Social engagements with Asian communities are often easier. The question presents not as are you vegetarian, but more, on what day? The conversation embraces my choice, and we perhaps move on to a discussion of our favourite Diwali cakes, or which of those made by our friends do we secretly like the best.
Elsewhere away from parts of Asia, it’s more of a challenge. Not only is my choice not readily understood, it’s not a disposition willingly shared or appreciated. And over the decades, five of them now, I have learned to avoid the confrontation that frequently emerges from another’s knowledge that I choose to be vegetarian. For some it is almost an afront, a challenge. “You can’t possibly get all the right proteins”, “Beef is a key element of our industry”, and of course, “But I see you wear leather shoes; that’s a bit contradictory”. Yes, it is.
There is a line in a Pete Seeger song that’s echoed across my thoughts since youth; to paraphrase “words, words, words, in Tom’s old declaration. If I understood them, and if my life pronounced them, would not this world be changed.
So, my thought, my life, my conduct, is about pronunciation. I am not an advocate. I don’t preach or proselytise or campaign. I know the decision is my own and I am not seeking to convert anyone. But it is a choice that’s right for me. For my integrity. So I hold a thought, that leads to a life whose conduct is that of a vegetarian. And yes I wear leather shoes. And I supply a certain delight to a particular kind of guest at dinner parties and social events. Their joy comes from repeatedly dancing around the contradictions that arise when one says “I will not eat the flesh of fish or animal” and still apparently chooses to wear leather shoes.
Today I let it pass. I know the contradictions I carry. The tensions between my beliefs, my stated observations about “right conduct” and the actual concrete daily pronunciation that emerges from my behavioiurs. I’m concerned to minimise my contribution to climate change, but I fly a lot. I care about my family, but in the very pronunciation of my day to day, I neglect them. I believe in equality but enjoy a life of privilege; even my vegetarianism is a choice available only because I’m privileged. This is the world I live in. Like so many, I carry an image of myself as a decent human being, attentive to questions of right conduct, yet almost every act pronounces that image provisional; something awaiting a scrutiny not yet fully applied, something that never quite sits comfortably in its own skin.
But let me be kind to myself for a moment. What remains is not conviction so much as practice. A thousand small decisions folded into ordinary life. Yet the decisions never quite stop. Shoes. Belts. Gloves. Restaurants. Invitations. Holidays. After fifty years, vegetarianism is less a position than a continuing negotiation with the world. Like so many of these lived contradictions
For a long time I imagined these tensions as personal failings. Things to be resolved. Loose ends to be tied off. The passing of time has made me less certain. The more lives I have encountered, the more I have come to suspect that contradiction is not an occasional defect in human conduct but one of its ordinary conditions. We say one thing and do another. We value one thing and reward another. We hold an image of ourselves while living lives that only partially resemble it. The contradiction hunter at the dinner table imagines he has exposed something unique when he points to the vegetarian’s leather shoes. I have long since realised he is merely noticing a condition that belongs to all of us. The details differ. The structure remains.
But recognising a contradiction does not remove it. For the more attentive among us it creates a sore, a kind of wound we return to repeatedly to rub, as if rubbing will smooth away the insult. The desire for a closer alignment between what we value and how we live remains. It reappears in different forms throughout a life. Sometimes as a decision. Sometimes as a habit. And sometimes as a journey into the hills east of Tardets looking for a pair of espadrilles.
I begin to think about the ways we look for that element of perfection in others. About how we gravitate towards those who share our values and insights. Who seem, as we do, to strive for a unity of being and doing. Of taking refuge, perhaps, within some larger consensus about what is right and good. But the thought never quite arrives. It hovers somewhere at the edge of awareness, half notion, half wish, before dissolving again into the business of driving.
The road climbed steadily through the Basque countryside. Villages appeared and disappeared. The road folded and pegged its way into the hills and in less than a moment my mind was moving with the twists and turns of daily living. The tiny negotiations between what we want and what we can get, between intent and reality, between what I want to be and that my conduct actually reveals; the compromises so small we barely notice them, the accommodations that accumulate over a lifetime, the countless occasions on which reality asks for something different from principle. The road was rarely straight; but a final twist and a small workshop appeared. A giant stone barn tagged on to a small stone house.
At the door a hand is proffered. I sense the moment. I’m caressed by gentle breeze with a scent of magnolia from the garden; of fresh cut grass and lingering mountain dew and I can almost feel the garden under my feet. , I anticipate the espadrilles. I’m asked if I’d like to see the workshop. I tumble over myself in delight. Finally I’m here.
