Can Xue - The Embroidered Shoes

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 weeks. 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.

The wind swept from afar. In the darkness, the lion reinforced the wind.

The lion was speeding day and night across the open country.

Out of the sun’s burned hair grew wild chrysanthemums.

The detective refused to come down from the ceiling. Whenever I closed my eyes, a pattering sound woke me up. That was him pissing. With the coming of the evening mist, he would start crawling back and forth on the wall, mashing the huge spiderwebs and threatening the fleeing spiders with a rattling sound. In the darkness, he would speak something unexpectedly. Immediately, the whole room resounded as if turning up a recorder. The hullabaloo would last till the next morning. I was so afraid of his speaking that I hid in my quilt pretending to be dead, hoping he would forget me.

“Your face resembles a green plum. It must be caused by lack of oxygen inside the quilt. To tell you the truth, I can hear your breath clearly.” He exposed my mind. “How could I have been trapped by your mother and you? I have to understand that I used to be a carefree lad, shouldering my black leather travel bag, and putting on my leather boots. In my pocket, there were two quality fountain pens, and I had a pair of gold-framed sunglasses. I was such a genius in performance that everyone expected me to achieve some kind of earthshaking undertaking. However, one dusk, in the middle of my investigation, I entered by mistake a dim corridor, which was full of whispering, as if a mouth lay in ambush in the seam of every brick. You just couldn’t distinguish. Now I am completely ruined.”

Outside the door, an unkempt old woman broke a jar. Her shrill “Oh-oh” drew many gray shadows. I heard the splash of water and the sound of sawing and loud kissing from two old men with broad moustaches. The door was pushed ajar, and one of the old woman’s strange eyes shaped like a hexagon appeared. The eye was surrounded by patches of dirt. “Aha, so this house is full of jars of pickled mustard tuber. They are stacked to the ceiling. No wonder the house is so bright. This dim lamp flashes so scarily…” Suddenly, she yelled, pointing at the detective on the ceiling: “What is that!?”

The detective twisted his body uneasily and mumbled, “Fussy … plus ignorant … What’s happening outside?”

“My classmate is drilling holes in the cement floor upstairs,” I replied.

“Oh, yeah?”

“She’s been thinking of drilling all the way down through our ceiling. Then she would hang a wire down to fix you, so that you don’t need to swing every day. Then you will be motionless like a thumbtack.”

“So your classmate is a thief.” The detective relaxed.

“Do you want to kill me?” My brother was suddenly heard outside. He kept one hand behind him and held a toy water gun in the other. He squirted the shadows on the wall while stepping back. “So you want to kill me?” he said again in a quavering voice. He made a heroic gesture, though his two skinny legs were trembling in his pants.

Ever since he was young, my brother had never had one minute of quiet. He was forever suffering from cramps, until he became hemiplegic. Sometimes he would sit motionless, appearing totally absorbed in thought. Whenever someone attempted to talk to him, he would jump up in anger and bite the speaker’s neck. When he was in high school, he once overcame his timidness enough that he formed a glorious goal — to become a student of dream walking. “Then you can look without seeing, listen without hearing. You can wander among the black mountains and forests. It’s such relaxation, and you feel so proud and elated!” His saliva splashed in my face enthusiastically.

For a whole year, every evening he sat in repose in one corner of the kitchen with his eyes closed. He argued that the atmosphere there helped him get into the right mood. One night, he played the fool by wandering along the pond. I gave him a box on the ears. He only stretched his mouth and continued his journey. He had to hold back the pain in fear I would see through his trick. I laughed my heart out. He also told me privately that inside mother’s clothes, there was frozen meat. “Just poke your finger on it…” He gave a sneer of contempt. As for my fiancé, he simply pretended not to notice such a person from the very beginning. Always keeping his head high and dashing around, he never glanced at him. He once even commented on the matter to me by remarking, “It’s said there’s a person coming to our house. This is an outrageous lie. I’ve never seen him.”

The detective became so furious that he blocked my brother’s way. For one moment, his eyes appeared “surprised.” That damned guy was putting on this show for me. He meant to humiliate me. He was wrong! I had noticed their jockeying for position for a long time. The detective was only an indulgent fool pretending to be clever. He could never win. The more shame he brought to himself, the happier I became. Sitting in a cane chair, I cast a sidelong glance at my brother. I encouraged him: Good lad, good job. Yet he was confused by this, owing to his rigid mind. I once saw sand dropping from his eyes, but he said that it was his brains. I cried in front of him in fear that he would die from this.

Yesterday, he was again in tears. Yet he also showed his teeth while speaking: “Once I close my eyes, there appear numerous bare feet flying overhead … Have you ever cried? I’ve been thinking of experimenting. Let’s try together. For example, we can put a plastic bag over our heads, tie it up around the neck, and breathe hard. Or you can pinch my nose tight, and I can do the same to you. Let’s compete for who will open the mouth first … I’ve been doing such experiments all along, and several times I’ve passed out. They said that a man comes here, that you brought him in, and he’s staying in your room? Humph, I don’t believe that you have such ability and interest. The thing I hate most are those soft shadows. They circle around you. They don’t cry when you beat them and don’t get hurt when you bump into them. But they scratch your nose once you close your eyes. Tonight, I plan to have a real dream walk. Don’t think you can sabotage it.” He kept his head high, his cheeks protruded, his mouth chewing. He looked like a wretched tramp living by begging and stealing.