The Embroidered Shoes

by Can Xue

  “I’m the only one who knows exactly how you disappeared. But I’ll never tell you. I can only tell it to the other person, the one who is sitting at the foot of the mountain, as you are. And I can only tell you about him, but not the person himself. The distance between you two is somewhat wide, so wide that you will never be able to meet. Thus the stories of your own disappearances will remain secrets from each of you. Therefore, you will continue using your imagination to pass the endless time.

  “If you like, you may consider me as a bird flying between you and the other person. You will imagine forever. Both of you have once lived among crowds of people, and therefore both have learned about logic and imagination. The game is pretty simple, yet effective. But I’m only an observer. In the shadows of the mountain, the eternal light is pulsating. And I have become the only witness of the spectacle.

  “Your ears are just suitable for listening to that sound; your eyes started shining as soon as you arrived here. As a result, you’ve forgotten the past. However, I remember everything, but I’m not going to tell you. No matter if you ask me or not, I’ll tell you some anecdotes about the other person; for one example, how he bent to pour the sand and dirt out of his shoes, and how he disappeared right after that. For another example, he seems to have a brother who left home with him that day. After the disappearance, the young man’s shrill voice stood our amidst those calling for the vanished one. However, the person who disappeared did not hear anything. He walked very fast. What he did could be described either as duty-bound and regret-free, or as hasty action. At the corner, he kicked off his shoes. Barefooted he arrived at the foot of the mountain, and fell down in a sleep.”

  This imaginary dialogue could probably go on forever. But if you watch the two speakers carefully, you will realize that their lips have never moved. The dialogue recorded above is merely an episode that the author has written down without any foundation. Many things can never be decided, and many people’s lives have been wasted in trying to solve unresolvable puzzles. But the mountain remains silent.

  As for those people who have voluntarily disappeared, what have they been thinking? It seems nobody will ever know, and the author can only imagine, on and on.

  Why didn’t anybody at that kind of grand gathering near the river notice that a person was about to disappear forever? I have heard that such occurrences happen very rarely, yet the relatives of the vanished person never search for long. They gather at the riverbank and call out loudly until exhausted and then return home the very next dawn. The second night, they call at the riverbank again. But the number shrinks sharply and only a few show up. After the third day, nobody goes back to the riverbank, but instead everybody discusses the odd event at home. By the turn of the new year, nobody raises the issue anymore, as if everybody had agreed beforehand to fall silent. The clothing of the vanished person would still be kept in the wardrobe. His bowl and chopsticks would still be placed on the table at mealtime. The family members would pretend that he still lived with them in the house.

  I once visited the relative of a vanished person. This relative was a tragic character with long hair and beard and an expressionless face. Yet his hands were restless with anxiety. One after another, he tore the buttons off his jacket. He repeated, “It was completely unnecessary to take such extreme action.” His tone sounded quite superficial. I asked him to talk about what happened that night. “I bid him goodnight, not having the faintest idea that he would leave. Isn’t that funny?” That was all he could remember.

  I strolled to the riverbank and looked around. I found a horse galloping against the wind, and the dead rider had a secretive expression on his face.

  A DREAMLAND NEVER DESCRIBED

  The Recorder sat in his roadside shed writing down the various dreamlands described by passersby. This had gone on for many years, and he had recorded a nearly infinite variety of images. Usually a session went like this: the passersby—all ordinary people who appeared a bit confused as they entered the shed—walked in and sat down on the floor. Their descriptions differed from person to person and ranged from vivid to dull and mechanical, confusingly meditative, or obscure. The Recorder sat before them, showing no facial expression. He copied verbatim, collecting everything into a black notebook. Then the passersby would leave, sullenly.

  Gradually the number of people with dreams to report decreased, and the Recorder felt more and more lonely, yet he continually stretched his neck out stubbornly and stared toward the end of the road. He was hoping for a dreamland that had never yet been described, one charged with heat and blinding light. He was not even sure what he had imagined in his own mind. But he believed firmly there was such a dreamland. Yet he could not by himself write this dreamland directly into the black notebook; he had to wait for someone to come in who could set it forth as it had appeared in his own dream. That person would describe this dream to the Recorder in the shed by the roadside, and the Recorder would copy it down for him. Because existence travels in zigzag paths, all the Recorder could do was wait.

  Day after day, the people who arrived could never describe directly the image in the Recorder’s mind; therefore, this image could never be turned into words, and its authenticity could never be established. As a result, the Recorder became disheartened day by day, yet he still stretched out his neck stubbornly. His hands and feet cracked in the bitter wind of winter, and in the dampness of spring his joints swelled like little steambuns. In addition, the run-down shed by the roadside started leaking. Most passersby no longer stopped to describe their dreamlands; instead they flung cold glances in his direction and continued on their way. The Recorder observed every one of them carefully, and his heart pulsed regularly between hope and disappointment. Sometimes a whole day would pass with only one or two people coming into his shed. And their dreamlands were nothing out of the ordinary, although they were filled with the mad joy of wandering in the vast universe; or with the conceitedness of a person who locks himself inside a cave deep within the shell of the earth; or with the horror of being captured by some beast of prey; or with the ghastly feeling of being in the process of dying. However, no one ever dreamed the image that appeared in the Recorder’s mind.

