Can Xue - Five Spice Street

‘‘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?

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.’’