Benjamín, Jaime, Fanny, and Lola would hear her coming because of the jingling bells on Whitey and Blacky and would run up the street, shouting with joy, to meet her. They, too, spoke Spanish because they went to the public school, as was required by law. Along with lessons, they were also given a free breakfast. Alejandro, on the other hand, had only been able to learn one word of our language: “Wednesday.” Whenever a customer asked him when his shoes would be ready, he would answer, “Wednesday.” When they asked how much the repairs would cost, he’d say, “Wednesday.” If someone said the weather was fine, he’d say, “Wednesday.” But if he had no talent for languages, he had exceptional skills as a shoemaker.
He rejected the Anarchist’s proposition and did not sweeten voids or correct shadows, but he proposed, on the other hand, to develop his shoemaker’s vocation in an unusual way, that is, by making shoes to measure not only for feet but for the soul as well. And also with no fixed price: “Let each customer pay what he wishes or can. That will oblige him to take a moral position, to chose between paying the minimum, the proper price, or the maximum. This will help him know himself.” The Anarchist liked those ideas and granted my grandfather the title “Professor of Shoeology.”
Alejandro went to the city dump and picked up every piece of leather and thick fabric he could find. Also, the skins of rats, cats, and dogs. And pieces of wood and boards. All of that would be material for creating new models or making repairs. Back in his wretched room, he would stretch out to meditate and allow the boots and army shoes he’d shined while in the army for those five years to march through his mind. He saw how they were made and analyzed their parts:
“First and foremost a sole, a portable platform, protective support that should be invisible so that the sole of the foot would feel its existence as a second skin, safe, invulnerable, sensitive, and above all full of love. Soles like mothers, giving birth to each step with an iron will, giving full hope of arriving where desired; constant producers of the road, soles that were nations. And the heel? It should support with strength, inspire absolute confidence, be a wall that cuts away from the past and sets the step right in reality, the resplendent now, allowing the proud foot to conquer the place, to penetrate, to take full possession, to become the center of the joyous explosion of life. But it should not, at the same time, be hard or cutting, rather as delicate as it was powerful, not only pushing the foot forward to the future but also absorbing the oceanic impact of the past. And the tips? They should be fine without damaging the precious toes, so those toes might penetrate with the greatest ease into the future, which awaits us up ahead, which is always a prize because the end of all roads is God and not death, itself only a transformation. May each step a person takes in my shoes carry them to happiness, blessed be they.”
His first customers were poor devils who came to have their shoes repaired. Alejandro accepted all jobs, no matter how humble, and from those jumbled patches he made luxurious slippers. Slowly but surely middle-class customers came, and finally, aristocratic ladies and gentlemen appeared, with an air of adventure. Alejandro had to recruit helpers. He chose them from the tenement, and that way they worked without having to leave their rooms. Anyone who had no job could participate in the making of entirely handmade shoes, sewn and glued, no nails used, and made from simple but noble materials. My grandfather swore he would never use one of those impersonal machines. Each pair of shoes had to be a task carried out with love and completely different from the others. A man has fingerprints that are exclusively his, unique in the Universe, and that’s the way his shoes should be, for him and for no one else. The money received—“How much do they cost?” “Whatever your good will determines.”—he divided equally among himself and his workers. He earned, despite working an astonishing number of hours each day creating new styles, no more than the lowliest of his helpers, the one who prepared the molds in cardboard. Ultimately he came to have more than a hundred partner-workers, laboring with faces smiling.
Teresa, returning from each tour wearing more and more baroque turbans, more rings, bracelets, and necklaces, more mascara on her eyes, and with long, violet nails, would become furious: “This is stupid! There is something in your head that doesn’t work properly. That damned Rabbi must be the reason. How is it possible that you have an ever-growing number of clients, that a hundred people work for you, and yet you always earn the same amount, a pittance? Five years have gone by, and you still aren’t getting any richer. The rich people exploit you. It amuses them to pay you less than they would a beggar. They don’t see you as a saint but as a fool. It isn’t right! I have to wear out my fleas making them see the hopeless future for thousands of indigents so that between what you earn and what you give us we can live in a style barely different from misery. You still try to go on earning merit in the pitiless eyes of the Grand Villain. By wanting to be a just man you don’t enjoy life. You’ve sunk all of us in your mystical tomb. God only loves the dead! You have to return to reality!”
My grandfather would smile, kiss his wife on the forehead, and go back to his waking dream about how to improve his work. Now he was seeking the formula that would allow him to make shoes that would pray as people walked!
Suddenly Shorty Fremberg appeared, the first Jew my grandfather had ever seen in all those years. He was really repulsive, with an enormous head, short legs, a long torso, no neck, a potbelly, hairy, with one eye coffee-colored and the other green. He would shake his wrist to show off a gold watch that looked like an alarm clock, thinking that it made him attractive to women. He strutted around in front of the female workers as if, at a snap of his fingers, they would drop the soles to dive toward his fly. He turned up out of curiosity — some friends had told him about the madman who worked for whatever people gave him — to order a pair of low boots. When he got them, he offered ten times less than what they were worth. Alejandro stared at him with his eyes burning and only said, pointing toward the rooms where his helpers worked: “Thank you, for their sake.” Fremberg, surprised, ashamed, gave a few more pesos and muttered, “For the tip,” and then exclaimed in Yiddish:
“But, please, Don Alejandro! My friends told me you were crazy, and they were right. What does this mean? When you divide up what you earn, everyone, even the snot nose kid who cleans the holes you call toilets here, gets the same amount as you! Do you call that conduct worthy of a Jew? Because you are as Russian as I am Polish. Forget the masks! It seems to me you’ve confused the goys with Hasidim and confused decay with saintliness! A real manufacturer fixes prices high and salaries low. We’re living in the Industrial Age, my friend! There are great opportunities for the middle class. In this land of the lazy, we foreigners can make a fortune. Labor costs are practically nothing. These illiterates have no unions and no social guarantees. The military men protect us. If the workers go on strike, just beating them up is enough. You saw what happened in María Elena. They wanted to riot and they were crushed like dirt. Besides, you could set up a store next to the factory and pay them with coupons, that way they’d have to spend whatever they made in our store at the price we set. The situation is ideal. Take advantage of it, Don Alejandro! With the artistic talent you have and with my business skills, we can become millionaires. If we become partners, we won’t need God to help us.”