Yet, it brought about a kind of reverse psychology on Five Spice Street. No one knows when people started being enthusiastic about painting murals, but all of a sudden murals began appearing on the walls along the street. All of them depicted sexual positions. Cleareyed people knew at once that these were realistic depictions of ‘‘the adultery.’’ Those bold, bare means of expression doubtless alluded to the fallacy in the widow’s story. Everyone demonstrated a fierce appetite for invention. They didn’t eat, they didn’t sleep: they painted day and night. In his excitement, one spilled a bucket of oil paint on himself and turned into an oil-paint person. Another shouted crazily, tore a painted nude to bits, and then pasted the pieces on the wall and called it an ‘‘abstract.’’ Sighing with feeling, people said: ‘‘Art can give people such sublime happiness! Aside from rationalists like the widow, who isn’t moved by its power? Life withers if it’s separated from imagination.’’
Madam X was unaware of all of this. Immersed in the adultery, she seized the pleasures of the moment without any thought for the future. Actually, she correctly sized up her situation: she knew her fantasies could not last. Calamity already loomed overhead, but in the eyes of others, she was still like someone without a care in the world: every day, there were two things she couldn’t forget. One was the date at the intersection. She was always impatient: like a young girl, she ran until she was gasping for breath. She couldn’t see anyone else; she couldn’t hear anything. As soon as she reached the shop window, she grabbed the man with the beautiful eyes, as though clutching at a reef in the midst of surging waves, or as though burning with fiery lust. The second was the adultery which occurred in an unknown place. Although no one had any way to break this case and although this wantonness in broad daylight had become the shame of the community, Madam X and Mr. Q flaunted their adultery by holding hands in broad daylight as they crossed the street, ignoring everyone else. They grew younger and more sexually radiant by the day. The people on Five Spice Street did nothing but watch. What else could have better demonstrated our breeding? To move a step forward: Madam X and Mr. Q were sexually experienced adults (one can even say that Madam X had ‘‘abundant’’ sexual experience). Being in the prime of life, they took keen pleasure in their rapture. Is it possible that when they were in the unknown place, they did not remove their clothes right away and carry on in all kinds of ways? Is it possible that they carried on just as the widow had described- dumbstruck, bored, or reciting poetry, singing to each other, and murmuring sweet nothings to each other while sitting far apart? This was illogical. All the more so, since Mr. Q was not sexually defective (his two children are proof of that; at a glance, you can tell whose children they are). Madam X was even less sexually defective: the crowds on Five Spice Street blush for her, this woman to whom no standards could be applied. She had actually never acknowledged any of society’s restrictions.
After being enlightened by such analysis, as well as by the depictions of the street murals, we found in the granary a likely solution (for the moment, we hypothesized that the adultery was being carried on there). Never mind whether Mr. Q had ‘‘an unmentionable disease’’ or whether his body had ‘‘broken into two’’ or whether Madam X had a premonition that there would be a day when they would ‘‘part company,’’ right now they were like dry kindling, burning until they were possessed. In Madam X’s words, it was ‘‘her sexual dream come true,’’ ‘‘this life was not in vain,’’ she was ‘‘thawing in multi-colored eyes,’’ and so forth. Of course, this was all just beautiful words, perhaps used to conceal something. (Deep down, she should have been embarrassed by her abnormal lust.) After mulling her words over carefully, we finally understood that the words were hiding her thirst for sex, the number of times she had had sex, time after time of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, and so forth. Madam X herself understood what it was that she wanted to express, and so did Mr. Q. No matter how it was covered up or what pretexts were concocted (conversation at the intersection, the mirrors, the waves in the eyes, and so forth), sex was the only reason they met. For years, they had yearned for sex day and night, earnestly longed for it. (In this, Mr. Q lagged far behind Madam X. It was only after she teased him that his lust burst out.)
