by Simon Wroe
“It was only a matter of time before something like that happened,” she said with great seriousness. “You were lucky to get out alive.”
For a second I wondered if she knew the truth of it.
“A pair of arseholes,” she went on. “They deserve each other.”
Her understanding: I was the innocent caught between two warring devils.
“I like Ramilov,” I told her.
She looked at me and shook her head sadly.
“No,” she said.
I did like Ramilov, despite the terrible thing he did. Perhaps that’s wrong of me, and I should now be trying to disown him. Is it possible to recognize someone’s good deeds without tacitly condoning their bad ones? Though that night in the cell had twisted all my feelings, I still hoped to see him freed at the first opportunity. I decided not to push the point with Harmony, however. We were speaking; she was grateful to see me, relieved I was alive. This was the most important thing in the world right now. Why ruin it?
“If you ever need to talk to anyone,” she was saying.
This was an opportunity to be seized.
“I’d like that,” I said.
If she was surprised by my haste she didn’t show it.
“But not here,” I told her. “Why don’t we go to the park?”
“All right.” She smiled.
“Next Monday, then?” I asked. Excitement was wreaking havoc with the modulations of my voice and I was struggling to control it. “We can go for a walk.”
—
Excerpt from Ramilov’s letters, no. 5: Know your chefs.
A very good rule. Some chefs want fussy presentation; some want simplicity. There is no ideal form of a dish. If you put heaven on a plate, someone will always complain that it’s too salty or not salty enough. Some like the risotto to be liquid, almost soupy; others want it to stand up by itself. Some will chop the top of a monkey’s head off when asked to; others will not. Some bring their world into the kitchen with them; others come from far away with their possessions in a duffel bag and a past they never tell.
In the police station holding cell Ramilov said he knew what he was doing, that I should let him handle it. I was too nice for prison, he said, making nice sound like a dirty word, but an ugly, bad-tempered, skull-looking bloke like him could have a fairly quiet time of it.
—
Excerpt from Ramilov’s letters, no. 6: Justice in England is open to all—just like the Ritz.
I don’t think this is one of Ramilov’s, but he says it. The Fat Man has employed some very expensive lawyers who are demanding the maximum possible sentence for Ramilov. But Ramilov’s duty solicitor, an exhausted man of uneven stubble whose tie bears many greasy scales of justice, says they are unlikely to get it. There are mitigating circumstances, not to mention the small matter of why The Fat Man was trying to eat an ape in the first place. I am not filled with confidence. If this fellow misses bits of stubble on his face every morning, what else is he going to miss?
Of course there is a better reason for The Fat Man’s lawyers to fail. That is the truth, though Ramilov will be furious with me for saying it.
He did not stab The Fat Man.
I did.
5. FORGIVENESS RATHER THAN PERMISSION
I felt the anger rising up in me. I saw his intentions to hold Ramilov and Dave and my father, all of us, in fear forever. I heard that wicked mouth bring Sam into it. I let the footprint of history trample my better judgment. I clenched my fist around the cleaver as The Fat Man sneered. I buried it into his straining side. I never wanted to stab him, but he kept shouting and needling—“Be a good son. . . . Don’t disappoint your poor old dad”—he made me do it. I laid him out. Monocle. Me. The commis. The fly. On the page, blood is a smooth cleft of a word with high, protecting sides. It is a word, like bed, that was meant for lying in. But as The Fat Man ran crimson at my feet I realized the word and the thing were not the same.
Ramilov made me promise not to tell. He insisted that prison was no place for a massive-faced youth such as I; he could not have it on his conscience. It had all happened so fast anyway, he went on, perhaps he had done it. But I remembered every frame of that last argument with The Fat Man even if Ramilov did not, and I knew what I had done. No matter, he said, sometimes there was a greater truth than fact, and I would have to take his word for it. He had ruined the Gloriana, as The Fat Man said, by leaving it out of the fridge overnight to fester. And he had phoned the Food Standards Authority the day of the dinner, an anonymous call, telling them they would find grounds for closure if they visited the restaurant. He had killed The Swan, he had hurt us all. Amends were called for. Though I could not see him from my cell his voice was desperate, cracking as he spoke. It sounded a lot like he was crying, which was strange, as Ramilov was not the type to cry over a rotten turkey or a failed restaurant, and certainly not over any grief Bob might have incurred.
