The Embroidered Shoes (19 page)

“You have estimated correctly that the old man is very much to my taste. Gone are the days when I was happy and relaxed. I suspect that was a murder.” Patting his belly and staring at the suction discs on his hands, I continued: “It's better for you to be up again. You've gained so much experience up there. I respect the strategies you use to deal with spiders. It's like the wind sweeping the lingering clouds. My brother believes that the thing on the ceiling is a shark with a monkey's face. Be cautious, he has a gun. Detective is not a role for your temperament. Nobody takes it seriously. Yesterday Mother told me that she remembered the master pedicurist who treated calluses. The guy had a pair of sunglasses. Where is he now? Look, she considered you as a chap treating calluses. What's the use for you to insist? Nobody believes you.”

A flash of white light could be seen through the crack around the door. The air smelled of the wet rusty scissors. A string of white teeth fell to the ground, and it walked smoothly for a distance.…

Pushing the door open, I stepped into the corridor. In the dim light, I saw pairs of bare feet lined up by the wall. The woman selling arecas was waving to me: “Attention, hey, just look at my cheeks. The areca is expanding inside. My tongue has no room to turn. For more than thirty years, I've been to the top of the mountain, where the ground is covered by fluffy dead garden burnet. When the wind blows, colorful little snakes slither out from it. I am creating a world record. I'll come back to finish the dream with you when I have time.” She entered a room and banged the door behind her.

Mother's head stretched out from another door. She looked glum and said: “So you want to disturb more? You want more? Just smell, see if pine moths have filled your father's knapsack? I've been suspicious about this for a whole day and night. Yesterday he sneaked back once. I did not really care. He has grown so thin now, he did not really occupy any space, just like a mosquito net full of holes. When he left, he had only one shoe on. In fact why should he walk back and forth, what is he showing off? What? It is horrifying to think of the things that have happened in this corridor. No matter how far you can see, you just don't see anything, never see anything clearly, isn't that true?”

“There was a woman selling arecas,” I told her. “I've met her twice.”

“Hush, don't talk nonsense. That was your aunt.” She winked and grinned. “You need to calm down. How can it be that you don't recognize her? It can't be more than ten years? She is the same old self, never changes. She stole my lamb jacket when she left. She's been very greedy ever since her youth.”

Mother's remark reminded me of my aunt, who used to live with us when she was thirty-five or thirty-six. She was a celestial, who could fly as lightly as a little bird. Her brows were plucked away completely, and her mouth was dyed bloody red. She nailed two big iron hooks in our bedroom, and on the hooks she hung a string, which held up a bed. This was her hammock. At midnight, she would swing in her bed as if it were a real swing. Standing on her bed and letting down her hair, she would utter strange sounds. Eventually she would slide through the window and fall onto the cinder road. As a result, her knees were forever swollen and bruised, and her hobby was hiding in her mosquito net squeezing the pus. To whoever tried to peep in, she would open her net as if nothing had happened and say: “Strolling in moonlight with neck stretching out, isn't that a spotty duck? There's also a shortcut that passes the withered rose. That path is a secret.” She finally fled with a horse keeper for a circus. They walked away valiantly and spiritedly, smelling of horse urine.

As soon as they left, mother wailed and whined, calling the man “human-monger, with a hooked knife in his waist. Little sister has bit the hook.” She jabbered on and on with tears in her eyes, but father was very excited. Standing in the middle of the room, he started his lecture. He talked about the beautiful wish, about the rats' invasion of the grain at our house. When he was talking about his painful itching syndrome, he became nervous. Rubbing his chest, he searched high and low, stepping on mother's feet.

Later on I heard Mother talking about the affair between father and the aunt. Mother understood them and supported their relationship in secret, though on the surface she pretended that she knew nothing. However, Father disturbed her plot. Nobody knows where he got this disabled man. The two talked in whispers in the cell for a whole afternoon before the business was done. Mother tried very hard to persuade them that I could substitute for the aunt. She said that although I was only in high school, and pretty young, I was very experienced in this. Otherwise, the garbage collector would not have hanged himself. But aunt was only a baby. She trusted people too easily, and she would suffer for that. Mother grabbed me by the chest and shook me, while shouting: “Just think what kind of person he is! Selling to a human-monger. That spider.” For this she had profound hatred toward Father.

