I have cordial relations with them all—or had.
Today SHOES was in an uproar, and I was dragged into the middle of this unpleasantness.
A man came in last week, who wanted a shoe in the window.
Not only did he want a shoe in the window, but someone told him (was it the young girl from the provinces, or sour old Luka?) when I would be coming back to work on the window: this afternoon.
He appeared at my elbow after I had unlocked its shop-side door and just as I raised my leg to climb up. He wanted a certain shoe in the window, he said, and he said this with such audacity that I banged my knee turning toward him.
He has one leg.
I was so startled that he spoke to me, that I acted stupidly. ‘H'm,’ I said, as if this h'm meant yes. I climbed up into the window and locked myself in, but he had disturbed my creativity so much that my hands shook.
He waited for about five minutes while I sat on the floor of the windowcase. He pounded on the door, but I was safe inside. Then he ran outside and attacked me from the pavement, using his eyes and one finger. But he could do little from the pavement unless he wanted to become a display himself. He left the ranks of the window gazers—a curious old woman and a girl whose eyes were only for the window.
I thought that I had taken care of him, so I felt it was safe to climb down.
I was met by the whole SHOES unit, who had called an urgent meeting. Though I am technically not part of their unit, I had no choice but to attend, the window being the source of unrest.
Everyone was in the most vile of moods, the air thick with the bad breath of people who need to eat and haven't since their mid-day soup at the canteen.
I argued: I cannot have my materials stolen. What would the window look like then?
Then I asked the meeting if anyone had tried to interest the man in the shoes in the shop. No one had thought of that, but why would they have anyway, several argued. They could not sell the man one shoe, and he—'sensibly,’ he had emphasised, didn't want to pay for what he didn't need. When he added 'patriotism' to that argument, no one knew what to do with him.
The meeting discussed needs, and I had to defend myself against accusations that I hadn't discussed materialism with him. ‘That would have rusted his face,’ Kishov said, his head bent as he shook dandruff from his hair onto the floor in front of him—a contest he played constantly with anyone, even himself if no one wanted to compete.
Naturally, the meeting first tried to pin the blame on me—an outsider. But I'm not an artist for nothing. Next, they turned on the girl from the provinces, for it was she who broke off counting shoes to listen to a person who was not in her work unit, a person who just came into the shop like anyone who comes into the shop looking for shoes. She didn't seem to understand even when she was asked, ‘Do you let the dust disturb your concentration when it blows in?’ Instead, stupid girl, she began to cry. It was decided that she would henceforth be housed with Luka.
But that only solved the problem of the maker of the problem. The problem itself was still to be dealt with.
There were some in the meeting (those going grey at their temples) who just wanted the problem to go away, and were willing to do it the underhanded way. ‘Sell him the shoe,’ they advised.
Others recoiled from that idea, the very young and the oldest. ‘What if we get caught?’ one young woman asked. ‘We will, surely,’ an old woman said.
'He will, not us,’ dandruff-head said, meaning me, and was nudged in the ribs by his middle-aged superior.
I didn't need him to tell me. The shoes in the window are there for their beauty, as is the painted sled that's in there now. They are not there to sell. If I allowed the shoes to be sold, where would I find shoes to put in the display?
Of course I could not sell a shoe from the window, I told the meeting. They are not mine to sell. They belong to the window.
'Then give him the shoe,’ one voice said, I couldn't tell whose. The necks I expected would bend up and down, bent up and down enthusiastically, as none of their heads were mixed up in this business.
Luka laughed, which surprised me, as I had always thought she was ready to report me for something she might think she found. Suddenly she was on my side. ‘Can't you just see this hero walking down the street, wearing a shoe from our window?’ she said.
The cinema-scene that played in various minds at Luka's instigation produced titters, scowls, and paleness.
Next, the meeting turned to the topic of who this disturbing man could be:
A spy sent to see what we would do?
A person who was so uncultured that he had never been in a city, and thus had never seen shops? He has a strange accent, but then so many people in this city do.
