The Embroidered Shoes

by Can Xue

  The old man shrank his bony body into a lump. Dandruff lay all around the collar of his worn-out jacket. He appeared very embarrassed and also deeply terrified by the unpredictable future. He was a petty clerk retired from some organization. His only daughter had received a good-quality family education. Now that his wife had passed away, and he had planned to pass his old age peacefully with his daughter and her family, this awkward situation had suddenly arisen. He was no fool, and he would fight to protect his own interests. He would not allow his own daughter to take such liberties and run wild. How could a person do as she pleased just by declaring that she had some kind of purely fictitious illness? He had lived for seventy years and had seen many seriously ill patients. But they all had to obey the law just like everyone else, and they never shrugged off their responsibilities and obligations. They went to see doctors as scheduled, took the medicines the doctors prescribed, and never made a fuss. He had never seen an illness such as his daughter’s, which didn’t need doctor or medicine. So he felt disgusted whenever his daughter mentioned her illness, but she mentioned it every day, purposefully. The old man complained to me for a long time in the cold wind, until both of us were overcome by perplexity and alarm. We kept silent about what we had in our own minds and then bid good-bye to each other.

  The ending came half a year later. In a small, lonely hut next to the highway, the old man died in his bed. People did not discover the body until three days later. Since nobody could determine the cause of death, it was recorded as a natural death due to old age. Only the son-in-law and the two grandsons took part in the old man’s funeral service.

  That night, my friend came to my house without invitation. She looked very tired and discouraged. She had lost all her former vitality. Shading the lamplight from her face with a palm, she smiled wickedly and spoke in a low voice:

  “So that man has become the first victim. You’ve seen it. Who will be next? At midnight when the patrol passes the street, you can stick your head out of your fifth-story window and see. A soul-stirring murder is being brewed next to the fountain near the front gate of the park. A human figure will jump over the locked iron gate. The edge of a knife will shine like a flash of lightning, and he will drop to the ground with hardly a sound. The hunter will have been waiting at the predetermined place. He will raise his knife without even checking beforehand. When he slashes down, his hand doesn’t feel anything. He pauses only for slashing, and the pause is perfunctory. A wail similar to that of a dying pig will last for only half a second. A meteor will fall in the cold, pitch-dark night. The frozen surface of the water in the fountain will be broken by the heavy corpse. The illness I suffer from is homicidal mania.”

  She felt frightened and asked me time and again if I had locked the door. She even ran to the door to check herself. She hid herself in my house for three days, shivering all over, until her husband came to take her away by force.

  After that, nothing much changed in her. I often met her in the streets on her way to the vegetable market. Holding her basket, she appeared calm. But in her pupils, I could see a lingering trace of hesitation. She became silent. When I talked, she would listen quietly with apparent attention. Yet I knew that she did not hear anything.

  One day, when I was about to leave her after saying hello, she grabbed me and uttered clearly, one word at a time, “He has been admitted to the hospital.”

  “Who?”

  “Who else? He! My husband! He’s finished! I used the same knife as before. You’ll know it if you go and look. The blood from the burst vessels in his brain will kill him. Who’ll be next?”

  So I went to the hospital. Her husband was in a coma. The patient in the next bed told me that X rays showed his stomach to be full of extremely fine steel needles, about an inch in length. The strange thing was that there was no bleeding. The doctors planned to perform a major operation on him that afternoon.

  However, this husband recovered miraculously. The next day he left the hospital, and I saw him sitting at home as if nothing had happened. “They made a mistake,” he apologized to me with a smile. “It was nothing but a flu.”

  When I met her again, the first thing she mentioned was my poking my nose into her business by going to the hospital. Then she said that since I was so nosy, our friendship had to stop. She didn’t like for others to interfere in her private business. As a patient, she had the right to do something strange. She was sneering as she spoke, her facial expression very determined.

  Year after year, we keep bumping into each other. But she never casts even a sidelong glance, as if I no longer exist. When I observe her in secret, I find her facial expression as calm as before, and her steps are very smooth. Indeed, in such a noisy city as ours, she doesn’t appear conspicuous at all.

  FLOATING LOTUS

  One ought not close one’s eyes to the awkward way the tender filament of a body stretches from its thin shell to pull itself across the crushed stones and rubble. By some distant predetermination the tomato-colored sunlight has been rendered inconsequential to it. The forest is dense and humid. Carnivorous mosquitoes breed batch after batch at the bottom of the well. Although heaven and earth equal it in their nakedness, they do not have its delicate shell. After crawling, it rests awhile, letting its soft body huddle inside, gathering itself for yet another furtive effort.

  “Floating lotus, floating lotus…” These words sound clearly and pleasantly, making people forget the forest as sharp as knives and the pain as keen as if the blades were cutting through their skin.

  “Can that which happens on Wednesday recur in a Sunday’s nap?”

  When time crawls like this, rough scales encrust its antennae. It’s not that it prefers monotony, but that it is the servant of the transparent fluid recirculating through its body.

