Read Online The Embroidered Shoes by Can Xue - Free Book Online

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.
    â€œOn 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.

THE CHILD WHO RAISED POISONOUS SNAKES
    Sha-yuan—one might call him Sandy Plain—was a child with an ordinary face, lacking any notable features. When he was not talking, his face was a dead blank. But of course this is somewhat different from being a corpse.
    â€œHe has been a well-behaved child,” his mother explained to me. “The only trouble with him is that he should never be allowed outdoors. There wouldn’t have been any trouble if he had stayed at home. We discovered his problem when he was only six. Once he sneaked away without the notice of his father and me. I looked for him everywhere. Finally we found him sleeping among the rosebushes in the park. He was lying on his back, with his limbs stretched out in a casual way. He told us later that he had not seen any roses, but many snake heads. He said he could even see the bones inside the snakes. Then, as one snake bit him, he had fallen asleep. To tell the truth, Sha-yuan hadn’t seen a single snake in his life up to that point. He only saw snakes on TV. His father and I were terrified, and we were more cautious than ever not to let him out.”
    While we were talking, Sha-yuan was sitting in the room facing a cupboard door covered with paper resembling wood grain, absolutely still and motionless. In my astonishment, I kept peering at him.
    â€œDon’t pay any attention to him. He long ago acquired the ability not to listen whenever he doesn’t want to. Once a doctor suggested that we take the child to a resort and let him socialize with other people. According to the doctor, this would improve his condition. So we went to the seashore. Sha-yuan often played with the kind of unruly children one finds at the seaside during the day. But he felt tired very easily. We had been observing him because we couldn’t help feeling anxious about the child. Whenever he felt tired, he simply lay down no matter where and fell asleep. He became so languid that he could sleep while washing his feet in the evening. We thought he was washing, but it was no more than a mechanical movement—his brain was at rest.
    â€œThe third day after our arrival at the seaside, a fisherman’s son ran in with a bleeding finger, telling us that Sha-yuan had bitten him. We questioned Sha-yuan afterward about the incident. He smiled absentmindedly and claimed that the finger was the head of a snake. If he had not bitten it, it would have bitten him. We stayed at the shore for a month. Apparently the beautiful scenery had no positive influence on Sha-yuan. That year he turned nine.
    â€œAfter that, we traveled somewhere every year—to the desert or the lakes, to the forest or the plains. But Sha-yuan was completely indifferent. Sitting in the train, he behaved exactly as he did at home, never looking out the window, never talking to anybody. It was possible that he did not even know he was traveling. But his father and I knew that the child had been too carefree ever since he was young. He never paid attention to his surroundings. He might have been a little cold. I don’t know how to put it, but he lacked sensitivity toward new things.
    â€œIt culminated last year when we discovered that his right arm was covered with wounds. Questioning him closely, we were led to a pitch-dark air-raid shelter where he squatted down with a flashlight. We found a box of little flowery snakes. His father asked him with horror where those snakes had come from. Sha-yuan replied: ‘I caught them one after another.’ This was very odd because