Chop Chop (21 page)

Again Ramilov was operating on his own logic. I demanded enlightenment.

“I can't get involved with someone that beautiful,” he explained. “Couldn't handle it. It would destroy me.”

I could appreciate his concerns about beautiful women. I thought about Harmony and the feeling I got when she asked for the mixing bowl after me, a feeling like my soul was trying to leave my body.

“Besides,” he said, almost to himself, “she is quite young.”

“She is very young,” I agreed.

“Yeah,” he said sadly. “People can get funny about that. A couple of years the wrong way and you're climbing out of a toilet window with your stuff in a duffel bag and getting a Megabus to the other side of the country, changing your name, starting again . . .”

“What?” I asked. He had lost me once more.

“
No,” he continued, ignoring my question, “I can't get involved in that. The best I can hope for with a girl like that is brinkmanship.”

“Brinkmanship?”

“An escalation of threat, to the point where the threats become too big to imagine. At which point both sides, faced with mutually assured destruction, back down,” he explained.

Here was more of that strange knowledge that unexpectedly leaked out of Ramilov every so often, cribbed from a magazine in a sexual health clinic or a TV documentary watched late one night at Mr. Michael's or who knows where. Cribbed, then turned to his own obscure ends.

“Mutually assured destruction?” I asked.

“Kissinger without the kissing.”

That Ramilov modeled his sexual relations on Henry Kissinger's foreign policy was certainly a surprise. An example of those jackdaw qualities I have previously mentioned. It made me wonder too if Harmony and I were in the midst of a cold war. Since we had shared that laughter at the Christmas party, there had been no flicker. Was it because I had messed up her section with my incompetence? Or because she had seen me laughing at Ramilov's crude sexual story about the button-nosed waitress? But then, if it was a cold war, I had done nothing to escalate the threat. I was not the United States in all of this, but a tiny state on Harmony's borders that thought it was fighting a great war while she carried on oblivious. Damn it, I was South Ossetia.

—

“I'll bet good money you won't get anywhere with that girl,” my father opined that night as we lay on our backs in my tiny, airless room, listening to the cries of the revelers and criminals in the street below.

“That's a stupid bet,” I said, regretting I'd ever mentioned her to him.

“Only for you,” said my father. “Because you'll lose.”

“No,” I corrected him. “Because it cheapens all concerned.”

“See?” he said. “That's the language of someone who knows he's going to lose.”

“Fine,” I said angrily. “I'll take your bet. Just to prove you wrong.”

I leaned over the side of the bed and extended a hand in the direction of my father.

“Fifty quid?” he said.

The sum was a lot higher than I had expected, but it was too late to back out of it now. We clasped hands and shook. Father and son. A touching image of togetherness, never seen before or since. Obtained under false pretenses, but obtained nevertheless.

“Your problem is you're scared shitless,” he added.

Thank you, Dr. Freud. You've spent my inheritance in Spearmint Rhino and on the horses but no matter, your advice is priceless.

F
irst the good news.

Later that month I managed to escalate my struggle with Harmony.

Then the bad news.

I was arrested almost immediately, along with Ramilov, on unrelated but extremely serious charges, the charges that form the dark heart of this story.

Prior to the arrest, as is so often the way, life was just starting to look up. Customers were at last returning to The Swan. From the small patch of concrete where the deliveries were stacked, the sun could occasionally be seen. Racist Dave had devised a new menu for spring: grilled lamb with Chantenay carrots tossed in caraway seeds and pea shoots, scallops with sauce vierge or spiced pigeon bastillas to start. And though he still cooked meat, his newfound vegetarianism brought a lightness to the food that it had never known under Bob. Globe artichokes stuffed with broad beans, mint and feta; a simple but transcendent dish of cauliflower served three ways: pureed, pickled and fried in masala spices.

And there was that day with Harmony. I owe it, in part, to a trail of ants, or “A Colony of Ants,” to give Ramilov his due. We are in the yard of The Swan. It is a Tuesday afternoon before service and Harmony is smoking a cigarette. I have come outside to take the air (though in truth I have timed it quite purposefully) and before I have a chance to formulate some lame observation
she
speaks to
me
. I cannot stress enough how unusual that is. Besides
reprimands or requests for utensils or orders about what needs to be done, I do not believe this has ever happened before.

