Five Spice Street

As the widow was speaking, the crowd noticed that Madam X’s face wasn’t at all the face they usually saw, but was that of some person they didn’t recognize. On that different face were growing two hoary eyeballs without pupils. The eyeballs weren’t moving, as if they were dead. Only her long, thin fingers were twiddling incessantly with the tiny mirror on her chest. Her fingers were very expressive, as if giving a mystical performance. She didn’t say a word.

After the widow finished, the female colleague spoke; after her came Old Woman Jin, and after her, the forty-eight-year-old friend. After her came Ms. B, and after her, Ms. A. Finally, everyone shouted: ‘‘Give up your destructive ploys! The children are our lifeblood!’’ Some held their chins up, as if to make this stranger’s face return to its original appearance.

Only then did Madam X finally twitch, and opening her pupil- less eyes, she asked, ‘‘What children?’’

‘‘The ones you summon here every day.’’ Tapping X’s knee with a crutch, the lame woman said, ‘‘Don’t play innocent!’’

‘‘There aren’t any children,’’ she said succinctly and definitely. ‘‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Perhaps there were some shadows that came into this room.’’ Everyone stared openmouthed.

‘‘I absolutely don’t care if some things enter while I’m experimenting. It is trivial, absolutely irrelevant. Maybe the shadows you mentioned just now were the children?’’ she added, her pure- hearted pose irreproachable.

There was just one thing: no one could find the pupils in her eyes. From the next room, Madam X’s husband heard the noise and thought the women were making trouble. He thrust his way through the crowd and blocked his frail wife with his broad back. In a low voice, he bellowed at the women: ‘‘What are you up to?’’

The women began backing off, looking at each other in despair. Though the gutsy widow yelled, she didn’t have the courage, either, to take on this burly man. Finally, they left, and the husband slammed the door with a peng. He stuck his head out the window and yelled that if anyone came to make trouble for his wife in the future, he would ‘‘knock her teeth out.’’ He also said that ‘‘no civic activities’’ had ‘‘anything’’ to do with them. On the way home, the women ran into a large crowd of teenagers. They tried to block their way, but the youngsters were as slippery as fish. You couldn’t get hold of them. Laughing and joking, they broke away.

‘‘We lost.’’ They sat down dejectedly at the side of the road.

‘‘Let’s wait until summer,’’ Ms. B said, ‘‘the time for discussing national political issues. People’s feelings run high, and then perhaps the situation we saw during the lecture will be repeated. We mustn’t lose our self-confidence.’’

6. MADAM X TALKS ABSTRACTLY OF HER EXPERIENCES WITH MEN

In her gloomy room, Madam X frequently talked about her experiences with men, mainly to her younger sister and the female colleague. It was her favorite topic. At such times, she looked as hesitant as a little child. Her voice was uncertain and her gestures feeble. She kept looking around, as if worried that someone would sneak in like a shadow. Nevertheless, according to what the two listeners leaked, what she said was shameless and crude. She could talk for a long time about each part of her ideal man’s body (of course such a person didn’t exist; according to Madam X, even the listeners didn’t exist). She talked of the significance of all sorts of behaviors and actions: among them, of course, were eye color and voice, which she said she blended into the body.

Here are two of her shocking examples: ‘‘The instinctive movements of the hands and lips coalesce into the feelings of a person’s entire life. We needn’t waste time understanding a man. It’s enough to see how he moves. Indeed, it isn’t even necessary to see. We can wait and taste them.’’ ‘‘Strength and duration are the clearest indicators of his individuality, but this must also be realized through a woman; otherwise, it’s self-deceptive and unmasculine.’’ She said some even more devilish words that we don’t feel comfortable repeating. When she talked of these things, she spoke like a slut. She was absolutely shameless. If anyone mentioned this, she’d curl her lip and say she wasn’t the one who should feel shame and then denounce the other for ‘‘being perverted.’’ No one could understand her aloof expression when she talked or the entrancing little smile at the corners of her mouth. If we don’t think of this as a performance, then we have to deal with her sexual problem, and that gives us a headache. In the Five Spice Street community’s recollections, the first person and also the last person who talked of men in such dirty language, observing no taboos, was Madam X. Even the female colleague who knew her well sometimes couldn’t stand it.