by Margo Glantz · 08/26/10
With the passage of time, the shoe loses its origin and its etymology. How many people today know that the Spanish word for “shoe” comes from the Turkish? It is a Renaissance term; it did not exist in Spanish before. Other words were used, like calzado, meaning footwear. In the first dictionary of the Spanish language, the one written by Covarrubias, we read that calzado refers to a person who wears shoes, as opposed to the devout who made a religious statement of not wearing them. Teresa de Ávila and Saint John of the Cross, for example, were commonly known as the barefoot Carmelites…
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The great colossus of Egypt went barefoot. Homeric heroes as well, though there is some room for debate on that point. But as we read in Deuteronomy, Moses can proudly tell the Israelites: “I have made you walk through the desert for forty years and your sandals have not worn out beneath your feet.” That is, I believe, the first written mention of footwear. Although if we really think about it, God had already anticipated the necessity of a good foundation when He created us. Our very first shoes are the ones offered by our own anatomy: the soles of our feet assure a firm and solid step. The softness and elasticity of this primeval footwear is mainly due to an incredible collection of little bones, the sesamoids, found beneath the first metatarsal.
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The dignity and beauty of the bare foot is preserved only in statues.
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And this preamble is essential for someone trying to write the story of a woman whose greatest ambition was to walk through life in designer shoes.
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She was not born on silk sheets, nor did she taste her first bite from a silver spoon. She worked in a small-town shoe store that sold downtown styles (knockoffs) at discount prices. The specialties of the store were clodhoppers designed for the comfort of matrons and little old ladies (black polish, austere and measured cut) and dress shoes in beige and red, grey and black, or white with chestnut or navy, made for ambitious young women from working-class neighborhoods.
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Once upon a time I might have wanted to be Cinderella, to have an evil stepmother and wicked stepsisters. To wake up one lovely morning to find Prince Charming in the kitchen, accompanied by a servant carrying a magnificent case lined with purple satin and containing the famous and eternal crystal slipper, in exactly my size.
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It is time to confess that this story is autobiographical and, as such, deeply sincere.
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“There are no words in my mouth,” realizes Blanca Hammer, the heroine of Until the Dawn’s Light, the latest work by acclaimed Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld. A life full of tragedy has taken its toll on Blanca, and the novel finds her criss-crossing Europe by train in the 1910s with Otto, her four-year-old son. What exactly is Blanca escaping from and where is she headed? Appelfeld answers such questions only partially, but two recent reviews of the book offer some fascinating insight.
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