My host brushes past the bales of jute but pauses to caress the coils of hemp; “Belgian.” He smiles and moves on through clouds of fibre dust as he forces open the way into the rope making room. I feel the soft rope-twisting sounds before I hear them, and brace, as the smell of effort and intention claims the scene. Gone has the blossom of magnolia and the sound of gentle breeze. Now is the fibre muted clatter of industry at home and the scents of mineral oil in every breath. I pause. My host draws me further into the room and lifts the newly formed tresses away from the machine to reach my nose and once again sighs “Belgium. He goes on “when times were hard of course and people could not afford more, we used jute, from India. But now as these things ease, we able once again to use Hemp like the old days; because it’s what good craft, good people and hard work, demand”. I am his now.
Locally made and truly ancient, the machine, hand cranked and coaxed at every turn weaves fine flat tresses of hemp that have cared for generations of working Basque feet. Yes, it’s a working persons shoe, cotton and rope, a companion evolved from the duties of the daily life. I knew this life in childhood, the smells of farm and field; the calls of the animals and birds. And now in later life, I return often here, to share it; the morning coffee, the midday field food, and the evening pataxaran. The ritual of rural life. The quiet warmth of working together; sharing the grain of a wood, working for the best in the stone. Learning a skill a neighbour is only too willing to share. The respect for the land, the tools the craft; for those who worked it before. And afterwards the time shared appreciating each other and the way we are in the world. And now it continues, here now in the workshop.
In the workshop, at almost every moment, I am furnished with tantalizing glimpses of bright linen fabrics, each unique to a house (an etche) or a province; centuries of heritage and stance woven into every line of colour. I speak of the beauty, the perfection (I can think of no other words) of the gaiety and joy expressed in every thread. “Las Golondrinas”. He sighs and smiles – I can feel the warmth. “Young and old. In Franco’s time, mainly from Navarre, and some as far as Aragon. They’re gone now, but they brought laughter and song and colour every summer. It’s different without them. But it’s still a hard walk across those mountains. You’ve walked them, you know”.
Somewhere amid the stories, the memories, revisits to chances lost, a coffee arrives, and a miniature espadrille, a keep sake of the visit. And pas-a-pas (step by step) we pick our meticulous route through the making of the shoe, the fibre, the rope, the sole as form, the left the right, the importance of the former and the size. A table of half finished product absorbs my time and the coffee cools. I’m offered a tool like a handshake, an invitation to the bench an embrace. And I am taught the rudiments of every step, and step by step, of the finest espadrille in the making. I feel more than a pilgrim, more even than a pelerin on my way to Santiago, or a guest in the field of stars. I feel like I’ve encountered an apostle.
And almost unseen, the moment draws to for the choice of fabric, and we drift toward a simple room of racks stacked with linen colour. Rolls of hand woven stories of family, work, craft and province. I pause. For all the choice before me, there can be only one. Not the bright multitude of stipes for languorous days at the beach, or the muted shades for the office, not even the fashionable patterns for metropolitan streets. It has to be a stripe the shoe likes. One where the shoe will feel at home. It has to be the stripe of the province. There can be no other choice.
My eyes begin to search among the rolls; the curtains of fabrics draped around the room. searching for the Souletine blue and the ecru of the linen. I spot it across the room, three steps and I’m there, the fabric in my hand.
The artisan looks and smiles “yes, yes” he says “…of course, of course. But a moment, a moment. I have something, special something; for the craft, you know. For those of us who appreciate that something just a little bit special. The hemp, of course, but here, here we have.” He reaches for a hard-wood box, beech from the nearby Fôret d’Arbeilles, brass hinges and just a little coat of dust. He carries it to the table. “Come, come” he beckons. I draw closer. Slowly, carefully, he opens the catches and raises the lid. “Look, look” he says, lifting the tissue away from the contents. “Some of Navarre’s finest leather”.
A light breeze blows the barn door ajar and once again the scent of magnolia reminds me of the world. I realize that the light is failing and it will soon be dark. These mountain roads become more difficult of an evening. I gather up my thoughts and turn my attention toward returning home.
David Marshall
Montory
Context for interested readers
The Espadrilles grew out of a wider exploration of conduct, values, community and consensus. Readers interested in some of the questions that informed its writing may wish to read: