The Emperor of Shoes

by Spencer Wise

  Ivy shook her head. “No, no. This isn’t ‘rotten capitalist go home!’ The workers are young capitalists. They want money. Want business. Retail or trading booth in Guangzhou. The women are future iron ladies, yes? Who will provide? Not the government anymore. We help make them a path. It’s only one day to spare, Alex. One day.”

  “This is moving ahead,” said Zhang. “The real Great Leap Forward.” He chuckled again at his own wordplay. “You let us have our YouTube videos, our speeches. Then everyone back to work.”

  “But what does it accomplish?” I asked. “That I don’t understand.”

  “Big pressure to the top in Beijing,” Ivy said. “So when we ask respectfully for what we want, they are forced to give because the pressure of the world is so great on them.”

  “Democracy,” Zhang said in a tone that made it sound like he was clarifying what Ivy said, even though she wasn’t talking about democracy. Zhang read this confusion on my face. “Not now of course. Slowly. It should be the case.”

  “I think you’re going to be disappointed,” I told him. “I don’t know if my country is all that different. A bunch of super rich people running the country.”

  Zhang smiled at this. “Aiya. So maybe we are all in the wrong century.”

  “Maybe so,” I said.

  I was staring straight at Zhang but out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ivy swallow hard. “Only a day, we ask. To achieve big goals. We have two dozen people in the factory with iPhones,” she said. “And VPN connections.”

  “You do?” I said, my stomach sinking. The paddle fan spun overhead, but it was hot. Hard to think straight. I felt my pulse whipping in my wrists. I took a napkin out of my pocket and wiped my forehead. “From?”

  “Allies in Hong Kong,” Zhang said. “At the China Labour Bulletin.”

  I didn’t look at him. I kept my eyes on Ivy.

  “Be honest,” I said. “Was this your plan all along?”

  “We consider all possibility,” she said.

  That got under my skin a little. I mean, I knew they’d been inching me along this whole time. You didn’t come all the way down from Beijing to brainstorm maybes. They had a plan to sell. No different from selling shoes. You didn’t grab a customer and say, “Hey, buddy, buy this goddamn shoe,” like a caveman. You worked up to it slowly. I would’ve done the same thing. Was that what pissed me off? Being on the other side of it for once?

  So I was the schmuck for listening. Okay, maybe.

  But you couldn’t go through life on guard, in a bubble, much as I was sure Dad would love that. You had to listen. And sometimes, rarely, people said shit that made sense. That was the risk of opening the door in the morning. You could become a sucker. Like everyone else.

  “What do you need from me?” I asked.

  A smile just barely spread across Zhang’s face, but he quickly stifled it back. “Don’t call the police. Not right away. Give us a little time.”

  “I’ll try,” I said. “Buffer you as best I can, but I don’t know who else is going to call the police. I can’t account for my father.”

  “This is okay,” Zhang said. “It is fine.”

  “If you give me a date, I can make sure no buyers or inspectors are visiting. Do you have a date set?”

  “We have to act soon. If Gang is so suspicious.” Zhang looked up at Ivy. “A week from now,” he said.

  “If we can get everyone organized in time,” said Ivy.

  “Soon as we decide on the date, we warn you,” Zhang said. “We give you twenty-four-hour warning.”

  “You really think this will help?” I asked Ivy. “Tell me what you think. I’m asking you.”

  She looked at me. Eyes narrowing. “Yes. I do.”

  I turned my head to the side. Couldn’t take them staring at me any longer. They wanted a commitment. The pleading looks. What was I going to do?

  I could almost hear my father say, Everyone else can act like an animal, but not you. That’s what he said when the townies spray-painted an anti-Semitic sign on the street sign by our house and I tried to go after them with a bat. I couldn’t understand why Dad stopped me. I mean, getting in Dad’s car in a wet bathing suit without a towel was some kind of mortal sin, but when it came to something important you were supposed to let it roll right off your shoulders. None of it made sense.

  “One day,” Ivy said. Cajoling. “One single day. Makes the workers so happy they double production the next day. So you lose nothing.”

