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Can Xue: The Embroidered Shoes

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Can Xue The Embroidered Shoes

The Embroidered Shoes: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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Can Xue (pronounced "tsan shway") is considered by many to be the most spirited, fearless, radical fiction writer to come out of contemporary China. Even her name is marked by tenacity (it's a pen name referring to dirty, leftover snow that refuses to melt). Her most important work to date, The Embroidered Shoes is a collection of lyrical, irreverent, sassy, wise, maddening, celebratory tales in which she explores the themes central to our contemporary lives: mortality, memory, imagination, and alienation. At times constructed like a set of graduated Chinese boxes, these New Gothic ghost stories build into philosophical and psychological conundrums that we ponder long after reading the final page. A doctor-detective-warrior who sleeps like a hippo in a cistern! A homicidal maniac housewife whose husband winds up in the hospital with a stomach full of very fine needles! These and many more strange, yet strangely recognizable, characters populate Can Xue's dream-ridden, transcendental territories. Written between 1986 and 1994, ten years after the death of Chairman Mao and during and following the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, The Embroidered Shoes is a life-affirming testament to the creative spirit.

Can Xue: другие книги автора


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She praised him lavishly for his being able to struggle out her name from absolute emptiness.

“Very few people have the ability to do that. This is an outstanding work of youth. Everyone is involved in the cheap trick of getting to the bottom of things, while you have almost reached the height of a flying horse galloping in the sky by your own sheer animal strength.”

He was determined to exclude Lao Jiu from the world that belonged to Ru Shu and him. His mind was made up from the very beginning though he had no expectation about the effect. Lao Jiu was one to worry about. He always maintained a great distance between them, keeping his mouth shut but knowing everything. In his mind Lao Jiu belonged to existence in the prehistoric period — barren, solemn, and indestructible. He needed him as much as he needed Ru Shu, except he never needed to express it outright. Whenever he thought of Lao Jiu, he would appear, every minute, every second. By contrast, Ru Shu never appeared at his expectation. Every memory of her came in incoherent flashes. She explained that this was because she had constantly been in chaotic transformation.

“It might get better when I grow older.” Her tone was mournful.

Lao Jiu did not do anything. Every day he did nothing but wander around. He never knew how he had managed to make a living till now. Ever since he could remember, he had seen Lao Jiu wandering around. He appeared to be an ageless man with ice-cold glances. He had no emotional relationship with anybody in this whole world. Once, brazen faced and unreasonable, he had persisted in following him to his house. It was an empty house. The windows were surrounded by withered evergreens. As soon as they opened the door, an old man in rags sneaked in. He looked so much like Lao Jiu that he could have been his father, although Lao Jiu denied it firmly. He screamed at the old man, “Scram!” There was no bed in the house nor quilt nor anything like that. Where did he sleep at night?

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.

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