Five Spice Street

Our Q was nearly forty years old and up to now had passed his time playing games. That laughing and joking romantic sentiment was the fundamental cause of his death. He wasn’t killed by a wave, or by hallucinatory drugs, and certainly not by public opinion. He realized his romantic idealism by disappearing into the crack of a tree and becoming an empty husk. From the age of eleven, he had looked forward to this day. His romantic ideal coincided perfectly with X’s murderous complex, and thus this series of incidents occurred. Earlier, we set forth X’s murderous complex merely to explain this evil virus and not to stress her social potency. Up to now, she’d had only enough power to drag one child into the water. A metamorphosis such as Q had undergone had little to do with X’s power. Things like waves and drugs all came from the imagination. His metamorphosis was caused by his inner elements. Of course, ‘‘combining two into one’’ with X was the key activator. As for the slow-witted Q, at first he owed being ‘‘reborn’’ (he wholeheartedly believed he was going to be reborn) to the waves in X’s eyes. He had called X a sorceress and by frequently looking in the mirror had verified his rebirth. When he put his mirror in his pocket and walked proudly down the street, and when he looked at himself in the shop windows, who on Five Spice Street could keep from covering his mouth and giggling? Especially since he had been such a serious, timid, conservative guy, and except for lying under the melon rack and dreaming wildly, in all his forty years he had never done anything rebellious.

As soon as we thought of Q, a strange feeling surged up in our hearts, and we felt unsure of our footing. Really, what was good about him? The odd thing was that our beautiful women actually yearned for him. Some were desperate. One clamored: she didn’t care whether he was strange or not, dependable or not, she was in love with him. He was the only man she could be friends with! Even if he was an empty husk in a crack in a tree, she still wanted to ‘‘draw swords and help him’’! Women desperately ran to check on Q. An empty chaise longe stood under the melon rack at the entrance to the small house. They searched carefully a long time before discovering that Q had ‘‘dissolved’’ ahead of X. The women found a broken mirror under a rock behind the house and smiled at each other. Some guy with a vague expression and wrapped in a blanket walked over and told them that Q was sitting in his office working on statistics. ‘‘Those days after he went crazy were a nightmare for us,’’ he said.

The beautiful woman from the foot of the stairs immediately offered her opinion: ‘‘Since he’s returned to normal, his charm is gone. Before this incident, there was nothing so wonderful about him.’’

After some reflection, everyone felt this opinion was brilliant. Without X, how would they have known about Q? Wasn’t it only when he entered Five Spice Street on a beautiful afternoon that he became adorable? They vied with each other in yearning for him. This was also a spiritual trust directly related to the incident. Now he had retreated, melted into the crowd, and become an ordinary person. He would no longer be the object of desire for Five Spice Street’s beautiful women. Who would fall for an ordinary guy? Our women’s love required self-sacrifice and a courageous spirit. Only an outlandish love would do. We weren’t gray and solemn! We’d run over here with knives to wholeheartedly undergo baptism by fire. We were ready to ‘‘die for love.’’ Who knew we were pouncing on thin air? This Q really was uninteresting. How difficult it was to realize our spiritual ideals! We regretted getting in so deep, regretted embracing unreasonable hopes. In reality, things that could make you happy were so rare! Sometimes the reality was precisely the opposite of what you’d imagined, and you met with blows that simply confused you. If we’d known earlier that Q merely wanted to be dissolute, that he didn’t regard this ‘‘incident’’ as real and would draw back into his shell, we wouldn’t have given him the time of day. Who would ever have known of this rundown, worm-eaten house!

Shaking with anger, they thought they had been greatly humiliated and duped. Following the lame woman (she recalled her breathtaking twenty-five seconds and realized that she and Q were absolutely irreconcilable; in fact, this goddamned Q was a hundred times worse than the young guy who robbed her of her virtue), they broke the window with stones and smashed the door. Then they barged into the house and broke every piece of furniture to smithereens. When they came out, they faced the open fields and laughed out loud to their hearts’ content. Someone started singing a march. Finally, they left triumphantly. Our widow didn’t participate, because she was enlightening a young person about his serious mistakes.