Can Xue - Five Spice Street

‘‘When I’m here, I feel alone. There are a lot of people outside, but I don’t know them-and haven’t for a long time. I pretend that they’re old friends, but in fact, I’ve never been able to tell them apart. I just call out any old name and tell some stories. Sometimes, it’s really quiet here. I don’t know whether this is good or not, and there’s no way to anticipate it: you can only wait. Do you still remember that we used to sing? That was a long time ago, wasn’t it? As for your brother-in-law, I’m going to leave him. I’ve had a premonition of that.’’

‘‘Let’s sing then,’’ her sister said, choking with sobs. (Listening to her sister’s sentimental words, she was already all tears. Anyhow, she was completely confused. She realized only that a catastrophe was about to befall them.)

‘‘Don’t sing!’’ Madam X curled her body into a ball. ‘‘Listen closely: he’s walking back and forth on the hill over there. I can hear him. When he isn’t here, I sit in this corner and listen: I hear everything. You know, he doubts his own existence. This is agonizing for me. There is a certain fateful thing in this. It’s coming: can I accept it?’’

The sister’s emotions were on the verge of exploding. Crying her eyes out, she wept for about fifteen minutes.

“You didn’t understand,’’ Madam X finally said. ‘‘Everything happened as I wished, even much better than I wished. You can’t imagine how good it is. At the time, how many rules I made for my eyes!’’

‘‘Did you bring it into effect?’’ her sister asked, close to tears.

‘‘Not just that!! I have everything-everything… Ah, I want to keep him, I want to do my best to keep him!’’ She stamped her foot and looked decisive.

One day not long after the crowds noticed the third big change in Madam X, an obtrusive guy forced his way into her home and stood bravely in the midst of the flickering demonic mirrors. He asked Madam X a lot of flirtatious questions, such as ‘‘Are you lonely at night?’’ ‘‘What kind of experience have you had with masculine charms?’’ ‘‘Is reddish-gold velour sexy?’’ and so on. After he finished asking these questions, he noticed that Madam X had climbed up to the windowsill. Only his voice was whirling crazily in the dark room: it was like playing a record over and over again. ‘‘Help me with this curtain,’’ she said to him. ‘‘I was just noticing that there’s a new problem here.’’ At this, the man ran off.

‘‘She isn’t at all the way she used to be. (In the past, when Mr. F and I talked about this at the toilet, we were simply crazy about her.)’’ The man announced, ‘‘When I was with her, she climbed up to the windowsill like a monkey. That was like having a pail of icy water thrown over my feverish body.’’

At this, everyone began tsk-tsk-ing in unison.

‘‘Why did she become like this?’’ they said. ‘‘Isn’t it too much? She has too high an estimation of her significance. She certainly didn’t need to change. It would have been better if she had stayed the way she was.’’

After Madam X’s third major change occurred, someone intercepted her husband on the road and forced a conversation on him. Now we’ll make the conversation public. (At the time the one who intercepted him had his face covered, and afterwards he still didn’t want to reveal his name for fear of getting entangled in all of this. We’ll call him Mr. X.)

Mr. X: Wait up! Let me ask you something: What do you think about your wife’s third major change?

X’s husband: What’s ‘‘the third major change’’? Sorry, I haven’t taken part in your civic activities for a long time. I’m afraid you’d drag me off to have my picture taken. I think everyone goes through some changes during a lifetime. One can’t be the same day after day, and it’s even possible to change four or five times in a day. It’s best if each person pays attention to whether or not his eyes are diseased or inflamed and doesn’t butt into other people’s business. If a person gets into other people’s business too much and neglects himself, he might go blind. The concern all of you have for us touches us in our hearts, but don’t neglect yourselves for the sake of this and come down with a fatal disease.

Mr. X: Why did she stop carrying on her occult activities?

X’s husband (sternly): She’s observing the stars. (Rhetorical question:) Have you paid attention to your eyeballs? You must be careful! Without your being aware of it, a viral infection can create a nasty crisis for a person. One person was still fine in the morning, but by noon he was completely blind. Now my wife has invented a better method (he was bursting with pride): she can create constellations out of thin air. (At once, he was on guard again:) What am I doing telling you about this? Leave me alone!!!

After this conversation became public, everyone understood what it was about. Containing their inner excitement, they strolled around under the eaves, poking each other and quickly exchanging knowing looks. They were smiling all day long. Ms. B shuttled back and forth under the eaves, exhorting everyone to ‘‘hush,’’ ‘‘stop walking around, and sit up straight against the wall.’’

What was it that they knew?

During this time, Madam X was still going about her routine work in the snack shop with her husband. At dusk every day, they still went walking together. It’s just that they walked for a much longer time-about half the time of her ‘‘dispel boredom’’ activities. Sometimes, they walked without talking at all. Their son, Little Bao, was asleep on his father’s shoulders. Despite following along a number of times, the people on Five Spice Street didn’t learn anything. Those two were just strolling blindly, like two silent souls. This made the people following them stamp their feet in fury.

When they were taking a walk, we frequently heard the woman sigh loudly. She deliberately acted afraid of the cold and leaned close to her husband as she said loudly, ‘‘I feel there’s an evil wind blowing. Aren’t you aware of this? It’s blowing so hard that my bones ache. Should we go back?’’ Her husband was enjoying his moment of glory: all the people on the street were craning their necks to look at them. He kept placating his wife-there isn’t any wind, she could look up and see that even the leaves weren’t moving at all. If there’d been any wind, there wasn’t any now. It felt so good to take a walk at dusk: if it were possible, he would only too happily walk with her for a lifetime. That would be wonderful! That would explain the problem so well! (God only knew what problem it would explain; anyhow, this husband was a little idiotic.-The writer.) Madam X looked at her husband affectionately and said, ‘‘Then let’s walk a little farther. There’s no one here; it’s absolutely deserted.’’ Madam X was good at this kind of show. Whenever everyone was paying more attention to her, she would surprise you by announcing that she didn’t see anyone. She did this to show how special and how important she was to the crowds. But if other people actually weren’t noticing her and each person was simply going about his own business, this was incredibly hard for her to bear. She couldn’t endure loneliness: she would strike up conversations with people everywhere, lest others ignore her. Unfortunately, all of us had a bad habit: sometimes, we couldn’t keep calm. We looked all around, and-in insignificant people and events-we looked forward to finding a little something that was exciting. It was as though we didn’t have anything better to do but be drawn to those people and things. We were flushed and full of desire; it was just like falling in love. This was the worst failing that certain people among us had.