‘‘After the old widow finished, she went back to her usual reserved state, turned her back on the writer, and started gulping saliva repeatedly. She never touched the writer, whose hand was resting on her bed. It must be that she wouldn’t excuse him for ignoring her in the past. She had to put on airs so that the writer would realize how impertinent and preposterous he had been all along. Since he was being treated like this, all kinds of feelings welled up in his heart. All along, he and everyone else had thought that the widow was a good-for-nothing old bag wearing a tattered old felt hat that was full of holes. She was dried up and had shrunk into the shape of a locust. She spent most of her time nodding her head and swallowing her saliva. All of the bodily fluids in her withered body must have turned into saliva. From far away you could hear the gudong gudong sound she made: the writer had always thought of this sound as a sign that she was still alive. Now it seemed that this metaphysical insight was problematic. The writer needed to cleanse himself from head to toe and then dissect himself with a scalpel before he could get to the root cause of his disease. Why did he always look up at the boundless sky every day and never see the people around him? These people were concealing intelligent and passionate hearts under their coarse and crude appearance: although the writer met up with them every day, he couldn’t recognize them. This was because the writer was accustomed to praise and had become self-righteous. He didn’t have time for contrary, idiosyncratic people: he thought they were beneath him. Every day, the writer was bent over his bed writing. He molded some gossamerlike figures that existed only in hallucinations. He adored them and described them as epic heroes. In his writing, all these figures were noble, elegant, and graceful. They were absolutely different from people like the old widow and others. They were like immortals, beyond ordinary life, and yet they were also like cardboard figures, without flesh and blood. Had the writer been developing a skill for years that had no foundation-a form that looked magnificent but was actually barren? Would this result in the collapse of the edifice the writer had created and trap him inside until he was smashed to pieces? He broke out in a cold sweat at the thought of this. Analyzing cause and effect, he realized how important it was for him to gain the widow’s forgiveness. Winning her over was the same as winning over every reader. Otherwise, the writer might as well pronounce his artistic career at an end. And he might as well put the torch to all the notebooks he had labored over.
‘‘ ‘Maybe one day you’ll wake up and see the rosy clouds filling the sky and you’ll forgive me in spite of yourself.’ Sobbing, the writer said miserably, ‘Please promise me: this is possible. Then, with a thread of hope, I’ll take my leave of you. This thread of hope will be my spiritual underpinning. I don’t dare hope that you will tell me right now that you’ll be my reader. I’m just begging you to give me that thread of hope. I promise you: I’ve made up my mind to do as you said. If you agree to give me this lifesaving hope, let’s shake hands on it. Your hand holds the power of life and death over me.’
‘‘The old bag thought for a long time and kicked the quilt fitfully. It seemed she couldn’t decide what to say. Finally she answered slowly: ‘Shake hands with you? Sure, that’s easy enough to do, but I have another consideration. I’ve learned something in my lifetime.
