Can Xue: Five Spice Street

No one could produce reliable information; even the shortcuts we tried all failed. We could only ‘‘sit and wait’’ for Madam X to betray herself. From our experience on Five Spice Street, no matter how shady and crooked one’s conduct, as soon as the right time came, the truth would see the light of day. One mild spring morning, Old Woman Jin, who sold used books for a living next to the grocery store, struggled to wake up from a whole winter’s lethargy: shuffling in old cotton shoes, her hair disheveled as a lion’s mane, she stood under the eaves, pounding her chest and cursing herself. She remembered that before the winter, her hair was really glossy: you could almost call it ‘‘beautiful.’’ Sleep had made a mess of it. After she finished cursing, she gazed around and saw the young coal worker swaying toward her. She dragged him inside, pushed him down on a worn-out cane chair, and whispered to him quietly. Stockpiled for a winter, her words poured out like a river. Every time he wanted to get up, she pushed him down again. Her old hands were like iron clamps; even the vigorous young coal worker could do nothing about it. Didn’t people say, ‘‘The older the ginger, the hotter’’? This is the secret that she had stored away like a treasure:

‘‘I’ve been strangely confident all along. Sometimes when I wake up, I can’t avoid being annoyed for a moment, as if my brain is empty. But that doesn’t amount to anything: all I have to do is look at my palms for a minute and my strength returns. I’ve had this confidence ever since I was a young girl; at the time, I vowed I would poke an opening in the wall with an iron drill. And, sure enough, I did this later. When I walked on the street, I never gave way to the people I encountered. I am a strong person. One time, an old fart rushed up at me head-on. I rammed him with my hipbone and he fell over. My fiance (unfortunately, I had a fiance; fortunately, though, I didn’t get married) stood nervously next to the door and said, ‘Don’t do that.’ I glanced at him and persisted. Later, I thought I would test his endurance, so I kicked him in his thin chest. The beautiful kick killed him. How joyfully everything ended. What spunk. This is my unique spiritual temperament. The people of Five Spice Street might think I’m broke and down-and- out with no meat to eat. They look at me as they would a power pole. But they’re wrong! One day I’ll control everything, and everyone’s welfare will be in my hands. This day will come. Things will occur that they can’t imagine.

‘‘It isn’t that I don’t understand self-reflection. I’ve asked myself countless times: Is my faith a product of my imagination? If I persist, will I dream my life away? I’ve already experienced a lot of trials, but none was life-threatening. Just this one time was unique, a time of wondrous glory. Only after this did I feel a fresh and flowering vigor-all my abjectness was swept away-like an old tree in early spring. No, like bearing a child at the age of one hundred. I mean a great mind maturing slowly! All along, I had a premonition that this uncommon life of mine held an opportunity; I told my poor mother this three times. I said this under a pine tree on a hill in the suburbs. There were two birds’ nests in the tree. Looking at the nests, I spat the words out one by one from the cracks between my teeth: ‘There will always be an opportunity.’ That’s how I said it! Everything that happened later proved this true. Even I was greatly surprised, and it’s too late to analyze it! What striking potential I had! What a dazzling blossom came from the silent seed of my childhood! If I had talked of this with people in the past, who would have believed me? The opportunity finally arrived, arrived so swiftly and ferociously that it almost caused me to lose my head: I looked on helplessly as it rolled away, my response as futile as fetching water in a bamboo basket. Of course, this was only ‘almost.’ In fact, I reacted quickly and grasped my opportunity for all I was worth. I saw the new situation clearly, adjusted my pace, and took action. I grabbed as much as I could, and all at once changed the prejudices of the people of Five Spice Street and established a new image in their minds. Here’s an example. Have you noticed Zhou Sanji at the grocery store next door? The same one who every day for several decades, after having a bowel movement, purposely blocked my doorway while he fastened his dirty trousers? He engaged in this indelicate behavior to keep emphasizing that he-Zhou Sanji-is thousands of times more brilliant than I; he thinks the whole world should know this, and if some people still don’t know, then it’s his responsibility to publicize it. I endured the humiliation and-like a mouse-drew back into the room. How many years went by like this? Years without justice. Not until this one time when the clouds parted and the fog vanished did this situation reverse itself. This one time was brilliant, epoch-making, pioneering work.’’

Having said this, Old Woman Jin held her tongue to keep the listener in suspense. Shaky, she hobbled to the stove, picked up a poker, and wildly stoked the fire until coal dust flew all around the room and choked them, all the while hanging on to the young coal worker with her other hand. By now, the coal worker had figured out what she was intending and was twisting back and forth on the worn-out cane chair, breathing heavily, and blushing. All at once, he was sexually aroused. Though he had no object for his arousal, he couldn’t control himself: it was unbearable. Old Woman Jin seemed to want to dig a hole in his flesh with her long fingernails. Every few minutes, she chanted in a low voice the name that made people quake: ‘‘X?’’ She felt that the secret hopes of her life, the remote and beautiful or gorgeous illusions, would all be realized. This reality was a reaction to the stirring name X, so she repeated this name over and over. It was like a lunatic’s game. While she stared hard at the coal worker, her old eyes gradually lost focus and then turned into two fluctuating blood-red orbs, all at once bulging out of her eye sockets and then all at once drawing back in. The young man felt an irresistible pressure. In the grip of self-contempt and a confusion of unreal emotions, he quickly reached the most astonishing decision of his life: he would ‘‘fool around’’ with this witch.

When they finished fooling around, the door of the house suddenly opened. The two bare-assed people on the bed saw the respectable Zhou Sanji. He stuck his head inside and then stood hesitating for some time next to the door, looking very excited. When he left, he said something hard to figure out: ‘‘A new era has begun. The worries of winter have been swept away.’’

Still bare-assed, Old Woman Jin left the bed (she didn’t let the young coal worker put his pants on, either), spat at Zhou Sanji’s receding figure, and cursed him for being ‘‘unbearably vulgar.’’ Then she started strolling around the room, around and around. Suddenly she stopped and exclaimed, ‘‘X and I will fight to the death!’’ Naked from the waist down, the young coal worker stood nervously on the bed, unable to figure out what was happening; he felt used. He became dejected and full of remorse. Why was this witch exploiting him? What was her motivation? His poor brain could never get a handle on it. We can assume that after repeated hints and inducements, his train of thought led from the name X to the body of this person who had always been his idol, and eventually to a certain spot in that body. As a consequence, he instinctively felt a sexual urge, and-confusing one object with another-he began fooling around recklessly and became a victim. Throughout the process, Old Woman Jin was absolutely calm and collected; we can say it was premeditated, that she had a plan all along, and that she manipulated the proceedings and easily achieved her immoral goal. The strange thing was that she didn’t want any pleasure from the young coal worker’s body. To tell the truth, she had long since passed the age for enjoying sex. Maybe we should say she ‘‘had no interest in fooling around,’’ or that she even felt it was rather ‘‘repulsive.’’ This incident became really complicated. Can we say that Old Woman Jin’s traps and schemes were merely to vanquish one or two imaginary enemies? What sort of realm did she and the coal worker seek in that muddled life of theirs? Could an intrepid person like her sometimes make mistakes in her predictions? We couldn’t figure this out. On our Five Spice Street, there’s a rule of thumb: don’t worry about what you can’t understand; just wait quietly and things will work out. And if they didn’t, then something was clearly wrong with you. Maybe the flaw was in your head, maybe it was in your toes-anyhow, it was incurable.