The Embroidered Shoes

A DULL STORY

Now that we’re talking about it, I used to be a very good athlete, a marathoner. I even won some local competitions. You know I have good legs. But although I’m good at running, I do have a problem — I have no appetite. I eat very little every day. In the past two years, I’ve lost almost all interest in food. This is fatal to an athlete. Yet medical examinations find nothing wrong with me. The odd thing is that I can still run as energetically as before despite the fact that I’m eating nothing. I even won the women’s championship in the provincial competition. It was on the day of that victory that I became sick. I immediately ran to the ditch at the back of the house and disgorged violently. Everything poured out of my stomach with the force of an avalanche. When I returned to the house after I finished vomiting, everybody commented on how terrible I looked.

From that day on, I stopped eating once and for all, because whatever I swallowed down, I soon vomited up again. Everything was turned upside down in my eyes. However, this did not interfere with my training and running. I continued my physical exercise, though I became thinner day by day. I lost more than twenty-five pounds in one month, and I looked all the more strange. The members of my team all said they were afraid to see me running. They could hear the grinding of my bones as I ran. And my skin became transparent, so they could see the movement of the bones inside my body. This was too much, too horrifying to them. They hated to see me running, because they did not want to be scared. After much cogitation, my coach decided to send me home for recuperation.

So I returned home and lived with my husband and children. My life was easy but sluggish. Then one October day, my father-in-law came. He wore an orange plastic raincoat, and he was shivering with cold. After some blushing and modest declining of hospitality, he finally sat down on the sofa. But he firmly refused our offer of a dry towel and hot tea. With his aged, veined hand he wiped the rainwater from his head and face. Pointing at me with one finger, he said to my husband that the disease I was suffering from was a very unusual one. He found in the medical books that this disease usually occurred among females. It was caused by the distance between their inner vanity and the goal they were after. At the root of my case was the fact that my legs were unique. He could tell at one glance that I would fall miserably. It was unfortunate to have such legs, and there were endless troubles awaiting me. He did not look at me even once while talking, nor did he allow my husband to put in one word. He simply rattled on and on. Like a wizard, he delivered all kinds of prophecies with his eyes crossed. Upon his departure, for some unknown reason, he made a strange sign to me with his hands, stiff with gnarled joints. It looked like both a gesture of ingratiation and a sign of threat.

“Hey, take it easy,” he said.

Father-in-law came increasingly frequently. It started with visits twice a week, then every day. Every time he would bring with him a huge medical book on neuropathology. He had folded down the corners of many pages, so he could always find just the place he was looking for. Then he would put on his spectacles unhurriedly, and read aloud those sentences and paragraphs from the book. After his reading, he would wink at me lasciviously and say, “Vanity cannot bring any benefit in the long run.” He firmly rejected our every invitation of staying for a meal as if he had been insulted.

Once I mentioned to my husband his father’s strange behavior. He smiled and raised his eyebrows, saying, “Can’t you see that he is desperate because of his fear of death?” When I pondered my husband’s remark, I felt as if I understood something, yet I did not understand anything. One thing was sure — my father-in-law took an extreme interest in me, or maybe we could call it extreme jealousy and hatred. But why? We had had no contact with him. My husband had left home at an early age and never took his father very seriously. In fact, he seldom even mentioned him. What had disturbed the old man so much that he decided to come to our house to make such confessions? Was it because of my not-very-great fame in the athletic world? But why should my fame irritate him so much? This whole business was very puzzling.

After about three weeks, he came one day with some pills of different shapes made of Chinese herbal medicine. He suggested that I take all of them. Staring at me, he declared that such pills could “snatch a patient from the jaws of death.” Of course I refused to take them. Then we fell into a real mess of an argument. Quite to my surprise, he slapped my face. In the flurry, I kicked him with all my marathon strength. He squatted down slowly, holding his belly, his whole body trembling. After a long time, he struggled up and limped home.

After three days, my father-in-law was admitted to the hospital. According to my husband, excessive melancholy had destroyed the old man’s physical balance. He believed that the argument had been fatal to him. “He hit you only because he was afraid of death!” my husband said, looking pensive. “The fear of death can make one lose his reason.”

