures at home, every year when spring came and the flowers were in bloom, large groups squeezed into the photography studio in the city center for group photos. Then, they took them home as rare keepsakes, placed them in the best frames, and hung them on their walls. No matter whose home you went into, photos covered the walls and filled people with pride. Madam X’s family was an exception. It was okay not to take part in this collective movement, but why make such extremely negative comments against it? She and her husband said that ‘‘there wasn’t any advantage’’ to taking photos, that it was all ‘‘a gloss’’; ‘‘if a person wants to see the reality, a lifelike self, the best method is to look in the mirror,’’ ‘‘if a person doesn’t dare look in a mirror, what does he take photos for? — it’s all selfdeception,’’ and so on. While playing, even their son, Little Bao, often offhandedly said, ‘‘Photos, photos, photos! I’m sick to death of this!’’ There were a lot of other weird things about Madam X’s family-too many to enumerate. They can be summed up, though, in one line: Everything they did was done purposely to destroy Five Spice Street’s social system. They desperately wanted to take this hostility to the grave.

4. MR. Q AND HIS FAMILY

Below a hill in the suburbs was a row of red brick bungalows: our Mr. Q and his wife and two sons lived in a small flat here. Mr. Q and his wife were both about thirty-eight or thirty-nine years old (in private, they adamantly considered themselves forty-five, having already seen everything there was to see in the world). They were affable and gentle-easy to be around. They both worked in government offices. After they returned home from an exhausting day, their tiredness was swept away by their lively sons (ages nine and eleven), who threw themselves at them.

Outsiders saw a touching family picture. In the front and back yards, they grew pumpkins, bitter melons, and beans and also raised some snow-white longhaired rabbits, a large tiger cat, and one handsome and heroic wolf dog. Husband and wife loved the country and disliked the urban hullabaloo. In the warm summer sun, the air was filled with sweet scents and the hum of bees. Under the melon rack, Mr. Q would kiss his wife-a long kiss, as if their lips were sticky with honey. Afterwards, they would sit and cuddle on the long stone bench under the melon rack. Hot tears brimmed in their eyes as they immersed themselves in a sort of ancient reverie and forgot all their worries. Only when a bird called would they come to. Then they would be inspired to kiss again. They had lived this quiet, affectionate life for fifteen years that seemed to have gone by in the blink of an eye. From the beginning, they got on very well, and their affection had grown deeper by the day. It seemed that the two had become an indivisible whole. Until Mr. Q met Madam X.

Of course, their temperaments were not at all the same. Mr. Q’s wife was a gentle, cowardly, simple woman. From the first day, she had adored him, and from adoration had gone on to love him. Her love was bone-deep. She had never given any other man a serious glance, because she thought that apart from Mr. Q, men were frightening and incomprehensible. Meeting Mr. Q had been her greatest good fortune. Waiting on Mr. Q wholeheartedly and taking on all the heavy family responsibilities, she now and then felt a young wife’s pride from the bottom of her heart. At times like this, she was no longer cowardly, and her cheeks took on the blush of a young wife; all at once, she became graceful and charming. It was hard to be sure about Mr. Q’s temperament. It was multi-layered. We can also say that he had never fully unveiled his true temperament, so we’ve never come up with a precise assessment. But his two main characteristics-generosity and kindness-were always evident. Other aspects of his temperament that became apparent in the half year of his contact with Madam X never fully emerged. From what he said, his behavior had been repressed because of his sense of ‘‘original sin’’ since the day he was born. No one could figure out how great his potential was, or what kind of abnormal thing he was capable of doing.

Mr. Q was chivalrous and warm. He loved his wife: from the very beginning, he decided he would never hurt her. He would always be a big brother to her and a protective, loving husband. In the beginning, their sex life wasn’t so great, but they worked on it, and with mutual affection as an accelerator, they eventually achieved a great deal of satisfaction. His wife developed from a passive virgin into a lover who could satisfy Mr. Q body and soul. Q appreciated his wife and felt indebted to her. Words like the following added spice to their lives: ‘‘If you ever love another woman, I’ll kill myself on the spot so that the two of you can fulfill your desires.’’ ‘‘It was simply unforeseen that you would fall into my life: it was God making up to me for my long life alone.’’ (The wife’s words.) ‘‘If there is life after death and I could choose another wife in the hereafter, I would still choose you.’’ ‘‘You’re my ideal. You thoroughly changed me and made me a good, pure man. Other women would have corrupted me.’’ ‘‘Is there any joy I haven’t experienced? Is there anything that can move me more than this?!’’ (Mr. Q’s words.) Although nauseating, this illustrates the depth of their love.

Yet, can we say that no one had ever come between them, that their lives had always been calm, with the blue sky and white clouds above and the cat and rabbits below, bees flying around them and little birds and insects sharing their affection? No. This would be a little too ideal. It was at odds with Mr. Q’s frame of reference. Unfortunately, Mr. Q was very sexy. Sensitive women could see from his face and his behavior the carnal desire he restrained. They could also see how crazy he was about sex. Now and then, a lusty vigor would surge up and contend with reason. This both annoyed and confused him. But each time he surmounted the difficulties the demons were stirring up, returned to his peaceful little kingdom, and once more became a good man, a good loving husband.

The year he turned thirty-five (a man’s best time), a gorgeous woman took stock of him and lay in wait at the foot of some dark stairs. She ‘‘grabbed’’ his arm and urgently expressed her desire.

‘‘You live for this.’’ Without listening to his protests, she fixed her eyes on his and waited with half-open lips for his kiss.

He didn’t move. After a long time (the woman felt it must have been ten thousand years), they finally found a way out of the stalemate. Mr. Q sighed and said, ‘‘What is this about? We don’t even know each other!’’

The woman left in a huff. Afterwards, he told his wife that he had felt a passing lightheadedness but had quickly regained his equilibrium and ‘‘had seen through’’ her.

‘‘She’s a common flirt,’’ he said to his wife (in an unduly bland manner that seemed to be glossing over something). ‘‘How can she compare with you!’’

He weaseled out of it, and the woman quickly turned to another man. He felt fortunate and proud: he hadn’t fallen for her trick; the sequel would have been unimaginable. At first glance, a woman might seem special although she actually wasn’t. Wasn’t this proof?

