The Emperor of Shoes

by Spencer Wise

  “It’s not necessary,” I said, but he knifed the words off my lips with a look that told me only he decided what was necessary.

  “I need names.”

  “Names,” I repeated.

  11

  IN THE HOTEL, I was throwing my shit into my Samsonite luggage fast as I could, trying to get out before I ran into Dad downstairs and he had the chance to talk me out of it.

  The zipper snagged. I tugged at it. Why was I shaking? Gang. It all went through his hands. So long as he kept logging 13.8 percent growth, Beijing was happy. They were whispering to him: keep this up and soon we’ll make you mayor of Chongqing, three times the size of Foshan, and then you’ll join the politburo up here with us.

  Wheeling my suitcase down the hall, my computer bag slung around my shoulder, I rode the elevator down to the lobby. Dad was standing there in a bright linen jacket, under the harsh artificial lights, hard-bellied, hair combed to the side, arms like a coal shoveler.

  He came right up to me with his hand out. He wanted to shake. Always first thing in the morning when we saw each other. But not this time. He looked down at my suitcase.

  “What is this?” he said. “Where are you going?”

  “The factory house,” I said. He didn’t move. I turned sideways and inched past him. Our chests brushed. He was an inch or two taller than me—one cruel covetous inch. What a genetic mockery to leave a son an inch short of his father. When we were standing against a wall or it was dark out, I stood on my tiptoes. My mother was a Russian potato—low to the ground. What I knew about science couldn’t fill a thimble, only that a child was the median height of his parents, and then one of them dominated you in every way that counted.

  “You’re kidding, right?” he asked. “Why would you do that? This is a five-star hotel. That place is no-stars.”

  I kept going.

  Dad was marching behind me. “Alex. Stop. Think what you’re doing. Trust me, you won’t be happy living at the factory. No one washes their hands. Or they fake it. Just run the water. It’s no place for you. There’s no turndown service there! I hope you know that. There’s no strudel, no Danish. Forget cream cheese! It’s a harsh cheeseless world out there. Get back here.”

  I kept moving. After meeting with Gang, I didn’t know if there was much I could do to help Ivy. I needed to get to her and tell her about Gang. I needed Zhang to get his ass down here. The game had changed. I couldn’t stay in the hotel anymore.

  Outside in the roundabout, I threw my bags into the trunk of the taxi and Dad had caught up to me, saying, “What if I can’t get online?”

  He was really reaching now.

  “Restart your computer,” I told him, slamming the trunk closed.

  “Restart? That’s what you say to your own father? Restart at sixty-five years old. Better to kick me in the balls than say this.”

  “You realize I’ll see you tomorrow, right?” I told him. “I’m not going away.”

  “Who do I eat with?” he said.

  “Make friends.”

  “No, thank you,” he said loudly. “I have you.”

  “Listen, you said it yourself. We need orders. One of us needs to be at the factory.”

  His face pinched tight, like his body was at war with his better manners. “Tomorrow,” he said, and stuck out his hand. We shook.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  He turned around and walked back into the hotel.

  I felt relieved as the car zoomed along the highway to the factory. I couldn’t help feeling that I’d escaped something. But then I started to think about my dad eating meals alone with the Filipino girls crooning Phil Collins—and slowly this ghost Dad all alone at dinner became more real to me than if he were actually here beside me.

  The road turned past a plastics factory, a pharmaceutical plant, a porcelain factory with a pyramid of toilets out front, water cascading into a wading pool. The taxi pulled up to the sliding metal gate of Tiger Step and I got dropped off beside the manager’s canteen.

  I reached a little walled-off one-story house behind one of the dormitories, butting up against the abandoned brick factory. I opened the metal gate and stepped into a small front yard, a dusty plot with dragon eye trees and banyans, their roots strangling the roof as if to drag it into the earth.

  A few brick steps led up to a sliding glass door. It was open, just like Yong had said. Key in an envelope on the credenza. I set my bags down and closed the door behind me and this sliced off the noise from outside.

