Auntie’s Fairly Flailing Tales # 4: Little Fellas
Part One of Two
There isn’t a sorrier sight than a shoemaker down at the heels. It had been so long since he had eaten real food that his stomach could have sued him for neglect. On the eve of St. Patrick’s Day, it was only through divine benevolence (and a paradoxically generous landlady) that he was able to score a good meal.
Well, it was “good” in the sense that beggars weren’t supposed to be choosers. Mrs. Cadwallader had been so gracious, especially after his hemming and hawing about the rent, that he knew enough not to mention how he’d nearly broke one of his remaining teeth on the entree, an unchewable slab of a strip steak that could have been the first cousin of the uppers he had used to make a pair of wingtips for a smarmy stockbroker, back when business had been better.
“More dessert , Mr. Levantino?”
“Yes, please,” he replied, because he was still hungry. Actually, the pastry wasn’t bad: a not-overly-sweet compote of peaches surrounded by a crust almost as flaky as the hostess. “I must say you’ve created quite the taste sensation here, Mrs. C. What’s it called?”
“Cobbler,” she chirped, and the word made her dinner guest cringe. Like an actress making a entrance, she swept across the room to turn on the lights. Before dramatically closing the drapes, she peeked outside at the street, crowded with revelers, apparently oblivious to the fact that the parade named for the patron saint of Ireland had petered out hours earlier. “They’re still carrying on out there. If it’s anything like last year, and the year before that, they’ll be raising hell ‘til all hours. It’s disgusting.”
“Couldn’t agree with you more. All that drinking and carousing. Hardly a way to honor the holy man. As a matter of fact, I consider it an insult to my heritage.” Noticing her raised eyebrow, he forced a chuckle, adding “I know what you’re thinking – -why is the ‘o’ at the end of my last name instead of coming at the beginning with an apostrophe? My mother emigrated from County Sligo, and soon after she got over here, she married a flamenco dancer.”
Mrs. Cadwallader’s eyebrows hopped even higher, and her ears twitched, aroused upon detecting an exotic element in his family history. “Ooh, how fascinating!” As she leaned more closely toward him, her romantic aspiration hiked up a notch, evidently side-stepping his status as a deadbeat, rent-wise, with her rose-colored blinders obscuring the fact he was a washed-up loser. What’s more the landlady had undertaken a dicey risk, possibly making herself vulnerable to heat from the municipal zoning board for flouting the ordinance against allowing a tenant to run a private business (such as it was) in a residential area. Such coddling ventured farther than the limits of thoughtful gestures from a kind person - - she had more designs on Levantino than the garment district slaps on models during Fashion Week.
With a series of brazen blinks, she showed off her new lashes, on special this week at her favorite drug store. She must be demented, Levantino thought. Or really, really hard-up. As was he, though strictly in a financial sense. For the time being, he thanked his benefactress for the free meal, politely shrugged off her pleas that he stay for a nightcap, and retreated downstairs to his studio apartment to make an earnest attempt to get a night’s sleep.
Earlier in his life Levantino had possessed the enviable ability to fall asleep, as the expression goes, “as soon as his head would hit the pillow.” Lately, however, the knack of settling down for a serene repose had abandoned him around the same time as the loss of a steady income. As bedtime approached, so would the dread creep into his head, already plagued with the fear and guilt of inadequacy. His soul shrank in the enormous shadow of a menacing world which delighted in making him feel insignificant and small.
Restless with such nocturnal bugaboos, along with the bumpy second-hand piece of junk pretending to be a bed and bullying his spine, he had only managed to doze off for brief periods, the figurative stack of z’s barely reaching the height of a dwarf’s ankles. ‘Round midnight or so, an intermittent sound, strident as a cop car’s siren and louder than the rowdiness in the street, chased away any remaining hope of sleep. “Oooo-oooo.” The noise originated from the area of the kitchen sink, the site of the apartment’s sole window, left carelessly unlocked and probably a quarter-inch shy of being completely shut.
“Oooo-oooo.”
“All right, already! I get the hint.” He no longer needed to brace himself whenever he snapped on the wall switch, for he’d lived in the place long enough to be inured to the habitual diaspora of Blattella germanica scurrying across the cracked linoleum. Instead he was shocked –- shocked!– - when the flickering light fixture revealed the source of the howling. “Ra-ooooul! Rau-ooooul!”
The cobbler rubbed his eyes, convinced that he might still be sleeping, dreaming, nightmare-ing. The frightening figure hadn’t gone anywhere. “Ra-ooooul! Oh, there you are!”
“Mother?” He’d always loved her, so the reunion should have filled him with filial joy. For the past twenty-three years, however, Raoul had been led to believe that she had blown this mortal coil. So what was she doing, screaming like a banshee in his kitchenette?
“Ah, me son, ‘tis a sad, sad, th’ing, such a disappointment for yer suff’rin’ mot’er.” She clawed at the bottom of her knitted shawl and raised an end to blot her eyes.” Don’t be t’inking I don’t know what’s goin’ on, me own son carryin’ on with that Welsh woman –“
“What are you talking about? She’s sixty if she’s a day!“
“ Ra-ooooul!”
