Хеннинг Манкелль - Italian Shoes

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.