  Maybe this was nothing but a kind of torture. The Recorder had asked himself this question numerous times, and numerous times had failed to find the answer. But just at the moment when the passersby with dreams were leaving, the light of that dreamland that had never been described would make his body tremble all over. This trembling—the trembling itself—confirmed in him the existence of that image. So he named that image that had never been described nor had ever occurred clearly in his mind “the wind.” “The wind” always arose when the person with dreams was leaving. Now what he was expecting with his stretched-out neck was more than merely the dreamers. When they were leaving, he knew, that light would appear. He had begun to see this more and more clearly.

  Then in the rainy season there came an old woman holding a huge umbrella. Her snow-white hair had been tousled by the wind. The eyeballs inside their deep, narrow sockets had no vision, yet she was not blind. She entered the shed and let the Recorder touch her ice-cold fingers, then she went on her way. It was on that day that the Recorder stopped writing down the descriptions of the dreamlands of the passersby. Nor did he stare down the road anymore. He was still waiting, however, and he seemed to know what he was waiting for. With the passing of time, that image of his had changed gradually into something less definite, and his hearing deteriorated daily. Very often when a passerby entered the shed, the Recorder was still in his reverie. Only one thing was clear: at a certain moment his heart would throb in response to that invisible light and that empty image, and his blood would surge like a herd of running horses.

  Once in a while there were still people stopping by his shed. The dreamlands they described had become more and more outrageous. Each one complained that the thing he had seen was indescribable. And because it was indescribable, they sometimes left, disheart
ened, in the middle of their account. The Recorder, understanding all this, held his black notebook and pen in his hands and pretended to be listening carefully. As a matter of fact, he did not record anything. When the person with the dream left, in his mind’s eye there still appeared the image that once had made him tremble, yet it had faded into a blankness with something like shadows swaying back and forth within it. He couldn’t confirm this, yet he was satisfied. Closing his notebook he sat on the floor for a break, and the instant of the break was sweet.

  The following is a dialogue between the Recorder and a person reporting a dream:

  DREAMER: What have I been talking about? What I have said is not even as much as one tenth of what I saw. That feeling could never occur again. Why can’t I describe it? It’s so disheartening! The wind is too strong here.

  RECORDER: Uh-huh.

  DREAMER: Whatever you have recorded here is all rubbish. Yet we still come to you because everybody knows you are the only person who records those things here. I really want to describe it. Please tell me—is it because I am not verbal?

  RECORDER: What you’ve said is really interesting.

  After the dreamers left, they never revealed to others the image that they had described to the Recorder, as if there were an unspoken agreement among them. After they had described their dreamlands to him, they felt they had left a piece of valuable property in his run-down shed. As a matter of fact, they seldom reflected on what they had described, yet they remembered making the description because that was their property. They paid no attention to whether or not the recorder had written anything in his notebook. What they did pay attention to was the very act of describing inside the shed. Although during their descriptions they were also continually grumbling and complaining, as if impatient or totally bored, deep inside they were quite satisfied with themselves. Once they left that shed they felt they became mere ordinary people. They tended to consider the unique communication between themselves and the Recorder as a supreme secret. They also tended to see that black notebook as something that made them feel intimate and commited to something in their hearts.

  Nobody had expected that the Recorder would abandon his black notebook, because it contained such a quantity of unique and strange dream images, and it was therefore considered by many people as the property of the many dreamers. But now he had thrown the notebook away, and he explained this only indifferently: “It flew away without wings.” And he refused to raise the issue again.

  Random passersby continued to enter his run-down shed, As usual he sat on the floor, straight and solemn, listening to their descriptions without making a sound himself. The disappearance of the notebook hadn’t affected the unique communication between them. Among those random passersby were some who had visited him before and others who had never been there. Without mentioning it, they all experienced the benefit of not having the notebook because now they could talk about whatever they wanted without worrying. After they had arrived at the Recorder’s shed, every one of them would speak, whether for a long time or a short time. So they started talking, yet who could hear clearly what they were talking about? That was impossible. It was not until today—this is quite a few years after it happened—that we realized that those people had never said anything meaningful. Instead they were only pronouncing some syllables willy-nilly to pass the time. And the Recorder was not listening carefully but only pretended to pay attention. As a matter of fact, he was thinking of something else. It was certain that he was thinking of that blank image and waiting impatiently for its arrival. Yet he knew that one cannot rush this sort of thing. Therefore, he had to pretend to be listening to the dreams. It was with such purposeful procrastination that they passed the endless time, repeating the same thing again and again, patiently.

