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3.1.3. The odd slipper


While traveling in an Eastern country, Mr. Palomar bought a pair of slippers in a bazaar. Returning home, he tries to put them on; he realizes that one slipper is wider than the other and will not stay on his foot. He recalls the old vendor crouched on his heels in a niche of the bazaar in front of a pile of slippers of every size, at random; he sees the man as he rummages in the pile to find a slipper suited to the customer's foot, has him try it on, then starts rummaging again to hand him the presumed mate, which Mr. Palomar accepts without trying it on.

"Perhaps now," Mr. Palomar thinks, "another man is walking around that country with a mismated pair of slippers." And he sees a slender shadow moving over the desert with a limp, a slipper falling off his foot at every step or else, too tight, imprisoning a twisted foot. "Perhaps he, too, is thinking of me, at this moment, hoping to run into me and make the trade. The relationship binding us is more concrete and clear than many of the relationships established between human beings. And yet we will never meet." He decides to go on wearing these odd slippers out of solidarity with his unknown companion in misfortune, to keep alive this complementary relationship that is so rare, this mirroring of limping steps from one continent to another.

He lingers over this image, but he knows it does not correspond to the truth. An avalanche of slippers, sewn on an assembly line, comes periodically to top up the old merchant's pile in that bazaar. At the bottom of the pile there will always remain two odd slippers, but until the old merchant exhausts his supply (and perhaps he will never exhaust it, and after his death the shop with all its merchandise will pass to his heirs and to the heirs of his heirs), it will suffice to search in the pile and one slipper will always be found to match another slipper. A mistake can occur only with an absent-minded customer like himself, but centuries can go by before the consequences of this mistake affect another visitor to that ancient bazaar. Every process of disintegration in the order of the world is irreversible; the effects, however, are hidden and delayed by the dust cloud of the big numbers, which contains virtually limitless possibilities of new symmetries, combinations, pairings.

But what if his mistake had simply erased an earlier mistake? What if his absent-mindedness had been the bearer not of disorder but of order? "Perhaps the merchant knew what he was doing," Mr. Palomar thinks. "In giving me that mismated slipper, he was righting a disparity that had been hidden for centuries in that pile of slippers, handed down from generation to generation in that bazaar."

The unknown companion was limping perhaps in another time, the symmetry of their steps responded not only from one continent to another but over a distance of centuries. This does not make Mr. Palomar feel less solidarity with him. He goes on shuffling awkwardly, to afford relief to his shadow.