The Emperor of Shoes

by Spencer Wise

  I asked Ivy to try on the first pair of heels. Behind us was a little wooden stage with three steps and a narrow red carpet across the top. I offered her my hand as she went up the steps but she shook her head and seemed to float up there on her own in these black strappy sandals with a cork wedge, little tortoise discs on the vamp glimmering, and she rose above us all in a loose-fitting cotton dress, which caused the men in the room to involuntarily smooth their hair and rub their kneecaps as if there’d been another factory fire and everyone was checking to make sure they were still alive.

  I wanted to show the ladies something special about this shoe. I asked her to turn around so they could see the profile of the heel from the back and I climbed up onstage with Ivy, got down on my knees, and I touched her ankle, the hollow right below the bone, and I lifted her foot up to straighten it out because I wanted to show the buyers how we sculpted and tapered the wedge to look like a true heel from the back; how up close you also could see little gold flakes sparkle in the cork, but the moment I touched her ankle everything vanished from my head. Because her ankle had turned inward, turned toward my touch, and there was a thump of hope in my chest and that was when I forgot everything.

  I heard Dad say, “Pick up her foot.”

  Yong said, “Ach, ach, ach.”

  Her feet were so soft and white they reminded me of the picture Mom had hung behind the toilet growing up—the Lux soap girl perched on a wood Thatcher chair.

  Ivy had long, slender toes, elegant and tapered, that never quite lay flat but angled upward, flaring, nothing like the folded and withered toes her grandparents must have seen under the binding bandages.

  Dad was beside me whispering in my ear, “Your tie.”

  I looked down.

  My tie was under her shoe. She was stepping on my tie.

  Dad said, “Give me,” and he tapped Ivy’s calf, and she said, “Oops, sorry,” and Dad flipped my tie over my shoulder so it rested behind my back, then he returned to his seat and apologized to the ladies. “This is his first time.”

  And now I was talking about the things I was supposed to talk about, but my mind wasn’t really there. I was thinking about her toenails, unpainted, but smooth and shiny, lacquered—she didn’t wear makeup either, did she? No color at all. I’d always preferred heavy makeup, but seeing this now, some new kind of nakedness, I couldn’t remember why I’d liked all those done-up faces. And there was an honesty to Ivy’s foot, like the shop women on Changshou Lu with all their merchandise spread on the sidewalk: statues of Michael Jackson, Playboy Bunny socks, bootleg cigarettes, clothing with way too much lace; their lives right out on the street for you to step on and walk over.

  “The fit is perfect,” I said to the Abelson’s ladies, my finger jangling along her hollow arch where I could see pale blue veins, all the inner workings, like the underside of a leaf. “This kind of fit comes from the precision of our lasts and our patterns. You can’t get a fit half this good anywhere else, even Dongguan, not at this price point.” The swelled joint at the base of Ivy’s big toe nestled perfectly between the crisscross straps. “Not a millimeter to spare,” I said, talking the way I was supposed to. The creak of wood under her wobbling foot, the thickened white froth of a callus on the back of her heel.

  I was thinking how marvelous it would be to see one of these designs on Ivy’s foot—it was on her foot, of course, but I mean out in the world, on the subway, and maybe I would gift her a pair of these sandals, which looked like they were made for her anyway, and it dawned on me that maybe I designed them, this whole line, with her in mind and it was always her foot I’d been imagining. The next sandals I showed—the ones done in woven raffia with a hand-crocheted peony flower that sat right on the cone of the foot—those were for her. I would leave them for her at her dormitory—and I was talking this whole time, surprised that I could do both at once, but every time I touched her skin, or the leather that was almost softer to my fingertips than her skin, my mind emptied again.

