‘‘You can’t possibly imagine those marvelous moments. No, there’s no way to describe them. You can’t imagine. Even years later, I still get excited. Whenever I think of him, I wonder whether he was a real person or a god from heaven. Really. In my mind, I’ve deified him. Is there still anyone like him in the world? Just looking at these handsome men all around, these ordinary people, makes me sick to my stomach, and I throw up. How could I possibly be interested in any of them?!’’
Something else occurred to her after she finished weeping. ‘‘Sometimes I’ve thought that maybe there wasn’t anything wonderful about him, that he was mediocre, and that it was only when I had that kind of relationship with him and at the same time bestowed my physical charms on him that he overwhelmed me. If he hadn’t met me, he would have been only an ordinary man, no different from any other. It’s only through a woman that a man can realize his virtues-and the woman must be strong, filled with the charm of sex. Otherwise, because of their fragile nature, men are likely to be corrupted by depraved women and become degenerate troublemakers disturbing the tranquility of the world.’’
We can be sure of this much: although the widow had had a sexual relationship with only one man, she’d had plenty of experience. She was almost a master of sexology. Her experience didn’t come from sexual relationships with a variety of men, but from her clear-headed, precise understanding of this sort of thing. And so the further away she was from men, the more dispassionate she was and the clearer her experience: she had a complete grasp of it. In men’s eyes, this made her even more potent: you could look, but you couldn’t touch. It’s no exaggeration to say: the widow is the ideal incarnation of sex. The men’s conduct on Five Spice Street proves this. Whenever she walks slowly and regally down the street, almost all the men stop in their tracks and idiotically ‘‘look back and smile.’’ They promptly undress her in their minds and keep their eyes on the private parts of her body. They’re intoxicated, flushed, and panting, and it’s a long while before they calm down. They’re distracted all day and continually look for chances to make up erotic stories. They imagine they’re big heroes. They keep it up until nightfall, when they wake up and become despondent. Then they’re deflated, unable even to make it with their wives. They vent. They rage at their wives for ‘‘having no sex appeal,’’ for ‘‘being like dried fish.’’ ‘‘It would be better to screw a hospital mannequin.’’ ‘‘What could you do with this kind of wife?’’ ‘‘If it weren’t for the ball and chain of this family, I’d long ago have become somebody,’’ and so on and on. They can’t help spouting nonsense like this. Some even leap out from the quilts, rashly spend the night naked on the floor, and get so sick they can’t recover for a long time. Our widow understood all of this as well as the palm of her hand: she just calmly observed it and drew these deranged followers to her even more. Never tiring, she hoped to change society by her ‘‘refined influence.’’
The widow’s notions about relations between the sexes always made Five Spice Street’s men angry and unhappy. Naturally, deep down inside, they didn’t believe her lies, but after her pronouncements, they always felt ‘‘a little uneasy,’’ ‘‘as if suspended in midair.’’ This feeling also affected their sex life with their wives. So some of them felt a nameless anger toward the widow. Because of his rising anger, one ‘‘truthful’’ middle-aged man, A, screwed up his courage and charged into the widow’s home one dark night ‘‘in an act of desperation.’’ ‘‘He didn’t reemerge.’’ It was a week before people finally saw him again. By then, he was a cripple, all skin and bones. He spat blood and had night sweats. All day long, he lay in a corner, curled up like an old cat. He had suffered brain damage and thought everyone who approached was a ‘‘panther.’’ He shook from fright. Some curious people wanted to ask him the details of his experience, but they didn’t succeed. His expression left them all in fear and trembling. They felt inside their pockets, afraid they’d lost something. It was plain to see: after ‘‘a night that no one could imagine,’’ the widow was even more ‘‘fresh and tender, radiant and vivacious,’’ ‘‘appearing in all her glory,’’ and even more ‘‘unattainable.’’ This transformation hindered her self-cultivation a little: she was ‘‘a little ill at ease’’ for several days, and her ‘‘memory seemed to slip.’’ After giving it some serious thought, she decided to burn her bridges, ‘‘disclose’’ the facts, and sweep away the people’s doubts about her. She began working on this one day at dusk in the open area in front of Madam X’s door. When the widow sat down on a pile of logs, the men of Five Spice Street rushed up one after another. Their eyes gleamed with evil as they surrounded the widow like stars around the moon. First, the widow gazed at the window with the shades drawn at Madam X’s home, and yawned for a minute or two, making the men fidget, and then she finally cleared her throat and began talking in a mosquito-like voice. As she talked, she shielded her throat with her hands, saying that she’d ‘‘caught a cold and lost her voice.’’ The only thing the men could do was tighten the circle and keep squeezing in toward her. Everyone became small and flat, and their heads became pointed. They were like bream swimming back and forth, filling every bit of space. Two gutsy guys with no place to stand actually perched on the widow’s hair and the tip of her nose. Just then, the curtains moved, and the widow’s spirits rose, but she soon realized it was only the wind. How disappointing! Finally she focused her narrative and came to the main point. Every few sentences, the bream-like men pushed back and forth to get closer to her chest: they rubbed her breasts with their pointed heads and responded to her speech with aha, aha. Those in the back couldn’t take this and squeezed those in the front row to the back while they themselves pressed forward for their share of ‘‘enjoyment.’’ The gist of the widow’s mosquito-like narrative was: she felt she had to clarify what happened that night. She had been ‘‘absolutely innocent’’ in this matter. She definitely wasn’t like ‘‘certain people’’ (when she said this, she raised her voice a little and stared hard at the curtains), teasing the men, pretending to be filled with ardor, but, once the real thing came around, acting as if it hadn’t: she’d take the men by their ears and make them look small while she herself had fun with it. She was a plain, pure-hearted woman: all her behavior grew from her inner desires. She wasn’t seducing anyone, nor was she purposely letting anyone down, nor was she using this to control anybody. Although she had rolled in the hay with A that one night, she hadn’t let him prevail. She concluded that the experience was also good for A. After all, he’d been in contact with a mature woman’s body all through the process; one couldn’t estimate the impact this would have on his life in the future. At least, it profoundly branded him: it was enough to make him resist any future temptation, and maybe because of this he would become disillusioned with the mortal world and-like her-begin cultivating morality. Men are very malleable, as past experience had confirmed for her.
Her sex research made it possible for the widow to reach her own conclusions and form her own system. All of her inspiration comes from deep thought. People admire this. At the same time, Madam X has been exploring the same field, but her attitude is precisely the opposite: she speculates recklessly, resorts to trickery, makes a loud clamor, even lecturing to the crowds when she has nothing to contribute, and confuses people with her evil motivations. One is real gold; the other is rotten copper. The widow’s analogy hits the nail on the head even better: she comes right out and says that Madam X is a ‘‘counterfeit.’’ As to what kind of fake, she won’t say. She just ‘‘giggles’’ constantly, embarrassed to open her mouth. We surmise that she probably has the evidence in hand: clearly it relates to ‘‘sex.’’ In the past, the people on our Five Spice Street no doubt believed that X was a woman, but now even this certainty is gone. We must be prudent about everything having to do with Madam X: we can’t take anything on faith. Let’s listen to the hints the widow dropped: