The Emperor of Shoes

by Spencer Wise

  I told him this place was fine.

  “You think the food’s lousy?” A desperation in his voice. “Do you? I want you to be happy. This is your night.” His shoulders banked at the mention of bad food. “We could go back to our hotel and do the buffet on the first floor. But it’s too much. We’re not buffet people. Here we can have a little noodles, some mustard greens, and that’s enough. I’m not a balloon. But if you want, we can gorge at the buffet. It’s chaos in there. Maybe you like that? A zillion kids running around like their pants are on fire, Chinese families, the kids, you know, since One Child, anything goes. You want to eat the chef’s hat—‘Chef, put your hat in the wok for my daughter.’ The parents don’t even pretend to control them. One child hit me in the penis with her nose.”

  “Keep your voice down, will you?” I said and then in an exaggerated whisper he said, “She was running full speed away from her brother, pigtails flapping, and smashed into my crotch. Never saw her coming. I dropped my tray, wonton soup in her hair, all over my nice chinos. Parents yelling in Chinese. Little girls flying at your crotch. Is this what you want?”

  “Enough of that story,” I said. “It’s great here. Couldn’t be happier.”

  He shouted for the waitress and then, under his breath, “Make sure you wear an athletic cup is the last thing I’ll say.”

  Dad asked our waitress, Wong, for a wine list. She shook off this request and said, “You try 47201.”

  “You heard of this?” Dad asked me, but before I could answer, Wong snapped, “You try,” and disappeared.

  “Always an adventure,” said Dad.

  Wong came back with a bottle of Italian pinot grigio. “47201,” she said, nestling the bottle like a baby along her forearm.

  “How much?” Dad asked.

  “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Excellent good.”

  She poured the wine and took our order. When she was gone, Dad pointed to the little pink sticker below the Italian label.

  “She’s reading the serial number off the wine. That’s where she got that number from. I was going to say something but why embarrass her? Two Wongs don’t make a right.”

  I rolled my eyes. This surprised me. Not the corny, semiracist pun, but the fact he refrained from correcting her. He never hesitated to embarrass me. I was prepared to lay into him about Ivy’s friend, but since he was in this gracious mood, I decided I’d come at him soft. Lowball him.

  Wong brought beef and dumpling soup in sterling silver tureens, essentially street food marked up 200 percent. But Dad’s basic philosophy was that quality was directly proportionate to price. This was Nana’s credo too: always buy the best. She never had a reason; never needed one. Expensive things were better. Wong brought bamboo baskets of pork dumplings with a vinegar dipping sauce; mustard greens; oyster mushrooms; string beans and pork; a stir-fry noodle; some dish called “chicken without a sex life” wrapped in lettuce; roast pigeon, its body butterflied, head on the plate, beak pointed in the air, half-open.

  Dad made a face after tasting the string beans. “They’re squeakers,” he said, putting it back on his plate half-bitten. I told him to send it back, but he refused.

  “Why make trouble?”

  I saw what was happening. He was doing this gracious act because he anticipated something coming. Or maybe that was paranoia on my part. I didn’t know. With someone like Dad, so good at manipulating, it was hard to know what was sincere. We dipped our chopsticks in the dish of lajiao, diced green and red chili oil, and scarfed down the food, commenting on every dish, chatting around the big sale. I timed it up so that I was pouring Dad a second glass of 47201 when I said, “I hear we’re holding a worker’s hukou papers because she owes us money. You know anything about this?” I was careful to leave Ivy’s name out of it.

  “I don’t know nothing,” he said, but I noticed that for a split second he’d stopped chewing his food. “What’s the word?” he asked.

  “Hukou. Identification papers that tell you where you can legally live.”

  Dad looked contemplatively at the chandelier. “Nah, never heard of that. Who’s talking to you? This Ivy telling you?”

  “No,” I said. “People talk. I hear things.”

  “Mmm,” he said, sawing into the breast of roast pigeon. “What’s going on with you two? You and Ivy. First it’s off to Grandmother’s house, now she’s the foot model, which, I got to hand it to you, was a good idea. Better than old Methuselah. So what’s the story? You’re not thinking about dating her, are you?”

