The Emperor of Shoes

by Spencer Wise

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “So you’re coming?”

  She smiled. “No offense, but anything is better than working here.”

  “It’s on the beach,” I said, climbing into the back of the van, and she was already making that face, knitted tight, before I realized how stupid that had sounded. She went to get into the front seat next to the driver, but I asked her to sit in the back with me. I’d never sat up front.

  “I can’t,” she said. “It will make Jianguo feel like a chauffeur.”

  My shoulders arched. “He kind of is the chauffeur. Right? He’s our driver.”

  “Maybe on the return,” she said and climbed into the front seat as Jianguo scrambled to clear his newspaper and smokes and cell phone off the seat. He glanced back to confirm this was okay with me. I shrugged. Now that she was riding up there with Jianguo, I felt a pinch of shame for always riding in the back, for knowing him a whole year and only communicating through shrugs and nods and hand gestures.

  Ivy said over her shoulder, “So, do you feel like your father’s delivery boy?”

  “No, I’m more like a service dog.”

  “China does not recognize service animals.”

  “But you do,” I said, grinning at her, and she smiled back at me, then faced the front.

  * * *

  Jianguo drove us out of town up onto the highway an hour south into Tai-San. We drove along the narrow river, past a marina of docked squid fishing boats. Ivy said it was mating season, so the fishermen couldn’t go out. They were sitting around tables playing liar’s dice and chess with their shirts off, out in front of their handshake houses. We wove past them onto a narrow dirt road toward the South China Sea. The tannery sat on a marsh that we filled in and leveled with dirt from the last drumlin swarm before the ground turned to mud. One of these knolls was cut in half as if someone dropped a guillotine blade on its neck. One side of the knoll had a blunt face of dirt and clay, but the other side was dotted with rows of young green trees, no underbrush anywhere.

  “Those trees,” I asked. “What are they?”

  “I don’t know how you call them in English. Koala bears eat.”

  “Eucalyptus?”

  “Yes. From Australia. Our government plants them everywhere. They grow fast and tall, but they drink all the nutrition in the soil and kill off other plants. Very bad. In English I think you call it invader species. I don’t know. Someone makes a lot of money off them.”

  I felt like she was talking about me. I know she was, but I didn’t want to call her on it and come off sounding paranoid, though maybe I was getting paranoid.

  * * *

  We pulled into the tannery and parked between a large hangar and a huge in-ground rainwater tank. There were a few workers inside the open garage door of the tannery wearing straw hats, rubber gloves and boots, broom-pushing puddles of cow blood across the floor into narrow gutters.

  “Nice beach,” Ivy said, once we were out of the car. We hid our noses in our shirts. The smell was crippling: rotten eggs and meat and feces, a smell that made my stomach muscles clench and triggered a surge of adrenaline screaming at me to flee.

  After ten minutes of waiting, Peng, the village chief, pulled up in a black Audi and got out wearing a red Scottie Pippen Bulls jersey, acid-washed blue jeans and black leather sandals. In addition to handing off the bribe, I wanted to check that he installed the equipment to get the recycling program started. The mayor of Foshan, his uncle, said we needed to recycle 25 percent of the waste material by 2016 or he’d kick us out.

  “Who’s this?” Peng said, first thing out of his car, smiling with yellow crooked teeth. Instead of the usual brush cut, he wore a toupee, at least I thought it was one, combed over sharply to the right. I’d met him a few times before when he came to the factory. Now he gave me a quick shake. Ivy also stuck out her hand, introducing herself, but Peng leaned over, bowed and daintily kissed the backside of her hand. He made a real show out of it, and while he was down there he lifted his eyes and they flashed wickedly. Ivy pulled her hand away.

  “She’s my translator,” I said.

  “Alex, you know I speak English good. So something else going on. Fine. None of my business.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Ivy glanced at me. Peng straightened up and said to Ivy in a syrupy voice, “Enchanté.” There was a pause. “That’s French,” he added. Ivy laughed and said it was clear that she was in the presence of a man of great importance.