“Look at this,” she said, gesturing for me to come over to where she was sitting.

I approached cautiously. My first thought was that Ramilov was behind this and some terrible trick was about to be played upon me. She saw my hesitancy and laughed, pushing her chin out and blowing smoke up into the air, a very masculine gesture that only terrified me more.

“Closer,” she said, smiling.

This was a great shock to me. The only females to use that tone of voice with me were the sad girls in the Camden Road doorways and big-hipped Sally Danzig in the student bar: I ran away from all of them
. So sorry. No time
. But I could not run away from this, nor did I want to.

I inched closer and she pointed to something in the restaurant wall, a thin crack running from the ground to a hole about eight feet up.

“Ants,” she said.

I realized she was not in fact trying to seduce me and felt more than somewhat foolish. She was pointing out an enormous highway of ants going in and out of the kitchen, in two frantic lanes of traffic, transporting food from one place to another.

“They're scurrying about even faster than we are,” she said.

Needless to say I was very flattered to be included in this “we.” But I was also overjoyed at the comparison. She saw it too: we, like the flies and ants, were the little creatures. They toiled at their own tiny lives as we toiled beneath the Fat Men of this world. Inconsequential when looked at from a distance, those little characters, but full of purpose up close, full of life. Also they were as strong as
anything. “Go to the ant, you lazybones,” King Solomon advised. “Consider its ways and be wise.”

“And they're doing the same job,” I said.

She smiled at that. Was this that warmth again, opening up? I was not sure.

“Where do you think it goes?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Dibden's pastry shelf probably.”

Harmony seemed pleased with this idea. She shuffled up and let me sit next to her on the bench while she smoked. It was perfect.

The next day I brought in my copy of
The Waste Land
and presented it to her. Don't ask me why. I just felt like I had to give her something. I thought she would appreciate it.

“It's the annotated text,” I explained.

“No one's ever given me an annotated text before,” she said.

I blushed, though afterward it occurred to me she might have been employing sarcasm. Still, it was a warm sort of sarcasm at that.

—

How did it change so fast? One moment I was swimming in the clouds with Harmony, the next I was chained to the bottom of the ocean. The end is looming over us now, and Racist Dave will tolerate no literary excursions. We must crack on, he says. The skull at the center
of this story is becoming clear amid the darkness of the flies; it repeats its own grim promise, and I have not forgotten mine.

One cold bright morning soon after, a stranger appeared at The Swan's back gate. We can assume he could hear music coming from the kitchen at the end of the yard, because he knew someone was home. Perhaps he heard the hoarse tones of Ramilov, echoing rap sentiments from his spot on larder. We can assume the stranger found the gate was open and decided to enter. He walked into the
yard, past the staggered boxes of meat delivered that morning. The music got louder.

I flip scripts

On you dipshits
.

The back door to the kitchen was open and I imagine the man must have seen Ramilov at his section with his back to him, making Parmesan tuiles. You have to work fast and fluid when the Parmesan comes out of the oven, so that the tuiles set in the right shape. With a spatula Ramilov had to lift them one by one from the baking tray and slide them delicately onto metal cylinders to shape them, gently pinching.

“Oi,” the stranger said abruptly.

I was putting the deliveries away in the dry store when I heard that unpleasantly familiar voice. I stuck my head round the corner and there was One-Eyed Bruce, as large as life, his one good eye glaring at Ramilov while the chef, quite oblivious, gave a detailed recital on female anatomy and shimmied his body from left to right with a slow, filthy pelvic thrust. One-Eyed Bruce was standing next to Ramilov as he did this, right up next to his shoulder. I hung back at the door of the dry store, mostly hidden.

Room service all night

Like to treat my bitches right.

Ramilov cocked his knees and let his arse sashay down toward the floor as he finished the tuiles and swept the pastry remnants into his bin.

“Oi, pussyclot!”

“Jesus!” cried Ramilov, finally noticing him. “Doesn't anyone say ‘
Backs'
round here?”

