Chop Chop (22 page)

I needed further elaboration on this point. At this moment, five sinister figures were pulling the black sheets over their bowed heads, waiting for the bell to ring. I thought it prudent to start looking for another door out of there, a window if necessary. But all the light in the kitchen was artificial and the only other door led to the parlor of horrors, which was locked. We were deep behind enemy lines, and the only way out of The Fat Man's dungeon was through the dining room. This was not a situation we could tiptoe out of. I was very anxious for our well-being. Also I was nervous for what Ramilov might do, as he was prone to rashness. But Ramilov did not move, nor did he speak again. I cannot tell you how long we stood like this, the ape caged and whimpering beside us, the cleaver on the counter in front of us. It could have been a moment or an hour. It was the purest example of kitchen time I have ever known.

Then the bell rang three times.

“Don't worry, mate,” Ramilov said. “Whatever happens, I'm not going to let that fat fuck eat your brain.”

I realized he was talking to the ape. Fine, why not? But I required assurances too. Pools of terror were collecting inside me. On some deep emotional level I had sprung a leak. What were we going to do? After a long and agonizing pause, the bell tolled again. Once, twice, three times. Rung out with full force. Again Ramilov did not move.

There were footsteps in the corridor. Belly first, The Fat Man sailed in. Angry was not the word. Fuming, fulminating, effervescent, incandescent: these get a little closer to the utter fury of the man. His enormous bulk, moving at speed, was terrible to witness. You suddenly appreciated the strength it took to carry a body like
that, and the sheer force implied by it. It was the force of every animal he had ever eaten, squeezed into one spirit.

“Well, chefs?” he snarled. “What the fuck are you doing?
Bring it in.
”

He was right up against Ramilov, glowering down at him.

“No,” said Ramilov.

“
Do you want the money or not?
” The Fat Man was bellowing, spraying food and spit.

“Fuck the money,” said Ramilov.

“What?” The Fat Man could not believe his ears.

“It's evil.”

The Fat Man curled his lip. Ramilov's empathy had tickled him.

“You should see what I've got planned for next time,” he replied darkly.

Suddenly I saw the months of ungodly dinners stretching into infinity, and I could not help but shudder. Where was the line? Morality struggled in the restaurant kitchen as it was—in The Fat Man's kitchen it didn't have a chance. If it were acceptable to kill an ape, what would be next? Where could you go after that? How many months before there was a human being in that cage? How long before we were taking cookery tips on the best way to cook a baby? For the first time I appreciated the weight these horrors must have put on Bob. Perhaps some, if not all, of his awfulness could be attributed to these godless dinners. But why had he agreed to them? Why had he not tried to escape? Why were we not pushing past The Fat Man and breaking for freedom right now? What hold did he have over us?

“You're not touching that creature.” Ramilov had his legs set wide apart.

“What do you know about right and wrong?” The Fat Man
sneered. “You think it's better to slit a pig's throat? You think you can smash a calf's skull at three months but not a monkey's?”

Ramilov's jaw was jutting fiercely. His eyes were like stones.

“Apes are different,” he said through gritted teeth. “Apes are majestic.”

“Ha!” The Fat Man cried. “Majestic! You chefs! You think you're all judges of taste! What taste have you got? The restaurants you run are tacky, the clothes you wear are tacky. Your friends are tacky, your wives are tacky, your lives are tacky!”

This was me, and my friends, The Fat Man was talking about. This was my profession he was insulting. The Fat Man was not interested in food—only in consuming, in mastery, in destruction. I felt sick. The pools of terror were fermenting in my gut. We had to get out of there.

“That's why you'll always be slaves!” The Fat Man spat. “You deserve no better!”

“Shut your mouth!” Ramilov barked back. The muscles in his neck were straining to attack.

“Ramilov,” I said, tugging at his sleeve, “let's go. Now.”

“Yeah,” he said in agreement, though still looking as if he were about to bite off an ear or nose. “You're right. Fuck this guy.”

He pushed past The Fat Man with me following close behind. There are Saharan plains smaller than that kitchen was just then, whole continents one could cross quicker. The open door was in front of us, the room of hooded figures at the corridor's end. If we ran now maybe they wouldn't catch us, maybe we'd be out and in the street by the time they lifted the black silk from their eyes. If we just ran . . .

We were passing the counter nearest the door, where the cleaver sat, when The Fat Man called out after Ramilov.

“Why don't you tell your little friend here why you left the place in Leeds?”

Ramilov stopped. His face, half turning toward his accuser, had drained of all color.

