Can Xue - The Embroidered Shoes

“But why did you make such a startling noise above us?” I asked him curiously. “Because of some inner fear?”

He hesitated. “The illness of your third sister bothers me day and night. It must be a very complicated syndrome.”

All of a sudden, I had a desire to chat with him. Tugging his ear, I told him: “Every night this apartment turns empty. Everybody hides. Even the doors and windows disappear. It simply turns into a sealed iron box. I wander about, bumping into all kinds of things. In anxiety, I kick the wall till my toenails swell up. My third sister, she must have hinted to you. She believes that I never get up at night. She points out that it is my scattered quilt that proves this. It seems you are not hearing me. Tell me, is there any sound from my mouth?”

“The room is awfully hot.” He was squint-eyed, his head hanging down, and he started to snore.

“You always tangle up everyone you meet like a beggar.” My third sister slapped my hand and blew on the reddened ear of her fiancé. She gave me an angry stare, while rubbing his hair, and then yelled, “Scram!”

For the next several days, she and her fiancé occupied the whole house. Early every morning, they drove me out. Closing the door behind me, they simply turned the house into a lunatic asylum. A broom came flying out of the window facing the street, then a bag of plum cores. Once the thing flying out was Sunglasses himself. He was all black and blue and cried, “Acute changes are going on in your sister’s body. Where did she get all that strength? Endocrinopathy is not a curable disease. The first time I saw her, she had bamboo leaves in her nostrils. That peddler selling popsicles yelled and yelled. It was so disgusting. My back was soaked with sweat, and my silk socks smelled…”

“It was summer,” I reminded him.

“True. It was summer. My affliction of foul-smelling feet was cured. Your third sister ordered me to wash with soda water every day. But now I feel nothing is meaningful.” Finally he observed me carefully. “Why can’t a serious person like you involve yourself in some business, such as collecting snakeskins? Every time you approach me, I feel uncertain about you. Your existence is a problem. It seems that you’ve made up your mind that you are stuck here, and you never think of getting into something positive, for instance, snakeskins. You are just too much at ease. After all, this is a disease of the reproductive system. Your family…”

Once I saw my father while I was wandering around. He dashed out from behind a big tree and ran across the street. He tossed his canvas bag into the air, scattering little fish and tiny shrimp all over the ground. With just one flash of his army-green leg wrapping, he disappeared completely. I ran over and picked up the fish and shrimp, but then I realized that the little creatures in my hands were actually green worms and ants.

“Have you discovered that Father is completely done?” My third sister bent her two short legs and leaned on a lamppost. She continued: “He pretends that nothing has happened. Wandering around the street, he appears talented and unconventional, but it’s a false image. I’ve experienced the disease of blockage in the urethra, so I know he is in great pain. We shake with laughter when we see him chatting with you in dead earnest about something like the green mountains. Every time he leaves the house, he sleeps in that run-down temple. There’s some straw in the corner, and other people also sleep there. In fact, at the moment when I first communicated my love to the doctor, he was staying there, too. Once when I went there, Father jabbered to me all day about a dogskin vest. Over and over he explained that the vest had fallen beneath the floor of our original house. It fell through a hole in the floor. He also said some kind of dog-shit mold grew there as big as a fist. The reason he was wandering about was to look for that vest. That green mountain, I can see, is only a symptom of urethra blockage.”

I walked into the collapsing temple, and saw several feral cats scurry away. Two black faces emerging from the straw pile told me that Father was no longer here. I understood that he had become too ashamed when he realized that I’d seen through his lies. I left the place in a hurry so he wouldn’t feel too embarrassed. Turning my head, to my surprise, I found him making faces at me through the window. “I’ve been in the green mountains all the time!” He pointed two fingers at me. I was at such a loss that I felt deeply disheartened.

“You traitor!” My third sister dashed over from across the street and blocked my way. “Why did you go to that old temple? Ah? Who gave you the right to act on your own? You’ve degraded all of us! Now that old guy is chuckling behind the window. He thought that we instructed you to go there, you fool. So now we have all become the laughingstock of others!” She punched me angrily, and all the seams on her blouse burst open.

I’d hidden a hammer at the corner of the house. When all were in their hiding places and everything had quieted down, I felt my way to the window by the dim light from the street. Opening the window, I spat ferociously into the darkness. I saw my sputum flash in a ray of light, until my mouth became numb. My hammer clanged against the brick wall and made a dull, muffled echo. A light from some house flashed once. Who couldn’t hear such deafening noise? Or could it be that my hand could never produce real sound? I hammered the whole night through, but in vain. In the morning I hid the hammer away in shame. My body ached all over. My third sister walked out of her bedroom, yawning. Her mouth smelled, She glared at me sneeringly, shrugged, and spat on the floor.

“Where has Mother gone?” I asked her with a straight face, wondering where she had emerged from.

My third sister jumped up with a scream in the middle of the room: “Stop your dirty tricks! You’re an odd one to put on the face of savior. It’s disgusting! You’re the one who’s sick! And you mistake me as the one! Who’s not clear about such things? In this corridor of ours, this disastrous passage, such soul-stirring changes are taking place, don’t you feel it? We’d be overjoyed if you left us! Yet you never leave; you’re stuck here…”

It was obvious that Mother had disappeared. Why should they remain so straight-faced and deny it? A living being should be seen and touched, yet mother could be neither of these. But whenever I raised the issue, they blew up. Their temper was definitely getting worse.

When I stepped into the kitchen, a large black figure emerged from the cistern. The soaking creature howled at me, “Look out!” It turned out to be the fiancé. How could he hide in the cistern? And what a coincidence that he rose up to threaten me just at the moment when I entered the kitchen. There must have been some ulterior motive there. “I’m a doctor.” Dripping wet, he stood erect and continued. At the same time, he kept poking my cheeks with his wet finger: “Your whole family has that complicated syndrome. Without my care, God knows what misery you would be living in. People in dire straits all want to save face, and they pretend that nothing has happened. When I was living above you, I could hear your third sister hit her head against the bed frame in pain. The reason I stamped on the floor so hard was to reduce her pain, in fear that she might run upstairs and have a fit. You’re the sickest of all your family. I’ve been watching your behavior all the time. I had been hidden in the water for more than two hours when you entered the kitchen. I’m shivering with cold.” His eyes grew dim, and he started sneezing, one after another, until my third sister rushed in and carried him off like a gust of wind blowing away a fallen leaf.