Can Xue - The Embroidered Shoes

“I have to say something,” the owner of the house announces. At that moment I smell the fragrance of a cigarette. “It’s about him. He wears a black garment and a black hat. Even his leg wrappings are black. He appeared on the street of the town as if he were an ancient bandit. Some people passed right in front of him without even noticing him. Others spied on him secretly from those shuttered windows. Both sides of the street were completely lined with barbershops. Inside sat many customers waiting to have their hair cut. Some of them appeared to be in high spirits. Nobody knew where all the barbers had gone. The customers did not notice the black-clothed person. Those who spied on him behind the windows were all pedestrians who had noticed him and had sneaked into the barbershops quickly, hiding themselves behind the curtains. The sun was burning, and he was soaked with sweat. Stretching his arms, he appeared to be driving something away. Those who were hidden observed, with pale faces, the performance of that black-jacketed man. Without anybody pushing him, he fell down. A large number of people swarmed out and circled him.

“‘Send him home!’ ordered one of those who had been hidden.

“‘Right! Send him home!’ all those that surrounded him agreed.

“Just don’t think about things like the dawn. Then you can harmonize yourself with the house. The sky will never lighten. Once you keep this rule in mind, you will feel comfortable. It’s because he was too listless that the original owner jumped into the sea from the cliff behind the house and became a fisherman. Every day I listen here, and I can always hear him struggling in the stormy sea. You and I do not belong to the sea below, we two. You knew the answer long ago. The original owner’s skill as a sailor was not very good. He was good at building a house. Therefore, his boat running into the rocks is unavoidable.”

Quietly he returns to his own room.

As soon as I heard the owner telling me that below the cliff is the sea, I started to feel an irrational attraction to that imaginary world below. I don’t know how long I’ve been staying in this house. I can’t keep track because I don’t have my watch with me and it’s always so dark. Also, my lighter has long since run out of fluid. Whenever I feel bored, I chat with the owner about the sea. And every time, he hands me a cup of lukewarm water and smokes his cigarette. He always starts the conversation with this sentence: “The little boat of the original owner has arrived…” Every time, I object: “But the original owner is dead, isn’t he? He ran his boat onto the rocks.” At that moment he smiles, and the red glow of his cigarette flashes. Paying no attention to my objection, he continues this talk: “Upon its departure I went to see the boat off. On the boat there was only one fisherman. I heard that he died of old age later on. Then the owner himself became the fisherman. He never fished. Instead he only picked up seaweed and such things to fill his stomach. Afterward his face gradually turned blue.”

With some understanding, I say, “We two are living above. We never turn on the light. So it’s almost as if we don’t exist, isn’t that so? Even if the original owner passed by below, he would never notice the house above him. It’s very possible that he once mistook this lump of black shadow as a tree. Calmly he must have glanced at it and immediately turned his glance away.”

After a while, without knowing it, I join the discussion. We talk so eagerly that we feel uncomfortable when we lapse into silence. But once we say something, we immediately feel that we are too talkative. Time passes like this. Of course, there is no clock, and the dawn never comes. The owner of the house says that before long I will be acclimated to the fact that there is no seasonal change. He also says we cannot use the content of our talk as the basis to sort out the years, months, or days because we forget completely about our talks the next day. Besides, the little boat itself is fictitious and it’s meaningless except for filling our need to divert ourselves from boredom.

When we feel tired from talking, we doze off separately. Upon waking, I remember fragments of what happened in the past. I remember that I found that trail from the very beginning, the single little trail toward the grassland. Although I have walked on that trail hundreds of times, I still have to look for it every time, though I never put much effort into looking for it. But what happened next is vague. It seemed that a flamingo was chasing me desperately. I was not afraid of it, yet he could never catch up to me. He ran always in the same position, as if held in place by a magnetic stone. I’m wondering if the small trail that I have used hundreds of times is really the only way to reach here. Since in my original memory this house is located at the end of a stretch of grassland with its back toward the mountain, there should be several ways, from several different directions, to reach here. For example, one could come down from the mountain, or from the south or west of the grassland. Who’s to say that there’s no path in those places? Once in the dim light I really saw a human figure in the west and I believe I was not mistaken. Would the flamingo come again?

But now the owner of the house firmly eliminates all the possibilities. He insists that there is a deep abyss behind the house, and that there has never been grassland in front of the house — just the rolling sand and stones. But how did I come here? According to him, this was only a chance incident. The so-called grassland and the banana groves are nothing but illusions that I made for myself. At the beginning there was a trail behind the house, the trail where he saw me off. But after several big explosions the trail has been blocked by mud and sand. The original owner of the house had calculated the odds before he chose this location to build his house. It is usual for people to pass by this location accidentally. In the past, many people have passed by the house by chance as I did. He received them politely and saw them off at the corner. Nobody noticed anything abnormal. But my forcing my way in this time was something unexpected. That was why he was a little bit upset at the beginning, though now he feels okay.

I insist on looking at the pigeons at the back of the house. I say that we should feed the little creatures. With a sneer, he agrees reluctantly. But he says we’ll have to go through the tunnel in the kitchen to get to the cliff at the back of the house. In such a place it is enough for a person to stretch out her head and have a glance. He can’t imagine why I have the idea that there would be pigeons in such a place. Besides, how could I ever get to the kitchen? I might entertain such fantasies, but once I tried to actually move, I would fall to the ground.

Although I am living in a room apart from the owner’s, his existence is a comfort for me. My skeptical mind has gradually calmed down. Every time I awake I hear the owner’s greeting: “So, you’re up.” In the darkness I put on my clothes and then sit in the living room with the owner every day without exception. When we have nothing to talk about, we sit in silence. I don’t feel particularly listless, just a little bit bored.

There’s one kind of guard that can hardly be called a guard. Those who belong to this category do nothing but sit at the foot of the bare mountains, month after month, year after year, until they forget their own existence. In the silence, the sound of a branch can be heard, broken by the wind, knocking against the trunk, one blow after another. I call such people guards. Why? Maybe I’m using the term as an excuse to fill the utter emptiness in my own heart, or maybe I consider it a real explanation.”