  I waved the bottom of my shirt to vent some air. Too warm in here. The breath and sweat and slickness. Too many thoughts. They spun and drifted, one voice squashed, another shouting. It’d be one day. I couldn’t come out of this clean. It was never going to be painless.

  But at least I’d have Gang off my back. They were turning themselves in basically. I wouldn’t have to rat anyone out. A shitty, selfish thought that I pushed out of my head.

  But maybe the brand takes off and I never even feel the hit.

  I nodded. “Okay. I’ll look the other way. For a day.”

  “Thank you,” Zhang said, bowing his head.

  Ivy moved to the edge of her seat like she was about to get up and touch me, reassure me—her eyes wide, telling me of course she couldn’t. She needed to stay there, on her side. Even if it made me feel real far off. A little pinch of guilt in her look too. Every sale carried it, because you were never quite telling the truth. I knew that. So what were they leaving out?

  “Listen,” I said, looking at Ivy. “This is a dangerous gamble. You don’t know what Gang will do. You could be in deep shit.”

  “There is risk,” Ivy said. “There is a way to make things more effective,” she said and nodded to me, and I understood she wanted me to be a part of it.

  “Absolutely not,” I said.

  “To give one speech,” Zhang said. “Now the whole world stops to watch.”

  “We need you there,” Ivy said.

  They were out of their minds. My support was one thing, but not my voice. If I gave a speech at this rally, then what? Goodbye to the brand with Bernie. No brand. No factory. My father would have a coronary. Gang would pull out my fingernails. The shoe-dogs would chase me out of China with pitchforks. That was why I couldn’t talk.

  But I wouldn’t monkeywrench it either. No saying what Dad or Yong might do, but I could try to stall them long enough to give Ivy and Zhang the forum they wanted. Let them lift the shoe and show everyone the shit-smeared sole. Maybe that would do some good. I cared enough to do that. But I wouldn’t put my face on it.

  That’s suicide. What good would it do anyway?

  The workers would still suffer terribly even if I spoke. That’s global capitalism. You couldn’t just turn the machine off. This had been going on for hundreds of years. There was no way out of it.

  No, I needed to keep my mouth shut, stay out of sight and stick to the plan with Bernie. When the demonstration happened, I’d act just as blindsided as Dad and Yong.

  “You know I can’t,” I said. “And I don’t see why it matters if I speak or not.”

  “If you are there,” Ivy said, “the government behaves like a good son. In order to protect its image. And your partnership. Much safer for the workers involved.”

  “Suicide. No one in my position would even think about doing it.”

  “Of course,” Zhang said, brushing the notion away with his hand. “This is the problem. But what if everyone in your position did this? Imagine you stand with us and your colleagues, factory owners, to our cause—what could be more? Without you. We are alone. Easy to smash. But if all the capitalist plant owners said to government, ‘We’re going to move elsewhere if you don’t take proper care of your workers.’ If you say, ‘I am willing to take smaller returns for good of Chinese workers,’ if every Alex takes this stance—now this is real revolution. You speak. Others
speaking. They hear you up in Beijing and force a change in their policy.”

  That all sounded nice and lofty. And maybe Zhang was right, that to stand in solidarity with the workers and other foreign and local factory owners against the Chinese government—that sure as hell might make a difference, but who was crazy enough? You would need to have nothing to lose.

  I didn’t want to tell them this, but in my head I was thinking there was a quieter way. The brand. That was what it came back to. If someone turned themselves into the Ralph Lauren of China—if they weren’t just here to squeeze every last dime out of these workers—well, then they’d have the wiggle room to give the workers more money, better benefits.

  Because Beijing didn’t want slave wages, that was just the way they drew business in. What Beijing wanted more than bringing in businesses was starting their own. Their own global brands. Made by China not just in. If they felt the Polos and Apples and Pradas could be based here, born here, Beijing wouldn’t mind the workers getting more.

  So if I could pull this off, if I could make bigger profits and compete in overseas markets, Beijing wouldn’t stop me from doing better by my workers.