  On the surface they were asking: “Are the top-lines too high? Could we do this taupe or bone? What’s the duty on that shoe?” And I was even answering: “Yes, to me they’re three millimeters off. Of course, we can do any color you want. Ten percent duty, buckle or zipper.” But beneath that, I was noticing that Ivy’s hair was the same color as the tea leaves drying on rattan mats beside the old man asleep in a chair out on the sidewalk. We went through eight or nine pairs of sandals and flats. With each new pair, she changed little but appeared to be a brand-new woman each time. And because my hands had touched her foot, because I’d made this shoe for her, it was almost like hearing her speak in her own language, knowing the shape of her foot down to the millimeter, its swells and soft curves, its movement, the fall of its line—its voice—and for a second I felt like I knew her more intimately than if I’d ever kissed her lips or breasts. For a moment, my fingertips nibbling along the soft white skin of her foot to show them the feather-line, I felt like I understood the aching and lovely mysteries inside her. For an absurd moment I felt like I knew her.

  The Abelson’s ladies said, “Does she speak English?” and I felt my stomach turn, the reverie gone, and I found myself saying defensively, “Of course she speaks,” and I told them that in fact only the fit model’s opinion matters, which was true, but I said it like I’d just discovered it now. “Nothing is precise here,” I said, “we’re not making electronics, which is all to spec. Black or white. Making shoes is about a feel. We must ask her.”

  “First show them the hand,” Dad said breathlessly. And I started explaining to them the touch of the leather, how soft it was because we used lamb-cow and they laughed at this, and Marie said, “You crossbred a cow and lamb?”, and Dad said, “No, no, he’s not explaining it right, this is his first time, it’s just an in-house name, soft like a lamb but it’s cow.” They reached out to touch Ivy’s foot. Then I asked Ivy to lift up high as if she were picking a persimmon off a high branch so the ladies could see how flexible the wood grain bottom was and Ivy’s feet came off the foot beds and the heel of her foot was like a slice of white chestnut. I heard Yong sigh and Hongjin touched his chest.

  Marie said to Ivy, “Would you buy them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you purge them from your closet if you owned them?” Yong asked.

  “No.”

  Dad said, “Are you sure you’d buy them?”

  “Yes,” she said, “but personally I like to wear two different shoes on each foot.”

  “Why?” Dad asked. “That’s nuts.”

  “I think all shoes should be scrambled,” Ivy said.

  “What does that mean?” my father said. “That is crazy talk.”

  Ivy said, “It is something Trotsky said about wealth.”

  “Trotsky?” Dad asked, his voice pitched high. “The communist? I mean, we’re all for communists here, but the Russian? Is this the League of Nations? When I want your political opinions I’ll ask. Let’s stick to shoes. Do they feel good on your feet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure? There’s nineteen muscles in there, half a mile of blood vessels, all crossing and mixing, a miracle of engineering—”

  “It is very comfortable,” she said.

  “Okay, good. You don’t want a shoe too large for your foot,” he said, with a real edge, and now I knew what he was doing, because that was something Nana used to say about women trying to marry men above their class. He was being a prick to her.

  “No,” Ivy said, still polite but her voice flat and without emotion.

  I could tell Ivy was getting under Dad’s skin, but he pulled it together and asked Marie a dozen times if she liked the bling, and he wiggled his eyebrows at me each time he said it because it wasn’t his generation’s word. There was a strip of sequins and beads that looked like a garter belt and it sparkled and shone.

  “Do you like that
?” he asked. “Every collection needs bling.” And then he noticed the sequins were moving in two different directions on the shoe, someone had applied them incorrectly. He apologized to Marie and Esme, who both said it was fine and they hadn’t noticed. “No,” Dad said, and he shook his head violently. It would not stand. Back down on his knees he got to work straightening the sequins to flow in the same direction, all the time chastising himself for the oversight.

  Yong apologized to the ladies for my father’s behavior. “He is an artist.”

  “I see that,” Marie said, and Esme harrumphed because she went to design school in Chicago for four years to call herself an artist while my father was almost illiterate, at least emotionally.

