by Kelly Link
The dictator’s wife will stare at visitors’ shoes until the visitors look down too, wondering if a shoelace has come untied.
Another old lady – but not quite as old – lets visitors in. On Tuesdays she dusts cases with an old silk dress. “Admission free today,” she said. “Stay as long as you like.”
“My shoes,” the dictator’s wife says to a visitor who has stopped to stare at her. She says this the way some people say, My children. She’s got an accent, or maybe her teeth don’t fit so well. “People don’t think about shoes as much as they should. What happens to your shoes when you die? When you’re dead, what do you need with shoes? Where are you planning to go?”
The dictator’s wife says, “Every time my husband had someone killed, I went to that person’s family and asked for a pair of their shoes. Sometimes there wasn’t anyone to ask. My husband was a very suspicious man.”
Now and then her right hand disappears up under her wig as if she’s looking for something up there. “A family sits down to breakfast. The wife might say something about the weather. Someone might happen to walk by and hear the wife say something about the weather. Then soldiers would come along, and the soldiers would take them, husband, wife, children, away. They would be given shovels. They would dig an enormous hole, there would be other people digging other holes. Then the soldiers would line them up, fathers, mothers, children, and shoot them.
“In this country you think talking about the weather is safe but it isn’t. Neither is breakfast. I gave soldiers bribes. They brought me the shoes of the people they shot. Eventually there were so many pits full of dead people in our country that you couldn’t lay out a vegetable garden without digging someone up. It was a small country but dead people take up a lot of space. I had special closets made for all the shoes.
“Sometimes I dream about those dead people. They never say anything. They just stand there barefoot and look at me.”
Under the covers, the dictator’s wife looks like an arrangement of cups and bones, knives and sticks. The visitor can’t tell if she’s wearing shoes or not. Visitors don’t like to think of the dictator’s wife’s shoes, shiny and black as coffins, hiding under the sheets. The visitor might not want to think of the dictator’s wife’s cold bare feet either. And that bed – who knows what’s under it? Dead people, lined up in pairs like bedroom slippers.
The dictator’s wife says, “When I married him I was fifteen.”
The dictator’s wife says:
I was considered to be the most beautiful girl in the country (remember, it was not a big country). My pictures were in all the papers. My parents wanted me to marry an older man who had a large estate. This man had bad teeth but his eyes were kind. I thought he would make a good husband, so I said yes. My dress was so beautiful. Nuns made the lace. The train was twelve feet long and I had two dozen girls from good families to hold it in the air behind me as we walked up the aisle. The dressmaker said that I looked like a movie star or a saint.
On my wedding day, the dictator saw me riding in my father’s car. He followed me to the church and he offered me a choice.
The dictator said that he had fallen in love with me. He said that I could marry him instead or else he would have my fiancЋ shot.
The dictator had not been in power for very long. There had been rumors. No one believed them. My fiancЋ said that the dictator should go outside with him and they would talk like men, or else they could fight. But the dictator nodded to one of his soldiers and they dragged my fiancЋ outside and they shot him.
Then the dictator said that I could marry him or he would shoot my father. My father was an influential man. I think he believed that the dictator wouldn’t dare shoot him. But they took him outside and they shot him just outside the church door, although I was begging them not to.
Then my mother said that he would have to shoot her as well because she didn’t plan on living any longer. She was shaking. The dictator looked very disappointed. She was not being reasonable. She looked at me as they led her out, but she didn’t say anything. One shoe fell off. They didn’t stop to let her pick it up.
I had twin brothers, a year older than me. When the soldiers took my mother, my brothers ran after them. The soldiers shot them as they ran through the door. I thought that next the dictator would have me taken outside, but my sister Effie began to sob. All the bridesmaids were crying as well. Effie said that she didn’t want to die and that she didn’t want me to die either. She was very young. So I said I would marry the dictator.
The soldiers escorted us outside. At the door, the dictator bent over. He picked up my mother’s shoe and gave it to me, as if it were a love token. A souvenir.