  “No,” I said, and I absentmindedly swirled the noodles and ginger around on my plate. “Absolutely not. We’re friends.” I doubt he bought that line of bullshit, so I went on the defensive. “I can’t have any friends in China? Just because you don’t? Well, you have one friend I know about. You have Karri.”

  I sat back and took a sip of wine. The Indonesian woman had taken her microphone off the stand and was walking up to the tables and crooning to the guests.

  “Okay,” Dad said, “so you know about me and Karri. It’s no big secret. Would have told you sooner or later. I don’t have to share every detail of my life with you. We’re not the Manson Family.”

  “I have no idea what that means,” I said.

  “Look, I’ve been at this a long time.”

  “At what?” I said, arching my eyebrow.

  “Work. Work is my only friend. You think I don’t have friends by choice? You think I’m living it up over here in China, don’t you? I used to stay at the Hotel National—only hotel that accepted foreigners. Pillows hard as stones. I mean they were actual rocks—weapons in case the Japs invaded again. I’m kidding, Mr. Serious, they weren’t weapons, but I slept on rocks. Brushed my teeth with beer. Because the water would kill you. That part is true. I’ve been sentenced here a quarter of my life. For what? For my health? No, for you, your sister, your mother. It’s all for you.”

  That was the Triple-A ball of Jewish guilt. He’d have to do a lot better. So I was under his skin and that could be a good thing. I couldn’t tell yet.

  “Let’s go over the process,” I said, in a soft voice. “You know it better than me, you know it inside out.” That was a classic pitch he’d taught me. Talk the other guy up. Let him feel valued, in charge, let him feel like an expert and you’re just some clueless schmuck, and then, once he loosens up, you slit his throat. “So say a new girl comes in wanting work. I’m talking about a specific worker named Ruxi. Okay, so, first Ruxi needed work permits from the town and permits from the factory.”

  “No, first she shows the hukou—”

  “I thought you didn’t know what that was? A moment ago.”

  “Oh, okay,” Dad said. “The hukou. Sure. It’s basically like an ID. It was the way you pronounced it.”

  I pronounced it the same way he did, but I let that slide. “And what happens if the worker doesn’t have all the money up front?”

  “We loan them the money, Alex. We want the workers. God knows we need the help. We want all we can get.”

  “Sure, I understand. But what if this girl needs to leave? She can’t leave without the hukou. Without the hukou she’s living illegally here in the city. Now, do you give her the money we owe her? Do you give her the hukou back? It’s a simple question.”

  Dad laid his chopsticks sideways across his plate to signal to Wong that he was done—ever the gentleman—and pushed his chair back, dabbed at the corners of his mouth with the pink cloth napkin and crossed his legs.

  “Let’s finish this conversation outside,” he said. “We overordered again. I’m a balloon. This is what happens at the buffet. Why’d you let me order so much? Next time stop me.”

  Outside, the air was warm and carried the scent of jasmine. We walked the grounds, a French Renaissance–style garden shaped in perfect symmetry and order, every shrub obedient, every unkempt branch snipped, every f
lower pruned. We walked along the flagstones, hedgerows up to our waists, long as the conveyor belts at the factory.

  “It’s complicated,” Dad said. “What you’re asking. More variables than you think. But I trust Yong. If Yong says she owes six months, she owes. But we’d never hold someone against her will.”

  Then Dad washed his hands clean.

  “Listen, Yong handles the floor and all the workers. He speaks the language. You only worry about product development. Head down, okay? That’s our way. You land in a place, find a way to blend in and keep your business to yourself, and that’s that.”

  “Right,” I said, “but you brought me in to take over the factory after you, and to do that I need the whole picture. I need to know how it all works. So it doesn’t really matter if I’m development or the janitor. I’m responsible. It’s on me if we sink.”

  “This is a question I need to ask Yong,” Dad said.

  “No, I’ll ask him.”

