The Embroidered Shoes (22 page)

At midnight on the third, I heard a tricycle passing my door. At the moment, my sick ear was running pus. I pulled out the cotton ball, fearing that I had heard wrong. Pus dripped onto my left shoulder.

“Don't turn on the light, or the pigeon will be scared,” my son warned me. I could see his apelike arms swinging through the air. He was playing at Chinese boxing, while mumbling about the crazy spiders that were running rampant.

There was a passenger on the tricycle. It was a short man with one leg. On his chin there was a big tumor. I could hear his coughing from afar. Once that tricycle passed underneath the grape trellis, leaving behind an extremely long shadow. It was simply too troublesome to move out of the house. It was not worthwhile to move those broken things which had no value at all. (In the mess, I threw away a kettle.) But nobody was willing to consider such a serious matter as the camel. When I was on the street, I almost broke my vocal cords from shouting. I saw only some very small images sliding by. They could have been some tricks of the sun, not even images. Pedestrians in the distance were as straight as poles.

My family members indulged in the foolish deed of feeding pigeons. At midnight disturbed pigeons would shrill as if they wanted to take the soul out of me. The whole house was littered with their excrement. Sometimes, they even sneaked into the wardrobe, attempting a terrorist attack. When I inquired about the pigeons during the day, everyone acted like a gentleman and denied their existence with a serious face. Pigeons? Where are the pigeons from? Then they smiled with contempt. By the foot of the guy my third daughter seduced, there lay a big gunnysack. Something was moving inside. I certainly knew what it was, but I attempted to stamp on it pretending not to know what animal was in there.

Before I could raise my foot, I was pushed to the ground by my son. They were birds of a feather. Approaching my ear, he shouted, as if I were deaf: “There are red rabbits in the wilderness. A mosquito is waving. Go there, it suits you.”

To him, I was out of date, no more than “something old and broken” at home. My son understood me. When he was twelve, he got a big mirror and placed it in front of my bed, saying in a serious tone: “Mama, what a magnificent son is rising up inside you!” I felt joyful though I knew he was lying, because what he said was exactly what I was thinking. “This is not a lie. When she was young, there must have been a tremendous explosion in her mind, which left fatal scars. What reason do we have, as her offspring, to tease her? Who hasn't chased a leaf, a beam of sunshine? How can we stand the idea of exposing her last hope just for that and turning her into a beggar? Mother now is as weak as a baby. We have to treat her dearly.” He was so full of righteous indignation that his eyes were filled with tears. Finally, he declared that he would “firmly share sorrow and worry with old mom” and “protect her fragmentary soul.” Later on, my third daughter told me that it was my son who had “instigated” the fleeing of the camel. At dawn, he “threw stones” at the back of the beast. But I had many doubts about this, because she wore a challenging expression.

Every evening, the guy seduced by my third daughter swaggered in, his gunnysack on his back, waiting for the fall of darkness. Before the sky darkened, the couple was extremely busy. Putting on their big-mouthed masks, they ran in and out, back and forth several times. My third daughter was hot tempered, and she'd been afflicted with vain hopes ever since youth. However, this was the first instance of such publicizing. The most annoying thing was that my son might also have been in cahoots with them. I was determined to give them a blow. I hid in the wardrobe, waiting for that guy to release the pigeon. As soon as the little thing flew into the wardrobe, I grabbed it and broke its neck, then I threw the bloody body outside before going back to my bed. The two set up wild shrieks and howls the whole night.

The next morning, though their eyes looked like walnuts, they said to me indifferently: “Mother, such gloomy weather is not good for planting vegetables.”

Holding back my pleasure, I replied: “Such weather is no good. I did not sleep deeply, so I feel very tired. I saw my camel hiding in a bathroom, eating the cement on the ground.”

“I heard,” the guy said in a rush, because my third daughter had given him a kick in secret. “In the gunnysack there's an animal that is harmful to the health. This is only a wild guess. In fact, nobody can tell if there is anything inside the bag. Therefore, illusions occur, gossip follows, unfair criticism comes…” He stopped short as my third daughter was ordering him to “scram.” She complained that his mouth “stinks”; it was caused by “eating rotten stuff the whole year round.”

