This all happened later

And so he redoubled his efforts, making one hundred and three more pairs of shoes before he finally had created the pair that he knew would do the trick correctly this time. But he also knew that if he was to disappear, he’d have to let someone know why. And so he went into the public house and tracked down a man who had once been his friend, a butcher who used to share the same portion of the block for his store before the war separated them. He told the butcher that he had made a pair of shoes that allowed him to travel back in time. And the butcher laughed, clapping him on the back, and asked him where he’d been storing all of his liquor. And the shoe maker, a quiet and pensive man, reassured the butcher that in no way was he lying. He’d made shoes that would allow him to travel back to before the war had started. And the butcher could now see that the man was deadly serious, and, if troubled, at least an old friend. So he started to ask him about the particulars of the shoes, and just what he planned to do with them. Two particulars that the shoe maker told him he was reluctant to share, one, because he didn’t want anyone coming after him, and the second because he didn’t really know. The butcher, a kind man really, with a red jowls and a great big beard that made him always appear jolly, offered to buy him a beer, but the shoe maker said no, that he’d have to get back to work now, but that he wanted someone to know where he’d gone. “When will you be back,” the butcher asked, fingering the glass of amber liquid, peering into its depths as if it had something to reveal.

“I don’t know,” said the shoe maker, and with that, he pushed back his stool and walked back towards his shop feeling light in his heart now that he had made up his mind. Of course, he knew exactly what he’d have to do. He was going to have to go back in time and kill himself, for it just wouldn’t do to have two shoe maker’s and only one wife. He didn’t know if he’d have the courage to do it, to kill his unsuspecting self. And yet, he knew that that version of himself had worked late on that fateful afternoon, had left his family out in the country house, his children no doubt playing in attic, a game of hide and seek, had left them to their deaths, his wife, his precious Helen, probably knitting and looking out the bay window waiting for him to return. And he saw that he hated that man, and didn’t just have to kill him, but really and truly wanted to, wanted to take his life for being so selfish, so characteristically wrapped up in his own world that he forgot that other world’s existed.