So many years have elapsed, and aunty has come back at night. With those mysterious arecas, she appears in the dim moonlight. I can never figure this out. I suspect that she never left. The walking out was only a trick, and the guy who kept horses for the circus was only a lie. All that time, she was hiding at the other end of the corridor, selling her goods to the wandering spirits. Though she was long past her youth, she could, with some fixing up, still appear a gentle and graceful lady. No one can tell about those things, because the corridor is forever hazy and tricky. Ever since I can remember, a damp steam has spread there. You couldn't see things three steps away, and you couldn't hear your own footsteps. Very often similar doors cracked open, and a soft shadow floated out. It gave off some muffled dream talk before it disappeared completely. Sometimes, I went outside. It was different from the corridor, though there were also those soft shadows. The wind smelled like a horse's mane, and the sky was pitch dark. Only those reddish yellow lights peeped out from narrow windows. They looked very irritating. When I stood on the low-lying land, I felt my body turn into a rock. The raindrops pattered on it. My eyes held water dripping from the eaves. A broken gong banged in the wilderness.

Oh, aunty, aunty, where are you? You even write to us, telling us something. You really take things to your heart! You attempt to fool me, making the illusion that this is a graceful April dusk. You think I will be running around like a blind person, twitching my nose to chase the smell of the dusty rain. It's your nature to put up a smoke screen in order to confuse human life.

Good, very good, aunty! I now understand the meaning in your letter. It's pouring with rain. A snake-shaped reflection flashes in the sky. In the earth, grass is breeding. The dream walkers are coming. Their stretched-out arms resemble iron forks. My brother is hiding in the middle. Yet he is no more than a sham. This is the result of your teaching. His steps are stiff and hard, lacking natural rhythm. I can see through him with one glance. Why did you teach him? It's in vain!

When the rain stops, I will feel my way to the other end of the corridor. I want to bump into you in the haze. Then I will ask for an areca, and tell you the miracles of these years. I will tell you how the detective slipped into our little house, how my parents disappeared mysteriously, how abnormal my brother's consciousness of sex is, how a cobra appeared in the wardrobe.… Aha, aunty, in fact I won't tell you anything. It's not necessary for me to fool you. Why should I fool an old witch like you? Yesterday, I found the compact you used for putting on makeup. I kicked it out the window. Now I still have enough strength to kick it. The wet rusty scissors have been inserted into the door crack again. The room is full of a fishy smell. Late last night, hundreds of nightingales sang on the tree. The moon was shining, the stars were shining. The little round mirror in my hand was also shining. Pale white sand stretched out into the distance.

3. T
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She eventually attained her goal by shoving me out the window. The moment I hit ground, I heard her telling somebody in a nasal tone, “It's nothing, just an empty can. There are too many of them under the bed. They attract ants.” Supporting myself against the wall, I stood up. Patting the dust from my clothes, I staggered away. I supposed that the run-down temple was just ahead of me. Somebody had told me that my father-in-law was enjoying living there. In the back of my mind, I had the idea of looking for him. I had to find somebody. How could I not? I had been deceived!
Someone had made a monkey out of me.
I had to complain to somebody. Good, just the person was approaching. It was a fat woman selling arecas. I had seen her from behind several times. I grabbed her and rushed into my story:

