At the height of his success, the writer felt doused with cold water and chilled from head to toe. He pitifully asked the widow for guidance. He didn’t imagine she would flare up and call him a ‘‘rat’’ and order him ‘‘to get out now.’’ She kicked him hard in the back- kicked him to the floor. The writer could do nothing but leave. This was a tragic, irreversible finale.
What was Mr. Q’s completely different nighttime character? Let’s return to the observations of the iron-willed woman we mentioned above. On a certain night, she heard weeping and wailing coming from Mr. Q’s home. To find out for sure what was going on, she skillfully entered the house and listened closely for several hours. She discovered that the couple and their two sons were asleep, yet the man kept weeping. Mr. Q’s uncontrollable grief seemed to come from his dream. Though sleeping, it seemed from his appearance that he was ‘‘struggling’’ hard. The woman stayed there until daylight; she waited until Mr. Q left the house. In the daylight, she saw Mr. Q change into a thin, shriveled old man. His gaze was unfocused. His eyes were swollen to the size of garlic bulbs. He also became paranoid, always fearful that his wife would trip and fall. Whenever he saw even a small stone on the road, he rushed ahead of his wife, kicked away the stone, and then, as if taking care of an infant, helped her walk on. As always, he did this with reverence and awe.
Another night, the woman noticed Mr. Q in the woods nearby. She considered approaching, but she heard two people’s voices and shrewdly hid behind a large tree. She listened intently until she realized the conversation was between Mr. Q and himself. It seemed he had a special skill: he faked a voice completely different from his own and created, one might say, ‘‘a conversation partner.’’ Mr. Q seemed intoxicated and crazy. He struck his head against the trunk of a tree so hard that blood trickled to his feet. Clearly determined to let himself go, he hit his temples with a stone until he saw stars and then stuck his head into a narrow hole in the tree. He kept it there until dawn. Among other things, he gulped down leaves and buried himself in mud, all the while whimpering like a dying person. It was enough to make your hair stand on end.
Finally, Mr. Q became two bodies: ‘‘in the daytime, he was a person; at night, a ghost.’’ He appeared exhausted, near death. As for Madam X, who had long suspected this sort of malady, she-hard as nails-determined that they should part company. We’ll talk of this later. For the moment, we’ll listen to some comments from Madam X to gain a more thorough understanding of Mr. Q’s malady.
When her sister asked ‘‘about his future,’’ Madam X changed her usual manner. Her face clouded over, and after a long silence, two tears rolled slowly from her eyes. ‘‘He’s going to be finished,’’ she said, choking. ‘‘The scene is gradually unfolding. You have to know that during my nights of insomnia, I couldn’t find him. I ran around crazily on the rooftop and searched every corner. But I never turned anything up. At sunrise, I sometimes was surprised to see him groaning in clumps of dried weeds. He was emaciated and frail, his bones like slender grasses, his eyes unseeing, his eyeballs showing a lifeless white. I knew that in the afternoon, I would run into him at the intersection, this stud with the peculiar voice. But the things that happened at night were more and more mysterious, and I was less and less able to endure it. It made my whole body sway lightly. I couldn’t stand still.’’
In speaking of the ‘‘cause of this illness,’’ she said: ‘‘Murder is committed at night when the winds of hell break bones and muscles. When I ran around on the rooftop-Oh! Why did it turn out this way? Why couldn’t it have been the other way around?’’
In despair, she said, ‘‘He entered my dream only once, but as a person with a totally different appearance. But I knew it was he who stood at the head of my bed.
Despite all these depraved notions, Madam X and Mr. Q’s adultery continued. How did they accomplish this in locations no one knew about? And how did they ‘‘enjoy themselves to the full’’? Also, how can she substantiate her views of men? God only knows. As for details, she revealed nothing even to her sister. She seemed too wary. Maybe what went on between them wasn’t as empty as the widow guessed. Even the widow wasn’t really convinced.
