Italian Shoes

by Henning Mankell

  The opera had reached its finale. The old floorboards creaked as we walked over them.

  ‘I hope you’ve washed your feet,’ said Louise as we came to the final door, which was closed.

  ‘What will happen if I haven’t?’

  ‘Giaconelli won’t say anything, but he will be disappointed even if he doesn’t show it.’

  She knocked on the door, and opened it.

  At a table with neat rows of tools sat an old man hunched over a last partly covered by leather. He wore glasses, and was completely bald apart from a few strands of hair at the back of his head. He was very thin, one of those persons who give the impression of being more or less weightless. There was nothing in the room apart from that table. The walls were bare, there were no shelves containing lasts, nothing but naked wooden walls. The music had come from a radio set standing on one of the window ledges. Louise leaned over and kissed the old man on the top of his bald pate. He seemed to be delighted to see her, and carefully slid to one side the brown shoe he was making.

  ‘This is my father,’ said my daughter. ‘He’s come back after all these years.’

  ‘A good man always comes back,’ said Giaconelli. He had a thick accent.

  He stood up and shook hands.

  ‘You have a beautiful daughter,’ he said. ‘She’s also an excellent boxer. She laughs a lot, and helps me whenever I need help. Why have you been hiding yourself away?’

  He was still grasping my hand. His grip became even tighter.

  ‘I haven’t been hiding away. I didn’t know that I had a daughter.’

  ‘Deep down, a man always knows if he has a child or not. But you have turned up. Louise is happy. That’s all I need to know. She’s been waiting for long enough for you to come walking through the forest to visit her. Perhaps you’ve been on your way all these years without realising it? It’s just as easy to lose your way inside yourself as it is to get lost in the woods or in a city.’

  We went to Giaconelli’s kitchen. Unlike his ascetic workshop, it was cluttered with all shapes and sizes of pans, dried herbs, bunches of garlic hanging from the ceiling, paraffin lamps and rows of jars with spices squeezed on to beautifully carved shelves. In the middle of the floor was a large, heavy table. Giaconelli noticed me looking at it, and stroked his hand over the smooth surface.

  ‘Beech,’ he said. ‘The marvellous wood from which I make my lasts. I used to get my timber from France. It’s not possible to make lasts from any other kind of wood: beech trees grow in rolling countryside, tolerate shade, and are not affected by big and unexpected variations in climate. I always used to choose personally which trees were going to be felled. I would pick them out two or three years before I needed to replenish my stocks. They were always felled during the winter and chopped into lengths of six feet, never any more, and were stored outdoors for long periods. When I moved to Sweden I found a supplier in Skåne. I’m too old now to raise the strength to drive down south to pick out individual trees myself. I find that very sad. But then, I make fewer and fewer lasts nowadays. I prowl round in my house and wonder how much longer I shall carry on making shoes. The man who chooses which trees to cut down for me presented me with this table when I celebrated my ninetieth birthday.’

  The old master invited us to sit down, and produced a bottle of red wine in a raffia sleeve. His hand shook as he filled our glasses.

  ‘A toast to the father who turned up!’ he said, raising his glass.

  The wine was very good. I realised I had been missing something during the years I had spent alone on my island: drinking wine with friends.

  Giaconelli began telling remarkable stories about all the shoes he had made over the years, about customers who kept coming back for more, and their children who would turn up at his door after their parents had passed on. But most of his stories were about all the feet he had seen and measured before making his lasts, and how my feet would have already carried me for approaching 120,000 miles. About the significance of the ankle bone – talus – for the strength of a foot. He fascinated me by speaking about the apparently insignificant little cuboid bone – os cuboideum. He seemed to know everything there was to know about the bones and muscles of the foot. I recognised much of what he talked about from my days as a medical student – such as the incredibly ingenious anatomical constructions; how all muscles in the foot are short in order to give strength, endurance and flexibility.