If a man took a risk for this kind of woman, what could he achieve except his own destruction? In general, women were loathsome. If there was another kind, he certainly hadn’t seen it, so how could he prove there was? Up to now, he hadn’t seen any relationship more perfect than his with his wife. He believed there could be nothing better. His vision was so sharp he couldn’t be fooled. He was already forty-five: was there anything he couldn’t see through?

His wife celebrated their (she did not say his, but always said their) victory as if it were a holiday. She couldn’t help but redouble her caresses. She called him ‘‘my poor boy. My poor, solitary little boy.’’ And he redoubled his response to her, ashamed of his momentary, contemptible thoughts. He vowed he would never tell her about this and would always preserve their love’s perfection and purity. Who could compare with his wife? This graceful, pure, virginal person! This soul fully loaded with love! Each time, he marveled and adored her. In their fifteen years together, they’d probably encountered that kind of ‘‘trouble’’ four or five times. Each time, Q dealt with it properly. He would never let such a vulgar thing disturb his angel-like wife’s mood (that would be the same as deliberately hurting her). If he had to, he would tell her afterwards. He would turn it into a joke. He would never let her have uneasy suspicions.

From the bottom of her heart, Q’s wife knew that Q was charming, knew the way he appeared to other women. But she wasn’t the least bit jealous. There was no room in her heart for jealousy. She was just uneasy. She thought of her husband as a charming child, skipping through the world as naked as the day he was born. All around were thorns and unseen wild animals. He could be hurt at any moment. He was her husband, her big brother, but emotionally he was also her child-a gullible, hotheaded child. She needed to guide him in the dark to a safe place. Excited about her mission, she couldn’t help smiling.

‘‘What are you so happy about?’’

‘‘Female stuff. Not for you.’’

The clouds passed, and the sky was once again blue and pure. The bean blossoms gave off their faint intoxicating scent. With one child on his knee, Mr. Q would cuddle his frail little wife in his strong arms: he was steeped in his happiness as father and husband. If this witch X hadn’t appeared, or if it had been another woman and not X, then Q and his wife could have been a model of affection, an example for everyone to emulate.

The disastrous incident took place one fair afternoon in May. It was a day off for Mr. Q and his wife. From the time they got up early in the morning (they never slept in), Mr. Q had felt an uneasy stirring that lasted until afternoon. He scrupulously hid it from his wife. After lunch, he stood up and told his wife he was going out to get his fortune told, and then-his mind unsettled-he left. (Here, we’ll add a little: Mr. Q was a truly superstitious person. In this, he was much different from Madam X, who practiced the occult arts without being superstitious herself. In the marrow of her bones, she was unusually self-confident: that is to say, she had always believed only in herself- not the gods, and not fate, either. She challenged fate, jeered at it. Whenever possible, she would do any wild thing to oppose fate. She would never admit defeat. Mr. Q was the opposite: he lived in fear, believed in the gods and fate, and seldom had any improper ideas. He often had his fortune told, and the outcome affected his mood, either stimulating him too much or leaving him dispirited. Sometimes, for several days in a row, he acted frivolously-like a child: he mumbled and was in a wonderful mood. Sometimes, he’d sit upright and silent like an old man, mind empty and eyes vacant. Whenever this occurred, his wife knew someone had told his fortune again. He would give up his day off to walk several miles to see a fortune-teller. He would save money to pay these guys who held his destiny in their hands. Having his fortune told was his only hobby. Two days earlier, a colleague had told him that a real psychic lived on Five Spice Street in the city: it was said that she had incredible abilities but hadn’t told anyone’s fortune yet. If he went, perhaps he could charm her into telling his fortune. Mr. Q immediately filed this information away in his mind. We have no record of the details of this fortune-telling, because no one provided reliable information and Mr. Q hasn’t told anyone of it, either. His letters threw light only on her eyeballs. He didn’t say a word about fortune-telling. Madam X’s sister (present at the time) only sighed about some totally unrelated things that referred vaguely to Mr. Q’s looks. We’ve dealt with this above. Anyhow, this was the first time Mr. Q and Madam X met. It was a vital meeting, for it changed the course of a lot of people’s lives. It also led to an innocent person’s death. We’ll discuss this later.

Here, we want to talk of the weather that day, because the weather was a decisive link in the whole affair. It really was an unfathomable, weird day! Of course, if we weren’t making a special point of looking into the details, it might have been no different from any other spring day. Years later, the lame woman on Five Spice Street recalled that the weather that day was very fair. Beginning in the morning, white clouds like flowers wandered in the sky. Later, ‘‘these flowers even hung from the treetops.’’ She stuck her head out the window: it was ‘‘like a wonderland’’ outside. ‘‘In addition to the cloud flowers, there was another unusual thing: the scent of the grass.’’ You need to know there’d never been any grass on Five Spice Street; only some stunted trees stood at the side of the road. But now a strong, refreshing smell of grass suffused the air with a little green color that intoxicated people and made them sentimental. It was in this kind of atmosphere that our Mr. Q walked toward Madam X’s little house. What happened next, and what kind of turn occurred in his life, is also comprehensible. We don’t know where the fault lay that day: even God acted as matchmaker for this pair of adulterers.

Mr. Q’s wife was utterly ignorant of what happened. She never inquired about her husband’s associates or his activities. She wasn’t curious about anything her husband didn’t care to tell her. After Q returned at twilight, he was in an especially good mood; his wife just thought that ‘‘he must have been told a good fortune today,’’ and felt happy for him. When the stars came out, the two snuggled in the doorway and sang ‘‘The Brook Below the Mountain’’ in soft voices. They were intoxicated for a long time. Mr. Q heard hidden meanings in the song that made him stop abruptly at the last note. His wife didn’t even notice. They snuggled even closer.

‘‘The scent of grass.’’ Mr. Q suddenly shed tears. ‘‘Has spring really come?’’

‘‘Finally,’’ his wife responded, choking with sobs.

A puff of fog from a green meteor on the horizon startled the hill. It quivered a few times as a magical silence settled down again everywhere. In his dreams that night, Mr. Q pondered the same question: ‘‘Can batteries be loaded into people’s eyes?’’ The entire night, he struggled in and out of dreams. An incandescent light blinded him. He turned his head and saw a colorless, deserted glass road that stretched to a certain corner.