“Fat Man need two chef nex' Tuesday, pussyclot,” said One-Eyed Bruce. “Don' matter who, he say you all as bad as each other.”

“You're a charmer, aren't you?” Ramilov, channeling Camp Charles, shot back.

“You be there.” Crooking a warning finger, One-Eyed Bruce turned and was gone.

Thus everything crumbled. All those new beginnings turned to ash and scattered to the corners of the earth. We thought we had escaped The Fat Man's clutches, that our pasts could not catch us. We were wrong.

I
won't do it,” said Ramilov. “No way.”

“Go on,” said Dave.

“Not for all the minge in Middlesbrough.”

“Please.” Racist Dave, no longer carnivorous, had lost his appetite for The Fat Man's dinner parties. Peeling tiger cubs will make a man ask questions of himself. Also there was the suggestion of his past, waiting in ambush. What if he was serving the Mancunian drug lords who wanted his head on a plate? An uncomfortable proposition. He had made his excuses, and offered another in his place.

“I shall not work for that fat fuck,” said Ramilov. “He's the devil.”

“You can have any days off you want,” Racist Dave pleaded. “You can come in late. I'll do your mise list for you.”

“No.” Ramilov was adamant. “I care about food. I have principles.”

“It's a thousand pounds in cash for one night's cooking,” said Racist Dave.

“In that case,” said Ramilov, “I'll do it.”

I froze in the middle of my veg prep. Surely we couldn't let him go. He had no idea what that house of horrors held in store. I looked at Dave, who just shrugged. What did he care? He was off the hook.

“Ramilov,” I told him, “I don't think you should.”

“What, and everyone gets the easy money except me?” said Ramilov. “Fuck off. I had no idea he was paying you that much.”

“It's not that.”

“If you want the cash then you can pony up,” Ramilov went on. “But I'm not sharing. Fatty can pay us both a grand.”

I could see Ramilov was not to be dissuaded. Someone would have to go with him and try to mitigate. I looked over at Dibden, the only other chef in the kitchen that morning, and saw he was already wearing his spavined-horse expression at the mere mention of The Fat Man's name. Dear Dibden, still quite useless. In the plonge, Darik and Shahram scrubbed at the pans, clattering and chattering, oblivious to the fates being decided next door. Fear couldn't touch those two.

“All right,” I said. “I'll do it too.”

What would life be like now if Ramilov and I had said no that final time? If he had not let the coin persuade him? If I—spurred on, in all honesty, as much by the money, by the need to keep my father's debts close to home, as by my concern for Ramilov—had not chased after? Would some other evil have taken The Fat Man's place? Or would we all, to a man, be free? Perhaps it is futile to mention these ifs and woulds. Freedom is never limitless. As a concept it is always fenced in. There is always someone who comes along and puts their feet in your face.

—

The morning of that final dinner my father and I had a falling-out. I say this as if it were unusual. We frequently did not see eye to eye. I disapproved of his lifestyle and I missed having a floor. But the falling-out that morning was particularly bad, and precipitated, in no small part, by my mother's phone call.

“Is he there?” was the first thing she said.

“Yes,” I said, looking at the man in question. He was sitting on the edge of my bed cutting his toenails, though I had asked him not to several times.

“How's his mood?”

“Not great,” I said. My father was still sulking from last night, when he had woken me to bet it was raining and I had somewhat bluntly declined.

“You know that man's problem,” my mother said. “He's a child. An old and very angry child . . . Chip on his shoulder the size of a fridge but emotionally he's still pooing his nappy.”

“Is that your mother?” my father inquired. “Tell her I've been going to a shrink three times a week and I realize I was wrong.”

Three months . . . Three months he had been asking me to put in a word, to recycle these little lies and half-truths. He had no direct contact with her himself. When he rang, she would hang up. But today, for whatever reason, I was sick of toadying to my father's requests. I'd had enough of the wheedling and wanted him gone.

“Dad's been going to the bookie's three times a week and says he's broke,” I told her. My mother laughed scornfully.

“A conspiracy, is it?” roared my father, suddenly furious. “The good son putting in a word! Three months on the floor while the little shit pours poison!”

