Читать книгу The Palace of Curiosities - - Страница 8

It’s not like waking up. I’m awake already. I have been somewhere. Like sleep, but not. My body rocks backwards and forwards. Something has hold of my shoulder and is shaking it, vigorously.

‘Wake up, Abel,’ a voice whispers. ‘It is time.’

‘Time?’ I ask, and forget everything.

I open my eyes. The first things I see are blocks of grey. They move: to and fro, up and down, side to side. A dark column hovers before me and I hold my breath. It leans over my bed, a swirl of mixed brightnesses. It touches my arm, and speaks.

‘Wake up. Are you awake?’

With the words, the ghost becomes a man.

I answer, ‘Yes.’

The smell of dried blood is on his shirt, under his fingernails, on the soles of his boots. I know this smell, for I have it on myself.

‘It is time for work. Come now.’

I look about me, and see blotched and crumbling plaster above my head. Narrow slots pierce one wall close to the ceiling, letting in a dribble of pale light. I am surrounded by a multitude of pallets, packed close together. The spectres rising from them become other men. I inhale the comforting stink of my own body and the warm reek of the others crowded into this place; a morning chorus of belching, hacking, spitting and farting giddies me with happiness. I remember: I sleep here. It is my home.

‘Shift yourself, Abel. You’re like this every morning.’

His name will come to me in a moment. The man waking me works with blood. I sniff again: animal blood. Meat. A butcher? No, a butcher has his own business, and does not need to sleep in a cellar. Then I know: he is a slaughter-man. We work together. This reasoning takes very little time, but he is impatient.

‘Abel, get bloody moving.’

It is my name. This man is my friend.

‘Yes, yes,’ I say cheerfully.

‘You’re in a good mood. Move, you old bastard.’

I am already dressed in most of my clothes. All I need do is put on my cap and boots. I get them from under my head, where I have been using them as a pillow. My friend pats me on the shoulder and smiles. We climb the grimy steps out of our cellar and join the troop of men lining up to pay the tally-man, who leans against the door-jamb, book in one hand, pint bottle of tea in the other, and a stub of a pencil behind his ear. Many of our companions thumb their caps and promise to cough up that evening. But we pay our sixpence on the spot for the next night’s lodging as we leave, and I recall that we do this each morning, at my friend’s insistence.

‘We must pay one night at a time. A man never knows what might happen,’ he says.

The moment the words come out of his mouth his name comes back to me, making me suddenly joyful at the gift of remembrance, at the realisation that he returns me to myself thus every day.

‘Alfred,’ I say. ‘You are my friend.’

He laughs and calls me an old bastard once more.

We step out on to the street and my breath catches at each new sight, which stops being new the moment I look at it. I wonder how I would find myself in this blur of grey and brown if it were not for Alfred, shaking me into wakefulness, striding at my side, half a pace in front, urging me on, drawing me out of my drowse and into a beginning of myself.

The world reveals itself to me piecemeal: the flat surface at my side becomes a long terrace of filthy brickwork interrupted by black holes, which resolve themselves into doors and windows. One of these doors leads to my cellar. I gape at how similar it is to all the others, how simple a thing it would be to confuse one door with another. I lose myself in the contemplation of this wondrous revelation and Alfred grasps my elbow, steering me away from the ordure running down the middle of the street.

‘What would you do without me?’ he says.

‘I do not know.’

I blink at this new world, which of course is the same world as yesterday, only somehow mislaid by me overnight.

‘You’d walk through shit the whole time, that’s for sure!’ He laughs, and I understand that it is a joke, and that he does not realise what he means to me. I feel an urge to thank him, but I do not.

At this early hour the rough sleepers are still piled up in doorways, wrapped around each together against the chill. But Alfred and I are different: we are men of purpose. Men like us stride swiftly to a rightful place of employment. We have work to attend to, work that directs our hands and steers our feet, that fills our bellies with food and drink, that shakes us awake and tires us so we sleep deeply; work that gives us the money to pay for a place that is warm and comradely, a place where one man shares his good fortune with another, and where Alfred and I are often the men with that good fortune, for the pieces of meat that we bring.

Work prompts me with a purpose, with something to remember every morning. Without work I would be empty. I shake my head, and with it that unpleasant notion; I am not empty. I have work, I have food, I have lodging, I have Alfred. I am a happy man. There is no more contentment for which I could ask.

A coal-train heaves itself across the viaduct and we pass beneath, the vaulted arches shuddering a rain of soot on our heads, which Alfred dusts from my shoulders with many jokes about how I look even more like a gyppo when I’m blackened with smuts. The first criers are about, shouting, ‘Milk! Watercress! Hot bread!’ Carts jolt past, the iron clanging of their wheels dinning in my ears, bringing me further back into the glove of my senses. We cross over a stream of raw sewage.

‘I don’t know how you manage it. The smell,’ says Alfred, voice muffled by the kerchief he has clapped over his mouth. ‘What are you about? Make haste.’

I pause and look down at the mess. Not a whit of movement.

‘It does not trouble me,’ I say.

‘Now I know you are lying,’ he replies, uncovering his mouth when we are clear of the sewer.

But I am not. It is an aroma, that is all. I stand a while longer, but then realise that Alfred is no longer by my side. I glance down to see what my feet are about, and they are still when they should be moving. I have been looking down too long; when I look up Alfred has drawn some distance away. I command my feet to pick up their pace and keep up with him, for his legs are transporting him very swiftly, his body slipping neatly between the other men passing to and fro along the thoroughfare. I quicken my pace and after some shoving I draw level.

‘You not awake yet, Abel?’ he says. ‘Come now, buck up, or there’ll be no time to eat.’

My mouth waters at the thought of food.

‘Ha! That’s put a spring in your step! Sprightly, now.’

We bound forward. With each stride, I am bolder and the world takes on more solid form. Each step breathes fire into my legs; the flagstones thump back at my heels, prickling my skin with wakefulness; my liver and lights quiver with the blood pumping around my veins. The jostling and jarring of the passers-by returns the awareness of my arms and ribs; the screaming of this waking city brings back my ears. I smile at every assault, for each serves to remind me of my flesh, my meat, my muscle, bone and blood. I am a man again, not the phantom I was upon waking.