The second day that Mr. Q and Madam X met, after the lame woman encountered Mr. Q from the window, a miracle occurred. At first, she felt that ants were biting her legs, and then, ‘‘without knowing where her strength came from,’’ she actually began all at once to lean on both crutches and wobbled out the door. We don’t know whether she had heard where Mr. Q lived or not-we aren’t even sure whether she’d heard anything about Mr. Q. However, she immediately ‘‘recognized him.’’ Now, calling upon a blurry memory, she headed toward Mr. Q’s home. Soon, she arrived at the small house with the melon rack. Q’s wife was sitting there, listening to the bees sing, with a little red flower in her hair, her head swaying back and forth. She didn’t even notice the lame woman who had stopped in front of her. She never paid much attention to outsiders. She thought her no more than a passerby waiting for someone in the doorway. She opened her eyes a little, then closed them again, absorbed in the singing of the bees.

‘‘Hellooooo,’’ the lame woman dragged out the sound sullenly. Q’s wife thought it was the wind calling uneasily in the open country, for the wind was always doing this.

‘‘Are you deaf?’’ Extending a thin, bony hand, the lame woman tapped her on the shoulder. Only then did Q’s wife turn around in surprise and look at her with a sulky, aggrieved expression.

‘‘The shadow streaking across in front of us is a wild dog.’’ She was staring hard at Mrs. Q. ‘‘I’ve had experience with this: that was ten years ago, one twilight when the peas blossomed.’’

The woman now made eye contact with her. Skimming over her small puppet-like face were inauspicious dark clouds, but they quickly vanished.

‘‘Something troubling you?’’ She gave the lame woman a compassionate look, indicating she should take the chair in front of her. ‘‘Not everyone’s in a good mood like me. I hear of troubled people everywhere-truly wretched. Who are you?’’

‘‘Me? How could you know about me? I’ve heard the story about you and the wild dog. It has only three legs-right? Me? You know, I’ve been paralyzed in both legs for ten years, and as I was lying there, I heard a lot of things-so many that my head nearly exploded. When I was confined to bed, I saw you and the dog. Today, all at once, I’ve walked over here: it’s really weird. The doctors say it’s dangerous for me to lose my temper; I have a pain in my chest.’’ ‘‘It’s too bad. This morning, I was thinking of weaving a crown of willow twigs to wear on my head. Beside the pond in back there are some weeping willows.’’

‘‘Go to hell!’’ The lame woman stood up and, pointing with a crutch at the melon rack, told her off. ‘‘What’s this? These ragged things hanging in front of the door: aren’t they counterfeit? You’re all nothing but walking corpses. It makes me dizzy just thinking of it!’’ She left in a rage.

Mrs. Q couldn’t understand her outrage; she thought the woman bizarre. She grew timid whenever a stranger appeared. She couldn’t make friends with anyone, for people were always bad-tempered and she didn’t dare get close. In truth, she shouldn’t have been born in this world, for there were too many threats all around. Luckily she had Q, her husband, her reliable friend who did away with the world’s dangers for her. And so, for the first time in her life, she grew worried: where was Q? Where was her passionate boy? She changed her shoes, went to the path, and looked around. She heard only the wind whimpering. She looked again and again, and suddenly was ashamed of herself: she felt she was being unfair to him. This was disgraceful. After she calmed down, she went back to the melon rack to listen to the bees. But the bees were no longer singing: they were just whirling around in a crazy circle. The woman’s head felt a little heavy, and her eyes a little blurred. Who on earth was that person? It seemed she had frequently been confronted with those blazing black eyes. When she went to the well to draw water, a lynx was squatting there. The path was always littered with wild animals’ footprints. Could it be a portent? No, so why was she pulling a long face? She remembered her trunk that held all kinds of treasures- including some the lame woman could never imagine! Well, then, sing some songs. She was hoarse.

The lame woman walked far away, her crutches still echoing…

It was really a terrifying day.

The bees didn’t sing again that day.

‘‘A fortune-teller came.’’ She braced herself to joke with her husband.

‘‘Recently, I haven’t been too interested in fortune-telling.’’ In high spirits, Q was looking at his wife. He kissed her little ears and smiled absent-mindedly.

“You’re wonderful!’’ Gasping in admiration, she threw herself into his arms. ‘‘How about paying a little more attention to our bees and getting them to sing all the time?’’

5. THE FAILURE OF REEDUCATION

One noon in the second year of Madam X’s ‘‘dispel boredom’’ movement, there was a small get-together at the lame woman’s home. More than a dozen charming, graceful women attended. This meeting wasn’t convened by anyone but was brought about by telepathy: it was a ‘‘coincidence.’’ These women were forthright like ‘‘feminists.’’ As soon as they sat down in the room, each began cursing someone. Because they were on the same wave length, they were doubly stimulated-they shared a bitter hatred of the enemy and fought in high spirits, all of them eager and determined to throw all their energy into this.

In this charged atmosphere, the widow suggested that they ask Old Woman Jin to go out and buy some fried dough sticks in order ‘‘to lift their spirits’’ for ‘‘working energetically on this.’’ Naturally, this suggestion drew unanimous approval, and soon the whole room was filled with the sound of fried dough sticks being eaten. Some people surreptitiously wiped their greasy fingers on the lame woman’s quilt. After finishing the dough sticks, they ate some fried dough twists and then played cards. In the midst of such a good time, they nearly forgot the main point. Only when the female colleague prompted them did they start cursing someone again. This time, it wasn’t the one they had begun with-the woman they all knew-but instead an eighty-year-old ‘‘who should have been dead a long time ago.’’ After half an hour, they finally realized they had ‘‘shifted the objective of the struggle,’’ and resumed cursing the first woman.

‘‘She’s still coming up with ideas for your children!’’ The widow brought up this most sensitive and thrilling issue and then launched into a lengthy self-analysis. Her emotions were like a surging flood: ‘‘Although I have no children, I will join you in struggling against her to the end. In the first place, I had the ability to have children, but my deceased husband and I didn’t think children were important. You could say we didn’t even think about it-and so the outcome was inevitable. You must remember that in those years, the old folks said that I would have at least a dozen children; they all described me as ‘a mother hen good at laying eggs.’ Fifty-eight people said this, and some were so excited they said it repeatedly. As you all know, I was great at sex. No one could compare with me. I was like a plot of fertile land: it was only necessary to sow good seeds and I could have continually born fruit. I wasn’t like a certain person, who, even if she had sturdy seeds, either couldn’t bear fruit or just bore one monstrous one. Her soil isn’t fertile enough. You can’t figure out if she’s even a woman. Later on, I didn’t care whether or not I had children. Having children doesn’t mean anything. The important thing is a person’s moral character. This is a person’s true value. Although it’s fine to have children, if they aren’t brought up well, they can harm society. What’s the point of having a child at odds with society from the moment it’s born? Now, a lot of these destructive children have appeared in our community, and they’re directly related to a certain person’s conspiracy. How should we deal with this? Is it conceivable that we can’t think of countermeasures?’’

