Five Spice Street

And why was the forty-eight-year-old good friend crying? Let’s listen carefully to what she confided to the widow. (The widow listened attentively, her expression serious.) She said that more than twenty years ago, when she was still a bewitching young woman, a boy fell in love with her at first sight. She was touched, but because of the disparity in their ages and because she was a widow, she ‘‘reined in her feelings’’ and didn’t let them show at all. Twenty years had gone by, and the boy had become a man with work and a family. She was still alone. Her pure feelings for him were her spiritual sustenance. They both realized that their inner yearning hadn’t vanished but had strengthened by the day. (Of course, she didn’t take the next step and destroy his family.) Just then, like a thunderclap on a fine day, her handsome boy suddenly took a fancy to someone else. He pursued the woman all day and ‘‘started inquiring into her background.’’ He became abnormally sensitive. Whenever someone was talking about the person for whom he felt this onesided love, he wedged himself into the conversation and loudly and unscrupulously defended her, pretending to be her knight in shining armor. ‘‘He really was shameless.’’ How could a normal person feel such desperate passion? This was incomprehensible. For example, she herself felt intensely passionate about the boy of old and the young man of today-it wasn’t what ordinary people might imagine, but for sure she ‘‘wasn’t desperate’’ and for sure she ‘‘wasn’t shameless.’’ This didn’t mean that she was feigning her feelings. Everyone would say that her feelings were natural and reasonable. Only ‘‘desperation’’ was phony and inane! She wouldn’t blame the one she cared about. The ones she abhorred were the evil woman and man who had lured him to evil ways. The evil man was the evil woman’s husband. The one she cared about had been simple and gullible all along. God knows how he’d become friends with that husband, such good friends that they were loath to part from each other. At the time, she’d warned him, but he had just laughed. We can see how good-hearted he was, filled with kindness for others, considerate of others, not begrudging going through fire and water for them. She’d known him twenty years, and thus she knew his character: it was only because of this that they’d maintained their affection so long. Now everything was over-and so suddenly! So unexpectedly!

The women promised to keep this to themselves. One evening a few days later, choosing a time before the youngsters arrived, they suddenly appeared at Madam X’s home. Madam X’s husband was in the front room playing Chinese checkers with his son. Staring at the chessboard and absorbed in their game, he did not appear to attach much importance to the arrival of these people: indeed, he didn’t even think of them as women, though they were all graceful, charming ladies. He didn’t give them even a sidelong glance. Only a hint of a disdainful smile hung at the corner of his mouth. Wearing a white wool sweater, Madam X sat at the window, making complicated gestures. A tiny mirror hung from a button on the front of her sweater. She kept her back turned and gave no hint that she would ever face them. The ladies exchanged knowing glances, whispering and speculating on the meaning of her gestures.

Finally, on behalf of everyone else, the widow walked forward and pulled Madam X around to face the crowd. She said sorrowfully that she represented ‘‘the mothers’’ in exhorting her not to inflict any more harm on their children. She’d thought all along that it would be better for her to undertake some decent work for the community — for example, to make some proposals or write blackboard newspapers, or perhaps help educate the people about the new laws. All this was both legal and promising (she acknowledged that in some ways Madam X was a little more nimble than others). Why bother going on alone with that occult stuff? Even if she continued for ten or twenty years, she wouldn’t gain the crowd’s recognition or improve her own position. Even if at certain times she thought she had achieved huge and wonderful success, and congratulated herself on it, excessively proud of herself, so what? No one understood her, so what practical significance would that kind of success have? Who would care about her success? Of course, they all understood her-knew that she was aloof and that right now she had no immediate hope of changing her position in society. She was probably most interested in pursuing a certain kind of fresh stimulation. But a person doesn’t live in a vacuum: her behavior shouldn’t harm others. When it does, serious consequences follow.