The Embroidered Shoes

by Can Xue

  The wind swept from afar. In the darkness, the lion reinforced the wind.

  The lion was speeding day and night across the open country.

  Out of the sun’s burned hair grew wild chrysanthemums.

  The detective refused to come down from the ceiling. Whenever I closed my eyes, a pattering sound woke me up. That was him pissing. With the coming of the evening mist, he would start crawling back and forth on the wall, mashing the huge spiderwebs and threatening the fleeing spiders with a rattling sound. In the darkness, he would speak something unexpectedly. Immediately, the whole room resounded as if turning up a recorder. The hullabaloo would last till the next morning. I was so afraid of his speaking that I hid in my quilt pretending to be dead, hoping he would forget me.

  “Your face resembles a green plum. It must be caused by lack of oxygen inside the quilt. To tell you the truth, I can hear your breath clearly.” He exposed my mind. “How could I have been trapped by your mother and you? I have to understand that I used to be a carefree lad, shouldering my black leather travel bag, and putting on my leather boots. In my pocket, there were two quality fountain pens, and I had a pair of gold-framed sunglasses. I was such a genius in performance that everyone expected me to achieve some kind of earthshaking undertaking. However, one dusk, in the middle of my investigation, I entered by mistake a dim corridor, which was full of whispering, as if a mouth lay in ambush in the seam of every brick. You just couldn’t distinguish. Now I am completely ruined.”

  Outside the door, an unkempt old woman broke a jar. Her shrill “Oh-oh” drew many gray shadows. I heard the splash of water and the sound of sawing and loud kissing from two old men with broad moustaches. The door was pushed ajar, and one of the old woman’s strange eyes shaped like a hexagon appeared. The eye was surrounded by patches of dirt. “Aha, so this house is full of jars of pickled mustard tuber. They are stacked to the ceiling. No wonder the house is so bright. This dim lamp flashes so scarily…” Suddenly, she yelled, pointing at the detective on the ceiling: “What is that!?”

  The detective twisted his body uneasily and mumbled, “Fussy … plus ignorant … What’s happening outside?”

  “My classmate is drilling holes in the cement floor upstairs,” I replied.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “She’s been thinking of drilling all the way down through our ceiling. Then she would hang a wire down to fix you, so that you don’t need to swing every day. Then you will be motionless like a thumbtack.”

  “So your classmate is a thief.” The detective relaxed.

  “Do you want to kill me?” My brother was suddenly heard outside. He kept one hand behind him and held a toy water gun in the other. He squirted the shadows on the wall while stepping back. “So you want to kill me?” he said again in a quavering voice. He made a heroic gesture, though his two skinny legs were trembling in his pants.

  Ever since he was young, my brother had never had one minute of quiet. He was forever suffering from cramps, until he became hemiplegic. Sometimes he would sit motionless, appearing totally absorbed in thought. Whenever someone attempted to talk to him, he would jump up in anger and bite the speaker’s neck. When he was in high school, he once overcame his timidness enough that he formed a glorious goal—to become a student of dream walking. “Then you can look without seeing, listen without hearing. You can wander among the black mountains and forests. It’s such relaxation, and you feel so proud and elated!” His saliva splashed in my face enthusiastically.

  For a whole year, every evening he sat in repose in one corner of the kitchen with his eyes closed. He argued that the atmosphere there helped him get into the right mood. One night, he played the fool by wandering along the pond. I gave him a box on the ears. He only stretched his mouth and continued his journey. He had to hold back the pain in fear I would see through his trick. I laughed my heart out. He also told me privately that inside mother’s clothes, there was frozen meat. “Just poke your finger on it…” He gave a sneer of contempt. As for my fiancé, he simply pretended not to notice such a person from the very beginning. Always keeping his head high and dashing around, he never glanced at him. He once even commented on the matter to me by remarking, “It’s said there’s a person coming to our house. This is an outrageous lie. I’ve never seen him.”