In those days when I set out to look for the camel, my sister ran away with a geomancer. That guy had only half of a real body. At night, I saw him disconnect the other half, while talking to me offhandedly: “As a matter of fact, half is enough.” When he lay down, he looked as if chopped in half with a knife. “Some kind of insect has grown on my body. They have eaten up the other half. The whole process was carried out without my knowing it.”

Before the elopement, my sister and I squatted in the kitchen, discussing the series of strange things that had happened in the corridor. Blushing, she told me that she had seen a bloody rooster pecking the wood on the doorframe when she opened the door to the corridor early in the morning of the thirtieth. Headless nuns streamed past. “They looked full of thoughts. I could see that from their chests.” While talking, she glanced at me in fear that I did not believe her. The incident happened one midnight. I opened the door to the corridor with a yawn, and immediately I realized that something had happened. Every door was tightly closed, yet the corridor was swept by beams of electric light, as if people were pointing their flashlights from above. This was very absurd. The north wind was blowing outside. A thin man came toward me.

“That's your son.” My sister tugged the corner of my clothes with excitement. “I'm instructing him to cultivate another kind of lifestyle. Be careful, be careful, don't bump him. This is a successful try. Of course, I have to teach him how to wipe his rear end. I didn't see much hope at the beginning.”

While she was talking, her body gave off the smell of horse urine. She was born a country woman. I didn't really see my son. There was a human figure, but it disappeared in a glance. But she simply refused to let go of it, arguing for my son doing some experiment. Then we stopped our quarrel and closed the door, because numerous wild pigeons had flown in. I believe that the pigeons were raised by the guy seduced by my daughter. This fellow was suffering from cancer, and he had to find a prank to cheer himself up. At the same time, he could create an atmosphere that made himself the center of attention.

“In the dusk, roses are blooming, wild pigeons are singing. You can't help feeling carefree and joyous,” Sister rattled on. “Some people who don't possess a heroic personality have collapsed, and they've developed a mood of resistance. These people are determined to live a kind of nondescript, weird life that runs counter to both reality and law. The fiancé of your third girl belongs to this type. You can find such people everywhere. They are easy to recognize. All you need to do is check their ears and eyes. These people are all cross-eyed, flap-eared, their lobes swollen and purple.” Talking thus, she came over to check my ears. Grabbing my ear, she jabbed it with a hairpin.

“Bumpkin!” I yelled, and escaped from her grasp.

She continued, “There's a subtle relationship between protruding ears and crossed eyes. This has provided us reliable evidence. Talking about raising pigeons, this is an example of an attempt at self-exploration. In other words, the final result of the resisting mood. Such a result is usually interesting. I once had a friend who didn't raise pigeons, but instead just moved his furniture around and around. He was very sick. One of his eyes had lost its eyeball. Diastolic pressure of 110 is a separation. In the countryside, all such diseases will be cured in the natural scenery.”

I should have gotten the hint from this (that is, fled), but the damned pigeons were swooping high and low, distracting my attention. While I was flailing at those birds, my sister blew a very strange whistle, forcing the birds to expel their shit. All at once, pigeon excrement fell like a storm. The whole room stank. Before I could climb out of the plastic shelter where I had taken cover, my sister had already escaped.

Now I remember the incident: The camel came here from the fire. At that moment, the sandy wind was so strong that I could not stand steadily. When the fire had burned to the top of the pagoda, a window below opened, and the camel stretched out its tamed head. The scene had stayed in my memory for so long that I did not feel any surprise when I was riding on its back. It simply came here naturally. Ever since its disappearance, I have been wandering around the blackened pagoda every day. I peep into every open window, only to hear wild pigeons flapping their wings in the empty pagoda, which they have turned into their nest. The fire was odd, as it did not burn anything down. When I asked my son about the cause of the fire, he was tying a slipknot in a rope and attaching one end to the bed. He asked me to put one leg into the knot, then he tied my leg up suddenly.