  Missing the sarcasm, Peng commended her on her taste and said he knew the minute he saw her that she was a splendid flower, a rare flower, not the typical country girl.

  “You have no idea,” she said.

  He looked down at the bags in my hand. “Why don’t we go up to my office?”

  We walked up the terrazzo staircase to his office on the second floor with a high ceiling and a long oak desk. His secretary brought in a tray of green tea and poured the steaming water into our small cups. When she was done pouring, Ivy put two knuckles down on the table as a way of saying thank you, the symbol of someone prostrate on her knees, and Peng observed all this, eyebrows arched, and said, “You don’t have to show Ms. Li such respect. She’s a secretary.”

  “Then she deserves even more,” Ivy said.

  Peng clapped his hands together. “Ah, beauty and good health, impeccable manners, but a soft heart too? You have it all. I should leave my wife and marry you.”

  “I am not available,” she said, “and you’re too old for me.”

  “Age,” he snuffled. “What’s age? With age comes wisdom. Wisdom and experience.” His eyes flashed again and I felt like punching him.

  He said he wasn’t stung by this rejection, however, because he already had a girlfriend, much too young, who fancied herself an actress. “If I want to see her, I must pay for everything. She says she loves me but of course they all say that. Prove it. She could buy dinner once, just once, couldn’t she? Contribute a little. Show me you care.”

  “This shouldn’t happen to men of your importance,” Ivy said.

  “Exactly,” he shouted and slapped his forehead with his palm. “See, you understand me.”

  She rolled her eyes at me subtly. The idea crept up on me to stand up and say, We aren’t doing business like this anymore, and walk out with Ivy, but I pushed it aside. Just give him the bags and get out. “From my father,” I said, this lame attempt to cut myself out of it, and reached the bags across the table. I didn’t know if there was bribe etiquette to follow. If it was like Christmas where we were supposed to watch him unwrap the gifts. He took the bags, peered inside, set them down by his feet and with a self-satisfied smirk said, “Good.” He didn’t even bother to take any of it out of the bag.

  “Tell your father thank you,” he said, “and the prices of course stay the same.”

  And now I knew I had to show some gratitude. Ivy looked away. I muttered a thank you under my breath.

  “Also tell him the audit will go fine this quarter,” Peng said.

  “How do you know that?” I asked, but I knew damn well why we never ran into problems. I just wanted to see if he’d cop to it.

  He reached for a pack of toothpicks on his desk and started to clean his teeth, but he didn’t have the class to cover his mouth with one hand. He picked away, smacking his lips, running his tongue over his teeth.

  “I am on the auditing board. It is a private company.”

  Ivy laughed out loud and then stifled it with her palm.

  Peng glared at her. “What is so funny?”

  “She’s laughing at me, Peng,” I said, and I half believed it. Why call out the obvious? Of course he was making money off his own fake audits.

  “Oh,” Peng said, his face softening. “In that case laugh all you want.”

  I stood up. I couldn’t take being in his office a second m
ore. “Can we see the recycling program?” I asked.

  * * *

  Back outside, the air was thick and humid. Peng threw a handful of pebbles at a scraggly dog with red skin sores. It barked once and scurried away. We walked across the uneven pavement to the first hangar, the smell more pronounced, fetid meat mixed with a salt breeze.

  They were all men, the workers, young too, staring at us as we walked past the glistening pink-and-brown rawhides packed in salt and stacked on wood pallets. The workers wore butcher aprons, jeans and rubber boots, steel mesh gloves and T-shirts, their forearms covered in jerry-rigged rubber sleeves. They were hanging the hides by two corners on meat hooks connected to an overhead track, while another group beat the hides with shovels to remove the salt and sand, and a last group swept the dirt and salt and hair that fell off into tall piles with a few cow tails sticking out.

  Peng leaned in and said, “No place for a pretty girl, Miss Ivy.”

