Can Xue - Five Spice Street

‘‘With a gloomy expression, I explained: ‘There are some things in this world which can’t be understood by the book. Sometimes, we have to change our way of thinking and look with brand-new eyes before we can enter into the essence of something.’ This seems difficult and troublesome, but with hard struggle you can make it. Of course, if you want to reform, there will be sacrifices. For instance, I sacrificed all my molars. This partial loss, however, let me achieve total freedom. If you can’t bear any loss, you’d better just blindly conform; you’ll never be able to understand vital newfangled things.’ My relationship with the worthy lady goes beyond the bounds of their ideas. This is a lofty relationship: it belongs to the future; it spans the present. There’s been no physical contact in my relationship with the worthy lady. It was in my fantasies that I felt her sex appeal. This is real, not a bit abstract. Still, it isn’t the same as ‘spare-time recreation.’ For the moment, I can’t find the right word to express it, but anyhow, it’s the momentum for my life development. They had to admit that beyond the notion they had, there was a huge space filled with novel things. I hoped they could all break through and try hard to expand their horizons and not be suffocated by parochial ideas.

‘‘As soon as I finished saying all this, they were even more excited. They started clamoring and pulled at my pants, saying that they wanted to see if I was actually impotent. The young guy on the other side of the wall added fat to the fire by reminding everyone: ‘People with this problem all talk a big line. They have one pack of dizzying reasons after another. They can talk the dead back to life. But they just want to distract you from their own invisible conditions. I know a guy who-after getting this condition-suddenly became very eloquent. Every day, in the scorching sun, he went to the street corner and clearly and logically analyzed old ideas and new ones and put forward an unlimited number of new scenarios. He also suggested that people all rub lard into their hair, and said that the more ‘spare-time recreation,’ the better, blah, blah, blah… Everybody was really interested and asked him to demonstrate in public. He was sweating profusely, and fell to the ground and died.’ When these guys were just about to pull down my pants, an old man (like Old Meng from the pharmacy) came stumbling into their midst, berated them, and held them back. Then he suggested ‘giving me enough rope to hang myself.’ He said this would bring out even more exciting scandals. Wouldn’t this be much better?

‘‘The second conflict occurred while we were cooling off outside. Those were days when my fortunes rose and fell. At the time, my buddies and I were discussing whether or not to put up advertisements for photographic equipment. Our discussion was lively, with a lot of views being presented. We also came up with the basic blueprint. Everyone was in a good mood. While all of us were absorbed in longing for the good life, we suddenly looked up and saw the worthy lady and her family stroll by in their leisurely way. They were talking loudly with their child about good birds and vermin. They were so rude that they didn’t even look at us: it was as if they were walking through a pile of stakes. The man was also laughing foolishly, quite pleased with his high-pitched voice. And the woman cheered him on: ‘Great! Go on! Talk a little louder!’ Looking at each other in despair, we were terrified. We turned pale and fell silent. After they disappeared into the distance, an old woman thumped her chest and shouted, ‘Aren’t they just treating other people as if they were fools?!’ Not until then did they become infuriated. After a quick brainstorming session, they looked around at me.

The spear was aimed at me: I was the cause of their arrogant bluster. Madam X used to be a sickly old woman whom no one respected; her husband always had to support her when they went for walks. Her hair was also very thin. After I started spouting nonsense about Madam X’s ‘sex appeal’ and took some ‘sweets’ from her, she wasn’t the same as before, although no one was sure exactly how she was different. In most people’s eyes, she was still an old woman, but there was something about her attitude that told people she was no longer the same as usual. If she still wasn’t a peerless beauty, she was at least a beautiful woman. The foundation for this view was hidden in the crowd. She could manipulate that person; she could master everyone via this person. He was the one who had elevated her position from that of a beggar so that everyone now paid attention to her, talked about her, looked up to her. In the meantime, so many of the charming, stylish women on the street were fading: no one was paying attention to them. It was as if her reality had vanished: wearing rose-colored glasses, everyone had discovered a goddess.

‘‘I was being treated so unjustly it was hard to vindicate myself. I swore to them that this worthy lady and I were just ‘soulmates.’ Though I respected her greatly, she had no idea who I was. The more I said this, the less the crowd would relax its grip: they greatly distorted what I’d said in the past and forced me ‘to come clean.’ The old woman with the high-pitched voice suggested that the worthy lady and I ‘perform again.’ The crowd supported this proposal. They pushed me into the lady’s house. (Two buddies watched from outside the window.) The lady was looking through her microscope, and because I blocked her light, she blew up. She didn’t notice me in the middle of the room but charged into another room and told her husband that two oxen outside the window had wrecked her research. ‘It’s really damnable.’ She wanted to find the hunting rifle and let the wild animals ‘get a taste of her marksmanship.’ The two buddies were so scared they took to their heels. Narrowing her eyes, she looked mockingly at the clowns outside the window and then turned around and noticed me. She was displeased. ‘There’s always something coming in. Damn it!’ Her husband ran up to soothe her: he said that I wasn’t a person but merely a rag drying on the clothesline. As he talked, he blocked me with his body and pushed me out of the house.

‘‘After the second conflict, my despair reached new lows. My eyes were bloodshot. Like a caged wolf, I paced in the house and howled shrilly until I was exhausted. Then I sat down to think about my worries. When I thought of what that son-of-a-bitch neighbor guy said, I couldn’t help feeling infuriated. It was impossible for these people to speak the same language as I did. They had stomped on all the feelings I’d stored up and on my selfless love. People are so alone in the world; it is so difficult for the light of ideals to penetrate the darkness. I was more sorrowful than at any other time, and my feelings for her ran even deeper. An invisible thread had linked the worthy lady and me together, to live or to die. I would go through purgatory for her. I was dominated by a self-denying fanaticism and a worshipful piety. I had a premonition that I would pull off a splendid feat. What would it be? You’d know it when you saw it.

‘‘I stayed home every day and didn’t go out again. I listened closely. I had reason to believe that the worthy lady would show up at my door. If she came unannounced and I wasn’t home, I’d regret this for the rest of my life. I had to wait patiently and trustingly. I had to be neatly and freshly dressed to meet her. While she was here, I would ask her to sit on my only chair, which had a dogskin cushion, while I would stand to show her my heroic image and leave an indelible impression on her. I mustn’t take this lightly and go to bed, because she might also come at midnight: this was the sticking point. I had a splendid idea: I would hang a rope from the window, tie a knot in it, and put my neck through the knot. Then if by any chance I fell asleep, the rope would wake me up. I also pounded a lot of bamboo tacks into the floor so that when I paced at night, I had to concentrate and circle scrupulously around these tacks. If I was careless, I’d be hurt. These ideas had a surprising effect: I was always in high spirits. I was highly alert twenty-four hours a day. I felt my life was fully enriched. As soon as I heard footsteps outside, I immediately smoothed my clothes and sat up straight. My heart throbbed. I didn’t look out the window but at the ceiling-until the footsteps gradually went away. I kept up this pose, unable to extricate myself for a long time. And because Mother kept intruding on my feelings from time to time with vulgar things like food and sleep, I sprang to my feet and sternly warned her: if she kept doing this, I would prove my true feelings by committing suicide. Because of the elevated aesthetic realm I now occupied, she had to look at me with new eyes, and she understood a little better. Didn’t she notice that I’d thrown out all my cologne? I’d bought a new toilet and planned not to use the public toilet any longer: why hadn’t she noticed this?