The Embroidered Shoes

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.

“Before dawn, the Seven-Li Fragrance always causes me migraine, and it smells of seawater, too. The Seven-Li Fragrance must be blossoming on both sides of a seaside highway. I can imagine the place.” After these words, he lowered his head and fell into sleep.

He died of an intussusception. It wasn’t until three days later that we, together with a doctor, found him under a Chinese chestnut tree. His travel bag was stuffed with stinking orioles and turtledoves killed with an airgun days before. We simply left him there. Out of fear, we pretended to have forgotten about burying him. On our way back, Mother and I kept talking loudly to control our fright. The doctor was walking in front of us. His white coverall was stained with bird droppings, large smears of yellowish green. Every now and then, Mother cast sharp sidelong glances at me with her aged eyes. I knew that she had guessed my thought. So I jabbered on at random, ill at ease. I mentioned a past incident in a watermelon field, and asked if she could remember which day it was.

“That’s very odd.” She halted and said hesitantly, “How could I have given birth to you? I have so much doubt about it. Just at that moment, I lost my memory. So the thing cannot be confirmed.”

I carry on my father’s dream. Time and again, I feel so vividly that I touch the paving of the highway warmed by the sun, and hear mimicking cock crows. This also happens at the instant just before dawn when I smell the Seven-Li Fragrance. The dreams are drawn out, with an extremely long white thread fluttering behind each one of them just like a kite. But what is the matter with the ostrich? Ever since my father’s death, my intestines have started to twist and turn. Glaring at me, Mother ordered simply, “You have to go to the mountains.” Then she threw the blood-stained travel bag at my feet.

I intend to look for a kind of herb that can cure intestinal diseases.

Upstairs there used to live a fellow with sunglasses. This guy was about fifty, though he told everybody that he was twenty-seven. One day he entered our kitchen. With one leap, he jumped into the cistern and refused to come out. He lived in the cistern for several years like a hippo, splattering water all over the kitchen. Every time I stepped into the kitchen, he would let loose a torrent of abuse. He then disappeared with my third sister. One day when the sweet scent of the Seven-Li Fragrance was spreading unchecked, we met on a cliff. My third sister exposed my little trick with a single remark. I seemed to hear them whistling to pigeons in the bamboo forest, but I dared not turn my head, because the turkey behind the rock made me very nervous. Venus rattled past my ear, and a surreal rosy color appeared along the rim of the sky. After that they disappeared together. How very suspicious.

However, a frosty morning still makes me ready to do something — it’s my nature. So I put on my cap and shoulder the traveling bag. I purse my wrinkled mouth to whistle, and kick out my legs, causing a messy fit of noise in my intestines — gestures preliminary to a long journey. In the mirror, I see the mask spit and say, “Fifty-seven.” Then I take off my cap and sniff the greasy brim, recalling the secret of my father’s artificial leg. He kept this secret from me very carefully. His leg was of high quality and showed almost no marks of being unreal. In fact, I did not know about it until after his death. For several days, Mother appeared to be on tenterhooks. Finally, she couldn’t control her urge to tell me that the reason she did not bury my father was because of the artificial leg. She never failed to have an attack of epilepsy every time she saw that smooth pink object.

“His own leg was okay, but he broke it intentionally in order to fix that wretched thing on — one of his wild fantasies. Wearing that stupid thing, he declared forever to people that he had become a young bachelor again. He even boasted to me that the artificial leg was as soft and light as cotton, and claimed his nerves had grown into the leg. He tried to create a special image of himself.”

I found the herb in the house of my third sister’s classmate. It was planted in a huge pot placed on the windowsill facing south. It dawned on me that this woman was also once tortured by intestinal diseases. Her room was littered with old newspapers, revealing her unbearable affliction.

Everything that happened in the past is real. At the time when I met my third sister on the cliff, pigeons were whispering in the woods, and it seemed to be drizzling. I had extreme trouble opening my tired eyelids. Then all of a sudden, she started talking from behind me, laying bare my trick.

The little gold ox is pacing back and forth on the tea table. A lump of frozen cloud drifts by the window. A dolphin is trapped between the dead branches of a camphor tree. Numerous roosters are crowing one after another. The mask on the wall is talking again: “Fifty-seven years old.” This mask used to be an old fellow picking odds and ends from the garbage. Purposefully, he hanged himself from our doorframe, naked.

1. OUR FAMILY SECRETS

“What are the long-legged mosquitoes humming about? It’s so ridiculous.” Mother’s voice came unexpectedly from the shadow behind the bed. She had been hiding in that corner since the last rain. She wanted people to think she had disappeared. Excitedly, she found a big umbrella and covered herself completely with it. “My body is puffed up like an oxygen pillow.” In the drawer she had found a five-headed needle, and she was punching it into her skin. With her teeth clenched, she punched and pressed, saying, “I’ve got to get rid of some water, or I’ll be dead.”

I wanted to tell her something about the summer. Hesitantly, I opened my mouth: “The hornet’s nest was humming on the bare branch. Something was swinging in the air … Once I lost a wallet. Obviously you remember the incident. It was stolen by a guy with a beard. The streets at the time were covered by white bed sheets, which shone in the sun. Children were running around carrying torches. Don’t you feel that the needles are pushing against rotten meat?”

All my family members had undivulged secrets. They must have seemed like frightening people. My father, for instance, was a very unusual person. I never understood him. To me, he was analogous to insects, because he always gave me a feeling of beetle shells. He would sneak in every night after supper had already started. Darting to the table, he would fill his bowl with rice while scanning the other dishes. He chewed and swallowed all the good dishes before banging his bowl down on the table and fleeing.

“Father is suffering some internal agony,” my third sister would say, showing the whites of her eyes. Her voice resembled a noodle hanging in the damp air. She always gnawed at the rims of the bowls at mealtime. As a result, all of our blue china bowls had chipped edges. I saw with my own eyes that she swallowed the chips with her rice. For a cure to her asthma, she had, up to that time, eaten more than a thousand earthworms. Actually, she drank them after melting them down in sugar. “Isn’t that miraculous!” Panting, she would put on an expression of wonder.

“Your third sister, it’s hard to say,” Mother commented in a sarcastic tone. “Did you hear her thumping the bed? The doctors think she’s having endocrinopathy. It’s a subtle ailment.”

I was about to reply when I heard a deafening noise from the upstairs neighbor. According to my reconnoitering, the guy had been fooling around with an iron drilling rod. The cement floor of his apartment was covered with small holes like a honeycomb. Mother continued indifferently, turning a deaf ear to the noise from upstairs: “I can see through anybody’s tricks. I have become so ingeniously skillful that I am close to being a master of magic. Day after day, I sit in this corner, puncturing myself with needles in my fight against the fluids. Sometimes I simply forget you are my children. Whenever I recall the past, the wild mountains and deserted forests appear in my mind’s eye, stars fall down like fireworks, and the black figure of your father hangs from a branch of the tree. Quickly he has turned into what he is now. It’s just too fast.”

At the window pane appeared a pair of huge sunglasses. That was the guy from upstairs coming down to spy on our reaction to his dirty trick. He never forgot to put on his sunglasses, believing that no one could recognize him this way.

“This guy is suffering from ringworm on his feet.” Mother turned her small, flat head distractedly. Every time the back of her head brushed her shoulders, wisps of dry, broken hair drifted into the air. “Can’t you smell the liquid for ringworms? Nearly everyone has some subtle ailment. But everyone racks his brain for ways to appear to be healthy.”

Sunglasses entered the room. Dressed in a white coverall and with a stethoscope hanging at his chest, he appeared full of dignity and dash. To show off, he raised the stethoscope solemnly to listen to the wall for a long time. Then, in an air of pretended wisdom, he said in a lowered voice: “I am a medical doctor. I live at No. 65 on Thirteenth Avenue. Your family has some serious problems.”

“Medical doctor? Perfect, doctor!” Mother shrilled from the shadow. “I’d like you to have a look at my ears! My ears are so sensitive. Is there any way to cure them, like giving them anesthesia?”

He bounced up and down several times on the spot, before disappearing completely.

“This is called the invisible method,” Mother told me quietly.

“A horse in heat, a tragic reality?” My third sister drifted into the room. Softly, she descended on the bedside. Supporting her chin with her fine, vinelike fingers, she was spellbound, staring into the air. “Such people have a special kind of organ,” she added, her eyes filled with rheumy tears. “All disasters are caused by this unlucky smell!” She dashed into her bedroom and started sobbing heavily. In fact, she would have felt much better if she had set herself down to crochet lace. When she was young, she used to sit quietly by the window, crocheting her lace. A slight touch by others would cause her nose to bleed. I was quite surprised to see her becoming so forward.

After dark every day, I started looking for my family members. From this room to that, I found that they had all disappeared totally. The wind swayed the little electric bulb, making the light turn bloody red all of a sudden. The west wind was blowing hard. I was feeling uneasy at not being able to figure out where they were hiding.

Then I formulated a plan. After supper one day, I asked Mother to lend me her needles. “What for?” Her eyes looked like billiard balls ready to roll.

“You always abandon me, thinking that I am useless. But on the contrary, I have my own skill. It may well be that I am more nimble than you are.” While talking I grabbed her sleeve tightly, fearing that she might suddenly disappear.

“I’m-sleeping-in-the-trunk,” she said, enunciating word by word and glaring at me. “Every night you pace around in my room, as anxious as an ant in a hot pot. Once you even stepped on my eyeball. Didn’t you feel it? I just can’t sleep. See the two huge dark rings under my eyes? They’re caused by insomnia.”

At night, I did notice there was a worn-out trunk, on which hung a rusty bronze lock. So I entered her room to look for the trunk, but there was nothing in the corner.

“You’re wasting your energy,” she chuckled drily. “Very often you remember something, but you won’t know that there is no such thing until you try to look for it. Once upon a time, there was some dough in our cupboard, and it was all moldy. Last year, I was digging in the cupboard in our attic, looking for that dough. I had been searching for a year when finally the stairs collapsed and I fell. Your third sister told me that the cupboard was not the original one, I had remembered wrong. Your third sister has her mind stuffed with fantasies about men. I know that’s the source of her disease. There’s no hope for a cure.” She shrugged in resignation. “How do you feel about our apartment?” Her triangular eyes gazed at me with interest.

“I’ve been searching for you. My legs are so sore that I can no longer raise them. I pitch stones on the ground. You must have heard it, haven’t you?”

“What trunk are you talking about? It’s just a story that I told you before. I warned you that it’s a waste of energy. It’s so stupid of you to search everywhere. You also mentioned three-needle acupuncture. You sound like a snake player. Are you really so afraid? Wait till you reach my age, then you won’t be afraid anymore. In your arrogant memory there must be many types of broken trunks. They are hidden here and there. You believe they contain something. It’s a phenomenon of youth, in fact…” She stopped short, impatiently examining the window behind me.

