The Embroidered Shoes

by Can Xue

  Lao Jiu did not change the least bit because of Ru Shu’s reappearance. In his memory nobody else’s image had forced itself into his mind besides this fragile companion. He could not see her. Obviously he could not see anybody. During the days when his companion was warmly involved with Ru Shu, he sat amidst the maple trees on the mountain observing his chest, which grew older every day. He even stamped a little green poisonous snake to death with his bare feet. Bathing himself in the sun, he could feel that the poisonous juice inside his body was filling up day by day. He thought of how odd and unique the means of communication were that he had with his companion. This was mostly accomplished by aspiration. Thus his companion could get him whenever he called him.

  Contrary to the other two, Lao Jiu had no doubt whatsoever about his own birth history. He had never revealed to anybody his own belief. He only tried to blend a unique manner into every deed. When his companion mentioned with excitement his own ambiguous position, considering it an honor, he only glanced at him sharply, fluttering his eyelashes.

  The old man finally had a general explosion. Locking the door, he started wrestling with Lao Jiu. He said, puffing hard, “Some gratitude for decades of raising up the child.… Such a plot in broad daylight!”

  With ease Lao Jiu threw him out the window. Then patting the dust from his clothes, he thought of the endless greed of human beings—and the inexplicability of their desires.

  His birth was the product of a plot that happened in a quiet ancient residence. He accepted the matter in the year when he was two. Among a group of naughty children, he discovered his companion. The gloomy glance of that child attracted him immediately. Without the child knowing it, he entered his life and became another soul of his. The endless path toward his destiny was empty. It had been his dream to have a young and confused companion. In secret he would guide him to the termination of his journey. He would be the only person that he could remember in the world. Before his appearance, his mind had been vacant for many years. Inside, there were only a few monkeys swinging on dead branches.

  “We fall into sleep under the shining stars, and we wake up in the morning glow; in our visions lions run in the jungle.”

  In drifting terms he described to the child the scenery at the termination.

  “But this place is falling into dilapidation day by day. Within one year you won’t be able to distinguish seasons, and within one day you can’t distinguish day from night. The sky is forever a bleak grayish white. There’s neither jungle nor people. Gradually even you will be turned into a red-colorblind patient. Just look at that floating leaf. What kind of exaggerated gesture!”

  The teenager was forever bent over his black leather notebook, his face full of scars of memory, the gloomy expression in his eyes hiding a desire to murder. Lao Jiu was waiting, and the chance was getting closer day by day. On the day when he reached his adulthood, he incited him to throw the notebook that his father had given him (Lao Jiu could still remember the youth’s father) into the garbage can, thus fulfilling the wish that he had had for several years. From that day on the youth was severed from his memory and became an unidentifiable man.

  Obviously this left artificial marks on his body. He was not born this way, but he didn’t know at all that it was all Lao Jiu’s arrangement. He only kept feeling surprised.

  “I should have a father. This is very strange.”

  “The notebook that you have forgotten is his biggest mistake. The old man has cut off his own retreat.”

  The marks and scars on his face healed gradually, and the shape eventually stabilized and many unpredictable expressions appeared. Sometimes his glance would startle Lao Jiu at a particular moment. Several times, he raised the issue of the black leather notebook to probe him. The teenager listened without any facial expression. Obviously he was changing day by day.

  More and more often, he could hear his upset footsteps in the wilderness at midnight. The footsteps bothered Lao Jiu, making him get up, put a shirt over his shoulders, and listen. From the window he could see a swinging candlelight. The young man was alone. In the small hut behind him there were all kinds of groaning sounds. Originally, he had hoped for a companion, who obviously was not Lao Jiu—had hoped for not the present existence but some discovery. He felt he would die if he couldn’t discover something new. Every day he despised his present existence. He would die of anxiety if some unexpected happiness did not appear. For several months he sat on the benches in the park half dreaming. He was trying to create a kind of strong image, yet simultaneously his mind resembled a dying rabbit. Ru Shu entered his life at that critical moment.

