‘‘Formerly, although X scorned others, we could still see her pupils, and so we felt we knew her fairly well. Her image today is simply too dreadful. Even if you look straight at her, you can’t see her pupils. There are just two flashes of turbid liquid that make you uneasy. It’s as though you’re going to do something evil. As if you’ve committed a certain crime. You feel disgraced. It’s diabolical.’’
‘‘A lewd sex life brands you. Isn’t it monstrous when a woman who’s always been sickly pale suddenly turns so seductive? There’s nothing good about this kind of flash in the pan. She must have suffered greatly at night from the turbulence of her inner secretions. You can prove this just by looking at the precipitous increase in her tears. I am not a bit impressed by the superficial changes in this person. I pity her from the bottom of my heart.’’
‘‘I had already lost the hope I had for her, and had decided to let go of her problems, but the dazzling change in her has rekindled my former feelings, and I feel stirred again in my innermost being. After all, this woman is the most troublesome woman I’ve ever known. You couldn’t break away from her. I can’t help but connect my lot with hers. Every change in her elicits a physiological echo from me. I’m going to suffer from insomnia again. My character contains a little too much of the tragic.’’
In all of this confusing chatter, Madam X’s husband’s good friend’s opinion was unique. Sticking his long, emaciated head out of his window that faced the street, he told us a story:
‘‘There’s a street where a transparently pure youth and a transparently pure woman are living. They have silently loved each other for years, but because of a certain reason they’ve been unable to take the next step in their relationship. They’ve only admired each other from a distance. They both transcend the ordinary. Today, this type is scarcer and scarcer. They communicated with each other in a way that didn’t require speaking directly. (They used various ways of expressing things: for example, talking of the weather, health, other people’s sexual problems, and so on). Each knew the other’s longing and encouraged each other in the dark. Several eventless years passed. All along, the young man took this friendship (or love) as a spiritual trust, and he lived happily. Like him, the woman was intoxicated by everything that existed between them. A thunderbolt struck the young man in the head and interrupted the fine day. Overnight, a beautiful woman became a poisonous snake, a pure and noble goddess became a depraved, demonic fox, and ideals became a ragged dishcloth! How did this happen? The young man was unable to respond. He grew so depressed and decadent that his health deteriorated. His life was destroyed. What a dreadful fate, such cruel irony. I can’t bear imagining how he endured. He felt disgusted. Nothing about her body could arouse him, and he just wanted to shake off these worldly entanglements and attain a genuine, independent selfhood. Indeed, what did the changes in certain parts of the woman’s body have to do with him? Hadn’t she played enough tricks on him? Did he want to sink into that shameful muddy hole once more? He had been wasting his life for many years; he had forfeited his self-esteem and hadn’t held fast to his ideals. Wasn’t this lesson painful enough? Being young is beautiful, but at last a person has to grow up. He can’t indulge in dreams and unreal idealism for a lifetime. He has to march on. He must acknowledge his past and become a new person. And so the young man did not join in the talk of the crowds; instead, he surveyed the world of his inner heart and forgot everything around him. In a kind of transparent state, he entered maturity.’’