We went to see my father-in-law, who was lying in bed unconscious. Once he came to, he would stare at us in a threatening way with his bloodshot eyes.

On the way home from the hospital, I suddenly felt something wrong with my legs — my left leg, it so happened. I couldn’t bend it, as if something were growing on the joint. My husband carried me onto the bus. By the time we arrived home, I could no longer stand up. We’ve been to hospitals numerous times and have taken numerous X rays. But there appears to be nothing wrong with the bones. No doctor can explain the case. I figure the reason that nothing can be diagnosed is that I am extremely antagonistic to the doctors.

Could it be that I had some subconscious guilty feeling about father-in-law’s illness? Did I feel regretful about my rude behavior at the moment of our fight? Not at all. When I kicked him, I felt the joy of mischief in my subconscious. When I heard he was sick, I was indifferent. I only felt that he looked funny lying in the hospital.

Another strange thing was that my appetite completely recovered after my legs became sick. I ate and ate every day. Soon a ruddy complexion returned to my cheeks. Every piece of news about father-in-law’s critical condition gave me a feeling of relief. Although I could not return to the athletic field, I felt my life had become more meaningful, with my renewed appetite as the sign. Once in a while, I would remember the wizardish glances of my father-in-law and his talk about my legs. Then I felt a little bit uneasy.

One day my husband came home and told me, “Father is wrestling with the god of death for the last time.” Then he said that if he told his father about the problem with my legs, the news would no doubt bring him back to life. But he did not intend to tell the old man. He did not tell me the reason. After a long silence, he said quietly to himself, “The struggle in the dark depths is spectacular. In no sense can an ordinary person reach such a place.”

One year later, I became confined to a wheelchair. Ever since that happened, my visual and audial abilities have been developing rapidly. It seems that the world surrounding me has become a crystal palace, transparent and shining from morning to night. However, at the extreme depth of my vision there is a small, moving black spot similar to a colon in a piece of writing. One night when I woke up I heard a weak noise resembling the clawing of a rat scratching among scraps of paper. I did not turn on the light — because darkness has no existence for me. Looking straight ahead, I could see that the black dot had turned into a small torch that disappeared after bobbing up and down several times. That rat’s noise grew steadily louder, until it became deafening. My husband was startled awake. Sitting up, he mumbled, “Father’s dead, died just now. I didn’t tell him about your illness.” I could feel the hesitation in his subconscious, though it was only a flash. In the end, he had come around to my point of view.

My complete victory increased a certain feeling of safety in me. It seems that my father-in-law was too fragile to withstand a single blow. After he passed away, I became more and more contented with my life in the wheelchair. One day a doctor came and gave me a thorough examination. His diagnosis was that my legs were perfectly normal. Immediately he ordered me to stand up.

“But why?” I stared at him with hatred.

At this moment my husband came in. With great effort he explained to the doctor, emphasizing repeatedly the advantages of my life in the wheelchair, as well as the disadvantages of standing up and walking, and so on. Finally, he said, “It seems to me that it’s good enough for her to be able to live like this. It is much more natural than her running the marathon in the past.”

Blinking his eyes, the doctor was completely confused. After a while he stuttered, “Then why should you ask me to come in the first place?”

My husband said, a little annoyed, “I asked you to treat her cold. These days she has a slight cold. We would like you to prescribe some medicine. But as soon as you arrived, you started to treat her legs indiscriminately. You are too subjective.”

The doctor wrote a prescription and left in a rage. After the doctor was gone, my husband said to me, “Take it easy. Now that father is gone, nobody will come and bother you anymore.”

Once in a while I hear news of sports from the outside world, such as who has won the championship or placed second and so on. Such things have become like smoke and clouds from another world to me in the wheelchair. My mind is becoming duller and duller and stiffer and stiffer daily. Every day I wander around from this room to that room by pushing the two wheels with my hands. Sometimes, I even go out the door and circle around the houses nearby.

