‘‘Please notice: forty years later, he quietly arrived. When I needed him most, he came to my side. All along, I’d had a premonition: my cousin would come. When I battled with my so-called nephew on those bone-chilling winter nights, it was precisely this faith that sustained me and kept me from collapsing. That damn vampire had always coveted my blanket: he thought I would die that winter and was truly impatient. My cousin really did come: not only did he help me by delivering coal, but he also stood in the middle of the room for seven or eight minutes, his eyes filled with affection- affection running just as deep as it had forty years before. He said softly, ‘‘I really didn’t imagine.” When he said this, he just moved his lips but made no sound. Still, I had no trouble hearing him. Tears blurred my vision. What a hot-blooded man! What feeling and meaning! After he left, my legs all of a sudden were stronger, and I walked about three miles. I even skipped a little and didn’t feel the least bit tired. I felt I could probably still do you-know-what: wasn’t it a miracle? (Her head drooped; it was as if she were sleeping, but after five minutes, she suddenly looked up again.)
‘‘I’d had a vague feeling for a long time that some invisible danger was hanging over my cousin. I’ve felt this for forty years now. At last, everything I anticipated has occurred! My cousin is a virgin through and through; I emphasize this because I want everyone to know his purity and innocence-that he’s been kept in the dark about passion between men and women: he’s utterly ignorant of it. Forty years of trials are enough to prove his character and morals. This was precisely why Lady Mirror (that’s what she disdainfully called Madame X) set her sights on him: she got a grip on him and wouldn’t let go. I am sure it didn’t give him any pleasure: indeed, he wouldn’t have known what Lady Mirror was doing with his body. During this whole thing, did I just look on quietly? Or did I gloat, as certain people guessed I would? Who knows what kind of frightening years I’ve lived through? Ever since Lady Mirror stopped her sorcery, put away her microscope and various costumes, and eloped with my poor cousin, all I’ve had has been night after night of loneliness, deathly stillness, emptiness, and terror. All at once, I became so decrepit I couldn’t even walk; I could only watch them receding into the boundless night until they disappeared.
‘‘How did this start? Why did this tragedy occur? Nobody knows this little secret-that it came from a very trivial matter: it came from that load of coal! I shouldn’t have asked the coal worker to deliver coal that day. Until the day I die, I’ll never forgive myself: I have to keep damning myself. As it happened, my entryway is on a slope, and as it happened, that guy wasn’t willing to pull it up the slope. Also as it happened, my gallant cousin arrived and helped. He must have gotten confused from the excitement of seeing me: in any case, he forgot where he was going and absent-mindedly followed the coal worker into Lady Mirror’s little courtyard. He fell in the doorway and lost consciousness. Only at dusk did he emerge; his expression was frightening.
‘‘Wait a minute. Now I have to go back and talk about that blanket. I left out an important part. Forty years ago, my cousin walked me back and carried the blanket for me. The women on the street all craned their necks enviously as they looked at the blanket. They also looked at my cousin and me (because of certain happenings, some people were too late to see us, and they regretted this greatly). They privately thought that my cousin and I were a couple made in heaven, and so that blanket was almost like a pledge of love: it tied our hearts together. Don’t think I pay any attention to X’s behavior. No! I’ve basically forgotten her. I didn’t come here today to talk about her, but to talk about the connection between my cousin and that blanket. What kind of garbage is she? This monster who emerged from underground-why on earth do we need to be concerned with what she does? I’m busy enough with my own life! Now it’s all the vogue to stare at some peculiar people. If someone strips on the main street and creates a hullabaloo or gets involved with a few more lovers, does she suddenly become somebody? Our people become more and more confused. We just aimlessly sought connections: this is really a shame! My cousin wallows in the mud because he fell in the doorway. He became corrupted while he was actually unconscious, and he’s still showing symptoms of insanity and delirium: he can’t break away. Can we possibly want to hit a person when he’s down and at this critical time attack him with deadly force, or should we be indifferent and go all out, go with the fads, and kick the dying one away and concentrate on those irrelevant things done by unrelated people?
‘‘I’m exhausted from talking. The topic of my talk today has been the connection between the blanket and my cousin. I haven’t expressed the gist of what I wanted to say very well. I’ve been distracted by this and that because that irrelevant issue kept interfering with my train of thought and mixed me up. Only by rousing my last little bit of energy to get hold of myself could I finally rid myself of outside interference and approach the essence of the matter. But the moments were fleeting, and the interference returns. It gets worse each time until it finally saps all my energy. The ideas I want to express are still misty. The end. You degenerates!’’ (She suddenly fell to the ground, her legs and arms twitching. After about twenty minutes, she came around and indignantly departed.)
The Lame Woman’s Report
‘‘You mustn’t believe anything about mirrors: that’s all make- believe, ladies and gentlemen, it’s all a pretense-a sleight of hand to distract your attention. You walked into a certain person’s home one day, saw mirrors of all sizes all over the tabletop, and saw the person gesture as if something real was occurring. You all clamored like a pot of boiling water: Wow! A miracle! Her supernatural ability is really incredible! After I unfold the real picture, you’ll raise a hue and cry all over again. Your greatest failing is that you’re gullible and impulsive. None of the comments has anything to do with the incident per se. The true picture is permanently buried deep. You talk as if you know a lot, but it’s doubtful that you do. What you see is far from the essence: instead, it’s a kind of lie, an artificial sport.
‘‘Now let me tell you about the so-called origin of what happened that afternoon. It was an eerie afternoon; death was vaguely in the air, making people extremely nervous. People jumped at each little noise. You’d sit by the window, and the curtains might suddenly be lifted by something and you’d see a sheep’s skull. I walked more than two hours along an endless gray wall and finally arrived at that manipulator’s home. She was sitting with her back to me and giggling. When I approached her, she was poking at an anthill with a rusty dagger. She poked it repeatedly and also stomped on it. The ants fled in a panic.
‘‘ ‘There’s something wrong with your husband. Everybody’s talking about it.’ I patted her back, doing my best to appear casual.
‘‘‘Shhh! Nonsense!’ She took stock of me with narrowed eyes. ‘Everything is going according to the predestined plan.’
‘‘With that, she hauled me forcibly into her little pitch-black room and asked me to take a seat on a worn-out iron bed. Then she moved over a huge wooden trunk, opened it, and told me to look inside. In it were men’s socks of all sizes, more than a hundred pairs of them, arranged in apple-pie order.
‘‘ ‘Every pair he’s worn from the time he was born until now is preserved here. This is one of my secrets. He doesn’t know about it.’ She eagerly told me to look. ‘Look at this pair with a hole in it; he wore it when he was eight, and it was torn because his toenails were too long. It amuses me to think of this: where could he go? Do you want me to turn a light on? No, okay then, I won’t. As soon as the light is turned on, the cutworms start moving around and our vegetables are ruined. Year in and year out, this trunk is locked tight. I don’t care. Where could he go?’ she reiterated, and shrugged.