“Thus I became a puppet controlled by that woman. She lived in the glass wardrobe, wrapped up in soft silk wadding. Her lips were black, her eyes closed. However, once she moved her stiff little finger, my body would feel paralyzed. Involuntarily, I went to listen to her teaching every day. Deep in my heart, I felt that it was something extremely important, and my feet simply carried me to her house, while my body was occupied with satisfaction. If I missed a single day, I would feel so agitated at night that I kicked my bed like crazy. At those moments, the woman who later married me was catching moths in darkness. If I stood up, I would bump into her knee. That was no fun: She had a gun in her pocket. ‘Your classmate is certainly a circumspect and farsighted person,’ I once tried to tell her. The consequence was a bang of the gun with a bullet going through the wall. In fact all I wanted was her consent, so as to satisfy my little desire. This has long since become a habit, yet the woman who married me would never understand this.
“The next day, I went there again. My heart felt apprehensive, and my head was empty, therefore, I had to go. This time she came out of the glass wardrobe to look me up and down attentively. She was in a black robe. She reeked of alcohol. Her neck was wrapped with a bandage, and one eye was covered with an orange patch. She supported her whole body by holding on to the arm of a chair with one skinny hand. She looked shabby and funny, yet her single eye was shining brightly. ‘You have to change your strategy immediately and play the role of a doctor.’ She gave me the instruction and put her other hand on my shoulder. That hand was dislocated, feeling like a fresh squid. ‘This is a prestigious profession; I myself was once in it. You will be outstanding. There won’t be any trouble.’ After the comment, she suddenly turned very powerful. Pushing both me and the chair aside, she stretched her arms and jumped upward several times. She might have been thinking of flying. Then she stood firmly on one foot for a long time, totally forgetting my presence. When she finished this gesture, she reentered her wardrobe and lay down on the cane-chair padding, feeling for her ice bag with one hand. Her body was all wet. I knocked on the wardrobe door hesitantly. But she gave out a sudden yell and hurled a huge iron hammer at me. While I was running for my life, a big gust of wind slammed the door at my back, which caught my leg and broke my bone. It was very painful.
“One drizzly day, frogs were hopping about in the mud. As I woke up from a dream, I suddenly put on the disguise of a doctor. This matter was first reported by an old garbage collector. That old man was living by the restroom on the first floor. On the wall inside his room, he hung ragged female underpants, stockings, and bras. They were all covered with a thick layer of black dust. Every time I met him, I felt enraged. I often shouted at him: ‘Get out of my way!’ Instead of letting me pass, he would slow his pace. Using his wicker basket, he pushed me against the walls on the left and the right. He never talked to me, but only glanced at me showing the whites of his eyes. Or he would pass a stinking fart whose smell could make me dizzy for several days. When I saw his bowed legs and smelled his rotten rags in the dawn, my blood boiled. I had to eliminate this guy, who was a fish bone in my throat, an ulcer in my stomach. My struggle against him was a life-and-death one. On that significant morning, I left the house. When I cleared my throat to give him some warning, he cast a sidelong glance at me and suddenly discovered the change on my face which was going to kill him. I did not know what touched him, but he discovered it with a wink of his eye. So he started running toward the muddy field. Repeatedly, he fell down and got up, fell down and got up. Anyway, he lost all his normal behavior. I did not chase him but stamped my feet to threaten him until he disappeared completely. After a few days, he was found hanged on the doorframe. When I took him down, he was as light as if he were only a husk. All the junk in his house had disappeared. On the empty wall hung a solemn portrait of the great leader. Underneath it there were bloodstains from mosquitoes.
“As soon as I became a doctor, the woman’s mother immediately proposed to marry her daughter to me. She pestered me endlessly. Once I was trimming my mustache when she dashed in. She grabbed the scissors from my hand and kicked me on my hipbone, calling me ‘fond dreamer,’ ‘without escape,’ and such things. I didn’t want to marry her because I simply couldn’t recognize her. Faintly, I noticed a pair of buttocks, a pair of skinny legs, and very dirty nails. Often I dodged her and hid aside, yet when I raised my head, I would still see one of her arms hanging on the wall, with thick black hair under the armpit. The inside of the fingers were twitching, and there were blisters between the fingers. I was greatly enraged by the scene. I practiced several times to drive out her spirit. Yet her mother, that witch who never shows herself (she told me that her mother disappeared ten years ago in the cellar), was controlling the unfolding of the whole situation. I could make no progress whatsoever. I would hide myself in the cistern for twenty-four hours, feeling relieved that they had started to forget about me. Just then the mother’s voice started talking to me in a partly ingratiating, partly coquettish tone: ‘My darling baby, I’ve been watching you. I’ve accompanied you all along. It’s true that she is no good at sex. It’s fair to say that she has lost all her sexual ability. That’s why she is so self-contented. I am very sympathetic to your situation. I am a woman full of sympathy. Oh!’ she suddenly screamed. ‘You’re shivering in the cold water. This breaks my heart. I’ve been watching you crying! Sometimes I feel happy when I see her condition today. I have to see her get married. If she can’t marry, I won’t have the face to live on in this world. Please think from my perspective. I originally intended to substitute her for my younger sister to marry that fellow in the circus, because my sister is a person with underdeveloped nerves. I’ve been taking care of her life all the time…’”
“Those people, she is addicted to robbing!” The fat woman suddenly became uneasy. “Let me take you to the temple.” So saying, she started running, dragging me behind her by my collar. I tried to struggle free, protesting that I didn’t want to go to the temple, because my life was hopeless. All I wanted was to complain to somebody. I was satisfied with that. “That can’t be done,” she said firmly, while running faster. When we arrived at the temple, we saw a woman with her face covered spinning thread at the door. She spat at the humming wooden spinning wheel.
I heard the father-in-law chuckling somewhere, but I couldn’t see him. Oil lamps could be seen floating in the air inside the temple, busy footsteps could be heard moving back and forth. I had lost sight of the fat woman, but I could hear her giggling somewhere. The lights quivered. On the ceiling a huge black shadow trembled. It resembled an old bear. “What fun it is to fish in summer!” I recited loudly in a calm voice. Taking off one shoe, I banged it noisily. The fat woman told me that I didn’t need to play any role. From now on, I could do whatever I wanted. Just like my wife’s classmate — self-confident, firm, decisive. Before that, she had been controlling my fate. But now she felt tired and fruitless. Immediately, I thought of becoming a warlord. This was a role I’d been dreaming about ever since I was a little boy. I started laughing once I made the decision. Freedom tasted so good. “Your old partner is drinking lamp oil on the sly.” She asked me to watch the big black shadow on the ceiling. The shadow was stretching and then shrinking. “I’ve been thinking of cultivating his son. I want to teach him metaphysical thinking, and other things, but I’ve failed. Now he has become a good-for-nothing. Look, that’s him crawling in through the window. He cries bitterly every time he sees me and he chews up all my arecas. That’s all about the family. You can’t even determine what kind of people they are.”