2. In Black

As always, Madame Helena wore black, although not full mourning: often with a green brooch, a golden-yellow foulard, or piping or cuffs; but of course no lace, not even as edging, enlivened the dark outfit, and she walked a step, only one step and no more to avoid seeming rude or in any way discourteous, in front of Madame Nashiru, a guide showing the way and at the same time doing justice to the house, neither too fast nor too slow, letting the new guest take in its solidness, the good taste of its decoration and lighting fixtures, and above all the exceptional quality of certain pieces of furniture, paintings, and items of porcelain or silver. In addition and with a bit of effort, she was trying not to think too much about something highly indelicate so that her face would show only friendly interest: Madame Helena wondered whether Madame Nashiru could walk as fast as she could in case she had to hurry. She had heard or read somewhere that in Japan, mothers and grandmothers, ill-natured old women drenched in their own rancor, enclosed newborn girls’ feet in wooden boxes so they would not grow, and men planning to choose a wife made certain that the candidates had diminutive feet and selected the woman with the smallest ones. Did they line them up and tell them to take off their shoes? Did they say something like I love you dearly but your feet aren’t small enough? Did they walk down streets and through salons with their eyes on the ground looking for the feet of their dreams? Were there contests, competitions, and prizes? Did upper-class women make use of boxes that were more discrete, lush, inlaid, carved, painted, impossible to remove, inviolable, and therefore more effective than the ones worn by poor women? Did they single out some girl at school or in parties for not having feet as small as the other girls? She had not seen Madame Nashiru’s feet, hidden beneath the hem of her dress, and she would never look down to try to find out whether they were normal or frighteningly small, with her instep arched like a hump of angry flesh. Perhaps she could get a glimpse of them some night in the salon if Madame Nashiru were to cross her legs when Madame Helena was convivially passing around bonbons after dinner, or if she were to lift her dress to keep it dry as she was going out on some rainy day. Nonetheless it seemed that Madame Nashiru walked with an almost ethereal ease, and her face, when Madame Helena paused to raise a curtain or open a door, was as placid as it had been when she had crossed the entryway and offered her gloved hand. Madame Helena concluded that Madame Nashiru’s feet must be normal, that no one had enclosed them in tiny wooden boxes the day she was born, she had never cried out in pain or had tried to remove the cursed binding while some old woman with tight lips advised her with secret pleasure to be patient and endure it the way she and her mother and her mother’s mother had endured it; she could even accompany her to Mr. Vorge’s shop, the shoemaker on Rede Street who made her shoes, and watch her display her feet without any shame when the apprentice took the measurements. Which was merely a passing thought because she would never do anything as unsuitable as be seen in the street with Madame Nashiru, that was certain, calling attention to herself in a city where so many people knew her, alongside a foreigner.

Madame Nashiru did not dress in black: she wore a two-piece mustard-yellow suit with brown piping and buttons. The collar of her jacket was open over a yellow silk blouse. Her hat, gloves, and Madame Helena supposed shoes were brown. She carried a fox muff in her right hand and a brown leather purse on her left forearm. She wore a two-strand pearl necklace and matching earrings, pearls so purely iridescent that Madame Helena had wondered, seeing them as Madame Nashiru arrived from the outdoor light, shining in the darkness of the vestibule almost with the glow of diamonds, whether they had just been taken from the sea, if they still dripped, wet and salty, onto Madame Nashiru’s shoulders. Madame Nashiru smiled and nodded. She was obviously satisfied by what was to come in the house on Scheller Street.