The Embroidered Shoes (6 page)

A man and a woman debate above it. He claims it can be destroyed simply by spitting on it. She doesn't believe him. Both of them glare at it.

Now it is in an antique hut, where two middle-aged men sit back to back. Whenever one of them speaks, the resonance in his chest reverberates in the chest of the other, making his lips move involuntarily. In general, each seems to speak independently, yet each hopes that the other will talk as much as possible so that he himself can go on endlessly also.

A: Shouldn't it be thought a marvel to change kapok into a golden necklace? This is a metaphor for wealth often used in the past.

B: I've been feeling afraid of losing something. It could be my urban petit bourgeois consciousness that drives me to constant pursuit. Even though I'm not in good health, I am an essentially solid sort of person.

A: It's not right to have a goal. Only when you advance counter to it can you possibly return home in one morning.

B: Suppose we try being silent. I think you can feel the resonance all the same. I've already heard your resonance.

One man begins to fidget. At this instant, we can hear a variety of drumming sounds echo in the chests of both. The second man starts to thrash about until both of them are exhausted, hot sweat streaming down their heads. Then they both stop simultaneously and sit down back to back again on a bench.

Time flies. A whole season has passed. Yellow leaves drop onto the windowsill, three altogether, arranged neatly.

“There's no real reason for us to pose this way against each other, like that pet with the antennae. It is driven by a constant desire to find a piece of smooth, muddy ground covered with liver moss. Or at least other people see this as its desire. But in reality, what is the essential motive? What on earth is essential? Why should things be one way rather than another? The existent is manifold. For instance, against the reddish-orange sunlight the forest rises sharp as a blade. We are forever in pursuit of something, but in reality this is futile.

In the rubble outside the hut an old rooster pecks at it attentively. The rooster appears extremely anxious. It pecks while also digging with its claw, rolling the little lump back and forth and refusing to give up. From an outsider's point of view, this is a soul-stirring spectacle. One can sense that the little thing is not nervous. It simply shrinks stubbornly into its thin, tough shell in a gesture of resignation to its fate. This goes on for half an hour. Then the rooster lifts its head and crows toward the heavens and forgets about the little lump beneath its body.

There was a period when deranged winds swept back and forth from every direction and the dried-up land opened in cracks. Many people pondered this. They thought and thought. Raising their proud heads, their saddened and indignant expressions could be perceived.

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.

A DULL STORY

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.

So I returned home and lived with my husband and children. My life was easy but sluggish. Then one October day, my father-in-law came. He wore an orange plastic raincoat, and he was shivering with cold. After some blushing and modest declining of hospitality, he finally sat down on the sofa. But he firmly refused our offer of a dry towel and hot tea. With his aged, veined hand he wiped the rainwater from his head and face. Pointing at me with one finger, he said to my husband that the disease I was suffering from was a very unusual one. He found in the medical books that this disease usually occurred among females. It was caused by the distance between their inner vanity and the goal they were after. At the root of my case was the fact that my legs were unique. He could tell at one glance that I would fall miserably. It was unfortunate to have such legs, and there were endless troubles awaiting me. He did not look at me even once while talking, nor did he allow my husband to put in one word. He simply rattled on and on. Like a wizard, he delivered all kinds of prophecies with his eyes crossed. Upon his departure, for some unknown reason, he made a strange sign to me with his hands, stiff with gnarled joints. It looked like both a gesture of ingratiation and a sign of threat.

“Hey, take it easy,” he said.

Father-in-law came increasingly frequently. It started with visits twice a week, then every day. Every time he would bring with him a huge medical book on neuropathology. He had folded down the corners of many pages, so he could always find just the place he was looking for. Then he would put on his spectacles unhurriedly, and read aloud those sentences and paragraphs from the book. After his reading, he would wink at me lasciviously and say, “Vanity cannot bring any benefit in the long run.” He firmly rejected our every invitation of staying for a meal as if he had been insulted.

Once I mentioned to my husband his father's strange behavior. He smiled and raised his eyebrows, saying, “Can't you see that he is desperate because of his fear of death?” When I pondered my husband's remark, I felt as if I understood something, yet I did not understand anything. One thing was sure—my father-in-law took an extreme interest in me, or maybe we could call it extreme jealousy and hatred. But why? We had had no contact with him. My husband had left home at an early age and never took his father very seriously. In fact, he seldom even mentioned him. What had disturbed the old man so much that he decided to come to our house to make such confessions? Was it because of my not-very-great fame in the athletic world? But why should my fame irritate him so much? This whole business was very puzzling.

After about three weeks, he came one day with some pills of different shapes made of Chinese herbal medicine. He suggested that I take all of them. Staring at me, he declared that such pills could “snatch a patient from the jaws of death.” Of course I refused to take them. Then we fell into a real mess of an argument. Quite to my surprise, he slapped my face. In the flurry, I kicked him with all my marathon strength. He squatted down slowly, holding his belly, his whole body trembling. After a long time, he struggled up and limped home.

After three days, my father-in-law was admitted to the hospital. According to my husband, excessive melancholy had destroyed the old man's physical balance. He believed that the argument had been fatal to him. “He hit you only because he was afraid of death!” my husband said, looking pensive. “The fear of death can make one lose his reason.”