Can Xue: The Embroidered Shoes

Turning around, he patted my back. He then sank into a reverie: “Dear boy, do you have such experience? There will be one day, let’s suppose it’s a dull day. You are skipping and running along the avenue, singing pop songs, even turning somersaults. Suddenly rain pours down. Pedestrians on the road start running, yet you stop in the rain. You simply pause, motionless. Thunder comes. You find a screen of rain all around you. Bending low, you pick up a spotted fallen leaf. On your feet, you are wearing a pair of rain shoes that you had in your childhood. One shoe is broken, exposing your bony toe. There is a man, a beggar, marching from the fields. He is shouting out a song: ‘The soldier’s troop is facing the morning sun…’ His rough voice scratches the milky sky sharply. Raindrops drip down from your coarse face. You suddenly realize that the person who is passing the field is no other than yourself.”

“I’ve tried more than once the method of jumping from the cliff. But I’ve never reached the expected result.”

He glanced at me seriously and said: “You have to make up your mind. Every expectation is a trap.” So saying, he pulled away a big stone and pointed at a dead centipede giving out groans. Frogs were jumping in the lotus pond. “I’m not at all happy in the temple. There were days when someone kept banging the gate of the temple. I burn my beard because I don’t know the time, also because of the feeling that the deadly silent mountains are pressing on toward us whenever I hear the wind. And the door is banged so loudly. Oh!”

The riverbank stretched out. Motionless willows stood on both sides of the bank. There was not a soul around.

Outside the straw hut, the blue-skinned old woman was squatting at the doorway, hammering stones.

The sun was circling in the sky. Many people were running madly on the street, every one trailing a long tail behind.

I approached the cliff again. As I was about to let out a sigh of relief, I heard my third sister’s cruel mockery. I backed up in shame and turned around. Embracing her classmate, my third sister was staring at me with curiosity. That girl, wrapped up inside a thick blanket, was leaning toward my third sister like a spoiled child.

“Everybody is running,” my third sister said, pointing at the streets below the cliff, “just like the maggots in the toilet. You come here, hoping that you can jump down lightheartedly, don’t you? We’ve been following you for a long time. As a matter of fact, I’ve tried myself. But what’s the use? It’s out of fashion, all cliché. Yet you never realized it.” She giggled again.

Then, sitting down on the grass, they jabbered about something. Their intimacy was simply disgusting. Mother was hobbling up the hill.

* * *

The Seven-Li Fragrance must be blossoming in some place far away. That’s why the smell of our room always has an element of imaginative exaggeration. The whole family has escaped from the house. The deed reveals the fragile nature of our nerves. Every behavior of ours is frivolous. When I was ten my aunt told me, pointing at the empty corridor, that a fox had run into the clouds directly from the window. After the talk, I smelled fox for several months in the corridor. It seems true that whenever we smell some kind of fragrance of flowers, the windows open slowly, and insects such as locusts drop to the ground. Whether before dawn or in the boundless pitch dark, there is no exception. On the rectangular tea table, there squats a little ox made of pure gold. Whenever my mother talks about it, her eyes sparkle.

Everything seems true: The apple tree planted in the cement floor in the corridor is bearing harvestable fruit, a mysterious silhouette of a camel appears in front of the window, the blue-skinned old woman is flying with a pair of wings like a wasp, my third sister’s fiancé has turned into the mask on the wall, and I am thirty-five years old.

“I gave birth to you while I was picking watermelon in the field,” Mother grins like a mad person. “I can’t count how many years have elapsed since these things happened. But you are clear about it.”

Because my third sister saw through the business on the cliff, I have to stay where I am. In front of me is a desert stretching to the distant horizon. The brown sand undulates mechanically and softly, giving out a muffled rumble. I remain where I am. A turkey stretches out its blood-red crest. Venus is exploding in big golden flowers. On my left stands a parchment tree, from which there hangs a specimen of parrot.

Can Xue (“tsan shway”), a pen name that refers to the tenacious, dirty snow that refuses to melt, lives in Changsha, Hunan, in the People’s Republic of China. Born in 1953, she worked as an iron worker in a factory for ten years and then became a self-employed tailor. In 1983, she began to write stories and novellas. Her first story was published in 1985, and since 1988 she has devoted all of her time to writing. Her previous books published in the United States are Dialogues in Paradise and Old Floating Cloud. She has also published extensively in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and China. The stories in this collection were written between 1986 and 1994. You can sign up for email updates here.