The next day Effie and I buried my parents and my brothers and my fiance. We washed their bodies and we dressed them. We put them in good sturdy coffins and buried them, but we buried them barefoot. I took my parents’ shoes and my fiancЋ‘s shoes to the dictator’s house for my trousseau, but I gave Effie to an aunt to look after.
Underneath the messy wig, the face of the dictator’s wife looks like the face of an evil old man and – just for a minute – the visitor may think that it isn’t the dictator’s wife at all, lying there in the old woman’s bed, but the dictator himself, disguised in an old dirty wig.
“I was too beautiful,” the dictator’s wife says. “I killed a lot of men. The dictator killed anyone – men, women – who stared at me too long. He killed women because he heard someone say that they were more beautiful than his wife. He killed my hairdresser because I told my hairdresser to cut off all my hair. I didn’t want people to stare at me. I thought if I had no hair, no one would stare at me because I was beautiful.”
The dictator’s wife says, “My hair never grew back. I wore dead women’s hair, made into wigs by dead wigmakers. I had closets full of dead people’s shoes. I went and sat in my closets sometimes. I tried on shoes.”
She says, “I used to think all the time about killing him. But it was difficult. There were children who sat at the table with us and tasted his food. Every night before I went to bed, his soldiers searched me. He slept in a bulletproof vest. He had a charm made for him by witches. I was young. I was afraid of him.
“I never slept alone with him – I thought for a long time that that was how a marriage was, a man and his wife in a room with a bodyguard to watch what they did. When the dictator fell asleep, the bodyguard stayed awake. He stood beside the bed to watch me. It used to make me feel safe. I didn’t really want to be in a room alone with the dictator.
“I don’t know why he killed people. He had bad dreams. A fortune-teller used to come to the dictator’s house to explain his dreams to him. They would be alone for hours. Then I would go in, to tell her my dreams. He would stand just outside the room listening to my dreams. I could smell him standing there.
“I never dreamed about the dictator. I had the most wonderful dreams. I was married. My husband was kind and handsome. We lived in a little house. We fought about little things. What we would name our children. Whose turn it was to make dinner. Whether I was as beautiful as a movie star.
“Once we had an argument and I threw the kettle at him. I missed. I burned my hand. After that, whenever I was dreaming, I had a scar on my hand. A burn. In dreams my husband used to kiss it.”
The dictator’s wife says, “The fortune-teller never said anything when I told her my dreams. But she got skinnier and skinnier. I think it was a bad diet, the dictator’s dreams and his wife’s dreams, like eating stones.
“I dreamed I got fat from having children. Every night my dream was like the most wonderful story that I was telling to myself. I would fall asleep in the same bed as the dictator. The guard would be looking down at us, and all night I would dream about my house and my husband and my children.
“Here’s the weird thing,” the dictator’s wife says. “In my dream, all our children were shoes. I only ever gave birth to shoes.”
The visitor may agree that this is st
range. In dreams the visitor’s children are always younger than they really are. You can pick them up in one hand, all of them, like pebbles. In the rain, or in bathwater, they become transparent, only their outlines faintly visible.
“My life was weird,” the dictator’s wife says. “Why wouldn’t my dreams be? But I loved those children. They were good children. They cried sometimes at night, just like real babies. Sometimes they cried so hard I woke up. I would wake up and not know where I was, until I looked up and saw the dictator’s bodyguard looking back down at me. Then I could go back to sleep.”
She says, “One night, the dictator had a dream. I don’t know what. He tossed and turned all night. When he woke up, he had the fortune-teller brought to him. It was early in the morning. The sun wasn’t up yet. I went and hid in my closets. He told the fortune-teller something. I don’t know what. Then his soldiers came and got her and I could hear them dragging her away, down the stairs, out into the garden. They shot her, and in a little while I went out to the garden and pulled off her shoes. I was happy for her.”