“The head chef's daughter, wasn't she?” The Fat Man asked with a leer.

Ramilov turned fully. Much of the earlier forcefulness had left him; he appeared quite stunned.

“How do you . . .” he began to ask.

“Amazing what you can find when you know the right people,” said The Fat Man. His voice had lowered. He knew he had us hooked again. “We do live in an age of wonders. . . . How old was she anyway? Thirteen?”

“That's not true,” said Ramilov blankly.

“That's what I like about chefs,” replied The Fat Man. “You're all so
bent
. Each in your own little way, you can't keep your hands clean. Your friend Dave had his drug debts, that weirdo Bob had his home videos. No wonder that dog was always trying to escape. You're all so proud . . . and stupid. You changed your last name—so what? How many Ramilovs do you think there are in the system? Bob kept those tapes just lying around in a locked drawer. You people make blackmail easy. You're a gift. What you won't do for money, you'll do for fear of others finding out. . . .” His words were trickling softly, calmly. “Thirteen is a bad age, isn't it? Lot of awkward questions.”

Ramilov had lowered his head. His breathing was forced.

“Tell me,” said The Fat Man, “did she still have dolls in her bedroom? Did you turn them to face the wall?”

“She wasn't . . .” Ramilov began. “I didn't . . .”

“Yes, I can see—a very difficult one to explain,” The Fat Man
went on. “But all that can be forgotten. Just do as I say and carve that monkey up. Right fucking now. I might even still pay you.”

Unsteadily, Ramilov took a step toward him. I could not tell whether he was about to yield or fight. My heart was doing laps. Was this the history of which Ramilov would not speak? I was terrified, above all, of discovering he was weak. I had no strong figures left. In that moment I hated The Fat Man more than I have ever hated anybody, for holding the past over us, for never letting us forget. People like The Fat Man and my father, forever contaminating our lives and poisoning our abilities, figures to fear, to dream of overthrowing. All the bitterness and rage I felt toward one flowed into the other, and I saw that as long as there were people like them in our lives we would never be free. There was the quaking ape in its cage, there the glinting cleaver, and here we were in the middle. “That's not how it was.” Ramilov raised his head and looked The Fat Man in the eye once more.

“Oh, I know what you must have told yourself,” The Fat Man said, grinning. “Everyone finds a way to make it right with themselves. When you steal something, when you kill someone, when you fuck a child . . .”

Ramilov stared at him unsteadily. He was about to crack.

“Don't listen to him, Ramilov!” I cried.

“Oh,” laughed The Fat Man, turning on me. “You think this is only about him? The money you give your dad, where do you think it goes?”

What was he doing bringing my father into this? What business was it of his?

“He has a gambling problem,” I said, uneasy with this new line of inquiry. “Come on, Ramilov, please . . .”

“He did have,” The Fat Man grinned, “but I cured him. Turns
out he'd rather keep his fingers than play the horses. That money goes to me, for debts unpaid.”

This information pinned me to the spot. I was in no mood to discuss my father, with this man of all people, but I had to know what he owed, what it would take for him to be free. This man, this constant reminder of my brother and my relative shortcomings, this tyrant to me for so long, now tyrannized by another. I cannot tell you exactly what I was feeling at this moment. My emotions were all riled up.

“How much does he owe?” I asked. No matter what my father said to me, we were still joined to each other. His debt was my debt. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Ramilov edging forward.

“Enough that he'll never pay it off,” The Fat Man replied. “I'm . . .
flexible
with the interest. Best thing you can do is get that monkey out of the cage and get to work. Take that money home. Be a good son, eh? Don't disappoint your poor old dad. . . . What would that brother of yours have done?”

In his most recent letter, Ramilov says he doesn't remember much about what happened next. He suggests “A Muddle of Violences.” The long and the short of it is The Fat Man received a meat cleaver in his prodigious gut. The lower intestine. A ruptured kidney.
Chop chop
. Nothing fatal, though we did wonder at the time, as he lay there bleeding out across the floor, his mountainous flesh changing color before our eyes.
Untold claret
. Ramilov suggested that we turn him over to face the sky, according to the laws of the Kanun. Otherwise his soul would enter the earth and there'd be no end of trouble. Ramilov has no memory of saying this, but I do. I can see and hear every element of those last moments in The Fat Man's house. I remember how we eventually rolled him, how I held his head to stop him from choking on his blood and felt the hair and fat and clammy skin of it, no different from a swine's. The
silence in that house was coming at us in waves, rushing forward and then retreating away. Voices were gathering in the corridor.
Pussyclot
was mentioned. Ramilov locked us in.