At this point, the widow remembered something: ‘‘The reason I didn’t have children is related to my years of keeping myself as pure as jade: I considered this to be of the utmost importance. After my husband died of his illness, have any of my relationships with men gone beyond friendship? One after another, strong young men-in the prime of life-were hot for me. But I had long ago transcended the worldly and given up the vulgar, and never again showed any interest in this kind of thing. Whether a person has children or not doesn’t matter. I’m concerned only to actualize my lofty ideals.’’ These sincere words opened up the female colleague’s sluice gate of sentimentality. Thinking of her ‘‘evil son,’’ she couldn’t keep from wailing until her face was wet with tears and snot. First she wiped her face with her sleeve and then with the lame woman’s grease-spotted quilt-leaving her face blotchy. Choking with sobs, she said she wanted to ‘‘fight a duel with’’ Madam X (she mentioned her by name; it would have been much better to be beautifully indirect, as the widow was; this showed that she lacked breeding). If she didn’t succeed, she’d kill herself and let the law punish her. Sure enough, as she talked, she rammed her skull against the side of the bed. Nobody stopped her: indeed, they all looked on with avid interest, as if they wanted to see how strong her skull was. The female colleague rammed her head more than twenty times before looking up and dashing outside with a ‘‘wild look in her eyes.’’

‘‘This is precisely the calamity that children bring down on us.’’ The widow summed up calmly, ‘‘What’s worth flaunting about this kind of child? It’s just exposing one’s own inferiority to the public through one’s child. When people see her son, they can’t help but associate him with her. If she didn’t have a son, she could still pretend to be classy.’’

As soon as the widow stopped talking, the room turned quiet. After a while, the sound of intermittent sobs came from two corners of the room. Old Woman Jin and the widow’s forty-eight-year-old friend were crying. They were crying because they were in the same boat as the widow-neither had children, nor could they in the future. As they thought of Madam X’s intrigue with Five Spice Street’s young generation, they hated her guts-God knows how much. In their trance, they imagined they had no children because of this detestable Madam X. If it weren’t for Madam X, they would have been happy round-faced grannies with dozens of children and grandchildren at their knees.

Old Woman Jin thought back to her unappealing ‘‘love life’’ with the young coal worker: it had made her sad and lonely. Sure, she’d had fleeting feelings of triumph and joy, but they were just a flash in the pan. It was this woman X who had kept her from reveling in her love. Now she ‘‘abhorred to death’’ this young coal worker: her relationship with him was no more than an ‘‘obligation’’ (she couldn’t bear to destroy him by abandoning him). If it weren’t for Madam X, she certainly wouldn’t have chosen this half-grown baby of a coal worker (she could get as many babies like this as she wanted). You have to know that in the past, she was a winsome woman. It was just because of her bad luck that she started hating men from the bottom of her heart and kept her distance. If she’d had a little better luck, every man would have wanted to throw himself at her feet and she could have chosen anyone she wanted. Now, she’d actually sunk so low as to end up the mistress of the young coal worker (the poor guy), and this had certainly not elevated her position on Five Spice Street; probably she’d fallen even further in other people’s opinions. The curse responsible for all this was precisely Madam X’s. This Madam X was a skilled sorceress. Anyone who saw her would involuntarily hallucinate, involuntarily start making mistakes. Generally, people would regret those mistakes for a lifetime. At the beginning, she’d had so many exciting plans! She’d spent so many good days immersed in fascinating ideas. She’d already defeated Zhou Sanji. She thought this victory was unquestionable. But beginning in the morning the day before yesterday, that damn back of his appeared again at her door. As he pulled up his pants, he was humming for fear she wouldn’t notice him. Now everything was upside down. She had no idea how it had started. She just knew that all her effort had been fruitless, and she’d become a laughingstock. She couldn’t hold up her head again. Zhou Sanji had also walked into her house at noon and announced to her and the coal worker: When he stood in her doorway and pulled his pants up, he wasn’t doing it for her. He wouldn’t give her even a passing thought if it weren’t that he’d heard her shout at him yesterday. He stated that he stood in her doorway just to ‘‘ponder things.’’

And why was the forty-eight-year-old good friend crying? Let’s listen carefully to what she confided to the widow. (The widow listened attentively, her expression serious.) She said that more than twenty years ago, when she was still a bewitching young woman, a boy fell in love with her at first sight. She was touched, but because of the disparity in their ages and because she was a widow, she ‘‘reined in her feelings’’ and didn’t let them show at all. Twenty years had gone by, and the boy had become a man with work and a family. She was still alone. Her pure feelings for him were her spiritual sustenance. They both realized that their inner yearning hadn’t vanished but had strengthened by the day. (Of course, she didn’t take the next step and destroy his family.) Just then, like a thunderclap on a fine day, her handsome boy suddenly took a fancy to someone else. He pursued the woman all day and ‘‘started inquiring into her background.’’ He became abnormally sensitive. Whenever someone was talking about the person for whom he felt this onesided love, he wedged himself into the conversation and loudly and unscrupulously defended her, pretending to be her knight in shining armor. ‘‘He really was shameless.’’ How could a normal person feel such desperate passion? This was incomprehensible. For example, she herself felt intensely passionate about the boy of old and the young man of today-it wasn’t what ordinary people might imagine, but for sure she ‘‘wasn’t desperate’’ and for sure she ‘‘wasn’t shameless.’’ This didn’t mean that she was feigning her feelings. Everyone would say that her feelings were natural and reasonable. Only ‘‘desperation’’ was phony and inane! She wouldn’t blame the one she cared about. The ones she abhorred were the evil woman and man who had lured him to evil ways. The evil man was the evil woman’s husband. The one she cared about had been simple and gullible all along. God knows how he’d become friends with that husband, such good friends that they were loath to part from each other. At the time, she’d warned him, but he had just laughed. We can see how good-hearted he was, filled with kindness for others, considerate of others, not begrudging going through fire and water for them. She’d known him twenty years, and thus she knew his character: it was only because of this that they’d maintained their affection so long. Now everything was over-and so suddenly! So unexpectedly!