“Stop it, Ma! You’re waking up everybody in the building! You sound like a deranged wolf.”
“–an’ all the time with nae a penny in yer kit!“
“Just a temporary lull, Ma, that’s all.”
She shot him a dirty look as if she could see right through him. (He could see straight through her as well.) “Nothin’ but blarney.”
He sighed in the woe-is-me way that had seldom failed to spark her sympathy when he was twelve. “OK. I admit it: business is bad. No customers. Believe me, it’s not my fault. Maybe you’ve heard about the recession. But the rich folks are still doing well. As a matter of fact, they’re bypassing small retailers such as meself -- er, myself, and going upscale. Super high-end. For the middle class, handmade footwear is a luxury. When they wanna splurge, they go out and pay three hundred dollars for sneakers –“
That Levantino was boring his own mother into a second death never occurred to him, nor had he ever speculated whether ghosts could yawn. Thus he droned on. “You’d think that the economy would have boosted the cobbling side of the trade, but no. The poor folks buy cheap stuff to begin with. When their shoes wear out, they don’t bother with repairs. They just throw ‘em away and -–“
“Sure, an’ ye be t’inking I was born yeste’day. Hundreds were the times I warned ye about chainin’ yerself to the wrong field o’ endeavor. Bull-headed is what y’are, just like your fat’er was, Gawd love ‘im and rest his immortal soul.”
“But, Ma – -everything’s different now. This ain’t the Land of Opportunity anymore. Lots of political careers have been built on blaming poor people for having bad luck. Like it’s a sin or something.” What was he doing, arguing with his mother’s ghost? It was insane.
She looked down at her left wrist, as if looking at an invisible watch. “ ‘Tis time to go.” She slapped her forehead, but her hand made no impact on the ectoplasm of her face. “Begorra! I’m after forgettin’ what I was s’posed t’ be tellin’ ye now! Expect t’ree sets o’ visitors tonight. Just givin’ ye what t’ey call a ‘heads up,’ me lad. ”
At that precise moment, the apartment door behind Levantino opened by itself, despite the impediment of the double bolt locks. Instinctively he turned round to look, and when he turned back around, his mother was gone. A haunting echo lingered, but this time it really was the wind.
As a chill slithered down his vertebral column he trembled, but not completely from the cold. Within moments, the nervousness subsided. So much for a spike in the old adrenalin. He wasn’t certain whether he’d suffered an apparent psychological trauma, but nonetheless felt enervated, or what has been frequently described as “drained.” He stumbled across the room, collapsed upon his futon, and immediately conked out, just as he used to do as a toddler whenever his mother put him to bed with a bottle laced with Robitussin.
It couldn’t have been much later when he suddenly sat up, with nary a trace of drowsiness. He glanced over at the faintly luminous red numbers on his no-frills alarm clock, mostly accurate (provided he had remembered to turn it an hour ahead the previous weekend.) Theoretically it was 2:00 am EDT. From the kitchen area came a startling clamor: eating utensils from the so-called “silverware” drawer clanging on the floor, cabinet doors opening and slamming shut. “Judas Priest! I’m being robbed!”
In the few seconds it took him to walk the length of the one-room apartment, Levantino shook his head at the stupidity of thieves ignorant of the reality that he owned nothing worth stealing. “Come on, Pal– -get a clue. I’ve got squat,” he announced as he flicked on the light.
“Ach!” A prime suspect of the alleged crime in progress jumped into the air.
The absurd prospect of dialing the 911 operator and reciting the physical description of the apparent perp and his six accomplices made Levantino shudder. Every member of the gang stood scarcely more than a foot tall, with an oddly-hued complexion –-similar to a deep tan shade once popular for men’s sandals, the color that season having been dubbed “bitterroot” or “butternut,” the shoemaker seemed to recall –- now easily discernible on the intruders from head-to-toe, for all seven of them were uncompromisingly naked.
Seven miniature faces were now glaring at the shoemaker, as if he were the one caught red-handed smack in the middle of a crime-in-progress. The weird little ringleader hopped up on the oilcloth-covered table and said, “Guten Abend, Herr Schuhmacher. Vere iss your Leder?”
“My what-er? “ Levantino tried to understand, extremely difficult amid the distracting circumstance of his apartment under siege by seven teeny-weeny guys with their full moons starkly shining. Finally: “Oh. You mean leather?”
“Ja! ” The septet of homunculi nodded in tandem, like a row of bobble-head figures for sale at the ballpark.
The language barrier seemed all but impenetrable, albeit the elfin visitors were more adept with the englisch than Levantino who struggled with sprechend und verste’hend the Deutsch. (For the first time in his life he regretted sleeping through every foreign language class in high school.)