“Call 999!” I hissed.

“No police!” he cried. “We can't get them involved!”

“Are you crazy?” I shouted back. “He'll die!”

The Fat Man was trembling now, quite cold in my arms. His blood was everywhere, pooling around us both. It would not stop. I was eight years old again, watching helplessly as the life ran from my brother. Neither of us was strong enough to stem the flow. That awful silence returned, louder than ever. I racked my mind desperately for a way to stop it, to forget the blood, and suddenly the lines of a poem popped into my head, I don't know why. Memory of some first aid would have been more useful but, like I said before, you can't choose what you remember. I decided to give The Fat Man as much of the poem as I could recall.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.

A Robin Redbreast in a Cage

Puts all Heaven in a Rage.

A dove house fill'd with doves and pigeons

Shudders Hell thro' all its regions.

A Dog starv'd at his Master's Gate

Predicts the ruin of the State.

I am not sure if The Fat Man appreciated my recital, as he never said anything one way or another on the subject. Of course, Ramilov does not remember this either. He was arguing furiously with
the guests on the other side of the door. They had realized the injuries were serious and the initial threats had been replaced with something stranger: some of them seemed to be suggesting that we should let their host die.
Let it happen
, the voices whispered.
Set us free
. Ramilov was shouting back that we weren't about to kill anyone, but when he turned away from the door and saw The Fat Man again, took in the state of him, he conceded that death was a distinct possibility. Reluctantly he made the call. The voices outside dissolved when he announced that the emergency services were on their way. The whispering walls were silent.

All Ramilov remembers for certain from this time is the ape, which he says did not take its eyes off The Fat Man until the paramedics had got him on the gurney and carted him away. He says he can't prove this for sure, but he swears that the creature was smiling.

—

Ramilov adds that he has joined the library and there is space on the shelves for a book by Monocle about Bob and the restaurant inspector and Racist Dave and The Fat Man and everything that happened. He says there is quite a lot of space on the shelves. The book selection is piss-poor in prison.

E
xcerpt from Ramilov's letters, no. 1: History is a graveyard of fallen idols. You'll stub your toe on a headstone if you wander round it long enough.

Soon after the stabbing I took my father home. The handcuffs, the holding cell, the questioning—these had all been distressing, if formative, experiences for me. Those detectives certainly know how to make a person feel lousy about themselves. My night behind bars had been a long and restless one, with only Ramilov's occasional groans (of distress, I think) in the adjacent cell for company. Strange as it was, in that hard room I had even missed my father's snores. The next morning, when I saw his sharp face in the reception of Kentish Town nick upon my release, all the rage of the previous afternoon was forgotten. For a second it occurred to me that he might have been arrested too—had he stolen someone else's stolen fruit?—but no, he was here for me, he had come to take me home.

“It should've been me in there—not you,” he told me somewhat ambiguously.

But I would not let him confuse me now. The minute I saw his face I resolved to do as he had done for me, as he had been asking me to do for him these three long months: I would take him home. An act of mediation on my part. After that mess in The Fat Man's house, good counterbalances were in order. My mother had not agreed to it, nor was she likely to, but I had seen enough of their fights to know there was no such thing as a clean break with them. Like two halves of an old book, one made no sense without the
other. With a bit of tape, a little perseverance, they could be stuck back together. Those long years had worn them into each other. They shared familiarity, and that counts for more than you think. I believed they could work together again.

The old man pronounced it an excellent idea. This, combined with the news of The Fat Man's incapacitation, the canceled debt, lifted his mood no end. Was it the thought of a reunion with wife or bookie that cheered him more? Still, it was an improvement. He gabbled about what he should wear for the trip home, how this time meant change. He'd turned over a new leaf, he said, he was no longer the useless human being he once was. He'd changed. Oh, and there was one more thing. Could I pay for his train ticket? He'd spent the last of his money on a present for my mother. A small collector's edition of model sports cars.

“Your mother is crazy for these,” he kept saying excitedly, though I seemed to recall it was he who loved sports cars, not her. Anyway, I didn't mention it. The second, less honorable part of my thinking was that if I got him out of London he wouldn't have the money or inclination to come back. An act of disposal as much as mediation.

