The Embroidered Shoes (13 page)

He walked all day except for stopping by the roadside to eat two pieces of bread and some ice cream. It was not until dusk fell that he entered the park. There were great changes in the park. He couldn't recognize that section of lawn. Perhaps there had never been a lawn. Nor flowerbeds and gardeners. Everywhere there were low wooden houses resembling each other with their doors shut tight and people rattling the same thing inside each house. Between houses there were only very narrow walkways. Without care one might brush against the dirty, damp brick walls. He wandered back and forth among the houses, hearing those monotonous rattling voices rising up into the silent night sky forming a gigantic wave of voices rumbling over him.

Finally one door opened and there appeared a dark shadow. Quickly, he walked over and recognized the figure as the man who patrolled the park. He appeared much older now. He asked the old man the direction of the original lawn and how he could exit from this group of houses.

“You can never find it, nor can you exit because it is night now.” He guessed that the old man was laughing at him with a bit of contempt. “At night everything looks exactly the same, and you might feel that if you came more often. There haven't been any tourists for quite a few years because it's too monotonous. Perhaps you're the only tourist who's been here for many years. Yet that's no use. You can't stay on. I'm going in. I can't stay outside for too long.” He closed the door sharply and snapped off the light inside. In one instant all the lights in all the wooden houses were turned off and the chattering stopped. It was dark all around except for the vague silhouettes of the houses. He felt his way along the brick walls. “It's too monotonous here. It's easy for your attention to drift. Please watch out,” the old patrolman said, although where he was standing could not be made out. Yet his words were reassuring. Standing for a while gazing over those vague, dark mushrooms in front of him, he realized it was time for him to return to his apartment.

This time she was waiting for him at the front gate of his building. In the glow of dawn her smile was as fresh as a new leaf.

“I went to the place where we met for the first time. It's so strange that it turned out to be a stone pit, because what I remembered is so much richer,” he said, feeling bubbles rise in his lungs. “I hadn't realized until now that this whole thing has had a decisive influence on me.”

“No individual thing has decisive significance for you,” she said.

The door had been blown open. Wind blew in through the broken window glass. She tittered. Picking up a fairly big piece of broken glass, she stared at it, facing the sunshine. The edge of the glass cut her finger. Blood dripped onto the other glass. The sun shone on them. They appeared gaily colored.

“It's not necessary to go to that park or stone pit often. We only met there incidentally. You only need to think of one place in your mind, and that place becomes your destiny.” Putting her cut finger into her mouth, she sucked with force. She said vaguely, “That's all it is.” After she finished the sentence, she spat out a big mouthful of blood, making the whole room smell of blood. Her finger was still dripping. Suddenly she said, “I'm leaving.” Turning around, she walked out. Like a gust of wind, she ran down the staircase, leaving a trail of blood in the corridor.

Returning to his apartment, he covered the window again with craft paper and assembled the bed that had been dismantled. Then he lay down deep in thought amidst the thick smell of blood.

He remembered the time when they had gotten to know each other. She had been full of vigor, indulging in fantasies. Every day she never tired of looking for something new. Once they had even climbed to the top of the commercial building in the city and thrown a bag of garbage onto the crowds below. When they descended the building she was giggling endlessly. Now when he reminisced about it, the memory seemed unimportant. But at the time he had been full of joy. Often there had been partings, but every time he had been full of hope and imagination, not the impatience and hatred that now possessed him. Since when had she turned so gloomy and rigid toward him, become so indifferent toward the things he cared for? Once he had thought her to be a warmhearted woman. At the beginning he thought she was just worn out and would not come again. Yet after a while she had come back. Maybe the time between two visits grew a little bit longer, but she had never left without looking back. This morning was the first time in a long time that he had seen her laugh. He had doubted if she could even smile.