A boy passing to my right shrieks the news so piercingly I clench my teeth: ‘Savage Murder! Shocking Discovery!’ Alfred sees my grimace.

‘You all right?’

I nod.

‘Loud, isn’t he?’

I nod again. ‘I am very hungry,’ I say.

‘Ah! A fine suggestion.’

He claps his hands together in the cold. We stop at a stall, which I know is the place we usually take our breakfast, and the man shouts his halloa, handing us fat bacon wrapped in a square of dirty bread; a pint of tea each. I shove all into my mouth, and Alfred laughs.

‘Your stomach, the great pit!’

The vendor roars at the joke. I smile through my bread, spilling some, filling them with even more merriment.

‘You will make yourself sick, you silly bastard,’ says Alfred. ‘Yes, we must hurry, but not that much.’

It occurs to me that I am never sick, but I do not say as much. It comes to me that I have tried to explain this before; but such things confuse him, and confusion takes away his cheerfulness. So I continue to play the fool, and he is happy. The grease sticks to my chin and I wipe it off, licking my fingers.

‘Good stuff?’ says Alfred through his bread.

‘Good stuff,’ I reply.

‘That’s you fixed up.’

Right away I know he is speaking the plain truth. The sticky bacon weighs me down into the earth. I pat my chest, feeling the smoke of the chimneys clogging each breath; rub my belly, testing the ballast of the half-loaf within.

‘Thank you,’ I say to him. ‘You are my friend.’

For a moment, his face changes, and I recognise the look. Suddenly I am aware that I have seen it before, over and over. How I know this I do not recall, nor who has looked at me thus: only that many have. I search for names and faces, but find none. It is most confusing. Alfred pushes the last of his bacon between his lips and is once again my gruff companion.

‘It’s only breakfast,’ he grunts. ‘Any pal would do the same.’

The day is no warmer when we hand back the tin mugs; indeed, it is still dark, but I no longer care for I am hot inside. We bow into the wind and head past the tannery and turn left. As we walk through the gate a church clock somewhere begins to strike the hour. I count five.

‘It is the best part of the day,’ Alfred says. ‘And winter too: the best time of year for men like ourselves.’

We strap on our leather aprons, and are ready. I know why I am here. I am a slaughter-man.

The first bullock of the morning is brought in. It is barely through the rectangle of the door before Alfred lifts his hammer and strikes the blow. The eyes roll and it falls forward on to its chin, grey tongue flopping between its teeth, gentle eye dim between the stiff, gummed lashes. Alfred shouts a brief huzzah at such a clean start and grins.

‘Barely twitching!’ he exclaims.

Two fellows hook the hind legs and winch the carcase upwards. Their names have not yet returned to my recollection, though I should have them before another hour has passed. I grasp the soft, warm ear and strike the knife beneath it; blood pours.

‘He never misses,’ mumbles one of the winchers, still chewing on his breakfast, a piece of bread clamped between his teeth.

His name surfaces in the mud of my mind.

‘Yes, William,’ I agree, pleased with myself.

‘There is a man at peace with his labour,’ says Alfred, and smiles. ‘I can see William snoring in long, untroubled sleep. Can’t you?’ He looks slantwise at me. A blade scrapes against bone. ‘Just like us, eh, Abel? You’re not disturbed by what you see here. Are you?’

‘Me? No.’

‘Good. Me neither. Steady hands and a steady stomach. That’s the two of us.’

The beast starts to kick, and Alfred frowns, but it is only a brief show. I raise the blade and watch it fall, guided by a precision I possess without knowing how as it strikes the exact midline of the belly and splits it open; the insides begin to cascade out in a sodden fall.

William and his companion heave out the innards, briefly sorting through the coils for any obvious signs of sickness. They are quickly satisfied, and I slice away the heart, liver and lights, giving a final grunt of exertion as my blade breaks through the cartilage between the vertebrae. The skinners set to work straight away. Three lads carry away the pluck; four others slop the black waters away continuously, bent into their work, never looking up to see whence comes the thick dark stuff they push into the grille of the drain.

I delight in the handsome geometry of the beast: the soft handshake of the intestines coiling about my arms, humid from the belly, delicate green and blue; the perfect smoothness of the liver; the pink and grey lungs, matched in wonderful symmetry and nesting the heart between. There is no time to ponder each marvel, for we have many beeves to work through.

‘This is a hungry city,’ says Alfred.

Each carcase I split open reveals the same beautiful workings, each with their particular differences: a larger pair of lungs; a surprisingly violet twist of gut. But these small variations only seem to further underline the natural majesty of them all; I cannot avoid the sensation that I am close to some revelation about myself. Why the mysterious insides of beasts should make me feel thus I do not know, but they draw me with an uncanny power that here I might solve some riddle. I push towards the answer: I am a man who knows the mystery of beasts.

I see the way they come in after hours of stamping down a hard road: their ankles gone, hooves raw; driven, beaten, thrashed and pushed towards their deaths – and any man who says a beast doesn’t know it is a fool. No fellow-beast comes back from the killing to tell them, but they guess it true enough.

They smell it on the road. Keeping their heads low: not sniffing for grass to chew, but getting a sniff of those who passed before, the excruciating spoor of that last drive, the screaming muscle, the aching bones. Most of all they smell the fear.

And if they are bad on the road in, that is nothing to how they are when they get to the yard and are left standing, listening to the sharpening of blades. They smell death before it happens; hear the thump of the stunning blow before it cracks the first skull of the day; taste the blood of their brothers misting the air from the day before, when their guts spilled out of the bag of their bellies.

The fear of beasts. It is a fire that runs between them dry as tinder. When they get it in them the worst things happen. So I strive to make it quick. Today, we are unlucky.

Alfred raises his hammer with a good will, but when it falls some agency turns it awry and it falls to one side, a feather’s width only, but enough to inflict pain without release. The bullock rears up, its skull caved in. How can a dead animal leap up? When they are hammered, that should be an end to it. But I’ve seen what I’ve seen. Slaughter-men know these things.

It pauses, hanging in the air. We are fixed also, though we must clear out of its way for the plunge that will follow: it wants to take us into that animal darkness, and Heaven help anyone in the way when it comes crashing down. I have seen a man lose an arm, torn off at the shoulder by those fiendish hooves, and heard the beast give a last moan of delight to hear its murderer scream.

