The Embroidered Shoes

by Can Xue

  It dawned on me that he belonged to the same type. The doctor told me that he was in fact not a detective but was only pretending to be one. Since he had to pretend to be something, he felt he was suited for posing as a detective. That was the only reason he did it. Yet when he was pretending, he did not feel at all happy. On the contrary, he was a little bit sad, because he was a man with deep emotions. Outsiders were mistaken to think he was indulging himself in the play. “Sometimes, I hate myself so much that I want to peel the skin off my cheek!” While saying this, he patted his chest bravely and continued, “Human beings should have their own personality!” His voice resounded in the air.

  My situation worsened after the talk with the doctor. I always saw those little huts. At every doorway, there was a square table painted black. In a dish on the table was placed a heap of areca nuts. A huge black cat was snoring on each table. There seemed to be a pale woman bending over to tie her shoes. For a long time she tied, untied, then tied again. Finally she gave up. Her long silk stockings fell to her ankles. Waving her hand, she called me in. Then she whispered in my ear, “Close your eyes.” She spat the dregs of the nuts in my face, one mouthful after another.

  “The hunchback is putting up a last-ditch struggle.” She listened attentively for a while, then waved her hand with confidence. “Just listen, the panting is horrifying. There are some people who are born being chased by terrible creatures. They can never escape. In their haste, they crash into the wall. I saw the hunchback pass by once after he hit the wall. The blood from his nose covered his face. In my whole life, I escaped just once. At the time, I was feeling relaxed. So I closed the door and made my bed for a rest. Suddenly a hand stretched in through the window. Whose hand was it? White and soft, it was the broken hand of a child! It waved at the window, making all kinds of gestures. Therefore, there was no use to run. My experience told me that instead of running, I could close my eyes and sink deep into a black pond. The days that I have passed so far have been very vague. I often feel depressed. Then I have the desire to look into a mirror. And talking about my mirror, there are some spots on it that can never be cleaned. Why?”

  She opened a trunk and showed me a pair of worn boots. “Hey, my speech isn’t clear, is it? That’s because I have a little lump of areca underneath my tongue. I started doing that more than thirty years ago. At the time I had the ambition to break a world record. That was a good day. As soon as I woke up that morning I thought ‘Today is a good day.’ Chinese ilex was rustling outside and lovely red locusts were resting on my mosquito net. Opening the door, I found that thing was flying all over the sky, rustle, rustle, the red light flashing, and numerous people were rolling naked in the mud waving sticks. In the past thirty years or more, I have never seen those people again. That’s why I keep the areca in my mouth. My will power is remarkable. Purposefully I sit in front of my house with areca in my mouth casting my frowns on passersby. Occasionally on autumn nights, I see butterflies all over the mountain. They emerge in an endless stream. It could be frightening if you were encircled by them tightly. You might be driven crazy by those little creatures. Nobody understands me when I talk to the passersby about those butterflies. I can’t make my speech clearer, all because of the areca.”

  Suddenly a spasm shot through my left hand. I realized with surprise that I had been coming to this woman’s house for the past several months to listen to her talk about her creative use of areca. And I had seen that pair of old boots at least fifty times. Every time I smelled the familiar foul odor. It dawned on me that I was having amnesia. It could be that I was not only suffering from amnesia, but also having a fantasy of creating a new record, just like that woman. That’s the whole reason I searched around in shuffling slippers. I always went to the same house, yet failed to recognize that same moldy hostess. Instead, I mistook her for a stranger. Then I let her rattle on and on, only feeling regret afterward, and realizing that the hostess never changed. Yet the woman was not going to give up her talking. Her thick lips touched my neck and puffed out a sticky whitish air.