“It's the truth, isn't it?” I shouted back.

“You think Sam would have treated his father like this?” he said, grabbing his shoes.

“He never got the chance,” I shouted.

“That's right,” my father spat back. “He never did. Because there was a fucking awful mistake and my beautiful son was lost. And the son who's left wouldn't put me out if I was on fire.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“You know what I mean,” he said. “Your mother knows what I mean.”

“That's so like you,” I shouted. “Always hiding behind
someone else. Never putting yourself forward. Oh, we mustn't blame ourselves! You hide behind Mum. You're still hiding behind Sam. Have some self-respect! Come out with it! Say it! You think the wrong one died.”

“That's what
you
think of me!” he cried, throwing the door open. “
That's what you want to hear
.”

“You don't deny it.”

“Any chance you get you cut your own throat!” he shouted. “I'll tell you one thing—your brother never would have played the martyr.”

With that he stormed out.

“No one's keeping you here!” I shouted after him. “Just go!”

The front door slammed behind him.

“Christ, Mum!” I cried. “He's a nightmare!”

“I know, dear,” she said.

“How did you stand him for so long?”

“Like I said, a child,” my mother told me. She had that calming voice on, which she sometimes used on my father too. “Don't let him upset you.”

I realized that she had heard every word of my father's insults. I was furious with him already, but bringing her into it . . .
Your mother knows what I mean.
I was not prepared for her slurs too. He had kicked my last support out from under me. Could it be true? Had the wrong one died? He had failed to deny it. This was his greatest failure, in a lifetime of them. My mother's placations did not help—their implication, as I saw it: there was something in his jibes to be upset about.

“I've got to go,” I told her. I was too angry, too appalled, to speak. Dressing hastily, I set out into the Camden streets and paced aimlessly for hours, cursing the traffic and the endless roadworks, the tourists and shoppers and crackheads and gamblers, the giant
boots above the market shops that threatened to crush us all, the tyranny of family that each child was born into, damning the whole bleak menagerie. I replayed my father's words and grafted on fresh and stinging retorts. I imagined charging him down and knocking those hurtful words right out of him.

—

I was still bristling when I met Ramilov outside The Swan that afternoon and we made our way to that cold expensive town house with the dead wisteria and the whispering walls. That quiet, joyless place, where god was blind and deadly sins lurked beneath black sheets.

The sleek chrome kitchen was untouched, its expensive gadgets unmoved. The pervading sense of dread had not improved since my last visit either. Powerful and imperious as ever, The Fat Man appraised Ramilov as if he were a fly in his soup.

“Ah,” he said. “The chef who ruined Bob. I've been waiting to meet you.”

I didn't understand what The Fat Man was talking about and looked to Ramilov for explanation. Perhaps it was my imagination, but Ramilov at this moment looked a little caught out, an uncommon expression for him. As he did not speak, The Fat Man turned to me.

“And of course,” he said with booming bogus bonhomie, “I remember this one. . . . How are we today?”

My mind turned nervously and I answered a fraction of a second too quickly, before I'd had time to check myself. I don't know why I said it. It just came out.

“Somewhat overwrought,” I said.

“
Some what over wrought?
” It was four words when The Fat Man repeated it.

“He's an English literature student,” Ramilov explained. “He doesn't mean anything by it.”

“An English literature student, eh?” The huge mouth mulled the phrase over, swilled it about and spat it out. “Go on then, recite something for us. Give us a poem.”

I looked at The Fat Man's grinning face. He did not enjoy poetry any more than he enjoyed food. It was all empires and thumbscrews with him, consumption and control. But what could I say? I couldn't refuse him. Nor could I recall any lines, put on the spot like this, with him all grinning and familiar, suggesting he knew more than he told. My mind blanked.

“I . . . I don't . . .” I stammered.

“Go on,” he pushed. “A little poem. I bet you've got a lovely reading voice, haven't you? A lovely
timbre
.”

“He's shy.” Bless you, Ramilov, for coming to my defense.

“Is that right?” said The Fat Man, still grinning broadly and bogusly at me. “Are you shy?”

