‘‘The writer humbly begged her to take his hand to show that she still wanted to be one of his readers, because otherwise ‘he would go crazy.’ No other gesture could have suited her fine character and grace more in revealing the beauty of her soul. The writer’s hand was at the edge of the bed: did she feel it? She need only shift a little to touch it.
‘‘ ‘It costs me nothing to do it, but I won’t do it for nothing.’ In the dark, she laughed vaguely and spat repeatedly. ‘I’m the key person, aren’t I? If I am persuaded, you can get everything you want. Both of us know this. I’m not a beauty, but I have enormous energy. My cousin knows this best. It’s no exaggeration to say that he admires me greatly. Just think, after forty years, he’s now an old man, and yet that incident remains fresh in his mind. Can ordinary people remember the past so well? I meditate on this subject from time to time, and I’m astonished at my ability. I see clearly that I can get anything I want. I was born with this omnipotence. Still, I always take the high road: I don’t want to contend for fame and fortune. After I left the meeting tonight, I knew you’d come to see me. It wouldn’t do any good for you to see others, but seeing me, you can get everything you want. What kind of person am I? Can anyone compare with me? Do you understand what I mean now? You’re a stenographer who can at any time write about big events and about people who are characterized by individuality and charm. To you, the most important thing is to have the eyes to penetrate everything. You have to look upon the people around you with far-sighted eyes and analyze which people are worth recording and which are merely a flash in the pan who won’t amount to anything. You shouldn’t choose only the young and beautiful. More often than not, age is directly proportionate to charm. You’ll learn this from experience. In this place, there are some persons of the hour who don’t possess profound genius. They might attract a lot of attention because they’re superficially active, but their hearts are absolute voids. These counterfeits can sometimes pull the wool over the eyes of young people like you, and-on an impulse-you might want to write them into history as heroes. If you do that, they would really start pushing society blindly, and so the entire course of history would slip-all because of your devil-may-care mistake. We can see from this the heavy responsibilities you stenographers must assume- how essential it is for a judicious person with abundant experience to guide you so that you’ll make fewer mistakes. Is it possible that these nameless heroes who work in silence, these people who are humble and cautious on the surface and don’t say much, don’t go out much, and yet actually have astonishing abilities-is it possible that they aren’t more worthy of being written into history than these phonies? Since you’re engaged in this work, why haven’t you noticed these worthy people all around you? Why haven’t you shown great interest in them and pursued them? This is you young stenographers’ biggest disadvantage. If a person doesn’t notice his limitations when he’s young and doesn’t have a cultural forebear (sometimes this cultural forebear and the worthy person are identical) to provide prudent guidance, his latent genius will unconsciously slip away, and in the end, he will have wasted his life and accomplished nothing. Nothing in his entire life will be worth remembering. You don’t run into worthy people all the time. Sometimes, in several centuries there’s only one. The issue is whether you have keen enough eyesight to identify them at first glance. You also need luck. When they have just come to your side and modestly offered to guide you, you might not listen if you lack talent. You will probably think that’s just boasting. But if you’re a genius, you’ll respond strongly, just like falling in love at first sight.’
‘‘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.