Before he fell into sleep he struggled to the window and looked down by raising the craft paper. He saw her standing on the street in front of the grocery store raising her injured hand. She also saw him, so using the other hand she pointed at her feet and nodded her head. He didn't understand the meaning of her gesture, not even once. Whenever he thought of that he felt very disheartened. He fell into sleep dejected and slept very deeply.

When he awoke he noticed many bloody finger marks on the wall put there by her the day before. At the time, he hadn't noticed, but after one day the blood marks had turned a bit black. They looked like leeches crawling on the wall, making him uneasy. Watching those leeches—her masterpiece—he remembered she had always been against him, and she was always mysterious in her ways. Nobody could predict what she was going to do in the next minute. With her back toward him and her face toward the wall, she said in a harsh voice, “People like me had better hide themselves in order not to upset people.” He turned her face back and saw an expression similar to that of a little deer being chased. He was so touched that he almost cried out. That time they stayed together for three days without leaving each other for one minute. At dusk, they would open the window and watch the sunset. Standing at the window hugging tightly against each other, they exchanged breath. She even leapt into the air naughtily. Every time she did so, he would be so frightened that his face turned pale and he would pull her down tightly. In the short three days, she forgot about things like the craft paper. She was jumping up and down and saying crazy things. Perhaps it was because both of them were young at the time, and also they were confused by the emotion caused by pity. That was the longest time she stayed. It was so long that he even had some illusion that she would stay forever. But, of course, this result was not to be.

Later on they could no longer share such intimate talk. Instead, they would talk vaguely and exchange evasive glances. When they met on the street, they would greet each other with some obscure gesture the same way she did in front of the grocery store. This method was decided on by her, and he went along with it. It appeared that they had a tacit understanding, but in reality they were very distant. Even at the climax of making love, the feeling was vague and ambiguous as if they were thousands of mountains and thousands of rivers apart. It was totally different from lovemaking with other women when he was young. Every time when it was finished he would be overwhelmed by an infinite confusion, his head feeling as if a bird's nest had grown there. At those moments he meant to dash out and chase her, yet he had no confidence whatsoever. Finally he would drop the idea. It was not because of his self-esteem, but just because he felt it would be in vain.

As she got older, her tone and glances became colder, and their distance and grievances grew deeper until they began holding grudges against each other. Once she revealed to him that their present situation was the best, exactly what she wanted, because it reflected the truth of their relationship. If they were, instead, to do nothing but stand at the window enjoying the setting sun, she would have to jump down and never return. However, such a relationship was horrifying to him. He couldn't remember how many times he had sneaked into the morgues of those hospitals to check the corpses, feeling exhausted from anxiety and fear. And he never dared to doze off in the morgues because there was always a red-eyed cat glaring at him fiercely. The days of waiting were endless spiritual torture because there were no lines or color there, just complete emptiness. It was during that period that his mouthful of strong teeth started to loosen.

Then an odd thing happened—she bit a small piece of flesh from his arm. According to her, she did it unintentionally, and she promised that nothing similar would happen in the future. The wound was not deep and healed quickly, leaving only a tiny scar. But whenever he thought of it he shivered with fear. When he inquired as to where the flesh that she bit off went, she replied that she had swallowed it. When she said that, she appeared furious, sending a chill up his spine. Yet he missed her every minute, every second, even missed the long bench by the fence on the lawn. It was there that she sat in the open air and gave him that magnificent talk. Besides there was that warm, sliding sun, the rising warmth from the earth, making him mistake her for a fine young maiden. She had forgotten all that long ago. Whenever he raised the issue later on, she appeared bored. Using her strong index finger, she would make a decisive gesture to stop his story. “I was only waiting for a boat there,” she would say shortly and drily. He couldn't help feeling very indignant.