From the train, beyond the carriage's lime green furnishings and the surly trolley steward, a great and ancient city could be glimpsed, as gray as the sky above it, carved from the same solemn temperament. And behind those stone façades: stories, flesh, difference. The land under this bridge, I once read, had belonged to German merchants for centuries, a self-governing Teutonic enclave deep in the heart of Albion. Of course my father was not interested. You could tell him nothing about London. He began arguing with the steward about the price of the Kit Kats, and I was obliged to produce my wallet once more. My father seemed to expect nothing less. As he reminded me between bites, I still owed him fifty pounds from the
bet about Harmony. I told him the book on that one was still open. He nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “Some women will take anything.”

Ordinarily I might have read this for a dig, as was my father's custom. But I don't think this was his intention.

“Your mother keeps taking me back,” he continued. “Christ knows I don't deserve it. A very kind woman. She deserved so much more.”

Was this another reference to me? The fallout from Sam's death. The son I could never be. But all that felt so faint and far away from us now, passing over the river, the sunlight flickering about us through the girders. I would like to think I had grown up. There was no reason why I could not have a civil exchange with my father about my mother.

“She is kind,” I agreed.

My father nodded happily.

“Yes,” he said, turning his head to look out the window. “It's time I went home.” He breathed in deeply through his nose and sighed.

“Smell that,” he said.

I sniffed the carriage air. It smelled like a train to me.

“Doesn't the world smell great when you don't have air freshener being sprayed through the keyhole every five minutes?” he said.

We both laughed, and it struck me, a little spike of sadness in the middle of our laughter, that we had not shared a joke in a long time. It had taken an arrest, a reunion and frequent dispensation of funds, but perhaps it had been worth it, for this.

Around us the city grew slowly out, greens sneaking in among the grays, increasing their share, popping up behind station platforms, between industrial parks. Banks of ivy sprawled over
concrete. Buddleias sprouted impossibly from the brickwork. Then we were in the still, patchwork fields and the city's populous streets and sad shadows and One-Eyed Bruces were just a dream, another version of life I had read in one of my books, and I was coming home again.

Was this right? Home? At the door my mother threw her arms around me.

“Why didn't you tell me you were coming up?” she scolded fondly, kissing me on both cheeks. I had forgotten that note of carbolic and old age she carried from the care home. Was that a little more silver in her hair, a little less rose in her skin? Still a handsome woman though, by any standards.

“I was arrested,” I told her by way of hello. “I've only just got out.”

Her eyes goggled a bit at that, which pleased me.

“My poor dear!” she cried, then slightly warily, with that voice she reserved for my father, “What happened?”

“An accident, Mum. It's okay. I'll tell you all about it.”

She ushered me in, aflutter with big, sweeping sentiments. They stopped short, however, of the other figure on the doorstep.

“Catherine,” he said. His arms came up a little at his sides, an old muscle memory of embrace, then fell quickly when she made no effort to respond. She looked neither surprised nor angry to see him. He nodded toward the front garden. “Daffodils have come up nice.”

She let him in without a word. In the sitting room the old sporting trophies had been cleared away, otherwise the place was pretty much as I had left it, as it had always been. That's what I mean about my parents—not much changes. My father must have sensed this unchallenged admittance was not the same as an official pardon, for he was wise enough not to sit on the sofa where he had
spent so much of the last fifteen years. He chose instead a straight-backed chair near the television that made him the center of attention. He knew an apology was required and molded himself into an appropriate shape—clasped hands, penitent stoop—to deliver it. Unfortunately, that was not what came out of him.

“I see you moved my trophies,” he said. Then, seeing the look my mother shot him, he added, “Which is fine.”

“How's London, dear?” my mother asked me.

“It's fine,” I said.

“It's horrible,” said my father. Whether it was the sight of my mother again, his hatred of the capital, the disappearance of his trophies or simply the effect of sitting upright, he appeared quite moved in his response.

“Are you all right for money?” she asked me.

“Yes,” I said.

“No,” said my father.

“I've missed you, love,” she said to me.

“I've missed you too,” my father blurted out.

“Dad”—I turned to him—“do you have something you want to say to Mum?”

“Yes,” he said. “I messed up. . . .”

This was true so far as it went. No one could deny that. My mother listened as he outlined his personal disgraces, her face flickering between the hatchet and the muse. He had gambled, he had strayed. Oh, he had been so terribly weak. Here he looked at me. Was that a wink? Was he lying about being untrue? Did he hope, by talking of infidelity, to remind my mother that he was a man of blood and passion? Perhaps this was their bond: somewhere between love and hate, closer to the latter but reminded, by these unsavory proxies, of the former.

