Can Xue: Five Spice Street

Had the old woman been rejuvenated in a trance and hallucinated that she’d run into a sweetheart from the past, clung fast to him, and persisted in a passionate daydream? Did this have anything to do with ‘‘hallucinogens’’? Someone raised another doubt: was she pretending to be crazy in order to monopolize Q? Q dominated everyone’s conversations-everyone was interested in him- and now through chicanery this old woman had appropriated him for herself, and insisted that he was some old lover from thirty years ago, even though it was clear that Q was young. She brooked no disagreement. If this world conformed to her wishes, who knew what might happen?

The fifth who noticed Q’s appearance was a man, the husband. As the saying goes, Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. But in today’s world, that isn’t quite right, because even rivals in love see the beauty in each other. Madam X’s husband is unusually handsome (the widow, the widow’s female friend, and everyone living on Five Spice Street think so). Too bad he was completely in the dark about it: even if someone told him, he’d be surprised and then immediately forget it. He was uninterested in his own appearance and cared nothing about other people’s opinions of him. Perhaps it can be said that he was ‘‘self-confident.’’ His feelings were like a baby’s-innocent and good, but a little stubborn. As a cuckold, he probably drew more attention than anyone else on Five Spice Street, but he acted just the same: letting well enough alone, calmly going about his business, as if nothing were happening. The women led by the widow had thoroughly researched his attitudes and finally produced a physiological explanation ‘‘inappropriate to explain’’ in front of others. (When she mentioned the ‘‘reason,’’ the widow poked her female friend in the waist and flushed a deep red.) The husband had only one word for Q’s appearance: handsome. Once he unintentionally mentioned this to his good friend (the one who had looked into Madam X’s age), and after his friend’s wife heard this, it spread fast. This was a great revelation for Five Spice Street residents, who had been speculating, but without much to show for it; now all their doubts vanished. They greatly admired the widow’s genius for probing, especially when they went a step further and came up with the term ‘‘eunuch’s psychology’’ to describe the husband. What joy they felt at having come up so spontaneously with this diagnosis.

Everything happened behind his back. Indifferent, Madam X’s husband shut the door as usual and went on with his days, and as usual was haughty and cold toward other women. He walked with his head high and his chest thrust out, making it clear that he didn’t look at any woman except X. It really drove the women of Five Spice Street crazy. True, they couldn’t all be considered beautiful, but there were some who were sophisticated and elegant, and others who were warm and affectionate. The widow, for example. In no respect could Madam X-this skinny monkey-compare with her. And she herself said that although she was more than forty-five years old, she ‘‘had never been defeated by any man,’’ ‘‘she wouldn’t mind if as many as two hundred men showed up at once.’’ She whispered all this to X’s colleague, who broadcast it to all the residents of Five Spice Street. She made so much noise that all the middle-aged and young men (and even some of the old men) were squinting and itching to try. The widow also said (in a loud voice this time) that his haughtiness was a pose; she didn’t think it was genuine but rather showed his desperate inner struggle to keep his lust under control. Whenever-with her full breasts thrust out-she encountered him, she ‘‘saw with a sidelong glance’’ that he was ‘‘shaking all over’’ and ‘‘twitching as if insane.’’ Just ‘‘one look from her’’ would cause his line of defense to ‘‘collapse.’’ But, as everybody knew, she had always been an honest, straightforward woman. Ever since her husband died, she had cultivated herself through meditation, so now she had few desires and no interest in this sort of game. Consequently, his longing for her was nothing more than a hopeless dream. She would ‘‘never be moved by it.’’

There were many other opinions about Q’s appearance, but for reasons of space, we won’t mention them. The opinions of these five people produce a blurred, mutually conflicting impression: Q is a large man, either ugly or handsome, or with nothing remarkable about him, with a broad square face and an odd expression-he looks a little like a catfish.

We still haven’t mentioned the opinion of an extremely important person: X. How does X view Q? How could we forget her? Without her, there would be no story! Her image of Q was simple: ‘‘I’ve never laid eyes on him.” Someone doubted this: wasn’t X joking — playing with words? No, ‘‘what she said was sincere’’ (the female colleague’s words). In truth, X didn’t look at people with her eyes. (Here, she was much different from Q. Q wanted to look at people with his eyes, but some obstacle always prevented him. For example, when he looked at X, his tear glands turned into a major obstacle. Thus, Q’s disposition wasn’t nearly as clear-cut as X’s, but was always hovering between seeing and not seeing, always ambiguous.) Someone else suggested: maybe X has never laid eyes on her hus- band-this handsome man-either, and so she has no idea that he’s so handsome and therefore she mistakenly cast him off and got hung up on ‘‘the ugly’’ Q? Wasn’t this the most regrettable thing she’d ever done in her whole life? Not necessarily. You have to realize that X hasn’t always been like this. When she was young, she chose this handsome man only with her eyes; she reeled him in and they became husband and wife. X’s personality grew ever more eccentric and inappropriate since she began her occult practices (about this, later). After she bought the mirrors and the microscope from the junk shop, she even announced that her eyes ‘‘had retired.’’ That is, except for things in the mirror, she looked at nothing. Some people were unconvinced, for this presumed that X hadn’t seen Q and didn’t know what he looked like, and thus she didn’t have any way of knowing if he even existed. How could she have a relationship with him? Here something is worth emphasizing: that is, X definitely knows what Q looks like, though without seeing Q with her eyes. Instead, she senses him by means of a supernatural ability. This is ten thousand times truer than seeing. (X’s own words.) This only seems absurd. According to the colleague’s report: on a certain fine morning, she saw X-as usual-walking along the crowded main street, looking in her mirror and taking bold strides, as if she had some sure plan in mind. The colleague swooped down. Scurrying up, she seized hold of X’s shoulders and carefully took stock of her eyes. Her appraisal of X’s eyeballs left her ‘‘speechless’’: ‘‘all the life had gone out of them, and they had lost any ability to see.’’ The colleague sighed sympathetically. ‘‘It’s self-glorification and a hairsplitting mentality that have poisoned her. If she were a little more objective, she would have noticed a long time ago another woman right next to her who was in fact much more remarkable than she, though she had never openly entered into a contest with her. X wouldn’t have ended up this way if she’d been aware of it.’’ (From this, we can also infer: in his letter, Q’s strange description of X’s eyeballs was probably something he imagined.)

Okay, since X did not see Q with her eyes but ‘‘sensed’’ him, we’ll take a look at what this ‘‘Q’’ she sensed was all about. X’s younger sister divulged that X had said that Q was the man she would meet at the intersection on Wednesdays: he wore a woolen overcoat (actually, Q didn’t even have a woolen overcoat), his voice was deep (this was essentially true), and his eyes possessed at least five different colors. (How could this be?!) She had no interest in men with sonorous voices and monochromatic eyes. Now she had met Q, and his eyes were precisely the eyes she had ‘‘sought in her dreams.’’ She didn’t have to mention his deep voice. With Q it was ‘‘the second time she fell in love.’’ When she said this, X lost control, ripping a sheet of white paper into scraps with her long, slender fingers and then tossing them into the air, where they flew up like butterflies. Such behavior suggests ‘‘hallucinatory drugs.’’