Five Spice Street

When the incident ended, Madam X wrote her sister a long letter. The widow prudently tore it open and read it with other members of our elite. This letter proved that the writer’s diagram of the maze was one hundred percent correct. She had never had eyes for either Q or Y. She was simply acting. In her letter, she professed she had mistaken Q for a peddler from far away wearing a baize overcoat, when in fact Q was an eccentric who had been born and reared here. But what she had looked forward to was a peddler from afar. Reason told her that this kind of person could exist only in a mirror. Although she was capable of creating miracles, she couldn’t create a person out of thin air, so she had to find a stand-in from among the local weirdos. Every stand-in had some characteristic of her ideal peddler from afar, but she would never decide to ‘‘unite’’ with this stand-in. All she could do was continue looking and continue ‘‘changing direction.’’ Each time she might experience that greatest joy. And for that, she could ‘‘ignore everything else.’’ Even though she was now discredited in the eyes of others, she ‘‘didn’t care.’’ She had enough physical and spiritual strength ‘‘to start over again.’’ If she had this kind of opportunity again, she ‘‘wouldn’t let it go.’’ Of course, she didn’t intend to harm anyone. She hoped to be ‘‘on friendly terms with everyone.’’ If she unwittingly hurt others (for example, she always felt very kindly toward Q’s wife and couldn’t figure out why she took this dead end. In X’s view, Q’s wife could definitely have found a much better way out), she was anguished but had no choice: everything she did was involuntary.

After tearing this letter open and reading it, the writer and the widow went to the snack shop on the corner and observed X closely for an entire day. They wanted to see how she would ‘‘start all over again,’’ but their labor was futile: Madam X’s eyes had once more become sightless. She could see the counter, the roasted nuts and seeds, and the marks on the steelyard (she wasn’t off even a little), and so forth. But she couldn’t see people. When she jostled against us, we felt flustered. It seemed she was still adhering to old principles and wanted to ‘‘meet by chance.’’ ‘‘Waiting for the fish to rise to the bait’’ was written all over her face, and a lot of people on Five Spice Street wanted to be that ‘‘fish.’’ They all nosed around Madam X’s fishhook, and all of them suffered! Madam X didn’t consider them fish at all, but only ‘‘dust rags.’’ The writer assumed that if she did consider some Y or Z to be a big fish, her objective would not have changed. Her respectful expression as she weighed out peanuts and beans told you that her joy was extraordinary. Her pleasure was murder. Whoever took her bait was finished. In the beginning, that person may have thought it was a good thing (like Q-with ‘‘hot tears brimming in his eyes’’-rapturously hurrying to the rendezvous at the intersection). Only later did Q discover that he was a big fish caught in a net. Either the fish died and the net was torn, or the carp jumped out and fell heavily to the ground-and was left deformed. Meanwhile, Madam X just sat by. Nothing made her sad. She had never been accustomed to sorrow or regret. As before, she sold peanuts and quickly forgot the incident. Later, if possible, she would secretly throw out her line and wait, full of hope, for the next fish. She confided to her sister that she was destined to reenact this procedure for a lifetime. Even if she were a ‘‘discolored pearl in old age,’’ fish would still jump to her bait. ‘‘This world is very large,’’ she said, and then immediately added, ‘‘But this large, deserted world wouldn’t hold a peddler from afar. I’ll wait a lifetime in vain.’’

Our diagram of the maze is finished to this point. People will want to shout, ‘‘We’ve done so much miscellaneous work-meetings in the dark room, doodling, pasting up posters, tailing her, and so forth. We’ve worked so long, and yet everything has been fruitless from the beginning: all along, X and Q were simply acting. Was X merely toying with the crowd? Is that what you mean? Or was it that you, the gloomy stenographer, came up with this sophistry to demonstrate your own damn literary talent? If you just want to promote yourself, be my guest. But you shouldn’t turn the crowd into horse- shit while making a hero out of a whore. What you did was too-’’ Hold on, friends: the writer never said X had great talent, that she could make life into a stage and then put on a play or something.