  She waved him off and walked in. No ventilation here aside from the open shipping door and a few standing fans. Dozens of rawhides hanging from meat hooks moved like tattered sails along the ceiling, giant torn flags of skin, loose and heavy.

  In front of us, the workers slipped rawhides into the loud fleshing machines where rolling knives and grinding bricks stripped the fat and muscle.

  Everything had a green patina of rust so all the machinery looked like it had been salvaged from a deepwater shipwreck. The irrigation gutters in the floor carried the hair and the chrome and lime past our feet, chopped up bits of fat in soapy water, trailed by some bluish-green sludge flowing to the open-air cement recycling tanks dug into the ground.

  “See,” Peng said, “I held up my end of the deal. We are recycling.” His cell phone went off. “Excuse me,” he said.

  Alone, Ivy and I walked past the splitting machines, where four men dragged the lime-swollen hides through a thin band saw. The bottom was suede, the top was full grain. It was difficult to see, but no one wore a mask. Suede was so dusty some tanneries sold it off because they didn’t want to deal with it, but we did well with suede. We passed the workers simulating grain on the cheap leather, the stuff with nicks and scratches. Plating machines exerted tons of pressure to give it an ostrich grain or snake or alligator. Around us, elevated on a metal scaffold were giant wooden tumble drums—the hides pickling in brine, sulfuric acid and ammonium salts.

  Then we came to the last room where a steep staircase led to a giant silo for recycling the cow hair. The manager here wore a teddy bear rhinestone shirt and wedge platform sandals, a streak of her hair dyed pink and held back by a barrette. She greeted us in Chinese. It was clear that each morning she spent time on her looks despite being the only female in the plant beside the secretary, despite working here at the end of the continent, in shit and mud and blood. We walked four flights of stairs up to the top of the silo. She kept doing this bashful outward roll of her foot as she talked, explaining that the hair recycling separated protein from water and waste. By adding hot air they made a powder, which fell down like snow. This powder was used for pillows and sofa fillers, fertilizer, even animal feed. Peng had caught up with us by now and he was making a big show to the girl about there not being safety ropes or a railing up there, and while they were arguing, Ivy slipped away. I followed her down the stairs and she opened the door to the silo with a grin. We ducked inside and sure enough it was snowing.

  “I never saw snow before,” she said, holding out her hands. It fell softly on her hair and shoulders. Fat flakes, twizzling, like flies at the canteen.

  “Is this what it feels like?” she asked. “Real snow.”

  I told her yes, except colder. “Come on. I don’t think it’s good to have this stuff on us.”

  “It is beautiful.” She held out her tongue and let the snow or cow hair or whatever the fuck it was fall on the tip.

  “Don’t do that,” I said.

  She closed her eyes.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Trying to picture cold,” she said. “Being stuck alone in snow and thinking you are going to freeze to death like Trotsky in Siberia. He was saved, you know, by a Jewish farmer driving a horse cart. This farmer was on his way home to bring his wife a duck to cook for the special day of week. What do you call this?”

  “The Sabbath.”

  “That’s it. The farmer had gone far for this duck to make his wife happy. This was the first thing I learned about Jews, they want to make their wives happy, is that true?”

  Her shoulders were covered in snow, her hair too. I could see the side of her face by the small square of light from the isinglass on the hatch door. “Not all the time. We don’t have a policy.”

  “Trotsky,” she said, “hid under blankets holding the duck, and the Jew farmer drove by the last guard station along the river, praying. Then they hear the duck. The duck is going real crazy, barking. No, ducks don’t bark. I can’t say in English.”

  “Quack.” The snow beating down. Light and soft. Thickening in her hair. I couldn’t see my breath.

  “Yes, quack. Doing this and Trotsky says I have to, I am so sorry, my friend. Then he snaps its neck. And then they drive all night and smuggle Trotsky free. So there’s no revolution without a Jewish duck farmer. But I feel very bad for his wife who probably yelled at him. She didn’t know how much her husband risked. He was also the father of the revolution even if he was just a farmer. Do you think of this, Alex? Both of us are small people. You are very rich, but still small. Do you wonder maybe if there is someone greater inside? Someone like a duck farmer?”

