Can Xue - The Embroidered Shoes

Lao Jiu saw through his doubt. Winking, he laughed in his direction. “Only a fool goes to sleep. But I am an extremely wise fellow.”

When he sought a reason for it, he had become a friend of Lao Jiu’s because they had some cruel essence in common.

He had an uncle who was a very headstrong man. When he walked he raised his head high and took giant strides. At night he never turned on the light. Stubbornly, he would sit in the middle of a dark room. Every time he wanted to turn on a light, his uncle would humph coldly, making him retrieve his hand in mid-reach unconsciously. Afterward he felt so angry that he cursed his uncle again and again whenever he remembered him. Yet this still wouldn’t lessen the hatred. Once a brainstorm hit him, and he tricked Lao Jiu into going to his uncle’s house. He didn’t even try to turn on the light. From the beginning his instinct told him that such behavior would not fit Lao Jiu’s manner, and he admired it greatly. Without expressing any emotion Lao Jiu moved a chair in the darkness and sat himself down side by side with the mountainous uncle. He hid himself outside the window and watched this dumb show.

One hour passed. Two hours passed. Finally the uncle jumped up in a rage. Turning on the light he yelled at him hidden behind the window: “Where did you pick up this bit of a clown? You heartless wolf! Hey?” He was so furious he didn’t know where to focus. His eyes were bulging.

When he told Ru Shu about this, the two of them laughed so hard that they almost lost their breath. Ru Shu called the uncle a “burly chap” and Jiu a “pangolin.” When these two words slipped from her mouth smoothly, he felt completely relaxed and he couldn’t control his joy. Ru Shu had her particular names for every person and every thing surrounding her. She usually spoke them in a casual way, and then both of them were full of a kind of evil excitement. She had never seen the uncle, yet she could create accurately from her mind the uncle’s pet phrases, such as “Small potatoes have small potatoes’ ideals; they don’t feel the least bit less than others” or “Nobodies are all involved enthusiastically in a competition of personalities. This world is creating genius,” et cetera. Her re-creations made him totally wide-eyed and dumbfounded, believing sincerely that the devil had entered her body. The third day that he got to know Ru Shu she told him that she could not exist with his friends in one world. Lao Jiu had an evil look — there would come a day when he would kill her.

“But Lao Jiu is not everywhere, we can easily abandon him.”

“But in reality he is you, how can you abandon yourself completely? Forgetting is only temporary, swayed by personal feelings. In a moment he would come back again. The person that is going to accompany you all your life will be him and not me. Yet we have to try, because you are my only one.”

So they started their experiment. They ran far away. They built a tent in the middle of the desert and roasted lamb. Both of them made themselves dusty and muddy, and both of them were burned black by the sun. They appeared healthy, natural, and unrestrained.

One midnight Ru Shu woke him by pushing hard. He heard her screaming: “He’s here!”

“Who?”

“Who else can it be?!” Her face was white as a sheet.

Sitting at the desk, she dripped red ink one drop at a time onto the stationery. Those were secret codes that could never be interpreted. Afterward she went to the well to wash vegetables. A train ran by, and she jumped onto it. In the five days since she disappeared, he and Lao Jiu could barely leave each other. In his sorrow and emptiness, Lao Jiu could always give him a certain kind of real feeling. The two of them sat in dull silence. They wandered and they dozed, thinking of something gloomy and ambiguous. Finally, they stared at each other and smiled in understanding.

Soon Ru Shu came back. She said that she had made only a short trip because she was feeling bored. Now everything had returned to normal. He shouldn’t blame her for it, should he? Such temporary separations could not be avoided between them. Now everything was returning to normal and she begged him to please believe her. She dragged him to the pear tree. The rustling of the leaves warmed his blood. Because of the thrill of reunion, both of them had that kind of alien yet familiar feeling. Ru Shu said she would not abandon Lao Jiu anymore, and now she understood it. When the train took her afar, she felt closer to him.

He said in a flattering tone, “I have run through a lot of train stations looking for one with a painted eagle. Even in my dreams the train wheels were rumbling.”

Lao Jiu did not change the least bit because of Ru Shu’s reappearance. In his memory nobody else’s image had forced itself into his mind besides this fragile companion. He could not see her. Obviously he could not see anybody. During the days when his companion was warmly involved with Ru Shu, he sat amidst the maple trees on the mountain observing his chest, which grew older every day. He even stamped a little green poisonous snake to death with his bare feet. Bathing himself in the sun, he could feel that the poisonous juice inside his body was filling up day by day. He thought of how odd and unique the means of communication were that he had with his companion. This was mostly accomplished by aspiration. Thus his companion could get him whenever he called him.

Contrary to the other two, Lao Jiu had no doubt whatsoever about his own birth history. He had never revealed to anybody his own belief. He only tried to blend a unique manner into every deed. When his companion mentioned with excitement his own ambiguous position, considering it an honor, he only glanced at him sharply, fluttering his eyelashes.

The old man finally had a general explosion. Locking the door, he started wrestling with Lao Jiu. He said, puffing hard, “Some gratitude for decades of raising up the child.… Such a plot in broad daylight!”

With ease Lao Jiu threw him out the window. Then patting the dust from his clothes, he thought of the endless greed of human beings — and the inexplicability of their desires.

His birth was the product of a plot that happened in a quiet ancient residence. He accepted the matter in the year when he was two. Among a group of naughty children, he discovered his companion. The gloomy glance of that child attracted him immediately. Without the child knowing it, he entered his life and became another soul of his. The endless path toward his destiny was empty. It had been his dream to have a young and confused companion. In secret he would guide him to the termination of his journey. He would be the only person that he could remember in the world. Before his appearance, his mind had been vacant for many years. Inside, there were only a few monkeys swinging on dead branches.

“We fall into sleep under the shining stars, and we wake up in the morning glow; in our visions lions run in the jungle.”

In drifting terms he described to the child the scenery at the termination.

“But this place is falling into dilapidation day by day. Within one year you won’t be able to distinguish seasons, and within one day you can’t distinguish day from night. The sky is forever a bleak grayish white. There’s neither jungle nor people. Gradually even you will be turned into a red-colorblind patient. Just look at that floating leaf. What kind of exaggerated gesture!”

The teenager was forever bent over his black leather notebook, his face full of scars of memory, the gloomy expression in his eyes hiding a desire to murder. Lao Jiu was waiting, and the chance was getting closer day by day. On the day when he reached his adulthood, he incited him to throw the notebook that his father had given him (Lao Jiu could still remember the youth’s father) into the garbage can, thus fulfilling the wish that he had had for several years. From that day on the youth was severed from his memory and became an unidentifiable man.