  An old cow skull sat on the dining room table, eyes hollow and dark, large enough that it seemed to be tracking me wherever I moved in the room. I turned the corner to the living room and stopped suddenly at the sight of two men standing against the windows. Statues. Two granite warriors—seven-foot-tall mustachioed giants with swords guarding the room.

  Beside them, on the wall hanging from a nail, I saw a pair of old braided straw sandals, the soles made from ancestral tablets that I knew the communists had banned when they stormed the countryside. Too superstitious.

  I ran my finger over the carved characters and it came to me that this was someone’s stuff. Strangers. It was theirs. This was the shit Yong bought up at those creepy countryside auctions after land requisitions.

  Off the living room was the main bedroom with a small bed in the corner but no bureau. Just some slatted wood crates from the old Guangzhou Eagle Coin factory, and I started unpacking my clothes into the crates.

  As I was carrying my toiletries to the bathroom, the cow’s hollow eyes stared at me from the center table, so I took a blue towel off the rack in the bathroom and draped it over the skull. Then I went into the kitchen and checked the drawers and cabinets. There were only a few pieces of silverware in one of them. I took a spoon to my bedroom and laid it on the threshold of the door. It was an old superstition my mother used to do. When a couple moved into a new home you were supposed to step over a spoon together or else you’d have a lifetime of bad luck.

  * * *

  Around 9:00 p.m., as we’d planned earlier, I heard the gate creak open and Ivy appeared by the sliding glass door. It opened with a pop.

  “We need to talk,” I said.

  She set her backpack on the floor. “Nice,” she said, looking around the house.

  Then she unzipped the top of her bag and took out a red colored cutout in the shape of a woman’s head. One of those paper cuttings you saw the ladies making in the market. The good ones did it freehand with an X-Acto knife.

  “A present,” she said. “I didn’t want to come with empty hands.”

  “Beautiful. It’s you?”

  She paused for a second. It was the profile of a regal-looking woman with a tall red cowl on her head.

  “If you think,” she said.

  I led her to the living room and, turning the corner, she shrieked when she saw the two seven-footers, the outline of their silhouettes.

  “I thought they are real,” she said, and took my hand and put it on her chest. “Feel,” she said. “So fast.”

  “I forgot to warn you,” I said, and I could feel her heart drumming hard through her cotton tank top.

  She slipped off her sandals and folded her feet under her butt on the couch. I sat across from her.

  “I need you to know something,” I said.

  “I go first.” She started talking fast, fingers dancing, about the meeting she’d organized last night—small—twenty people, but bigger than the last one and more were coming next time. The only problem was she needed a bigger place to hold the meetings.

  And then she started naming people. “Old Cao from the molding plant, and Auntie Wei from soleing, and Sting Wang who is very boy friendly, and Auntie Eagle—how do you say in English? Seven mouths and eight tongues, something like this, and Little Magnet, and Supervisor Pig Face, no one knows his real name—”
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  As she listed workers, I found myself actually thinking, after each name, there was the one I could sacrifice to Gang. But I wrenched the thought from my head. What kind of monster picked? There was no choice. I wouldn’t be a part of it.

  In the flow of these thoughts, under the heat of Gang’s orders, I didn’t notice that Ivy had stopped naming people, only that she was staring at me now, lips pursed.

  “Something wrong?” she asked.

  “Gang called me. I met with him,” I said. “He knows someone is organizing workers. But he doesn’t know who. He wants me to give them up. The names of the ringleaders.”

  Her lips made a round O, but no sound came out.

  “You need to get Zhang down here,” I told her. “We need to talk. All of us. Before you take any action. I don’t know how much I can really do to help you.” I reached over and touched her thigh. “I’m saying it’s dangerous. For everyone. Maybe you call it off.”

  “We can’t. Did you give my name?”

  “Of course not. But I’m in a real bad spot here. What do I tell Gang?”

  “Tell him the rumors are false.”

  “You can’t organize here. It’s too risky.”

  “I will discuss with Zhang. We don’t want to hurt you.”