  The days I spent with the detective (or doctor) ran in endless hot pursuit of each other. One day when I was washing my feet, my knee joint made a funny noise. With a bang, the detective fell down from the ceiling. Rolling on the ground, he snatched my shoes and ran away. The water in my basin was splashed everywhere. He had another ability—to hook himself onto flat objects, onto the ceiling or the underside of the bed, or onto the eaves. God knows how he managed to stick himself firmly onto those places. I guess he had suction discs on his body—at least three of them. His body had become lighter and lighter. He moved as if he were drifting in the air. I thought he might forget about walking and grow wings like a sparrow if this tendency continued to develop. My brother had been suffering from neuro-gastritis ever since he noticed the game between the detective and me. He belched crazily at every meal, burping up all the rice and vegetables he had taken in. Once, as soon as he started such belching, I jumped up from the table and kicked away the dishes. Then I declared loudly, “I have found a fiancé.”

  “How dare you take such liberties!” Mother shook her head, chewing loudly on a mouthful of beans. “When I found your father, he was no more than a chicken thief.”

  “What kind of fiancé is it?” My brother put on an air of surprise by raising one eyebrow. He asked, “Is that the guy who cured your sickness? That man? I’ve investigated him extensively. The two arms in his sleeves are only two wires. That is to say, he has no arms whatsoever.”

  “In fact,” I cleared my throat and stated word by word, “it’s that old garbage collector.” Watching mother collapse, showing the whites of her eyes, I continued, “We’re birds of a feather. We’ve been cherishing the same ideals and following the same path for a long time.”

  At that pronouncement, Mother choked on the beans in her mouth. Later on she was sent to the hospital to get the beans out. Hardly had she arrived home from the hospital than she punctured herself with her needles. Her body looked like a toad.

  The first time the straw toy appeared at the window, I was having an attack of malaria. That creature was a man with a longish face. He looked funny with his mouth frothing and eyes glaring with rage. In the dark of night, rats were tearing at something. Turning on my light, I entered Mother’s room. I saw her twisting madly in her bed, her pillows and blankets flying everywhere. As soon as she paused, the bed dripped with water. There was a small puddle underneath already. I imagined her having so much sweat in her body that she appeared to be melting. On the hill outside resounded a strange whistling sound. It came and went, whizzing in at one moment and quieting down at another.

  “What wind is this?” The detective and I were squatting under a cotton rose tree, our teeth chattering.

  “The sound of rats,” I said with a suffocating voice, something pressing my chest.

  The wind swept back and forth on the waste hill.

  “Let’s get married—it’s neat and tidy.” When he said this, his teeth chattered louder. I felt that all his organs were breaking.

  Heavy, threatening footsteps could be heard. The shadow of the old woman reflected in the window.

  “Of course you don’t believe I’m a real being. You have a skeptical, indifferent attitude toward my existence,” he said, still squatting motionlessly. “Not long ago, you told your brother while hiding behind the door that I was nothing but a product of the collective imagination. Everybody refused to expose the fact on purpose and pretended to be on guard, because they didn’t want to appear ridiculous. I don’t think you can deny that there’s something between us. For example, we are squatting here together. That in itself indicates something. Your corridor is horrifying. One night when I opened the door, I could hear screaming and shouting from a battle pouring out like a flood. What magnificent things were happening in that dim light?”

  That night, we whispered like two mosquitoes in the darkness under the cotton rose tree. The next morning, when I looked in t
he mirror, I could see scratches from the branches on my face.

  “Mother, I want to get married.”

  “The cannas under the cotton rose were all trampled,” she said in a flat tone, while digging in her ear with a hairpin. “Such zeal is frightening. At that time your father was not more than a chicken thief. That is to say, the matter is obvious.”

  I shouldn’t have let that person stay at our house. For that reason, the old garbage collector hanged himself unaccountably. He hanged himself on our doorframe like a dried up locust. I had fallen into my own trap. After this happened, Father started to laugh every day, covering his mouth. There was a festival atmosphere in the family. Purposefully, Father and Brother would talk some nonsense in loud voices, such as “Hey, say, has that gourd you planted borne diamonds?” “Look, while I was asleep, three cats bit my ear during the night!” And so on. These conversations would end up in their nipping at each other merrily like dogs.