After further fruitless speculation (the hungrier everyone got, the more peevish and argumentative the meeting became) a decision was finally reached. The problem of the one-legged man who wants to buy a shoe would be solved by myself, the most cultured and also the most lettered, by writing a Directive to Address Irregularities.
I wrote the Directive, and it properly addressed, I thought, every possible permutation of irregularity. I framed it and hung it behind the front counter, where it was admired and read out to those who could not read.
It explained that the stock in the shop was for sale.
It exhorted all workers to do their duty, and not be waylaid by people from outside the unit who would not have the unit's productivity as their goal, or might even be saboteurs.
It made clear the inalienable difference between the shop and the window. Each to its purpose, and each to its needs. (I would no more think of taking shoes from the SHOES shop to put in the window than I would steal a man's hair from his head, though his hair might look good under a hat in my CLOTHING window. His hair serves the man's head. The shoes in SHOES serve their inventory.)
The Directive went into finer detail than perhaps you have patience for. But by the time that the nail was banged into the wall and the Directive straightened, there was no fault in understanding amongst any of the workers in the unit, even the young girl who had never worn shoes till she came to the city, let alone seen a shop.
A state of peace and equilibrium reigned again.
I was at SHOES today, hanging shoes on a painted vine that sprouted a red shoe, a blue one with white laces, and a patent-leather boot, when an insistent knock on the door of the window broke my concentration and made me fumble the shoes, the precious shoes.
I knew before I opened the door, that it was him.
'I wish to buy that shoe,’ he said, taking hold of the door and pulling it open. Not only that, but he insinuated his long body onto the base of the window floor and stretched out his long arm to point to the shoe he wanted. A left-foot shoe half hidden under the dropped patent-leather boot: a green shoe with yellow laces and a punched design along the toe. I leaned my body out over his, partly to push him back and partly to see what he was wearing: the same drab lace-up as every man who had bought shoes in this city for the past three years.
I pulled back into my window and stood upright. He stood upright also, supported by a cane in his left hand—a respectful distance from my window door.
He puffed out his chest to make sure I saw the stiffness of medals.
So this was to be a test of wills!
I fought in the Great War, too, though I was not, like him, a pensioner, if that was what he was. He was either that or something more sinister, as he clearly wanted to turn my life upside down.
I used the classic defence, which usually works: pointed disinterest. I went back to my work, shutting myself away from him.
He tapped on the door with his cane.
I called out: ‘Luka, please ask for this hero's identity card. We will have to report him as an attemptive—supply liberator.'
'Comrade,’ I heard Luka say, and I could see without looking, that perpetual bubble of spit grow large and pop at the side of her mouth.—
Then I heard
Luka cry out some primitive peasant Save me! curse. The supply liberator must have had a shock of a card.
'Comrade window-dresser!’ the man called. ‘Come down, by order of the Ministry of the People's Welfare.'
I had known in my bones that he was a spy. Others would have wet their legs at the word Ministry, but I had nothing to fear. My feet met the floor with a steadiness none of the SHOES work unit felt. They stood around comically rigid. But I had comported myself faultlessly throughout this trial.
The man leaned on the counter. Luka snatched the abacus out of his elbow's range. ‘With the exception of....’ —and here he pointed with his cane to the couple of middle-aged men—'Unit SHOES, Hero Boulevard has performed with distinction.’ He elaborated for a moment on the pride he felt in seeing a unit that—and he wiped a tear from his eyes, which brought tears to many.
He was not finished. I am to be awarded another medal! I wanted to sit at that announcement, I felt so weak.
The man from the Ministry continued. ‘There is a need,’ he said, ‘for high-class shoes for heroes with one leg. At the moment, there is no unit detailed to carry out this function.'
That is true. There is the manufactory that makes shoes for windows. There are manufactories that make shoes for shops. But his Ministry had identified a need, as yet unfilled.
I therefore now announce to you what he announced to us at that moment that I can still feel, down to my toes: There will be a manufactory of high-class shoes for heroes of the left foot. Our unit will make those shoes, and I will design them. None of us has ever made shoes, and I certainly have not designed shoes before, but that has never stopped any worker, once there is a plan.