  For a second I wondered if that was true, you had to wonder, could I even trust her at all? Or maybe I was getting paranoid. I forced the thought out of my mind.

  Her gaze moved around the house. It was quiet between us. Then she cleared her throat. “Can I think of this like our house together? I know it isn’t mine, but I can think this?”

  “You can have a key. Come here whenever you want. It’s ours.”

  She leaned forward and kissed me and her skin smelled like the sweet cement glue that she’d been around all day.

  “He could arrest us. Send us off for ‘vacation-style therapy.’ Way up north. It is true. Your family never hear about you again. Never see you. I am tired. Too tired. Does he have people here?”

  I shook my head. “No way to know.”

  “I can’t think about Gang right now. I want to hear about the Peach Blossom Spring. Like my mother used to tell me.”

  I didn’t know how her mother told it, but it didn’t much matter. I thought for a second.

  “The peaches are about the size of your head,” I said, but I was still worrying about Gang. “And the rice leaves never curl.”

  “And we have a house?” she asked.

  “Everyone owns their own house. And none of the seventy-year leases. Forever.”

  “Do I have to wear pants?” she asked, closing her eyes.

  I laughed. “Whatever you want.”

  She grinned. “Good. I like to wear a red dress, red shoes and a tall phoenix crown like the women in operas.”

  “I want to match, so I’m going to have a cheongsam made. In red. For China.”

  “Everything for China,” she said drowsily, and she was quiet and I watched her chest rise and fall, breathing deeply.

  Outside, the frogs at the bottom of the water gutters belched loudly. A din of crickets and birds. All calling in different notes, their own specific frequency.

  “I can get Zhang down on Friday,” she said.

  “I have to meet Bernie on Friday. After.”

  She lifted her head and kissed me slowly and then pulled back a little, still close enough for me to feel her eyelashes flickering.

  I told her, “My mother believes there’s letters written on every part of your body that tell your past and future, but only a tzaddik can read it.”

  “What’s a tzaddik?”

  “A smart Jew, basically.”

  “What do mine say?”

  I reached for the hem of her tank top and lifted like I was lifting a veil, pressing my lips to her navel, a mole partly hidden by the fringe of her bra strap, the hollow of her armpits, wings of her collarbone, the scalloping shape of her lips, wide and pink.

  “So what is my destiny?” she asked.

  “Don’t know. You need a smarter Jew.”

  She grinned and kissed me. Pressed me down on the couch and dragged herself over me. With one hand I reached behind her back and fumbled with the clasp of her bra.

  She reached back and unclasped it, sliding the straps off her shoulders.

  “There’s a bed,” I said.

  “Those are the words on me?” she asked. “Very depressing.”

  She pulled my shirt over my head.

  “Here is better,” she said.

  * * *

  After, we were lying on the couch side by side, watching the threads of smoke from a candle on the coffee table. The light in the room dim and murky.

  “I’m frightened of him,” she said. “Gang.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll mold a golem and send it after him.”

  “What is this?”

  “Golem? An old Jewish monster. Made of clay. You put this invisible brand on his forehead—the Hebrew word emet—and then he comes to life and does whatever you want.”

  “Anything his master tells him?” she said.

  “That’s right. He obeys.”

  She rolled onto her side to face me and gave me this knowing smile I couldn’t read. Maybe she thought it was stupid.

  “It’s just one of those stories you tell kids in Sunday school,” I said. “I tried to make one in art class once, molded the clay, wrote the magic word on its forehead, and ordered him to rise and kill Mike Adams who was always giving me purple nurples—that’s on the nipples, it’s weird—I’ll explain later. It didn’t work. Which is a good thing because the story always ends the same. The golem goes fucking crazy and murders its creator.”

  She laughed. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But that’s how it always ends.”

  We fell silent. I guess we were thinking about that. How you can only control someone so long before they turn around and bite you in the ass. I felt the cold eyes of the seven-foot warriors against the far wall steady on me, and as long as she stayed here, I could keep it away, but I knew as soon as she was gone, I couldn’t fight it off—their granite eyes, their plated armor, this clawing in my chest, the dark void of the future pulling.

