The Embroidered Shoes by Can Xue Page B

people stopping by his shed. The dreamlands they described had become more and more outrageous. Each one complained that the thing he had seen was indescribable. And because it was indescribable, they sometimes left, disheartened, in the middle of their account. The Recorder, understanding all this, held his black notebook and pen in his hands and pretended to be listening carefully. As a matter of fact, he did not record anything. When the person with the dream left, in his mind’s eye there still appeared the image that once had made him tremble, yet it had faded into a blankness with something like shadows swaying back and forth within it. He couldn’t confirm this, yet he was satisfied. Closing his notebook he sat on the floor for a break, and the instant of the break was sweet.
    The following is a dialogue between the Recorder and a person reporting a dream:
    DREAMER : What have I been talking about? What I have said is not even as much as one tenth of what I saw. That feeling could never occur again. Why can’t I describe it? It’s so disheartening! The wind is too strong here.
    RECORDER : Uh-huh.
    DREAMER : Whatever you have recorded here is all rubbish. Yet we still come to you because everybody knows you are the only person who records those things here. I really want to describe it. Please tell me—is it because I am not verbal?
    RECORDER : What you’ve said is really interesting.
    After the dreamers left, they never revealed to others the image that they had described to the Recorder, as if there were an unspoken agreement among them. After they had described their dreamlands to him, they felt they had left a piece of valuable property in his run-down shed. As a matter of fact, they seldom reflected on what they had described, yet they remembered making the description because that was their property. They paid no attention to whether or not the recorder had written anything in his notebook. What they did pay attention to was the very act of describing inside the shed. Although during their descriptions they were also continually grumbling and complaining, as if impatient or totally bored, deep inside they were quite satisfied with themselves. Once they left that shed they felt they became mere ordinary people. They tended to consider the unique communication between themselves and the Recorder as a supreme secret. They also tended to see that black notebook as something that made them feel intimate and commited to something in their hearts.
    Nobody had expected that the Recorder would abandon his black notebook, because it contained such a quantity of unique and strange dream images, and it was therefore considered by many people as the property of the many dreamers. But now he had thrown the notebook away, and he explained this only indifferently: “It flew away without wings.” And he refused to raise the issue again.
    Random passersby continued to enter his run-down shed, As usual he sat on the floor, straight and solemn, listening to their descriptions without making a sound himself. The disappearance of the notebook hadn’t affected the unique communication between them. Among those random passersby were some who had visited him before and others who had never been there. Without mentioning it, they all experienced the benefit of not having the notebook because now they could talk about whatever they wanted without worrying. After they had arrived at the Recorder’s shed, every one of them would speak, whether for a long time or a short time. So they started talking, yet who could hear clearly what they were talking about? That was impossible. It was not until today—this is quite a few years after it happened—that we realized that those people had never said anything meaningful. Instead they were only pronouncing some syllables willy-nilly to pass the time. And the Recorder was not listening carefully but only pretended to pay attention. As a matter of fact, he