Five Spice Street

The writer started his work by analyzing the concept of loneliness: what essential difference was there between Madam X’s loneliness and the loneliness of real geniuses? The loneliness of geniuses was a thing that surpassed reality and surpassed space and time. One was born with it. No one could imitate it. This type of rare person is usually sitting on a deserted mountaintop or the roof of a thatched cottage (like C; of course C wasn’t a genius-he merely imitated one remarkably well) while engaging in conversation with the gods. His body gives off golden rays. Ordinary mortals like us cannot hear that dialogue. He is a static sage or a fossil. Only the highly cultured who rid themselves of selfish ideas can sometimes recognize him when they look up. He doesn’t always sit on a mountaintop or the roof of a thatched cottage to maintain his solitude. He also has an uncommon warmth and attentiveness for humankind. His solitude consists in always walking in the vanguard of history, and humankind doesn’t understand him in time. When he comes down from the mountain- top or the roof of the thatched cottage, he becomes one of us: there’s no way to tell him apart. He participates in ordinary affairs and perseveres in guiding others. He transmits the macrocosmic and microcosmic worlds he has seen from the mountaintop or the roof of the thatched cottage and leads everyone to propel the wheels of history forward. In his lifetime, the writer has met one or two such sages. It’s easy for the same types to recognize each other.

What is Madam X’s solitude? The writer considered this exhaustively and concluded it was a wholly morbid thing. Her solitude resulted from obstinacy. A person who neither converses with the gods nor possesses education and who practices that sort of common trade isn’t elevated above the crowds. Her haughtiness and disdain arise from inner weakness and manifest her struggle to achieve selfish ends. This morbidity is as follows: against all reason, she is able to make her eyes ‘‘retire’’ so that they no longer ‘‘see any people.’’ She can actually grow a plate of armor over her whole body so that ‘‘nothing can penetrate it’’ and ‘‘she doesn’t feel any outside attack.’’ Her way of interacting with ordinary people is bizarre: she calls them by random names. Even more annoying: she fakes the loneliness of geniuses in order to delude everyone! Who’s interested in the solitude of an ice cave? If she died in that cave, no one would know or be alarmed. The ice would seal the cave for years and no one would notice! Her loneliness is part and parcel of her own madness; it has nothing to do with ordinary people. She had definitely better not try to identify it with the loneliness of our geniuses. While we accepted Madam X’s impersonal existence on Five Spice Street, some confused people sometimes forgot that she was just a sick, inferior person. They were mistaken about some of her odd behavior. They got excited about it and raised X’s image, forming a dense fog around her. Outsiders who didn’t know the whole story would think Madam X was some kind of genius. Only because of this did people question whether Madam X was real, and why she existed on Five Spice Street. This question grew bigger by the day and branched out. It became mysterious and inexplicable. If pursued to the end, this train of thought would exhaust anyone to death-no matter how erudite. The writer’s conclusion was: Madam X’s loneliness was essential to her individual psychosis and wasn’t at all worth investigating.

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