It falls, staggering. Alfred tries a second blow, but it swings its head despite our attempts to hold it steady, and this blow is worse than the first, breaking the bone beneath the eyes. The screaming starts: a sound no-one would believe who had not heard it. Women have it when they push a child out of them; beasts have it when we push the life out of them, and do it badly.

It is dead enough to fall to its knees, undead enough to thrash out when the hooks dig through its tendons and the hauling starts, so it takes four men to get it up there, the four who should be mopping the floor, so now we are slipping in the bile it has spewed up. I cut its throat right across, more than is needed, to sever the windpipe as well as the vein, and air whistles out, but at least it is a hiss and not the awful keening.

Finally, we tie it off: heels up, head down, tongue licking the floor; and still struggling. The blade is in my hand. My fellows are getting angrier, and I am the only one who can do a thing about it. I lift my hand; the blade falls and I have some comfort that this stroke at least is deep and true. I lose myself in the sight of its guts, gushing out in a smooth clean tumble. I do not let myself see its juddering terror as I kill it for the last time. I will not let myself think of that at all.

The hauliers are bringing up the next beast, shouting, ‘Get a move on, you fuckers. How long does it take to kill a bullock, for Christ’s sake?’ Their charge is restless: it can smell and hear and taste and see what is before it, and knows its share. Then it is in, stamping out its complaint, and we must continue. I look at Alfred: he is sweating, his hand unsteady. The haulers hate him, the winch-men hate him, the sweepers hate him, the animals hate him. His day is already bad, and the only direction it can go is to the worse.

‘Alfred,’ I say.

I hold out my hand and he places the hammer into my grasp. The bullock looks at me with wet brown eyes, and I look back; I lay my hand on its flank until it grows still. Then it happens: it stumbles forwards, as though kneeling in prayer. I am to be its killer, but I am kind, each blow struck by me being on the mark. It knows it will be fully dead when it is split open. I am the only one it can be certain of. Other men try but I succeed, every time. It closes its eyes, knowing I will be quick and sure. It is my nature.

I do not disappoint: neither the beast nor my companions. They see my kindness, and each of them pauses, even the most brutish of the hauliers, and breathe out their relief.

‘You’re a good man,’ says Alfred, and rubs my shoulder, swabbing it with blood.

His voice snaps in the middle, dry and thin. I return the hammer to him.

The day swims past, and I drift upon its languorous current. My arm continues to rise and fall and I am drawn into a drowse by the movement, by the length and silkiness of black hair flowing in a stream from wrist to elbow, the veins standing out along the length.

With each fall of the blade the muscles of my hand and thumb stiffen and relax, and I find myself thinking how simple a thing it would be to make a vertical incision upwards from the wrist; how soft the curtains of skin as I part them, warm as the inside of a mouth, revealing the workings of the body within.

I see myself slip a flat-bladed knife beneath the musculus coracobrachialis and biceps brachii – for these notations are suddenly known to me – and raise them slightly from their accustomed bed against the bone of my upper arm. I do not want to fix my gaze anywhere but on this work, which terrifies me yet is familiar, and comforting in its familiarity.

I am opened up, and am possessed of a knowledge that sparkles through me. My heart soars: I know this. For what are men but hills, swamps, sinkholes, deep abysses, flat plains? I understand now. This is no gazetteer of any country; it is the terrain of man’s interior geography, and I am a geographer of that body for I know the mountains and rivers, the highways and cities. I gaze at my flesh, opened up so beautifully. It prickles, quickens. I behold the mappa mundi. All I need to know is here.

I feel wetness on my cheeks, hear a cough and the softness flies away, as though I have been roughly shaken from sleep. My heart beats fast, and I am filled with a fear that I shall find everyone looking at me, somehow knowing my strange imaginings, but the sound is one of the sweepers. I examine my arm: it is untouched. My body is quiet again.

I shake my head and empty it of what I have just witnessed. I do not know whence it came. I have been affected by the terrified beast earlier, that is all. I am a plain man and do not know such long words, nor such an overwhelming philosophy. It is nothing. I press my knowledge into a deep well.

At mid-morning my companions lay down their tools and go out for a mug of tea and piece of bread.

‘I shall stay,’ I say, for I desire a peaceful spot in which to gather up my ragged thoughts.

‘Come now, Abel. You’ve earned a breather.’ Alfred grins.

‘You more than any of us bastards,’ adds William, and they laugh.

‘One-Blow Abel, that’s you!’

I make my mouth smile also.

‘There is but one carcase needs finishing off,’ I say, lightening my voice to make it careless.

Alfred dawdles.

‘I shall stay also. We shall follow presently.’

He grins at me as they depart.

‘Just the two of us, eh? Best company a man could have.’

I set myself back to work, striking the carcase before me; but my hand trembles and I only split it halfway. I try again and strike untrue, jarring the bone so hard my shoulder numbs, and I drop the axe. The steel rings against stone, and Alfred calls out.

‘Abel?’

‘Yes,’ I reply.

‘What is it?’

‘I have dropped my blade.’

‘Dropped it?’ His voice sounds with shock, and he pushes through the curtain of cadavers to my side. ‘What ails you, Abel?’

His eyes search mine.

I shrug. ‘It is nothing.’

‘Well, then,’ he says. ‘Very well.’

He coughs, busying himself in picking up my blade and placing it into my hand.

‘See,’ I say. ‘I am steady again.’

I make another stroke to prove my words, but it is a poor effort, shearing away and striking my forearm, and I am sliced to the bone. For an instant, all is peaceful as we stare at my arm, the dark crimson of muscle within. He speaks first.

‘Christ, your arm.’

‘Yes,’ I say.

It is true. It is my arm. He, like me, can see the sick whiteness showing at the heart of the slit. I should be afraid, but I am not; I feel no panic as I watch the wound fill with sluggish blood. I wait for it to commence pumping, in the way that kine do when I cut their throats, but it does not. The liquid rises partway to the brim and then pauses, small bubbles winking on the surface. As I watch, I am aware of another sensation: my soul begins to beat sluggish wings, unfolding them after a long sleep. My body tingles, stirs.

