Can Xue - The Embroidered Shoes

At the same time, it dreamed in its shell about more peaceful days. Even when it wanted to move a little, it never stretched its antennae too far. It couldn’t see the green mossy land before it. The bright sun had no bearing on it. The forest had nothing to do with it either. The only pertinent thing was the place one or two feet away.

A mob dashed toward the forest of strange trees. The rooster crowed again, its feathers standing up on its neck, one foot stepping into the edge of the forest.

The two middle-aged men are still talking calmly, each one speaking independently. Whenever one of them stops, the other appears restless and finds more words to say in order to guarantee that his opposite will be able to respond appropriately. And this response spurs him to go on talking.

Before we know it, a second session is half gone. This one has passed more slowly than the first, and there are no yellow leaves to symbolize it. It might even be said that this second season is almost motionless.

Both men feel they have lost the urge for everything except talking about dull subjects in order to stimulate the other to continue the dialogue. Neither, for instance, can remember how long ago they had a meal. Even their curiosity has shrunk to the single concern with what word will be spoken by the other. To make the other speak, each must talk without stop. Such drill becomes a monotony. Besides, the sounds from their throats are not at all pleasant.

It seems there was a period of ambiguity when the edges of things were not distinct. The human heart waxed fresh and vigorous as if just emerging from a morning bath. Distant birds began to hop about continuously, and the waves rolled in systematically.

Standing before the window, A said something inadvertent. Its long resonance formed its usual parabola in front of him.

At that moment the rooster was a tiny, light brown, fluffy ball. No clues to future developments could yet be discerned. All existence went along happily under the will of heaven. With the accelerating motion of nonexistence, unstable embarrassing details gradually displaced themselves.

A’s words stopped performing their parabola and became a spray of hurried dots emitting a perfunctory tone.

It was just at that moment that the sun turned tomato red. Loaches squeaked with suffocation in the ditches. By beginning their experience simultaneously, the two men greatly reduced the terror they would have felt in beginning alone, and they settled into a state of calm.

Outside, at an indeterminate point, it crawls forward methodically. One can see its trace amidst the rubble. It has no goal because it knows not where it is.

Everything that at first seems trivial or ambiguous shows great significance later. Because this phenomenon is so vulgar, so monotonous, once one glances backward at its origin one cannot help falling into illusion — it seems there shines a certain spiritual light along the trail from which it comes. Illusion is no more than illusion, and no one can clarify a situation from its origin.

The two middle-aged men from nowhere have never shown the slightest emotion. With their trivial, ordinary hopes, they have been sitting back to back in this little room in the hut for many years. The disturbance of falling leaves cannot arouse their surprise. Their talk has no particularly new content, only cliches, simple and repetitious.

B moves his body, feeling again that it is too troublesome for A to walk to the window and speak there. In fact, it is totally unnecessary. In the past B hated using such expressions as “time flies by” in his talk. Whenever someone used such expressions, he would harrumph with contempt. Recently he has tried several times to talk in a non-speech mode. This method has often proved effective. Every time he tried it, A would produce a resonance to the object expressed with such a method, and these resonances were particularly good. In such moments, A would encourage secretly, “Please speak more and more…” And B would fulfill his mission in solemn silence.

It knows nothing about the two men in the hut. It has never had an experience like theirs. It huddles inside its shell, sinking into a soft, sound slumber. Each time it wakes up it crawls for a while. The scenery before it may be startling, but it crawls along calmly from stone to stone, then rests for a few minutes before stretching its body once more outside its shell. All this happens silently. Its body is too soft to make any noise. Because of the shell, it does not feel much, even when such as the rooster pecks at it ferociously.

Somebody wants to perform an experiment: to portray the image of its crawling on the same canvas with the two men in the hut. After the experiment the canvas is hung at the edge of the forest. Yet the reality of the matter does not change much at all. The three of them still follow their own courses independently. No trace of passing time can be detected in their development.

The experimenter does not give up. Standing on a pine branch, he shouts back toward the place below, dragging his sounds out very, very long. But if you stand inside the hut you can feel that the shouting outside has been blocked somewhere. They can’t hear it, and it can’t hear it. So the experimenter becomes grieved. But this remains irrelevant to them.

Then the experimenter thinks that at least the two men in the hut have some comfort from each other, whereas it is too pitiful. It was born silently, and it will die silently.

Yet the experimenter is wrong from the very start. It can never experience the fastidiousness of human beings. Dreaming deeply in its own shell is its highest enjoyment. When it is attacked, it has the ability not merely to elude disaster but to transform it into pleasure, as in the case with the rooster.

“That which happened last Thursday is bound to be repeated in the nap on Sunday, floating lotus, floating lotus…” the experimenter says with feeling. He turns his hesitant glance toward the tomato-red rays of sunshine.

No one knows when the canvas disappeared. The scene of the hut and the rubble becomes clearer, the loaches leap in the ditches.

We always assume things in accordance with our own will. For example, standing before the canvas we cannot help singing some lyrics. Then the earth sinks, the fire dragon dances fervently, our meditating gaze gradually turns profound. But one thing we are very clear about — past the rubble there stands a very ordinary hut. We can say that nothing can hide inside.

“Floating lotus,” the experimenter intones again with deep feeling.

Now that we’re talking about it, I used to be a very good athlete, a marathoner. I even won some local competitions. You know I have good legs. But although I’m good at running, I do have a problem — I have no appetite. I eat very little every day. In the past two years, I’ve lost almost all interest in food. This is fatal to an athlete. Yet medical examinations find nothing wrong with me. The odd thing is that I can still run as energetically as before despite the fact that I’m eating nothing. I even won the women’s championship in the provincial competition. It was on the day of that victory that I became sick. I immediately ran to the ditch at the back of the house and disgorged violently. Everything poured out of my stomach with the force of an avalanche. When I returned to the house after I finished vomiting, everybody commented on how terrible I looked.

From that day on, I stopped eating once and for all, because whatever I swallowed down, I soon vomited up again. Everything was turned upside down in my eyes. However, this did not interfere with my training and running. I continued my physical exercise, though I became thinner day by day. I lost more than twenty-five pounds in one month, and I looked all the more strange. The members of my team all said they were afraid to see me running. They could hear the grinding of my bones as I ran. And my skin became transparent, so they could see the movement of the bones inside my body. This was too much, too horrifying to them. They hated to see me running, because they did not want to be scared. After much cogitation, my coach decided to send me home for recuperation.