Chop Chop Read Online Free PDF

He turned his hands over leisurely, continuing the show. On the back of his other hand, a purple scar the size of an egg marked some old traumatic burn.
    â€œThese are the hands of a chef,” he said. “The hands say everything.”
    I was to learn that Bob did not give a spit about a person’s accomplishments or curriculum bloody vitae. His preferences were altogether more violent and arcane. Bob wanted soldiers, psychopaths and masochists. He wanted people who would do and suffer anything for him. To each new recruit he would raise his enormous fists, slowly twisting them open and closed, and show off the throng of welts and bruises and scars, scars within scars, that ran across them, as if each one were a medal. As if each wound made him a better man.
    Bob had seen my hands and he knew what I was not, but if I could hack it in the kitchen, he said, I could still be of use to him. Fifteen minutes later I stood before him in a knackered T-shirt and a pair of Bob’s enormous checkered chef’s trousers, the elastic exhausted totally, held up with a plastic wrap belt. The ensemble was completed with a dusty black chef’s cap and my hiking boots, last worn for a camping holiday in the Lake District where he (the other arsehole, not Bob) couldn’t get the fire lit and drove off to the pub in a strop and we sat there for hours in the cold damp dark, waiting for him to return.
    â€œJust the basics,” Bob told Racist Dave. “He’s green.”
    Dave looked at me. As if, in that outfit, there could have been any doubt.
    â€œFucking hell,” he said. “I need backup. I need a chef de partie.”
    â€œI’ve got one coming in on trial next week,” said Bob. “Russian name. Ramadov or something.”
    â€œSo I’m on seven doubles,” said Dave.
    â€œLooks that way,” Bob grinned. “I’ll be in the office.”
    â€œYou,” Dave turned to me. “Do you know how to wash salad?”
    I thought I did. I didn’t. I removed too much of the dandelion leaves and too little of the watercress stalks. My hands kept going numb in the water. The salad came out of the spinner too wet and had to be put through again. I thought I knew how to chop onions too. Again, it turned out I did not.
    â€œNo,” said Dave, already losing patience. “This is how.”
    He cut the onion in half and pulled out the root, then cut through it lengthways, in five-millimeter intervals, without cutting all the way, then drew the blade through horizontally, again not cutting all the way, then turned the onion half ninety degrees and brought the knife down in five-millimeter intervals once more, reducing the onion to a dice. He scrapped the cut onion deftly into a container and returned to his section.
    It looked easy enough. I put the knife to the onion and cut downward in intervals. So far, so good. Growing in confidence, I turned the blade on its side and, holding the onion tightly, drew the knife decisively across the onion and straight into my waiting thumb. Dave’s knife was very sharp. It sung through my flesh so cleanly that for a moment I thought I had got away with it. Just a nick after all. But then the blood began and no amount of persuasion would stop it. And as the blood drained out of me, the panic poured in. It was the day my brother found the wasps’ nest all over again.
    â€œI didn’t ask for red onions,” said Dave, looking over. This, I now realize, was very witty for him.
    He sent me off to the dry store to look for a bandage, but thewound would not stop bleeding and the bandages kept slipping off. I have never been good with blood: since my brother, whenever I see the slightest cut I worry that it will not stop. I worry, and I am reminded of things I would rather forget. I was struggling with all of this when the quiet dark-eyed girl came in. She stood in the doorway, legs planted slightly apart, her eyes fixed upon me.