The women promised to keep this to themselves. One evening a few days later, choosing a time before the youngsters arrived, they suddenly appeared at Madam X’s home. Madam X’s husband was in the front room playing Chinese checkers with his son. Staring at the chessboard and absorbed in their game, he did not appear to attach much importance to the arrival of these people: indeed, he didn’t even think of them as women, though they were all graceful, charming ladies. He didn’t give them even a sidelong glance. Only a hint of a disdainful smile hung at the corner of his mouth. Wearing a white wool sweater, Madam X sat at the window, making complicated gestures. A tiny mirror hung from a button on the front of her sweater. She kept her back turned and gave no hint that she would ever face them. The ladies exchanged knowing glances, whispering and speculating on the meaning of her gestures.

Finally, on behalf of everyone else, the widow walked forward and pulled Madam X around to face the crowd. She said sorrowfully that she represented ‘‘the mothers’’ in exhorting her not to inflict any more harm on their children. She’d thought all along that it would be better for her to undertake some decent work for the community — for example, to make some proposals or write blackboard newspapers, or perhaps help educate the people about the new laws. All this was both legal and promising (she acknowledged that in some ways Madam X was a little more nimble than others). Why bother going on alone with that occult stuff? Even if she continued for ten or twenty years, she wouldn’t gain the crowd’s recognition or improve her own position. Even if at certain times she thought she had achieved huge and wonderful success, and congratulated herself on it, excessively proud of herself, so what? No one understood her, so what practical significance would that kind of success have? Who would care about her success? Of course, they all understood her-knew that she was aloof and that right now she had no immediate hope of changing her position in society. She was probably most interested in pursuing a certain kind of fresh stimulation. But a person doesn’t live in a vacuum: her behavior shouldn’t harm others. When it does, serious consequences follow.

As the widow was speaking, the crowd noticed that Madam X’s face wasn’t at all the face they usually saw, but was that of some person they didn’t recognize. On that different face were growing two hoary eyeballs without pupils. The eyeballs weren’t moving, as if they were dead. Only her long, thin fingers were twiddling incessantly with the tiny mirror on her chest. Her fingers were very expressive, as if giving a mystical performance. She didn’t say a word.

After the widow finished, the female colleague spoke; after her came Old Woman Jin, and after her, the forty-eight-year-old friend. After her came Ms. B, and after her, Ms. A. Finally, everyone shouted: ‘‘Give up your destructive ploys! The children are our lifeblood!’’ Some held their chins up, as if to make this stranger’s face return to its original appearance.

Only then did Madam X finally twitch, and opening her pupil- less eyes, she asked, ‘‘What children?’’

‘‘The ones you summon here every day.’’ Tapping X’s knee with a crutch, the lame woman said, ‘‘Don’t play innocent!’’

‘‘There aren’t any children,’’ she said succinctly and definitely. ‘‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Perhaps there were some shadows that came into this room.’’ Everyone stared openmouthed.

‘‘I absolutely don’t care if some things enter while I’m experimenting. It is trivial, absolutely irrelevant. Maybe the shadows you mentioned just now were the children?’’ she added, her pure- hearted pose irreproachable.

There was just one thing: no one could find the pupils in her eyes. From the next room, Madam X’s husband heard the noise and thought the women were making trouble. He thrust his way through the crowd and blocked his frail wife with his broad back. In a low voice, he bellowed at the women: ‘‘What are you up to?’’

The women began backing off, looking at each other in despair. Though the gutsy widow yelled, she didn’t have the courage, either, to take on this burly man. Finally, they left, and the husband slammed the door with a peng. He stuck his head out the window and yelled that if anyone came to make trouble for his wife in the future, he would ‘‘knock her teeth out.’’ He also said that ‘‘no civic activities’’ had ‘‘anything’’ to do with them. On the way home, the women ran into a large crowd of teenagers. They tried to block their way, but the youngsters were as slippery as fish. You couldn’t get hold of them. Laughing and joking, they broke away.

‘‘We lost.’’ They sat down dejectedly at the side of the road.

‘‘Let’s wait until summer,’’ Ms. B said, ‘‘the time for discussing national political issues. People’s feelings run high, and then perhaps the situation we saw during the lecture will be repeated. We mustn’t lose our self-confidence.’’

6. MADAM X TALKS ABSTRACTLY OF HER EXPERIENCES WITH MEN

In her gloomy room, Madam X frequently talked about her experiences with men, mainly to her younger sister and the female colleague. It was her favorite topic. At such times, she looked as hesitant as a little child. Her voice was uncertain and her gestures feeble. She kept looking around, as if worried that someone would sneak in like a shadow. Nevertheless, according to what the two listeners leaked, what she said was shameless and crude. She could talk for a long time about each part of her ideal man’s body (of course such a person didn’t exist; according to Madam X, even the listeners didn’t exist). She talked of the significance of all sorts of behaviors and actions: among them, of course, were eye color and voice, which she said she blended into the body.

Here are two of her shocking examples: ‘‘The instinctive movements of the hands and lips coalesce into the feelings of a person’s entire life. We needn’t waste time understanding a man. It’s enough to see how he moves. Indeed, it isn’t even necessary to see. We can wait and taste them.’’ ‘‘Strength and duration are the clearest indicators of his individuality, but this must also be realized through a woman; otherwise, it’s self-deceptive and unmasculine.’’ She said some even more devilish words that we don’t feel comfortable repeating. When she talked of these things, she spoke like a slut. She was absolutely shameless. If anyone mentioned this, she’d curl her lip and say she wasn’t the one who should feel shame and then denounce the other for ‘‘being perverted.’’ No one could understand her aloof expression when she talked or the entrancing little smile at the corners of her mouth. If we don’t think of this as a performance, then we have to deal with her sexual problem, and that gives us a headache. In the Five Spice Street community’s recollections, the first person and also the last person who talked of men in such dirty language, observing no taboos, was Madam X. Even the female colleague who knew her well sometimes couldn’t stand it.

This colleague was also greatly interested in men and had a lot of experience. Not only did she have intercourse frequently with her husband (after their son left, even more frequently), she also took great pleasure in talking about it-fantasizing all kinds of titillating details as she talked, reliving the experience and reviewing it. She was really expert, but she didn’t like Madam X’s vague way of talking about intimacies between men and women, which kindled her secret emotions and made her impatient for the sequel but provided no real stimulation. In the end, she just drew a blank, as if she’d been made a fool of-she was ashamed and embarrassed. It was damnable! Arbitrary! If they were talking about men, they must have names; they must have bodies and relationships, so that people could grasp them. Madam X’s insubstantial remarks were idiotic nonsense, a hodgepodge. Using a child’s tone of voice, she feigned a great deal of experience. She talked and talked, but it was nothing but nonsense-or, rather, a hoax. Her steamy language became insipid. She talked as if reading a document. It was boring and tiresome.