  The detective became so furious that he blocked my brother’s way. For one moment, his eyes appeared “surprised.” That damned guy was putting on this show for me. He meant to humiliate me. He was wrong! I had noticed their jockeying for position for a long time. The detective was only an indulgent fool pretending to be clever. He could never win. The more shame he brought to himself, the happier I became. Sitting in a cane chair, I cast a sidelong glance at my brother. I encouraged him: Good lad, good job. Yet he was confused by this, owing to his rigid mind. I once saw sand dropping from his eyes, but he said that it was his brains. I cried in front of him in fear that he would die from this.

  Yesterday, he was again in tears. Yet he also showed his teeth while speaking: “Once I close my eyes, there appear numerous bare feet flying overhead … Have you ever cried? I’ve been thinking of experimenting. Let’s try together. For example, we can put a plastic bag over our heads, tie it up around the neck, and breathe hard. Or you can pinch my nose tight, and I can do the same to you. Let’s compete for who will open the mouth first … I’ve been doing such experiments all along, and several times I’ve passed out. They said that a man comes here, that you brought him in, and he’s staying in your room? Humph, I don’t believe that you have such ability and interest. The thing I hate most are those soft shadows. They circle around you. They don’t cry when you beat them and don’t get hurt when you bump into them. But they scratch your nose once you close your eyes. Tonight, I plan to have a real dream walk. Don’t think you can sabotage it.” He kept his head high, his cheeks protruded, his mouth chewing. He looked like a wretched tramp living by begging and stealing.

  I believe such rubbish was all caused by his thirst for sex. And such desire was totally imaginary. He had never looked for a girl. He just couldn’t, because my generation in this family has no sexual ability. The cause for this was Mother’s sexless reproduction. Mother was a witch, and she could even play such a trick. I can’t help but admire her. This was why she helped so hard to get the detective and me together. She knew the result! Talking about sex, I recalled that old man dead of a stroke (poor man, his death was so unfair—why should he hang himself?) and the rumor. My mother might really have been surprised if I had had some affair with him. That would have been so far beyond her expectations.

  The rain always came at dusk. Once the rain started, rustling sounds could be heard from every room in our building. Such minute sounds are mysterious. Taking an umbrella, you might stand on the street, observing the building. You would find every window covered with a black curtain. Some would be shaking because of the scandals inside the rooms. I listened attentively. As soon as I lay down, I found all the windows pressed onto me from all directions. I was totally encircled. The curtains rustled noisily until they broke and fell down. Looking carefully, I found under every curtain a huge mound of liver and a box of toothpicks. There was an addle-headed old man sitting there picking his teeth. Every pick was followed by a “pooh” toward the window.

  There was only one exception among the windows. There sat a girl in a flowery skirt. She was cutting her toenails with a big pair of rusty scissors. At every snip she would clench her teeth and then a long piece of nail flew out the window. Raising her head, she turned out to be an old woman with white hair. She flung her snivel at me, then she folded her black feet covered with sagging skin. She yelled at me, “The conflict between us has no end, never!” To my surprise she was none other than my classmate. So I threw down my umbrella and ran back to my room. I can still hear her shouts: “Glass has started exploding!”

  “So that’s it.” The detective fell down from the ceiling. He showed me his palms and said in a self-indulgent tone:
“Please notice the two suction discs on them. Aren’t they the result of long, hard practice? I heard you arguing with that female thief. I warned you long ago not to intrude on another’s privacy. You are born with such dirty interests. Since fifteen years old, you have…”

  “You have estimated correctly that the old man is very much to my taste. Gone are the days when I was happy and relaxed. I suspect that was a murder.” Patting his belly and staring at the suction discs on his hands, I continued: “It’s better for you to be up again. You’ve gained so much experience up there. I respect the strategies you use to deal with spiders. It’s like the wind sweeping the lingering clouds. My brother believes that the thing on the ceiling is a shark with a monkey’s face. Be cautious, he has a gun. Detective is not a role for your temperament. Nobody takes it seriously. Yesterday Mother told me that she remembered the master pedicurist who treated calluses. The guy had a pair of sunglasses. Where is he now? Look, she considered you as a chap treating calluses. What’s the use for you to insist? Nobody believes you.”