During the day I kept telling myself that I shouldn’t forget to pay attention to those trunks at night. I wondered why I always forgot, and thought I should make a mark at those spots. Yet as soon as night arrived, my memory was befuddled. I turned this way and that, passing a trunk, a broom, a wallet, etc. But I just couldn’t remember anything. Where were my family members? They should at least have left some clue. Rats started a fight in the light fixture. The rats in this house were as big as cats. I covered the bulb with my pale hands to avoid attracting moths. The light was cold, and its rays penetrated to the depths of my heart. On the wall, I saw a projection of my heart. I intended to tell Mother about the summer. Suddenly all the kidney beans she had salted melted into stinking water and the Boston ivy drooped over. In the shadow, the bronze kettle rattled angrily. A cat climbed over the wall, at the foot of which there grew some castor oil plants. My third sister came by whistling. She had two bamboo leaves stuck in her nostrils. They had red spots on them and resembled dominoes.

There was nobody in Father’s room, either. The air smelled of sweat. There was a banana peel on the stool. During the day he told me in secret that he had recently been engaged in catching locusts. With his own eyes he saw mother kill five flowery moths and dump them into the dried-up well at the back of the house. “Tomorrow I will climb the green mountain,” he said, twisting his hips, and tapping the earthenware pot that he held against his chest like a little kid. “The locusts are flourishing there.” He was enjoying the verb he used, his face glowing with health.

“I’d like to tell Mother something,” I said.

“Your mother,” he rolled his huge eyeballs with difficulty, trying to recall something. “She is not a reliable thing. Don’t trust such a thing easily.” He jumped high on one foot, spilling all of the sand out of the pot. “I’ve been sleeping in the cotton fiber. It’s so quiet there, and no rats, either. How long have you been suffering from sleepwalking? It’s certainly a painful ailment. I once had it, too. Now about Sunglasses, you don’t need to guard against him, but treat him nicely. That guy is my friend. When dawn comes, we wander around, and at night, we sleep in the cotton fiber. One day when the Chinese scholar tree blossomed all in white, I squatted down at the corner of the street. Taking off my vest, I scratched myself as much as I could — I hadn’t had a bath for the whole winter. Later on, I noticed somebody else squatting there. That was him, he was scratching also. Together we listened to the humming of the mosquitoes, and our bodies felt all warmed up.”

The door banged open. “I just can’t wash my hair.” My third sister stood between father and me, with her hands on her hips and her hair let down. “Every time I wash my hair, my head gets light and drifty, like a balloon, and floats away from my neck. You simply cannot experience such a thing, no way! I’m just wasting my time.” She sat heavily on the bedside, a hook from her bra strap unfastened. “Who understands my sorrow? In the blue sky, there flies a yellow weasel! Ah? Ah?…” She sang and panted in an odd tone and spat on the floor.

“She has an enlarged cervical vertebra.” Father’s nose wrinkled up. He threw something at the foot of the bed.

“Father?”

“Your mother will come and eat it. Do you know why your mother hides herself? She’s trying to avoid rats. Last time I threw down a piece of cooked meat with maggots in it, but she ate it happily. Her stomach is rumbling with hunger. She eats everything I throw down. You may try, too!” Tightening his pants, he let out the aged, shrunken, smooth left leg. Then he threw his canvas bag onto his shoulder. With high spirits, he said, “I’m going to the green mountains today!”

I could hear him whistling outside the window.

Finally, I told Mother the story about the summer. I repeated it again and again, my face turning purple. Mother appeared half listening, smiling indulgently. With a bare foot she scratched her tightened calf muscle.

“That’s right, when the sun rises, I will turn into a fat hen.” In that instant, her pupils seemed to be melting. “The whole day, I squat in the woodpile under the eaves. Little children come and throw cobblestones at me. Eventually, one of them will break my spine.” She suddenly stood up, her eyes turned left and right in an equivocal way. “Now I need to change my approach completely. I have displayed fortitude and resolution. Just now I have broken a window. You all believe that I’ve been kept in the dark, don’t you? You, every one of you, what are you crying for underneath your quilts? Every day, just look at your swollen eyelids. I’m also making my own plans. You can’t see through me, but you think you can do everything your own way now! That’s why you’re jabbering such nonsense to me.”

Since a certain day, Mother had started to frighten us. She hid herself on purpose, yet she was present everywhere — underneath the bed, on top of the cupboard, behind the kitchen door, inside the cistern. Her deformed shadow drifted all over the place. The shadow was fat, swollen, purple in color, and smelled moldy. As a result, we walked quietly and spoke in whispers. Often when I was talking in Father’s ear, she screamed, as if she were about to jump out. It scared the wits out of us. Yet when we looked around, she was nowhere to be found. And the scream was from the radio. At other times, she giggled in the shadow instead of screaming. The sound raised goose bumps on our bodies. My third sister was the first to burn out. Struggling out of her fits of hysteria, she searched for our missing mother, with a spade on her shoulder. At those moments, her face was purple, her neck stiff; she looked valiant and spirited. The base of the walls inside the house, the stove, and everything else had all been dug into a mess.

The day I suddenly realized that Mother had disappeared from this house forever, father was putting on his leg wrappings. “I’m going to the green mountains to fish for two months,” he told me in high spirits. His cheeks were flushed with excitement.

“What shall we do about Mother?” I asked abruptly.

“I’ve raised a poisonous snake in the bushes. It comes out whenever I call it. Are you interested? We can catch locusts together.”

“There’s a poisonous snake I raised right under my bed.” Mother’s sharp voice resounded in the shadows.

Taking up his canvas bag, Father dashed out of the house like a young boy, his bag flopping against his skinny hips. “Two months!” he shouted back to me, raising two fingers, while running away.

I heard a suspicious sound behind me. When I turned around, I saw my third sister smashing her spade down on the dark spot where Mother’s voice could be heard. A string of yellow sparks leapt from the cement.

“The buttons on that thing must be almost all gone, am I right?” I suddenly remembered.

My third sister never took me seriously. Dripping with black sweat, she was digging enthusiastically at the cement, her nostrils flared. “I’ve been sleeping too long. So I need to stretch my body a little,” she defended herself. “You’ve been imagining that the house is collapsing. It’s so vague. Why can’t you think of something else? I can’t understand how you’ve become such a misanthrope. Such people make me sick, sick.” At noon, she had her nap half naked. She lay on her bed convulsing, stinking saliva dripping from her mouth. She usually slept like this until dusk and refused to have supper. When Father was home, he would peep into her open door, poke out his tongue and say, “What a miracle and wonder inheritance can play! Following the rule, what kind of decisive turning point will occur?” After such a remark, he felt he had somehow qualified himself to grab all the food in the house and take it away in his travel bag.

One rainy day, a soaking wet man staggered in. Wiping rainwater from his face, he bawled down to mother’s shadow in the corner, addressing her in a shrill voice: “Hi, Mom!” Like a gust of wind, my third sister dashed over and wrapped him in a huge bath towel that had black spots on it. She rubbed and rubbed until his lips turned red and his eyeballs bloodstained. Then she fell to the floor and cried out, “It’s awful to have a fiancé!” Then she suddenly became so muscular that she could carry the whole bundle wrapped inside the towel all the way to the bed. Carefully she put the bundle down, covered it with a quilt, and patted him to sleep.

“Its so uncomfortable to have a doctor at home.” Mother’s head stretched out like that of a snake.

“Who’s that?”

“Sunglasses, of course. I knew long ago that Sunglasses was her fiancé. Now her illness will be healed. Such an awkward illness. Such things are totally strange.” She drifted back beneath the bed.

“How could it be that the fence turns green? I’ve lost my stethoscope.” The fiancé was groaning inside the bath towel. “The room is high in temperature. That’s good. I feel sleepy when it’s hot.”

After the heavy rain, our house was full of spiderwebs. The slightest move would cause them to billow into one’s eyes. My third sister was jumping about chasing spiders. Torn webs wafted all over the place.

“Oh, her youthful vitality.” The fiancé opened one eye to enjoy the scene. “In my place, I have all sorts of insects. In the full of night, when I was wandering around outside, one of the insects must have sneaked into my bedding. This has occupied my mind, and I cry my heart out for that.”

“But why did you make such a startling noise above us?” I asked him curiously. “Because of some inner fear?”

He hesitated. “The illness of your third sister bothers me day and night. It must be a very complicated syndrome.”

All of a sudden, I had a desire to chat with him. Tugging his ear, I told him: “Every night this apartment turns empty. Everybody hides. Even the doors and windows disappear. It simply turns into a sealed iron box. I wander about, bumping into all kinds of things. In anxiety, I kick the wall till my toenails swell up. My third sister, she must have hinted to you. She believes that I never get up at night. She points out that it is my scattered quilt that proves this. It seems you are not hearing me. Tell me, is there any sound from my mouth?”

“The room is awfully hot.” He was squint-eyed, his head hanging down, and he started to snore.

“You always tangle up everyone you meet like a beggar.” My third sister slapped my hand and blew on the reddened ear of her fiancé. She gave me an angry stare, while rubbing his hair, and then yelled, “Scram!”

For the next several days, she and her fiancé occupied the whole house. Early every morning, they drove me out. Closing the door behind me, they simply turned the house into a lunatic asylum. A broom came flying out of the window facing the street, then a bag of plum cores. Once the thing flying out was Sunglasses himself. He was all black and blue and cried, “Acute changes are going on in your sister’s body. Where did she get all that strength? Endocrinopathy is not a curable disease. The first time I saw her, she had bamboo leaves in her nostrils. That peddler selling popsicles yelled and yelled. It was so disgusting. My back was soaked with sweat, and my silk socks smelled…”

“It was summer,” I reminded him.

“True. It was summer. My affliction of foul-smelling feet was cured. Your third sister ordered me to wash with soda water every day. But now I feel nothing is meaningful.” Finally he observed me carefully. “Why can’t a serious person like you involve yourself in some business, such as collecting snakeskins? Every time you approach me, I feel uncertain about you. Your existence is a problem. It seems that you’ve made up your mind that you are stuck here, and you never think of getting into something positive, for instance, snakeskins. You are just too much at ease. After all, this is a disease of the reproductive system. Your family…”

Once I saw my father while I was wandering around. He dashed out from behind a big tree and ran across the street. He tossed his canvas bag into the air, scattering little fish and tiny shrimp all over the ground. With just one flash of his army-green leg wrapping, he disappeared completely. I ran over and picked up the fish and shrimp, but then I realized that the little creatures in my hands were actually green worms and ants.

“Have you discovered that Father is completely done?” My third sister bent her two short legs and leaned on a lamppost. She continued: “He pretends that nothing has happened. Wandering around the street, he appears talented and unconventional, but it’s a false image. I’ve experienced the disease of blockage in the urethra, so I know he is in great pain. We shake with laughter when we see him chatting with you in dead earnest about something like the green mountains. Every time he leaves the house, he sleeps in that run-down temple. There’s some straw in the corner, and other people also sleep there. In fact, at the moment when I first communicated my love to the doctor, he was staying there, too. Once when I went there, Father jabbered to me all day about a dogskin vest. Over and over he explained that the vest had fallen beneath the floor of our original house. It fell through a hole in the floor. He also said some kind of dog-shit mold grew there as big as a fist. The reason he was wandering about was to look for that vest. That green mountain, I can see, is only a symptom of urethra blockage.”

