The Embroidered Shoes

HOMECOMING

As a matter of fact, I’m very familiar with this area. For some time I came here every day. However, now it’s too dark, and the moon is reluctant to come out, so I can go forward only by instinct. After a while, I smell an odor. It’s from a small chestnut tree. Past the chestnut tree, dry grass crackles under my step. Now I feel relaxed. Here’s a stretch of grassland. No matter which direction you face, you can’t reach the end of the prairie without at least half an hour’s walk. The ground is very flat, without even any dips. Once my younger brother and I conducted an experiment here by walking forward for ten minutes with our eyes closed. We both came through the trial safe and sound.

Reaching the grassland, I wander about aimlessly. I know that soon afterward I’m going to see a house. Ultimately I will arrive there without having to give it much thought. In the past this method always brought me unexpected joy. Once I enter that house, I will sit down and drink a cup of tea with the owner (a pale-faced gentleman with no beard or hair). Then one breath will take you down along a zigzag mountain trail until you reach a grove of banana trees. The owner is rather kind, and, in his reluctance to part, always accompanies me to the corner, where I have to turn. He always wishes me good luck. The most comfortable thing is the downhill trail, which is very easy to walk. Soon there will appear a monkey to greet me. Each time I nod at him, and then he leads the way. Usually, when I reach the banana grove, I lie down beneath a tree and eat my fill. Then I go home. On my way home there is no monkey. Of course I never lose my way, because everything is so familiar to me. Strangely, the way home is again downhill, and I walk without any effort. Why is that? I’ve never understood the logic in this.

Wandering like this, I know I’ve reached the house because my forehead has suddenly bumped into the brick wall. Tonight the owner of the house hasn’t put on the light. Nor does he greet me from the stoop as he usually does.

“Why should you come so late?” he says from inside the window. He sounds a bit unhappy. Feeling his way around for a long time, he opens the door with a creak.

“I can’t turn on the light,” he says. “It’s too dangerous. I guess you still don’t know that behind our house there is a deep abyss. This house was built on a cliff. I’ve been hiding this fact from you in the past, but I can’t anymore. Do you remember that I always accompany you to the corner, chatting about something distracting? I was afraid that you might turn your head and see the position of the house!”

I sit down at the table.

“That’s not too difficult,” the owner continued. In the darkness he passes a cup of lukewarm water into my hand. “Once in a while it comes out. I mean the moon. You can see it now. I really can’t turn on the light. Please forgive me. This house has reached its dying age. Please listen, and you will understand everything.”

What he’s saying is patent nonsense. It’s obvious to me that the house is situated at the end of the flat grassland with its back toward the mountain. I can remember clearly. Once I even circled around to the back of the house and fed pigeons there! But now he has made it so terrifying that I have to be more cautious.

In fact, the moon still hasn’t come out, and there’s no sound whatsoever from outside. It’s a silent, suffocating night. It could be that the owner has lost his mind during my absence for all these years.

He sits quietly in front of me, smoking.

“Maybe you don’t believe me. Just stand up and have a look!”

Supporting myself with the table, I stand up. All of a sudden I fall forward onto the ground without anybody pulling me.

“Now you understand.” I suppose he is smiling slightly. “It’s terrible, such a thing. Light is absolutely forbidden. And the banana grove can be reached only under the condition that you do not turn your head and look back. Well, my little deceptions are something from the past. Maybe you won’t even care about them anymore.”

“Now I have to wait until morning to leave.” I sigh and say, “When the dawn comes I’ll be able to see and it will be convenient for me to go.”

“You’re completely wrong,” he says, deep in thought while smoking. “There won’t even be a question of dawn. I’ve told you that the house has reached its dying age. Can’t you imagine what’s left? Since you have forced your way in, I have to arrange a room for you. Of course, the light cannot be turned on. You’d better calm yourself down and listen. You can hear how those sea waves are striking against the cliff.”

Of course I can’t hear anything. Outside the window appears a dark shadow that might be the mountain. I remember this house is located at the foot of a mountain. I listen intently. Still there is dead silence.

“How can the dawn come?” The owner has guessed what I’m thinking. “You will understand. As time goes by, you will understand everything. Once you force your way in, you have to live here. It’s true, you’ve been here in the past, and every time I saw you off in person. But then you were only passing through — that’s not the same thing as forcing your way in. Then this house was not as old as it is now.”

I mean to argue, I mean to tell him that I did not intend to force my way in. As in the past, I am, again, just passing through. I would not have come if I had known that my behavior constituted “forcing my way in.” But I open my mouth without saying anything, as if I am too timid and ashamed.

“The foundation of the house is very fragile, and it’s built on top of the cliff. Right behind the house there’s a deep abyss. You should be aware of this situation. Now that you’re here, you can live in a small room on the right. Actually, I am not the owner of this house. The original owner has departed. I, too, came here by accident, and I stayed. At that time the original owner was not very old. One day he went to the back of the house to feed the pigeons. When I heard a sound, I went out back, but I couldn’t find him. He had disappeared. That was when I discovered the cliff behind the house. Of course the original owner had jumped over the edge. I never had a chance to ask him why he had built the house in such a place. I still find it puzzling. But I’ve gotten used to the idea.”

