The Embroidered Shoes (18 page)

“Poignant memories!” She always ends her comments with this. Then she stares at her pale, transparent fingers, raising them and turning them around in the light. So far as I remember, she can only talk about one subject, that is, how lonely and damp it is to live in a wardrobe and how bad the air is. According to her, she is disheartened and has given herself up as hopeless because of the bad living conditions inside the wardrobe. If only there were any hope, she would strive forward and do something extraordinary. But there is no hope, not even a hint of hope.

Our break-up happened two months ago, when she discovered my relationship with the detective. I was combing my hair when she arrived. She gave me an angry stare and said between her teeth, “What a damp day it is today.” She threw something wrapped in a newspaper at me. Before I could recognize what it was, dozens of lumps appeared on my neck.

“Don't fancy that you can follow your inclination unchecked,” she declared in a shaking, angry voice. “Your dirty relationship has hurt others. Who has caused my present situation? Every night I bang the door of my wardrobe as loud as a cannon. I even swallow handfuls of salt. When you were squatting under the cotton rose tree, I shot at you with my air gun, you dirty pigs. Every day I risk breaking my heart. Oh, holy God, those withered cannas, those insatiably avaricious deeds. I've seen clearly from my window. Oh, Lord, please answer me if there is justice in this world! How can such despicable, shameless invasions of another's personality be allowed? My room is so clean. I hang two scented bags at my window. I change them every day. Once in a while, I leave two peacock feathers in place of the bags. The effect is marvelous. But now everything is gone. Everything is destroyed completely. By whom? Two villains without any ambition, mean sordid merchants! You will be punished!” She was heartbroken and left beating her chest and stamping her feet.

For more than a dozen days, I was unable to sleep. Instead, I hopped up and down on one leg till dawn, fighting with my life against an invisible little something. Eventually, my sprained feet swelled as big as buckets, and my body was completely mashed. I had to negotiate with the detective, intending to break our relationship.

“Help, help!” Before I could open my mouth, he dashed over to open the door. His yell attracted all our neighbors.

I closed the door and pushed it tight with my buttocks, asking why he was doing that.

“Fleas!” He stamped with fury.

“Fleas?”

“Fleas, fleas! You broken clock collector (I can't imagine why he called me such a nickname). Now I see that you've been hiding it all this time, pretending to be self-satisfied. Yesterday you were bitten while having a meal. You were so itchy, yet you only smiled lightly, saying it was nothing but a rash. I've been fooled by your family. How could I be so stupid? I get furious when I think about it. Oh, no, wait a minute. I'm not angry at all. I didn't mean anything when I said I was furious. Now I've become completely detached. I'm going to live a pure life, resembling the birds flying in the blue sky.” Jumping up suddenly, he hung from the ceiling, swinging his legs back and forth. With a smile, he told me he was practicing some kind of breathing exercises, and he suggested that I try it, too.

“This is something meaningful. Ever since I discovered the exercise, I realize that my body glows and is as light as a swallow. The roles I played in the past are no comparison, just children's games. Your classmate is such an outstanding model. Once I saw her sitting motionlessly in the glass wardrobe. I was so touched that tears ran down my cheeks.” When he swung in front of me, he kicked heavily at my shoulder. “It could be that you have some kind of jealousy about my success? Can I change my natural disposition through a period of hard practice?”

I advised him not to put on the disguise of a detective, because it was old-fashioned. He could have pretended to be, for instance, the night soil remover who lived on the fourth floor. That would have been more significant. After all, he was a human cleaner. He might have been spotted by others at the beginning. But that didn't matter, after a time of hard practice.…

“I've been pondering for two weeks. And now I've decided to end our marital arrangement…” He swept through a beautiful dancing movement, stretching out his legs. “… so that both of us can start anew and live that meaningful, pure life. Just think, suddenly you can turn into a bird with spreading wings! Would you please not misunderstand me (he suddenly used “would” and “please” to me), and think that I will move out of your house. This is nonsense. I've made up my mind to stay on. I will build a bridge toward success through my diligence. I want to show you what a life with integrity is.” He made two forward rolls in one motion.