I am filled with joy, as this is recognition above my previous recognitions. I am drunk with joy. And so is all of my new work unit, except for a few middle-aged men. We shut SHOES to celebrate. The chair was dusted off for the esteemed posterior of our benefactor from the Ministry of the People's Welfare. I feel—I feel it still—a warmth of comradeship such as I have never felt with another. There is the unspoken promise between the Ministry man and myself (his eyes shone with approval towards me) that if this manufactory fulfils, there will be yet another manufactory established with myself as designer, for high-class shoes for the right foot.
In the glow of ruddy cheeks and shining eyes, bottles appeared from nowhere and glasses were filled. The first toast! We all raised our glasses, and the man from the Ministry inclined his glass with a little rakish tilt towards me...
The man from the Ministry proved to be a hero indeed. When the party was over, the SHOE unit members were as firm-legged as boiled turnips, but he took his leave, rising like an oak from his chair. He walked down the block and disappeared in the murk of a broken streetlight. Even with his cane, he walked with the tread of a true leader—a leader who that fine green shoe looked cobbled for, as soon as it met his foot.
* * * *
Luckily, not every editor and publisher in the free world acts as if fiction were directed by a centrally planned economy, nor is every author fit to be assigned to a Work Unit. Therefore, to my editors and comrades in this volume, I raise a glass of homemade turnip plonk in celebration as a writer and consumer of these glorious products of the imagination, unfit for any Plan.
Anna Tambour
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Pallas at Noon
Joy Marchand
Sing, O muse, of the death of Pallas by the sea.
Today, 4 a.m.
Chloe is up early to make the rolls. They're cinnamon raisin and she hopes they turn out like the ones pictured in Good Housekeeping. Into a heavy bowl, she sifts flour, salt from a terra cotta pig, sugar from a paper sack. She's wearing too many silk robes over too many silk nightgowns and her movements are stupid and slow. Sweat beading on her upper lip, her breath coming in gusts, she powders cinnamon with a mortar and pestle, plucks raisins from a screen on the windowsill. Everything by hand. Everything.
Dean's not awake yet and she's thankful because she needs more butter for the rolls and he has no tolerance for the hand-crank butter churn. Chloe's husband hates the chortle of the heavy cream splashing in the glass jar, hates the squeak of the crank. But she loves leaning against the granite countertop with the jar wedged in the crook of her arm, likes cycling the crank while the butterfat turns into a thick golden ribbon against the glass. She likes how the movement warms her beneath her heavily layered morning clothes until she feels damp, and small, and cocooned. Most of all, she likes the time it kills, this churning, grating, grinding, drying, washing, slicing. Work keeps her from floating away.
The rolls come out just like ones in the photograph. Dean eats them while looking at his notes, drinking the coffee percolated from freshly ground Sumatra. He offers sound bytes to fill the silence: two o'clock sales meeting, a machine presentation, the anticipated morning commute, his racquetball chops. By the way my darling, I used up the toilet tissue. Could you add it to the delivery order? Can you manage it today? How's the stutter, Clo?
N—.—.—.—n—.—.—.—n—.—.—.—not bad, she says. A shrug.
Then Dean is gone, and his rustling, clinking, paper-and-fork noises fade, and all that's left is a mouth print on a cup and a glossy smear of sugar on a bone china plate. The kitchen exhales, invigorated by silence and lemon furniture polish. A thesis, inspired by coffee smells, dish soap, and citrus oil, unfurls as she rinses the dishes. It weaves itself into the first line of a poem—holds for a moment—then unravels down the garbage disposal as the impossible catches her eye.
There are filthy fingerprints on the counter: tiny, sandy ovals made by tiny, sandy fingers—impossible marks in a fan shape on the freshly scrubbed surface. They must be a figment, Chloe thinks, a specter. There can be no marks since there is no child—has never been a child—in this barren house. With trembling hands, she erases the marks with an abrasive pad and a scatter of blue scouring powder, a pumice stone, a buffing rag, a pint of surface cleaner. A scrub brush, a steel wool pad, three capfuls of eye-stinging Mr. Clean.