  A flash of white light could be seen through the crack around the door. The air smelled of the wet rusty scissors. A string of white teeth fell to the ground, and it walked smoothly for a distance.…

  Pushing the door open, I stepped into the corridor. In the dim light, I saw pairs of bare feet lined up by the wall. The woman selling arecas was waving to me: “Attention, hey, just look at my cheeks. The areca is expanding inside. My tongue has no room to turn. For more than thirty years, I’ve been to the top of the mountain, where the ground is covered by fluffy dead garden burnet. When the wind blows, colorful little snakes slither out from it. I am creating a world record. I’ll come back to finish the dream with you when I have time.” She entered a room and banged the door behind her.

  Mother’s head stretched out from another door. She looked glum and said: “So you want to disturb more? You want more? Just smell, see if pine moths have filled your father’s knapsack? I’ve been suspicious about this for a whole day and night. Yesterday he sneaked back once. I did not really care. He has grown so thin now, he did not really occupy any space, just like a mosquito net full of holes. When he left, he had only one shoe on. In fact why should he walk back and forth, what is he showing off? What? It is horrifying to think of the things that have happened in this corridor. No matter how far you can see, you just don’t see anything, never see anything clearly, isn’t that true?”

  “There was a woman selling arecas,” I told her. “I’ve met her twice.”

  “Hush, don’t talk nonsense. That was your aunt.” She winked and grinned. “You need to calm down. How can it be that you don’t recognize her? It can’t be more than ten years? She is the same old self, never changes. She stole my lamb jacket when she left. She’s been very greedy ever since her youth.”

  Mother’s remark reminded me of my aunt, who used to live with us when she was thirty-five or thirty-six. She was a celestial, who could fly as lightly as a little bird. Her brows were plucked away completely, and her mouth was dyed bloody red. She nailed two big iron hooks in our bedroom, and on the hooks she hung a string, which held up a bed. This was her hammock. At midnight, she would swing in her bed as if it were a real swing. Standing on her bed and letting down her hair, she would utter strange sounds. Eventually she would slide through the window and fall onto the cinder road. As a result, her knees were forever swollen and bruised, and her hobby was hiding in her mosquito net squeezing the pus. To whoever tried to peep in, she would open her net as if nothing had happened and say: “Strolling in moonlight with neck stretching out, isn’t that a spotty duck? There’s also a shortcut that passes the withered rose. That path is a secret.” She finally fled with a horse keeper for a circus. They walked away valiantly and spiritedly, smelling of horse urine.

  As soon as they left, mother wailed and whined, calling the man “human-monger, with a hooked knife in his waist. Little sister has bit the hook.” She jabbered on and on with tears in her eyes, but father was very excited. Standing in the middle of the room, he started his lecture. He talked about the beautiful wish, about the rats’ invasion of the grain at our house. When he was talking about his painful itching syndrome, he became nervous. Rubbing his chest, he searched high and low, stepping on mother’s feet.

  Later on I heard Mother talking about the affair between father and the aunt. Mother understood them and supported their relationship in secret, though on the surface she pretended that she knew nothing. However, Father disturbed her plot. Nobody knows where he got this disabled man. The two talked in whispers in the cell for a whole afternoon before the business was done. Mother tried very hard to persuade them that I could substitute for the aunt. She said that although I was only in high school, and pretty young, I was very experienced in this. Otherwise, the garbage collector would not have hanged himself. But aunt was only a baby. She trusted people too easily, and she would suffer for that. Mother grabbed me by the chest and shook me, while shouting: “Just think what kind of person he is! Selling to a human-monger. That spider.” For this she had profound hatred toward Father.