  From the Recorder’s point of view, throwing away the notebook was, of course, perfect. Though it did have some drawbacks, however, one being that he was now more and more dependent on the dreamers. He had classified his life into several periods, according to the kind of dreamers who arrived. He no longer remembered how much time he had spent in the shed. In fact, his concept of time had completely disappeared. Whenever he was recalling certain events, he would think this way: “That’s the day when that dark, skinny-faced man arrived…” or “That afternoon when the woman with butterfly freckles arrived…” “That day when nobody stopped by…” or “That morning when the person came, then left without saying anything…” et cetera. Such classifications appeared very convenient, yet because fewer people were coming to him lately, his memory was deteriorating. This method of classification, as a result, embodied great vagueness and even error because it distorted sequence, and very often uncertainty would creep in. Fortunately, now he didn’t care that much about such things, and he had become increasingly casual.

  If on one day more than two dreamers arrived, the Recorder would regard that day as a festival. When they had departed, he would still sit in the shed with his straight back and with his solemn expression. His whole body, including his heart, was trembling amidst the light that nobody, not even he himself, could see. Such an event was not common, and the Recorder knew it himself; therefore, he didn’t appear anxious. He also knew that the dreamers did not come of their own free will. The will that determined their arrival was in fact inside his mind. Now that he had stopped stretching out his neck to stare down the road, most of the time he felt calm. His only hint of impatience would occur at the moment when a dreamer arrived, because he already knew what the consequence would be. Afterward, he could be seen creeping about, shivering in the cold wind and blowing warm air onto his fingers, which were as swollen at the joints as little steamed buns, yet in his eyes there danced indescribable ecstasy.

  Many people say that the Recorder was a fictitious being because he couldn’t even prove his own existence, and they are right. There was no proof of the existence of the Recorder himself, at least for the middle and late periods of his career in recording. He was shrinking into his strange and unique shell, until finally nobody could see any trace of him. What they saw was only an empty shell that had been abandoned by the roadside. The shell was similar to the most ordinary shell of the river clam. Once in a while someone asserted that he could hear the sound of the Recorder as though from an extremely deep rock cave, but because that cave was so profound, when the sound reached his ear it was almost like the weeping of an ant. Such assertions were of little value.

  It’s true that every day we saw the Recorder sitting in the shed by the road in the same posture and behaving in the same way. The strange thing was that whenever we thought of him as being a member of our own species, there would arise unexpected doubts about his personal life, as well as that mysterious communication between him and the dreamers. But these were things that had been explained from his own personal perspective. Without that, everybody felt it would be impossible to make an adequate analysis of him. Almost nobody could remember any specific details about him, such as a word or phrase, a facial expression, a gesture, a line he had written, and so on. Everything about him existed in his own description, yet that description was only dimly discernible and lacked continuity. The key here was that others could not re-create him, describe him, in their own words.

  Nineteen-ninety was the tenth year after the Recorder set up his shed by the roadside. There was an unparalleled snowstorm. After the big snow, all the inhabitants swarmed into the streets, stamping their feet and blowing warm breath into their hands while they discussed the storm. When they walked into the run-down shed of the Recorder, they saw that the storm had blown away half of the roof, and inside the snow was piled up more than two feet deep. People found the Recorder sitting quietly in the snowdrifts. His eyebrows and hair were piled with snowflakes. No one noticed that a column of steam was rising from the back of his neck. What kind of energy source was burning inside his body?

  “From now on no one will come to discuss their dreamlands,” the Recorder declared to the arrivals in
a firm tone. “That era has passed. I have decided this just now.” Nobody was listening to him. Nobody was noticing him. Nobody had ever thought of noticing him.

  The Recorder was still sitting by the roadside waiting. Now there was no longer anybody to come to him. That is to say, what he was waiting for was no longer those dreamers. His body was seated straight. His dried, skinny face was always inclined toward the north, and on his face there was an expression of having abandoned everything. He was still indulging himself in that empty image, yet people could no longer discern his reaction toward it. What people saw was a person in rags, perhaps an idiot, wasting time, sitting in a tumbledown shed by the roadside. Such unconventional behavior did not arouse people’s good feeling toward him; instead, now people snubbed him. When they were passing by, they would turn their heads away intentionally, or they would raise their voices, pretending not to notice the shed.

  Thus, for the Recorder, external time had stopped. Pretty soon he had lost the feeling of time passing. Once or twice a day he would walk out of his shed to look at the vehicles passing by, the pedestrians, and the sky above him. Of course, it’s more likely he did not see anything but only pretended to be observing. There was no set time for his walking out of the shed—sometimes it was in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, sometimes in the middle of the night. At the beginning he didn’t know what he was doing himself. After several days it dawned on him that he was now classifying time according to his own subjective will. This was a brand-new kind of time. From then on he was going to live in this kind of time, and he had decided this himself.