Chop Chop Read Online Free PDF Page B

They were extraordinarily clear and piercing, those eyes, possessed of a striking light up close. I noticed her nose had a strong Roman accent, not particularly ladylike, but certainly not ugly. The smells of the kitchen, the sweat and grease and smoke, seemed to part around her. She traveled with a lighter scent. Sighing, she extended a hand toward my huddled, bleeding form. I was feeling very wretched and thought this a great kindness.
    â€œThank you,” I told her.
    â€œMove,” she said curtly. She pushed me aside and pulled a tub of mustard off the shelf. Then she left. A dark moment for the ego. There would be some vigorous tweezering in the mirror later.
    A ferocious-looking man came in carrying a stack of pots. He regarded me in silence. Clearly, the look on his face said, You are something that does not belong here, a large and useless thing taking up valuable space, a beach ball in a bomb shelter. He put the pans down in a corner and left. I was left alone again to wonder what I was doing in this kitchen full of hard and hateful people. I didn’t even like cooking. But a short while later the big silent man returned and threw me a plastic glove. It clung snugly to my damaged hand and, though it quickly filled with blood to resemble a set of diabolical udders, I found that if I angled my hand downward I could avoid bleeding all over the establishment. I thanked the kitchen porter, whose look had softened to a grim pity, pity for the useless object in the middle of a war.
    Eventually I pulled myself together and returned to the kitchenwhere the half-chopped onion sat mocking. I finished chopping it and announced to Dave, with some pride, that the job was done. It had been touch and go for a minute, indeed that vegetable had almost destroyed me, but I had won in the end.
    â€œI don’t want one onion chopped,” he said. “What am I going to do with one fucking onion? Do the whole bag.”
    The whole bag?
It was the size of a turkey. I struggled to lift it. No one in their right mind needed so many onions. That day I realized I knew nothing about food or cooking. Also, more worryingly, nothing about people or communication. Months of fiction in that armchair, and years of studying it before that, had left me dealing with life at reading speed. Conversations passed me by while I was still formulating a response. People here dealt with one another so firmly, with no concerns for the nuances of situation. Violent, ugly scenes were followed by swift resolves. A passage of action Dostoevsky might have covered in thirty pages was done and dusted in thirty seconds.
    A strange and terrifying world. A world for my brother, not for me.
    â€”
    Later, as I was peeling garlic on the back bench, Dave asked me to step into the yard with him. I was surprised to see it was dark out, and I realized I had lost track of time. While I had been inside, the day had drifted into a cool, starless night. The moment in the dry store aside, I had not thought once about tweezering the spot between my eyebrows until I made it raw. At some point it had rained. The bench and empty oil drums were damp with small archipelagos of water. There were still trays of stew and pots of sauce and boxes of vegetables sitting about, but they were different from the ones that had been there that morning.
    â€œSmoke?” He held out a cigarette. “You will,” he said when I refused.
    He lit his cigarette and tugged grimly at it. I had the job if I wanted it, he said. The commis post at The Swan was mine to turn down.
    I felt the muscles in my back tightening as they cooled. I felt the arches of my feet dull as lead. I felt my hand on the frame of the kitchen door, gripping it tight, primed to pull myself through it or push myself from it and move in curt, decisive movements, to move like a chef. I looked down at my numbed and scarred hands. Not the same soft and feckless examples I had walked in with that morning. I thought