Bit by bit, the bizarre plight of the uninvited guests transpired: earlier that evening a couple of hostile drunkards– - “zwei Trunkenbolde” – -had spit on the time-honored dictum to pick on someone their own size, opting instead to assail the tiny immigrants by mugging them sore and stripping them bare. Battered but undefeated, they dragged themselves to the shoemaker’s apartment. They were operating on the outside chance of setting up a mutually beneficial business arrangement whereby they would with preternatural speed produce X number of pairs of shoes to fit various sizes of human feet, whereas Levantino would reciprocate by providing seven sets of suitable street clothes for twelve-inch-tall men. The Germans were ready to deal.
“Sounds all well and good,” Levantino remarked. “But the way I see it we got two problems. First off, I don’t have a piece of leather to my name.”
The crew chief looked stricken. “Nein? Nicht eins?”
“Not a scrap.”
“Ach! Vat a pity, Herr Schuhmacher. You see, ve can verk -–how you say?–miracles. Giff us chust one piece of Leder und ve can make for you many, many schoos. You haff heard of the loaves and the fisches, ja? But this time ve exchange loafers for breeches.”
“Which brings us to Problem Number Two: I don’t think I can scare up any clothes for you guys. Even if I had some fabric around, which I certainly don’t --I’m a shoemaker, not a seamstress – - how the heck could I make you anything? You know better than I do that this machine here was built for tough thread and stiff material, not for sewing tiny shirts and pants.”
All seven little mouths drooped with the unenviable thought of braving the frigid wind in the middle of a March night while stark naked. Levantino felt himself moved to pity.
“I wish I could do something for you, I really do –“ He stopped short, as if struck by the memory of something half-forgotten. “I think there might be – - I’m not making any promises, mind you. Don’t get your hopes up, but wait right here.”
Levantino opened his closet door and started rifling through the cluttered mass, scattering personal belongings behind him, going deep into the recesses until finally emerging with a cardboard box. “This was left here by a previous tenant.” He slammed it on the table and blew off the dust. The contents consisted of numerous miniature garments, doll clothes to be precise. He’d meant to donate them to some charity but kept putting it off. Every once in a while he’d also thought about joining Procrastinators Anonymous, but they’d kept postponing the meeting.
Not all of the re-discovered clothes were frilly gowns and perky sportswear designed for a so-called “fashion doll.” Thanks to a brainstorm from some anonymous R&D director decades ago, the line of merchandise had featured a male counterpart (sold separately.) Marketed as the doll’s permanent escort, the boy version required a wardrobe of trendy outfits, including plastic shoes like elfin thimbles. Years ago many of them had appeared under the Christmas tree for the little girl who used to live in this apartment, and by a felicitous stroke of fortune, wound up inside a shoemaker’s closet. Ceremoniously, he took out the pieces of little apparel and displayed them, one by one, across his palm. “Here, try ‘em on.”
Levantino fretted that a proper fit might be an issue; after all, the doll itself was anatomically incorrect whereas the living, breathing little men most assuredly were not. He had absolutely no control of the strange thoughts the odd predicament inspired, such as the faint recollection of a local hotel expanding in order to provide for an extra ballroom. Additionally, the fabric clung in some places and bagged out in others; most of the pant legs had to be rolled up a few centimeters, while the minuscule shirts were snug. The crew chief modeled his selection: a pair of fire engine red, vinyl bell-bottoms girdled with a purple cummerbund and topped by a wide-collared shirt unbuttoned from neck to waist. He looked like a tiny disco dancer.
The laugh which Levantino tried to suppress came out as a spurts, unsuccessfully disguised as a cough. “I hate to tell you this, Guys, but these rags are hideously out of style. ‘Retro’ to the max.”
“Ach, ve do not care if ve are fashion plates. Ve chust vant to avoid drawing unnecessary Achtung. But vat about the other end of the bargain? Vas ist das for you?”
“What? Oh, forget about it. Just get home safely.”
“Danke schön, Herr Schuhmacher. May Gott repay you a t’ousand times. Gute Nacht.”
Just after the decently- –if not quite presentably–-clad visitors departed, their host inadvertently opened the door to a puzzling question: even with the nudity problem covered, who wouldn’t notice they were only twelve inches high? It was the kind of unanswerable conundrum that could contribute to insomnia, but the unsettling feeling beginning to tiptoe into Levantino’s skull was an entirely different kind of uneasiness.
Within seconds, he had to sit down, suddenly stricken with the kind of wooziness such as might be wrought by Max Schmeling returning from the grave expressly to get back into the ring with the overmatched and out-of-shape Levantino. According to the shoemaker’s perversely masochistic reverie, the formidable prizefighter, who had hung on for a full century before he croaked, his pugilistic prowess still rippling through his ghost, thus retaining his ability to deliver the goods, would pummel the flinching opponent against the ropes, whereupon the spirit of James J. Braddock would arrive to assist in the humiliating defeat by delivering the knock-out punch, laying Levantino flat out and temporarily dead to the world.
Part Two (of Two) immediately follows below.