  Louise said she wanted Giaconelli to make a pair of shoes for me. He nodded sagely, and stared at my face for several seconds before turning his interest to my feet. He slid to one side an earthenware dish of almonds and other nuts, and asked me to stand on the table.

  ‘Please take off your shoes and socks. I know some modern shoemakers measure feet with socks on, but I’m old-fashioned. I want to see the naked foot, nothing else.’

  It had never occurred to me that I would ever have somebody measuring my foot in order to make me a pair of shoes. Shoes were something you tried on in a shop. I hesitated, but removed my worn-out shoes, took off my socks and clambered on to the table. Giaconelli looked at my shoes with a worried expression on his face. Louise had evidently been present before on occasions when the Italian had measured people’s feet for shoes, as she withdrew into an adjacent room and returned with some sheets of paper, a clipboard and a pencil.

  It was like going through a rite. Giaconelli examined my feet, stroked them with his fingers, and then asked if I was feeling well.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Are you completely healthy?’

  ‘I have a headache.’

  ‘Are your feet in good order?’

  ‘Well, they don’t hurt at least.’

  ‘They’re not swollen?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The most important thing when making shoes is to measure the feet in calm circumstances, never at night, never in artificial light. I only want to see your feet when they are in good condition.’

  I was beginning to wonder if I was the object of a practical joke. But Louise seemed completely serious, and was ready to start making notes.

  It took Giaconelli over two hours to complete his examination of my feet, and to compile a list of the various measurements needed for the creation of my lasts, and thereafter of the shoes my daughter was keen to present me with. During those two hours, I learned that the world of feet is more complicated and comprehensive than one might think. Giaconelli spent ages searching for the theoretical longitudinal axis dictating whether my left or right foot pointed outwards or inwards. He checked the shape of the ball of each foot, and the instep, and investigated to see if I had any characteristic deformations: was I flat-footed, was either of my little toes unduly prominent, were my big toes higher than usual, so-called hammer toes? I gathered that there was one golden rule that Giaconelli followed meticulously: the best results were achieved using the simplest of measuring instruments. He restricted himself to two shoe heels and a shoemaker’s tape measure. The tape measure was yellow and had two different calibration scales. The first scale was used to measure the foot in old French stitches, each one equal to 6.66 millimetres. The other one measured the width and circumference of the foot, using the metric system, in centimetres and millimetres. Giaconelli also used an ancient set square, and when I stood on the sheet of indigo paper he drew a line round my feet using a simple pencil. He talked all the time, just as I recalled the older doctors doing when I started training as a surgeon – constantly describing exactly what they were doing and commenting on every incision, the blood flow, and the general condition of the patient. As he was drawing an outline of my feet, Giaconelli explained that the pencil must be held at exactly ninety degrees to the paper: if the angle was less than this, he elaborated in his heavily accented Swedish, the shoes would be at least one size too small.

  He traced the outline of each foot with his pencil, always starting from the heel and following the inside of the foot to the big toe, then along the tips of the toes, and back to
the heel via the outside of the foot. He instructed me to press my toes down hard on the ground. He used the word ground, even though I was standing on a sheet of paper on a table. As far as Giaconelli was concerned, people always stood on the ground, nowhere else.

  ‘Good shoes help a person to forget about his feet,’ he said. ‘Nobody travels through life on a table or on a sheet of paper. Feet and the ground are linked together.’

  As the left foot and the right foot are never identical, it is essential to draw outlines of both of them. When the outlines were completed, Giaconelli marked the location of the first and the fifth phalanx, and also the most prominent points of the ball of the foot and the heel. He drew very slowly, as if he were not only following the outline of my foot, but was also relating to an inner process that I knew nothing about, and could only guess at. I had noticed this characteristic in the surgeons I admired.

