Can Xue - Five Spice Street

Next, we want to speak of Madam X’s special work. It might seem that Madam X is actually engaged in the special work she calls ‘‘dispelling boredom.’’ This work isn’t at all clear. You’d never succeed in investigating it, and if you tried, you’d become a laughingstock. One or two guys with evil intentions would love to see the writer try this. They would say: let’s see what kind of silly explanation you can come up with for this stubborn historical problem. Stenographers and artists are annoying gossips. Let’s hope they bungle everything they write. The more plagued and haggard they are, the better. We wish all the stenographers and artists in this world would die! Readers! You cannot imagine the risks of a writer’s work. How often the writer struggles to survive the dangerous shoals and the swift current.

Did this damn problem stump the writer? Would the writer drown silently if he didn’t pull back from the difficulties? Those of you with ulterior motives, please be patient: the main show hasn’t started yet! The writer wants to avoid answering this question directly and will pull the threads really long-until they lead him to

Madam X’s distant and obscure youth. Let us join material from X’s sister with the writer’s imaginative power into a picture of Madam X’s shadowy youth. That very thin little girl, with wild fiery eyes, hopped around all day long and yapped like a puppy. Her fingernails were long and sharp, and she had never been able to ‘‘pick up’’ things easily; rather, when she saw things, she ‘‘clawed’’ at them. She clawed countless holes in the colorful shirt she wore. Except for her silly little sister, she considered everyone around her enemies. She played games of murder incessantly. She was merciless and ruthless (the time she threw her mother’s spectacles proves this). Even if she suffered a thrashing (her parents, at their wits’ end, did this once or twice), it didn’t occur to her to repent; rather she came up with countless ‘‘new tricks’’ for revenge. After this devilish child grew up and left home, she discovered that in this world, her childhood tricks would not work. If she persisted, she risked destruction. She didn’t change her essential self, but she wasn’t a blockhead, either. On certain occasions, she was very flexible! As the years rolled on, her murderous psychology did not diminish but actually grew by the day! But she understood very well that this world didn’t offer an opportunity to express it. If she couldn’t control this instinct, she would die.

My beloved readers! Friends! Having read to this point, you’ve certainly guessed the truth, haven’t you? Flexible and with small intelligence, Madam X chose our Five Spice Street to fulfill her childhood dreams. She had investigated Five Spice Street and learned that the people were nice, warm, honest, and magnanimous. She concluded that no matter what kind of disturbance she made, she would incur no punishment. And so, not long after settling down here, she bought those evil props-mirrors and a microscope. She smiled slightly when she played with those things, and her motions were terribly exaggerated. She ‘‘celebrated’’ the beginning of this ‘‘work’’ with her husband and son and then closed the door and ignored others. It’s said that one day, holding her precious son on her lap, she taught him how to look through the microscope with one eye, and he did this for more than half an hour. Then the two of them rolled happily around on the bed. They said they’d seen ‘‘the most interesting stuff in the world.’’ She also said that she would ‘‘give’’ her son all she had lost when she was a child.

The situation immediately became unmanageable. The woman spent every day inside, leading her ‘‘double life.’’ In the daytime, she spent the whole day with her head buried in her small trade. When the people of Five Spice Street passed by her shop, they would be blinded, absorbed in observing her eyesight, her neck, and so forth. No one sensed that, when they turned around and left, she stared fiercely with hawk-like eyes at their receding backs. (One time, the writer suddenly turned back and met her eyes. The writer grew dizzy as a result and had to lie down for three days. He is still suffering from the effects.) So you see the sacrifice artistic work requires. It’s not something those hooligans can understand. In the public toilet, they labeled the writer a ‘‘fame-fisher.’’ The murderous scene flashed from her innermost being. We had never seen that kind of murder without lethal weapon or blood. People became aware of it only through the writer’s analysis, which explained profound things in a simple manner. Maybe instead of being actually ‘‘aware,’’ they could only ‘‘understand it in a general way.’’

There was no so-called ‘‘double life’’ at all: it was a smoke bomb she had set off herself. Everything she did-running a small business (that was her device for staring at people’s backs), closing the door (that was her device for analyzing the terrain and choosing her battlefield), looking in the mirrors at night, and engaging in adultery with Mr. Q (to reinforce her plot by adding a conspirator)-in fact, all of these were one thing. Even her sleeping at night was a ploy to conserve strength and store up energy. Otherwise, how could she behave with such spirit in her murderous activity? No one took better care of herself than she did. Someone might object: so what about those teenagers? Was it possible that they, too, were taking part in her murderous activity? At one point, they raced to her house every night and sat there seriously without moving. Not all of them longed to be killed by her or thought it would be a great pleasure. The writer once more must stretch the threads out very far-to the time before Madam X and her family came to Five Spice Street.

Back then, no one knew of Madam X’s existence, and her murderous plan was still hidden in her mind; she hadn’t yet taken any action. After entering Five Spice Street in disguise and implementing a lot of on-the-spot reconnaissance, she framed her plan. Then she embarked on carrying it out. The teenagers were her first targets. After consideration she decided to employ means whose effects would resemble smoking dope. The fad-loving teenagers were very happy. They went every night in high spirits. Some even proclaimed that they could ‘‘adopt this method to become well known.’’ How could they prevent Madam X from injecting them with poisons? Although sometimes they hated her and stole her shoes, and so forth, in general they were innocent, infantile children wholly in X’s clutches.

Did Madam X’s unusual powers and murderous activity create a great tragedy? Excuse me, here the writer must speak only of the facts and real situation. The real situation was: except for her colleague’s son, who had indeed been affected, she hadn’t harmed anyone else’s physical or mental health at all. Because of the climate on our Five Spice Street, people who were already living here possessed a kind of immunity. Madam X overlooked this in her reconnaissance. With this immunity, we could be marinated in poisonous juices for years and still retain good health. As for the colleague’s son, he was poisoned because of a serious childhood disease that destroyed his immunity. Madam X jumped for joy because of this one success. Her precious husband’s foolish chatter made people laugh their heads off. He told everyone about her ‘‘great power,’’ ‘‘mighty as an A- bomb.’’ Madam X called this success ‘‘an unexpected harvest’’ (she didn’t intend to affect anyone; as she claimed, she had long since completely ‘‘forgotten’’ everyone around her). ‘‘It didn’t occur to me that there would still be one left for me!’’ She was enraptured. ‘‘This is really a nice, nervy child! Maybe he too will create miracles.’’