  In fact, it, too, was born in the tomato-colored sunlight. The memory of that time has been so obscured as to make it impossible for any trace to remain. But one day when a bird chirped, it was startled for a long moment. It could see the mosquitoes doing their usual mad dance along the rim of the well, those old fancy dances that it had grown weary of watching.

  A man and a woman debate above it. He claims it can be destroyed simply by spitting on it. She doesn’t believe him. Both of them glare at it.

  Now it is in an antique hut, where two middle-aged men sit back to back. Whenever one of them speaks, the resonance in his chest reverberates in the chest of the other, making his lips move involuntarily. In general, each seems to speak independently, yet each hopes that the other will talk as much as possible so that he himself can go on endlessly also.

  A: Shouldn’t it be thought a marvel to change kapok into a golden necklace? This is a metaphor for wealth often used in the past.

  B: I’ve been feeling afraid of losing something. It could be my urban petit bourgeois consciousness that drives me to constant pursuit. Even though I’m not in good health, I am an essentially solid sort of person.

  A: It’s not right to have a goal. Only when you advance counter to it can you possibly return home in one morning.

  B: Suppose we try being silent. I think you can feel the resonance all the same. I’ve already heard your resonance.

  One man begins to fidget. At this instant, we can hear a variety of drumming sounds echo in the chests of both. The second man starts to thrash about until both of them are exhausted, hot sweat streaming down their heads. Then they both stop simultaneously and sit down back to back again on a bench.

  Time flies. A whole season has passed. Yellow leaves drop onto the windowsill, three altogether, arranged neatly.

  “There’s no real reason for us to pose this way against each other, like that pet with the antennae. It is driven by a constant desire to find a piece of smooth, muddy ground covered with liver moss. Or at least other people see this as its desire. But in reality, what is the essential motive? What on earth is essential? Why should things be one way rather than another? The existent is manifold. For instance, against t
he reddish-orange sunlight the forest rises sharp as a blade. We are forever in pursuit of something, but in reality this is futile.

  In the rubble outside the hut an old rooster pecks at it attentively. The rooster appears extremely anxious. It pecks while also digging with its claw, rolling the little lump back and forth and refusing to give up. From an outsider’s point of view, this is a soul-stirring spectacle. One can sense that the little thing is not nervous. It simply shrinks stubbornly into its thin, tough shell in a gesture of resignation to its fate. This goes on for half an hour. Then the rooster lifts its head and crows toward the heavens and forgets about the little lump beneath its body.

  There was a period when deranged winds swept back and forth from every direction and the dried-up land opened in cracks. Many people pondered this. They thought and thought. Raising their proud heads, their saddened and indignant expressions could be perceived.

  At the same time, it dreamed in its shell about more peaceful days. Even when it wanted to move a little, it never stretched its antennae too far. It couldn’t see the green mossy land before it. The bright sun had no bearing on it. The forest had nothing to do with it either. The only pertinent thing was the place one or two feet away.

  A mob dashed toward the forest of strange trees. The rooster crowed again, its feathers standing up on its neck, one foot stepping into the edge of the forest.

  The two middle-aged men are still talking calmly, each one speaking independently. Whenever one of them stops, the other appears restless and finds more words to say in order to guarantee that his opposite will be able to respond appropriately. And this response spurs him to go on talking.

  Before we know it, a second session is half gone. This one has passed more slowly than the first, and there are no yellow leaves to symbolize it. It might even be said that this second season is almost motionless.

  Both men feel they have lost the urge for everything except talking about dull subjects in order to stimulate the other to continue the dialogue. Neither, for instance, can remember how long ago they had a meal. Even their curiosity has shrunk to the single concern with what word will be spoken by the other. To make the other speak, each must talk without stop. Such drill becomes a monotony. Besides, the sounds from their throats are not at all pleasant.

  It seems there was a period of ambiguity when the edges of things were not distinct. The human heart waxed fresh and vigorous as if just emerging from a morning bath. Distant birds began to hop about continuously, and the waves rolled in systematically.

  Standing before the window, A said something inadvertent. Its long resonance formed its usual parabola in front of him.

  At that moment the rooster was a tiny, light brown, fluffy ball. No clues to future developments could yet be discerned. All existence went along happily under the will of heaven. With the accelerating motion of nonexistence, unstable embarrassing details gradually displaced themselves.

  A’s words stopped performing their parabola and became a spray of hurried dots emitting a perfunctory tone.

  It was just at that moment that the sun turned tomato red. Loaches squeaked with suffocation in the ditches. By beginning their experience simultaneously, the two men greatly reduced the terror they would have felt in beginning alone, and they settled into a state of calm.

  Outside, at an indeterminate point, it crawls forward methodically. One can see its trace amidst the rubble. It has no goal because it knows not where it is.

  Everything that at first seems trivial or ambiguous shows great significance later. Because this phenomenon is so vulgar, so monotonous, once one glances backward at its origin one cannot help falling into illusion—it seems there shines a certain spiritual light along the trail from which it comes. Illusion is no more than illusion, and no one can clarify a situation from its origin.