  When I was finally allowed to get down from the table, the whole procedure was repeated once again, with me sitting in an old rattan basket chair. I assumed Giaconelli had taken it with him from Rome when he’d made up his mind to continue creating his masterpieces in the depths of the northern forests. He displayed the same degree of meticulous accuracy, but now he didn’t speak: instead he hummed arias from the opera he’d been listening to when Louise and I had arrived at his house.

  Eventually, when all the measuring was finished and I was allowed to put back on my socks and my old, worn-out shoes, we drank another glass of wine. Giaconelli seemed to be tired, as if the measuring had exhausted him.

  ‘I suggest a pair of black shoes with a hint of violet,’ said Giaconelli, ‘and a perforated pattern on the uppers. We shall use two different leathers in order to present the design discreetly but also to add a personal touch. I have leather for the upper that was tanned two hundred years ago. That will give something special in the way of colour and subtlety.’

  He poured us another glass of wine, emptying the bottle.

  ‘The shoes will be ready a year from now,’ he said. ‘At the moment I am busy with a pair for a Vatican cardinal. I’m also committed to making a pair of shoes for Keskinen, the conductor, and I have promised the diva Klinkova some shoes appropriate for her concerts featuring Romantic lieder. I shall be able to start on yours eight months from now, and they’ll be ready in a year.’

  We emptied our glasses. He shook us both by the hand, and withdrew. As we left through the front door, we could hear once again music coming from the room he used as his workshop.

  I had met a master craftsman who lived in a deserted village in the depths of the vast northern forests. Far away from urban areas, there lived people with marvellous and unexpected skills.

  ‘A remarkable man,’ I said as we walked to the car.

  ‘An artist,’ said my daughter. ‘His shoes are beyond compare. They’re impossible to imitate.’

  ‘Why did he come here?’

  ‘The city was driving him mad. The crowds, all the impatience that left him no peace and quiet in which to carry out his work. He lived in the Via Salandra. I made up my mind some time ago to go there, in order to see the place he has left behind.’

  We drove through the gathering dusk. As we approached a bus stop, she asked me to pull into the side and stop.

  The forest came right down to the edge of the road. I looked at her.

  ‘Why are we stopping?’

  She stretched out her hand. I took hold of it. We sat there in silence. A lorry laden with logs thundered past, whipping up a cloud of snow.

  ‘I know you searched through my caravan while we were out. I don’t mind. You’ll never be able to find my secrets in drawers or on shelves.’

  ‘I noticed that you write letters and sometimes receive answers. But probably not the answers you’d like to get?’

  ‘I receive signed photographs from politicians I accuse of crimes. Most of them answer evasively, others not at all.’

  ‘What do you hope to achieve?’

  ‘To make a difference that’s so small it’s not even noticeable. But it’s a difference, for all that.’

  I had a lot of questions, but she interrupted me before I had chance to ask them.

  ‘What do you want to know about me?’

  ‘You lead a strange life out here in the forest. But then, maybe it’s no more strange than my own. I find it hard to ask all the questions I’d like to have answers to: but I can sometimes be a good listener. A doctor has to be.’

  She sat in silence for a while before she started speaking.

  ‘You have a daughter who’s been in prison. That was eleven years ago. I hadn’t committed any violent crimes. Only fraud.’

  She half opened the door, and immediately it became cold inside the car.

  ‘I’m telling you the facts,’ she said. ‘You and Mum seem to have lied to each other. I don’t want to be like you.’

  ‘We were young,’ I said. ‘Neither of us knew enough about ourselves to do the right thing every time. It can sometimes be very hard to act in accordance with the truth. It’s much easier to tell lies.’

  ‘I want you to know the kind of life I’ve led. When I was a child, I felt like a changeling. Or, if you like, as if I’d been billeted with my mother by chance, while waiting for my real parents. She and I were at war. You ought to know that it’s not easy to live with Harriet. That’s something you’ve escaped having to go through.’