  “I fix, I fix,” Dad said, dragging himself across the stage on his belly and the Abelson’s ladies widened their eyes at the sight of this large man sprawled out with very delicate hands gently touching these sequins. Later I wouldn’t be surprised if he told me it was perfect all along. Nothing whatsoever for him to fix, but he just had to find a way down there because that was who he was, he was too far from the action and he only knew the world by touch.

  The Abelson’s ladies placed orders for twenty thousand pairs of one of the casuals, a hundred thousand for each of the cork-bottom sandals, and they passed on the rest. Dad hugged me and hugged the ladies and everyone hugged like we were all new parents. Dad said, “On his deathbed, Rabbi Akiba told his son, ‘Wear a decent pair of shoes.’ Those were his last words.”

  “Very nice,” Esme said, rolling her eyes. Marie elbowed her.

  “This rabbi is your friend?” asked Yong.

  “He is two thousand years old.”

  “Big reputation,” Yong said. “Then these shoes we make are worthy of Rabbi Akimbo.”

  Marie said she needed to get back to the hotel and she thanked everyone except Ivy, who was the one who tried them on in the first place and made them beautiful. The Abelson’s ladies went over some of the corrections. They’d like the shoes on the floor if possible by January.

  “Of course possible,” Dad said. “The Chinese are dogs. I mean they work like dogs. Naturally. They live for work. I happen to respect this.”

  “Please, don’t hesitate to inform on us if there are any problems,” Yong said.

  * * *

  They left me in the room with Ivy to take down the corrections and mark them on the shoes. I took out the tape measure and the little awl for making notches in the leather and my notebook where I’d written down the notes.

  “Congratulations,” Ivy said. “Now you can die of happiness.”

  “Better than getting hit by a bus,” I said. “You read about that? A Chinese banker run over while texting his mistress on his iPhone. The phone survived. His last words were some nonsense about chrysanthemums.”

  She laughed. “You are losing a lot in translation. He’s talking about anal sex.”

  “Is that the chrysanthemum? Wow. I really missed that one.”

  “I read about it,” she said. “That’s modern Chinese death. Warm spring, texting your mistress on the way from work, and a bus driver worried about his son’s gaokao exam drives an orange bus into your chest. And your last words are about anal sex.”

  I got back down on the floor with the tape measure, silver pen and wood-handled awl. “Maybe this guy had a good death.”

  “For me,” Ivy said, “good death is in the struggle. That’s how we used to die. For true socialism. Die so we aren’t footstools for capitalists and colonialists and foreigners to rest their feet on. Smash all divisions. Die for this thing hidden inside everyone. This thing that can make someone like my grandmother bite through someone’s jugular.”

  The tape measure I was wrapping around her instep slackened. I sat back on my heels and looked up. “Jesus, your grandmother did that?”

  “She was a girl. But, yes. A Japanese soldier. When he dragged her off to the camps during occupation.”

  “Did she kill him?”

  “I don’t know. They beat her almost blind.”

  “And now you get hit by a bus while sexting.”

  She giggled. “This is what Hegel calls irony of history.”

  I finished the instep and moved on to the lift of the heel. “You did a real good job today. Thanks for helping.”

  “Will you declare me a model female worker?”

  “You’re very sarcastic today,” I said, marking the leather with a silver pen.

  “I think I look beautiful in this dress,” she said in a sad and plaintive tone that made me stop working. I was about to agree but she kept talking.

  “There is a girl in my room, Alex, I haven’t mentioned her to you, I don’t think. Named Ruxi, and for two weeks she cries and cries. She try to quit and go back to her home, she is from a north province, small village, but Tiger Step has her hukou papers and says she owes them money for permits. The foreman says work until the end of season, and so she does this. He still won’t let her go. Ruxi goes to Yong, never dreamed of talking to a rich man before but she does, and he says six more months. Can you help this girl? She has a brother who must go off to school and she needs to care for her parents.”

  “I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding,” I said, but I felt stirred by Ruxi’s story, stirred maybe because what if it was true?

  “No, they have denied her request to quit. They keep her money.”