He leads me to the appointed small room and orders me to lie down on the wooden bed. He tells me not to think about anything, explaining that this way I can hear what’s happening outside. And he tells me not to expect the dawn, that such a thing does not even exist anymore. I have to learn to adjust to this new environment in which I must depend on the senses of touch and hearing. As silently as a fish he leaves me. For a long, long time I am in doubt as to whether he is exaggerating. For example, he considers my coming here as “forcing my way in,” and he makes much of the cliff and the abyss. But what do these have to do with putting on a light?

I don’t know how long I’ve been sleeping in silence. Finally I’ve made up my mind. I find a lighter in my pocket and start a small fire. In that faint light I search the small room up and down without finding anything. It’s an extremely ordinary room. The ceiling is made of bamboo strips. The only furniture in the room is the old wooden bed that I have lain on. On the bed there’s a cotton mattress and a quilt. There is perfect silence, and there appear to be no terrible changes in the house because of the light I am making. Obviously the owner of the house is exaggerating. Maybe he’s suffering from some neurosis. A lot of things in the world are hard to figure. These are all kinds of possibilities. To be cautious, I had better keep still. Besides, there isn’t much fluid left in my lighter. I should save it. It’s the same as the blindfold game I used to play with my younger brother. We would limit our travel to only ten minutes. The whole situation might have turned out completely differently if we had set our time limit at one hour. Furthermore, what is the structure of the human ears? For example, can my ears stay this quiet forever? As for the owner of the house, can he find a way to keep himself alert? How can he be so listless for such a long time?

I hear him coming. Feeling around, he says, “So, one corner of the ceiling has dropped! Those explosions just now were horrifying. I hope you didn’t make any light. In the waves below, a fishing boat is sinking. I suspect the fisherman on the boat is the original owner of this house. Such things always seem to have a relationship to each other. According to the account I’ve heard, the fishing boat has run aground on the rocks. The whole boat is smashed to bits and the dead man is lying peacefully amidst the seaweed. Above him is the little house he built with his own hands.… Of course this story is pure nonsense. How can he see any house? He’s choked to death on seawater. And there’s nothing poetic about it at all. He’s lying at the bottom of the sea, his face down, buried in the sand and stone. He will rot, gradually.… Now I’m returning to my room. You should just calm down and stay here. Gradually you’ll find that everything is fine. Certainly better than your wandering all over the place.”

I try to walk out of the house. The earth is trembling terribly. Clinging to the ground, I crawl outside the front gate. In front of me should be the flat stretch of grassland. As soon as I stand up and walk, I feel suddenly that it’s not grass under my feet but something hard and moving. I start to change direction. But no matter which direction I walk I can never reach the grassland, and beneath my feet there’s always that lump of moving substance. Surrounding me is a stretch of grayish black. Except for the vague silhouette of the house, I can’t even see the mountains. Of course, I can’t go behind the house. According to the owner, there’s a cliff. Since I have walked randomly along the grassland, I should be able to walk back as long as I walk randomly. There’s no need to feel tense. With these thoughts in mind, I start walking randomly in some direction. In the beginning nothing happens. I start to feel a little bit pleased with myself. About a hundred paces on, I suddenly step into empty air. Fortunately, I get caught in a little tree sticking out and I climb back onto the cliff. I remember very well that I started walking from the front of the house. Why have I reached the cliff? Does that mean that “different roads lead to the same destination”? Where’s the trail through the grassland? I ponder hard. It seems there should be some answer. In fact, I have vaguely felt that answer for a long time, but subconsciously I have refused to recognize it. Clutching the ground, I crawl back into the house. Inside, there’s a kind of relaxation and a safe feeling. I even feel that the darkness and the smell of the lime are familiar, cozy, comfortable. In the darkness, the owner of the house hands me a cup of water — lukewarm and with a smell of being unboiled, but it’s still drinkable.

“I have to say something,” the owner of the house announces. At that moment I smell the fragrance of a cigarette. “It’s about him. He wears a black garment and a black hat. Even his leg wrappings are black. He appeared on the street of the town as if he were an ancient bandit. Some people passed right in front of him without even noticing him. Others spied on him secretly from those shuttered windows. Both sides of the street were completely lined with barbershops. Inside sat many customers waiting to have their hair cut. Some of them appeared to be in high spirits. Nobody knew where all the barbers had gone. The customers did not notice the black-clothed person. Those who spied on him behind the windows were all pedestrians who had noticed him and had sneaked into the barbershops quickly, hiding themselves behind the curtains. The sun was burning, and he was soaked with sweat. Stretching his arms, he appeared to be driving something away. Those who were hidden observed, with pale faces, the performance of that black-jacketed man. Without anybody pushing him, he fell down. A large number of people swarmed out and circled him.