“Tonight, I'm going to tie up both of your legs so that you won't stamp on the little strolling parrots. All those wonders that you told me about happened before our birth. We were thrilled every time you opened your mouth. A few days ago, you broke the mirror, saying there was flame licking out of it. You are so rude. The mirror was our family heirloom. I saw you running around the house, writing obscenities with chalk on the wall of the public toilet. You looked jubilant when you returned. You even told me that you'd been to the forest when you lost your way while looking for the camel. But where was the camel to start with? I said so at the time just to please you. But you simply wouldn't let go of it, pursuing something unrealistic and out of date. You've become so crazy that everybody has a headache. Let me tell you, this so-called camel is only a symbol and sign of the color blue. If you are so foolish as to look for its existence, that's a road toward death.”

He forgot me completely after his lecture and resumed playing with his marbles, despite the fact that one of his old mother's legs was tied to the bed.

5. M
Y
F
IRST
D
REAM

I dreamed an oval square with silver sand on the ground. Gazing into the distance, I saw the short black houses glaring covetously. There was no sun in the sky. The sand was shining as if it were alive. I put on my sunglasses in fear that my eyes would get irritated. I was not standing in the square. In the bluish white sky cinereous vultures floated, casting huge, dark shadows on the square. Then the silver sand would shiver as if suffering from convulsions. Tears froze on my cornea like wax.

“The wind is coming, Mother,” I said somewhere outside the square, choking with sobs.

The square was very big. A stretch of black ditches framed the shining sand inside. The sandy wind smelled like granite. This smell was very familiar, as it often filled the air in my room at midnight. As soon as it came, three persimmons dropped from the persimmon tree: tap, tap, tap. At that instant, a black hole appeared in my memory, resembling the black hole on a lung in an X-ray negative. I had to open the window and take some fresh air. I wondered if many people would show up from the houses surrounding the square if the sun came out. Yet the sky was forever bluish white, with neither sun nor moon.

I mumbled blindly: “Now it's morning.” As I spoke, I heard a rooster's crow mimic my voice. I knew it was my own imagination. The cinereous vultures were still circling mechanically. The birds had entered an extent of eternity. Their flying was neither fast nor slow, but always steady.

I felt scared after having this dream. Before dawn, an old man was sweeping the fallen leaves outside. These were big leaves from the Chinese parasol tree, and they made a big noise. A bright green star swam across the window, lighting the room for a minute. I heard my third sister curse “Damn it!” and saw her march to the window to pull down all the curtains in her room. She always closed the curtains after her dreams. Then she would lie in bed shivering with a pale face.

When I pushed open the door to my father's room, I found him not in bed, but in his armchair, deep in thought, his bare feet scratching the floor impatiently.

“Come in, there's a draft there.” He saw me without turning his head. “Now you want to talk about your horror. It's like the black men in your childhood dreams. It makes your heart thump. You have no endurance. Please have a look at this pair of weather-beaten feet, and you will understand everything. We've all been there, your mother and I; those cinereous vultures are induced by us. At the beginning, we used to cry while clinging to each other.”

“They often come at midnight.” I sounded like a good-for-nothing when I started complaining.

“You should practice breathing in that odor. This is learnable. Your problem is that you lack exercise. Just keep calm, you will become experienced.”

So that dream was not my unique creation; it was my family legacy. It was true that I understood everything by observing Father's feet.

“Are there residents in those houses?”

Father still did not turn his head, but replied: “You see those small houses. They are only the product of your imagination, because you are never on the square. We can only reach the edge of the square.”

6. M
Y
S
ECOND
D
REAM

It seemed to be midnight when I entered the forest with my aunt. The moon looked gray, and my aunt had big yellow flecks on her skin. In her hand, she held a worn rubber boot. She squatted down every now and then to pick up something and put it into the boot. I tried very hard to figure out what she was picking up, but failed.