When the counter is sterile, she starts on the floor.
Funeral Shroud
A recliner sits in the attic, positioned to catch the sunrise. Chloe lounged there on her last morning as a writer, with a yellow tablet and a ballpoint pen. Her jaw clenched tight, she sifted through her thoughts like a tired old woman searching a junk drawer for a thimble. She searched for a simple concept she could capture in ink on cheap yellow paper. Words came: dusty drapes, grimy window, cardboard boxes, ready for the burn barrel.
She abandoned the pen on the arm of the recliner and took up a sponge, slipping into a trance of tidying up as easily as one might slide into a tepid pool. The drapes went into a basket, joined by a pair of lap-throws and a dozen Christmas napkins. The mottled web of dirt on the attic window went into the fibers of a rag. Her anger went into a plastic bucket, to mingle with the gray-brown mop water.
While she sorted through the attic junk, the rhythmic potential of each item wafted upward like steam, opening her pores and tempting her palate with sultry iambic feet: colored pencil, candy wrapper, crumpled yellow paper. Then she was smiling, giddy with the possibilities—O, flexible poetry!—and it felt as if the curse on her work were about to be lifted. But when she stood to stretch, she noticed the boxes Dean had set aside for the burn barrel.
Expecting stacks of coupons and bundles of bank statements, she opened a carton and was startled by the blocks of static, the frenzied ant races. When her eyes focused, the furious black flecks coalesced into a pile of speckled composition books, titled in Dean's tiny copperplate. Qualities of Light, Poems 400-450. The Sway of the Pendulum, Poems 451-500.
The boxes were full of Dean's creative work, hundreds of sonnets inked in fine-tipped pen with the aid of an Ames lettering guide. The margins were packed with illustrations of fantastic machines, levers and gears and cogs. Beneath the books she found Dean's note-taking tackle, his steno pads, magazine clippings, news
paper articles, index cards. In the next box: a compass and protractor, French curves in three sizes, templates and drafting scales. In the last box: spools of kite string, bags of marbles, a conglomeration of magnets, a cup of bearings, a plastic baggie full of colored lenses, twists of piano wire, a shoebox brimming with mousetraps. Dean's materials, entombed in cardboard, stacked in a pile to be burned with the leaves, or set on the curb for city sanitation. His work. His thoughts. Dead dreams.
She left the funeral pyre as she'd found it and abandoned her own instruments on the arm of the recliner—yellow tablet and ballpoint pen, dictionary and pocket thesaurus. They remained there for years, lost and forgotten, gathering a shroud of dust pale as bone.
Today, 6 a.m.
The binoculars are titanium and fit in the palm of her hand. They are survivors of the attic purge, deemed useful for mistletoe spotting in the backyard tree line. Because they've been spared, she can crouch behind the curtain in the parlor and train them on the street like a scientist positioning the Hubble telescope. There is no dust in the lace curtain to mar the lenses, no grime on the windows to impede their function. Her view is immaculate.
At half past six Edie-Across-the-Street and Mister-Dave's-New-Wife open their doors to retrieve the morning paper. It is their habit to stand for a moment in their pink sponge curlers, newspapers under their arms, shouting things at one another that are meant to be pleasant. I see you got the car washed yesterday. I hear it's supposed to rain so you should see if he got a rain coupon. Oh, I told Dave to wait until tomorrow, I really did, but he couldn't wait another minute. You know how men get with their cars. Boy, don't I ever.
At quarter past seven The-Man-Who-Walks-with-the-Golf-Club sprinkles Cat Chow on his mat before heading out for his walk but The-Cat-with-the-Torn-Ear doesn't show up. Usually, the cat is there crunching kibble when the man returns from his shuffle, and they stop to converse about small things. Rrrrrrow-ow. That good, huh? Nnn-gow. Well, you know I can't afford the hoity-toity stuff. Brrrrrrr. The cat's absence leaves a hole in the fabric of the morning.
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