A torrential rain came. Closing my eyes, I could see big raindrops bang on empty rusty iron barrels, creating a thundering sound. The white screen of rain blotted out both sky and land. There had been a similar downpour in April. The chickens blasted by the west wind fell to the ground one by one. A man with a black face and a straw hat was digging holes for planting trees. His hoe clanged against the granite. According to the old garbage collector, he could never drive those crows away on rainy days. They perched on the glistening sandy ground. They were so numerous that from a distance they looked like black spots on the ground. Their sad, shrill cries were soul stirring. My dream-walking spells got worse on rainy days. Day and night, I was constantly bothered by them. Whenever the attack came, I ran to the forest. In the woods, I smelled suffocating steam. The rainwater clinging to the leaves dropped onto my neck at one touch. There I always mistook the time outside as an April dusk. I always mistook the dusk's grayish blue, inside which there was a big pile of sawed lumber.

The wind swept from afar. In the darkness, the lion reinforced the wind.

The lion was speeding day and night across the open country.

Out of the sun's burned hair grew wild chrysanthemums.

The detective refused to come down from the ceiling. Whenever I closed my eyes, a pattering sound woke me up. That was him pissing. With the coming of the evening mist, he would start crawling back and forth on the wall, mashing the huge spiderwebs and threatening the fleeing spiders with a rattling sound. In the darkness, he would speak something unexpectedly. Immediately, the whole room resounded as if turning up a recorder. The hullabaloo would last till the next morning. I was so afraid of his speaking that I hid in my quilt pretending to be dead, hoping he would forget me.

“Your face resembles a green plum. It must be caused by lack of oxygen inside the quilt. To tell you the truth, I can hear your breath clearly.” He exposed my mind. “How could I have been trapped by your mother and you? I have to understand that I used to be a carefree lad, shouldering my black leather travel bag, and putting on my leather boots. In my pocket, there were two quality fountain pens, and I had a pair of gold-framed sunglasses. I was such a genius in performance that everyone expected me to achieve some kind of earthshaking undertaking. However, one dusk, in the middle of my investigation, I entered by mistake a dim corridor, which was full of whispering, as if a mouth lay in ambush in the seam of every brick. You just couldn't distinguish. Now I am completely ruined.”

Outside the door, an unkempt old woman broke a jar. Her shrill “Oh-oh” drew many gray shadows. I heard the splash of water and the sound of sawing and loud kissing from two old men with broad moustaches. The door was pushed ajar, and one of the old woman's strange eyes shaped like a hexagon appeared. The eye was surrounded by patches of dirt. “Aha, so this house is full of jars of pickled mustard tuber. They are stacked to the ceiling. No wonder the house is so bright. This dim lamp flashes so scarily…” Suddenly, she yelled, pointing at the detective on the ceiling: “What is that!?”

The detective twisted his body uneasily and mumbled, “Fussy … plus ignorant … What's happening outside?”

“My classmate is drilling holes in the cement floor upstairs,” I replied.

“Oh, yeah?”

“She's been thinking of drilling all the way down through our ceiling. Then she would hang a wire down to fix you, so that you don't need to swing every day. Then you will be motionless like a thumbtack.”

“So your classmate is a thief.” The detective relaxed.

“Do you want to kill me?” My brother was suddenly heard outside. He kept one hand behind him and held a toy water gun in the other. He squirted the shadows on the wall while stepping back. “So you want to kill me?” he said again in a quavering voice. He made a heroic gesture, though his two skinny legs were trembling in his pants.

Ever since he was young, my brother had never had one minute of quiet. He was forever suffering from cramps, until he became hemiplegic. Sometimes he would sit motionless, appearing totally absorbed in thought. Whenever someone attempted to talk to him, he would jump up in anger and bite the speaker's neck. When he was in high school, he once overcame his timidness enough that he formed a glorious goal—to become a student of dream walking. “Then you can look without seeing, listen without hearing. You can wander among the black mountains and forests. It's such relaxation, and you feel so proud and elated!” His saliva splashed in my face enthusiastically.

