I’m trying out a little game I thought up. The game is to retell a fairy tale or children’s story while omitting one of the major characters.
This is Puss in Boots, minus the kitty (Part 2). Part 1. Part 3.
High fashion is like a tide; trends come in and go out twice a day. Woe unto anyone left stranded on the beach of yesterday’s style.
But if fashion is a tide, there is a moon that pulls it, and moons, as anyone can tell you, wax and wane. So it came to pass that one year, a new name was being whispered among the ladies of the King’s court.
The Marquis de Carabas!
He was a man shrouded in mystery – enigmatic and elusive. No one knew where he had come from, or when, or where they had first heard his name. He had just appeared in the city one day and had taken society by storm.
The Marquis kept a small shop somewhere in the city. Those who knew would not say where it was. No one ever visited without permission; the Marquis worked by invitation only. From time to time, while packing up a pair of shoes, the Marquis would sigh to a client, “Ah, my dear, such a pleasure it has been. I wish you had a friend as pleasant and as beautiful as yourself. If she would drop by at precisely 2 o’clock on Wednesday, I might make some shoes for her as well.”
At 2 o’clock on Wednesday there would invariably be a friend who arrived breathless at the Marquis’s shop, and at 3 o’clock on Wednesday, there would invariably be a tea-party to tell the story of it.
The man might have been a mystery, but there was no secret about his custom leather craftwork. Everyone wanted a pair. It wasn’t that they were a new style, or a retro style, or any particular style at all. It was that you could instantly tell when a someone was wearing a pair of Marquis, because they just looked… better than any shoes you’d ever seen.
There was no signature cut or line or shape. There was no trademark arch or height or color. But there was character and personality in every shoe. No one ever lent or borrowed a shoe made by the hand of the Marquis de Carabas.
Those who had met the Marquis struggled to describe him. He was young, certainly, and the very portrait of elegance and charm. But what people remembered of him was neither his face nor his clothes, but his boots.
Of all his exquisite handiwork, the Marquis had kept the best for himself. He wore a pair of boots the like of which no one had ever seen. They flew in the face of established shoecraft. They were not a king’s boots, nor a nobleman’s boots, nor huntsman’s boots, yet they were majestic and refined and dashing all at the same time.
However, having seen them once (or twice, or three times!), no one could remember any details of what they were like.
The ladies of the court held countless arguments over whether they were black or brown and over whether they were ankle high or calf high or knee high, over whether they had buckles or straps or zippers or buttons or any fasteners at all. The one thing that all could agree on was that they wanted a pair of shoes from the hand that made them. They left an *impression*, and it was the right one.
Such was the enduring quality of the Marquis’s craft that he did not go out with the tide, or fade away with the moon, but became more famous with every day, week and month.
One day, a royal carriage pulled up in front of the shop of the Marquis de Carabas. From the carriage climbed maid after maid, each full of giggles and oohs and ahs. The princess was shoe shopping, and she had brought a full retinue.
Princesses can get away with things that no-one else can; for a full day the mysterious shop of the Marquis was open and flamboyant. As a host, he was bursting with jokes and gaiety. A tornado of activity, he was continuously darting into the back room of his shop and returning with pair after pair of breathtaking shoes. His wares on open display, the marquis pampered the entire group.
It was a tremendous party, and each maid left exhausted, flushed with exhilaration and carrying several pairs of shoes.
The next time the princess visited the Marquis, she came alone, cloaked and hooded. The Marquis glanced up from his workbench when he heard the bell above his door jingle.
“I’m closed, my dear.” he said.
The Princess removed her hood. “I’m not here to buy shoes,” she said.
On recognizing the Princess, The Marquis showed no surprise, but he looked at her very very closely.
“I should think not, my dear,” he said. “Certainly not after last week’s extravaganza. Such a marvellous party, and such a delightful retinue you have. Simply darling, each and every one of them.”
“Except,” and here he quirked an eyebrow, “I don’t often forget a foot, and I would swear that I never fitted a shoe to yours that day. I know shoes, and noblewomen,” said the Marquis, “and you don’t fit the mould.”
“When I came last week,” said the princess, “You didn’t give my maidens shoes. You gave them something else, something more, and I don’t know what it was.”
“Ah,” said the Marquis. “You’re more observant than most. Come, sit down, and I’ll tell you about what I do.”
When the princess was seated, and tea made and poured for the both of them, the Marquis was silent for a long, long time. The princess waited expectantly.
“Do you know why people buy shoes?” said the Marquis at last. “They buy shoes because they want to be someone. I see it every day. People come in and ask me to make them a pair of shoes, but what they really want is for me to make them into someone else.”
“As I measure their feet I talk to them and find out what person they want to be. Then, I make that person’s shoes. People love me for it; they pay any price I ask. But,” he said, and here his voice became sad, ” I can’t give them what they really want. I live a charade, I play a game. I play it well, but it is a game nonetheless, and I can never be quite sure how it will end.”
“And now,” concluded the Marquis, “I will show you something that I have never shown anyone else.”
He vanished into the small back room and returned carrying a pair of shoes. They were the poorest pair of shoes the princess had ever seen. Their tatters had tatters; their stains had stains, their holes… had holes.
To the princess’s shock, the Marquis slid off his boots (those gorgeous, fabulous, exquisite boots!) and strapped on the pair of filthy clogs.
The Marquis looked down at his feet and smiled. He waggled his toes. They poked cheekily out, unencumbered by any genuine presence of shoe.
“I wasn’t always a Marquis.” he said. “I’m not really one now. It’s not a real title and I don’t have real land. Carabas is just a word that sounds nice.”
The Marquis broke into a grin, and he winked at the princess.
“But my boots fit, and they’re comfortable, and they keep my feet dry.”
He took off the clogs and reached for his boots to put them back on, but he was stopped by the princess, who laid her hand on his arm. The Marquis looked up, and she locked her eyes directly on his.
“I never looked at your shoes.” said the princess quietly. “I don’t care what shoes you wear.”
“When I was seven years old,” the princess said, “my Father held a great ball. All the neighboring kings and princes were invited. Everyone told me that one of the princes was sure to be my husband someday. When it was time to get ready, I went to my room and my entire outfit was laid out on the bed for me… including the shoes.”
“Someone had chosen them for me,” she said. “Someone had picked my clothes, my shoes, and presumably my groom as well. Those shoes hurt my feet. They pinched and cramped and made the night a misery. Ever since that night I’ve hated shoes.
“All the women of the court love shoes,” continued the princess, “and I can’t stand them. Last week, I came here because my servants made me.
“But you don’t really sell people shoes, and what you do isn’t a game. You don’t make people into something, but you give them the hope of something, the picture of what they can become, if they choose to do so.”
She reached out and picked up the filthy clogs. The Marquis gasped as he saw her shake off her slipper and slip her foot into one of them.
The princess’s feet were covered in white silk stockings, and the fashionable part of the Marquis cried out in seeing such beauty soiled with the coarse, dirty leather of a peasant’s shoe.
But the princess just smiled and waggled her toes in the empty air.
“Comfortable,” she grinned. “I’ll take them.”
well-crafted