When the colleague left, she ran into her fat husband. She stamped her feet and shouted abuse. Her husband drew her into his arms and patted her rump, hoping to calm her down.

‘‘I’ve been robbed! I’ve been fleeced!’’ She jumped up and slapped her husband’s face. She still hadn’t vented all her hatred and was shaking all over.

‘‘By whom?’’

‘‘A thief!’’

‘‘Where?’’

‘‘Help!’’

Although Madam X didn’t quite sense the people around her, she learned from various channels of the wrath they felt for her, and logic, too, told her the whole world was hostile. She’d known for years that if she told people her true feelings she’d be laughed at, because everyone saw things precisely opposite from the way she did. Even if it was the most ordinary, imperceptible feeling, she was absolutely different. Yet she’d been herself for a long time, and there was no way to change. Who was at fault? Madam X stubbornly believed it was everyone else. To go her own way, she not only didn’t look around her with her eyes, she also didn’t talk with people. Sometimes it seemed that she was chatting with you earnestly with an attentive expression, and then you noticed that she wasn’t talking to you at all, but talking over your head-or, even worse, talking to herself. She would be annoyed if you reminded her you were there. She was used to this kind of conversation. It was her weapon for dealing with the world. You couldn’t see this weapon, but it was awesome. It always left the crowds on Five Spice Street unsure whether or not they wanted to talk with her again. They also wondered whether she secretly laughed at them. Were her empty generalities a kind of jeering? If they couldn’t figure this out, weren’t they fools? Time after time, they secretly made up their minds that they must figure out Madam X’s ideas, but their efforts were always futile: it was always exhausting to talk with Madam X, and you ended up losing your self-confidence.

Someone asked Madam X about this, and she very simply told the person: she certainly didn’t have any intrigues and wouldn’t bother to laugh at anyone-that’s the only way she could talk with people. Since she held ‘‘different views’’ from everyone else and was like this by nature, she had no choice but to deal with people this way lest both sides be ‘‘unbearably anguished.’’ Let’s bring up an example: she called the carnal relationship between men and women sexual intercourse. Everyone felt this was too ‘‘frankly revealing,’’ too unpoetic. It should be called something like ‘‘recreation,’’ but this term ‘‘nauseated’’ her. So, since the crowd stuck to its opinion and she didn’t intend to change, if neither interfered with the other, perhaps they could live in peaceful coexistence.

Madam X acted this way toward the crowd but not with her younger sister. The two were birds of a feather. Their conversations always had to ‘‘exhaust’’ the subject. Sometimes, they closed the door and talked most of the day. Their passionate conversations generally were devoted to the composition of eyes, the differences between men and women, and astrology. Madam X always gave her opinions freely, and her sister respected her, believing that these matters consumed every minute of her day. Madam X told her that, on the contrary, she didn’t consider them, and that it was precisely for this reason that she was able ‘‘to keep a clear head’’ from start to finish. As soon as someone took the evil path of ‘‘considering,’’ he would become muddle-headed and lose his original appearance and ‘‘become a parrot.’’ If no one ‘‘considered,’’ if they were all as simple and pure as she, then everyone would be much more free and easy together. It was only because people learned from birth to ‘‘consider’’ that everything became so singularly complicated and she was thought ‘‘abnormal,’’ able only to float like a balloon in midair. Of course, her sister didn’t understand all this talk. She had always respected her big sister unconditionally and never tried to reason it through. She had just one comment: ‘‘She can fly!’’ Whether innate or influenced by her sister, her logic was just as weird. When they talked behind the closed door, now and then you could hear their husky voices drifting from the window, singing a duet, ‘‘The Little Lonely Boat.’’ They always sang the same song, but each time the sentimental meaning seemed different. If people came to visit at times like this, the husband solemnly kept them outside and told them in hushed tones, ‘‘They’re singing inside- shh!’’

Madam X repeatedly described her ideal man in her usual style: vulgar, inane, and pretentious. She acted as if she were fascinated by the aftertaste of real things. ‘‘When the time comes, neither can stop fondling the other, neither can stop talking. Language is also a way of hinting at feelings, because try as hard as you can to communicate your ardor and your dreams to the other, you can’t just show your feelings through action-that isn’t enough. And so you use language. At such times, language has more than just everyday meaning-if only in some simple syllables, some little sounds that have sprouted wings. I can elicit that kind of special language.’’ Madam X also sometimes sighed with feeling, ‘‘I can’t find a pair of good hands. Men’s hands should be animated, filled with warm strength. The hands represent the whole person, with a tide of feelings surging through them.’’ Almost all men’s hands are ‘‘completely dry, pale, and lifeless,’’ no better than ‘‘a tool for releasing one’s own lust.’’ She could tell those ‘‘poor, thin, neutered things at a glance.’’ These things ‘‘had never experienced the pleasure of fondling: they weren’t womanly, nor did they become real men. It’s as though they’re counterfeit goods.’’ Overjoyed, her sister was only too eager for more details. She also foolishly confided that sometimes she ‘‘jumped up and down with desire and almost couldn’t control’’ herself. Madam X, of course, wasn’t as simple and impulsive as her younger sister. She was experienced and astute. Only in vulgarity were the two sisters alike.

Madam X gave an example. She said that one day years ago, she happened to see a pair of eyes flash past her, and all at once they turned into eyes with three colors. Inwardly happy, she approached that person. At the same time, she felt two young hands, which ‘‘seemed to have some stories.’’ When she had just made contact, she realized her stupid mistake: ‘‘Those hands were shriveled, malnourished, and a little sickly. When they fondled you, they twitched.’’ She shook her head, embarrassed, and said she certainly wouldn’t make that mistake again. The world was full of these kinds of stunted hands. ‘‘With my eyes closed, I can sense this very clearly.’’ ‘‘This is a place where decrepitude and asexuality reproduce. With hands like this, a man certainly can’t create anything.’’

Sometimes, after Madam X finished, the two would just sit across from one another in silence and watch the rays of the setting sun pass across the window screen. They listened to the clock strike on the glass mantle, and the younger sister often exclaimed: ‘‘In the past, we were all as lively as wild deer!’’ Madam X would respond with an insipid, perplexed smile. Wallowing in sloppy sentiment, Madam X disclosed one of her secrets.