  “Look, it’s not summer camp,” Dad said, throwing his hands up. “Sure, some of these girls have a raw deal. Imagine doing the same repetitive motion, day in and day out. I’m sure some go crazy. But I also know a lot of them are grateful. They’re not farming anymore. They’re out of the village and moving up. They’re where we were seventy years ago. That’s the free market.”

  I said, “I get the sense there are things going on at this factory I don’t know about. Things I don’t agree with. If we can make a few little changes to improve things without hurting our margins, why wouldn’t we do that?”

  “Is this Ivy giving you these ideas? She is, isn’t she? She’s the one talking Trotsky in your ear. You didn’t talk like this before. This is new. You don’t know from trouble. If she’s here to start trouble, I’ll have Yong get rid of her.”

  That was the ultimate power play and he knew it. He’d fire her. Simple as that. We turned off onto a side path that led to a small pond and a not-so-French octagonal pavilion with flying eaves and red hanging paper lanterns. We could smell the lotus blooming on top of the water, the red light rippled over the pond, and I could see my father’s weary face in the glow. He leaned forward on the railing and sighed.

  I was staring straight ahead, but I could feel Dad side-eyeing me. I knew he was thinking: I created you. Like how the old rabbis would mold a mystical golem to follow orders—I honestly think that’s how Dad saw fatherhood. And now he was worried that his divine creation was beginning to turn against him. I felt him out of the corner of my eye. Weighing the question so intensely I could almost hear the deep drive of his voice asking: Hey, schmekel, are you about to turn?

  “She’s not a problem,” I said. For some reason I felt the need to reassure him. “She’s looking out for a friend, that’s all, okay. No one’s causing problems. I feel for her friend. If it’s true. It’s hard enough working on the line. You know that. Hell, you barely even go on the line anymore.”

  “That’s because of my allergies.”

  “Still. As you said. It’s not summer camp.”

  I could make out the silhouettes of night cranes standing on one leg around the bank of the pond. Dad’s arm snaked around my shoulders. I felt it heavy on the back of my neck, the prickly bristles of hair on his forearm.

  He said, “We need to think long-term, you and me. This is how I beat everyone to China. Everyone else liquidated or quit or drowned. I thought ahead. Not a week out, not a month. Five, ten years down the line. Where do you want to be? I can get you there, but you got to stop being an idiot. I know it’s hard for you, but try. Stop with these girls. Are you lonely, is that it? Am I not enough company?”

  “No, no.” He was under my skin now. “It’s not that.”

  “Alex, we’re doing a quarter million pairs this season—sure we’re way down from last year and the year before—but we need the line running full steam. We need girls like Ruxi. It takes five Americans to do the work of a single Chinese girl. Their values are in the right place. Like ours. We need them. Give me workers. Communists, fascists, tramps—I don’t care who they belong to. I need bodies on the line.”

  He was talking big now. Pushing further and further away from my questions.

  “Just answer me. Did you already know about Ruxi and her situation?”

  “Not at all,” he said. “If I knew, I’d tell. To be honest, thousands of workers have passed through and I’ve never talked to a single one.”

  “You don’t think it’s odd you’ve never talked to one of your workers?”

  “What’s to say? They don’t speak English. They aren’t educated. I have enough worries. I have to place orders and deliver. What do I care how their lives are?”

  “You damn well should care. I care. Let’s start there. So if you don’t know anything, let me bring it to Yong.”

  “Stay out of it, Alex. Don’t be a hero. You know who’s a hero? The rabbi who snipped your dick. Who snipped all those dicks. One tiny slip and you ruin a man’s life forever. Ha! That’s a hero. Don’t be something you’re not.”

  “Come off it with the jokes,” I said, my voice rising. “Let’s be straight.”

  “Okay, let’s be straight. I think you’re only interested in this for Ivy. That’s what I think. You want to get in her panties.”

  “Watch it.”

  “Don’t poke,” he said, and only then did I realize my index finger was in the center of his chest and my feet, unbidden, had carried me close enough to see the spool-shaped scar beside his eye where Nana almost blinded him with her high-heeled shoe for proposing to a shiksa.