I walked into the collapsing temple, and saw several feral cats scurry away. Two black faces emerging from the straw pile told me that Father was no longer here. I understood that he had become too ashamed when he realized that I’d seen through his lies. I left the place in a hurry so he wouldn’t feel too embarrassed. Turning my head, to my surprise, I found him making faces at me through the window. “I’ve been in the green mountains all the time!” He pointed two fingers at me. I was at such a loss that I felt deeply disheartened.

“You traitor!” My third sister dashed over from across the street and blocked my way. “Why did you go to that old temple? Ah? Who gave you the right to act on your own? You’ve degraded all of us! Now that old guy is chuckling behind the window. He thought that we instructed you to go there, you fool. So now we have all become the laughingstock of others!” She punched me angrily, and all the seams on her blouse burst open.

I’d hidden a hammer at the corner of the house. When all were in their hiding places and everything had quieted down, I felt my way to the window by the dim light from the street. Opening the window, I spat ferociously into the darkness. I saw my sputum flash in a ray of light, until my mouth became numb. My hammer clanged against the brick wall and made a dull, muffled echo. A light from some house flashed once. Who couldn’t hear such deafening noise? Or could it be that my hand could never produce real sound? I hammered the whole night through, but in vain. In the morning I hid the hammer away in shame. My body ached all over. My third sister walked out of her bedroom, yawning. Her mouth smelled, She glared at me sneeringly, shrugged, and spat on the floor.

“Where has Mother gone?” I asked her with a straight face, wondering where she had emerged from.

My third sister jumped up with a scream in the middle of the room: “Stop your dirty tricks! You’re an odd one to put on the face of savior. It’s disgusting! You’re the one who’s sick! And you mistake me as the one! Who’s not clear about such things? In this corridor of ours, this disastrous passage, such soul-stirring changes are taking place, don’t you feel it? We’d be overjoyed if you left us! Yet you never leave; you’re stuck here…”

It was obvious that Mother had disappeared. Why should they remain so straight-faced and deny it? A living being should be seen and touched, yet mother could be neither of these. But whenever I raised the issue, they blew up. Their temper was definitely getting worse.

When I stepped into the kitchen, a large black figure emerged from the cistern. The soaking creature howled at me, “Look out!” It turned out to be the fiancé. How could he hide in the cistern? And what a coincidence that he rose up to threaten me just at the moment when I entered the kitchen. There must have been some ulterior motive there. “I’m a doctor.” Dripping wet, he stood erect and continued. At the same time, he kept poking my cheeks with his wet finger: “Your whole family has that complicated syndrome. Without my care, God knows what misery you would be living in. People in dire straits all want to save face, and they pretend that nothing has happened. When I was living above you, I could hear your third sister hit her head against the bed frame in pain. The reason I stamped on the floor so hard was to reduce her pain, in fear that she might run upstairs and have a fit. You’re the sickest of all your family. I’ve been watching your behavior all the time. I had been hidden in the water for more than two hours when you entered the kitchen. I’m shivering with cold.” His eyes grew dim, and he started sneezing, one after another, until my third sister rushed in and carried him off like a gust of wind blowing away a fallen leaf.

Father had been spreading the rumor that he left home because of unbearable oppression. He also said he had been living on fish and shrimp, but it wasn’t true, because he sneaked back home to steal food. It wasn’t even discreet stealing but brazen robbery. Though at every theft, they all pretended not to notice. They played their roles so well that I was tempted to think they had trouble with their eyesight. Maybe they were able not to see something — for instance, father pilfering food — if they didn’t want to see it. On the other hand, they could always see something, for instance, our disappeared mother, if they wanted to see it. Therefore, they discriminated against people with eyes like mine. Sunglasses once commented about me, “It’s horrifying for a person to develop such an unfortunate temperament as his.”

For several days, I’d felt terribly dizzy. I dared not look at people, or even look out the window. Wrapping my head in a cotton-padded quilt, I had lain in bed for three days and three nights. The fourth day, I supported myself by leaning against the wall and moved to the door muddleheadedly. I stood there clutching the doorframe. In the wind, everything was tilted and had several silhouettes. It was impossible to see anything clearly. Under that dead tree sat my mother. She had her nylons peeled down and was scratching her swollen feet. Because of the wind, her white hair stood toward the sky. She looked like a primitive figure. “Mo-ma!” I called out in a funny way. She turned her head toward me. I saw an unfamiliar, vague face. This was a young woman. “Your illness is serious. You’ve had that disease for a long time. It started from inside, and the hope for recovery is slim. You should keep this fact covered up.” She made a resolute gesture with a sneer.

My mouth felt very heavy, and the wind was so noisy I couldn’t hear my own voice. So I shouted, “I can’t see anything clearly! My head has a bellowing inside! You are young, so why is your hair all white?”

“That’s the problem with your eyes,” she sneered viciously. “From now on, just don’t use your eyes anymore. It’s much better that way. Your dizziness is caused solely by the eyes. I have a relative who is suffering from the same disease. He used his eyes so much that eventually his eyeballs fell out. Since you can’t see things anymore, you have to admit it as a defect. Ambition will lead to no good ending.”

I remembered that red snake berries once grew along the wall. Bending low and closing my eyes, I could feel them with my trembling fingers.

The sky was dim; everything underneath it looked like some kind of fluid. Three white geese flew through the mist like swimmers, then in one white flash they all disappeared. My finger touched a snail. My heart quivered, and my body was covered with goose bumps. Forcing my eyes open, I saw the woman fall back, farther and farther away. My eyeballs expanded so fast that I felt they might drop out of their sockets.

“I’ve also been sick,” she waved her hand at last. “You’ve seen that my feet are swollen like carrots. I feel terrible every time I touch them … I’ve been taking extra precautions to hide it.”

“You, go lie down.” My third sister jabbed my back and said with boredom, “Your spine is like a snake in puberty.”

Half conscious, I felt my way back to bed and covered myself with the quilt. Even inside the quilt, I could still hear the noise of my sister rummaging through chests and cupboards and also the howling and crying of her fiancé being chased and beaten. My third sister was getting more and more unbridled daily. She let down her hair and wore shorts and T-shirts. She beat my quilt with a broom. I had never thought she possessed such strength. In fact, her asthma was only one of her little dramas made up out of nowhere. She always succeeded at whatever she involved herself in. I curled up inside the quilt, soaking with sweat, waiting for the fit to die down.

It was getting dark, and I still couldn’t get up. I dug out a broken mirror and looked into it. I saw a vague lump of a face, with two reddened balls rolling around in it. They must have been my eyeballs. I tossed the mirror aside. It crashed on the concrete floor with an irritating sound.

In the dim red light the fiancé’s round face appeared. It had a gray lining. His tongue flickered in and out, as if playing a new trick. I listened carefully and heard his voice.

“Why are you lying down? The situation in the family is very complicated. You must beware of pine moths. I’m surprised that when I was living in the temple with your father, I felt much more relaxed. Now I’m shaking with fright, in fear of stepping on a pine moth. They are crawling everywhere. Often when you’re about to fall asleep, you’ll find one hidden in your quilt. When the old fellow brought back that pine branch, I anticipated such an unsolvable problem today. It’s been one week that your third sister has been eliminating those poisonous insects. Our quilt has been ruined completely by the beatings. She is never merciful, and she has a stony heart…” As he spoke, he lost his concentration.

“Do you think I have glaucoma?” Breathing with difficulty, I saw him melt into a shadow.

“Ahmm, in the temple, one heard the seeds of the Chinese parasol tree drop to the ground every night. Your father will never come back. He’s got what he wanted, and now he’s boasting about himself to the proprietress.”

The very night when the fiancé warned me about the pine moths, I was attacked by them. They crawled into my quilt and nestled close to my legs, waist, arms — like a carpet full of needles. Turning on the light, I peeled them away and threw them out the window. Yet hardly had I lain down than they were with me again. They rustled; they pricked. I felt dizzy with pain. So I turned the light on again, and peeled them off, and threw them out, again and again. I was exhausted, but still couldn’t sleep. In the morning, I found no pine moths but only skin made raw from scratching.

“It’s tragic to be attacked by pine moths.” My third sister was staring at me. “There’s no use to try hiding. You have to be whipped severely. When I’m in the mood, I often rip the whole quilt with my whip. Yesterday, I almost whipped the doctor’s eyeballs out. He was in my way. Serves him right whoever dares to block me.” Her T-shirt had dark wrinkles under the armpits. She was standing in the middle of the room with her hands on her hips. Her face had a murderous look. “In the temple, pine moths swarm out of the rotten floorboards every time the mountain wind blows. The day before yesterday I found that father’s hair was filled with such insects. He was sleeping on the floor, and the moths were making nests in his hair. ‘Jingle-jingle,’ a little lamb was eating grass. When the wind stopped, the lamb would run very fast. Tiny pebbles rattled down … Ha, our father, it’s extremely difficult to figure out his attitude toward life.”

“I’d like to consult with others about our obstacles in verbal expression.” My mind was working, yet my mouth was motionless. My lips had turned into a pair of iron clips.

“Hush.” My third sister stopped me. Apparently she had heard the sentence in my mind. “Wild flights of fancy can only worsen your sickness. Let me tell you the cause of my asthma. It was caused by the medicine that the doctor prescribed. He was making fun of my emotions. What a fool I was to believe him. My heart breaks now that I think of it! Don’t you take any medicine. It can only cause a neurosis. Never believe the doctor in this family. When you think about it, you won’t be surprised to find that he is not a doctor at all. I believed it just because I wanted to. These days Mother chats with me about wild bees every night and about her lost wallet. I was moved to tears. In one stretch, I find myself walking on that stone path. When dawn comes, I realize that there is no wallet. She made up the whole story just to get my sympathy. Our mother squats in the corner making up such stories for others. She is immensely proud of herself whenever somebody is taken in.”

One morning my legs swelled terribly, but my dizziness stopped unexpectedly. I listened intently. The house was dead quiet. Getting up, I circled through the house, supported by a stick, but not a soul was to be seen. I walked out the door and limped down the street. The sun was hot, glaring down from the branch of a tree. All the joining parts of the walls were puffing out dust. My T-shirt stuck to my back. Raising my head, I saw numerous blue and purple circles.

“Isn’t that Ah-wen?” An old man stopped blankly. “Good, come and have a stroll. Good!” While talking, he scratched his armpit with force and then spat heavily at my feet. I walked away, and could still hear him chasing me and shouting, “Very good! Good sun, good…”

“Be on guard against such people.” The old man’s voice entered my ears like a gust of wind. “He sneaks into a python’s cage whenever he feels like it.”