  The two middle-aged men from nowhere have never shown the slightest emotion. With their trivial, ordinary hopes, they have been sitting back to back in this little room in the hut for many years. The disturbance of falling leaves cannot arouse their surprise. Their talk has no particularly new content, only cliches, simple and repetitious.

  B moves his body, feeling again that it is too troublesome for A to walk to the window and speak there. In fact, it is totally unnecessary. In the past B hated using such expressions as “time flies by” in his talk. Whenever someone used such expressions, he would harrumph with contempt. Recently he has tried several times to talk in a non-speech mode. This method has often proved effective. Every time he tried it, A would produce a resonance to the object expressed with such a method, and these resonances were particularly good. In such moments, A would encourage secretly, “Please speak more and more…” And B would fulfill his mission in solemn silence.

  It knows nothing about the two men in the hut. It has never had an experience like theirs. It huddles inside its shell, sinking into a soft, sound slumber. Each time it wakes up it crawls for a while. The scenery before it may be startling, but it crawls along calmly from stone to stone, then rests for a few minutes before stretching its body once more outside its shell. All this happens silently. Its body is too soft to make any noise. Because of the shell, it does not feel much, even when such as the rooster pecks at it ferociously.

  Somebody wants to perform an experiment: to portray the image of its crawling on the same canvas with the two men in the hut. After the experiment the canvas is hung at the edge of the forest. Yet the reality of the matter does not change much at all. The three of them still follow their own courses independently. No trace of passing time can be detected in their development.

  The experimenter does not give up. Standing on a pine branch, he shouts back toward the place below, dragging his sounds out very, very long. But if you stand inside the hut you can feel that the shouting outside has been blocked somewhere. They can’t hear it, and it can’t hear it. So the experimenter becomes grieved. But this remains irrelevant to them.

  Then the experimenter thinks that at least the two men in the hut have some comfort from each other, whereas it is too pitiful. It was born silently, and it will die silently.

  Yet the experimenter is wrong from the very start. It can never experience the fastidiousness of human beings. Dreaming deeply in its own shell is its highest enjoyment. When it is attacked, it has the ability not merely to elude disaster but to transform it into pleasure, as in the case with the rooster.

  “That which happened last Thursday is bound to be repeated in the nap on Sunday, floating lotus, floating lotus…” the experimenter says with feeling. He turns his hesitant glance toward the tomato-red rays of sunshine.

  No one knows when the canvas disappeared. The scene of the hut and the rubble becomes clearer, the loaches leap in the ditches.

  We always assume things in accordance with our own will. For example, standing before the canvas we cannot help singing some lyrics. Then the earth sinks, the fire dragon dances fervently, our meditating gaze gradually turns profound. But one thing we are very clear about—past the rubble there stands a very ordinary hut. We can say that nothing can hide inside.

  “Floating lotus,” the experimenter intones again with deep feeling.

  A DULL STORY

  Now that we’re talking about it, I used to be a very good athlete, a marathoner. I even won some local competitions. You know I have good legs. But although I’m good at running, I do have a problem—I have no appetite. I eat very little every day. In the past two years, I’ve lost almost all interest in food. This is fatal to an athlete. Yet medical examinations find nothing wrong with me. The odd thing is that I can still run as energetically as before despite the fact that I’m eating nothing. I even won the women’s championship in the provincial competition. It was on the day of that victory that I became sick. I immediately ran to the ditch at the back of the house and disgorged violently. Everything poured out of my stomach with the force of an avalanche. When I returned to the house after I finished vomiting, everybody commented on how terrible I
looked.

  From that day on, I stopped eating once and for all, because whatever I swallowed down, I soon vomited up again. Everything was turned upside down in my eyes. However, this did not interfere with my training and running. I continued my physical exercise, though I became thinner day by day. I lost more than twenty-five pounds in one month, and I looked all the more strange. The members of my team all said they were afraid to see me running. They could hear the grinding of my bones as I ran. And my skin became transparent, so they could see the movement of the bones inside my body. This was too much, too horrifying to them. They hated to see me running, because they did not want to be scared. After much cogitation, my coach decided to send me home for recuperation.

  So I returned home and lived with my husband and children. My life was easy but sluggish. Then one October day, my father-in-law came. He wore an orange plastic raincoat, and he was shivering with cold. After some blushing and modest declining of hospitality, he finally sat down on the sofa. But he firmly refused our offer of a dry towel and hot tea. With his aged, veined hand he wiped the rainwater from his head and face. Pointing at me with one finger, he said to my husband that the disease I was suffering from was a very unusual one. He found in the medical books that this disease usually occurred among females. It was caused by the distance between their inner vanity and the goal they were after. At the root of my case was the fact that my legs were unique. He could tell at one glance that I would fall miserably. It was unfortunate to have such legs, and there were endless troubles awaiting me. He did not look at me even once while talking, nor did he allow my husband to put in one word. He simply rattled on and on. Like a wizard, he delivered all kinds of prophecies with his eyes crossed. Upon his departure, for some unknown reason, he made a strange sign to me with his hands, stiff with gnarled joints. It looked like both a gesture of ingratiation and a sign of threat.