  Ru Shu was a woman without roots. He noticed this while sitting on the bench in the park, and it was further proved when she repeatedly jumped from running trains to meet him. But this was not important. The thing that deeply shook his belief was the fact that she had her own pursuit.

  “The cold wind blew and blew at midnight. I knocked open a door. From inside stretched an unfamiliar head. All of a sudden it started to talk. I could barely understand it at first, and I made all kinds of mistakes. Now that naivete has passed.”

  This was her description of her work. She said that up to now she had seen the goods in every house. There was no way to cheat her even if they wanted to. For example, the uncle. She had certainly seen him. Even with her eyes closed she could imagine him; otherwise, how could she give such an accurate judgment? Talking about him, she had also knocked at his door on a certain summer night in a certain year. At that time both of them were young, a little girl and a little boy. They were farther from resembling each other then than now. She remembered the incident. The reason she went to the park was because of her remembrance of this. At first glance she could see the changes that had taken place in his face over these years and the horror came to her. Then there was the incident of escaping.

  “Why should you knock at the door? Since there is no secret whatsoever inside the house?” he asked.

  She answered that it was because she did not want to give in, or she didn’t want to lose the game. Since she had already entered the dead end, she had to bother the people inside the house for the rest of her life. That was all her happiness.

  That fall, Ru Shu’s searching gradually showed a purity and extremity. In the aging season, her face showed some edges and corners, and her expressions turned indifferent and cold. She came to him less and less; instead she would stay inside the house alone—her house was never located permanently at one place, and he could never decide where she lived. Like their life histories, it was a fabrication.

  Using a charcoal pen she drew many thick lines on the wall (those walls were very white and totally empty), and on every line she drew numerous antennas. She told him that those antennas were all memories about nights. Now she was devoting all her energy to this work. Nothing related to daylight could arouse her interest. Of course, daylight did not include him. He also was an antenna that she had drawn, and he belonged to the night. This was revealed by the shadows in his face. Even the blazing sun in the vast desert could not burn that shadow away. The symbols on the walls were all alive. Very often she was so touched by them that she could not stop sobbing!

  In a ceilingless house, she pointed at the slim woman who passed by outside the window and said, “She’s wearing such a thin coat. Yet in the place she is going to it is snowing. The whole sky is full of six-cornered floating flowers. She is walking gently, taking into her eyes all the scenery along the way. ‘Fragrant Grassland,’ the name of the place, appears in her mind. But in reality the place in front of her is seeing falling temperatures. When I was young, I had similar experiences several times. Every time I forgot to bring proper clothes. Now that woman is far away, and her figure from behind does not appear that confident.”

  “Fragrant Grassland! Fragrant grassland in a snowstorm?” she suddenly shouted.

  At the same time he found himself in the middle of a crowded square. Many familiar faces passed by without expres
sions.

  Somewhere Ru Shu was saying excitedly, “I’m the puzzle inside the puzzle!”

  He knew what emphasis she made with her vigorous charcoal pen. He could also see her lonely destiny. He did not pity her, but let her go her own way. The narrative about that woman had started before they moved into the room in the corridor. For a long time, Ru Shu would toss and turn in bed, placing her fevered head on his bosom, and then she would lead into that story. According to her that woman was everywhere. She wrapped her head in a kerchief with colorful patterns. She would appear from a dark doorway and she would travel through every big street and small lane. She had been to Ru Shu’s room. Quietly she sat by the desk and one page after another she turned through an old book, her ears pricked up with caution.

  “Every time I removed the clutter from the desk, there was always one book that appeared punctually. In the light, her hair was shining, and it was even thicker than mine.”