‘Christ,’ says Alfred. ‘Dear, sweet Christ.’

He sits upon the floor, not caring about the stickiness and filth.

‘Sit down, man,’ he croaks.

‘Yes,’ I say, lowering myself to sit next to him.

He is trembling.

‘You are dying. You will die. What am I to do?’ he stutters. ‘You will bleed to death. You are slain. What can we do?’ His hands patter all over his apron, wringing the corners. ‘I must get help,’ he says, but does not move.

‘Yes,’ I agree, and do not move either, for my eyes will not leave the sight of my inner workings revealed in this impossible fashion.

I am surprised, but not in that way of a new thing, a never-before-seen thing. It is the stillness of curiosity. I ache to dip my thumb into the dish of the wound to see if I am warm or cool; indeed, I lift my hand to do so, and only hesitate because Alfred is shaking violently, small sobs coming from deep within his chest.

‘I must go. I must go and find a doctor,’ he says, over and over, not stirring. ‘I should not have spoken to you. I distracted you. This is my fault.’

I want to say, It is not, but I am lost in contemplation of this phenomenon.

‘I am not bleeding,’ I muse, and find I have spoken aloud.

Alfred is sitting quite still. ‘Dear Christ,’ he breathes. ‘You are not.’

It is the truth. The injury is full of blood, but is not spilling over.

‘I wonder why,’ I say, for it holds me in a fascination.

I am a slaughter-man: I know well the fountaining of heart’s-blood when an artery is severed.

‘Sweet Jesus,’ repeats Alfred. ‘Look.’

I look. The blood is sinking, and as it subsides the edges of the wound begin to close together very slowly, but fast enough that it is possible to observe the motion. I am held in the grip of a terrific stillness, so entrancing is the sight of my body re-sealing itself. After minutes I forget to count all that can be seen is a red seam along my forearm. I flex my fingers, and they move: I can bend easily at the elbow. Nothing is damaged. Alfred gets to his feet, staggering backwards.

‘You …’ he says, his eyes wild. ‘When a man is cut, he should stay open. You close up. It is not right. You should be dead.’

His gaze darts up and down and from side to side; everywhere but at me.

‘I am not,’ I say simply.

His breathing is rough. ‘I do not—’ he begins, and stops. ‘I do not know you.’

He walks away. I inspect my miraculous arm, twisting it about and watching the line where I cut myself grow smooth and pink. After a while I pick up my axe and continue with my labours. I am determined to concentrate, for I do not wish to slip into another bout of this dangerous half-sleep. The others come back in; Alfred also, but he says nothing, and will not look at me.

I set my teeth and apply myself to my labour. I am a slaughter-man, I say to myself. I cut open the bodies of beasts. They stay open. I was cut, and I closed up. I did not bleed. I shake the troubling thoughts away. I must have been mistaken: I cannot have cut myself so deeply. These things are not possible.

The remainder of the day is simpler. Each beast waits patiently in line, and the greatest noise we hear is the sigh of each giving up its spirit gladly. At the end of the day, I walk out of the gate to find Alfred waiting.

‘Let’s be walking home, then,’ he says grudgingly.

He keeps half a pace ahead of me, and looks back every now and then, as though expecting something, eyes sliding to my forearm. I wince with the knowledge of my body and how it healed; and how he witnessed it happening.

‘Alfred?’

‘What?’ he growls.

‘You are my friend,’ I mumble.

‘Yes, yes,’ he mutters. ‘So you keep saying. Give it a rest.’

He thrusts his eyes ahead, walking faster so that I have to quicken my step to keep up with him. I chew the inside of my mouth until I taste iron. I hold out the package I have been given as my day’s perk: I bear the prize of an entire head, brains and all, for the way I turned things round, the gaffer said.

‘I like brains,’ I say. ‘Brains are tasty.’

He breathes out, slowing down so that I do not have to rush so.

‘They are,’ he agrees, and we fall back into step.

The evening is chilly: he is wrapped up in his coat like a boatman, breath standing before him, humming some tune I do not recognise. I try not to interrupt him. It is difficult. At last I speak.

‘About today—’ I start.

‘It is of no consequence,’ he snaps, picking up the pace again.

‘But it was—’

‘It was nothing!’ he cries. ‘It was a difficult day. That bullock! God, how it wouldn’t die! Enough to make any man see things.’

‘But, Alfred, at the slaughter-house—’

‘I do not want to talk about it. In fact, I remember nothing.’

‘Alfred—’

‘I said, I do not want to talk about it. Get a move on,’ he grunts. ‘It is time to get some food inside us.’

‘Oh.’

My mouth fills with water.

‘That’s the job. Think of that. Nothing else.’

‘Yes. You are right.’

He breathes out heavily, clouding the air around his head.

‘Of course I am. No more rambling. I’m freezing. Let’s get back and get this lot cooked. Of a sudden I have a powerful hunger upon me. Think how good it’ll taste. Any meat you’ve had a hand in is a clean and cheerful dish.’

He slaps my shoulder. I know that the events of today have brought me close to grasping something, but it is already beginning to slip away. If he would talk to me, maybe I could fix my understanding. But he will not.

We walk in silence to our lodging house, a narrow squeeze of a building caught between the muscular shoulders of the tenements to each side. Ours is little different, except the bricks are perhaps grimier, the steps to our cellar a little more slippery with spilt beer and bacon fat, the straw in our palliasses a little older. But there are just as many folk squeezed into the upper floors – three families to a room as I hear it. Their babies squall as lustily; their men and women argue just as cantankerously. It is our crowded ark, one of an armada of vessels crammed thick with humanity. I have no desire to move from my cellar, where everything is cosy and peaceful by comparison.

A woman from one of the upstairs rooms cooks the meat, and there is plenty to share. All the cellar-men fill up the kitchen, joining in the feast of my good fortune. One man brings beer, another, bread; for this is our way of a night. We eat until Alfred’s bad humour is quite taken away, and we are friendly once again. When we have finished, we return to the cellar and Alfred finds our pallets as sure as a seagull finds its nest from the hundreds on a cliff. I stretch out, cradled in the comfort of my companions patting their stomachs, smacking their lips and wiping gravy off their chins.