  When he came, he crept in like a mantis, clutching a roll of rotten cotton wadding. Stroking his sparse beard, father sniffed cautiously at the cotton while clamping onto his arm.

  “Hey, you, young chap, what’s your attitude toward family and marriage?” Father pestered him, his leg sweeping out in a secret attempt to trip him flat unexpectedly.

  At that particular moment, I wished he were a moth or something so he could crawl to the ceiling and scare the shit out of them, just as he usually scared me. But this weakling had already lost his ability at transformation. Instead, he could only keep quiet and crawl on the ground with his back bent low.

  “Pah!” Mother spat at him. She kicked his cotton wadding so hard that it rolled into the corridor. He followed it rapidly and opened it up. Then he lay there on his stomach.

  At first, he was completely quiet. But as soon as people dropped their guard, he started to sneak into the house, making a peculiar sound. It was such a faint yet sharp pulsation that people felt there was something sinister going on. Once a classmate of mine came for a visit. After she sat for a while, her face began to show surprise. She stood up and peeped out. Immediately, I knew what was happening. I coughed loudly, inquired how she managed to cure the tinea on her scalp, and asked her for a prescription. She tried to calm down. Stretching her neck, she struggled to neglect the annoyance. Then she appeared more restless, or even angry. She walked around the room, looking here and there, complaining that I was treating her rudely. Finally, she stamped her feet and called me a shameless liar. Waving her fist threateningly, she left the house. As soon as she was out, I went wild. I kicked down the cupboard and knocked over the tables and chairs, charging toward every possible hiding place. I dug for a long time, my cheeks red with fury, my bent nails carved deep into my flesh. Yet I could find nothing. The noise was everywhere, yet it was invisible. Touching my forehead, I found a smooth bald spot.

  My classmate lived on the third floor. She, too, was a mysterious figure. Since she was thirteen, she had been eating a kind of tiny insect called sea ox. At the beginning, it was said that it was for curing the ailment in her eyes, then for curing hemorrhoids. In short, she had illnesses all over her body. Consequently, her pockets were full of the insects. They frequently crawled out and dropped to the ground. “Some people tried to take the treatment, yet they failed to stick it out. How can any treatment be effective without consistency? I have been persistent for six years,” she told me upon her high-school graduation. At present I go to visit her about once a month. She is a small skinny person, always lying sick in a huge wardrobe. (Inside she has put a chair for sleeping that is made of cane.) The glass door of the wardrobe is always tightly closed. I can’t figure out how she can breathe in there. When I come to visit, she asks me to sit in the middle of the room, while she herself remains in the wardrobe. We talk through the glass door. Even with her light weight, she has cracked the cane chair and broken the two back legs.

  “Poignant memories!” She always ends her comments with this. Then she stares at her pale, transparent fingers, raising them and turning them around in the light. So far as I remember, she can only talk about one subject, that is, how lonely and damp it is to live in a wardrobe and how bad the air is. According to her, she is disheartened and has given herself up as hopeless because of the bad living conditions inside the wardrobe. If only there were any hope, she would strive forward and do something extraordinary. But there is no hope, not even a hint of hope.

  Our break-up happened two months ago, when she discovered my relationship with the detective. I was combing my hair when she arrived. She gave me an angry stare and said between her teeth, “What a damp day it is today.” She threw something wrapped in a newspaper at me. Before I could recognize what it was, dozens of lumps appeared on my neck.