  So many years have elapsed, and aunty has come back at night. With those mysterious arecas, she appears in the dim moonlight. I can never figure this out. I suspect that she never left. The walking out was only a trick, and the guy who kept horses for the circus was only a lie. All that time, she was hiding at the other end of the corridor, selling her goods to the wandering spirits. Though she was long past her youth, she could, with some fixing up, still appear a gentle and graceful lady. No one can tell about those things, because the corridor is forever hazy and tricky. Ever since I can remember, a damp steam has spread there. You couldn’t see things three steps away, and you couldn’t hear your own footsteps. Very often similar doors cracked open, and a soft shadow floated out. It gave off some muffled dream talk before it disappeared completely. Sometimes, I went outside. It was different from the corridor, though there were also those soft shadows. The wind smelled like a horse’s mane, and the sky was pitch dark. Only those reddish yellow lights peeped out from narrow windows. They looked very irritating. When I stood on the low-lying land, I felt my body turn into a rock. The raindrops pattered on it. My eyes held water dripping from the eaves. A broken gong banged in the wilderness.

  Oh, aunty, aunty, where are you? You even write to us, telling us something. You really take things to your heart! You attempt to fool me, making the illusion that this is a graceful April dusk. You think I will be running around like a blind person, twitching my nose to chase the smell of the dusty rain. It’s your nature to put up a smoke screen in order to confuse human life.

  Good, very good, aunty! I now understand the meaning in your letter. It’s pouring with rain. A snake-shaped reflection flashes in the sky. In the earth, grass is breeding. The dream walkers are coming. Their stretched-out arms resemble iron forks. My brother is hiding in the middle. Yet he is no more than a sham. This is the result of your teaching. His steps are stiff and hard, lacking natural rhythm. I can see through him with one glance. Why did you teach him? It’s in vain!

  When the rain stops, I will feel my way to the other end of the corridor. I want to bump into you in the haze. Then I will ask for an areca, and tell you the miracles of these years. I will tell you how the detective slipped into our little house, how my parents disappeared mysteriously, how abnormal my brother’s consciousness of sex is, how a cobra appeared in the wardrobe.… Aha, aunty, in fact I won’t tell you anything. It’s not necessary for me to fool you. Why should I fool an old witch like you? Yesterday, I found the compact you used for putting on makeup. I kicked it out the window. Now I still have enough strength to kick it. The wet rusty scissors have been inserted into the door crack again. The room is full of a fishy smell. Late last night, hundreds of nightingales sang on the tree. The moon was shining, the stars were shining. The little round mirror in my hand was also shining. Pale white sand stretched out into the distance.

  3. THE DETECTIVE�
��S (OR DOCTOR’S) LONG, DULL STORY

  She eventually attained her goal by shoving me out the window. The moment I hit ground, I heard her telling somebody in a nasal tone, “It’s nothing, just an empty can. There are too many of them under the bed. They attract ants.” Supporting myself against the wall, I stood up. Patting the dust from my clothes, I staggered away. I supposed that the run-down temple was just ahead of me. Somebody had told me that my father-in-law was enjoying living there. In the back of my mind, I had the idea of looking for him. I had to find somebody. How could I not? I had been deceived! Someone had made a monkey out of me. I had to complain to somebody. Good, just the person was approaching. It was a fat woman selling arecas. I had seen her from behind several times. I grabbed her and rushed into my story:

  “Kind-hearted person, you have to listen to my story from the very beginning. This family is a wonder! There must be some guy hiding somewhere giving instructions. Once this guy blows a whistle, all my family’s necks go stiff, and their eyeballs freeze. They are turned into nothing but empty puppets shaking in front of you. I’ve been searching high and low but can’t find the puppet master, even though I’ve been severely tortured by him all along. The trouble is I have a little hobby, that is, chatting with others, and sometimes I enjoy playing a little trick. Otherwise life is too depressing. Yet once this guy whistles, the family turns arrogant. They march into the house and dash at each other, emitting the sound of cracking wood. It’s savage. I have to hide myself every day in a cistern. Such long hours of hiding cause abscesses on my joints, and little worms crawl out of the abscesses. Unfortunately, even the cistern is not safe. The hermaphrodite of the family, that patient of neurosis, found my dwelling and drove me out with a broom. As I was naked, I had to protect my private parts with my hands and avoid his attack. He’s a vicious man, so he knows how to wait for that fatal blow. He has particular hate for my sexual organs. His glance is too extremely horrifying. Oh, and there’s something else.”