The Knife Block

There is nothing like the sharpness of a kitchen knife. Have you ever had your tongue cut open? The cool vermiculent taste of the knife edge, the warm mouthy taste of blood. A bucket worth squeezed between your teeth, spouting fountain-like into your cupped hands. Catch it all. Don’t waste it. Can medical science put it all back inside you? I don’t know the answer and who are you going to ask with a mouth full of blood? Stand up and run, don’t drop that precious blood and ignore your writhing tongue muscle. Clamp it between your teeth like a piece of meat and run. Run. Run.

—

We’d been given the knife block as a wedding present and for each of those twelve years I had promised Sonya that I’d get the knives sharpened. Finally exasperated and angry our marriage hinged on their resharpening. The knife block contained three different blades made by a Turkish company. There was a bread knife, a boning knife and a kitchen knife all worn and blunt now, like our marriage.

Sonya had said, “I should have just done it myself, saved myself the worry. All those years trying to cut tomatoes for a thousand salads, all that wasted energy.

“I loved your salads,” I said.

“But not enough,” she replied and left without the perfunctory kiss goodbye.

She left me in my pyjamas staring at the knife block, toes curling around the stool legs. I stared at those three knives for sometime and thought of how much they had cut since our wedding. I thought of all the dinner parties and barbecues and morning after breakfasts we’d had together and I almost couldn’t give a damn. Almost. We still had something between us. Perhaps it was just a single sinew of something so slender that even our blunt boning knife could cut it with ease, but it was there. I pulled the bread knife from the block and ran my finger along the side of the scalloped serrations and thought of Sonya’s curves. I pressed the knife hard against my wrist and held it there long enough to leave a mark. It was the very bluntness of the edge that made me cry. As the mark on my wrist faded I decided to get them sharpened. At least next time they would cut when required.

—

I scanned through a decade of fridge magnets, finding five for knife sharpeners. All those empty promises stuck like reminders on the fridge door. I left messages with two of them when the third magnet caught my eye and made me smile: ‘Turkish knife sharpener and fortune teller’. I dialled immediately expecting to leave some silly message on the answering machine but was caught by a low voice wearing a thick accent.

“Hello, fortune telling, hello…?”

“I need to get my knives sharpened, Turkish knives… have I rung the right number? I got your number from a fridge magnet, maybe it was old and you only do fortune telling now but…” I rambled on like this, filling the silence for at least a minute, before I wound down to nothing. After a while she spoke again.

“Hello, fortune telling”

I was about to hang up when she followed with, “…and knife sharpening”

“So you still sharpen knives then, I have knives that need to be like new. Will you do this?”

“Bring them to me today, I will see. Carry them only in the knife block and see me at three. Three knives at three. Okay?.

“Okay. Who do I ask for when I bring them in?”

“Neva”, she said and hung up.

Three knives at three, easy to remember I thought. It was sometime later that I realised I hadn’t told her how many knives I had.

—

The shop was across town and I drove there with the knife block seatbelted into the front seat like an adopted child. The Turkish son that might bring Sonya and I a little closer again. I picked it up in both arms and stepped out of the car. There was a sign painted on the window that said ‘Turkish Fortune Telling’ and a smaller sign on the door listing opening times in Turkish. I pushed inside, cradling the knife block, and was met with Turkish music playing faraway out the back somewhere. I felt like a local with my Turkish knives and proudly sat them on the counter and rang the little bell.

Someone shouted in Turkish and I heard a staircase being negotiated before a formidable middle-aged woman appeared through curtains and said:

“Three at three?”

I nodded.

She smiled at me and then her face fell flat and doglike. “These knives are not Turkish,” she said, “these are Greek knives.” She turned and called back through the curtains something vicious I didn’t catch but the Turkish music abruptly stopped.

I felt very bad. I no longer felt like a local. I felt like I had just been caught carrying heroin by the Turkish police. One of my legs began to shake slightly.

“Surely a knife is just a knife” I said with a thin smile.

Neva turned back to face me and stopped. She took a long breath snapping her lips together. I could see that my helpful suggestion was akin to spitting at her children. She walked across the room and opened another curtain.

“In there,” she pointed, “and bring the knife block.”

—

“Greek knives are harder to sharpen. More impurities. The steel is of a different grade, in no way superior to a true Turkish knife mind you, just different. Because they damage my sharpening stone they cost more than Turkish knives to repair. I will only sharpen one for you today.

“One at once?”, I said.

