Can Xue - The Embroidered Shoes

When he awoke he noticed many bloody finger marks on the wall put there by her the day before. At the time, he hadn’t noticed, but after one day the blood marks had turned a bit black. They looked like leeches crawling on the wall, making him uneasy. Watching those leeches — her masterpiece — he remembered she had always been against him, and she was always mysterious in her ways. Nobody could predict what she was going to do in the next minute. With her back toward him and her face toward the wall, she said in a harsh voice, “People like me had better hide themselves in order not to upset people.” He turned her face back and saw an expression similar to that of a little deer being chased. He was so touched that he almost cried out. That time they stayed together for three days without leaving each other for one minute. At dusk, they would open the window and watch the sunset. Standing at the window hugging tightly against each other, they exchanged breath. She even leapt into the air naughtily. Every time she did so, he would be so frightened that his face turned pale and he would pull her down tightly. In the short three days, she forgot about things like the craft paper. She was jumping up and down and saying crazy things. Perhaps it was because both of them were young at the time, and also they were confused by the emotion caused by pity. That was the longest time she stayed. It was so long that he even had some illusion that she would stay forever. But, of course, this result was not to be.

Later on they could no longer share such intimate talk. Instead, they would talk vaguely and exchange evasive glances. When they met on the street, they would greet each other with some obscure gesture the same way she did in front of the grocery store. This method was decided on by her, and he went along with it. It appeared that they had a tacit understanding, but in reality they were very distant. Even at the climax of making love, the feeling was vague and ambiguous as if they were thousands of mountains and thousands of rivers apart. It was totally different from lovemaking with other women when he was young. Every time when it was finished he would be overwhelmed by an infinite confusion, his head feeling as if a bird’s nest had grown there. At those moments he meant to dash out and chase her, yet he had no confidence whatsoever. Finally he would drop the idea. It was not because of his self-esteem, but just because he felt it would be in vain.

As she got older, her tone and glances became colder, and their distance and grievances grew deeper until they began holding grudges against each other. Once she revealed to him that their present situation was the best, exactly what she wanted, because it reflected the truth of their relationship. If they were, instead, to do nothing but stand at the window enjoying the setting sun, she would have to jump down and never return. However, such a relationship was horrifying to him. He couldn’t remember how many times he had sneaked into the morgues of those hospitals to check the corpses, feeling exhausted from anxiety and fear. And he never dared to doze off in the morgues because there was always a red-eyed cat glaring at him fiercely. The days of waiting were endless spiritual torture because there were no lines or color there, just complete emptiness. It was during that period that his mouthful of strong teeth started to loosen.

Then an odd thing happened — she bit a small piece of flesh from his arm. According to her, she did it unintentionally, and she promised that nothing similar would happen in the future. The wound was not deep and healed quickly, leaving only a tiny scar. But whenever he thought of it he shivered with fear. When he inquired as to where the flesh that she bit off went, she replied that she had swallowed it. When she said that, she appeared furious, sending a chill up his spine. Yet he missed her every minute, every second, even missed the long bench by the fence on the lawn. It was there that she sat in the open air and gave him that magnificent talk. Besides there was that warm, sliding sun, the rising warmth from the earth, making him mistake her for a fine young maiden. She had forgotten all that long ago. Whenever he raised the issue later on, she appeared bored. Using her strong index finger, she would make a decisive gesture to stop his story. “I was only waiting for a boat there,” she would say shortly and drily. He couldn’t help feeling very indignant.

It was fairly recently that she had gone to extremes in her appearance. In the past, she had never paid much attention to her appearance. Yet she always dressed simply and comfortably. Her clean underwear gave off a fine fragrance. But recently she had put on a set of extremely ugly men’s clothes and refused to change. They had become dirtier and dirtier, shabbier and shabbier. She even boasted about them, saying they were so convenient. In the past, time spent washing clothes was nothing but trouble for her, and so on. Then she would say that since she could no longer smell the odor of the dirty clothes, why should she spend time pursuing formalities? It was even acceptable that she would not take a bath from now on. The only reason she kept taking baths and washing her hair was as a compromise with his strange habits, despite the fact that she felt they were vulgar. This took place in the third month after she cut her finger. They saw each other at the dock. Both appeared a little bit wan and sallow, a little bit melancholy. He told her he had heard someone knocking at the window of his apartment late at night. Could it have been her?

“That’s impossible. When I’m outside I never think of you. You’ve known for a long time that I don’t have a memory.” She wrinkled her nose slightly. “Can you guess if I have just returned or am planning to leave? An eternal puzzle.” She pointed at the passing boats and asked him to look. The river appeared vast and endless with boats floating as if in outer space.

He did not answer her question because he knew it had no answer. It was she who had told him that. Lowering his head, he saw that her bare feet wearing the sandals had turned a bit rough.

“Shall we return to the apartment?” he asked.

“No,” she said harshly. “From now on let’s see each other here. It’s very convenient for both of us. Of course, there’s no way for me to arrange the date ahead of time. You’ll just have to come often and see if I’m here. That shouldn’t be too difficult.” Arrogantly she threw back her short hair, putting her hands into her wide pockets.

“I turned over a person’s ear, and I saw that mole,” he said. “At the moment I was in a unique situation.”

“There are such cheap marks everywhere,” she sneered in contempt. “Now you’d better go. Let me see you disappear among the crowd.”

“It’s you who has raised the issue.”

“It’s possible that I have said so. Don’t always remember. You should forget along the way. Why don’t you go?”

At that moment a gray boat was anchoring. She raised her long legs and boarded the ship. This time she did not look back. The boat gradually sailed away as if it were departing into the vast universe.

But he knew there was a thread linking him with that boat. He turned around and walked away. At every step he felt his chest being pulled at painfully by that thread. At the same time, that triangle in his mind’s eye was shooting out gold sparks.

The Little Gold Ox

There’s frost outside. One sniff of the glistening air tells me that. Frosty mornings always create discord among people. I inhale deeply and smile quietly. Then I chuckle unexpectedly, giving out the queer “heh-heh” that I often find myself producing lately. The frigid, discordant wind rattles the window frame repeatedly. In the clear sky floats a ball of red silk thread, spinning and bobbing, up and down, circling around. I can’t get the window open. I know that the bright sunlight is only a deception — the bitter cold would freeze my nose. “I have a very sensitive nose,” I say to myself, nodding firmly and staring out at the frozen earth.