Alfred lolls on his elbow, picking at his buckled teeth with a straw. His rough sandy hair stands up in surprised tufts. He shifts his thin hips, cracks out a fart and laughs at the sound. His mouth is soft, for all his endeavours to hide it beneath a broad moustache.

‘You know what, Abel?’ he muses. ‘When we strike it rich, we’ll be out of here. Get a nicer room.’

‘Why would we want that? There are so many friends here.’

He scowls. ‘So I’m just one of many, am I?’

‘Not at all, Alfred. You are my dearest friend.’

‘Ah, get away with you.’

He is pleased, and I do not know why he demurs. It is true: I would not find my way through each day without his guidance. The thought is alarming, so I push it away. He clears his throat.

‘Time to reckon up, Abel.’ He rubs his palms together in pleasure. ‘Our little ritual.’

And I remember: every night before we turn in, I count out our wages.

‘This is for lodging,’ I say. ‘This for breakfast. And midday food. This for drink. And this left over.’

‘More drink?’ says Alfred.

‘Hmm. No. I need better boots.’

‘That will not buy you boots.’

‘Then I shall save each day until I have enough.’ I hand the money to him. ‘Will you keep it safe for me? I lose things, you know. I will forget where I have put it.’

Alfred laughs. ‘You’d forget your head!’

‘Yes, you’re a wooden-head, and no mistake!’ calls a man further down the row of sacks.

‘Old dozy!’ another man takes up the cry.

‘It is true,’ I say, for so it is.

‘Come on, lads,’ mutters Alfred.

‘Oh, we like him, Alfred; even if he is tuppence missing.’

‘You know there’s no harm in it.’

One of them punches my upper arm. ‘You’re our lucky charm.’

‘Not one of us has got hurt since you joined us.’

‘So we’re not going to chase you off, eh?’

‘Not our Abel.’

‘You’re a bit of a miracle, as I hear it.’

‘Fished you out of the mud, they did.’

‘You were mostly mud yourself.’

‘You should of been a goner. By all accounts.’

‘No-one as goes in the river comes out. Save you.’

‘Got a bit of luck you’d like to rub off on me?’

‘Come on, Abel, how about a good rub-down!’

They roar with laughter and I decide it is best to join in. I ache for them to say more. To paint in the blank picture of my forgetting.

‘You were in the papers and everything. Come on, Alf, show us.’

Alfred unbuttons the neck of his shirt to a scatter of playful whistles and draws out a much-folded sheet of newspaper. He lays it across his knee, smoothing out the folds carefully.

‘There you are,’ says one, leaning over Alfred’s shoulder and jabbing at the page.

‘Watch it, Pete. You’ll tear a bloody hole in it.’

‘Look, Abel. That’s you, that is.’

I squint at the small engraving: a man’s head; nose prominent, eyes dark and deep-set, a shadow of hair on the chin. Below, a cluster of uniformed men around a prone figure. They look very pleased with themselves. Mysterious Gentleman Rescued, reads the headline. Startling Discovery, of Particular Interest.

‘You can read it?’

I realise I have been speaking out loud.

‘Didn’t know you were educated.’

‘Neither did I,’ I say.

They laugh, and are easy with me again.

‘You can see why they thought you were that Italian.’

‘Go on, say something wop. You know you can.’

I do not have to think: the words fly easily to my tongue. ‘Piacere di conoscerla.’

‘He’s a living marvel!’

‘Yes, but not that posh one, as went missing.’

‘They found him with his throat cut.’

‘And his trousers down!’

‘So you’re common as muck, like the rest of us.’

‘Better off with us lot, eh, Abel?’

‘I am,’ I agree, and it pleases them greatly.

‘Why did you jump?’ says one, more thoughtfully.

‘I do not remember,’ I say. ‘Maybe I fell in.’

‘Lot of drunks fall in. No offence.’

‘I am not offended.’

‘You don’t seem like a drunk.’

‘Well, you weren’t in the pudding club. That’s why the ladies tend to take a late swim.’

They chuckle again, and after a while Alfred shoos them away.

‘Don’t chase them off.’

‘Only trying to help out a pal.’ He sulks. ‘Give you a bit of peace.’

‘I know. But I like to hear them talk. Truly, I don’t remember.’

‘Remember what?’

‘Any of it. Falling in the river. Being pulled out. Anything before this cellar.’

‘Now you’re pulling my leg.’

‘Alfred, I am not.’

‘Abel, I know you’re a wooden-head at the best of times …’ He stops. ‘You mean it?’

‘I want to remember. I can’t. I look into myself and find nothing. Each morning I wake up …’

He looks worried. I decide to stop. The look changes to thoughtful, and then he smiles.

‘It’ll come back,’ he declares, with a certainty I do not share. ‘Big shock, that’s what it is. Thing like that’d scare any man out of his wits. Make him imagine all kinds of nonsense.’

‘You are sure?’

‘Course I am. Wouldn’t lie to you, would I?’

‘No. You are my friend.’

‘You keep me straight, Abel, you do.’ He smiles, and grasps my shoulder.

‘Right, listen up!’ bawls one of the cellar-men. All heads turn. ‘I am chief bully for the evening, and I have a treat for us all.’

He flourishes his hand towards a woman at his elbow. There are a few whistles and rumbles of approval.

‘Some of you know her, some of you don’t. Not a tooth in her head. Eh, May?’

The woman grins, demonstrating the truth of his statement.

‘So, steady up, lads, finish your idle chatter,’ he says. ‘A gobble for sixpence; a helping hand for three.’

They gather into a knot and lay out their coins. She seems unconcerned by the number of acts they are negotiating, eyes brightening only when the take is firmly stowed in her bodice. She leads the first into the corner. The rest turn their backs and share a pipe, acting as though they cannot hear his shallowing gasps.

‘You’ve got a bit left over, haven’t you, Abel?’ says Alfred casually.

‘I have,’ I say.

He waves towards the female, who is already taking her next customer in hand. I consider her fingers working at my body in a similar fashion.

‘It’s there for the taking.’

‘No,’ I decide.

He smiles. ‘Me neither.’

Although I do not wish to participate, I find it difficult to take my attention from the hunched bodies in the darkness. One of the men, satisfied now and lounging on his mattress, notices the direction of my gaze.