“I never asked him why he killed her or why he killed anybody. When we were married, I never asked him a question. I was like the fortune-teller. I never said anything unless he asked me a question. I never looked at his face. I used to stare at his shoes instead. I think he thought I was staring at his shoes because they weren’t clean, or shiny enough. He would have them polished until I could see my face in them. He wore a size eight and a half. I tried his shoes on once but they pinched the sides of my feet. I have peasant’s feet. His shoes were narrow as coffins.”
Tears slide down the dictator’s wife’s face and she licks at them. She says, “I had a daughter. Did I tell you that? The night before she was born, the dictator had another dream. He woke up with a shout and grabbed my arm. He told me his dream. He said that he had dreamed that our child would grow up and that she would kill him.”
She doesn’t say anything for a while. Visitors may grow uncomfortable, look away at the rows of shoes in glass boxes. The bed and the dictator’s wife are reflected in each pane of glass. The dictator’s wife says, “When my daughter was born, they put her in a box. They threw the box in the harbor and the box sank. I never gave her a name. She never wore any shoes. She was bald just like me.”
The dictator’s wife is silent again. In the silence, the glass boxes seem to buzz faintly. There is a smell as if someone is standing nearby. All the people under the bed are listening. Far away, the other old woman is humming as she dusts the cases. At this point, the visitor asks, hesitantly, “So how did she grow up and kill the dictator?”
The dictator’s wife says, “She was dead so she couldn’t. One day the dictator was picking strawberries in his garden. He stepped on a piece of metal. It went right though his shoe. The dictator’s foot got infected. He went to his bed, and he died there six days later.”
The dictator’s wife’s voice gets scratchy and small. She yawns. “Nobody knew what to do. Some people thought I should be executed. Other people thought that I was a heroine. They wanted to elect me to office. I didn’t want to be dead yet and I didn’t want to stay there, so I packed up the shoes. I packed up every single shoe. I went to my aunt and she packed up Effie’s things. Effie had gotten so tall! She was walking around outside without a hat on, as if sunlight wouldn’t hurt her. We didn’t recognize each other. We got on a ship and went as far away as we could. That was here. I had ninety-four steamer trunks and there wasn’t anything in them but shoes.”
The dictator’s wife stops talking. She stares greedily at the visitor, as if the visitor is delicious. She looks as if she would like to eat the visitor up. She looks as if she would like to eat the visitor up in one bite, spit out the visitor’s shoes like peach stones. The visitor can hear Effie coming down the aisle, but the dictator’s wife doesn’t say another word. She just lies there on the bed with her teeth out again, in the glass beside the bed.
Effie motions for the visitor to follow her. Each case has a name printed on a tiny card. You can’t see over the top of the stacked cases, but you can see through them. Light has collected in the boxes and the glass is warm.
Effie says, “Here. These shoes belonged to a famous opera singer.”
The opera singer’s shoes have tall green heels. They have ivory buttons up the side. The visitor looks down at Effie’s feet. She is wearing wooden sandals – Dr. Scholl’s – with thick red leather buckles. Her toenails are red. They match the red buckles. When she sees the visitor looking, she bends over. She turns a small key in the side of the shoe. Red wheels pop out of the bottom of the Dr. Scholls. She turns the key in the other shoe, and then she straightens up. Now she’s quite tall.
She rubs a glass case with the dusty dress one more time, and then raps it sharply. It rings like a bell. “Museum’s closed now,” she says to the visitor. “There’s a three o’clock matinee with a happy ending. I want to see it.” She skates off down the narrow glass aisle, balanced precariously on her splendid shoes.
4. Happy ending.
The man and the woman are holding hands. They are getting married soon. If you looked under the table, you’d see that they aren’t wearing any shoes. Their shoes are up on the table instead. The fortune-teller says, “It’s just luck that you found each other, you know. Most people aren’t so lucky.” She is staring at the shoes – a pair of old black boots, a pair of canvas tennis shoes – as if she has never seen such a splendid, such an amazing pair of shoes. No one has ever presented her with such a pair of shoes. That’s what the look on her face says.
“You’re going to get a lot of nice wedding presents,” she says. “I don’t want to spoil any surprises, but you’ll get two coffee makers. You should probably keep them both. You might break one.”
