Five Spice Street

This colleague was also greatly interested in men and had a lot of experience. Not only did she have intercourse frequently with her husband (after their son left, even more frequently), she also took great pleasure in talking about it-fantasizing all kinds of titillating details as she talked, reliving the experience and reviewing it. She was really expert, but she didn’t like Madam X’s vague way of talking about intimacies between men and women, which kindled her secret emotions and made her impatient for the sequel but provided no real stimulation. In the end, she just drew a blank, as if she’d been made a fool of-she was ashamed and embarrassed. It was damnable! Arbitrary! If they were talking about men, they must have names; they must have bodies and relationships, so that people could grasp them. Madam X’s insubstantial remarks were idiotic nonsense, a hodgepodge. Using a child’s tone of voice, she feigned a great deal of experience. She talked and talked, but it was nothing but nonsense-or, rather, a hoax. Her steamy language became insipid. She talked as if reading a document. It was boring and tiresome.

When the colleague left, she ran into her fat husband. She stamped her feet and shouted abuse. Her husband drew her into his arms and patted her rump, hoping to calm her down.

‘‘I’ve been robbed! I’ve been fleeced!’’ She jumped up and slapped her husband’s face. She still hadn’t vented all her hatred and was shaking all over.

‘‘By whom?’’

‘‘A thief!’’

‘‘Where?’’

‘‘Help!’’

Although Madam X didn’t quite sense the people around her, she learned from various channels of the wrath they felt for her, and logic, too, told her the whole world was hostile. She’d known for years that if she told people her true feelings she’d be laughed at, because everyone saw things precisely opposite from the way she did. Even if it was the most ordinary, imperceptible feeling, she was absolutely different. Yet she’d been herself for a long time, and there was no way to change. Who was at fault? Madam X stubbornly believed it was everyone else. To go her own way, she not only didn’t look around her with her eyes, she also didn’t talk with people. Sometimes it seemed that she was chatting with you earnestly with an attentive expression, and then you noticed that she wasn’t talking to you at all, but talking over your head-or, even worse, talking to herself. She would be annoyed if you reminded her you were there. She was used to this kind of conversation. It was her weapon for dealing with the world. You couldn’t see this weapon, but it was awesome. It always left the crowds on Five Spice Street unsure whether or not they wanted to talk with her again. They also wondered whether she secretly laughed at them. Were her empty generalities a kind of jeering? If they couldn’t figure this out, weren’t they fools? Time after time, they secretly made up their minds that they must figure out Madam X’s ideas, but their efforts were always futile: it was always exhausting to talk with Madam X, and you ended up losing your self-confidence.

Someone asked Madam X about this, and she very simply told the person: she certainly didn’t have any intrigues and wouldn’t bother to laugh at anyone-that’s the only way she could talk with people. Since she held ‘‘different views’’ from everyone else and was like this by nature, she had no choice but to deal with people this way lest both sides be ‘‘unbearably anguished.’’ Let’s bring up an example: she called the carnal relationship between men and women sexual intercourse. Everyone felt this was too ‘‘frankly revealing,’’ too unpoetic. It should be called something like ‘‘recreation,’’ but this term ‘‘nauseated’’ her. So, since the crowd stuck to its opinion and she didn’t intend to change, if neither interfered with the other, perhaps they could live in peaceful coexistence.