Blood surged into my brain. In a hurry, I complained to a shadow beside the road: “I’ve been thinking of bestirring myself. I think so very hard. Every day, I hear the leaves rustle in the old camphor tree at the doorway. Just count how many blisters on my lips, and you will understand me. Only if … I’ve met so many people. I tug at their sleeves and mean to tell every one of them, but there is a great obstacle preventing me from expressing myself in words.”

The shadow turned its back on me and remained silent. I could see the sun move to the top of the lamppost. The walls continued to puff dust.

“Good, good sun, good!” The old man was chasing after me. He ran a few steps and then bent down to roll up his extremely long trousers which were dragging on the ground.

The shadow turned back all of a sudden. His vague face was now turned toward me. He spoke each word separately through his teeth: “As a youth, you once had a food phobia.”

On top of my third sister’s bed lay a mountain of cotton fiber she had torn into shreds.

Somewhere outside, a black hand was scratching on the wall: scrtch, scrtch …

“It’s a wire brush.” The pale little face of my third sister peeped out from inside the cotton pile. “It’s like this every night. It has aroused in me an unfounded melancholy.”

“You?”

2. MY THIRD SISTER TELLS OF THE LOAD ON HER MIND

This morning, after I scraped the mold from my tongue and cleaned my scalp, I started decking myself out. Under the lamp was the letter from my aunt that arrived yesterday. It read: “It’s only because you’ve sunk too deep. You should rise with force and spirit in order to save yourself. For example, you can come to visit me and change your environment for a while…”

Bah, change environment! I am too clear about such rubbish! Everybody talks the same, because they all want to prove that they live in some kind of clean, high-class rooms so as to distinguish themselves. To such idiots, past events have vanished like smoke.

Next door lived a man who subsisted by scrounging through garbage heaps for odds and ends. This man had an extremely tiny face, with a huge mole on his chin. I never knew his name, since nobody ever called him by it. He was an independent, unimportant nobody. Yet I noticed that such people usually possessed the highest intelligence and the most definite opinions. When I was in junior high, he often called me to his house for a visit. “I often think,” he said, as he stooped over to kick amidst the rags and rotten paper. The room was choked with dust. He was a hunchback, and the hump on his back jiggled up and down. “If only I could pile up all the odds and ends I have collected in my lifetime, it would make a gigantic mountain. I often lose my way. At those moments, I find myself hiding in a hole like a worm. Whenever I move my head, my face touches something sticky. Recently I discovered that the odor of rotten cloth pours out of my nostrils every morning. Maybe I’m dying. I’ve taken a new measure. That is, I’ve installed a ladder in the middle of the room, and I exercise while sleeping on it. From the ladder, I can see into the distance. I can see the fields, which are pitch dark, with some tiny lights swirling around. Once I fell from the ladder. That must have awakened your whole family, didn’t it?”

“That’s impossible,” I shook my head firmly. “People in this house never sleep. Every one of them has some good game as a hobby. Please go on — black fields, tiny lights, and also little model houses? I’ve seen some little houses, in which people like you live.”

“The wind is whimpering in the fields, somebody is smashing a rock by the roadside. Just wait, you’ll see the rooster on top of the house. Beware of your surroundings. The guy above you is a suspicious character. I saw him with my own eyes spraying disinfectant on other people’s clothes. Never dry your underwear outside your house.”

The hunchback had enormous palms with deep black cracks in them. He rubbed his pointed ears vigorously with his hands until tears ran from his eyes. He called this “exposing the internal pain.” He was forever wandering around picking in the garbage but never went very far. He was also a thief. Whenever he had a chance, he sneaked into other people’s houses to steal an alarm clock, a tea kettle, and other trivial items. But he never had the luck to escape. When he was caught, he was tied high up on that big tree. Despite all that, people didn’t seem to remember his past and continued to throw odds and ends to him. I saw him tied to that tree several times. Closing his purple eyelids, he would fall into sleep. When he was let down, he tapped the dust from his body as if nothing had happened. He hobbled into his hut and sat at the doorway for several days. He sank into his thoughts with his eyes wide open, and he smiled as if entranced.

“Why do you steal?”

“Oh?” He shrugged and paced the room. “At this particular moment, my mind is extremely clear. The little huts that you mentioned, I’ve seen them also. They were in the forest. All kinds of strange creatures lived there. There was one old creature with a pair of bear paws. All day long, he sat at his doorway studying ants and picking his teeth with a bamboo stick. Another guy caught passersby and tied them up with a rope in his dark house. Then he fed them a kind of medicine meant for toothache. There were many houses, resembling ghost’s caves, with all sorts of heads poking out from the holes. They looked like featherless chicken heads. I was completely baffled by the scene and couldn’t control my emotions. At those moments, I couldn’t help taking others’ things so as to stir up some disturbance and transfer my self-absorption. Please notice the hair on my temples. It’s been rubbed down. Sometimes blood drips when I rub my scalp.”

“Those ghost holes, they are so vivid in my mind.”

The hunchback was gradually becoming senile. I saw him passing my house, clutching a wooden stick which he banged on the ground. He had become totally bald. His tiny head hung weakly on his shoulders, and his grieving eyes lingered on my doorway. I got so terrified that whenever I looked out the window and saw him coming, I leapt to the door and closed it. For days I would hide inside, and I vomited every time I heard the clatter of his stick. There was a rumor going around about the hunchback raping little girls. I felt very uneasy, sensing that there was some hint for me in the rumor. My body ran with sweat when I was in bed.

The second day of the rumor, mother yelled in the middle of the room, clapping her hands in joy. “I’ve had a premonition for a long time,” she said. She also called in a doctor to check if I was a virgin, because this was “a vitally important point,” according to her. The detective living upstairs arrived. He turned out to be the doctor that mother was calling for. It could be that he only disguised himself as a doctor. With a gauze mask and a pair of sunglasses on, he declared that he was living at No. 65 on Thirteenth Avenue. When he smiled, he bared a vicious green tooth on the left side of his mouth. I stopped him when his pale sweaty hand stretched toward my chest with a stethoscope. I told him in a confidential air that I had had affairs with sixty-nine males, and my state of sexual desire was extremely high. On hearing that, he beamed with joy. Narrowing his eyes, he asked, “Can’t you find a small piece of wood to dig out my ear wax?”

It dawned on me that he belonged to the same type. The doctor told me that he was in fact not a detective but was only pretending to be one. Since he had to pretend to be something, he felt he was suited for posing as a detective. That was the only reason he did it. Yet when he was pretending, he did not feel at all happy. On the contrary, he was a little bit sad, because he was a man with deep emotions. Outsiders were mistaken to think he was indulging himself in the play. “Sometimes, I hate myself so much that I want to peel the skin off my cheek!” While saying this, he patted his chest bravely and continued, “Human beings should have their own personality!” His voice resounded in the air.

My situation worsened after the talk with the doctor. I always saw those little huts. At every doorway, there was a square table painted black. In a dish on the table was placed a heap of areca nuts. A huge black cat was snoring on each table. There seemed to be a pale woman bending over to tie her shoes. For a long time she tied, untied, then tied again. Finally she gave up. Her long silk stockings fell to her ankles. Waving her hand, she called me in. Then she whispered in my ear, “Close your eyes.” She spat the dregs of the nuts in my face, one mouthful after another.

“The hunchback is putting up a last-ditch struggle.” She listened attentively for a while, then waved her hand with confidence. “Just listen, the panting is horrifying. There are some people who are born being chased by terrible creatures. They can never escape. In their haste, they crash into the wall. I saw the hunchback pass by once after he hit the wall. The blood from his nose covered his face. In my whole life, I escaped just once. At the time, I was feeling relaxed. So I closed the door and made my bed for a rest. Suddenly a hand stretched in through the window. Whose hand was it? White and soft, it was the broken hand of a child! It waved at the window, making all kinds of gestures. Therefore, there was no use to run. My experience told me that instead of running, I could close my eyes and sink deep into a black pond. The days that I have passed so far have been very vague. I often feel depressed. Then I have the desire to look into a mirror. And talking about my mirror, there are some spots on it that can never be cleaned. Why?”

She opened a trunk and showed me a pair of worn boots. “Hey, my speech isn’t clear, is it? That’s because I have a little lump of areca underneath my tongue. I started doing that more than thirty years ago. At the time I had the ambition to break a world record. That was a good day. As soon as I woke up that morning I thought ‘Today is a good day.’ Chinese ilex was rustling outside and lovely red locusts were resting on my mosquito net. Opening the door, I found that thing was flying all over the sky, rustle, rustle, the red light flashing, and numerous people were rolling naked in the mud waving sticks. In the past thirty years or more, I have never seen those people again. That’s why I keep the areca in my mouth. My will power is remarkable. Purposefully I sit in front of my house with areca in my mouth casting my frowns on passersby. Occasionally on autumn nights, I see butterflies all over the mountain. They emerge in an endless stream. It could be frightening if you were encircled by them tightly. You might be driven crazy by those little creatures. Nobody understands me when I talk to the passersby about those butterflies. I can’t make my speech clearer, all because of the areca.”

Suddenly a spasm shot through my left hand. I realized with surprise that I had been coming to this woman’s house for the past several months to listen to her talk about her creative use of areca. And I had seen that pair of old boots at least fifty times. Every time I smelled the familiar foul odor. It dawned on me that I was having amnesia. It could be that I was not only suffering from amnesia, but also having a fantasy of creating a new record, just like that woman. That’s the whole reason I searched around in shuffling slippers. I always went to the same house, yet failed to recognize that same moldy hostess. Instead, I mistook her for a stranger. Then I let her rattle on and on, only feeling regret afterward, and realizing that the hostess never changed. Yet the woman was not going to give up her talking. Her thick lips touched my neck and puffed out a sticky whitish air.

The days I spent with the detective (or doctor) ran in endless hot pursuit of each other. One day when I was washing my feet, my knee joint made a funny noise. With a bang, the detective fell down from the ceiling. Rolling on the ground, he snatched my shoes and ran away. The water in my basin was splashed everywhere. He had another ability — to hook himself onto flat objects, onto the ceiling or the underside of the bed, or onto the eaves. God knows how he managed to stick himself firmly onto those places. I guess he had suction discs on his body — at least three of them. His body had become lighter and lighter. He moved as if he were drifting in the air. I thought he might forget about walking and grow wings like a sparrow if this tendency continued to develop. My brother had been suffering from neuro-gastritis ever since he noticed the game between the detective and me. He belched crazily at every meal, burping up all the rice and vegetables he had taken in. Once, as soon as he started such belching, I jumped up from the table and kicked away the dishes. Then I declared loudly, “I have found a fiancé.”

“How dare you take such liberties!” Mother shook her head, chewing loudly on a mouthful of beans. “When I found your father, he was no more than a chicken thief.”

“What kind of fiancé is it?” My brother put on an air of surprise by raising one eyebrow. He asked, “Is that the guy who cured your sickness? That man? I’ve investigated him extensively. The two arms in his sleeves are only two wires. That is to say, he has no arms whatsoever.”

“In fact,” I cleared my throat and stated word by word, “it’s that old garbage collector.” Watching mother collapse, showing the whites of her eyes, I continued, “We’re birds of a feather. We’ve been cherishing the same ideals and following the same path for a long time.”