  “Don’t fancy that you can follow your inclination unchecked,” she declared in a shaking, angry voice. “Your dirty relationship has hurt others. Who has caused my present situation? Every night I bang the door of my wardrobe as loud as a cannon. I even swallow handfuls of salt. When you were squatting under the cotton rose tree, I shot at you with my air gun, you dirty pigs. Every day I risk breaking my heart. Oh, holy God, those withered cannas, those insatiably avaricious deeds. I’ve seen clearly from my window. Oh, Lord, please answer me if there is justice in this world! How can such despicable, shameless invasions of another’s personality be allowed? My room is so clean. I hang two scented bags at my window. I change them every day. Once in a while, I leave two peacock feathers in place of the bags. The effect is marvelous. But now everything is gone. Everything is destroyed completely. By whom? Two villains without any ambition, mean sordid merchants! You will be punished!” She was heartbroken and left beating her chest and stamping her feet.

  For more than a dozen days, I was unable to sleep. Instead, I hopped up and down on one leg till dawn, fighting with my life against an invisible little something. Eventually, my sprained feet swelled as big as buckets, and my body was completely mashed. I had to negotiate with the detective, intending to break our relationship.

  “Help, help!” Before I could open my mouth, he dashed over to open the door. His yell attracted all our neighbors.

  I closed the door and pushed it tight with my buttocks, asking why he was doing that.

  “Fleas!” He stamped with fury.

  “Fleas?”

  “Fleas, fleas! You broken clock collector (I can’t imagine why he called me such a nickname). Now I see that you’ve been hiding it all this time, pretending to be self-satisfied. Yesterday you were bitten while having a meal. You were so itchy, yet you only smiled lightly, saying it was nothing but a rash. I’ve been fooled by your family. How could I be so stupid? I get furious when I think about it. Oh, no, wait a minute. I’m not angry at all. I didn’t mean anything when I said I was furious. Now I’ve become completely detached. I’m going to live a pure life, resembling the birds flying in the blue sky.” Jumping up suddenly, he hung from the ceiling, swinging his legs back and forth. With a smile, he told me he was practicing some kind of breathing exercises, and he suggested that I try it, too.

  “This is something meaningful. Ever since I discovered the exercise, I realize that my body glows and is as light as a swallow. The roles I played in the past are no comparison, just children’s games. Your classmate is such an outstanding model. Once I saw her sitting motionlessly in the glass wardrobe. I was so touched that tears ran down my cheeks.” When he swung in front of me, he kicked heavily at my shoulder. “It could be that you have some kind of jealousy about my success? Can I change my natural disposition through a period of hard practice?”

  I advised him not to put on the disguise of a detective, because it was old-fashioned. He could have pretended to be, for instance, the night soil remover who lived on the fourth floor. That would have been more significant. After all, he was a human cleaner. He might have been spotted by others at the beginning. But that didn’t matter, after a time of hard practice.…

  “I’ve been pondering for two we
eks. And now I’ve decided to end our marital arrangement…” He swept through a beautiful dancing movement, stretching out his legs. “… so that both of us can start anew and live that meaningful, pure life. Just think, suddenly you can turn into a bird with spreading wings! Would you please not misunderstand me (he suddenly used “would” and “please” to me), and think that I will move out of your house. This is nonsense. I’ve made up my mind to stay on. I will build a bridge toward success through my diligence. I want to show you what a life with integrity is.” He made two forward rolls in one motion.

  A torrential rain came. Closing my eyes, I could see big raindrops bang on empty rusty iron barrels, creating a thundering sound. The white screen of rain blotted out both sky and land. There had been a similar downpour in April. The chickens blasted by the west wind fell to the ground one by one. A man with a black face and a straw hat was digging holes for planting trees. His hoe clanged against the granite. According to the old garbage collector, he could never drive those crows away on rainy days. They perched on the glistening sandy ground. They were so numerous that from a distance they looked like black spots on the ground. Their sad, shrill cries were soul stirring. My dream-walking spells got worse on rainy days. Day and night, I was constantly bothered by them. Whenever the attack came, I ran to the forest. In the woods, I smelled suffocating steam. The rainwater clinging to the leaves dropped onto my neck at one touch. There I always mistook the time outside as an April dusk. I always mistook the dusk’s grayish blue, inside which there was a big pile of sawed lumber.