A man’s Self is the sum total of all that he can call his. –William James, 1890 The palace doors came loose on their hinges, and the inventory began tumbling out of the overstuffed world of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. It was an impressive accumulation: a billion here, 800 million there; an office tower in Manhattan; a waterfront estate on Long Island; dozens of country houses in the Philippines; and even a second palace in Marcos’ home province, Ilocos Norte, which almost no one knew about until now. One took the spectacle in with a feeling of wonder and disgust, something like one’s reaction, as a child, upon learning that Egypt’s King Farouk ate 600 oysters a week. In the Marcos accounting, a central question–what might be called the Farouk Conundrum–kept arising. The conundrum was prefigured by Farouk’s grandfather, Khedive Ismail, a grandee who died in 1895 while trying to guzzle two bottles of champagne in one draft. Khedive Ismail kept a harem of 3,000 women. The central question posed by Ismail’s harem, by Farouk’s oysters and by Marcos’ billions is this: Why, exactly? One may focus the question by meditating upon the 2,700 pairs of shoes that Imelda Marcos left behind in Malacanang Palace. A person’s vision may cloud a little as he tries to peer into the shadows of Swiss bank vaults or into the double-bottomed luggage of the Marcos real estate deals. But the image of the 5,400 shoes of Imelda Marcos makes the metaphysics vivid. Sophie Tucker said, “I have been rich, and I have been poor. Rich is better.” Of course it is, especially when spring arrives and the IRS closes in. But when most people imagine what life would be like after winning the lottery, they do not come up with 5,400 shoes. The methodical analyst switches on his calculator. If Imelda Marcos changed her shoes three times a day, and never wore the same pair twice, it would take her more than two years and five months to work through her shoe supply–as it existed on the day she fled Manila. Since she undoubtedly would continue to buy new shoes even while trying to do justice to the old supply, it is clear she could never wear all of her shoes. The parable of Imelda’s shoes has something to teach. She could never wear them all. Nor could the Marcos family, one suspects, manage to spend the billions of dollars they plundered from the Philippines. As easily could Khedive Ismail labor through his harem of 3,000 women.
