From the bottom of her heart, Q’s wife knew that Q was charming, knew the way he appeared to other women. But she wasn’t the least bit jealous. There was no room in her heart for jealousy. She was just uneasy. She thought of her husband as a charming child, skipping through the world as naked as the day he was born. All around were thorns and unseen wild animals. He could be hurt at any moment. He was her husband, her big brother, but emotionally he was also her child-a gullible, hotheaded child. She needed to guide him in the dark to a safe place. Excited about her mission, she couldn’t help smiling.
‘‘What are you so happy about?’’
‘‘Female stuff. Not for you.’’
The clouds passed, and the sky was once again blue and pure. The bean blossoms gave off their faint intoxicating scent. With one child on his knee, Mr. Q would cuddle his frail little wife in his strong arms: he was steeped in his happiness as father and husband. If this witch X hadn’t appeared, or if it had been another woman and not X, then Q and his wife could have been a model of affection, an example for everyone to emulate.
The disastrous incident took place one fair afternoon in May. It was a day off for Mr. Q and his wife. From the time they got up early in the morning (they never slept in), Mr. Q had felt an uneasy stirring that lasted until afternoon. He scrupulously hid it from his wife. After lunch, he stood up and told his wife he was going out to get his fortune told, and then-his mind unsettled-he left. (Here, we’ll add a little: Mr. Q was a truly superstitious person. In this, he was much different from Madam X, who practiced the occult arts without being superstitious herself. In the marrow of her bones, she was unusually self-confident: that is to say, she had always believed only in herself- not the gods, and not fate, either. She challenged fate, jeered at it. Whenever possible, she would do any wild thing to oppose fate. She would never admit defeat. Mr. Q was the opposite: he lived in fear, believed in the gods and fate, and seldom had any improper ideas. He often had his fortune told, and the outcome affected his mood, either stimulating him too much or leaving him dispirited. Sometimes, for several days in a row, he acted frivolously-like a child: he mumbled and was in a wonderful mood. Sometimes, he’d sit upright and silent like an old man, mind empty and eyes vacant. Whenever this occurred, his wife knew someone had told his fortune again. He would give up his day off to walk several miles to see a fortune-teller. He would save money to pay these guys who held his destiny in their hands. Having his fortune told was his only hobby. Two days earlier, a colleague had told him that a real psychic lived on Five Spice Street in the city: it was said that she had incredible abilities but hadn’t told anyone’s fortune yet. If he went, perhaps he could charm her into telling his fortune. Mr. Q immediately filed this information away in his mind. We have no record of the details of this fortune-telling, because no one provided reliable information and Mr. Q hasn’t told anyone of it, either. His letters threw light only on her eyeballs. He didn’t say a word about fortune-telling. Madam X’s sister (present at the time) only sighed about some totally unrelated things that referred vaguely to Mr. Q’s looks. We’ve dealt with this above. Anyhow, this was the first time Mr. Q and Madam X met. It was a vital meeting, for it changed the course of a lot of people’s lives. It also led to an innocent person’s death. We’ll discuss this later.
Here, we want to talk of the weather that day, because the weather was a decisive link in the whole affair. It really was an unfathomable, weird day! Of course, if we weren’t making a special point of looking into the details, it might have been no different from any other spring day. Years later, the lame woman on Five Spice Street recalled that the weather that day was very fair. Beginning in the morning, white clouds like flowers wandered in the sky. Later, ‘‘these flowers even hung from the treetops.’’ She stuck her head out the window: it was ‘‘like a wonderland’’ outside. ‘‘In addition to the cloud flowers, there was another unusual thing: the scent of the grass.’’ You need to know there’d never been any grass on Five Spice Street; only some stunted trees stood at the side of the road. But now a strong, refreshing smell of grass suffused the air with a little green color that intoxicated people and made them sentimental. It was in this kind of atmosphere that our Mr. Q walked toward Madam X’s little house. What happened next, and what kind of turn occurred in his life, is also comprehensible. We don’t know where the fault lay that day: even God acted as matchmaker for this pair of adulterers.
Mr. Q’s wife was utterly ignorant of what happened. She never inquired about her husband’s associates or his activities. She wasn’t curious about anything her husband didn’t care to tell her. After Q returned at twilight, he was in an especially good mood; his wife just thought that ‘‘he must have been told a good fortune today,’’ and felt happy for him. When the stars came out, the two snuggled in the doorway and sang ‘‘The Brook Below the Mountain’’ in soft voices. They were intoxicated for a long time. Mr. Q heard hidden meanings in the song that made him stop abruptly at the last note. His wife didn’t even notice. They snuggled even closer.
‘‘The scent of grass.’’ Mr. Q suddenly shed tears. ‘‘Has spring really come?’’
‘‘Finally,’’ his wife responded, choking with sobs.
A puff of fog from a green meteor on the horizon startled the hill. It quivered a few times as a magical silence settled down again everywhere. In his dreams that night, Mr. Q pondered the same question: ‘‘Can batteries be loaded into people’s eyes?’’ The entire night, he struggled in and out of dreams. An incandescent light blinded him. He turned his head and saw a colorless, deserted glass road that stretched to a certain corner.
The second day that Mr. Q and Madam X met, after the lame woman encountered Mr. Q from the window, a miracle occurred. At first, she felt that ants were biting her legs, and then, ‘‘without knowing where her strength came from,’’ she actually began all at once to lean on both crutches and wobbled out the door. We don’t know whether she had heard where Mr. Q lived or not-we aren’t even sure whether she’d heard anything about Mr. Q. However, she immediately ‘‘recognized him.’’ Now, calling upon a blurry memory, she headed toward Mr. Q’s home. Soon, she arrived at the small house with the melon rack. Q’s wife was sitting there, listening to the bees sing, with a little red flower in her hair, her head swaying back and forth. She didn’t even notice the lame woman who had stopped in front of her. She never paid much attention to outsiders. She thought her no more than a passerby waiting for someone in the doorway. She opened her eyes a little, then closed them again, absorbed in the singing of the bees.
‘‘Hellooooo,’’ the lame woman dragged out the sound sullenly. Q’s wife thought it was the wind calling uneasily in the open country, for the wind was always doing this.
‘‘Are you deaf?’’ Extending a thin, bony hand, the lame woman tapped her on the shoulder. Only then did Q’s wife turn around in surprise and look at her with a sulky, aggrieved expression.
‘‘The shadow streaking across in front of us is a wild dog.’’ She was staring hard at Mrs. Q. ‘‘I’ve had experience with this: that was ten years ago, one twilight when the peas blossomed.’’
The woman now made eye contact with her. Skimming over her small puppet-like face were inauspicious dark clouds, but they quickly vanished.
‘‘Something troubling you?’’ She gave the lame woman a compassionate look, indicating she should take the chair in front of her. ‘‘Not everyone’s in a good mood like me. I hear of troubled people everywhere-truly wretched. Who are you?’’