Five Spice Street

Still bare-assed, Old Woman Jin left the bed (she didn’t let the young coal worker put his pants on, either), spat at Zhou Sanji’s receding figure, and cursed him for being ‘‘unbearably vulgar.’’ Then she started strolling around the room, around and around. Suddenly she stopped and exclaimed, ‘‘X and I will fight to the death!’’ Naked from the waist down, the young coal worker stood nervously on the bed, unable to figure out what was happening; he felt used. He became dejected and full of remorse. Why was this witch exploiting him? What was her motivation? His poor brain could never get a handle on it. We can assume that after repeated hints and inducements, his train of thought led from the name X to the body of this person who had always been his idol, and eventually to a certain spot in that body. As a consequence, he instinctively felt a sexual urge, and-confusing one object with another-he began fooling around recklessly and became a victim. Throughout the process, Old Woman Jin was absolutely calm and collected; we can say it was premeditated, that she had a plan all along, and that she manipulated the proceedings and easily achieved her immoral goal. The strange thing was that she didn’t want any pleasure from the young coal worker’s body. To tell the truth, she had long since passed the age for enjoying sex. Maybe we should say she ‘‘had no interest in fooling around,’’ or that she even felt it was rather ‘‘repulsive.’’ This incident became really complicated. Can we say that Old Woman Jin’s traps and schemes were merely to vanquish one or two imaginary enemies? What sort of realm did she and the coal worker seek in that muddled life of theirs? Could an intrepid person like her sometimes make mistakes in her predictions? We couldn’t figure this out. On our Five Spice Street, there’s a rule of thumb: don’t worry about what you can’t understand; just wait quietly and things will work out. And if they didn’t, then something was clearly wrong with you. Maybe the flaw was in your head, maybe it was in your toes-anyhow, it was incurable.

After this, Old Woman Jin changed greatly. Sometimes when she got up in the morning, she felt a tremendous confidence in her body. She looked at herself in the mirror, assumed various winning poses, and then decided to get rid of the outer clothing that veiled her body. She wanted to achieve a ‘‘complete revelation of her soul.’’ She felt that all the conditions for this were already in place. And so she started going naked above the waist in order to bring about this ‘‘revelation.’’ It’s too bad the aesthetic judgment of the people of Five Spice Street wasn’t receptive to this kind of ‘‘revelation.’’ Their reaction was completely cold; all did their best to avert their gaze and pretend not to see this old woman’s naked body. There was another major change in Old Woman Jin’s life: she made trouble during Madam X’s nighttime activities. If anyone had the guts to ask about this, she would raise her fist toward the sky and say, ‘‘Bah! It was a great mistake! I’ve been contemptibly robbed of my achievement! X? Who’s X? Isn’t it simply me? Of course it is. Who besides me has her demonic power? But you all blindly believe the deception that has turned pretense into reality. I proclaim loudly, I am X and X is I!’’ At dusk, she always fidgeted; unable to sit still at home, she ran into Madam X’s home and made off with one of her mirrors. She boasted she had mastered all the minutest details about Madam X and had long since ‘‘defeated’’ her, claiming Madam X was now on the point of ‘‘retiring’’ from Five Spice Street. When she said this, naturally she didn’t forget to jiggle her breasts for the enjoyment of others and then call out the coal worker’s name, asking him to ‘‘give evidence.’’ Everyone on Five Spice Street surrendered to her awesome presence.