“What else?” says the man.
“You want to know if you’ll have kids, right? Yeah, you’ll have kids, a couple of them. Smart kids. Smart grandkids too. Redheads. Do you garden?”
The man and woman look at each other. They shrug.
“Well, I see a garden,” the fortune-teller says. “Yes, a garden, definitely. You’ll grow roses. Roses and tomatoes. Moses supposes his toeses are roses. But Moses supposes erroneously. Do you know that song? Squashes. Is that right?”
“Cole Porter. Squash,” the man says. “Squash is the plural of squash.”
“Okay,” the fortune-teller says. “Squash, plural not singular, and tomatoes and roses. That’s when you get older. What else do you want to know?”
“We get old together?” the woman says.
“Well, looks like,” the fortune-teller says, “um, it looks good to me. Yeah. You get old together. White hair and everything. You grow things in the garden, your grandkids come over, you have friends, they come over too. It’s a party every night.” She turns the boot over and studies the heel. “Huh.”
“What?” the woman says.
“How you met. That’s sweet. Look here.” The fortune-teller points to the worn-down tread. “It was a blind date. See what I mean about luck?”
“You can see that in her shoe?” the man says.
“Yeah,” the fortune-teller says. “Plain as anything. Just like the garden and the grandkids. Blind date, first kiss, hunh! The next date, she invited you over for dinner. She washed the sheets first. Do you want me to go on?”
“Where will we live?” the woman says. “Do we fight about money? Does he still snore when he gets old? His sense of humor – does he still tell the same dumb jokes?”
“Look,” the fortune-teller says, “You’ll have a good life. You don’t want all the details, do you? Go home, make wedding plans, get married. You should probably get married inside. I think it might rain. I’m not good at weather. You’ll be happy, I promise. I’m good at the happy stuff. It’s what I see best. You want to know about snoring, or breast cancer, or mortgages, go see the woman next door who reads tea leaves.”
She says, “You’ll get old together. You’ll be comfortable t
ogether. I promise. Trust me. I can see you, then, the two of you, you’ll be sitting in your garden. There’s dirt under your fingernails. You’re drinking lemonade. I can’t tell if it’s homemade or not, but it’s perfect. Not too sweet. You’re remembering I told you this. Remember I told you this. How lucky you were, to find each other! You’ll be comfortable together, like an old pair of shoes.”
MOST OF MY FRIENDS ARE TWO-THIRDS WATER
“Okay, Joe. As I was saying, our Martian women are gonna be blond, because, see, just because.”
– RAY BRADBURY, “The Concrete Mixer”
A few years ago, Jack dropped the C from his name and became Jak. He called me up at breakfast one morning to tell me this. He said he was frying bacon for breakfast and that all his roommates were away. He said that he was walking around stark naked. He could have been telling the truth, I don’t know. I could hear something spitting and hissing in the background that could have been bacon, or maybe it was just static on the line.
Jak keeps a journal in which he records the dreams he has about making love to his ex-girlfriend Nikki, who looks like Sandy Duncan. Nikki is now married to someone else. In the most recent dream, Jak says, Nikki had a wooden leg. Sandy Duncan has a glass eye in real life. Jak calls me up to tell me this dream.
He calls to say that he is in love with the woman who does the Braun coffee-maker commercial, the one with the short blond hair, like Nikki, and eyes that are dreamy and a little too far apart. He can’t tell from the commercial if she has a wooden leg, but he watches TV every night, in the hopes of seeing her again.
If I were blond, I could fall in love with Jak.
Jak calls me with the first line of a story. Most of my friends are two-thirds water, he says, and I say that this doesn’t surprise me. He says, no, that this is the first line. There’s a Philip K. Dick novel, I tell him, that has a first line like that, but not exactly and I can’t remember the name of the novel. I am listening to him while I clean out my father’s refrigerator. The name of the Philip K. Dick novel is Confessions of a Crap Artist, I tell Jak. What novel, he says.
