Can Xue - Five Spice Street

‘‘So, do I now understand what my relationship with her is? I do what I have to do, and she also has to see her undertaking through to the end. Don’t think I still have any control over her, and don’t think, either, that she has the slightest interest in sex. The moment a woman wakes up, she can change into a tigress. I must have been living in a dream if I wasn’t aware of even this. She-this tigress- doesn’t enjoy saber rattling, nor does she like to snarl. She only wants to devour people. I just have to watch out for this, especially while sleeping, when any weird thing might happen. It would be better to worry about my own safety than to trick her with my bravado. She meant what she said. I couldn’t blame anyone else: I had asked for all the bitter fruit; now I’d better quietly gulp it down. I could make allowances for my wife. All her weird transformations arose from a kind of subtle mindset for retaliation. I could do nothing about her mindset, because a person has limited energy.

‘‘Let’s imagine for a moment: a husband and wife have lived together for twenty years, very much in love. The faithful wife devoted her whole being to love. She had a boundless appetite for, and interest in, sex. But the husband, in addition to love, had other things he needed to do: he had a social circle, friends, and obligations. His best friend’s wife caused his friend to sink into frightening circumstances. They couldn’t extricate themselves. Everyone knew his character: he was always ready to help his friends; he was self- sacrificing. So he quickly got into the act and saw it through to the bitter end (his friend, of course, was endlessly grateful). Unfortunately, it was a knotty problem: he could get hold of it only by throwing all his strength and energy into it. The most important thing was that he had to be interested in it, enter into a mood that was foreign to him. Only if he was in the right mood could he understand that lady’s whole world, understand the rules she lived by, and figure out all of her desires. Then, he couldn’t relax: he had to play things by ear. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t get results. He was cautious and conscientious in his work, flinging aside all his miscellaneous thoughts. After a time, he developed a strong interest in that lady’s world. He studied all her actions and appreciated them, analyzed them, and quickly became fascinated. At home, whether eating, working, or sleeping, he generally also thought about the lady. Her expressions and gestures were constantly in his mind. He was calculating all her possible moves and planning his next mission accordingly. He also unwittingly adopted the lady’s peculiarities. Now and then, he ran over to the sink to take a look at his face (his family had never bought a mirror). Even more embarrassing was that with time, he was actually bashful when he saw the lady: he blushed and his heart leaped. This was really ridiculous. He hated himself for being this way, but he just couldn’t help it. Of course, this didn’t mean that he became romantically interested in her. He’d always embraced a saintly attitude toward women. This time, he was absolutely selfless in helping his friend: this was obvious to everyone. He was irreproachable. His restlessness was caused mostly by the fact that he was seldom in contact with any women but his wife. Some of it was just as people said: the lady had some evil ways. She tricked people with her sorcery and got her fun from making people crazy.

‘‘Now you can understand what a difficult responsibility his friend had given him, what an enormous test it was for him. It was a miracle he had survived up to now and hadn’t broken down either physically or mentally. He reckoned it up: to this point, thirty-six people had urged him to give this business up, spend time with his wife, and go home and enjoy his family. They said it wouldn’t get him anywhere. He ‘wouldn’t have a chance to taste the sugarplum.’ He would just ‘hopelessly look forward to something, like a fool.’ (What was he looking forward to? Money from heaven? Golden melons growing from the earth?) If things had gone on like this, he would have become impotent. You have to know that people can’t for a minute be without the ‘spare-time recreation.’ Even in the face of all kinds of public pressure, he persevered. He dared to say that no one could be found who understood that lady’s inner life as he did. No one knew her as well as he did, nor could anyone else truly guess her purpose (this prevented many frightening occurrences!). As he was absorbed in high-minded feelings about his friend and carrying out this very difficult work, a crisis befell his family. His wife was a loving person, but very hard-headed and monomaniacal about everything. She could not, nor did she want to, understand her husband’s high- minded sentiments. She felt that she had been unreasonably deprived of the rights she should have had. Hadn’t she enjoyed this continual ‘spare-time recreation’ for twenty years? Hadn’t it all been beautiful and satisfying? It was the way she’d held on to her husband and her whole family. Now, suddenly, a witch had shown herself and taken control of her husband, and left her with an empty house and sleepless nights. How could she resign herself to this? She understood everything in the world with her narrow mind and denounced her husband’s elaborate, lofty work as ‘indecent behavior.’ If her husband was a little late getting home, she said he was ‘engaged in shameful activity.’ If her husband didn’t have the energy for sex, she said her family ‘had become a nonentity’! ‘A demon has taken my place.’ She wrote posters all day long at home and pasted up words all over the place castigating her husband. This was a big joke in the neighborhood. Her husband became frightened and backed off, but when he reluctantly tried to have sex with her, she dodged away and cursed him: ‘You’re shameless,’ you just want ‘more women.’ You ‘want to screw every woman in the world.’ Anyhow, it was bad language, not the least bit reasonable, and it became more and more contemptible, ominous, and crazy. Recently, their conjugal relationship had deteriorated to the point that it couldn’t be remedied. For no reason, she concluded that she ‘had found the value of her life.’ This was to make things incessantly difficult for her husband-erect obstacles and set traps-and plot murder at an opportune time. She did all of these horrifying things. She was addicted to this. Her interest in sex, which had gradually dried up, now bloomed again and was revealed through a metamorphosis: she was as greedy as a wolf; it never stopped. There wasn’t even a shadow left of the formerly gentle woman.

‘‘After a period of antagonism between my wife and me, suddenly the worm turned and she had no more interest in me. For days on end, I was secretly happy and thought that the trouble- making demon had vanished and that everything would return to normal. When I went out in the morning, she patted my shoulder affectionately a few times and told me to ‘just go on my way without worrying.’ These good times didn’t last long: an even greater blow landed on my head. My neighbor told me (as he talked, he stomped on my foot; he must have thought I was a moron) that my wife had had an affair with Old Meng the fortune-teller. They had openly gotten it on together upstairs in the pharmacy: everyone on the street knew this. My wife had also asserted: her husband had sanctioned her behavior. She and I each ‘had found his and her own intimate friend.’ This was like a bolt of lightning. I lost consciousness all at once. Later, I rushed to the second floor of the pharmacy and kicked open the door. I saw the two of them still rolling around in bed. Old Meng grabbed his glasses with his hook-like fingers, propped them on his nose, and looked all around. He didn’t realize what had happened-he couldn’t see me with his near-sighted eyes, which were almost blind.