  She asked him to recall from which day the story about that woman started. And he answered that it seemed to have started from that day when the camellia blossom withered away. That day they were circling around and around in the mountains carving their names in the bamboo. They didn’t return to their house until very late. She was so sad that she couldn’t go to sleep the whole night through. Sitting up she told him the story touchingly. She said that the woman had disappeared thirty years ago. Sitting by the window she finished reading one letter, then she walked out and disappeared amidst a vast sea of men. Left over on the windowsill were two glasses, one blue, one white, with tea marks inside.

  “Thirty years is not that long,” Ru Shu tried hard to explain patiently. “That woman would come every day because she belonged to a kind of eternity. Time had long ago stopped for her. Is it kind of dull to talk about this?”

  She became very nervous and stared at the doorway. She was waiting for the knock on the door.

  A STRANGE KIND OF BRAIN DAMAGE

  There does indeed exist a strange kind of brain damage. I have a friend who is a housewife in her thirties. When she talks with others, her left eye will not stop blinking.

  One morning several years ago, this friend stopped at my door to tell me, “I’m suffering from some kind of illness. Unfortunately, nobody has noticed this. May I call this illness a form of brain damage? In my opinion, this is a special kind of affliction.”

  She leaned close to me and began fervently to describe her symptoms. More exactly, she was describing her daily routine. To be honest, I heard nothing unusual or even interesting in her discourse. She was the virtuous wife of a husband who had an impressive income, and she had two sons. Her family had attained a middle-class standard of living. These were things I had already known for a long time. I was puzzled by the effort she put into detailing that which was commonly known.

  “Maybe you feel that life is empty?” I tried to sound her out. At that moment, she was in the middle of her chatter about some trivia, such as shopping in the vegetable market, stopping on her way to have a pair of shoes repaired, and bargaining with the shoe repairer.

  “Please don’t interrupt me!” Her eyes flashed at me angrily, and her speech rushed on like running water. At long last, after she finally brought her story to the end of her prolonged day when she crawled under her quilt to enter dreamland, she turned her head toward me and remembered my question.

  “Please blink both eyes, old friend, if you think you understand my words. Perhaps you want to render some judgment about it, but you would be seriously mistaken! What did I say? Who can respond to the deeper meaning of what I say? I have a disease, not epilepsy but rather a kind of brain damage. My symptoms are invisible. Only through my tone can you sense them. This is why I have wanted to tell you all these things. I want to ask you if you understand.”

  Of course I did not understand. In fact, I did not think she had any particular tone. Her narration, again, did not exceed the ordinary. If I had to name some characteristics, I could only say that her talk was a bit overelaborated and too insipid.

  “In fact I feel very nervous,” she said. “Who can explain my illness? Nobody would believe my story. But one day I did experience an attack of the illness. The cause was a scarf belonging to the woman next door. It was a very cold day, and early in the morning it started to snow. When I noticed the figure of my female neighbor, I ran to my window to watch. As I expected, she was wearing that damned green scarf again.

  “I had had an argument with her the day before, criticizing her for wearing that irritating thing. She fought back ferociously, and even suspected that I was jealous. Anyway, she felt that I was not behaving normally. I felt very regretful after the argument. Closing my door, I screamed and even smashed a thermos bottle.

  “I had happened to see her from the window that morning, so I ran out and jumped on her, trying clumsily to pull her scarf away. She let loose a torrent of curses, even using insulting terms like ‘whore.’ She was much stronger than I. With one swing of her arm, she threw me to the ground. Then she left me there in a rage. From that moment, I diagnosed myself as a victim of brain damage. Of course the event of the scarf itself was not important. It only triggered the attack. I’ve had the illness all the time.

  “Just now I’ve described to you one day in my life. Haven’t you sensed any implications? Not at all? Oh, no, don’t think that I’m unhappy with my lifestyle. On the contrary, I’m very satisfied. I’m only a little disappointed that nobody can sense the subtle implications in my tone. People interpret my words according to their own standards.