  But I was wrong. She wasn’t thinking about that at all. She touched my arm lightly.

  “Please do not misunderstand this,” she said. “You’re someone that I know and care about, but you are also someone I need to help me. It’s something I’m uncomfortable with. Because you own the factory. This should be my battle. I should be able to do this myself. I need to be Qiu Jin here. The revolutionary woman.”

  I sat up on my elbow and looked at her.

  “I’m uncomfortable with it too. I’m worried you’ll change things for the better around here and I’ll end up getting the credit. That’s how this fucked-up world works. I don’t want that either. This is your battle. Sure, it’s my factory, but it’s your vision. Your country. Your revolution. I want to support you. And I’m a shoe guy—no one ever needs to hear or see me.”

  She smiled warmly.

  “I should go,” she said. “Before curfew.”

  She wrapped a throw blanket around her bare shoulders and went toward the door. Grabbing the towel off the skull head and wrapping it around my waist, I followed her outside. Even now at night the air was thick and warm. But no moon. Never a moon. She walked barefoot into the dirt yard lit by floodlights mounted on the roof.

  We could see the silhouette of Plant B in the night. The high wall. But if you squinted a little you could hardly tell what it was, or you might think it was a hill, and you were alone here, and that sound of traffic whooshing by on the road below us could be a fast stream.

  A giant dragonfly hovered over Ivy’s head like it was thinking about landing on her. Its wings a blur. It bac
ked off only to come forward again. Back and forth. Back and forth. Then it darted over the fence ribboned with barbed wire.

  Ivy said, “It’s simple. The people must be masters of their own country. It was one of Sun Yat-Sen’s Three Great Principles.” Under her breath, she said, “Shit.” Wincing, she lifted her right foot and I saw she was bleeding. She squeezed the wound and out came a little green shard of beer bottle glass.

  “Are you okay? It’s bleeding. Let me dress it for you.”

  “It’s nothing,” she said, flicking the glass over the cyclone fence.

  12

  ON MY WAY out of the factory to meet Bernie on Friday, I froze outside of Yong’s office. The last few Fridays, Yong and Ms. Lin and the Crazy Cat Lady from purchasing made an afternoon of going down to Li Shui market to buy lychee. They sampled from each vendor, debating quality, ripeness and price per pound, oftentimes returning with nothing.

  So I had to make my move now while they were out. I put my hand on the cold handle of Yong’s office door and slowly, without making a sound, pushed it open.

  I slipped inside the door and sat at his desk chair.

  I jiggled the mouse on his computer and the screen flashed alive and I clicked on the personnel financial spreadsheet for Plant C. The workers on the stitching line. It was sitting in a folder on his desktop. There was no reason I shouldn’t have them. I was a third of the company. This wasn’t wrong, I told myself as I clicked print. I needed the hard numbers, and no one was going to be honest with me unless I dug for them myself. Snatching the papers as they spit out of his laser printer, I folded them in half, shoved them in my pocket and slipped back out the door. Down the hall I could hear Dad yelling at someone in the showroom. I felt good as I took the steps, two at a time, down the stairwell out to the courtyard.

  * * *

  A taxi left me on Fenjiang Middle Road in Chancheng, a little ways down from Foshan University. I headed south, squeezed along the sidewalk by a steady stream of Chinese headed into the Jinma movie theater where they play censored American movies.

  I walked into a bar called Lazy Papa. Mostly expats. Bernie liked it. Only a few people inside. Midafternoon. The place was pretty dark, lit up with lamp sconces on the walls. A Union Jack flew from the rafter beams. Beat-up floral couches, ugly mint wallpaper and a dank moldy smell. Reminded me of Bernie’s basement as a kid, where, lying on his stomach, he’d grind the shag carpet while we watched Chained Heat scrambled on Cinemax, squinting through the jittery snow in a vain search for boobs.