Five Spice Street

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.