Five Spice Street

The widow’s power to infect people was astonishing: everyone on Five Spice Street had experienced this repeatedly. Unfortunately, Mr. Q hadn’t seen her clearly, and she remained humble and aloof. She had never forcefully projected herself, nor had she wanted to control people (on the other hand, when X saw men, she pounced like a hungry tiger and didn’t hesitate to take advantage of their stupefaction to inject them with hallucinogens and perform cruel experiments on their bodies and then, when this was over, just kick them out. As she put it, ‘‘Each was going his own way’’). She also had the kindly heart of a mother: she cared for the nation and for the people. She loved the people as if they were her children. All her influence was latent, invisible. Only people with pure hearts were permanently attracted, so in his confusion Q, whom X had injected with toxins throughout his body, lost his only opportunity to evolve and quickly sank into a deep pit. The widow’s brief sideways glance made him ‘‘glow with health’’ for a few days, but he definitely wasn’t aware of what this was all about. Nor did the widow bring more of her influence to bear on him (she had too much work to do, and it was too heavy a burden; she couldn’t neglect everyone else in order to look after Q!). And so X-this demon-pulled him into a muddy pit. He divulged that in the process of seeking fun with X, he’d wanted several times to wash his hands of it and free himself from that unsportsmanlike position he was in (of course, this was because of the latent influence of the widow’s brief glance), but that damn sorceress’s witchcraft intoxicated him and made him crazy. So he went all out in trying to become a colorful butterfly like X.

‘‘Even if I can’t change into a colorful butterfly, I can appreciate the true meaning of being human,’’ he clenched his teeth and said. ‘‘Anyhow, I’m bored with being a child. Just think about it: I’ve been like that for almost forty years!’’

When the incident reached its crisis, Mr. Q’s colleague stuck his head out of his blanket and gave his views: ‘‘A person makes himself out to be neither old nor young. It’s really odd when someone your age dribbles a basketball or looks into mirrors. In the countryside, this sort of thing is called being ‘bewitched,’ and the consequence is usually serious. This guy believes wholeheartedly that he can be whatever he wants to be. How’s that possible?’’ He sneezed several times from the dust stirred up on the other side of the room by Q, who was dribbling the basketball.

Many people were slinging mud, and many were making faces. Q’s eyes were somewhere between seeing and not seeing, and his ears between hearing and not hearing. In fact, he saw everything and heard everything, but-filtered through his mind-the things that he saw and heard changed into grotesque colors and deafening noise that made him uneasy day and night. He frequently felt scared and coerced. It wasn’t even possible for him to have the few seconds of quiet he wanted. His legs were constantly springing, and he lived that way, too. He couldn’t stand this. He had worked hard at imitating X: he wanted to ‘‘achieve that highest degree of serenity.’’ The result: fifteen seconds of quiet. That was when he and X were together and X led him into a certain fairyland where they stayed for fifteen seconds. After he returned, the situation grew worse. He jumped back and forth like a kangaroo and didn’t go to bed for three days. His wife wept for three days and three nights and became even skinnier.

‘‘That world has lured me in. Unfortunately, it doesn’t belong to me.’’ He summed things up dejectedly. He looked into the mirror and saw the wrinkles in his forehead and his absurdly stiff bearing. ‘‘I’m no more than a cockroach.’’

Though he reached this gloomy verdict, the next time X suggested they roam around in fairyland, he couldn’t wait. Even more afraid he wouldn’t be able to enter, he hugged her tightly around the waist so she couldn’t abandon him. When someone asked what he had seen, he became blank and feverish, and his eyes brimmed with tears. He laughed idiotically and forgot to answer. It was this way every time. In such brief moments he could neither see nor hear and was completely happy.