  “I like you,” I said moronically. I couldn’t think of anything else.

  Ivy smiled at me in the darkness, one panel on her cheek illuminated, and I wanted to aim for that square and kiss her.

  “I like you too,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “At university, there was one rule—never ask why.”

  She was right up against me, I could feel her breath. I felt cold now, after hearing this story. She leaned closer. Lifted her head and the panel of light was on her white throat. She traced my lips with her finger and then her head tilted forward and her lips covered mine. Her tongue turned in my mouth and then curled as if she was trying to hook me. Her hands floated up my back; her skin smelled a little like the sweet cement glue at the factory and a little like talcum powder, in the whirling whiteness, and then she drew her head back slightly. Then it was silent except for our faint quick breaths.

  “You just said that you went to college,” I said.

  “I did,” she said.

  “Why are you really working at a shoe factory? No one who’s gone to college works at a factory.”

  “So much questions.” She put her hand on my chest. “Can you put your arms here?” She raised my hands to her hips.

  “Tell me something. Tell me what happened in Tiananmen.”

  We heard banging on the outside of the silo, a deep hollow reverberation and Peng’s voice: “Hullo? You two in there? Where did they go?”

  “I was there.” Her voice a rustle.

  “What happened?”

  “Hullo?” Peng shouted. “I lost them. In my own tannery, where are they hiding? Hullo? Mr. Younger Cohen and beautiful Ivy?”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I got my sister killed.”

  The hatch door opened and we were flooded in light and I saw that her face was anguished and twisted.

  “Look what I found,” said Peng. “Two sparrows in a nest. Ivy, you cheat on me already and we just met. I could take you to more romancing place than tannery.”

  My hands dropped. Hers too. “I’m sorry,” I said, but she was already walking out, and the snow sloughed off her hair and back, trailing her feet.

  “Give me a minute,” I told Peng, and I followed Ivy, who had crossed the lot and was now s
tanding on the foundation wall overlooking the green sea.

  For a second I felt like I was back on the beach in Lynn. The small granite hills, the smell of the salt marsh, the tall cordgrass curved like scythes.

  “Don’t mind him,” I said, “he’s an asshole.” She didn’t answer. “Are you upset I kissed you?”

  “I want to be honest with you,” she said. “But there’s so much you don’t know.”

  No beach here: just a deserted coastline, the wind banging the door of a ramshackle fisherman’s hut.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” I said. That was a lie.

  “No,” she said, “I do. I am going to need you.”

  * * *

  Ivy sat in the back of the van with me. I didn’t make a big deal out of it, I was just glad she was there. We watched the girl in the teddy bear shirt waving goodbye as we drove off. Then Ivy asked if we could make a stop in the Wuling valley. There was something she wanted to show me.

  “I don’t know. I told Dad I’d be back right away. He needs me for confirmation samples on the Abelson’s line. Sorry.”

  She drew back. “Your father will never know. Jianguo won’t tell. Come on. The factory does not walk away. It will stay waiting for you.”

  “Sorry.”

  I said it ten times in my head to try to purge it from my brain. I felt like it was all I said anymore. How was mea culpa not Yiddish? This stunned me in middle school Latin class.

  “Have you ever tried not listening to him?” Ivy asked. “Even to see what happens?”

  I’d always held at third base. Back on Duggar’s field in Lynn, and I’d just lofted a fastball over the right fielder who was chasing it all the way to the fence, and I rounded second when the third base coach flashed the sign—palms flat, away from his body—hold. Stop. Don’t run up the score on the sucky Andover Pirates. Never once did I blow through his sign. I trotted into third and stayed, and my father wasn’t there, he was probably in a German hostel in Taichung the first time it happened and sat bolt upright in his bed as God spoke unto him, “The boy obeys the signs,” and Dad rubbed his eyes and said, The boy listens? He’s a good boy? Not the worst? Thank you, amen or whatever—