  “I’ve had only the one attack—the fight with the woman next door. Of course, nobody saw it, and that fool would never be able to figure out what was going on. She thought I was jealous of her, meaning that I wanted to have an affair with her husband or something like that. I haven’t had an attack for a long time.”

  Suddenly she appeared bored. She yawned in my face and then left hastily.

  It was probably the third day after my friend told me about her illness that I suddenly remembered the story as I was passing by her house and decided to visit her.

  She was sitting at the desk writing something. When I entered, she only raised her head briefly and greeted me coldly. Then she continued her writing, her pen moving with lightning speed. I glanced at the notebook and discovered that she was not writing words, but some mysterious symbols. After ten minutes or so, she put down her pen and uttered a long sigh of relief.

  “You think that I’m boasting?” She studied me carefully, and her glance made me very uncomfortable. “Contrary to everyone’s expectation, my being ill is true. I’m a practical person with extremely logical reasoning in life. You’re the one who deliberately mystifies the situation.” Her tone sounded pedestrian and dull.

  “Why do you say so?”

  “For example, you mentioned something about life being empty that day. You tried to locate the source of my illness somewhere in the external. You distorted things to justify yourself. You even pretended to be a psychologist. Isn’t that an urban, petit bourgeois frame of mind? When you came in just now, I was wondering whether I had wanted to have an affair with the husband of that stupid woman. Nobody could prove it either way. If I didn’t want the affair, what did I want? The only thing certain is that I smashed my own thermos bottle. I’ve never even met that fellow, the husband. But that’s unimportant; the important thing is that I saw the green scarf, which led to my crazy behavior. I’m the only person in this whole world who went nuts over that scarf. Okay, so it’s done, and I don’t want to mention it again.

  “Haven’t you seen that I am sinking into a narrow trap? You still haven’t? My illness is something like congenital heart disease, but it’s not fatal. I feel it frequently. I’ve described to you my daily routine. Of course you didn’t understand me. Who does? I’m too tired of the confusion, so I’d better stop right now. Let me tell you something in the form of a story: There’s a certain person in a good family and living a comfortable life.
However, she has one slight defect—a rare illness which is going to develop day by day. Yet it will never be fatal. Don’t misunderstand me, and definitely don’t make any inferences, because everything is contrary to common sense. That’s the end of the story. You’ll be surprised when I tell you that I’m willing to deteriorate from the illness. I would be horrified if one day I felt any sign of recovery, Every day I wait anxiously for that feeling of the onset of the severe illness. I’ve told you that I’m feeling tense. Thank God, I’m not waiting in vain.”

  After she finished her talk, my friend chuckled. Pointing at the closed door behind her, she whispered to me, “Recently an old fellow has been living with us. He’s a ridiculous guy, full of ambition to chase after petty advantages. I can’t explain problems like that. Right now I’m planning how to chase him away. Can you help me with some ideas?”

  I frowned. Immediately she pulled her face straight and said, “Please stop being sanctimonious! I’ve told you I’m a practical person, I might even be very vulgar, or maybe snobbish. Don’t ever have any illusions about me!”

  The door suddenly swung open, and a panic-stricken old man appeared in the doorway. Of course, he was the woman’s father. He stared at us for a long time while licking his palms comically. My friend made a mad dash toward him, shoved him into the inner room with a curse, “Goddam it!” and slammed the door. Then she opened her outstretched hands and declared with desperation, “You see, I’m having another attack.”

  By chance, I met this father on my way home from work. The old man told me that she was not really as snobbish as she said. She had been treating him very well and showed a daughterly respect, except that she was hot tempered. “But recently, a great change had occurred. She’s started telling everybody that she is ill. Is this merely some excuse?” The old man looked around nervously and added quickly, “I don’t think she is ill at all! Only those who let rats run free are mentally troubled. But she is raising two huge black cats with care. This shows how good our household is. Can you tell me why she would want to kick me out? Can you tell me?”