All that was by the by, I told him. I had stabbed The Fat Man, and I must pay for it. This was one responsibility I couldn’t ignore. Ramilov gave a long exhalation of breath and was quiet awhile before he spoke again.
“You don’t get it, do you?” he whispered sadly. “They’ve got a warrant out for my arrest in Leeds. All that stuff The Fat Man said about the girl—it’s true.”
I could not hear it, not then. He had become a mentor to me. I could not rewrite him.
“No, Ramilov, you didn’t.”
“She wasn’t thirteen. . . . More like fifteen,” he pleaded. “And very mature for her age. I swear I thought she was older.”
“Oh, Christ.”
“Very soon these police officers are going to put all this together,” Ramilov continued, “and I’ll be put away for a long time. I’m not walking out of here tomorrow, I know that. I deserve that. But you don’t. . . . Only one of us has to go to prison. You could still be free.”
“I’m not going to let you take the blame for my crime,” I told him.
“You fucking idiot!” he shouted. “I’m not a good person! I’ve done shitty things all my life! I’ve never been good. I’m asking you. . . . I’m telling you. . . . Let me do something good.”
Spiritually, this argument caught me off guard. The force of his words, pushed through the bars of that holding cell, threw me, and I confess I eventually yielded to his demands. Ramilov made me promise not to tell a soul I did it, and I gave him my word.
But ever since I have been haunted by the idea of Ramilov in prison. Whatever crimes he may have committed, he is innocent of one. I worry about how the wardens treat him, about his cellmate’s sense of humor. His letters are always terse, reasonably upbeat—I wonder what they hide. I think of that single night I spent behind bars: the hard bed, the locked door, the stainless steel toilet bowl, the absence of belts and shoelaces, your life around your ankles, the eyes at the door, the terrible weight. Above all, the shame. Night after night, who knows what that must do to a man?
And so, finally, my guilt has won out. Guilt, you understand, for letting another suffer for my actions, for always letting others suffer for my actions—not for any pain The Fat Man might have experienced. It would have been more poetic if that gross tyrant had been attacked by one of his dishes or burst an artery laughing at someone’s misfortune, that’s all I will concede. On that score I have no regrets (though late at night, when I am alone, I do still see the cleaver opening him up, scoring through the soft fat and flesh, and wish I could forget it). But serving justice to one has dealt injustice to another, and this is what piques my guilt. Ramilov would no doubt say that guilt is a selfish emotion, that he is not an innocent man, that justice steers its own course, and that he’ll kill me himself when he gets out.
I have given the matter a lot of thought. To ruin a man’s great redeeming statement might, I think, be more brutal than putting a cleaver in his guts. I am sorry if I have thwarted Ra
milov’s shot at absolution, but I could not leave the truth unsaid. This is my smart apology for a savage act. Whatever comes of this confession, I shall accept.
6. TAIL END
Racist Dave thinks I have used the word personally too many times and the word gash not nearly enough. He says he would have put in less of the love bollocks and maybe more of his cooking triumphs instead, like when he did 130 covers by himself on the Sunday after our first trip to Mr. Michael’s, still so spannered that he couldn’t talk, or more about how he saved the croquembouche and less about how poor diddums’s hand got burned afterward. He is still sore about my buzzing around the story and wishes I possessed a more constant, focused mind. He is generally appalled by the literary allusions and claims he has been misquoted on a number of occasions. He would like to clarify that he was merely stating the opinions of others when he said, “The fucking Pakis are coming through the Channel Tunnel,” in chapter 3. Dave is also of the opinion that this whole story would have worked better as a musical, with a nice chorus line of waitresses, a big Pavarotti-type tenor as Bob and perhaps a choreographed dance sequence based around a Saturday night service. I respect Dave’s opinion but he does not know what he is talking about.
