The darkness tinted sky leisurely opened her eyes. Streaks of rays penetrated through dust and smog, a lone artist painting the sky florid orange. The morning breeze susurrated, caressing the broken and guttered pavement. Dry Smoke and fumes suffocated the air. It swept away crumbled posters and dried leaves of brownish hue that crunched in the wind. The sky appeared indolent but prepared for work.
A young boy rode a repeatedly puncture-fixed bicycle, one hand on his cap – the other on the handle. He gripped on as he wrenched down the thoroughfare. Behind him were freshly folded newspapers enhanced in satiric caricatures. “La Charivarie” read the title.
At the corner of the lane- a short aged man produced a bunch of clinking keys and opened his shoe store, the first to open and last to close.
The shoes were crammed in the teeming room. Strong odour of leather and dubbin scented the atmosphere. Leather cracked on some boots like its owner’s epidermis. His eyebrows were white as snow incessantly twitching and quivering. He pulled out a small wooden chair, its legs were shaking like his, parts of it broken, like him. He settled and waited.
The grocery stores next to him opened and would always be a brawl among the crowd in the morning for bread. Some stolen, others sold out. Some stale others burnt- but would be sold out kit and caboodle.
Men in high hats and long mustaches would come to him revealing their dirty exorbitant leather shoes, which he would then dub neat. They would toss him 20 centimes and leave hastily. Ten years disappeared, he seldom sold anything. His heart silently beating to the countless thoughts that pass by in his mind.
Ordinarily another day began but ended divergently. He scarcely paid attention to the world around him. A few damaged shoes were missing from the rack, the shape of its sole was imprinted on the rack, and dust on the untouched area. He heaved a sigh and sat back on the chair, another day, with missing shoes, still unsold.
The next day, before his store a few centimes lay covered in dirt and grime. Beneath it a petal of a red poppy. Its shades spreading like waves on the sea, from darker to lighter. He slipped it in his pocket and remained. The memories flooded in, gunshots, screams, loss, pain. His wife, his two children. All lost. He remained. He survived. The petal had immoderate color for the gloomy and polluting world around him. He waited for the visitors who never approached.
Another day passed, on closing he found 3 shoes missing. Why would anybody except a beast steal three?
Another day, newspaper boy, smoking chimneys, his corner store, stale bread.
A few more centimes lay, this time a white lilac petal. He smiled, tears appearing in his half clear eyes his throat tightened. He remembered his mother, the two elder sisters the way he ran across the flower-thickened garden and hid in the bushes. His fearless laughs, his innocent dreams. He looked back into the grey world that killed it all, his mother, his sisters, his innocence, his courage. Heart anchoring he sat on the chair, brushing the mud on the centimes with those hands that contributed to the violence in this world, hands that murdered someone else’s innocent dream.
More days elapsed. More centimes and a white snowdrop petal. Realization struck, it wasn’t late. He could still change and rewrite over his mistakes. He could teach the world his faults. Encircling, he wanted to know who was behind this. He wanted to change – the shoes that covered everybody’s free feet from running, from exploring. The shoes that stomped on hope. The shoes that confined and erased freedom. From shoes to flowers that caresses his heart and nurtures the world. The flowers that rejuvenate.
A worker appeared panting, with horrified eyes and body pale. His dirty clothes covered in sewage waste and cement. His filthy fingers pointing the outstretched lane.
Everyone raced to the nearest sewage system at the closing lane. Wet cement and lined up pipes lay around the dirty land under construction. Many people peered and whispered about the strange creature. The shoe seller gently paced, people cleared and silenced.
Fresh flowers coloring this dying world. Shoes that had not feet but roots inside them. Exquisite flowers were planted in the shoe seller’s leather boots. A little jar beside contained some pennies, all in mud and gravel. It was circled around a small body dressed in pink frock, torn and filthy from exhaustion and struggle. She could not be more than seven. Her long brunette hair, embroidered in flowers, some petals balling. Her freckles and thin lips were pale. Her body was lifeless for a few hours but it looked as if she was in a dreamless sleep.
It was burdensome for the shoe seller to witness it. How much a few minutes of silence communicated! He sat beside her lifelessly beautiful toes and caressed the shoe keeper’s shoeless feet.
By Rona