“Yes. One at once but for the price of three at three. Okay?”

We were sitting in a small room lit by candles at a table with a bowl of water at its centre. My knife block rested on its side. Neva seemed to be calmer now and examined the blades while she talked. She had laid the three knives across the table like tarot cards.

“So which is it to be?”, she signalled for me to select a knife. I had the distinct feeling that I was doing much more than simply choosing a knife. I thought of Sonya and her tomato salad and how the little things could make a big difference and chose the kitchen knife. A sensible choice, I thought; the perfect tomato cutter. A sharp knife to reset a marriage.

Neva froze. She began to cough. She muttered words I didn’t understand and suddenly stood up, grabbed the kitchen knife and ran out of the room. In the distance I heard a man’s voice and the application of steel on stone. I heard men whispering and I heard Neva’s voice above the others. And then I heard the little bell at the front of the shop ring with a new customer. Neva cried out her Turkish greeting and made her way to the counter.

“Hello, my friend” Neva said, “fortune telling again so soon? Is every second day not enough for you?”

And then I froze. For it was Sonya’s voice I heard next. “Neva, I’m leaving my husband tonight and I need to know if I’m doing the right thing. Oh Neva, I’m so exhausted with all this thinking”

My breathing stopped still as I strained to listen.

Neva called out again in Turkish and I heard an old man answer her. “I’ve ordered you some Turkish coffee. Now come Sonya let’s see what’s to be done. No not in there, I have another customer waiting there – with Greek knives (she whispered). Yes of course it’s okay, I always have time for you, through here”.

And I heard them walk into the room beside mine. Hanging Persian rugs separated us but I felt exposed. I heard Neva splashing water in a bowl and I heard everything that Sonya said as though she were directing it to me.

“There is nothing left between us, nothing. I look in his eyes and only see more reasons why I have to leave him. He doesn’t care. Every night I pretend to be the good wife, every night I prepare the dinner and…”

Here Neva interrupted, “…still with the blunt knives”

“So blunt, so blunt… You know how many tomatoes I’ve tried to cut”

“…Still with the tomatoes” I thought.

“And your new lover? tell me more about him”, Neva said. This time my heart stopped and I bit my knuckles to hide the pain.

“He is a man from the Ivory coast of Africa as black as a knife handle. He is kind and gentle and attentive. You know they have a pick-up line in West Africa. He used it on me. The mans says, “I am the knife” and the woman replies “…and I am the meat”.

“And are his knives sharp?” asked Neva.

“You bet” said Sonya and they both laughed out loud.

I was shaking when the curtain flew open and an old Turkish man stood there brandishing my kitchen knife. He took aim and threw it into my knife block its point digging into the wood a good inch.

“Neva!” he cried and then some Turkish. She came running into the room, pushing past the rugs and exchanged words with the man. Pointing she said, “Your kitchen knife is ready. He says as a favour he will do one more. He says a wife needs more than one knife to make her happy. He says he will sharpen the boning knife as well. I told him that one knife is enough for today. I said to him, why does his wife need more than one knife? Is she a knife block I say? But he insists”

And they hurry back out to the sharpening stone arguing with each other and laughing, boning knife in his hand.

They leave me with the kitchen knife and my breathing and the gentle breeze of the hanging rugs still waving from their departure. The kitchen knife now vacillates like a dagger in front of me. I pull it from the knife block and smell its freshly sharpened edge. It smells like fury. I run its warm flat surface against my forehead, the perspiration catches on it and wets it all over, lubricating both handle and blade. I am standing up now and realise I’ve stopped breathing. I am beyond. I push through the hanging rugs towards Sonya. She sees me and tries to scream but her voice catches with the shock. I raise the knife high and I am blinded. My lungs collapse with force and I can’t take a breath. There is a struggle. The knife has gone from my hand and Neva and a multitude of Turkish men hold me to the ground. They all yell at each other, one of them brandishes my empty knife block, now blooded. My head feels like it has been cracked open. Their hot garlic breath pressing me further into the ground. Neva speaks to Sonya with mesmerising force, like a mother to a dying daughter. She tells Sonya to leave, to leave town today and change her name. Be safe and hide with your strong young lover forever, she says. They embrace and then Sonya is gone, carrying our empty knife block of twelve years; ready to be filled with new knives. They bend my arms behind me and open my jaw and pull out my tongue further than it should be possible. Neva leans forward with the kitchen knife and speaks to me in Turkish.

I don’t understand what she is saying.