One noon, Madam X was lying alone on the beach at the riverside. Nobody else was there. ‘‘The sky was that kind of sentimental color, without a cloud to be seen, and the edge of the sun was filled with sharp triangles.’’ The sun ‘‘shone hot and unrestrained’’ on her body, giving her a lot of colorful hallucinations. She said, ‘‘It was just like his kisses.’’ She ‘‘felt the reality of carnal intimacy.’’ She didn’t know how it happened, but she was suddenly aroused and felt she ‘‘had to take off all her clothes.’’ And sure enough, she did. She lay there nude for a long time, and then stood up and ‘‘flew in the burning heat, running around wantonly, wildly.’’ (Luckily, at the time, no one passed by; otherwise who knows what farce would have ensued!) Afterwards, she went to the riverside a number of times, but didn’t take her clothes off. She just walked on the beach, in her words, ‘‘waiting for miracles.’’ If the weather was good, she said, ‘‘Perhaps he will walk toward me in the sunshine.’’ If it was raining, she said, ‘‘He’ll walk toward me through the rain; there will be row after row of white mushrooms on the ground.’’ But no miracles came; it was just wishful thinking. Inwardly, Madam X knew this very well. Later, after she was more experienced, she no longer played this kind of game. “You can only meet someone by chance,’’ she said. Madam X’s sister told a good friend her older sister’s secret. That good friend then told her husband, and the husband told his good friend. His good friend was a gossip. And so Madam X’s secret went the rounds of Five Spice Street until everyone knew it. Did she lose face as a result of this? Was she ashamed to show her face? Hardly. She didn’t give a damn: it seemed ‘‘an inner joy was revealed on her face.’’

After Madam X’s husband’s good friend heard this, he took the husband to his home, where they talked in whispers for two hours. He accused Madam X’s husband ‘‘of spoiling his wife this way.’’ Someday, ‘‘there would be a big problem.’’ By then, it ‘‘would be too late.’’ He pounded his knee; bitter remorse was on his face. At first, the sentimental husband was at a loss, but then he felt sorry for this friend and began consoling him. He told him not to be ‘‘too irascible,’’ for this would ‘‘be harmful to him,’’ and not knowing when to stop, he also gave an example. He said that, because of a trivial matter, a colleague in the past ‘‘had had his heart broken’’ and was left with a myocardial infarction that even now frequently caused unspeakable suffering. “You need to take it easy,’’ he said. The friend jumped out of his seat. ‘‘Hey!’’ he shouted. ‘‘Whose wife are we talking about? Are you a sadist?’’ To avoid a scene, the husband patted his shoulder and pushed him back into his chair. ‘‘Never mind,’’ he said. ‘‘Actually, there’s no need to make such a big deal about someone taking her clothes off. In fact, everyone thinks of doing this; it’s just that other people exercise self-restraint and consider forbearance glorious-just look at how much self-control I exercise, and how ascetic I am. If someone else did this, everyone would condemn it.’’ Sometimes he too wanted to strip and dance around on a public occasion, for he thought this would be great fun. But he didn’t dare: ‘‘I don’t have the guts.’’ Of course, his wife was much braver than he, although she could also actualize her idea only in a deserted place. He could only admire and respect this. He certainly wouldn’t interfere with her personal enjoyment. He wasn’t a fool! Nobody could force him to be a fool!

‘‘Then am I a fool?!’’ The good friend was furious. The husband looked at him with remorse: he couldn’t stand it. They parted on bad terms for the first time in years. As soon as he left, the good friend roared at his wife, ‘‘Throw the stool he sat on into the garbage! I have really fucking had it!’’ He sulked for several days.

The men of Five Spice Street-consumed with Madam X’s secret-became more sentimental and affectionate. Quite a few dashed to the riverside to ‘‘take in the scenery,’’ waiting to catch that ‘‘great nude scene’’ (the widow’s words) and then play things by ear. Each did this on his own, fearful that others would see through their intentions. If acquaintances ran into each other, their faces flushed as they exchanged small talk: ‘‘It’s a sunny day, isn’t it? No? But don’t you feel a little hot? Haha…’’ Then they would turn and walk away, but not too far; they would just make the rounds in the vicinity. Naturally, this scheming was all for nothing. They didn’t glimpse even Madam X’s shadow. Miffed, they would whisper to themselves: this was a hoax from the beginning-how could this kind of thing go on? If the woman had the guts to strip in a public place, wouldn’t it be better to screw some guys at home? Although stripping sounded exciting and even romantic, it certainly wasn’t the same as making it with some men: it wasn’t even close to the real thing. Why bother running over to a deserted wasteland to do this? It was incomprehensible. Was this some kind of symbolic act? Perhaps just camouflage? Was the real thing behind it? What kind of scene was it when a woman jumped around naked in a deserted place like this? If she couldn’t control herself, she should have done something quietly at home. What did this ‘‘naked act’’ count for? The crowds on our Five Spice Street always had to think everything through every which way: they never reached a verdict lightly and would never give up on a riddle just because they were temporarily stumped. They had to give it hard thought; if they couldn’t solve it, they would keep their eyes open. Sometimes, a small matter could trigger thoughts for a long time, and another small matter could suddenly enlighten them.

Our Madam X might be the world’s most volatile and unpredictable person, whose every action and word was an inexplicable riddle. No experience or common knowledge could help in dealing with her. You’d have to treat her like an extraterrestrial. We’d have to come up with some totally new, extraordinary, non-logical approach. No flippancy, no emotionalism. Maintain composure at all costs. Even if we accomplished nothing, this would be better than shouting and reckless action. Up to now, though there’ve been some small mistakes, and one or two people have disturbed the main process, in general, our people are still observing: they haven’t been indiscreet, nor have they been swayed. This is sensible and shows their good breeding. After Madam X took off her clothes, Five Spice Street became lively for a while: everyone was talking about it, and the talk led to continuous profound analysis and a rich association of ideas. Everyone’s surplus energy now had a place where it could be vented. This in itself was noble-a great opportunity for everyone to refine his or her soul until it was sanctified. But unfortunately, among the people on Five Spice Street there were a few uncouth degenerates who didn’t behave. They charged around everywhere, upsetting the social order and turning good into bad. They messed up everything. They themselves were in the dark about what they hoped to achieve. They just loved showing up all of a sudden and catching you off guard, leaving everything a mess, and then taking their time walking away.