“So what are we cooking today?” Ramilov interrupted. “Lungs and gizzards? Barbecued spleen?”

This somewhat kamikaze approach of Ramilov's caused me a great deal more discomfort than I was already in. I tried to nudge him quiet. But The Fat Man seemed amused by the question. He smiled horribly and shook his head.

“Oh, I think we can do better than that,” he said, and ran through the other courses we were to prepare: stuffed pig's intestines, chargrilled bull's testicles with capers, monkfish livers on toast, six capons set in aspic . . . The list went on. The special course, he said, would need no preparation. We would get to that later.

So we set about the dishes as instructed, both of us working quickly, in silence, hoping to escape as soon as we could. There was no horseplay from Ramilov today; he was thoughtful, on edge.
Every once in a while we thought we heard the soft murmurings of other people through the walls, somehow directed at us.

Do it
, the voices seemed to whisper.
Kill it. Cut it. Feed us.

And occasionally there was another sound, different from the rest: a kind of low, whimpering moan, faint but unmistakable, coming from close at hand. I wondered what it was.

“I don't care,” said Ramilov, who had heard it too. “We'll just bash through this, take the money and get the fuck out of here.”

The afternoon passed at a clip. We felt the eyes on us and worked faster. I read somewhere that King Solomon died standing up, leaning on his cane, and his spirit slaves, thinking he was still watching them, carried on working for forty days until termites ate the cane and the body fell. It was evening when we carried the first dishes into the Mary Celeste dining room, mindful of those invisible eyes, pushing aside the half-drunk glasses of wine and champagne to make way for the groaning trays. As we made our way back to the kitchen I noticed Ramilov's jaw was clenched. He looked more like a skull than ever.

An hour or so passed. Another hour of low whimpers and dread, of angry thoughts. I kept thinking about the argument with my father. What had he meant by “Your mother knows what I mean”? Was that just his sly implication or something more substantial? It tore me up that she might think the same as him, whatever that was. But the most hurtful phrase was my own, which he could not deny.
The wrong one died.
It was true, after all. Sam was the better child. He would always be the greater force. Yet even by my own slight standards, I could have been a better son. A better brother. In those final hours with Sam, I could have been so much better. I waited and wallowed, until The Fat Man returned at last.

“So far, so good,” he said. “Now the main event.”

Once more he went to the parlor door and unlocked it.

“Thought of a poem yet?” he asked, leveling his cold eyes at me. I shook my head. It was the only part of my body that still seemed to work. This time The Fat Man did not lift the thing inside the parlor, but dragged it out underneath a black silk sheet.

“Still shy, are we?” he said as he pulled the covered object in front of us. “Still overwrought?”

You could not see what was beneath, but steel glinted at the edges of the sheet. Another cage. A large one. I looked at Ramilov but he was very still and quiet, and suddenly small again. His fingers, bunched in on themselves, looked like white roses. Seeing him like this made me even more nervous.

The Fat Man looked from Ramilov to me and back again. A flicker of amusement played about his greasy lips. This was his little test. We drew our breath, and he let the drape fall. We stared in horror at the large, intelligent eyes staring back at us. It stood on two legs, whimpering softly, its fingers worrying the bars of the cage. A fully grown ape, as scared as we were. Ramilov's breathing was coming short and sharp next to me. I did not look at him.

“A lot of people think only the Chinese eat monkey brains,” said The Fat Man. “Not true. The brain of an ape is greatly prized in many parts of the world. But few places do it properly. The brain is soft tissue. It degenerates very swiftly. It has to be eaten as fresh as possible. And there's nothing fresher than living. . . .” Here The Fat Man paused and moved toward the counter. “Which makes your job very simple. One single chop, in fact. Just a centimeter off the top of the skull. With this—”

From a drawer he produced a cleaver, glinting sharply.

“There's some handcuffs in the drawers,” he added. “I would advise you use them. Apes tend to struggle.”

He turned to leave and looked back at us.

“When the bell rings three times. That's all you have to do.”

As soon as he had left I turned to Ramilov.

“Ramilov, if you think I'm going to do that . . .”

I stopped.

“It's not going to happen,” he said very quietly.