  Of course you’d pocket less, but you could do it, if you weren’t too greedy. Six percent? Five percent if the orders were big enough. No midrashic law saying you couldn’t work on five percent. I’d need to sell more. Except it was going to take time. Slow. Then a little trickles down. A modest change. A start. And then maybe everyone gets paid a little more, charged a little more. The customers, the manufacturers. The market would adjust.

  But not if I spoke.

  “Look, I’m part of the system and it sucks, you both know that. All I can do is hope to change it from the inside. But I can’t put my face on this thing at all,” I said to her. “I just can’t. I’m going to need every worker, every line running soon. I’ll look the other way with you being here and doing your iPhone speeches, as long as it’s peaceful, but I’m not talking. Do you understand? I’m a shoe guy. I don’t want to be out in front of this thing.”

  Ivy nodded and her eyes slid away down to the floor. Like she was real disappointed. What choice did I have? If she couldn’t understand this, then I was sorry.

  “I see,” Zhang said, but he hesitated, like he was about to say something else; the bottom of his lip twitched, or maybe he did something with his eyes—it was all too fast to register—and then he stood up and reached out his hand.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Weary, I lifted myself up and shook his hand, but when I went to pull away his grip tightened ever so slightly, as if he was still thinking at any moment I’ll change my mind. His hand kept pumping.

  “Thank you, comrade,” I said, I guess as some sort of concession that even though I was not giving them exactly what they wanted, I was still on their side. Zhang showed me this odd smile that was tough to read, and it must’ve sounded pretty stupid, that word coming out of my mouth, though I wanted to hear how it sounded—or maybe I was embarrassed for meaning it.

  14

  NO SLEEP. 2:00 a.m., awake in bed with a sketch pad on my lap trying to draw a pattern for this new brand. My lead lines were getting sharper, thicker, angrier, but the design wasn’t getting anywhere. Where the hell to start? I was going to pitch the idea to Dad, pitch a whole new direction for our business, but there had to be an actual shoe, a few styles to show him. It couldn’t just be talk. There had to be a shoe for any of this to work.

  Restless, I threw the sheets off my lap, stood up and went to my dresser. I pulled on some shorts and my old burned-out gray T-shirt from the Arlington JCC, worn so thin you could see the warp and weave, and, moving with some kind of purpose masked to me at first, I headed out into the muggy night. Outside, the faint sweet smell of formaldehyde from the shoe cement hit my lungs, and my brain caught up to my body. The sample room. That’s where I was headed. I needed to be in the workshop. Needed my hands on real materials. That’s the only way to start. Not doodling on a notepad in bed.

  I keyed open the metal door to Plant B and took the stairs up to the third floor. Inside it was eerily quiet and dark: just the hulking silhouettes of the cutting machines, heat towers and sole presses crouched in the darkness. I felt blindly on the wall for the light switch and one aisle of chain-hung fluorescent bulbs shuddered and flickered to life.

  Against the walls were tall metal shelves displaying our new Western slouch boots, and unless you were a shoe-dog, you wouldn’t know which was the real Frye boot and which was our imposter. Dad was a copycat genius. But to come up with something fresh. Something new. Where the hell did you start?

  I sat on a stool at the steel-top worktable. The table face was scored and scratched from the tools—pegging awls, skiving knives, stitch groovers—scattered about. I picked up each tool, felt its heft in my hand, before arranging them in a neat row off to my right.

  Dad’s favorite last was sitting in the middle of the table, angled toward me. We still used this old waxy oak last that my great-grandfather had hand-lathed, because its measurements were perfect and Dad was a sentimental old bastard. But he was right. Brazilian last makers always rounded the feather line, Italian style, but this was the old Austrian form that you couldn’t find anymore, whispering to me now to pick it up.

  So I lifted it up with two hands and rubbed my thumb along the roughed bottom, a grainy burr from all the tack nails, and the toe box had a nice, hard-worn patina. Each whorl and grease stain confiding a secret. Whispering that it had always been here, right at the center, if I’d bothered to look.

