Return to Leo (Part I)

When the next day I arrived punctually at Leo’s, he in a buttoned to the neck white tricot undershirt with long sleeves, in britches, this time not on a cavalry belt but on very refined lily colored suspenders, which, not over his shoulders, dangled to his side like some weird Eastern harness, was just occupied shining his officer’s boots. 

He did this in the unnaturally large corridor of his big house. He pointed me to a low bench under a dark oak coat hanger with a dozen or so shining, brass hooks while he himself, sitting nearby on a low stool, without rest remained occupied with his shoes. He had five pairs of officer’s, meaning ten shoes to shine. All of them, excluding of course the immemorial difference between the shoes for the right foot and the shoes for the left foot, were identical, they also had exactly the same insignificant sign of use. 

Cleaning these officer’s was its own kind of ritual. First, with the help of the so-called brusher, meaning a small brush with a haft, he smeared an even, thin layer of black polish delicately and precisely from the spits up to the very end of the bootleg. I remember the polish well, of the still pre-war firm DOBROLIN. From time to time he wet his brusher in cold water, poured into a specially adapted UNRRA tin can. 

The shoes stood in a row in the order they were being shined. When after a long time he finished his ten-folded activity, he took two, identical dark yellow, fat, soft, hairy, as if zibeline, rags. On one in a dark brown color there were pictured three cocky, marching by the flames, SA men as well as the slogan, of course in German, that in SALAMANDER boots you could get through any fire. On the second there was printed only in the corner the visage of a salamander and the name of the firm. 

“You know,” Leo said, “last night I kind of balled, and for me the best medicine for a hangover is just this cleaning of shoes.” 

“And how do you wear them?” I asked. “For me they all look identical. Do you just put on a right shoe and a left shoe and go out?” 

“Oh no, old boy,” he responded, “there are here, as you see, five pairs. I immediately, like a bitch her ten puppies, I can differentiate each shoe and each pair. For me the boots have a soul and each of them a different character. But the cobbler who made these, not appreciating my, how would I say, super sensitivity, just in case, cleverly marked them.” 

Here Leo showed me the inside of the high boot. Each pair had stitched in on both sides silk squares of a different color, about eight by eight centimeters, which set to the thin, very noble skid of the lining of the shoe, colored yellow-orange, meaning the so called fur, looked impressive. 

Leo put away the last wiped off by the salamander-rag boot. He took into his right hand a very large brush of elliptical shape and secured to his palm its belt, a little like cleaning horses, putting his left hand into the first boot standing in the row, lifting it to the height of his face and with quick and rhythmic moves began to shine it. It was easy to tell that this was giving him great pleasure. 

I got to things. I said that I was always reading the magazines about the different screw ups trying for the illegal crossing of the border, that even two of my colleagues, and actually colleagues of my family, were caught and are sitting in prison, unknown yet how many years they’ll end up getting, and what kind of guarantee do I have, that even if I pay this hundred thousand, I won’t be met by the same. 

Leo suddenly interrupted me. 

With a gesture he motioned to close my mouth, handed me the brush and the already shined third from the row boots and showed me, also with a gesture, to keep shining, while he himself noiselessly disappeared in his socks to the kitchen.