Can Xue: Five Spice Street

‘‘This kind of woman is so hot!’’ Old Meng, the fortune-teller from the pharmacy, was a little intoxicated as he narrowed his eyes. ‘‘I’m more than eighty years old-been with a lot of women in my time. Nowadays, some young people are quite unreasonable and don’t have any respect for their elders, and even say we’re just old rubbish. In fact, we might be better at it. One day, I’ll prove it: sexual prowess isn’t affected by aging. Not only isn’t it affected, but it gets even better with age. I can go on forever, but they can’t-these young sons-of-bitches!’’ He raised his skinny fist to show off his strength to the coal worker and the other young guys. ‘‘I’m much tougher than they are! If you don’t believe it, just try me! Madam X’s speech has made me feel young again. But her talking about this in public shows she has a problem. It’s okay if a woman is horny, but flaunting it in public is too much! How can that be acceptable? Have we all gone crazy?’’

‘‘She meant these words for me,’’ Madam X’s first youthful love said. ‘‘She’s been repressed a long time. I used to sympathize with her. Now she’s a complete mess-talking nonsense all the time, no matter what the occasion. This has totally ruined my impression of her. What does she mean by this publicity stunt? When I saw her standing there, I felt only hatred in my heart: all at once, my wild love for her vanished without a trace. Although everything began because of me, from this point on, I swear I am her enemy: she’s wounded my pride too much. How can a woman talk in public of her private affairs? Let’s say a woman’s lust is heating up and it’s hard for her to control herself-still, she should do things in secret. This woman is just the opposite: ordinarily she pretends to be decent. If you proposition her, she turns you down cold, holds you at arm’s length, and you would never imagine that she could pull something like this! I really can’t stand it!’’

The audience was growing larger: realizing that something was amiss, Madam X’s husband worked his way anxiously through the crowd, intent on reaching Madam X’s side. He was sweating profusely. At last, he shoved his way to a spot behind her and tugged at a corner of her clothing, trying to warn her of the growing danger. The other men thought he was going to monopolize Madam X and shouted angrily. They tripped him, and he fell over.

Madam X’s emotions ran high, her daydreams came one on top of another, and she paid no attention to anything around her. She had no idea that someone was tugging at her, nor did she know who was in the audience. In fact, she hadn’t expected anyone to listen to her lecture; she was talking to the people she only imagined. Flickering waves of light, radiated from her eyes and changed the people’s faces into grotesque shapes. But from her own point of view, her shining eyes were blind-a sorry state of affairs indeed. If we could have chosen, we’d have preferred a pair of ordinary eyes to eyes shining with this strange light. Madam X herself wasn’t sorrowful: she said she was accustomed to being blind; nothing suited her better. She also exulted over now being so ‘‘free and unfettered,’’ ‘‘taking to the water like a duck’’! She kept talking like this, bubbling over with sentiment and wit. As she talked, she sometimes interrupted herself to say, ‘‘I’m so moved by my own words, I could almost die.’’ This was indeed a strange sort of consciousness: who could be so ‘‘moved’’? Even ‘‘moved to death’’?

Madam X was unaware that the crowd was squirming: things were coming to a head. Madam X’s husband saw the danger signs and prepared to risk his life to protect his wife. He stopped trying to dissuade her, for he knew her nature and understood this wouldn’t have the least effect. He watched tensely, waiting.

A crowd’s emotions are always subtle, like the colored glass in a kaleidoscope. The audience had listened in a confusing mist to her nonsense for more than half an hour, straining to ponder the significance of her words. The men in the front row stretched out their arms, longing to pinch this young woman’s cheeks or thighs; the men in the back were filled with indignation, wishing they could take the places of the ones in front. Suddenly, someone threw the first melon peel from the back (someone said it was from the widow’s window). It scored a lucky hit and stuck to Madam X’s left cheek. And then stones and tiles rained down on her. Her husband risked his life to protect her, and the two of them fled into their little house. They didn’t even dare breathe. Yet their window was smashed, leaving a huge hole, and Madam X’s calf was so badly hurt that ‘‘for two weeks, she couldn’t work in the snack shop.’’ It appeared that Madam X had lost: maybe she could pretend to be blind and not look at others, but the eyes of the public were fixed on her every movement. She was forced to recognize that the crowd’s emotions were dangerous and volatile, and this left her even more dispirited. Her husband was so distressed that he sighed and groaned continuously and ran all over the city as if he were crazy, in search of ‘‘an herbal cure for the injury.’’

After two weeks, Madam X’s leg wound was healed, but she hadn’t recovered from the trauma to her soul. She had to work in the snack shop for her livelihood, but the rest of the time, Madam X was in a stupor: sometimes after she woke up, she didn’t even recognize the people close to her (her husband and son) but called them ‘‘those people.’’ The game of ‘‘dispelling boredom’’ naturally was also done away with. In her stupor, she ate almost nothing. She was on the way to becoming a transparent ghost, wandering back and forth in silence. Every day, when it was time to turn on the lights, the people of Five Spice Street saw the handsome husband leading his darling son, Little Bao, by the hand and supporting a pallid transparent shadow with the other hand for a leisurely walk along the crow-black river. They walked a few steps and then stopped, listening intently to the billowing river. Their son kept skipping along and throwing stones into the water: he was happy. People gathered together and remarked: ‘‘Look, ‘the Invisible!’’’ ‘‘This is what trying to please the public leads to.’’ ‘‘It’s all over for her.’’

People were too optimistic: this situation didn’t last long. Suddenly one day, the husband’s second good friend (the one who said he’d been in love with Madam X as a teenager) saw him walking on the street in high spirits with a large cardboard box clutched to his chest. Curious, he went up to him and, despite resistance, brazenly opened the box: inside was a microscope. That night Madam X’s room was brightly lit, as if it were a holiday. The widow goaded her good friend to go in and look around; she saw that she had ‘‘polished all the mirrors and placed them in a conspicuous spot.’’ Her face was glowing ‘‘orange,’’ her hair was ‘‘as black as lacquer,’’ the husband was even more ‘‘jubilant,’’ and ‘‘every other minute, he jumped up uneasily and hugged her around the shoulders,’’ as if afraid that she was about to lose her human shape and change into something unfathomable, but also as if ‘‘giddy with good fortune.’’ His sickening sweetness was enough to ‘‘make a person throw up.’’ Once again, the demonic mirrors issued a summons, and at night teenage boys and girls tossed and turned anew and grew moody. For reasons yet unknown, a few stood naked at the side of the street, and each was fined five yuan by the police. The next day at dusk, one after another, they made their way into Madam X’s small room and sat there for two hours like imbeciles. Then, as before, they cursed Madam X as ‘‘boring’’ and ‘‘dull’’ and taunted her mercilessly. One even vowed that the next time he would steal her shoes. (But the next time, as soon as he went in, despite himself, he calmed down and became just like a porcelain doll. Then, after he left, he once more vowed that the next time he would steal her shoes for sure.)