It was fairly recently that she had gone to extremes in her appearance. In the past, she had never paid much attention to her appearance. Yet she always dressed simply and comfortably. Her clean underwear gave off a fine fragrance. But recently she had put on a set of extremely ugly men's clothes and refused to change. They had become dirtier and dirtier, shabbier and shabbier. She even boasted about them, saying they were so convenient. In the past, time spent washing clothes was nothing but trouble for her, and so on. Then she would say that since she could no longer smell the odor of the dirty clothes, why should she spend time pursuing formalities? It was even acceptable that she would not take a bath from now on. The only reason she kept taking baths and washing her hair was as a compromise with his strange habits, despite the fact that she felt they were vulgar. This took place in the third month after she cut her finger. They saw each other at the dock. Both appeared a little bit wan and sallow, a little bit melancholy. He told her he had heard someone knocking at the window of his apartment late at night. Could it have been her?

“That's impossible. When I'm outside I never think of you. You've known for a long time that I don't have a memory.” She wrinkled her nose slightly. “Can you guess if I have just returned or am planning to leave? An eternal puzzle.” She pointed at the passing boats and asked him to look. The river appeared vast and endless with boats floating as if in outer space.

He did not answer her question because he knew it had no answer. It was she who had told him that. Lowering his head, he saw that her bare feet wearing the sandals had turned a bit rough.

“Shall we return to the apartment?” he asked.

“No,” she said harshly. “From now on let's see each other here. It's very convenient for both of us. Of course, there's no way for me to arrange the date ahead of time. You'll just have to come often and see if I'm here. That shouldn't be too difficult.” Arrogantly she threw back her short hair, putting her hands into her wide pockets.

“I turned over a person's ear, and I saw that mole,” he said. “At the moment I was in a unique situation.”

“There are such cheap marks everywhere,” she sneered in contempt. “Now you'd better go. Let me see you disappear among the crowd.”

“It's you who has raised the issue.”

“It's possible that I have said so. Don't always remember. You should forget along the way. Why don't you go?”

At that moment a gray boat was anchoring. She raised her long legs and boarded the ship. This time she did not look back. The boat gradually sailed away as if it were departing into the vast universe.

But he knew there was a thread linking him with that boat. He turned around and walked away. At every step he felt his chest being pulled at painfully by that thread. At the same time, that triangle in his mind's eye was shooting out gold sparks.

APPLE TREE IN THE CORRIDOR

The Little Gold Ox

There's frost outside. One sniff of the glistening air tells me that. Frosty mornings always create discord among people. I inhale deeply and smile quietly. Then I chuckle unexpectedly, giving out the queer “heh-heh” that I often find myself producing lately. The frigid, discordant wind rattles the window frame repeatedly. In the clear sky floats a ball of red silk thread, spinning and bobbing, up and down, circling around. I can't get the window open. I know that the bright sunlight is only a deception—the bitter cold would freeze my nose. “I have a very sensitive nose,” I say to myself, nodding firmly and staring out at the frozen earth.

Everything gives the appearance of being real. The little gold ox on the tea table is moving again, its tail swinging. “You, old boy, are already fifty-seven this year,” the mask on the wall says to me. The mask is covered with a fuzz of white mold resembling a beard. It reminds me of a jade green cobblestone that I saw embedded between tree roots poking up out of the soil at the side of the highway. One dusk I attempted to dig it out with a small knife.

On that last day, a huge crowd swarmed into the city's streets. With surprise I discovered the scene from a very high vantage point just as it was happening. Of course, these people have long ago disappeared completely, and the incident has left me with no solid impression. At the beginning, I had pried open a window to climb into the building. In every empty room I found a pale mask. On the wall the swinging shadows of the wild vines made threatening gestures, reminding me of haunted houses. Then my face went moldy. Every time I look into the mirror, I see a hazy white oval. This is so disgusting.

My father's brown leather jacket, ornamented with multicolored birds' feathers, still hangs in his closet. As soon as the closet is opened, the feathers stand up, as if they were about to fly away. He spent his whole life traveling in the mountains. He looked forever travel-stained and smelled of grass. Leaning over a greasy table at a bar, he once discussed with me an intestinal disease and its cure. He was laden with anxieties.