At that pronouncement, Mother choked on the beans in her mouth. Later on she was sent to the hospital to get the beans out. Hardly had she arrived home from the hospital than she punctured herself with her needles. Her body looked like a toad.

The first time the straw toy appeared at the window, I was having an attack of malaria. That creature was a man with a longish face. He looked funny with his mouth frothing and eyes glaring with rage. In the dark of night, rats were tearing at something. Turning on my light, I entered Mother’s room. I saw her twisting madly in her bed, her pillows and blankets flying everywhere. As soon as she paused, the bed dripped with water. There was a small puddle underneath already. I imagined her having so much sweat in her body that she appeared to be melting. On the hill outside resounded a strange whistling sound. It came and went, whizzing in at one moment and quieting down at another.

“What wind is this?” The detective and I were squatting under a cotton rose tree, our teeth chattering.

“The sound of rats,” I said with a suffocating voice, something pressing my chest.

The wind swept back and forth on the waste hill.

“Let’s get married — it’s neat and tidy.” When he said this, his teeth chattered louder. I felt that all his organs were breaking.

Heavy, threatening footsteps could be heard. The shadow of the old woman reflected in the window.

“Of course you don’t believe I’m a real being. You have a skeptical, indifferent attitude toward my existence,” he said, still squatting motionlessly. “Not long ago, you told your brother while hiding behind the door that I was nothing but a product of the collective imagination. Everybody refused to expose the fact on purpose and pretended to be on guard, because they didn’t want to appear ridiculous. I don’t think you can deny that there’s something between us. For example, we are squatting here together. That in itself indicates something. Your corridor is horrifying. One night when I opened the door, I could hear screaming and shouting from a battle pouring out like a flood. What magnificent things were happening in that dim light?”

That night, we whispered like two mosquitoes in the darkness under the cotton rose tree. The next morning, when I looked in the mirror, I could see scratches from the branches on my face.

“Mother, I want to get married.”

“The cannas under the cotton rose were all trampled,” she said in a flat tone, while digging in her ear with a hairpin. “Such zeal is frightening. At that time your father was not more than a chicken thief. That is to say, the matter is obvious.”

I shouldn’t have let that person stay at our house. For that reason, the old garbage collector hanged himself unaccountably. He hanged himself on our doorframe like a dried up locust. I had fallen into my own trap. After this happened, Father started to laugh every day, covering his mouth. There was a festival atmosphere in the family. Purposefully, Father and Brother would talk some nonsense in loud voices, such as “Hey, say, has that gourd you planted borne diamonds?” “Look, while I was asleep, three cats bit my ear during the night!” And so on. These conversations would end up in their nipping at each other merrily like dogs.

When he came, he crept in like a mantis, clutching a roll of rotten cotton wadding. Stroking his sparse beard, father sniffed cautiously at the cotton while clamping onto his arm.

“Hey, you, young chap, what’s your attitude toward family and marriage?” Father pestered him, his leg sweeping out in a secret attempt to trip him flat unexpectedly.

At that particular moment, I wished he were a moth or something so he could crawl to the ceiling and scare the shit out of them, just as he usually scared me. But this weakling had already lost his ability at transformation. Instead, he could only keep quiet and crawl on the ground with his back bent low.

“Pah!” Mother spat at him. She kicked his cotton wadding so hard that it rolled into the corridor. He followed it rapidly and opened it up. Then he lay there on his stomach.

At first, he was completely quiet. But as soon as people dropped their guard, he started to sneak into the house, making a peculiar sound. It was such a faint yet sharp pulsation that people felt there was something sinister going on. Once a classmate of mine came for a visit. After she sat for a while, her face began to show surprise. She stood up and peeped out. Immediately, I knew what was happening. I coughed loudly, inquired how she managed to cure the tinea on her scalp, and asked her for a prescription. She tried to calm down. Stretching her neck, she struggled to neglect the annoyance. Then she appeared more restless, or even angry. She walked around the room, looking here and there, complaining that I was treating her rudely. Finally, she stamped her feet and called me a shameless liar. Waving her fist threateningly, she left the house. As soon as she was out, I went wild. I kicked down the cupboard and knocked over the tables and chairs, charging toward every possible hiding place. I dug for a long time, my cheeks red with fury, my bent nails carved deep into my flesh. Yet I could find nothing. The noise was everywhere, yet it was invisible. Touching my forehead, I found a smooth bald spot.

My classmate lived on the third floor. She, too, was a mysterious figure. Since she was thirteen, she had been eating a kind of tiny insect called sea ox. At the beginning, it was said that it was for curing the ailment in her eyes, then for curing hemorrhoids. In short, she had illnesses all over her body. Consequently, her pockets were full of the insects. They frequently crawled out and dropped to the ground. “Some people tried to take the treatment, yet they failed to stick it out. How can any treatment be effective without consistency? I have been persistent for six years,” she told me upon her high-school graduation. At present I go to visit her about once a month. She is a small skinny person, always lying sick in a huge wardrobe. (Inside she has put a chair for sleeping that is made of cane.) The glass door of the wardrobe is always tightly closed. I can’t figure out how she can breathe in there. When I come to visit, she asks me to sit in the middle of the room, while she herself remains in the wardrobe. We talk through the glass door. Even with her light weight, she has cracked the cane chair and broken the two back legs.

“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…”

“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. THE DETECTIVE’S (OR DOCTOR’S) LONG, DULL STORY

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.”

“Oh, yes, this is exactly what I am going to say — why I believe that the profession of doctor is the most suitable for me, and why I don’t feel that being a butcher fits me. The decision was an accident. It was caused by my mother. You know that my mother died when I was eight. Day and night, she dug in the garbage heap. She belonged to such a miserable class, and I despised her. At my house, there were always many female guests. They covered their eyes to play blindman’s buff until each one of them was black and blue from tumbling and falling. Mother would boast while chewing odd-tasting beans: ‘My child is studying law.’ But in fact, I was thinking how to sabotage their game. I planned to pee in their plates, I planned to steal money from one of them. Outside the house, the sun was whistling, the little tree was swinging and swaying neurotically. I feared going out on sunny days, because I always stepped on my own shadow. My eyelids drooped constantly, and I always felt like peeing. I was doomed if someone gave me a slap on the back. ‘What are you listening to?’ Mother asked, putting her hairy arm on my shoulder. ‘The shouting of the sun.’ ‘Aha, this child is studying law.’ I walked into the corridor, hoping I would meet a person or even a cat — whenever I’m left alone, I long to meet something. I hate monotonous days. It’s a piece of luck that I have this corridor. It’s always so dim, and this is exactly what I like. Seeing a ball of stuff rolling by, I yelled, ‘Excellent!’ Mother and her female guests all peeped out to see what was the matter. But there was nothing happening, only my vision was blurred, and my throat felt itchy. ‘He’s doing research.’ Pointing at me, Mother told the group, ‘There’s certainly much to do in it.’ Spontaneously, they raised one finger: ‘Hush.’ Then they all returned to their hide-and-seek.

“I’m going to tell you in a minute how the idea of acting roles came to me — that was the product of a brainstorm. I once ploughed a piece of vegetable garden, do you believe me? Inside a broken trunk full of earth, I planted rows of Chinese cabbage very neatly. When the sun started shouting, I was engaged in an experiment on fertilizer production. I was very serious, yet very confused. While working, I was looking around. Every now and then, I would drop the rakes and spades, pretending not to be doing anything. I opened the window a crack and turned an ear to listen to the sun. When I felt tired, I would go to the house for a rest. But when I came out again, I found all my cabbages gone, only some traces of digging left in the earth. This happened several days running.

“Finally, I caught the saboteur. She was a woman who lived in a glass wardrobe. She was like a column of smoke. Day and night, she clutched an ice bag. According to her, this was her therapy. When she discovered that my therapy (planting Chinese cabbage) interfered with her therapy, she was determined to stop me. She complained that the smell I created in the corridor had caused a malfunction of her urinary system. ‘It’s no good to ignore the existence of others,’ she warned me, while tapping on the glass. ‘If you feel restless, you may talk to me. I will find some time to receive you. I’m not a rigid person bent solely on profit. Talking to others cheers me up and reminds me of my past.’ She opened her mouth exposing her decayed teeth. Her face looked blue inside the wardrobe. ‘What do you think of me? Not ugly at all, right?’ Several times I intended to move, yet stopped short, because she ordered me to. From her wardrobe, she pointed at me and commanded: ‘Halt!’ My legs felt weak, and I stopped. My back was sweating. ‘I have a classmate living downstairs. You’ve been evolving designs on her.’ She gave a snort of contempt and then nodded her head.

“Thus I became a puppet controlled by that woman. She lived in the glass wardrobe, wrapped up in soft silk wadding. Her lips were black, her eyes closed. However, once she moved her stiff little finger, my body would feel paralyzed. Involuntarily, I went to listen to her teaching every day. Deep in my heart, I felt that it was something extremely important, and my feet simply carried me to her house, while my body was occupied with satisfaction. If I missed a single day, I would feel so agitated at night that I kicked my bed like crazy. At those moments, the woman who later married me was catching moths in darkness. If I stood up, I would bump into her knee. That was no fun: She had a gun in her pocket. ‘Your classmate is certainly a circumspect and farsighted person,’ I once tried to tell her. The consequence was a bang of the gun with a bullet going through the wall. In fact all I wanted was her consent, so as to satisfy my little desire. This has long since become a habit, yet the woman who married me would never understand this.

“The next day, I went there again. My heart felt apprehensive, and my head was empty, therefore, I had to go. This time she came out of the glass wardrobe to look me up and down attentively. She was in a black robe. She reeked of alcohol. Her neck was wrapped with a bandage, and one eye was covered with an orange patch. She supported her whole body by holding on to the arm of a chair with one skinny hand. She looked shabby and funny, yet her single eye was shining brightly. ‘You have to change your strategy immediately and play the role of a doctor.’ She gave me the instruction and put her other hand on my shoulder. That hand was dislocated, feeling like a fresh squid. ‘This is a prestigious profession; I myself was once in it. You will be outstanding. There won’t be any trouble.’ After the comment, she suddenly turned very powerful. Pushing both me and the chair aside, she stretched her arms and jumped upward several times. She might have been thinking of flying. Then she stood firmly on one foot for a long time, totally forgetting my presence. When she finished this gesture, she reentered her wardrobe and lay down on the cane-chair padding, feeling for her ice bag with one hand. Her body was all wet. I knocked on the wardrobe door hesitantly. But she gave out a sudden yell and hurled a huge iron hammer at me. While I was running for my life, a big gust of wind slammed the door at my back, which caught my leg and broke my bone. It was very painful.