‘Come on, cold-fish,’ he shouts. ‘You can have one on me if you like.’ He tosses a few coins in the air. ‘It’ll make a man of you.’

He laughs, not unpleasantly, and those men who are not distracted by the woman turn to regard me.

‘You have got one, haven’t you?’

‘Maybe it’s a tiddler,’ chaffs one, waggling his little finger.

‘She doesn’t mind small fry, do you, May?’

The woman hoots, washing down her most recent bout with a mouthful of beer and scratching at her skirts.

‘Maybe it’s as lifeless as he is. That soaking in the river has made it as much good as a herring.’

‘The river’ll do that to a man. Turn his every part to mud.’

‘Don’t plague him so,’ says Alfred, and their eyes turn from me to him. He is examining the laces of his boots as though they are fascinating objects worthy of deep study.

‘Only our bit of fun, Alf.’

‘He doesn’t mind, do you, mate?’

‘No,’ I say truthfully.

One of them thumps me on the back.

‘See? We’re only jesting.’

‘You’re all right, Abel, even if you can’t get it up. Anytime you change your mind, though, first one’s on us. Right, lads?’

They murmur assent, raising their smokes and cups in a toast. Then, finished with their companionable teasing, they settle to the more stimulating activities of the evening. After some time, the woman completes her labours and departs.

It occurs to me that I have heard taunts like theirs before, and I scrabble in my head for when it might have been. Last night? Last year? The harder I search, the more elusive the answer. I close my eyes, and it comes to me: I stand encircled, hands bound. My mind stirs unpleasantly and I shake my head. Perhaps I do not want to remember, after all. But now I have called them up, they will not leave me.

Dead fish.

Dead man.

Corpse-kisser.

I have heard every name before and they do not sting. My mouth fills with bile. I blink, and am back in the cellar. Alfred is peering at me closely.

‘You all right, Abel? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘I am well,’ I lie.

‘They don’t mean anything by it,’ he says, and pats my knee.

‘I know.’

‘Don’t pay them any mind.’

‘I shall not.’

‘Some men are so,’ he reassures me.

‘Yes.’

He is sitting so close his thigh is pressed against mine.

‘Alfred,’ I say quietly.

‘Yes, Abel?’ he breathes.

‘Please let me speak to you.’

‘Is it about today?’ he grumbles.

‘Yes.’

‘I am tired, Abel. I do not wish to talk any longer.’

‘Please?’

‘Go to sleep, Abel.’

He turns, curving his back away from me. The cellar quietens into sleep.

I am left alone, now that there are no distractions. I roll up my sleeve, uncovering my left arm. It is the same shape and colour as it was this morning, the hair as dark, and sprouting a thick trail from elbow to wrist in the same fashion. It matches the right arm perfectly, except for the scar: now a pale silver trail.

I struggle to believe that it is a part of my body; yet when I cut into it, it was as familiar as looking into a dish of potatoes. I try to make sense of this, and tell myself it is because I spend my days and nights cutting open beasts, and am used to the sight of muscle, bone, yellow fat, grey slippery organs. I am not convinced. It is not the same. My flesh is quick; the beasts are dead.

How could my body accomplish such a feat of healing? I puzzle over this riddle but find no answer. Only a creeping fear: no true, honest man heals like this. Therefore, I am a monster.

My mind strains to escape from this terrible conclusion, for how can I live with such knowledge, with myself? I desire an answer, and for that answer to be that I am mistaken. My most sincere wish is to be man and not miracle. There is of course only one way to prove that I am a simple fellow who bleeds and heals in the slow, painful way of ordinary folk. I must cut myself again, and prove it wrong.

With a stolen candle stub in my pocket, I take myself to the yard privy. Alfred does not wake to ask me what I am about. I get out my pocket-knife. My fist closes about the handle, the blade hovers; I press the point into my forearm, where the last trace of the scar remains. I will cut myself in the same spot, and it will bleed, and I will have to bind it up. Yes. I will prove it was nothing more than a freakish mistake.

I draw the blade along my arm in a straight line, and my skin separates as it should. I close my eyes in relief, but when I open them once more I see the gash beginning to draw shut. It is most curious. I run the blade along the new join and tease it open. My body obeys, and parts its lips, only to begin closing once again the moment I lift the knife away.

A shallow cut proves nothing. I dig a little deeper. There is pain now, but one that rouses me to a strange wakefulness. As a man swimming underwater breaks the surface and feels breath fly back into his body, so do I fly into myself. My body sparks into liveliness, including that masculine part of me, which also raises its sleepy head. I grind my teeth: how can I possibly feel arousal with the cutting open of my arm? It is shameful. I would rather be the piece of dead meat that everyone calls me than this degraded creature.

I examine the wound, excitement mixing with horror. It gapes, and I can see through to the dark red within. I have seen enough meat cut open to know there should be blood, and now. Tentatively, I push the knife back in, draw it out once more. This time I should leak, but I do not. I turn my arm around in the small light, wondering at this mystery. The candle shows me what I do not wish to be real: other than a moist smearing on the metal itself, all is dry.

I stare at my disobedient arm, and once more the ragged edges of skin begin their drawing together. I push my finger into the hole to stop my body re-forming itself, but the flesh closes, pushing me out with a firm pressure, like the tongue of a cow. It takes a little while longer, but there is no halting the knitting-up of the slit.

I shake my head and tell myself that this is not a proper test. Perhaps only my left arm is possessed of these strange qualities. I should cut a different part of my body – but not my other arm, for that is too similar. I roll up the leg of my trousers to the knee, select a spot on the calf and push in the point of the blade.

A drop of blood trickles down, catching in the mat of hair. My heart leaps with joy; I am bleeding. But no more follows and already the cut is barely to be seen. I jab at a different spot and feel a fresh surge of hope when a fat red bead falls as far as my ankle. A second drop spills from the wound, followed by a third. Breath gathers tightly in my throat. I am a normal man: I bleed.

Then the flow thickens, and stops. The wound blinks its eye, and closes. This is not possible. I must be normal; I have to be. There must be some place on my body that does not heal. But where? I drag my trouser-leg up as far as it will go and poke the blade into the pale ochre skin of my thigh. There is barely a smear of scarlet for my trouble. I try again; healing occurs straight away.