  The wood darkened up by the throat where Dad always held it tight. Worn from all the times he touched it without needing to touch it, just unconsciously whenever he was nearby, like it was some kind of talisman.

  I cupped the heel firmly and traced my finger lightly down the cone and closed my fist around the toe of this phantom foot, and it struck me how rigid it was. You could knock someone out with this last. Heavy and dense. Way too stiff for the shoe I wanted to make. I needed flexibility. That was the vision, right? Mine. Zhang’s vision too. A compromise. Not too stiff and not too supple. In between. A compromise. A way forward. A fucking calico.

  I lifted my eyes to the window that overlooked the roof of the dormitory where Ruxi had hovered a month ago, stuck between air and land, her white dress filling like a balloon, and I felt a surging inside my chest.

  There was a way to make it work. Forget the fucking last.

  I pushed my great-grandfather’s last to the edge of the table. Away. No listening to it. I didn’t need it. What about stitch-and-turn construction, I thought. But that never fit well. No, there was a third way. I could stitch right onto the inner sole board. Or better yet, onto Strobel board. Like the old kung fu slippers.

  I jumped out of my chair and started fumbling through egg crates of materials on the shelves for the Strobel board. Then I set up the three spools of woven elastic on the worktable and sat back down, my legs jittering under the table as I poked holes around the edge of the Strobel board with the awl, faster, then cutting off strips of elastic from the spool and weaving it through the holes. Something was slowly forming right under my eyes.

  A new construction. It could work. I could profit and the mingong could profit and we could advance together. In harmony. We could make this work. That wasn’t crazy.

  No one was crazy here. Zhang and Ivy weren’t trying to destroy the factory, just improve it. That was all. They were all capitalists at heart in China. Zhang was for sure. They had been doing knockoff capitalism and now they were ready for the real thing.

  I was starting to feel good about everything, but then this other voice snuck up on me and said, Who are you kidding, dummy? You can’t do both.

  A shiver jolted down my back. Two of me just spoke to each other here and at first I couldn’t place the voices. How the fuck did I end up agreeing to both Bernie and Zhang?
That was the real problem. You were either a Bernie or a Zhang. One or the other.

  But I’d basically said, “Here’s the key to my plant. Come in and let me help you show the whole world on fucking YouTube how my profits are too big because Beijing oligarchs and local cadres skim so much off the top and our own greed makes us nickel-and-dime workers, using the hukou legal system against them, and their own government encourages us.”

  Why risk all that?

  These two voices kept grating and grinding against each other as I was weaving the upper, and one of them had to be the imposter. One of them was a fucking knockoff.

  Zhang was right: the migrant workers were the shit on the shoe of China. And it was our asses that it all came out of. So this was right. If the movement spread the way Zhang envisioned then the market would adjust. Sally McGee in Topeka would pay an extra two dollars for her sandals. Everyone would. And once they did, everything would come up. Not just in China but worldwide. If my profits were a little less, then prices went up. She was going to pay another few bucks. The beauty of this vision was going to allow the market to ask for more money out of the customer. The customer would know it was fair. That was Zhang’s vision. That was all he was really saying. It wasn’t revolutionary. He and Ivy didn’t want to kick me out.

  This shoe could be the fucking solution. The compromise. Everyone profits—the government, the workers, our own bottom line. It’s something my father would never dare to do.

  Gang would have less of a hard-on for catching radicals if his numbers looked better. What he cared about was getting into the central bureau, the twenty-five dudes who ran China. That’s all.

  In this business, sometimes if you got the right look, it caught on fire. Suddenly you were riding a goddamn hockey stick curve up. A shoe got hot. And what did that mean? Bigger margins. More to give. More to go around. See how that worked? Nice and clean. A middle ground. A way forward for us in China. Now you were paying the workers more and doing volume and everyone was fucking happy. One needed the other. And all for a day’s strike. That was worth it. You almost needed to think of the strike as an investment. A way to situate yourself for the long game.