No doubt he will consider this blather as well, but there is an interesting coda to the story of my father. A week or so after the stabbing I came across Glen rooting around in a bin at the corner of the high street and Camden Road. His thin, shambling frame was bent forward at right angles, and with his bony arms he worked the rubbish over, as a swimmer treads water, every so often raising his dark and tilting head to draw breath. Though his heavy overcoat and filthy shoes bore all the hallmarks of long struggle, his eyes were bright and keen. Winter had not diminished him.
It was early and I was not due to start work until eleven. And so, partly in honor of Ramilov, who had always treated the man respectfully, and partly in honor of Harmony, whose act of charity outside my window that night had made such an impression, I asked Glen if he wanted some breakfast. He did, and promptly ordered four bacon sandwiches and five cups of tea as soon as we sat down in the greasy spoon. I was happy to feed him for a little closure. What had really happened, I wanted to know, between him and One-Eyed Bruce that day?
Glen, between mouthfuls, said he did not have a clue what I was on about.
I realized my fictions had got ahead of me. One-Eyed Bruce was my name for him. I rephrased the question.
“The Rasta with the white eye. You were having a fight about apples in the street.”
“Oh, him,” Glen said without interest. “You mean Neil.”
Neil? My mortal enemy of the last eight months, the adversary who woke each morning with the intention of bathing in my blood, my sworn tormentor, was called Neil? The world buckled a little under the weight of this new information. There was no One-Eyed Bruce, just as there was surely no Rosemary Baby or Charming Man or The Last Lehman Brother. The supporting characters in my story threatened to float clean away. If they left, what then? Racist Dave, Mr. Michael and The Fat Man would all expect proper names, and Darik, Shahram, Dibden and Ramilov too. And I would not be able to get away with calling myself Monocle any longer, and would have to use my real name. The thought of it was too appalling to consider. So I did the only reasonable thing: I ignored what Glen had said.
“What happened?” I asked again.
“Trying to steal my apples, wasn’t he?” said Glen. “Too crooked to steal his own.”
“I saw that,” I told him, remembering how my father had come running out of the bookie’s to join the fracas. “There was another man in the fight too, wasn’t there?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Glen. “I thought he was after my apples too”—he wrapped his long piano player fingers into a fist around the bread and bacon—“but the next day he came up to me in the street and gave me something worth quite a bit, said I should buy myself some more apples.”
This was a shock to me. A revelation. My father, with his bent pound shop spoons and his “If you want me to leave you’ll have to pay me” attitude, responsible for this act of grace? It was supernatural. But perhaps, I thought, I had read my father wrong. Perhaps he was as capable of goodness as anyone else, his heel-like qualities notwithstanding. As Ramilov had proved, the great acts of charity were not always where you would think of looking. And even though the apples in question had been stolen, it was still a noble gesture. He had fought for the little man, and with that apple money he had helped him survive the cold hard winter. Those apples had sustained Glen. A bright bushel of health amid the Camden canker, they had kept him going. Alone, the gesture did not excuse my father’s conduct of the last fifteen years. Yet it opened up an avenue of possibility. It made my father a candidate for redemption.
“And did you?” I asked, almost choking with happiness.
“Did I what?” said Glen.
“Did you buy more apples with the money?”
“Fuck no,” said Glen. “I spent it on booze.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah,” Glen added, “thirty quid I got for that silver swan. The man at Cash Converters said it was an antique.”
Don’t even trust your own father. Some thanks I get for raising you. You think I’d come to your place of work and put you in that position? You think me so cheap? Well, go on, search my stuff. You’ll find nothing. I’ll bet money on it.
