Five Spice Street

The audience was growing larger: realizing that something was amiss, Madam X’s husband worked his way anxiously through the crowd, intent on reaching Madam X’s side. He was sweating profusely. At last, he shoved his way to a spot behind her and tugged at a corner of her clothing, trying to warn her of the growing danger. The other men thought he was going to monopolize Madam X and shouted angrily. They tripped him, and he fell over.

Madam X’s emotions ran high, her daydreams came one on top of another, and she paid no attention to anything around her. She had no idea that someone was tugging at her, nor did she know who was in the audience. In fact, she hadn’t expected anyone to listen to her lecture; she was talking to the people she only imagined. Flickering waves of light, radiated from her eyes and changed the people’s faces into grotesque shapes. But from her own point of view, her shining eyes were blind-a sorry state of affairs indeed. If we could have chosen, we’d have preferred a pair of ordinary eyes to eyes shining with this strange light. Madam X herself wasn’t sorrowful: she said she was accustomed to being blind; nothing suited her better. She also exulted over now being so ‘‘free and unfettered,’’ ‘‘taking to the water like a duck’’! She kept talking like this, bubbling over with sentiment and wit. As she talked, she sometimes interrupted herself to say, ‘‘I’m so moved by my own words, I could almost die.’’ This was indeed a strange sort of consciousness: who could be so ‘‘moved’’? Even ‘‘moved to death’’?

Madam X was unaware that the crowd was squirming: things were coming to a head. Madam X’s husband saw the danger signs and prepared to risk his life to protect his wife. He stopped trying to dissuade her, for he knew her nature and understood this wouldn’t have the least effect. He watched tensely, waiting.

A crowd’s emotions are always subtle, like the colored glass in a kaleidoscope. The audience had listened in a confusing mist to her nonsense for more than half an hour, straining to ponder the significance of her words. The men in the front row stretched out their arms, longing to pinch this young woman’s cheeks or thighs; the men in the back were filled with indignation, wishing they could take the places of the ones in front. Suddenly, someone threw the first melon peel from the back (someone said it was from the widow’s window). It scored a lucky hit and stuck to Madam X’s left cheek. And then stones and tiles rained down on her. Her husband risked his life to protect her, and the two of them fled into their little house. They didn’t even dare breathe. Yet their window was smashed, leaving a huge hole, and Madam X’s calf was so badly hurt that ‘‘for two weeks, she couldn’t work in the snack shop.’’ It appeared that Madam X had lost: maybe she could pretend to be blind and not look at others, but the eyes of the public were fixed on her every movement. She was forced to recognize that the crowd’s emotions were dangerous and volatile, and this left her even more dispirited. Her husband was so distressed that he sighed and groaned continuously and ran all over the city as if he were crazy, in search of ‘‘an herbal cure for the injury.’’

After two weeks, Madam X’s leg wound was healed, but she hadn’t recovered from the trauma to her soul. She had to work in the snack shop for her livelihood, but the rest of the time, Madam X was in a stupor: sometimes after she woke up, she didn’t even recognize the people close to her (her husband and son) but called them ‘‘those people.’’ The game of ‘‘dispelling boredom’’ naturally was also done away with. In her stupor, she ate almost nothing. She was on the way to becoming a transparent ghost, wandering back and forth in silence. Every day, when it was time to turn on the lights, the people of Five Spice Street saw the handsome husband leading his darling son, Little Bao, by the hand and supporting a pallid transparent shadow with the other hand for a leisurely walk along the crow-black river. They walked a few steps and then stopped, listening intently to the billowing river. Their son kept skipping along and throwing stones into the water: he was happy. People gathered together and remarked: ‘‘Look, ‘the Invisible!’’’ ‘‘This is what trying to please the public leads to.’’ ‘‘It’s all over for her.’’