Can Xue - Five Spice Street

‘‘‘I kept imagining that ‘‘H’’ and ‘‘L’’ had turned into two ‘‘mosquitoes.’’ They were buzzing in the sky and disappeared without a trace. Peace and prosperity were coming back, flowers were blossoming, and life was beautiful again. Am I leading too befuddled a life? Yesterday, I unconsciously held out my hand and realized that my thumb had been numb for a long time.’

‘‘ ‘Now we need to talk openly about sex as a scientific issue. Didn’t those two people take advantage of our excessive seriousness, our virginal sense of shame, to set their defiance into motion? We have to cure our vegetative nervous disorder and boldly reveal our viewpoints. At the right time, we can also beat back their savage aggression with a public performance to show that we are totally open-minded.’

‘‘ ‘This probably started a long time ago, and probably there has never been a real beginning, for what we thought was clear was actually covered by mist. It broke out at this point, no sooner and no later. Was it aimed right at us? How can my legs be as weak as they are? A voice is constantly whispering in my ear: ‘‘Two ears, three legs, two ears, three legs…’’ ’

‘‘ ‘The one who made this long speech was motivated by the expectation that his listeners would poke through the layer of tissue paper and reveal the vivid prototype. His adversary understood his intention well, but was sophisticated and astute enough to keep his own views veiled. That was the profundity of the game. If someone ignorantly shouted out his real views, he was just asking for scorn from the crowd.’

‘‘This writer always wanted to take a fair-minded stand and write objectively about this incident’s beginning. This doesn’t mean that other people’s vivid depictions were non-objective, inaccurate nonsense. The writer simply wants to try hard to string these diverse viewpoints together like pearls, bring them into focus, and achieve a static view, like the way the sun-before it sets-grasps the whole of the universe. ‘Things will eventually get sorted out,’ anyhow, and ‘the whole thing will be obvious.’ As the writer sat at home, eyes closed, pondering all of this, the uninvited crowd kept interrupting. These people were all swayed by their own emotions. They pulled the chair away while the writer was sitting on it, and brandishing clubs, they intimidated the writer by saying that while he was writing, he had to ‘be practical and realistic,’ ‘be candid,’ and then in a babel of voices, each person poured out his own views, which included a high-level sense of history and responsibility. They endlessly analyzed their superiority and inferiority, their achievements and their shortcomings, from the time of their birth until well into the future. As for the beginning of the incident between X and Q, they skimmed over this, dealing with it at one stroke-or not dealing with it at all. Totally forgot it. Yes, it was a minute, unimportant matter. They had come here to express their own passions. The matter of X and Q was nothing but an excuse that brought them together. In other words, the matter of X and Q was merely a fuse detonating individual passions that had been stored up a long time. After they finished expressing themselves, they started attacking each other.

‘‘The much-admired widow said that Ms. B was ‘a toad lusting after a swan.’ She was ‘an ugly woman who didn’t know herself, who disgusted people with her crazy ideas. Would he (Mr. Q) bother to stare at you?’ She stood up straight and pounded Ms. B’s belly with her arms. ‘You don’t even know what color his eyes are. You just talk nonsense about his eyes being as big as an ox’s. I’ll tell you the truth: His eyes are triangular! You even made up the time of the beginning. It was midnight when he came, and gray piglets were running all over the streets. A hooligan was blowing a whistle. I left my house to go to the toilet and saw this with my own eyes. Even though no one saw me, I couldn’t keep from blushing. Even now as I recall this, I still blush. You told us he came at noon, so your nonsense messed up such a good beginning. You and all egotistical demons ruin all the good things in the world. It’s only because you’re here that those two could take it easy and get along. One after another, you kept talking nonsense, and you’ve completely lost the last little bit of sober reason you might have had. You’ve dragged everyone into the dark abyss, and yet you think you’re witty, you think you’re brilliant, while those two took the advantage, got what they wanted, and were home free a long time ago. You guys have brought an end to the fineness of our generation.’

‘‘Ms. B didn’t chicken out, either. She kept trying to trip the widow with her foot and shouted ‘Down with dictators!’ She stressed that she ‘was born in the spring, the productive season, and so she was diligent and great at logical reasoning.’ She said the widow ‘was unlikely to have any extraordinary sex appeal.’ ‘She’s just jealous, that’s all.’ As she talked, she finally tripped the plump widow, who fell to the ground. The writer had to jump down from the table and intervene.

‘‘Just then, the good friend of Madam X’s husband started fighting with Old Meng. Old Meng groped for a stool with his wiry, withered hands and, shaking, held it high above his head, then fiercely smashed it down. As it happened, he hit his own feet. When the good friend heard the sound of bones breaking, he was scared out of his wits. He left Old Meng and hurried over to the writer, to whom he whispered: ‘The day it all began was the birthday of my rebirth. Nobody can deny this. I realized this truth when I was in hell, where I suffered so many tribulations! How did I survive? Isn’t the reality cruel in the extreme? Everything has confirmed my predictions. The ideal is coming true.’

‘‘Then these two people suddenly began arguing again. Old Meng said he ‘certainly didn’t gain much.’ That lady was a vampire, and the husband and wife were conspiring to frame him, and so he planned to ‘keep his distance.’ But before this, he ‘had to be given a room in their house’-this would be ‘just and reasonable.’ If he didn’t get a room, then he wouldn’t stay away, but would ‘wait for a lifetime’ in their home. The good friend said that, as he saw it, ‘money was like dirt.’ He had long ago become like an itinerant monk: no temptation could corrupt him again. If Old Meng coveted that house, and just went ahead and dealt with his wife, he couldn’t care less. Now the only things in his heart were big ones-nothing else. Didn’t Old Meng see that he was sleeping on the street and begging? While he was talking, he grabbed the writer’s hand again, insisting that the writer record the important thing in his heart-the ‘good and glorious beginning’ that he had memorized so that he could be ‘a witness to history.’ ‘I’ve endured so many hardships!’ He stressed again: ‘Beautiful hair has fallen from my head like leaves blown down by the wind.’ He had impatiently drawn a rather unsuitable analogy. The writer consoled him: he would write all of this down and string everything together like pearls. He wouldn’t leave anything out, because he was talented. But he couldn’t ‘write it down on the spot,’ for this superior, convoluted work must be pursued in circumstances in which he wouldn’t be interrupted. He had to meditate with his eyes closed, let things ferment, and then let the inspiration flow, and write like a torrent of water that couldn’t be held back.

‘‘ ‘Am I an ordinary bead on your string?’ The good friend was unhappy. ‘How dare you describe me with such an analogy? You insidious stenographer (he had always considered me a stenographer), I’m not a bead! It’s you and your confederates who are beads! No, you’re not even beads: you’re merely a string of stinky tofu. The fine beginning belongs to me alone.’