Can Xue - The Embroidered Shoes

“I’d like to tell Mother something,” I said.

“Your mother,” he rolled his huge eyeballs with difficulty, trying to recall something. “She is not a reliable thing. Don’t trust such a thing easily.” He jumped high on one foot, spilling all of the sand out of the pot. “I’ve been sleeping in the cotton fiber. It’s so quiet there, and no rats, either. How long have you been suffering from sleepwalking? It’s certainly a painful ailment. I once had it, too. Now about Sunglasses, you don’t need to guard against him, but treat him nicely. That guy is my friend. When dawn comes, we wander around, and at night, we sleep in the cotton fiber. One day when the Chinese scholar tree blossomed all in white, I squatted down at the corner of the street. Taking off my vest, I scratched myself as much as I could — I hadn’t had a bath for the whole winter. Later on, I noticed somebody else squatting there. That was him, he was scratching also. Together we listened to the humming of the mosquitoes, and our bodies felt all warmed up.”

The door banged open. “I just can’t wash my hair.” My third sister stood between father and me, with her hands on her hips and her hair let down. “Every time I wash my hair, my head gets light and drifty, like a balloon, and floats away from my neck. You simply cannot experience such a thing, no way! I’m just wasting my time.” She sat heavily on the bedside, a hook from her bra strap unfastened. “Who understands my sorrow? In the blue sky, there flies a yellow weasel! Ah? Ah?…” She sang and panted in an odd tone and spat on the floor.

“She has an enlarged cervical vertebra.” Father’s nose wrinkled up. He threw something at the foot of the bed.

“Father?”

“Your mother will come and eat it. Do you know why your mother hides herself? She’s trying to avoid rats. Last time I threw down a piece of cooked meat with maggots in it, but she ate it happily. Her stomach is rumbling with hunger. She eats everything I throw down. You may try, too!” Tightening his pants, he let out the aged, shrunken, smooth left leg. Then he threw his canvas bag onto his shoulder. With high spirits, he said, “I’m going to the green mountains today!”

I could hear him whistling outside the window.

Finally, I told Mother the story about the summer. I repeated it again and again, my face turning purple. Mother appeared half listening, smiling indulgently. With a bare foot she scratched her tightened calf muscle.

“That’s right, when the sun rises, I will turn into a fat hen.” In that instant, her pupils seemed to be melting. “The whole day, I squat in the woodpile under the eaves. Little children come and throw cobblestones at me. Eventually, one of them will break my spine.” She suddenly stood up, her eyes turned left and right in an equivocal way. “Now I need to change my approach completely. I have displayed fortitude and resolution. Just now I have broken a window. You all believe that I’ve been kept in the dark, don’t you? You, every one of you, what are you crying for underneath your quilts? Every day, just look at your swollen eyelids. I’m also making my own plans. You can’t see through me, but you think you can do everything your own way now! That’s why you’re jabbering such nonsense to me.”

Since a certain day, Mother had started to frighten us. She hid herself on purpose, yet she was present everywhere — underneath the bed, on top of the cupboard, behind the kitchen door, inside the cistern. Her deformed shadow drifted all over the place. The shadow was fat, swollen, purple in color, and smelled moldy. As a result, we walked quietly and spoke in whispers. Often when I was talking in Father’s ear, she screamed, as if she were about to jump out. It scared the wits out of us. Yet when we looked around, she was nowhere to be found. And the scream was from the radio. At other times, she giggled in the shadow instead of screaming. The sound raised goose bumps on our bodies. My third sister was the first to burn out. Struggling out of her fits of hysteria, she searched for our missing mother, with a spade on her shoulder. At those moments, her face was purple, her neck stiff; she looked valiant and spirited. The base of the walls inside the house, the stove, and everything else had all been dug into a mess.

The day I suddenly realized that Mother had disappeared from this house forever, father was putting on his leg wrappings. “I’m going to the green mountains to fish for two months,” he told me in high spirits. His cheeks were flushed with excitement.

“What shall we do about Mother?” I asked abruptly.

“I’ve raised a poisonous snake in the bushes. It comes out whenever I call it. Are you interested? We can catch locusts together.”

“There’s a poisonous snake I raised right under my bed.” Mother’s sharp voice resounded in the shadows.

Taking up his canvas bag, Father dashed out of the house like a young boy, his bag flopping against his skinny hips. “Two months!” he shouted back to me, raising two fingers, while running away.

I heard a suspicious sound behind me. When I turned around, I saw my third sister smashing her spade down on the dark spot where Mother’s voice could be heard. A string of yellow sparks leapt from the cement.

“The buttons on that thing must be almost all gone, am I right?” I suddenly remembered.

My third sister never took me seriously. Dripping with black sweat, she was digging enthusiastically at the cement, her nostrils flared. “I’ve been sleeping too long. So I need to stretch my body a little,” she defended herself. “You’ve been imagining that the house is collapsing. It’s so vague. Why can’t you think of something else? I can’t understand how you’ve become such a misanthrope. Such people make me sick, sick.” At noon, she had her nap half naked. She lay on her bed convulsing, stinking saliva dripping from her mouth. She usually slept like this until dusk and refused to have supper. When Father was home, he would peep into her open door, poke out his tongue and say, “What a miracle and wonder inheritance can play! Following the rule, what kind of decisive turning point will occur?” After such a remark, he felt he had somehow qualified himself to grab all the food in the house and take it away in his travel bag.

One rainy day, a soaking wet man staggered in. Wiping rainwater from his face, he bawled down to mother’s shadow in the corner, addressing her in a shrill voice: “Hi, Mom!” Like a gust of wind, my third sister dashed over and wrapped him in a huge bath towel that had black spots on it. She rubbed and rubbed until his lips turned red and his eyeballs bloodstained. Then she fell to the floor and cried out, “It’s awful to have a fiancé!” Then she suddenly became so muscular that she could carry the whole bundle wrapped inside the towel all the way to the bed. Carefully she put the bundle down, covered it with a quilt, and patted him to sleep.

“Its so uncomfortable to have a doctor at home.” Mother’s head stretched out like that of a snake.

“Who’s that?”

“Sunglasses, of course. I knew long ago that Sunglasses was her fiancé. Now her illness will be healed. Such an awkward illness. Such things are totally strange.” She drifted back beneath the bed.

“How could it be that the fence turns green? I’ve lost my stethoscope.” The fiancé was groaning inside the bath towel. “The room is high in temperature. That’s good. I feel sleepy when it’s hot.”

After the heavy rain, our house was full of spiderwebs. The slightest move would cause them to billow into one’s eyes. My third sister was jumping about chasing spiders. Torn webs wafted all over the place.

“Oh, her youthful vitality.” The fiancé opened one eye to enjoy the scene. “In my place, I have all sorts of insects. In the full of night, when I was wandering around outside, one of the insects must have sneaked into my bedding. This has occupied my mind, and I cry my heart out for that.”