He had blamed himself for losing Sam, he went on, and he had
blamed that loss for so much. He had hogged the burden of grief. He knew that wasn't fair or right, because we had loved Sam too, my mother and I. That guilt had also fallen on us and we had not given in. I studied a detail on one of the cushions and did not meet his eyes. My father said he could see his mistake now, and he could change. It was a touching speech, which struck all the right chords. And though my mother's bitterness was every bit as corrosive as my father's in its own way, I thought I saw her expression softening as my father talked, the deep marionette lines around her mouth dissolving, the blue-gray eyes taking in new light. In that moment I was filled with hope for my family. As people we had a lot to learn, yet there was some acceptance of that.

But always with my father there were doubts. His record for sincerity was poor. Country cunning lingered in those sharp features. His eyes, small and bright against his spider-veined cheeks, knew many versions of the human condition. Like the mirror in my mother's room that split the viewer into a thousand different types of self, my father possessed kaleidoscopic properties: he could be many things at once. He was the husband begging forgiveness, who had come bearing gifts. He was the con man spinning his spiel, with some toy cars he'd bought for himself. He was the penitent traveler. He was the man who stole apples from the homeless. He was the poor dupe who always got the blame. He was the only one who had been near that silver swan above the till. He was the chicken and the fox. He was the thief next to Christ who was saved. He was the thief who was left to rot.

I left the two of them to talk in the living room and wandered around the house awhile. The same pictureless walls. The same tatty show home furnishings. The same damp, unlived-in smell of the house rotting quietly when we turned our backs. The glass on the front door was frosted, not striated as I had remembered. The
place was still cold. Behind an old tumble dryer in the garage I found a child's bicycle covered in rust and cobwebs, its tires flat and jaded. Sam's bike. I remembered how big that bike had looked to me when we tore through the backwaters together. So shiny, so grown up. I had dreamed of one day possessing it. Now I did not even want to touch it.

Up the stairs, past the window that overlooked the rest of the cul-de-sac, I paused outside his room but did not enter. Not yet. I was still not quite ready. Instead I carried on toward my parents' room. My mother's hinged mirror stood in the corner. I pulled the wing mirrors around me and I was back in the endless hall of my childhood, a kaleidoscope of all my many selves, multiplying and dividing according to the angles of the glass. I was the wooden child with books for friends. I was the weak brother, straggling and creeping. I was the brother who survived. Hate. Love. We learn these words so early; we read them in our mothers' laps. But little boys grow up. Experience outstrips us, and we live with the mistakes we have made. The face at the center of the kaleidoscope was leaner and older now. A man's face looking back at me: a chef's.

—

Excerpt from Ramilov's letters, no. 2: What is done cannot be undone.

Back on the landing I looked again toward Sam's room. The door was closed. I had not entered since the moment I found him. Now I reached for the handle. Now I stepped inside . . . There were the posters of the shows we used to watch, the teenage footballers long since retired. There were the scrapbooks he had kept and the boots he had run in and the football shirt hanging proudly over the back of his chair, torn where he had snuck under the golf course fence one time to retrieve our ball, restitched by our mother in nearly matching thread. There was the bed where he had rested
before . . . Christ, could I not even say it? Before he died. Before the hemophilia took Sam, with a little help.

In fact,
hemophilia
was shorthand for what Sam had really had: thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura. A different cause amounting to the same curse. His platelets would not clot. The blood was faulty and had to be replaced. But when the doctors took his blood they seemed to take a part of his character too: he became sluggish and overshadowed, adult. In the months following our encounter with the wasps Sam's movements grew stilted. Like his father on the tee, his hips were not in kilter. Back to the doctors he went, and they found blood in his joints, making him limp. He had never stopped bleeding. They said his blood must be changed again.

I remembered one day around this time, on the way to town, my mother suddenly pulling the car into a foreign lot. It was just the two of us. My brother was at home, resting up on doctor's orders. My father, preempting medical opinion, was doing the same. Outside it was pouring with rain, and the glum afternoon light had made the windows reflective. We sat there awhile, the wipers still slapping, as I watched my mother's strong features in the windshield wrestling with the idea. Back and forth, back and forth. Then they made a decision.

We stumbled through the downpour, hand in hand, into church. The metaphors are all there if you want them: deluge and shelter, the passing out of darkness and into light; though if I recall correctly it was pretty gloomy inside that church, more of a passing from one kind of darkness into another. A few figures sat facing the front, regarding the stigmata of the painted wooden Christ, meeting the gaze of those gaping wounds. It was the first time I had ever been inside a church. Of course I'd heard claims of god's powers, the magic tricks and resurrection stories, but I'd never been inside
his house. Looking around it, I was a little disappointed. There didn't seem to be much to do.