“Kind-hearted person, you have to listen to my story from the very beginning. This family is a wonder! There must be some guy hiding somewhere giving instructions. Once this guy blows a whistle, all my family's necks go stiff, and their eyeballs freeze. They are turned into nothing but empty puppets shaking in front of you. I've been searching high and low but can't find the puppet master, even though I've been severely tortured by him all along. The trouble is I have a little hobby, that is, chatting with others, and sometimes I enjoy playing a little trick. Otherwise life is too depressing. Yet once this guy whistles, the family turns arrogant. They march into the house and dash at each other, emitting the sound of cracking wood. It's savage. I have to hide myself every day in a cistern. Such long hours of hiding cause abscesses on my joints, and little worms crawl out of the abscesses. Unfortunately, even the cistern is not safe. The hermaphrodite of the family, that patient of neurosis, found my dwelling and drove me out with a broom. As I was naked, I had to protect my private parts with my hands and avoid his attack. He's a vicious man, so he knows how to wait for that fatal blow. He has particular hate for my sexual organs. His glance is too extremely horrifying. Oh, and there's something else.”

“Aha, so you have recovered from your disease? Are you telling everybody that you have severe diabetes?” The fat woman pushed my hand away and staggered to the wall to observe me. She said calmly, “I remember you living by fishing for little shrimp in the past. You were bent down next to the brook. You slept under a dead Chinese scholar tree, all wrapped up in old cotton wadding. On that tree there were several odd-looking bird nests. The birds went into panic whenever the wind came … You once gave my nephew a bamboo hat. He's lost consciousness ever since he put on that hat. You've destroyed his life. I've been waiting to settle accounts with you.”

“I'm thirty-six. They say I'm still a young man. The problem started the year I was five. Hey, have you ever heard of a disease called snake's-head craziness? It causes sores on the fingers. I had it once. It caused an infection in the lymph nodes all over my body.” I blushed when I said that and kept my eyes on the ground timidly. I always feel embarrassed when I touch on the fundamental problem.

“You are learning a skill. That's good. I'm her aunt, and I've watched her grow up. The night you squatted with her under the cotton rose tree, I was spying on you in the corridor. I was thinking: What a good day you picked! I even pointed my flashlight at you, hoping I could dazzle your eyes and have some fun with you. You just can't accept the fact that my niece has lost her sexual ability, right? What I mean is that she has never had sexual ability. Why did I point my flashlight at you? Because she never keeps me, her aunt, in her mind. For more than a decade, she has been telling people that I've disappeared, and she even forces others to believe her stupid presumption. She has been sabotaging my little plans in secret all that time. Did you notice the window facing the corridor that humid night? I was behind that window the whole night, observing you two. I flashed the light repeatedly to scare you. I am the memory of this family. I'll die after everyone else.” She glanced at me sexually, her wrinkles becoming moist. “Do you have any interest in arecas? All the residents in the building keep their senses with my arecas. In fact all those rooms are empty. I've felt my way into each one of them. There's not a single soul here. Sit close by me, I'd love to soothe the wound in your heart. I am a massager of the human soul.” She squatted down against the wall. Her voice became as soft as a little chick's, and her eyes dimmed down. She beckoned me to squat down with her and clasp her hand, because she was having trouble breathing. She might have died if I had made any mistake.

I was delighted. This was everything that I could hope for. I immediately started my complaint. I love to start from the very beginning, which is closer to the fundamental problem, and thus more meaningful.

“I plan to start with the fundamental thing,” I said solemnly, then I peeped stealthily at her. She was distracted, her facial expression extremely serious. I felt excitement rise in my heart.

“Thirteen friends have said the same thing to me: ‘How can a young guy turn out like this? Think of the past, he was so valiant and bright!' They were stunned, they felt pained, then they presented me with a memorial album and an umbrella. Now I'm going to touch on the fundamental problem—my whole story, cause and effect, origin and development. But before that, I'd like to raise an important issue. Wait a minute, please answer a question for me:
Have you ever had snake's-head craziness?
”

The fat woman complained that some insect had crawled into her ear, so she felt curiously itchy. Shrugging her shoulders, she offered again to massage my soul. “I understand you.” She sniffed my palm and put on an unfathomable smile. Pressing one ear against the dirty brick wall, she said, “There's all kinds of noise. When did you change your occupation? My niece told me that you've become a doctor? You're certainly very flexible.”