Maybe I need to go faster, to beat my body at its game of healing. But however quickly I jab the point of the knife, each cut starts to close up before I have time to make the next; the quicker I stab myself the quicker the doors of my flesh slam shut, matching my frenzy for hurt with a frenzy for healing. My breath scales a ladder of panting gasps as I climb closer and closer to myself. I am – I am – I am not Abel. Rather, I am not merely Abel. I am broad as the desert, tall as the sky, deep as the ocean. I know the answer to all my questions. It is all so clear, so simple. I am—

So close. I soar towards the sun of understanding. As my body heals, heat sears my wings and I plummet into familiar darkness. There is no attainment to be found: my hand wearies, and I cease my battle. The knife is barely marked with moisture; the skin of my legs and arms flecked with creamy marks that fade as I watch. A few moments more and they are gone. My ribs heave up and down, and I realise I am weeping. The candle gutters and goes out.

I do not understand what manner of man can skewer himself with a knife and shed not one drop of blood, and have his body remake itself. I look like a man. I eat, drink, shit, sleep, lift and carry, the same as every one of my fellows. But I am unlike them. I do not know who I am, or what I am.

I hide a great secret, one that marks me as grotesque. Am I man or animal? I can no longer call myself either: I do not have the comfort of calling myself a beast, for a beast can be butchered for the use of mankind, and I cannot serve any such purpose. Nor can I say that I am a man, for no man can do what I have done: cut myself and heal, against nature. It is terrifying. It raises my hopes towards understanding only to dash them most cruelly. It thrills and humiliates me. What kind of creature am I? I have no answer.

I stumble back to the cellar, crawl back to my mattress. Alfred is humped beneath his jacket. I want to shake him awake, and smile, and call him slug-a-bed, and thereby assure myself of my humanity. But it is the middle of the night. I close up the knife and put it under my blanket. There is nothing left to do but attempt to sleep.

My eyes bore into the darkness. I see my work: carcases swaying from the ceiling, each one cleanly cut, ready for the butcher’s slab; I know they are all my doing. I am proud and slap the nearest, feeling the cool clean flesh against my palm. I know this: it is what I do. I name each part: the shank, the loin, the flank, the rib, the wing, the blade, the clod, the words sinking into some deep, comforting place. I am a slaughter-man. It is all I am. A plain and simple man.

Let sleep come, I beg the night. The soft delight in which I take such pleasure. Where there is neither fear nor worry. It does not hear my prayer. The questions torment me. Why do I not bleed? How can I heal like this? I feel the granite ice of my mind begin to crack with such a groaning that it rends me head to heel. A cleft appears and light spears through the chink, casting fearsome shadows. I want to force myself shut, return to that safe vacancy where all is quiet. Yet I am also ravenous. I hunger to know what is in that great light, what I might discover when I shine the lamp of understanding upon myself.

I struggle with the need to know and the need to run. I blunder into nothingness: a dark room, darker than the inside of closed eyes, where I hold out my hands and pat the black air, afraid of stumbling into walls, or ditches, or worse. A day ago, I was a wiped plate. I was empty, clean, untouched. Now, I stand in the slaughter-house and see my body cut open, peeled by my own hand and yet healing. I do not want this body. I am too frightened to close my eyes again, for fear of what I might find there.

The next morning, Alfred does not need to rouse me, for I am already awake.

‘Let’s get to work,’ he grunts, and it is all the greeting I have from him.

I want his smile, the warmth of his eyes when I call him friend, the easy way he guides me into the day. We walk in silence, the air freezing between us. I try to think of a topic of conversation that does not involve cutting. I fail, so great is my need to be unburdened.

‘Yesterday. It was – strange,’ I try.

‘Indeed? I don’t recall,’ he snarls and hides his face behind his collar.

‘But, Alfred—’

‘Oh, can I have no peace? There’s nothing to talk about, Abel. Nothing.’

I grasp his shoulder and swing him about. All I want to do is talk to him. I do not understand why he will not listen.

‘Abel, get your hands off me. You’re really pushing your luck.’

‘Alfred, I am …’

My voice quavers, and his features soften. He takes my arm and pulls me to the wall, glancing up and down the street.

‘All right, all right; if you are truly that upset. Let me help you, then. Tell me.’

‘In truth? You want to hear?’

He sighs. ‘Yes, I do.’

‘Yesterday, when I cut myself …’ I gasp. ‘You saw it. I healed.’ I chew on the words, straining to free themselves from my mouth.

‘Very well. I saw it. But it wasn’t so deep. Perhaps.’

‘I did it again,’ I breathe.

‘Oh, come now. No you didn’t,’ he says, forcing a brightness I do not share. It does not ease my confusion.

‘Last night. While you slept.’

‘You’re mistaken. Maybe you had a nightmare. Don’t carry on so.’

‘Alfred—’

‘This is too strange for me, Abel. You’re a man like any other.’

‘What if I am not?’

‘You are. Think it and you can make it so. Come now, give me a smile and leave it be.’

‘But don’t you ever have strange thoughts about your body?’

‘Thoughts?’ He looks startled, and draws closer. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘But, Alfred—’

‘But Alfred, but Alfred,’ he sneers, in a mincing mimic of my voice. ‘Let’s get breakfast and drop this.’

‘I am not hungry.’

‘Christ, I thought I was in a bad mood,’ he snaps, and sticks his hands into his pockets. ‘But you take the bloody biscuit.’

We walk on in silence. I wish I could take back my words.

‘Alfred. Please do not be angry with me.’

‘Shut up, Abel. You’re tiring me out and we haven’t even started work yet.’

It is a long walk to the slaughter-house. From the first beast brought in, I find myself looking over my shoulder, starting at every twitch of thought, wary of where my mind might lead me. However, no fearsome pictures come to plague me. I would like to be sure it is the force of my will that keeps me free, but I cannot be sure.

I lift my arm, let it fall, and another carcase splits down the middle, the meat pale in the weak light. I push it aside and they bring in the next. It is easy work, the easiest I know. For all that I try to lose myself in the raising and falling of the cleaver, the line of uncountable carcases waiting to be split by my firm and unerring blow, my mind will not let off its needling.

