Tail D: Last night, when I walked to the riverbank, the south wind carried Madam X’s voice. She said: ‘‘I don’t want to give everything away, but I can reveal a little privileged information. I understand why everyone has been driven to the last extremity. I understand it to the core. From now on, no one should be anxious.’’
Probably no one will believe me because I can’t point to concrete facts, and nobody can know whether I’m lying-just amusing myself at everyone else’s expense. But how could I make public what Madam X said earlier? That’s my secret alone: it came from many sleepless nights, or perhaps from a decree of the gods! Wouldn’t telling everybody mean I was making light of it? In a lifetime, you might never encounter it at all. I can’t stand to see everyone tailing (these words are probably too vulgar), plodding through wind and rain and even sinking straight into the trap. So all I can do is to vow to heaven that what I’m telling is the truth. I know the inside story of the whole thing. My information came from Madam X herself, and it is absolutely true.
Don’t think that I’m cocky. No. I don’t think I’m all that wonderful just because of this. I’m still one of you, and I’ll pretend nothing has happened to me, just as usual. Yesterday, my cousin asked why I eat pickled vegetable soup and dried turnips at every meal. I answered that I have to adhere to this way of life until I die-and this definitely wasn’t boasting. Tonight, I can still go out with everyone else and rush around: no one can see that I’m any different. I dislike attention: that’s self-glorification. I think people who wildly flaunt themselves are very funny. They become intoxicated grasping shadows and forget to keep striding forward. They’re like babies without experience: they just want to enjoy themselves and are always eager for life to favor them with more. The moment they discover a little something new (sometimes, only an illusion), they start clamoring about their success in case others don’t know of it. They want prizes for their discoveries. A life of reaping without sowing has spoiled them. I am quite the opposite. I’ve lived an industrious and frugal life since childhood, one not lacking in ideals. All my life, I’ve consciously disciplined myself. Only in this way have I nurtured the good habits of being calm and not cutting a fashionable figure.
One individual never joined in the extensive surveillance and also kept cool and collected. This was the much-admired widow. Let’s hear her views:
‘‘Listen, everyone, I can’t stand your irrational, ignorant behavior! Each of you came with your own selfish intentions and impulsively took part in this collective activity, keeping busy day and night. But can you grasp the substance of this matter? It’s a maze that opened up in front of you, but you can’t get in. You just pretend to know it well to cover up your own foolishness.
‘‘Let me come straight to the point: Madam X, affecting a certain vague genius, has stirred up so many storms on our three-mile-long street and disturbed so many people’s minds that she has altered their individual destinies. Everybody knows this. Out of inertia, we’re used to this fixed, unchanging perspective. As soon as something comes up, we go all out to join in. But if we think about this deeply, we’ll discover a big problem. (We generally have no time to reflect because all day long we’re fervently busy with our civic activities.) Let me give you a simple example: at present, this surveillance is grounded in our firm belief that Madam X is engaged in a certain kind of unusual adultery.
‘‘From the revelations at the meetings in the dark room, you knew something explosive was about to occur. But the reality was not what you thought. And it is going to stay this way. There is no sign of any change. And so you felt tricked and you became tenacious and thought you’d use this tenacious antagonism to solve your problems and make history develop in accord with the trajectory you had set. What if someone pointed out (unfortunately, such bright people are rare) that your belief was vague and untrustworthy in the first place? With all of your reasoning built on it, your idea couldn’t hold up, could it? As soon as we grew excited, we endowed a certain subject with all kinds of charm and let ourselves be dazzled. Such unusual adultery, such a mysterious, unfathomable paramour: we manufactured all of this from our hopes and emotions. Why did we have to hope for this? Because we were bored, and because we were afraid, and so we shifted the crisis and came up with this surveillance.
‘‘I want to tell you now: Madam X couldn’t be the way she is in your imaginations. That is an inconceivable joke. In this perfectly mature society of ours, behavior is governed by iron discipline. This has become second nature. It guarantees peace and harmony. If now someone-who knows whether she’s come from outer space or has simply grown out of the earth-shows up who is not part of this society and manipulates our collective will and makes us into dolls for her to hold, how can people come to see this? Isn’t this the same as saying that our society is merely a plaything that can be manipulated and changed at will? Wouldn’t this embarrass our elite? Thinking of this makes me really indignant. Some of us have college degrees and strict social training; some have taken on important leadership roles in the meetings in the dark room. They’re imperturbable and capable of analyzing facts. For some years, I have trusted them almost unconditionally and supported their work. Now it seems I’ve been glaringly wrong! My simplicity and sincerity have brought me to an awkward pass. I’ve been tossed aside and ignored. Current fads have swept through the entire street. Everyone competes to trample traditional taste, boisterously congratulating themselves on the so-called ‘rebirth.’ They also say they’ve discovered a new continent: this new continent is Madam X. She’s an ingenious person, with an infinite number of sleights of hand. Everyone should pay attention to her! What happened to our earlier calm?
‘‘Looking back, I still remember clearly how correctly everyone treated a certain stenographer when he came here with his fantasies to undertake an investigation. Really, the people changed greatly. How did this get started? How could it have reached this point? Trying to get to the bottom of it, I have to denounce myself. I feel incredibly remorseful. During a meeting in the dark room last month, all kinds of clues already pointed to today’s crisis. Then, however, I sat behind the platform, looking on with a child’s gullible eyes. I didn’t suspect the dangerous trend in the crowd’s mood. I looked on calmly as everyone slid into the mud hole and wallowed. After the meeting, while the crowd was ready to act and was plotting activities, I was up to my elbows with something else and didn’t have time to warn and deter everyone. Thus, things went from bad to worse. How could I have been so careless? Was it merely because of objective conditions? Was it a chance mistake? Most people would avoid the blame this way, and would even depict themselves as suffering heroes. But this is not the way I operate. Not only must I accept responsibility for all the mistakes, but I must also examine the squalor in my soul and find out where the root of my mistake lies.
‘‘I remember clearly that I’ve been gullible since childhood. I used to glorify everyone who was around me, and looked only at the bright side of people. If someone stole something of mine, I not only wouldn’t ask for it back, but I would also give him some other things. Touched by this, he would become my friend for life. Later, as a young person, I married the right man and regarded my husband as my protector god. I trusted him completely and was docile and obedient. I turned away from all outside temptations. Maybe my husband wasn’t as perfect as I had thought, and maybe he had already fallen ill with an unmentionable disease and hushed it up when we got married, but none of this could keep me from feeling great ardor. Even now, I feel this ardor and don’t waste it on outsiders. I’m bringing this up not because I want to overthrow the past but because I want to explain where the weak part of my character came from. When my husband was alive, someone mentioned a certain instance of his being unfaithful. I was so outraged I let out a stream of abuse at that person! To outsiders I was a very sexy young woman as beautiful as flowers, tied down by a nearly disabled man who had actually duped me. What kind of lamentable joke was this? Why couldn’t I get a little happiness by finding someone else?