“One drizzly day, frogs were hopping about in the mud. As I woke up from a dream, I suddenly put on the disguise of a doctor. This matter was first reported by an old garbage collector. That old man was living by the restroom on the first floor. On the wall inside his room, he hung ragged female underpants, stockings, and bras. They were all covered with a thick layer of black dust. Every time I met him, I felt enraged. I often shouted at him: ‘Get out of my way!’ Instead of letting me pass, he would slow his pace. Using his wicker basket, he pushed me against the walls on the left and the right. He never talked to me, but only glanced at me showing the whites of his eyes. Or he would pass a stinking fart whose smell could make me dizzy for several days. When I saw his bowed legs and smelled his rotten rags in the dawn, my blood boiled. I had to eliminate this guy, who was a fish bone in my throat, an ulcer in my stomach. My struggle against him was a life-and-death one. On that significant morning, I left the house. When I cleared my throat to give him some warning, he cast a sidelong glance at me and suddenly discovered the change on my face which was going to kill him. I did not know what touched him, but he discovered it with a wink of his eye. So he started running toward the muddy field. Repeatedly, he fell down and got up, fell down and got up. Anyway, he lost all his normal behavior. I did not chase him but stamped my feet to threaten him until he disappeared completely. After a few days, he was found hanged on the doorframe. When I took him down, he was as light as if he were only a husk. All the junk in his house had disappeared. On the empty wall hung a solemn portrait of the great leader. Underneath it there were bloodstains from mosquitoes.

“As soon as I became a doctor, the woman’s mother immediately proposed to marry her daughter to me. She pestered me endlessly. Once I was trimming my mustache when she dashed in. She grabbed the scissors from my hand and kicked me on my hipbone, calling me ‘fond dreamer,’ ‘without escape,’ and such things. I didn’t want to marry her because I simply couldn’t recognize her. Faintly, I noticed a pair of buttocks, a pair of skinny legs, and very dirty nails. Often I dodged her and hid aside, yet when I raised my head, I would still see one of her arms hanging on the wall, with thick black hair under the armpit. The inside of the fingers were twitching, and there were blisters between the fingers. I was greatly enraged by the scene. I practiced several times to drive out her spirit. Yet her mother, that witch who never shows herself (she told me that her mother disappeared ten years ago in the cellar), was controlling the unfolding of the whole situation. I could make no progress whatsoever. I would hide myself in the cistern for twenty-four hours, feeling relieved that they had started to forget about me. Just then the mother’s voice started talking to me in a partly ingratiating, partly coquettish tone: ‘My darling baby, I’ve been watching you. I’ve accompanied you all along. It’s true that she is no good at sex. It’s fair to say that she has lost all her sexual ability. That’s why she is so self-contented. I am very sympathetic to your situation. I am a woman full of sympathy. Oh!’ she suddenly screamed. ‘You’re shivering in the cold water. This breaks my heart. I’ve been watching you crying! Sometimes I feel happy when I see her condition today. I have to see her get married. If she can’t marry, I won’t have the face to live on in this world. Please think from my perspective. I originally intended to substitute her for my younger sister to marry that fellow in the circus, because my sister is a person with underdeveloped nerves. I’ve been taking care of her life all the time…’”

“Those people, she is addicted to robbing!” The fat woman suddenly became uneasy. “Let me take you to the temple.” So saying, she started running, dragging me behind her by my collar. I tried to struggle free, protesting that I didn’t want to go to the temple, because my life was hopeless. All I wanted was to complain to somebody. I was satisfied with that. “That can’t be done,” she said firmly, while running faster. When we arrived at the temple, we saw a woman with her face covered spinning thread at the door. She spat at the humming wooden spinning wheel.

I heard the father-in-law chuckling somewhere, but I couldn’t see him. Oil lamps could be seen floating in the air inside the temple, busy footsteps could be heard moving back and forth. I had lost sight of the fat woman, but I could hear her giggling somewhere. The lights quivered. On the ceiling a huge black shadow trembled. It resembled an old bear. “What fun it is to fish in summer!” I recited loudly in a calm voice. Taking off one shoe, I banged it noisily. The fat woman told me that I didn’t need to play any role. From now on, I could do whatever I wanted. Just like my wife’s classmate — self-confident, firm, decisive. Before that, she had been controlling my fate. But now she felt tired and fruitless. Immediately, I thought of becoming a warlord. This was a role I’d been dreaming about ever since I was a little boy. I started laughing once I made the decision. Freedom tasted so good. “Your old partner is drinking lamp oil on the sly.” She asked me to watch the big black shadow on the ceiling. The shadow was stretching and then shrinking. “I’ve been thinking of cultivating his son. I want to teach him metaphysical thinking, and other things, but I’ve failed. Now he has become a good-for-nothing. Look, that’s him crawling in through the window. He cries bitterly every time he sees me and he chews up all my arecas. That’s all about the family. You can’t even determine what kind of people they are.”

Finally my father-in-law appeared. He emerged from behind the Buddha. Shading his eyes from the light with his hand, he singed his hair on each of the oil lamps and calmly sniffed the odor. After some thought, he came to me. “You are forever thinking of floating toward that ball of light,” he said, shaking my hand solemnly. His own hand was warm and dry. “I still remember you coming to my house to buy used pens. I must feel suffocated, right? It’s very complicated. There’s no particular benefit. When you finally float to the top, you feel worse, because you simply can’t breathe. Some people died just like that. All in all, don’t make trouble for yourself. But I, I love the little shrimp that are hiding in the cracks of the rocks. I am completely happy and pleased with myself. I swim here and there, never opening my eyes. That’s why I never have eye disease. My legs are still good. You’ll know it when you see me jumping. “He tried to jump up. I only heard a fit of cracking sounds and found him groaning on the ground. “I can jump really high!” He panted, waving his fists. I simply stepped over his body.

I knew there was something seriously wrong with his legs. What happiness and pleasure was he talking about? He was only pretending to be a young man. He could do nothing but burn his hair at the lamps and steal food from home. It was a life of penal servitude. In order to stretch his neck to let out the stinking hiccups in his throat, he used the words “happy” and “pleased.” But he had overdone it, and now he could not get up again. Why was he so stubborn! He wanted to show people he was not afraid of death by burning his hair. But what’s the use? I still remember his trick of declaring, “Going to the green mountains!” traveling bag on his back, that he had played for decades. Every time he looked full of vigor and vitality. But now even though he had given up the old past, he still struggled for a jump.

“He is living a happy life as a bachelor,” the fat woman told me quietly, with a handkerchief over her mouth. “He is an out-and-out puppet, and he has lost feeling for his surroundings. As a matter of fact, his whole family has sneaked into this temple. When the north wind starts blowing, they hide in the attic. The lady on the ceiling is your mother-in-law, isn’t she? Fortunately the old man doesn’t know, or it would cost him his life. He is too solitary to measure himself objectively. Look at those oil lamps. They lit them. They light the lamps even during the day because they feel distracted. But the old man never recognizes it. This old fool always believes the temple is completely empty. I once gave him some hint, and he was enraged. It’s so stupid that he believes he is unique. Of course, they can’t see the old man either. They have tired themselves out with the game of catching rats. Now they are suffering from a bad cold. They’ve wrapped themselves up in thick clothing, and they poke their flashlight beams here and there every day. Bah, such people.”

Night had fallen. I went out with the fat woman. The wind was strong. Creamy colored phantoms floated past us. We were huddled up, unable to see each other.…

I haven’t told the story as I intended. I am forever circling around, never able to approach reality. Once I open my mouth, I discover I’m telling something that I have falsified, instead of the thing. The whole purpose of talking is to arouse others’ attention. As a matter of fact, I never intend to tell anything, but only to make some noise. There was a time when I had the spirit to go forward. I dissected a toad, laying its organs on the table one after another. As for those little lumps, I broke them one by one with a small knife. We all make noise, which is very different from the noise made by rats. For instance, on a summer noon, we sit at home. It is very quiet around us, but the gal I married suddenly makes a thump. It turns out that the hook on her bra has slipped out. I know she does that on purpose, and that’s extremely different from rats. When she has accomplished her success, she tells me that once she quiets down, she will smell the hair of her dead mother.

The oil lamps were crackling merrily like fireworks. The fat woman mumbled something and declared that she wanted to go to the lake. The lake was very deep, but she could walk into it. She had already mastered how to breathe underwater. She loved the ghastly atmosphere. “My fatigue only attacks when I see black shadows swinging around me and bubbles ascend one after another.” So saying, she hobbled into the dark night. After a while, she could be heard hawking her wares somewhere. The voice was disjointed, as if she were lisping. Suddenly I realized that I could never enter that temple. I made a circle around the wall but simply couldn’t find the entrance. I walked around once more, touching every brick, but still in vain. Listening attentively, I could hear people talking and the oil lamps crackling. Refusing to give in, I walked around again, or maybe several times, nobody knows how many times. The wall was teasing my shivering finger with its firm coldness. At that moment, I remembered my ideal role. Also I knew that for the gang inside, whatever role I played had nothing to do with them. They only considered my change as a child’s game. They always cast me in “the role of selling bowls of tea.” It seemed I would have to circle that damp wall till dawn. Ever since youth, I had had a habit of splitting hairs, and I always stuck to some insignificant thing.…

Now I realized that I could only be a peddler collecting used fountain pens. Despite the fact that I made all kinds of voices — or changed roles every day, putting on a gunny sack or pretending to be crippled or swallowing down live snakes — they just wouldn’t care. The key was that they couldn’t really see me much. In the steam, they were busy washing their hair, breaking walnuts, trimming their toenails, digging rat holes, building attics. Everyone was covered with sweat. That day my staying in the cold water for such a long time drew the attention of the old woman. Yet she was not paying attention to me as a person, but to my pocket watch. She attempted to cheat me out of the watch so she could give it to her sister. She assured me that by all means the watch would be completely destroyed once it fell into the water. Regardless of my trembling from the cold, she forced me to give up the watch by clutching me by the throat. “What do you need that for? You don’t even have a place to hang it, because you never have a body. But I can hang it around my neck,” she said arbitrarily.

“He is nothing but a gust of gloomy wind.” The woman I married made the conclusion peremptorily. “At midnight when I probed into his quilt with my hand, my fingers were frozen up. There was nothing on the bed. Something was swaying and drifting in the room, flocks of gray pigeons were looking for food on the ground.”

I always change my mind on a sunny day. I consider such weather beneficial to me. Though I have trouble opening my eyelids, though I feel like urinating all the time, I always have some new ideas about something that I am interested in, and I always engage myself in doing something. When I am doing something, I feel myself as having a role. But I haven’t been doing anything for a long time, because the sun hasn’t been out for a long time. Now I no longer hear the sharp shouting of the bright sun, nor the south wind booming, only the giggling of the pigeons, as well as traps that are too numerous to be avoided. Now I am forgotten by them. I just can’t give in. How can I give in like this? Tomorrow morning I will smash the tiles on the roof, I will let the panther in the corridor bite people. All this will make me feel that I am acting the role of a warrior.

