I want to give my very good friend Antonio Lanave, who lives in Bari, in Italy, a pair of shoes – a simple proposition, but it has not proved to be so.

The project began two years ago. I became a friend of his, and when I had an hour to spare in the mornings I would park my fifteen-hundred-weight truck outside his house and knock at his door, a gaggle of Italian children standing around hopefully. The door would be opened by a patent wire-and-weight idea of Antonio’s, operated by one of his two devoted elderly sisters from the first-floor landing, and I would see Antonio standing at the end of the corridor, ready to bow when he saw who it was.

Then a pleasant hour would pass, sitting in his crowded yet neat little studio, crowded with things, not people. He would continue to work while I sat and watched and we talked as best we could, he having no English at all and I but a British soldier’s Italian. But we became great friends and we sat together and drank the delicious little aperitif his sister brought and the two or three little cakes or almonds. He is sixty-three, short and stout, with nothing unusual about him except his penetrating and questioning eyes. He is a veritable “maestro” and a painter of renown; his work is always highly competent and sometimes inspired. He wears a plain blue suit, a scarf loosely over his shoulders, and a plain cloth cap.

It was at one of such contented little visits that the question of shoes came up. I had a new pair of shoes, bought from the Officers’ Shop. They were plain, honest, brown English shoes, and he admired them with awe and respect. One felt slightly self-conscious about the Empire. His shoes, he pointed out, were not fine, strong, healthy leather, but imitation, mostly cardboard. They had cost a thousand lire. They were unobtainable then, and it was not possible to get them repaired. To such a pass had the Government brought things. Good shoes he loved; he worked on his feet and he suffered, with his feet.

When I left Bari to go to Egypt our leave-taking was sad. Promises to come back, the future peace, the return eventually to England for me; all these glad things were brought up to lessen the pang of parting. Then he produced his present, a genuinely inspired picture of my wife and baby, made from a photograph, the colouring learned by artful questioning at various times. It was a handsome present indeed. What could I give him? Perhaps some shoes? His face lit up. Yes, that would be handsome: some shoes and some dress material for his sisters? So the debt of honour was incurred and we parted.

In Egypt the unit had an ingratiating little Egyptian cobbler who willingly made shoes for the British officers. The size of Antonio’s feet was given to him and he set to work and from the finest leather made a strong, handsome pair of shoes. The carpenters made a box for them and they were joyfully posted, not direct to Antonio, because one lacks confidence in civilian posts abroad, or did when the shoes were sent off some six months ago. They were posted instead to a brother officer with a request that he deliver the shoes.

Two months later I left Egypt for home. A week after I had left the parcel of shoes turned up again at our camp in the desert. The brother officer had also left Italy for home, and the Army Post Office, a very efficient and tidy-minded branch of the Service, returned them to the sender. The orderly-room sergeant thereupon repacked them and sent them to England after me. At the same time a letter came from Antonio thanking me in courteous and fluent terms for the dress material, and for the shoes, which had not yet arrived. The dress material had been posted two weeks before the shoes, which had been announced in a letter.

Recently the shoes arrived safely here in England. A new parcel was made up. This time it was addressed to Antonio himself at his address, knowledgeably written backwards in the approved and very logical Continental style. We felt better when they had at last gone off, after their journey from Egypt to Italy, Italy to Egypt, and Egypt to England.

Three days ago the postman brought the parcel back, with a little label saying that “new shoes” are prohibited for export except under licence from the Board of Trade. After all this one could not give in, and Antonio has a great faith in the integrity of the British. It was therefore important for international relations, as well as for Antonio’s feet, to persevere. Application was made to the Board of Trade and a handsome form came back, which took some filling in, because the circumstances are not the normal ones. The price f.o.b. and the question of whether or not it was a “firm order” made the modest gift seem like a gross of seven-league boots. However, it is hoped that the Government will deign to license the export of this one pair of shoes.

There must be a moral in all this. It is a pertinent sign of the times that Antonio, a professional artist of position, should need a pair of shoes and that all this trouble should be so very much worth while; maybe it is an indication that nations should not let their Governments “stab” other countries “in the back-” Yet Antonio, who has spent his life quietly painting pictures and minding his own business, could not by the wildest stretch of imagination be considered a “war criminal.” He still has a gigantic canvas and frame, ten feet by seven, in the entrance hall of his house, from the days -when he was commissioned- and commanded- to paint a haughty picture of Il Duce. He never painted it; he just stalled until there was no need. The shoes have many difficulties to surmount yet, especially when they reach Italy. I feel that there will be more forms to be filled up, and very complicated ones, by Antonio. But if all goes well, one day Antonio will take his little eager steps to and from his canvas with his small feet well shod. The pains will have been worth while.

DAVID SCOTT DANIELL.

The Manchester Guardian; Jun 27 1946