Can Xue - Five Spice Street

So, whether we wanted to or not, the only option was: we had to continue tailing them, like a pack of loyal dogs following their masters and secretly protecting them. Even if we were dead tired, we couldn’t let up in the slightest. This was foreordained by fate. Although we weren’t one bit happy about it, although we often grumbled that the road was bumpy, although we lost sleep over it, although we gained nothing from it, although it was uninteresting, we couldn’t extricate ourselves. As long as they went out, we were tied behind them. Sometimes, I can’t keep from asking myself: What on earth is this all about? How did these two characters become our masters? They’re nothing, and we always looked down on them, but unfortunately God likes to play games with people: the more you scoff at something, the more he will inflate its status, until your head is muddled and you busy yourself blindly with it. You can’t control yourself.

Tail C: I came up with a scheme once: I planned to take a certain action while Madam X was walking. Of course, I couldn’t do this alone: I needed the community’s agreement; otherwise, people would think I had evil intentions. I thought through the numerous difficulties in achieving a consensus: each person had his own notions, so if I tried too hard, others would hate me. They’d all drop what they were doing and run over to question me: What’s wrong with you? Do you want the glory for yourself alone? Do you think you are a prophet? How dare you cast everyone else to the side? As soon as they doubted me, they wouldn’t cooperate. Not only that, they would want to abandon everything and would leave no stone unturned in wrecking my scheme. I had originally intended to announce my ideal scheme to the people, but as soon as I realized what this might lead to, my spirits sagged. It would be better for me to bury the scheme deep inside myself and wait for the whole thing to wind down on its own. As I saw it, this was the only way. Nobody could even think about taking advantage of me.

Every night, I’d stretch out on the canvas lounge chair and reflect on my unpredictable fate, on my extraordinary self-control, and on my character, which ran deeper by the day. I couldn’t help choking up. The crowds’ emotions were the hardest thing to figure out: one misstep might put you at odds with them. When I was young, I made numerous such mistakes. Now, of course, the situation was quite the reverse. I had done my utmost to appear ordinary, dull, and undistinguished throughout the process. I had been extremely careful not to overstep the limit. I had gone with the flow. No one knew my true ideas, even though the one I harbored was ingenious! This is why I never doubted that my work was useful and why I could be so selfassured. Without a spiritual pillar sustaining him, a person might as well be a walking corpse. When I saw how anxiety-ridden and how indecisive the people were, I became aware of my good fortune. I easily saw their mistakes. Sometimes, I wanted to roar at them. Unfortunately, mortals are always so short-sighted and ignorant of life. For most, thinking straight is like roosters laying eggs.

I felt keenly that this world lacked people with ideals and aspirations. Mediocrity was everywhere. Every project was left unfinished. All the talent died before it could be born. The future was hopeless. What a frustrating world! I’m not a pessimist: I’m just a fighter constantly striving to become stronger in today’s reality. Look at everything I do, and you’ll agree.

Tail D: Last night, when I walked to the riverbank, the south wind carried Madam X’s voice. She said: ‘‘I don’t want to give everything away, but I can reveal a little privileged information. I understand why everyone has been driven to the last extremity. I understand it to the core. From now on, no one should be anxious.’’

Probably no one will believe me because I can’t point to concrete facts, and nobody can know whether I’m lying-just amusing myself at everyone else’s expense. But how could I make public what Madam X said earlier? That’s my secret alone: it came from many sleepless nights, or perhaps from a decree of the gods! Wouldn’t telling everybody mean I was making light of it? In a lifetime, you might never encounter it at all. I can’t stand to see everyone tailing (these words are probably too vulgar), plodding through wind and rain and even sinking straight into the trap. So all I can do is to vow to heaven that what I’m telling is the truth. I know the inside story of the whole thing. My information came from Madam X herself, and it is absolutely true.

Don’t think that I’m cocky. No. I don’t think I’m all that wonderful just because of this. I’m still one of you, and I’ll pretend nothing has happened to me, just as usual. Yesterday, my cousin asked why I eat pickled vegetable soup and dried turnips at every meal. I answered that I have to adhere to this way of life until I die-and this definitely wasn’t boasting. Tonight, I can still go out with everyone else and rush around: no one can see that I’m any different. I dislike attention: that’s self-glorification. I think people who wildly flaunt themselves are very funny. They become intoxicated grasping shadows and forget to keep striding forward. They’re like babies without experience: they just want to enjoy themselves and are always eager for life to favor them with more. The moment they discover a little something new (sometimes, only an illusion), they start clamoring about their success in case others don’t know of it. They want prizes for their discoveries. A life of reaping without sowing has spoiled them. I am quite the opposite. I’ve lived an industrious and frugal life since childhood, one not lacking in ideals. All my life, I’ve consciously disciplined myself. Only in this way have I nurtured the good habits of being calm and not cutting a fashionable figure.

One individual never joined in the extensive surveillance and also kept cool and collected. This was the much-admired widow. Let’s hear her views:

‘‘Listen, everyone, I can’t stand your irrational, ignorant behavior! Each of you came with your own selfish intentions and impulsively took part in this collective activity, keeping busy day and night. But can you grasp the substance of this matter? It’s a maze that opened up in front of you, but you can’t get in. You just pretend to know it well to cover up your own foolishness.

‘‘Let me come straight to the point: Madam X, affecting a certain vague genius, has stirred up so many storms on our three-mile-long street and disturbed so many people’s minds that she has altered their individual destinies. Everybody knows this. Out of inertia, we’re used to this fixed, unchanging perspective. As soon as something comes up, we go all out to join in. But if we think about this deeply, we’ll discover a big problem. (We generally have no time to reflect because all day long we’re fervently busy with our civic activities.) Let me give you a simple example: at present, this surveillance is grounded in our firm belief that Madam X is engaged in a certain kind of unusual adultery.

‘‘From the revelations at the meetings in the dark room, you knew something explosive was about to occur. But the reality was not what you thought. And it is going to stay this way. There is no sign of any change. And so you felt tricked and you became tenacious and thought you’d use this tenacious antagonism to solve your problems and make history develop in accord with the trajectory you had set. What if someone pointed out (unfortunately, such bright people are rare) that your belief was vague and untrustworthy in the first place? With all of your reasoning built on it, your idea couldn’t hold up, could it? As soon as we grew excited, we endowed a certain subject with all kinds of charm and let ourselves be dazzled. Such unusual adultery, such a mysterious, unfathomable paramour: we manufactured all of this from our hopes and emotions. Why did we have to hope for this? Because we were bored, and because we were afraid, and so we shifted the crisis and came up with this surveillance.