4. MY MOTHER’S RAVINGS

I once entered the sun. That day when I woke from my nap, the room was filled with the fragrance of broad-bean blossoms. The scent had attracted a pair of butterflies, which were dipping and swooping high and low. As I touched my head, it gave out a loud sound as if it were an alarm; it also shone with a kind of mental white light. My son screamed at me, pushing me out of the house. “The sun is high outside, the rabbits are speeding across the muddy ground, the leaves are soaked with fresh tastes…” He seduced me. Holding my head, I stepped outside. The sunbeams poured down like running snakes. I remember I passed a slabstone path. The stones were so hot that the soles of my shoes were burnt. Every time I raised my eyes, I could see the pagoda among the firs. The pagoda was very tall, with a window on top. A man was experimenting with a tiny solar stove. The fire had caught his clothes. Behind the pagoda, the sky was all red. I began to run in a doddering manner. I remember there were some small woods ahead.

“It’s not necessary to run. It could be an illusion. The forest is aswarm with rabbits. You might stumble over them.” My son gave a snort of contempt. He was standing not far away, staring at me with two bloodred eyes.

I felt extremely hot; the pagoda was still burning, and the flames singed my eyebrows. It was useless to flee, because the horizon was so far away, and in my field of vision, there were only boiling hot slabs. There really were some rabbits, yet they were all those unrealistic red rabbits that run without the sound of footsteps. Now I could see clearly that the sunbeams were skins of tiny red snakes. They wriggled across my hips every now and then. Each snake had a ball of dazzling fire on its head. They looked like stars falling all over the place. Yet my son was indifferent to the heat. People told me that every day he climbed up the pagoda to test his solar stove, but I knew that guy on top was not him. At home he always complained that my eyes were too complicated and colorful and “looked evil.” What color would they reflect in the sunlight? I thought about this time and again.

In my pocket there was a small mirror. I looked at it and saw a big letter E, a black E. I turned it round and round, and the letter was still E. How could the mirror show an E? Yet I remember it so well. I tried it more than thirty times. In the sun, there was always that E. But inside the house was another matter. The room was cold. I put the mirror on the table, then I could see my dull, swollen face. Every time the sunlight passed my hip, I would miss something. It could have been a wallet, black in color, it could have been an old pin. In such circumstances, I would grab the person I met on the way and report to him. My talk was very fluent. That man would record every word I said with a pen and notebook. He was all seriousness. Frequently, he would shade the sun from his face with a hand and ask me that formal documentary question: “What kinds of complications can viral flu cause?” His question stimulated my boldness further. When I got more excited and verbal, I would clutch at his chest ferociously for fear he would leave before I finished. The man did not escape; instead he became vaguer and vaguer, and his body became lighter. I knew something had gone wrong, yet I rattled on and on like a machine gun.

When I finally finished and raised my head, I felt my eyeballs were filled with different colors. My facial expression must have been like a devil’s. I felt both annoyed and lost. Those people, why should they always carry a pen and notebook? This was something profound. They all had soft, smooth faces, and they could easily shade the sunlight with a thin, narrow palm. In emotional moments, they would instantly withdraw into seclusion, obviously to avoid trouble. At those moments, they smiled modestly and then disappeared. It is very subtle to avoid trouble: What kind of trouble were they trying to get rid of? How could they consciously realize such trouble was approaching? No matter how hard I tried to please them, they forever considered me as alien.

When I felt restless at home, overanxious from searching for lost objects, my daughter set obstacles to prevent me from approaching her. This disheartened me so much. Sometimes she would sit cross-legged and say in a lazy voice: “One of my friends covered himself with a bag that he made, like a silkworm cocoon. He stayed there till the last day. Even the fallen skin was well protected, and he didn’t need to worry about the sun. There was nothing missing. It was just a joke.”

My face blushed on hearing this. Consequently, I tried to avoid her. I was very careful. At the beginning, I sneaked out through the window, then I simply stayed out, wandering along the streets. The night was long and empty. I needed to find somebody I could talk to strategically about the Chinese parasol tree. The tree was very tall and straight. Against the purple sky, the leaves rattled in a loud voice as if they were emphasizing something. Every time I talked about a tree that could shout, my daughter would comment that it was a hornet’s nest. She complained that I had something wrong with my eyes. The tree died the day she was born. What can I do to prove it?

Gathering my spirit, I decided to go and see the old house. I waited till midnight. When I waded across the drying-up stream, my legs were covered with leeches. The place was once a stone pit, but it had been abandoned. Piles of big stones stood there like dreams. That night there was no moon, and everything was quiet. I was frightened by my own footsteps. I heard a clang. It was a cigarette lighter. A short man with only one leg was smoking in the empty yard, but he disappeared before I could see his face. I gave a push, and a big pile of stones fell with a noise resembling a landslide.

Last night, I saw the camel again. At the time, it was very tall, shining like gold. I sat on it and rode along the wide avenue of the city. It was elegant and graceful. But as soon as we arrived home, it lay down and simply refused to get up again.

“Tell it that the ground is very dirty. It will stain its belly,” my son said seriously. Hearing this, the camel stood up shakily. It stood motionless the whole night through outside our window. The whole time both my son and I were fidgety, discussing nervously what to feed it, how to manage its excrement, and so on. At dawn, the camel started moving. It chewed on the window frame then peeped inside the house. Suddenly it turned around and walked away without any hesitation. We lost it despite our pursuit.

“Where did you find it?” my son asked, grinning in a challenging way.

“It’s been there all the time.” I could not help appearing at a loss. I dug at the cracks on the wall with my fingers.

Plaster fell on my son’s leather shoes. He stamped his feet with disgust and gave a prolonged “Ohhh” sound. He said, “In that case, it won’t get lost. Take it easy, it’s only gone for a walk. Did it feel very bored with you?”

In those days, I strolled along the streets every day harboring a secret hope. I gazed around, observing every guy with a northern accent.

My son tried to persuade me that the camel would never get lost, and I should stop wandering about. “How can a thing that has been there all the time get lost?” Besides, even if we found it, we couldn’t solve the problem of its food.

But my third daughter never looked at us, taking it for granted that we were making up stories. She stroked her fingers through the air and said: “Camel? Humph! People will laugh their heads off! Just ask others. Where in the city can one find such things? I saw clearly that the thing you tied outside the window was a mangy dog. It ran away when I poured dirty water out. You are lauding the story to the skies: Camel! Stop fooling others, you will pay for the lie!”

But it really was a camel! Its skin shone like gold. It was so tall that I didn’t know how I had climbed up. Anyway, I was on its back the moment I found it. My third daughter was too vulgar to believe in miracles. When I was on top of that creature, I even dangled one leg to show my fearlessness. I believed many people were watching. The bigger the audience, the more high-spirited I became. At dusk, little black birds with deep thoughts flew over my head. In the grayish blue evening light, the footsteps of the camel were as soft and light as if it were stepping on mushrooms.

I screamed just to draw the attention of others. My voice resounded in the air. A guy squatting on the ground smashing a jar remained indifferent to my scream. I fixed my eyes upon him, only to realize that the whole street was empty, and not even one soul was watching me. An old lady stretched out her head to empty a basin of dirty water. She didn’t even see me. There must have been some kind of mistake. Residents in a city had never seen such an animal. They pretended not to notice it just because they were not used to it and they did not want to admit it. What would happen if they finally recognized the undeniable fact and if I made public the magnificence of my sitting on the back of a camel?

It had disappeared however. According to my daughter, I was no more than a bundle of rags with a kind of flamboyant character. Therefore, I decided to look for it. I had a bronze mirror, an heirloom from my grandma who told me that I could see a fire dragon at the very center of the mirror. I decided to go far away with the mirror. I still remembered that the camel had gotten up as soon as my son told it that the ground was dirty. It was such an obedient beast. But when I told this to my third daughter, she replied that I was finishing a dream. She told me that I had said the same thing repeatedly ten years ago. I was also making a strange sign with my hands (she tried to mimic the sign for me). She also told me that while I was talking, there appeared on the wall behind me a red torch, shining and dazzling. I was totally confused by what she said. Her specialty was to mess things up, thus making people desperate.

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. MY FIRST DREAM

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. MY SECOND DREAM

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.

“Aunty, what are you collecting?”

“Playing cards,” she shook the boot and laughed. “The ground is littered with such little playthings. I am dazzled. When you pick them up, every piece seems to be an unexpected achievement. I play this game every night. I am so enchanted by it that I sing and dance like a little kid. But your mother never believes such business. I’m going to guide you.”

The thick bushes opened beside us. This was probably a road. My feet only glided above the road, without touching down. I was not used to this. But the more forcefully I stepped down, the more obvious the feeling of floating became. My body was swinging, my long, narrow shadow looked like a guy walking on stilts.

The short figure of my aunt came and went among the trees. Her firm voice resounded in the air like the lingering sound of a big bell: “I’m going to guide you.” She entered the thick black forest as if she were entering total emptiness, and she could still see the playing cards scattered on the ground. This was certainly a unique skill. My mother had a similar ability. Once I followed her closely and found her running into an empty deserted stone pit. She circled there several times and then ran all the way back home. As full sisters, their behavior was strikingly identical.

“There’s a hot spring ahead. Do you see the spout of hot mist? One summer, lilies blossomed all around the hot spring. We collected them seriously, feeling really fulfilled. But when I got to the spring two nights ago, the old man failed to recognize me. Approaching him, I realized that he was chewing the roots of the grass. He told me that his two legs were rooted in the earth.”

“Could the square be only a model?” I was still pondering this matter. The lily blossoms were another of my aunt’s lies. The reason she left the house with my mother at midnight, sacks in hand, was to dig for gold.

“There won’t be any solution to such things.” My aunt suddenly hushed me. “In the valley over there, a rabbit once appeared. It was all red. Your mother went crazy because of that. One day I took her to the valley and told her, pointing at a protruding stone, that was the so-called rabbit. I shouted at her for a long time before I realized that her ears were deaf. Aha, a king of spades.”

She was running far ahead of me, then her voice suddenly stopped. It was very dark, my head grew hot, and I pursued her with all my might. Suddenly I stepped on something soft. It turned out to be my aunt, who had fallen asleep on the ground. She had her worn rubber boot under her head, and her fat body looked swollen and horrifying in the dim light. Without the courage to look at her, I turned around and tried to run. But I couldn’t run at all. Anyway, I assume that I ran out of the forest and found a big stretch of flat land in front of me, and on the land was a tall building, with many open windows and irritating lights. Father was waving at me from one window, all smiles. On his face, he wore a huge artificial beard. He jumped onto the windowsill and sang out at the top of his voice, his thin legs trembling. I was hiding here and there, trying to avoid people and give my legs some rest. But lights were chasing me like hunters pursuing an animal. Then I said: “Now it’s morning.” Immediately I heard the mocking cry of a rooster. This method has become my magic weapon.