  ‘What happened?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘The usual horror stories. One thing after another. Glue sniffing, thinner, drugs, truancy. But it didn’t get me down, I pulled through. I recall that period of my life as a time playing non-stop blind man’s buff. A life led with a scarf tied over my eyes. Instead of helping, all my mum did was tell me off. She tried to create an atmosphere of love between us by shouting at me. I left home just as soon as I could. I was trapped in a net of guilt: and then came all the fraud and deceit, and in the end I was locked up. Do you know how many times Harriet came to visit me while I was locked up?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Once. Shortly before I was released. Just to make sure that I had no intention of moving back in with her. We didn’t speak to each other for five years after that. It was a long time before we got in touch again.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I met Janne, who came from up here in the north. One morning I woke up to find him stone-cold dead in bed beside me. Janne’s funeral took place in a church not far from here. His relatives arrived. I didn’t know any of them. Without warning I stood up and announced that I wanted to sing a song. I don’t know where I got the courage from. Maybe I was angry to find that I was on my own again, and maybe I was annoyed by all those relatives who hadn’t put in an appearance when Janne needed them. The only song I could remember was the first verse of “Sailing”. I sang it twice – and looking back, I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. When I emerged from the church and saw those apparently endless Hälsningland forests, I had the feeling that I belonged here, in the trees and the silence. That’s why I ended up here. Nothing was planned, it just happened. Everybody else around here is leaving and heading for the cities: but I turned my back on urban life. I found people here that I’d never realised existed. Nobody had told me about them.’

  She stopped, and announced that it was too cold in the car to carry on talking. I had the feeling that what she had said could have been the blurb on the back of a book. A summary of a life, lived thus far. I still didn’t really know anything about my daughter. But she had begun to tell me.

  I switched on the engine. The headlights illuminated the darkness.

  ‘I wanted you to know,’ she said. ‘One thing at a time.’

  ‘Let it take as long as it needs,’ I said. ‘The best way to get to know another person is one step at a time. That applies to you just as much as it does to me. If you go too fast, you can collide, or run aground.’

  ‘As happens at sea?’

  ‘What yo
u don’t see is what you notice too late. That doesn’t only apply to unmarked channels at sea, it applies to people as well.’

  I pulled out and continued along the main road. Why hadn’t I told her about the catastrophe that had blighted my life? Perhaps it was only due to exhaustion and confusion as a result of the astonishing revelations of the last couple of days. I would tell her soon enough, but not just yet. It was as if I was still trapped in that moment when I’d emerged from my hole in the ice, had the feeling that there was something behind me, looked round and saw Harriet, leaning on her wheeled walker.

  I was deep in the melancholy forest of northern Sweden. But even so, most of me was still in my hole in the ice.

  When I got back home, if the thaw hadn’t started and the ice was still there, it would take me a long time to chop it away again and open up the hole.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE HEADLIGHT BEAMS and shadows danced over the snow.

  We got out of the car without speaking. It was a cloudless and starry sky, colder now, and the temperature was falling. Faint light seeped out from the caravan windows.

  When we went inside I could hear from Harriet’s breathing that all was not well. I failed to wake her up. I took her pulse: it was fast and irregular. I had my blood pressure monitor in the car. I asked Louise to fetch it. Both Harriet’s diastolic and systolic readings were too high.

  We carried her out to my car. Louise asked what had happened. I told her that we needed to take Harriet to an A&E department where they could examine her thoroughly. Maybe she had had a stroke, perhaps something had happened in connection with her general condition: I didn’t know.

  We drove through the darkness to Hudiksvall. The hospital lay in waiting, looking like an illuminated liner. We were received by two friendly nurses at the Emergency entrance; Harriet had regained consciousness, and it was not long before a doctor arrived to examine her. Although Louise looked at me somewhat oddly, I didn’t mention the fact that I was a doctor myself – or, at least, had been. I merely informed them that Harriet had cancer, and that her days were numbered. She was taking medicine to ease her pain, that was all. I wrote the names of the medication on a piece of paper, and gave it to the doctor.