This time, the one who jumped onto the stage was a woman named B — the woman who, during the failed attempt at reeducation, wanted everyone to ‘‘wait for summer’’ to settle up with Madam X. This woman analyzed the situation in great detail and also consulted with Madam X’s friend for an entire day. During the consultation, they were suddenly inspired. The two of them came to a speedy decision: they would have an improvisation on Five Spice Street, using ‘‘living theatre’’ to re-create Madam X’s striptease. They discussed this until their faces were red and their hearts were pounding. They drew up a plan, having considered carefully all the details and possible scenarios. Their eyes heavy with sleep, they mumbled and fell into bed, where they dreamed ambitious dreams. While sleeping, they conserved their strength and stored up their energy, getting ready for tense battle the next day. As soon as it was light, they appeared naked on the two corners of the main street. One walked from east to west, the other from west to east. Except for people who were paralyzed and confined to bed, everyone crowded onto the street. Too timid to approach, they watched this ‘‘avant- garde’’ pastime from a distance. At first, the crowd just screamed wildly. The enthusiasm of those two women was rising to high pitch: they were twisting their arms and hips and shaking their bellies in all kinds of ways; it was an endless tour de force. They cupped their hands around their mouths and cried out to the crowd, ‘‘Ha! Ha! Haha!’’ This seemed to inspire the crowd: one by one, people involuntarily began twisting. Soon they too wanted to take their clothes off. They couldn’t restrain themselves: why not go with it? Maybe not take everything off, but going topless was a great pleasure.

So on this three-mile-long street, everyone was excited. All the people were hugging and kissing everyone they saw, touching others all over their bodies. One or two even ‘‘got on with it’’ on the spot. It was a noisy, rollicking scene. Everyone was sweating profusely and breathing hot and heavy like oxen. At first, the two women’s husbands were furious, but now, when fresh, lively, fleshy women threw themselves at them, they changed their minds and seized the day. As they gasped for breath, the two people said, ‘‘After all, there’s another side to life. All along, we have been too parochial, too unable to enjoy life, as if we were living most of our lives for nothing. We didn’t get anything: we could only be jealous. Jealousy is the worst emotion, indicating impotence. It appears that we should add some new things to our morality; otherwise, we’ll be out of date.’’

The fling went on for a whole day and had an odious, indelible influence on Five Spice Street. The next morning, upon opening their eyes, most people had forgotten their performances of the day before, and when they saw each other, they didn’t talk of it, either. But with stern expressions, everyone began talking of ‘‘moral cultivation.’’ Their expressions revealed anxiety, pessimism, and depression, and also some latent indignation at being taken advantage of. Then, they looked all around, all of them knowing very well who the others were looking for. The two women disappeared. Only after two or three days did they steal back to Five Spice Street. Their sensitive noses detected that there’d been a sharp turn in the course of events: they’d better stay out of the storm tide. It’s said that as they fled, the two of them were at odds again. In order to shift the blame, they assaulted each other ferociously, even ‘‘knocking out one another’s teeth.’’

Sitting at her window, Madam X saw the street scene in her mirror. She feigned self-composure and gave all her attention to combing her hair. After that she polished her shoes, and after that she showed her son how to use the microscope. Then, striking an astonished pose, she said to her husband, ‘‘What the hell? Did I ever give a lecture to these guys? When did I ever do that?’’ Humoring her, her husband said no. He said that she had certainly not given any lecture to ‘‘these guys.’’ It was ‘‘these guys’’ who wistfully thought her soliloquy had been for them: this was their excuse for attacking her. ‘‘This is the biggest joke in the world.’’ (From this, we can also see how hard this husband tried to please Madam X every day; no one could understand how he could tolerate this kind of peculiar way of life. He must have been possessed.)

Madam X also asked, ‘‘At the time, did I give them a little attention?’’

‘‘You’re mistaken.’’ Her husband was still toadying to her. ‘‘You’ve always liked talking with a hypothetical other. That time, you supposed that they were some other people; you definitely didn’t notice them.’’

‘‘That seems right.’’ She calmed down, and her customary slight smile floated up on her face.

Days later, Madam X made light of the time she had taken her clothes off, and laughed it off as ‘‘epilepsy,’’ which was ‘‘inexplicable, that’s all.’’ She decided to ‘‘meet someone only by chance.’’ She said she had now completely stabilized: indeed, her feelings ‘‘could penetrate the mountain ranges and reach the polar region.’’ Her fingers were becoming more ‘‘velvety and delicate’’ by the day; her ‘‘anxiety wouldn’t return.’’ From then on, sure enough, she seldom went out. She spent the entire day at home and in the snack shop, in every action showing ‘‘refinement and ease’’ (the sister’s words). She kept her eyes down and never looked at other people (even when she was waiting on customers, she was like this; sometimes, she looked at the air over a person’s head or at the ground beneath his feet, but you definitely couldn’t catch a glimpse of her eyes). When she talked with you, she did so in a drifting, hesitant tone which embarrassed you. She herself was unaware of this.

More time went by, and Madam X lived her life quietly. Quite a few men grew interested in her, and she looked them over one by one. Finally, she confirmed that she hadn’t recognized that person from among them. As for them, of course they couldn’t bear her rigorous, cold looks, which defeated them the first time they challenged her, and they gave up thoughts of overstepping their bounds. She said that she would recognize the person she was longing to find. No matter where she was, no matter what the occasion, she would know; there’d be no mistake. He had unique eyes and strong hands and ‘‘hot blood surging through his veins.’’

But sometimes her view was diametrically opposite. ‘‘Maybe that person is just in my imagination.’’ As the sun was setting on a winter day, she sighed and said to her sister, ‘‘I’m not worried about this. Whatever will be, will be. Anyhow, I want to experiment-see how high I can reach. Even if there’s nothing afterwards, I always have to experiment. This is predestined.’’

With that, she turned her face toward the sunlight and asked her sister whether she saw anything in her eyes. Uncomprehending, her sister said it seemed as if her eyes had a few little fish swimming back and forth in them. Madam X told her: certainly not fish, but ‘‘the rays of her very being.’’ Only that person could see these rays of her being, for that person had the same kind of eyes. They would recognize each other by their eyes. Now she felt that her eyes were glowing more each day. ‘‘Their intensity can illuminate everything in the universe.’’