  “I doubt it,” I said, though what if they really were withholding her wages and making it impossible for her to leave? What if they weren’t going to give her the money she earned?

  “You must do something. Bad enough what our own government does to us. Bullshit talk of equality and shared prosperity. Now we have to deal with you foreigners fucking us over too. Everyone thinks the foreigners will save us but there’s just more.”

  “I’m not fucking anyone, Ivy. Why don’t we let the labor union handle it?”

  “Daigao’s union? Are you kidding with me? Puppet union. You must know. Daigao is appointed by central labor bureau. Who is committee chair? Yong. You think he hires someone to cut down his own money? Help her. Be like a Trotsky.”

  “Trotsky only helped himself,” I said. I didn’t really know what I was talking about, but my grandfather had actually met Trotsky. Zayde always told this story of meeting him at the Triangle Diner in the Bronx eating cabbage rolls in exile.

  “He was a Jew. Like you.”

  “Not really,” I said. “He changed his name.” I pictured him alone at this New York diner stuffing his face with blintzes and brisket and kugel, dreaming of killing the czar. I had far more in common with fat New York Trotsky than the lean wolf storming the Winter Palace in his greatcoat and breeches. Was that what she wanted?

  “Ruxi thinks Yong will let her go but she’s crazy. Says she has faith. It is a spell. This whole country is like a spell. People like Ruxi have faith in this country that only lets them down.”

  Again I said there must have been a misunderstanding, and I got back to work with the awl marking the notches on the leather strap around her ankle, but inside I was afraid of the way Ivy was talking. I felt my hands starting to sweat, because I was also embarrassed, an idiot for not knowing. How much didn’t I know? Ivy was saying, “Well, Alex, what do I say to her?” and I told her to hold still, stop moving, and she said, “Alex, it is cruel, it is slavery, what it is, human bondage,” and that was when my hand slipped and the point of the awl pierced her foot.

  She screamed. Not in pain, I don’t think, but frustration. A speck of blood emerged on the side of her foot, and as I was apologizing, unconsciously, I swiped the blood away with my thumb.

  “Can you do this for her?” Ivy said. “Help.”

  “Well, I don’t know. My father would—”

  And she balled her fists tight by her ears, furious now, not about the foot, but her face was red, and she said, �
�Are you always going to be your father’s puppet? A war is coming.”

  She turned and ran out of the conference room and suddenly I remembered where I’d heard that before. Fireworks, petit fours and afternoon tea at the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong. The anniversary of Handover Day, marking the end of British rule. I had just flown in, dizzy with jet lag and homesick, and Dad, in his peculiarly Dad way, said out of nowhere, “Do you have to pee? Let me show you something.” We rode the elevator to the Felix restaurant on the thirtieth floor. In the bathroom, the urinals faced an enormous glass wall overlooking all of Hong Kong. We stood next to each other peeing and looking out over the parade of ships flying Chinese flags in the harbor, holding our dicks in our hands as firework ash sifted down like salt over the water. I felt like God taking a leak on the greatest city in the world. The street thronged with people who, if they only looked up, could see my circumcised cock. “It’s Handover Day,” Dad said, and I didn’t understand it then, but I do now, and then he said the same thing Ivy said, I heard them at the same time in my head. There’s war coming. And I was alone now in the conference room looking down at my hand where the rich red drop clung stubbornly to my thumb, quivering, and I lifted it to my mouth.

  3

  LATER THAT EVENING, in the gold-filigreed restaurant of the Hotel Fontainebleau, Dad and I were moving in two directions. He was scooting his chair to his left, and I was going right, both of us hiding from the smoky eyes of the Indonesian woman singing Rod Stewart songs as if she’d written them for us. Around the table we went until eventually we came together, our shoulders nearly touching and our backs to the band.

  “We can go someplace else,” Dad said. “Papa treated me after my first sale, and you’ll do it for your own son.” He leaned in, smiling, looking at the empty chair beside me as if he saw my imaginary son drinking a Shirley Temple.