‘Via Salandra in Rome,’ said Louise. ‘That’s a street I’m determined to walk along one of these days. Have you ever been to Rome?’
‘I’ve been there several times. But I don’t know the street you mention.’
Louise got out of the car. I followed her. The timber-built cottage must have been over a hundred years old; opera music could be heard from inside.
‘There’s a genius living in this house,’ said Louise. ‘Giaconelli Mateotti. He’s an old man now. But he used to work for the famous shoemaking family Gatto. As a young apprentice, he was taught his trade by the one and only Angelo Gatto, who started his workshop at the beginning of the 1900s. But now Giaconelli has brought his skills to the forest. He grew tired of all the traffic, of all the important customers who were always so impatient and refused to accept the fact that patience and time were essential for the making of good shoes.’
Louise looked me in the eye, and smiled.
‘I want to give you a present,’ she said. ‘I want Giaconelli to make you a pair of shoes. The ones you are wearing are an insult to your feet. Giaconelli has told me how our feet our constructed; the bones and muscles that enable us to walk and run, to stand on tiptoe, to dance ballet even. I know of opera singers who don’t much care about directors or conductors or costumes or the high notes they have to sing — but are passionate about the shoes they wear which they believe enable them to sing properly.’
I stared at her. This was just like listening to my father. The browbeaten waiter who had long since been banished to the grave. He had also spoken about opera singers and their shoes.
It was a strange feeling, realising that my father and my daughter had this in common.
But the shoes she was offering me? I wanted to object, but she raised her hand, walked up the steps, pushed the cat to one side and opened the front door. The opera music hit us with full force. It was coming from one of the rooms further back in the house. We passed through the rooms that Mateotti lived in, and where he kept his leather and his lasts. On one of the walls was a hand-painted motto that I assumed had been written by Mateotti himself. Somebody by the name of Chuang Chou had said: ‘When the shoe fits, you don’t think about the foot.’
One room was filled with wooden lasts, stacked on shelves from floor to ceiling. Each pair had a name label hanging from it. Louise pulled several lasts out and I was amazed when I read the names. Giaconelli had made shoes for American presidents, now dead; but their lasts were still here. There were conductors and actors, and people who’d achieved notoriety, for good reason or bad. It was a bewildering experience to make one’s way through all these famous feet. It was as if the lasts themselves had struggled through snow and swamp so that the master I still hadn’t met would be able to make his marvellous shoes.
‘Two hundred individual operations,’ said Louise. ‘That’s what’s needed to make just one shoe.’
‘They must be extremely expensive,’ I said. ‘When shoes are elevated to the level of jewels.’
She smiled.
‘Giaconelli owes me a favour. He’ll be pleased to reciprocate.’
Reciprocate.
When had I last heard anybody use that word in a context like that? I couldn’t remember. Perhaps people who live in the depths of the forest use language in a different way? Perhaps people who live in big cities chase down words as if they were outlaws?
We continued to make our way through the old cottage. There were lasts and tools everywhere, and one room smelled strongly of the tanned hides piled up on simple trestle tables.
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.