I am steeled to drop my blade and run at the first intimation of strangeness; I keep my sleeve buttoned at the cuff. I do not want to be catching sight of my healed arm all the time for it continues to fill me with a sick feeling.

I do not want to drowse, do not want to be taken to any place but here, do not want to see the things I have seen. I press my attention to the slaughter-work with a great passion, and in under an hour every hook is hanging with the carcases of the beasts I have killed. My companions are delighted with the speed of the work, and go outside to smoke a pipe. For all their friendliness, I do not wish for company, so I busy myself cleaning all of the cleavers.

I am confused. I should be dead. Every beast I have ever slaughtered tells me the plain truth of it. When a man is cut, he should stay cut. But I heal; and even more disquietingly, I do not even bleed. When a man is drowned, he is drowned. But not me: they tell me I was as good as a drowned man when they pulled me out of the river. I am no better than any other man.

I have heard over and over how I am a miracle: spewed up on to the banks of the Thames. How no man comes out alive after supping on its liquor, but I stood up from my bed after three days, was working in less than two weeks. I do not disbelieve the tale; but it could have happened to a different man. I cannot remember my tumble into the river, nor anything before: nothing of home, father, mother.

Alfred tells me it will return to me in time. But what if I am concealing some terrible secret from myself? I fear what I might have forgotten. Is that what I was so close to discovering when I cut myself last night? Am I running from some ghastly crime? Am I evil? Maybe I am a thief, a footpad, a murderer and do not know it. I shake these wonderings from my head: I do not want to fall into distraction and cut myself again.

Why not? breathes the voice in my head, quite calm and reasonable. You will heal. You have seen it.

I look at myself in the bright edge of the steel blade. I see brown eyes edged with dark lashes, a beaked nose, a broad mouth. Not the face of a wolf, or a bear. A man.

This is what you are, says the voice. However different or strange, you are a man.

I am not convinced. I shake the voice away, for all its kindness, and examine the sides of beef, hoping the sight of their symmetry might calm me. As I watch, the nearest carcase starts to sway in a current of air I cannot feel, gently back and forth.

The meat grows darker, oozing with moisture. The ribs swell out, only to be sucked in. It is breathing; air whistling through the severed windpipe, the stump of its neck twisting from side to side, searching for its missing head. Then the forelegs start to twitch, straining to touch the floor; the hind legs kick out to free themselves from the meat-hook.

Then they all begin: every dangling carcase dancing, thrashing back and forth on the hooks; fighting to free themselves, to find their scattered parts and knit themselves back together.

I hack at the monster that began this vile waltz; but with each slash it grows ever more frantic, as it fights to be free. I do not know what to do – there is no throat to cut nor heart to slice out, these things having been done already – yet I strike and strike again at the dead thing for there is nothing else for me to do, but it will not lie still, and I weep with the ghastly hopelessness of it. A hand grips my shoulder and the axe falls from my hand.

‘You, man!’ shouts a voice, and I turn to see the face of my pay-master. ‘What are you doing?’ he bellows.

I open and close my mouth.

He presses his face close to mine. ‘I said, what in damnation are you doing?’

My mouth is empty.

‘Look!’ he bawls, punching me so hard I stagger backwards. ‘Look, you bastard!’ he shouts again, and I do look: at shredded pieces of flesh and bone on the floor, the remains of the carcase hanging before me. All is still.

‘Waste my fucking meat, would you? You fucking lunatic. Get out of here and don’t come back.’

I stare at the floor, at the quiet bones.

‘I said, sod off.’

He thumps me again. I slip on a piece of fat and barely save myself from falling. He picks up my blade, brandishes it.

‘Now. Get out. Unless you want to replace the carcase you’ve just ruined. I always knew you were trouble.’

I run. On the street I drag off my apron and let it fall into the gutter. I stare at it a long time. Alfred finds me there when he leaves work, for I have forgotten the way back to our lodgings. We walk in silence. When we arrive, I do not know what to do except lie down.

I barely have time to close my eyes before the silt of my mind stirs and a picture floats up, urgent as a stream of bubbles from the bottom of a pond. I am scrambling over coiled rope, thick as a man’s thigh, headlong to the stern of a boat, its deck treacherous with oil and lurching from side to side in mountainous seas. I’m almost thrown off my feet as the hulk heels sharply.

I grip the iron railing and peer into the dashing spume of the sea, far below. Jump, commands the voice of the waters. My arms await you. I haul myself up the rungs to sway on the topmost bar.

‘Wait for me: I am coming!’ I yelp into the filthy spray.

The wind smacks the words back into my mouth.

Hurry, I will not wait.

Suddenly there are other voices: men approaching, screaming. I know the words mean Stop, come down, madman. I shall not be turned aside. This is not madness. This is escape. If falling on to land cannot kill me, then perhaps the death granted by water might.

I jump, and am sucked down into a darkness cut into small flickering pieces; my jaw falls open at the hinge, mouth taking in a slow river of silt, filling my lungs with cold hard fists. Weed slops around my tongue like a woman’s hair; the water is a stone in my lungs but there is no pain, no fire.

I move a piece of wood and it is my arm; I beat it against my face until the bridge of my nose swings towards my left eye. My arms do not break the surface; they stir the rusty mud and hide the broken window of the light, burrowing me deeper and deeper into the long night of the ocean.

The mouths of fish flay me to the bone; as fast as they nibble the fruit of my flesh, it restores itself. They return to feed on me, over and over. I beg the sea to grind me into mulch, for I ache to lie still for ever. I shall not come out, I wail. But it pushes me away. Throws me out, on to earth. I surface from tea-brown water, flesh boggy from its long stewing, gasping for my first breath as the new air slaps life into my lungs. But I want to die, cries the voice of my soul.

The heavy embrace of the river resolves into the hands of children searching through my pockets, fingers boring holes into my shoulders as they strip me. My ears unlock to their complaints.

Not much here.

Not so much as a bloody wipe.

Waste of bloody time.

He’s a dead one.

I want to be a dead one for them. Blood settles in a slow night-fall into the pouches of my cheeks. The muscles of my face remember; begin to knit and heal and make me whole again, and they are never tired. I am already forgetting that I have done this. My body remembers, and keeps it secret. I go forward into darkness, into the fear. To find that light I saw and lost.