The lying git. Truly, the man had no shame. But even this information held a ray of hope for my father—he had chosen to give the silver swan to someone in need. It was a criminal act, but not a selfish one, and somehow that made it easier to forgive. But why was I always so keen to forgive him, this put-upon sneak, this worming pariah? In that moment I realized I still loved my father, even if I didn’t always like him.
—
Now our northern friend is urging me to crack on. No time, he says, no time. All right, Dave, but there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy.
At midday on Monday I waited at the Camden Town Tube station for the quiet dark-eyed girl. There was a knot in my intestines the size of a cantaloupe. Strange to say it, but I was more nervous at this moment than I had been in the holding cell, awaiting my fate, arguing with Ramilov about who would take the blame. I will. No, I will. It meant almost nothing that she had agreed, on her day off, to come to the park with me. Almost nothing, but not quite. Days off were rare and sacred occasions, particularly since Ramilov’s detainment. She could have given me a thousand excuses for not being there. But she had said yes, and I could not imagine that had anything to do with the scenery.
The escalator brought her toward me, no silver dress this time, no halo, but beautiful all the same, that long river of black hair released, flowing free once more. I saw her long before she saw me. As she got closer I pretended not to recognize her, looking through her as if she were just another girl, but the act soon fell apart, much to my relief. Outside, sunlight poured into the streets below. It fell onto us, illuminating our tired faces, washing away the shadows. Yes, more metaphor if you want it. Baptism, renewal, divine love: take your pick. What struck me was that, for the first time in six months, I remembered there were other kinds of heat besides the stove.
She was holding out the book I had lent her, The Waste Land.
“Thanks for this,” she said. “He gets the loneliness in the city right, doesn’t he? When he stops poncing about in German.”
So she was lonely in the city too? I hadn’t thought anything could dent her, she was so formidable to me. But I wasn’t quite foolish enough to read it as a weakness admitted. That was a highly conscious reveal. She was opening something up to me.
“Do you want to see the monkeys?” I asked.
“Am I meeting the parents already?” she said.
I would call that a warm sort of insult with romantic potential.
Up Parkway and across the traf
fic junction, Regent’s Park stretched out ahead of us, the vaguely military fences and nets of London Zoo beyond. In the world again, amid all these strangers and faces and expressions, after all those hours in the kitchen. Together, Harmony and I. Me and Harmony. For a moment, when we reached the top of the tree-lined avenue and I gestured for Harmony to follow me into the bushes, a trace of some old distrust passed across her face. Only for a second though, before she was following me through the shrubs on the path Ramilov had picked many times. There at the fence the monkeys could be seen. A wisdom of apes, a darting of exotic creatures high up in the English beeches, their ancient faces—alive despite the Fat Men of this world—turned in curiosity toward us.
I had not given any serious thought to what I would say to her. The thought of “talking things over” I’d accepted as a pretext for getting some time alone. But the last week had not been easy. Now I could only think about the pool of clotting blood on the kitchen floor, the slow spread of darkness around The Fat Man’s frame, his cold sweat against my skin, the cleaver still gripped too tightly in my fingers. I looked at Harmony and felt an overwhelming desire to confess. I had been through it all before with Sam; I could not go through it again. Both times I had lied to my parents, but for some reason I felt I could tell Harmony. She was the only person who might understand, the only one I would allow to judge me. Indeed, I felt I had to tell her: bottling these things up was not good for me.
“It didn’t happen like you think, you know,” I said. And I described the figures beneath the black sheets, the house of sighs, the songbirds and the tiger. I told her about that final night, and the cell, and Ramilov hammered to the wall for his sins in an earlier act. I told her everything. She listened without a word, those dark eyes trained on mine. When I finished she remained silent. That’s it, I thought. Our first date, and I’ve confessed grievous bodily harm. I waited for her to make excuses and move away. But she stayed where she was.