“‘Send him home!’ ordered one of those who had been hidden.

“‘Right! Send him home!’ all those that surrounded him agreed.

“Just don’t think about things like the dawn. Then you can harmonize yourself with the house. The sky will never lighten. Once you keep this rule in mind, you will feel comfortable. It’s because he was too listless that the original owner jumped into the sea from the cliff behind the house and became a fisherman. Every day I listen here, and I can always hear him struggling in the stormy sea. You and I do not belong to the sea below, we two. You knew the answer long ago. The original owner’s skill as a sailor was not very good. He was good at building a house. Therefore, his boat running into the rocks is unavoidable.”

Quietly he returns to his own room.

As soon as I heard the owner telling me that below the cliff is the sea, I started to feel an irrational attraction to that imaginary world below. I don’t know how long I’ve been staying in this house. I can’t keep track because I don’t have my watch with me and it’s always so dark. Also, my lighter has long since run out of fluid. Whenever I feel bored, I chat with the owner about the sea. And every time, he hands me a cup of lukewarm water and smokes his cigarette. He always starts the conversation with this sentence: “The little boat of the original owner has arrived…” Every time, I object: “But the original owner is dead, isn’t he? He ran his boat onto the rocks.” At that moment he smiles, and the red glow of his cigarette flashes. Paying no attention to my objection, he continues this talk: “Upon its departure I went to see the boat off. On the boat there was only one fisherman. I heard that he died of old age later on. Then the owner himself became the fisherman. He never fished. Instead he only picked up seaweed and such things to fill his stomach. Afterward his face gradually turned blue.”

With some understanding, I say, “We two are living above. We never turn on the light. So it’s almost as if we don’t exist, isn’t that so? Even if the original owner passed by below, he would never notice the house above him. It’s very possible that he once mistook this lump of black shadow as a tree. Calmly he must have glanced at it and immediately turned his glance away.”

After a while, without knowing it, I join the discussion. We talk so eagerly that we feel uncomfortable when we lapse into silence. But once we say something, we immediately feel that we are too talkative. Time passes like this. Of course, there is no clock, and the dawn never comes. The owner of the house says that before long I will be acclimated to the fact that there is no seasonal change. He also says we cannot use the content of our talk as the basis to sort out the years, months, or days because we forget completely about our talks the next day. Besides, the little boat itself is fictitious and it’s meaningless except for filling our need to divert ourselves from boredom.

When we feel tired from talking, we doze off separately. Upon waking, I remember fragments of what happened in the past. I remember that I found that trail from the very beginning, the single little trail toward the grassland. Although I have walked on that trail hundreds of times, I still have to look for it every time, though I never put much effort into looking for it. But what happened next is vague. It seemed that a flamingo was chasing me desperately. I was not afraid of it, yet he could never catch up to me. He ran always in the same position, as if held in place by a magnetic stone. I’m wondering if the small trail that I have used hundreds of times is really the only way to reach here. Since in my original memory this house is located at the end of a stretch of grassland with its back toward the mountain, there should be several ways, from several different directions, to reach here. For example, one could come down from the mountain, or from the south or west of the grassland. Who’s to say that there’s no path in those places? Once in the dim light I really saw a human figure in the west and I believe I was not mistaken. Would the flamingo come again?

But now the owner of the house firmly eliminates all the possibilities. He insists that there is a deep abyss behind the house, and that there has never been grassland in front of the house — just the rolling sand and stones. But how did I come here? According to him, this was only a chance incident. The so-called grassland and the banana groves are nothing but illusions that I made for myself. At the beginning there was a trail behind the house, the trail where he saw me off. But after several big explosions the trail has been blocked by mud and sand. The original owner of the house had calculated the odds before he chose this location to build his house. It is usual for people to pass by this location accidentally. In the past, many people have passed by the house by chance as I did. He received them politely and saw them off at the corner. Nobody noticed anything abnormal. But my forcing my way in this time was something unexpected. That was why he was a little bit upset at the beginning, though now he feels okay.

I insist on looking at the pigeons at the back of the house. I say that we should feed the little creatures. With a sneer, he agrees reluctantly. But he says we’ll have to go through the tunnel in the kitchen to get to the cliff at the back of the house. In such a place it is enough for a person to stretch out her head and have a glance. He can’t imagine why I have the idea that there would be pigeons in such a place. Besides, how could I ever get to the kitchen? I might entertain such fantasies, but once I tried to actually move, I would fall to the ground.

Although I am living in a room apart from the owner’s, his existence is a comfort for me. My skeptical mind has gradually calmed down. Every time I awake I hear the owner’s greeting: “So, you’re up.” In the darkness I put on my clothes and then sit in the living room with the owner every day without exception. When we have nothing to talk about, we sit in silence. I don’t feel particularly listless, just a little bit bored.