‘‘After the second conflict, my despair reached new lows. My eyes were bloodshot. Like a caged wolf, I paced in the house and howled shrilly until I was exhausted. Then I sat down to think about my worries. When I thought of what that son-of-a-bitch neighbor guy said, I couldn’t help feeling infuriated. It was impossible for these people to speak the same language as I did. They had stomped on all the feelings I’d stored up and on my selfless love. People are so alone in the world; it is so difficult for the light of ideals to penetrate the darkness. I was more sorrowful than at any other time, and my feelings for her ran even deeper. An invisible thread had linked the worthy lady and me together, to live or to die. I would go through purgatory for her. I was dominated by a self-denying fanaticism and a worshipful piety. I had a premonition that I would pull off a splendid feat. What would it be? You’d know it when you saw it.
‘‘I stayed home every day and didn’t go out again. I listened closely. I had reason to believe that the worthy lady would show up at my door. If she came unannounced and I wasn’t home, I’d regret this for the rest of my life. I had to wait patiently and trustingly. I had to be neatly and freshly dressed to meet her. While she was here, I would ask her to sit on my only chair, which had a dogskin cushion, while I would stand to show her my heroic image and leave an indelible impression on her. I mustn’t take this lightly and go to bed, because she might also come at midnight: this was the sticking point. I had a splendid idea: I would hang a rope from the window, tie a knot in it, and put my neck through the knot. Then if by any chance I fell asleep, the rope would wake me up. I also pounded a lot of bamboo tacks into the floor so that when I paced at night, I had to concentrate and circle scrupulously around these tacks. If I was careless, I’d be hurt. These ideas had a surprising effect: I was always in high spirits. I was highly alert twenty-four hours a day. I felt my life was fully enriched. As soon as I heard footsteps outside, I immediately smoothed my clothes and sat up straight. My heart throbbed. I didn’t look out the window but at the ceiling-until the footsteps gradually went away. I kept up this pose, unable to extricate myself for a long time. And because Mother kept intruding on my feelings from time to time with vulgar things like food and sleep, I sprang to my feet and sternly warned her: if she kept doing this, I would prove my true feelings by committing suicide. Because of the elevated aesthetic realm I now occupied, she had to look at me with new eyes, and she understood a little better. Didn’t she notice that I’d thrown out all my cologne? I’d bought a new toilet and planned not to use the public toilet any longer: why hadn’t she noticed this?
‘‘Did you ask about the beginning? See, this was it-such a long beginning that it’s almost a section of history. I don’t think it will have any conclusion. While I’m waiting, all the joy and anguish will quietly fade away. Only the perpetual rays of light are blazing ahead, and a new character is emerging. All of this was determined by the porcupine dream: it plunged into a deep pond, and one by one, the giant sequoias fell over beside the pond. From then on, the worthy lady and I made history together. But the clamor at the public toilet is so hard on the ears! Are my buddies splashing themselves with cologne again?’’
The Writer’s Report
‘‘The writer knows well enough that we want to figure out how Madam X’s love affair with Mr. Q began. Each person was burning to know, and each had pigheaded subjective biases; no one would give in, but they also hoped they would be unanimous in reaching an impartial solution so we could get a break from exhausting our brains on this. Of course, this was just a simple-minded wish. Although this looked simple, in fact it was very complicated. On our Five Spice Street, whenever a problem like this turned up, the answers were maddeningly endless. Where one person saw a wild boar, another saw a dove, and perhaps a third person saw a broom. We had to respect individuality and the facts: we had to accept all the various answers before we could rush across riptides and land on the radiant opposite shore. If you split hairs and got entangled in non-essential details, and lacked flexibility, you would unwittingly become more and more confused, finally sinking to the bottom of the darkness. Magnanimity is humankind’s noblest characteristic. In our diverse and confusing world, there are so many knots that can’t be untied and so many bewildering doubts and suspicions that can only be melted and eliminated in a broad and generous heart.
‘‘Perhaps this kind of thing had no fixed beginning: it was so unusual, so exciting, and so colorful that people speculated about it endlessly. So, in everyone’s eyes, it rapidly evolved into some specific lenses that were directly interrelated with each individual. And then they affected each other and formed a sinuous net: this is also understandable. We ordinary people living on this three-mile-long street have always been closely linked. Superficially we looked cold and indifferent, but inwardly we were very enthusiastic, romantic, and humane. One person’s business was everyone’s business. Every day, we cared about nothing but other people’s business and planned our actions accordingly. We might have looked narrow-minded and short-sighted, and as if we cared about nothing but our own small worlds. In fact, we were highly idealistic comrades in the same camp. Our little world was a microcosm of the outside world. Each individual pursuit was also a collective pursuit. Not only were we not disloyal to each other, we supported each other. ‘All roads lead to heaven,’ ‘sublime in the rainbow.’ In this place of ours, as soon as something big occurred, a series of chain reactions would immediately ensue and hundreds of individual lenses would appear, independent of each other and all mutually opposed. Sometimes a big mess managed to bring about a certain temporary, laughable unity, but this quickly collapsed of its own weight, and everyone took his own path, continuing to hold to his own opinion to the end. Each person’s individuality had plenty of chances for practice and development. During this development, each person played God. We were pure-hearted and noble, filled with ardor and sincerity, one after another opening up a strange and beautiful new world, delighted with our achievements. Reality was reflected dramatically in our land. Fluky nature was tamed by the rules of our thought. This new world was fascinating. Here, the vines and trees that grew madly all year long, the birds that sang crankily, the ocean with its grand waves, the waterfalls that roared incessantly: behind all of this, the vital everlasting light was shining. This world was the original source of poetry and the eternal theme of art. In the scorching summer sun, when we opened our blurry, bloodshot eyes and gazed up at the sky, those calls that were everywhere-the low murmur-emerged, and the formations of the wild geese grew chaotic, the sun’s rays turned purple, our flesh was divinely stirred, and our brains experienced the perfection of poetry. What appeared before us this time was merely a repetition of an ancient game that had been around for thousands of years. If one looked upon it with one’s intellect, perhaps it was banal, even a little arid, and so perhaps it was also non-existent. The issue per se was not important. What was important was its artful reproduction in the people’s minds, that magnificent creation, that powerful, untrammeled imagination, that rich, deep excavation toward essence, going into minute detail and not letting go. It’s all of this that constitutes the priceless treasures of our boundless universe. Although we will one day be decrepit, the fantastic fruit on the tree of life will forever symbolize our wild, unruly passion.