7. MY THIRD DREAM

I found myself living in a cave — this happened after one of my naps. I dared not open my eyes because I heard two tigers pacing back and forth outside. After a long time I was sure that they had not discovered me, so I opened my eyes and sat up. A beam of sunlight shone down through a crack in the cave. Someone was snoring deep inside the cave. He snored in his sleep as well as when awake. Touching my body, I found myself wearing a set of khaki fatigues. I knew it was only a disguise: No savages living in a cave wore khaki suits. The most they could have had was some hanging leaves. They might even have been naked. I dared not leave the cave, so I stayed there dully till dusk. The two tigers finally left. I could hear the noise they made while descending the mountain. I should have begged for something to eat at the foot of the mountain. As I had no preparation whatsoever for living in a cave, I didn’t need to put on an air if it was only a fraud. I walked for a long time in the confusing mist, then I heard a weird chuckle: a human figure appeared vaguely in the top of the dragon spruce.

“So you are living in the cave?” he was shouting. “Excellent! It’s very noble to do such a thing!”

I continued on my way. I felt very bored. I hated to see my shadow, because it too appeared suspiciously vague. This just wasn’t right.

“You’d better get really prepared if you are determined to live in a cave. That will be an eternal silence.” The man was still shouting; his voice was very irritating. I meant to hide from him in a bush, but he discovered my attempt immediately. So his shouting became all the louder: “Someone is in khaki, someone has a cap without a peak, and he walks loudly. Please pay attention to such matters.”

I simply squatted down and pressed two stones against my throbbing temples. This proved to be very effective, for I fell into sleep immediately.

In a minute, I saw my aunt’s fat gray face above my own. She was stroking my face with a pitiful expression. She spat on her palm and then applied it to my neck. The tone of her voice was very emotional and gentle: “You are beset with crises. Your living in a cave has aroused so much disturbance. The cave is so dirty that I feel very worried. I plan to clean it and cover the wall inside with those artistic paper fans and also several porcelain plates. I learned such aesthetic interest from the classmate of your third sister. She is well cultivated.”

Two pine trees had grown out of the run-down temple at the foot of the mountain. The branches had broken through the roof and stretched toward the sky.

Could my aunt be the snoring person? So she has been waiting in the darkness for this performance?

“Someone is raising two panthers in the corridor.” She clenched her teeth. “That’s the guy who was experimenting with growing vegetables. Today the corridor is full of disasters. The day the rain came, I fell asleep on the cement floor of the corridor. I shiver even to recall that. You have to be determined and persistent in order to live in a cave. I had focused so much expectation on it that I was overjoyed from the very beginning.”

Many vicious black cats attempted to get close. I had this dream during my nap. When I was about to fall asleep, I saw Father’s head pop in, hanging like a pine worm on the wall. Now, I wanted to go to the rock. I would have awakened if I had jumped down.

8. MY FOURTH DREAM

I once arranged to go with my father to the riverbank which was ten li from here to pick up shells and cobblestones. It seemed that we were discussing this matter in a bar. At the time, a skinny guy was squeezing onto the same bench where we sat. He was constantly picking his nostrils and wiping his hands on my father’s back. Whenever we whispered, he would move closer to listen. When I stared at him, I saw that his eyeballs were made of plaster.

We didn’t carry out our plan immediately after our discussion. As a result, Father made faces, passed code words, and made gestures in front of everybody, as if he had special privilege. I was utterly embarrassed. He even went to the trouble of following me everywhere. No matter whom I was talking with, he would join us. Holding my shoulder and winking at the person, he would interrogate this person rudely: “Hey, do you want to return to the joy of a carefree childhood?” Full of worry, I hid myself behind the toilet, hoping the big dog would appear, as if this would become a life-and-death turning point. But Father immediately joined me in my hiding place and rattled on about our “secret.” While talking, he would elbow my waist, and ask: “Isn’t it a wonderful break? Isn’t it a genius of a creation? How did we come up with such a unique idea?”

The dog eventually showed up. I jumped on it ferociously but ended up in hitting my mouth against the ground. I made use of the momentum and closed my eyes. I knew that my teeth were bleeding, but I still pretended to be falling into sleep. It was not at all comfortable sleeping beside the toilet, with green-headed flies roiling beside me. But I couldn’t wake up, because my father was waiting for me. Since it was a dream itself, I drifted into yet another dreamy image once I thought like that. In this dream, the earth was so covered with thorn bushes that nobody could move. Somewhere I heard a pair of bare feet running on the playground. The feet were full of corns. Because the feet had been stamping on the crushed stones, they had turned purple and brown. All my family members lay in ambush amidst the Cherokee rosebushes. The wind carried their whispering, and I could see Father’s peaked cap swinging. (Ever since he got bald, he has been wearing that cap.) A pigeon flew out of a Cherokee rosebush into the sky. So there was another trick there.

A similar thing had happened several years before, when we were at the end of our rope, and the whole family fled to a stone pit. Hiding behind a work shed, we jabbered on and on until dawn. Outside the stone pit, there wandered packs of hungry wolves. The moon rose. I counted eight of them altogether. They swung in the sky as if they were stringed balloons. Somebody was taking aim at a black muzzle showing amidst the rosebushes. Father could be heard chuckling. Then a loud bang …

9. MY LAST DREAM

It seemed to be in our big house. The light was dim, and my whole family was dozing off on the floor. Half asleep, people saw a fine figure entering the house, but nobody wanted to move or to observe clearly. Nobody knew the time. The window was opened gently by the wind, and a strong scent of Seven-Li Fragrance filled the house. Gray and jade-colored locusts were hopping all over the place.

Father was the first to jump up. Looking around in a hurry, he put on his travel bag and ran out of the house. His long legs carried him really fast, like a master sportsman. The scent of the flower was making him crazy. His air of going ahead regardless of anything else was very surprising. Two big wasps flew after him at a distance.

My third sister got up early in the morning. She dashed over to close the window as soon as she saw that it was open. Standing by the window, she sank into meditation, watching Father’s back, as if she were getting lost. She had once told me about a big snake shining with sapphire blue light. The snake crawled across the grass, its head raised high and swinging. The grass was very deep, with strings of ball-shaped fruit on the flowers. “Once there was a mountain monkey, which waited day and night on an empty hillside.” Her eyes suddenly turn perplexed, making her face strange to me. The locusts were flying and jumping with a rustle. The wind carried Father’s coarse voice. He was singing a funny song. My third sister suddenly straightened her face and walked heavily to the chest of drawers.

Mother was forever in a state of unconsciousness. In her dream, she stretched her limbs, and her face was all rosy and smiling.

I rolled on the floor and heard some disturbing noise. An old woman with grayish blue skin was squatting on the tea table, resembling a funny little animal. She was digging with her small finger in the tea leaves left over in the cup and eating them, while instructing my third sister about something. I couldn’t figure out the strange language.

My third sister shrugged her shoulders, throwing the clothes in the drawers out the window. “It has always been placed in the last drawer, my model someone must have moved it. Damn him!”

Mother was perspiring. Her eyelids were damp. In her hand, she had a bunch of broad bean flowers that she had gathered in her dream. She was chewing enthusiastically.

I was killing locusts by the pond with my father. The sunlight was glancing on the quiet lotus. Someone threw a stone into the water. My father kneeled down to drink the green water from the pond. He said with tears in his eyes: “My intestines all have been dyed green.” His thin hair was sticking out at the back of his head like the tail of a chicken.

Touching his travel bag, I found it completely empty. So I said to him on purpose: “It was said in the temple today that you were selling human organs. This could be a misunderstanding caused by the travel bag. Why should you take the trouble of holding it all the time? It’s not beneficial to you…”

Turning around, he patted my back. He then sank into a reverie: “Dear boy, do you have such experience? There will be one day, let’s suppose it’s a dull day. You are skipping and running along the avenue, singing pop songs, even turning somersaults. Suddenly rain pours down. Pedestrians on the road start running, yet you stop in the rain. You simply pause, motionless. Thunder comes. You find a screen of rain all around you. Bending low, you pick up a spotted fallen leaf. On your feet, you are wearing a pair of rain shoes that you had in your childhood. One shoe is broken, exposing your bony toe. There is a man, a beggar, marching from the fields. He is shouting out a song: ‘The soldier’s troop is facing the morning sun…’ His rough voice scratches the milky sky sharply. Raindrops drip down from your coarse face. You suddenly realize that the person who is passing the field is no other than yourself.”

“I’ve tried more than once the method of jumping from the cliff. But I’ve never reached the expected result.”

He glanced at me seriously and said: “You have to make up your mind. Every expectation is a trap.” So saying, he pulled away a big stone and pointed at a dead centipede giving out groans. Frogs were jumping in the lotus pond. “I’m not at all happy in the temple. There were days when someone kept banging the gate of the temple. I burn my beard because I don’t know the time, also because of the feeling that the deadly silent mountains are pressing on toward us whenever I hear the wind. And the door is banged so loudly. Oh!”

The riverbank stretched out. Motionless willows stood on both sides of the bank. There was not a soul around.

Outside the straw hut, the blue-skinned old woman was squatting at the doorway, hammering stones.

The sun was circling in the sky. Many people were running madly on the street, every one trailing a long tail behind.

I approached the cliff again. As I was about to let out a sigh of relief, I heard my third sister’s cruel mockery. I backed up in shame and turned around. Embracing her classmate, my third sister was staring at me with curiosity. That girl, wrapped up inside a thick blanket, was leaning toward my third sister like a spoiled child.

“Everybody is running,” my third sister said, pointing at the streets below the cliff, “just like the maggots in the toilet. You come here, hoping that you can jump down lightheartedly, don’t you? We’ve been following you for a long time. As a matter of fact, I’ve tried myself. But what’s the use? It’s out of fashion, all cliché. Yet you never realized it.” She giggled again.

Then, sitting down on the grass, they jabbered about something. Their intimacy was simply disgusting. Mother was hobbling up the hill.

* * *

The Seven-Li Fragrance must be blossoming in some place far away. That’s why the smell of our room always has an element of imaginative exaggeration. The whole family has escaped from the house. The deed reveals the fragile nature of our nerves. Every behavior of ours is frivolous. When I was ten my aunt told me, pointing at the empty corridor, that a fox had run into the clouds directly from the window. After the talk, I smelled fox for several months in the corridor. It seems true that whenever we smell some kind of fragrance of flowers, the windows open slowly, and insects such as locusts drop to the ground. Whether before dawn or in the boundless pitch dark, there is no exception. On the rectangular tea table, there squats a little ox made of pure gold. Whenever my mother talks about it, her eyes sparkle.

Everything seems true: The apple tree planted in the cement floor in the corridor is bearing harvestable fruit, a mysterious silhouette of a camel appears in front of the window, the blue-skinned old woman is flying with a pair of wings like a wasp, my third sister’s fiancé has turned into the mask on the wall, and I am thirty-five years old.

“I gave birth to you while I was picking watermelon in the field,” Mother grins like a mad person. “I can’t count how many years have elapsed since these things happened. But you are clear about it.”

Because my third sister saw through the business on the cliff, I have to stay where I am. In front of me is a desert stretching to the distant horizon. The brown sand undulates mechanically and softly, giving out a muffled rumble. I remain where I am. A turkey stretches out its blood-red crest. Venus is exploding in big golden flowers. On my left stands a parchment tree, from which there hangs a specimen of parrot.