For a whole year, every evening he sat in repose in one corner of the kitchen with his eyes closed. He argued that the atmosphere there helped him get into the right mood. One night, he played the fool by wandering along the pond. I gave him a box on the ears. He only stretched his mouth and continued his journey. He had to hold back the pain in fear I would see through his trick. I laughed my heart out. He also told me privately that inside mother's clothes, there was frozen meat. “Just poke your finger on it…” He gave a sneer of contempt. As for my fiancé, he simply pretended not to notice such a person from the very beginning. Always keeping his head high and dashing around, he never glanced at him. He once even commented on the matter to me by remarking, “It's said there's a person coming to our house. This is an outrageous lie. I've never seen him.”

The detective became so furious that he blocked my brother's way. For one moment, his eyes appeared “surprised.” That damned guy was putting on this show for me. He meant to humiliate me. He was wrong! I had noticed their jockeying for position for a long time. The detective was only an indulgent fool pretending to be clever. He could never win. The more shame he brought to himself, the happier I became. Sitting in a cane chair, I cast a sidelong glance at my brother. I encouraged him: Good lad, good job. Yet he was confused by this, owing to his rigid mind. I once saw sand dropping from his eyes, but he said that it was his brains. I cried in front of him in fear that he would die from this.

Yesterday, he was again in tears. Yet he also showed his teeth while speaking: “Once I close my eyes, there appear numerous bare feet flying overhead … Have you ever cried? I've been thinking of experimenting. Let's try together. For example, we can put a plastic bag over our heads, tie it up around the neck, and breathe hard. Or you can pinch my nose tight, and I can do the same to you. Let's compete for who will open the mouth first … I've been doing such experiments all along, and several times I've passed out. They said that a man comes here, that you brought him in, and he's staying in your room? Humph, I don't believe that you have such ability and interest. The thing I hate most are those soft shadows. They circle around you. They don't cry when you beat them and don't get hurt when you bump into them. But they scratch your nose once you close your eyes. Tonight, I plan to have a real dream walk. Don't think you can sabotage it.” He kept his head high, his cheeks protruded, his mouth chewing. He looked like a wretched tramp living by begging and stealing.

I believe such rubbish was all caused by his thirst for sex. And such desire was totally imaginary. He had never looked for a girl. He just couldn't, because my generation in this family has no sexual ability. The cause for this was Mother's sexless reproduction. Mother was a witch, and she could even play such a trick. I can't help but admire her. This was why she helped so hard to get the detective and me together. She knew the result! Talking about sex, I recalled that old man dead of a stroke (poor man, his death was so unfair—why should he hang himself?) and the rumor. My mother might really have been surprised if I had had some affair with him. That would have been so far beyond her expectations.

The rain always came at dusk. Once the rain started, rustling sounds could be heard from every room in our building. Such minute sounds are mysterious. Taking an umbrella, you might stand on the street, observing the building. You would find every window covered with a black curtain. Some would be shaking because of the scandals inside the rooms. I listened attentively. As soon as I lay down, I found all the windows pressed onto me from all directions. I was totally encircled. The curtains rustled noisily until they broke and fell down. Looking carefully, I found under every curtain a huge mound of liver and a box of toothpicks. There was an addle-headed old man sitting there picking his teeth. Every pick was followed by a “pooh” toward the window.

There was only one exception among the windows. There sat a girl in a flowery skirt. She was cutting her toenails with a big pair of rusty scissors. At every snip she would clench her teeth and then a long piece of nail flew out the window. Raising her head, she turned out to be an old woman with white hair. She flung her snivel at me, then she folded her black feet covered with sagging skin. She yelled at me, “The conflict between us has no end, never!” To my surprise she was none other than my classmate. So I threw down my umbrella and ran back to my room. I can still hear her shouts: “Glass has started exploding!”

“So that's it.” The detective fell down from the ceiling. He showed me his palms and said in a self-indulgent tone: “Please notice the two suction discs on them. Aren't they the result of long, hard practice? I heard you arguing with that female thief. I warned you long ago not to intrude on another's privacy. You are born with such dirty interests. Since fifteen years old, you have…”