  “This isn’t Camp Wekeela, Alex.” He pushed the barrel of my finger aside. “No more Friday night latkes and applesauce, every pish in the pool wins a trophy for not drowning.”

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “This isn’t your fight. This Ruxi girl. It’s got nothing to do with you. You know your problem? Your mother made you her way. Center of the world. That’s my fault for leaving you alone with her. A sickness to be smothered. Like Nana did to me. I had to save you. I brought you in. I saved you. Did you want to carry an umbrella for the rest of your life?”

  My face flushed, fingers curled into a fist. Mom had me carry an open white umbrella everywhere I went to hide me from the Angel of Death. Religion had scrambled her brains. But Dad was every bit as smothering as my mother, ten times more, painting her to sound like a psychopath, left to raise two kids on her own while her husband traipsed through the Far East. Of course she turned to religion. And the fact Dad cast himself in this role of Messiah was pure delusion. There was no use talking to him. I turned and started back to the hotel, back through the diamond hedges and the tunnel of trees, but now they took on a whole different shape—the canopy of cypresses and firs packed tight and tall, closing in on me.

  I heard his voice. “Where you going? The van won’t leave without me. Jianguo’s a loyal driver. He’s my guy. They’re all my guys. I built this empire.”

  Squawks from a pyramid of geese flying overhead, migrating back north, calling to each other, but it sounded like they were laughing at me.

  Dad’s gravelly voice behind me. The clap of his soles on the flagstone. Louder. “This is a shoe factory in the asshole of the world, princess. You’re here now. It’s all yours, babes, and fucking a Chinese peasant isn’t going to change a thing.”

  Before he could react, I swiveled around and grabbed him by the shoulders. I tried to twist him down, but he widened his base, planted his feet apart and gripped my tie in his fist, shaking, dead black eyes, his breath crackled in his nose.

  “Come off it,” he said. “Cohains aren’t animals.” I took a vine step across his body and staked my left foot behind his calf and tried to whip him down. This noise, a growl, mine or his, our chests too close to tell. His knee gave, waist buckled, and he rolled a little but didn’t go down. His left arm still clutched my tie but his right was fre
e. A boxer in the reserves in Shelby, Mississippi, undefeated only because the goys wouldn’t fight him. I knew my jaw was open if he wanted it, one jab was all it’d take. He saw it too, but didn’t throw. It must have looked like I was holding him in a dip. He was going to crack some lame joke. How did the Chinese judge score us? I wouldn’t let him. I smoothed off the wrinkled fabric at his shoulders and set him right. What was the use? Even if I knocked his ass out, he’d keep getting up, keep coming at me.

  “What were you going to do exactly?” he asked, hands on his knees, taking short breaths. “Out of curiosity.”

  “Kill you.”

  “That’s great. The instinct, I mean. You can’t teach that. Now aim it at the business instead of old farts like me.” He reached for my tie and began wriggling the knot back into place. “Look how I almost destroyed it. I’m sorry. I love this tie. You remember Levenstein’s?”

  Levenstein’s was the top men’s store in Lynn. He once took me to get a suit for my bar mitzvah and this red tie with the smallest blue corn silk flowers, way too long for me then, hung down past my dick, but he wouldn’t buy me a kid’s tie. The necktie makes the man. What a piece of work. He thought I’d fall for it. Get a little schmaltzy and all was forgiven.

  “You were almost feral when I took you to that shop. You used to blow your nose in the bottom of your shirt, remember that? And now look at you. A true Cohain. The Chinese see it. Why do you think they like us so much? They know we aren’t ordinary. You laugh, but it’s true. I’m sorry I laid hands on you.”

  He was holding my chin. “I’m not going to let you piss this all away like my father did.” He slapped me real soft on the cheek twice and held his palm there the third time.

  “Now let’s go home and get a drink at the Amazonia,” he said. “I still owe you a goddamn drink. Two hundred thousand pairs this afternoon. That’s nothing to be ashamed of. And remember you put that line together mostly. That’s your baby.”

  He took a quick swipe at his eye with the back of his wrist.