Can Xue - Five Spice Street

‘‘After the old widow finished, she went back to her usual reserved state, turned her back on the writer, and started gulping saliva repeatedly. She never touched the writer, whose hand was resting on her bed. It must be that she wouldn’t excuse him for ignoring her in the past. She had to put on airs so that the writer would realize how impertinent and preposterous he had been all along. Since he was being treated like this, all kinds of feelings welled up in his heart. All along, he and everyone else had thought that the widow was a good-for-nothing old bag wearing a tattered old felt hat that was full of holes. She was dried up and had shrunk into the shape of a locust. She spent most of her time nodding her head and swallowing her saliva. All of the bodily fluids in her withered body must have turned into saliva. From far away you could hear the gudong gudong sound she made: the writer had always thought of this sound as a sign that she was still alive. Now it seemed that this metaphysical insight was problematic. The writer needed to cleanse himself from head to toe and then dissect himself with a scalpel before he could get to the root cause of his disease. Why did he always look up at the boundless sky every day and never see the people around him? These people were concealing intelligent and passionate hearts under their coarse and crude appearance: although the writer met up with them every day, he couldn’t recognize them. This was because the writer was accustomed to praise and had become self-righteous. He didn’t have time for contrary, idiosyncratic people: he thought they were beneath him. Every day, the writer was bent over his bed writing. He molded some gossamerlike figures that existed only in hallucinations. He adored them and described them as epic heroes. In his writing, all these figures were noble, elegant, and graceful. They were absolutely different from people like the old widow and others. They were like immortals, beyond ordinary life, and yet they were also like cardboard figures, without flesh and blood. Had the writer been developing a skill for years that had no foundation-a form that looked magnificent but was actually barren? Would this result in the collapse of the edifice the writer had created and trap him inside until he was smashed to pieces? He broke out in a cold sweat at the thought of this. Analyzing cause and effect, he realized how important it was for him to gain the widow’s forgiveness. Winning her over was the same as winning over every reader. Otherwise, the writer might as well pronounce his artistic career at an end. And he might as well put the torch to all the notebooks he had labored over.

‘‘ ‘Maybe one day you’ll wake up and see the rosy clouds filling the sky and you’ll forgive me in spite of yourself.’ Sobbing, the writer said miserably, ‘Please promise me: this is possible. Then, with a thread of hope, I’ll take my leave of you. This thread of hope will be my spiritual underpinning. I don’t dare hope that you will tell me right now that you’ll be my reader. I’m just begging you to give me that thread of hope. I promise you: I’ve made up my mind to do as you said. If you agree to give me this lifesaving hope, let’s shake hands on it. Your hand holds the power of life and death over me.’

‘‘The old bag thought for a long time and kicked the quilt fitfully. It seemed she couldn’t decide what to say. Finally she answered slowly: ‘Shake hands with you? Sure, that’s easy enough to do, but I have another consideration. I’ve learned something in my lifetime.

People-these weird creatures-are very vainglorious. As soon as you give them a little appreciation, or even just forgiveness, they swell with pride. They boast everywhere, giddy all the time, never sure where they are or where they belong. Most people are like this by nature. As I see it, the world is going to collapse at the hands of those who take pleasure in doing charitable works. They distribute their cheap sympathy without hesitation. They comfort anyone, encourage anyone. Because of them, unscrupulous people stand up again right after being punished and continue their evildoing. Because they were supported, they would do even worse. No, I can’t shake hands with you now. I don’t sympathize with you at all. My beloved cousin doesn’t sympathize with you, either. All our lives, the ones we’ve abhorred most are those who take pleasure in charitable works. If, after learning this painful lesson, you want to climb to a new beginning, if you take my advice, I can give you a thread of hope, but I am definitely not going to shake hands with you. If I did, you’d become even vainer and forget all the troubles you’re facing. You’d sink into complacency again and you’d become flighty again. That’s just the way people are. Go ahead and keep that thread of hope. I’ll be watching you closely and hoping for your success. Please keep in mind: even if you succeed, you mustn’t imagine that you can shake hands with me. I’ll point out many of your other shortcomings, and I’ll probably make you out to have no redeeming features. Only in this way will you improve. I loathe mediocrity. I have something else to declare: it’s about swallowing saliva. I hear that people on the street criticize me a lot for this, just as if it’s something indelicate they can’t bear to see. They also allege that I have to swallow saliva three times for every sentence I speak. You just heard what it’s really like. I talked for so long, and yet I didn’t interrupt myself even once to swallow. My self-control is astonishing. As I said, there isn’t anything I can’t do. Inferior people sling mud at me in secret. They think if they mention a certain tiny shortcoming of a certain person, they can then exclude this person from the ranks of the worthies forever. Please. Who doesn’t have shortcomings? The personages who made history often had shortcomings that broke through, but that didn’t affect their greatness. What matters is a person’s essence and inherent ability. Some idiosyncratic shortcomings are perhaps signs of being worthy people. I loathe mediocrity. A mediocre person without any shortcomings has absolutely no excuse for living in this world.’ ’’

Now we are ready to enter the core of the story. We couldn’t objectively narrate this in a routine way: Traditional styles wouldn’t work; we had to innovate. Otherwise, people might start fighting for position. The walls might get damaged and the houses collapse. They might do anything. Or-who knows? — they might start quacking in unison like ducks, so no one could hear anyone else-quack from morning to night, and from night to morning, until you’d go crazy and give up. Over a long period, the furtive personal relationship between X and Q had become the spiritual sustenance for everyone on Five Spice Street. On the surface, we disavowed this, even scorned it, but in fact-night after night-everyone was caught up in dreams. Each one took part in the game, imagining himself the leading actor. During the day, whenever they heard of something happening, they would rush to the scene and inspect it closely. They were collecting traces to fuel their imaginations. Such actions were always taken alone. Frequent small-group discussions always took place in a certain person’s house either with a dim light or with all the lights extinguished. It’s said that talking about such things in the dark was ‘‘even more dramatic.’’ The writer obtained his materials in just such a place.

After his big mistake, the writer was abandoned by his readers. Luckily the widow enlightened him, and once he won his readers over again, he regained his composure and became steadier. He no longer engaged in his art ‘‘by shutting himself in a small room,’’ but lost no time reimmersing himself in the crowd, ‘‘bending over their chests to listen to them breathe.’’ In this way, he promoted himself and became much more philosophical about himself and society, and much more confident.