Five Spice Street

Having brought the story to this point, the writer has left innumerable issues hanging. The story cannot end here. Everyone on Five Spice Street knows it’s not over. So the writer must do his best to clarify the mess piece by piece. It has no beginning (‘‘The Beginning’’ is merely an assumption), and has no ending, either. If earth and sun collide, the story may end but will no doubt begin again on another planet. The writer’s task is like boring into the maze of a gigantic anthill, but he cannot shirk it. He knows through experience that only the methods of abstract art, used in diagramming each aspect of the maze, will enable him to lead readers to grasp the ‘‘general idea,’’ even if they can’t find their way through the specifics. This is the fascination of art. Though it can’t be fathomed, it has supreme influence. Only the heartless and coarse have nothing to do with art.

The First Diagram of the Maze

Does Madam X really exist? Why does she exist on Five Spice Street? It seems too late to raise this question. Could we have described such a complex historical episode, duping vast numbers of readers, if it turned out to be nothing but trumped-up nonsense? Would we do this just for fun? It isn’t so simple, beloved readers. We are all mutually dependent. The lesson taught me that you are closer to me than my parents, and more important, too. I would never be flippant with any of you. My objective is only to kindle doubts and criticisms, to purify our ideological dimension. After the writer’s investigation, which has undergone scrupulous examination, and after compiling various opinions, he decided that the following questions were worth consideration.

First of all, this Madam X was no genius. Aside from her work in the snack shop and her deceptive sorcery, she had no special skill. On our Five Spice Street, very few geniuses (for example, the writer and the widow) were truly aloof. It appears that Madam X is really a lonely person; indeed, she’s even lonelier than the writer or the widow. She kept secrets not only from her husband but also from her lover Mr. Q. Everything she did resembled an improvisational act. Had she ever revealed any of her innermost feelings? Absolutely not, not even a hint. Only geniuses are mighty. And the mightiest are the loneliest. X is neither a genius nor is she mighty, yet she is inscrutably lonely. What on earth is she? Perhaps this person does not exist at all. Is it possible that she is merely a figment of our imagination, an expression of our collective consciousness?

Just this morning, however, the writer saw her selling beans on Five Spice Street! She was tying an apron around herself. Her hands were rough. Aside from the expression in her eyes, which were still unusually empty, she was no different from anyone else. Hardly a genius, she wasn’t even part of the elite (she had never been close to our intellectuals; instead, she seemed to stay as far away as possible). The writer had once seen Mr. Q suggest timidly that he perhaps belonged to the elite stratum; all at once, she flushed. ‘‘Hunh,’’ she said, ‘‘luckily, I can’t read. It is a great advantage.’’ Mr. Q’s face turned red. Where had this weirdo come from? How could she reside on Five Spice Street?

It seemed that we had to investigate this from another angle. We couldn’t keep focusing on X herself but had to return to our own concepts, carefully straighten them out and test them, and learn where the defects lay so that the mistakes could be corrected. Of course, we couldn’t do this without aesthetic awareness. Aesthetic awareness was always the wellspring of our creation.