Margen
"A forty-one on the left and a forty-four on the right."
"Say that again?"
"Forty-one on the left. Forty-four on the right."
"Since when?"
"Since seventy-eight. Half a joist came down on me, the big beam, at the secondary-school site, and the right foot never went back into its own size."
"And you are..."
"Prudencio Carriedo. Bricklayer, retired since 2014."
"Benilde Lasheras. This shoe shop has been mine since 2003."
"I know. It used to be your father's."
"It was my uncle's. Look, Prudencio, I can't break up a pair."
"That's what they told me in four other shops."
"And it isn't unkindness. A broken pair sits there forever: what I'm left with is a right forty-one and a left forty-four that are no use to anybody."
"They'll be some use to somebody."
"To somebody whose feet are exactly the other way round from yours. And somebody like that doesn't walk in every day."
"Buying two pairs is what I always do. I wear the forty-one from one, the forty-four from the other, and the two left over I throw away."
"You throw them away?"
"I throw them away. What else am I supposed to do?"
"How many pairs do you get through in a year?"
"One. Two when I was still on site."
"Sit down there, on the stool."
"There's really no need to..."
"Sit down, I bend badly. See that notebook up there, the fat one with the elastic bands?"
"I see it."
"In there is every pair that has gone odd on me in twenty-three years, written down by model and by last, which is the mould of the foot. Sixty-one single shoes."
"Sixty-one."
"The ones left on their own when something happens to a pair. A sole that burns in the window under the August sun, a customer who takes one away to try on and never comes back. I keep them hanging by their laces in the back store, by year, because once or twice a year somebody walks in with a foot and a half and half the time I've got it."
"And today you've got it?"
"Wait, and don't get up."
"..."
"Here. Left forty-one and right forty-four, same model and same last. The right one is brown and the left one is brown a shade darker."
"How much darker?"
"Just enough for you to see it and nobody else. They're missing both heel tips, the blocks on the heel, and one sole needs regluing: I'll do that this afternoon."
"Benilde."
"One pair. I'm charging you for one pair."
"And the two left over?"
"Nothing is left over today. Look at the line above in the notebook."
"..."
"Read it out loud, I know it by heart."
"Teodoro Alcaine. Olive mill. Forty-four on the left, forty-one on the right. Nine years."
"One pair, Prudencio."
"Benilde, Teodoro and I sit next to each other at the bar every Sunday."
"I know."