The years of my life in this crystal clear world have caused my body to become radiant. At the beginning it was a little bit phosphorescent, starting from the nails on my toes. Because of the shoes I had on, nobody could see it and it was nothing. Finally, the day came when my husband told me that my legs had disappeared completely from his sight. From a distance I looked like a half-bodied person floating on a cloud of phosphorescence. Besides that, the crown of my head had started to shine with little dots of light. He also discovered that my arms had become extremely strong and powerful. Maybe it was the result my pushing the wheelchair. Thus I float and swim freely in and around the house. I feel completely satisfied and comfortable. The only trouble is that I can’t help feeling sorry for my husband because all the household chores have become his burden. But I don’t take this seriously once I see his happy-go-lucky attitude. At the beginning my children complained, but before long they got used to the fact and conscientiously shared part of the chores. Because I am very satisfied with my present situation, they feel that it is very natural for me to be sitting in the wheelchair. What outstanding children they are.

I remember the way my younger son explained the thing once when he came home from school. He said, “Somebody told me that you will die once you get wet from the rain. So don’t go out for too long. It’s dangerous.”

“Who told you that? Who’s poking his nose into my business?”

My son kept silent. He simply wouldn’t tell me despite my pursuit. I started to feel uneasy. Instinct told me there was some kind of disgusting secret in my son’s statement. Who was the person who couldn’t wait to destroy my peaceful mind? Who on earth was my most direct enemy?

Suddenly it dawned on me: Could it be the spirit of my father-in-law that refuses to let go? After much thought he seemed to be the only one who could be considered an enemy. I told my husband about my uneasiness.

He replied, while glancing at our younger son with contempt and disapproval, “Don’t even bother about the child’s words. Pure nonsense. What’s more, you can even order your legs to disappear from vision. This is some unusual ability that nobody can compete with. You should at least have that much confidence, huh?”

After listening to him I felt not only uneasy but also guilty. My uneasiness did not disappear.

After several days, my youngest son said to me again, “Mom, aren’t you moving too much? You should pause for a while and think about something, somebody told me.”

“But who?!” I blew up. In that instant, I found that all the phosphorescence on my body disappeared and both legs started to tremble.

“I can’t tell…”

“Tell me immediately!”

“… Grandpa.”

“Hah! Where is he now?” I jumped up from the wheelchair, staggered toward my youngest son and caught his shoulder. I saw his face turn extremely pale and his eyes open wide as if he had seen a ghost.

“In his home! At his home! Everybody knows, except you!” My son started to sob. Covering his face with his hands, he ran away.

Hearing the sound, my husband rushed in and complained loudly, “Why do you bother? It would be so good if you just considered that old guy as dead! Yes, it’s true that he recovered, but to us he’s dead. That’s why I told you he died. We have nothing to do with him.”

“So he’s not dead!” I howled like a lioness. I added, “I’m going back to my sports team and start my training.”

“Aiya! Why bother about training? Why take the trouble? A person like you is simply unsuitable for running the marathon. I say it’s a waste of energy. There are enough marathon champions. But how many can you find who are confined to a wheelchair by their own psychosomatic will? You should forget about the drawbacks. Just think about the advantages of your present life. Doesn’t your food taste better this way?”

My husband’s words are always very convincing. After a long silence I decided to accept his opinion because my experience tells me that it’s always the most comfortable to deal with people and the world according to his opinion.

From that time on my legs have no longer been paralyzed, nor do they shine. They are no more than two normal legs. However, I still prefer sitting in a wheelchair without moving my legs, pushing the wheels with my hands instead. Such a life has brought me extreme inner peace.

My children are as busy as before. On the sly, they go to visit their grandpa. My husband still stands by me. But I no longer bother about those things. After a while I forgot everything about the past.

It’s not until today, after so many years, when my youngest son has brought the news that his grandpa’s dead, that I remember he had such a grandpa.

“On his deathbed he kept rumbling, ‘Oh how lonely, how lonely.’”

My husband said, “Such people are born to suffer.”

You see, my story ends like this.