The Knife Sharpener (4)

4.

He wore stained corduroy beige slacks, with a frayed leather belt, a few shredded notches short of ripping, tucked under an overflowing belly. A white crew neck t shirt, covered in yellow sweat and brown gravy stains. Patchy facial hair and one eye drawn into a narrow slit. A hand rolled Champion cigarette dangled from the corner of his thin-lipped mouth. Slight odour: tobacco, musk, and steel.

            He sat behind the steering wheel of a rust beat Toyota panel van and played Neil Diamond’s ‘Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon’ on fuzzy cassette. A dilapidated air freshener hung from the rear view mirror and empty fast food wrappers covered the floor of the passenger side. He held the accelerator at an unremarkable 75 kilometres an hour. Not sure if it will go any faster and certainly unable to afford to go any slower. Industry, outer west Melbourne suburbs, and warehouses pass by. A few milkbars peeling at the façade. A few stop signs. Not a lot of traffic lights. Not a lot of traffic out here but for some semis and old sedans.

            His name is Helmut Isa. Occupation, knife sharpener. Mobile and on call. Tools of his trade firmly strapped down in the rear of the van, wrapped in velvet and stashed carefully in a tin box.

He checked his old cracked flip phone Samsung for the next set of chefs in need. En route. Put it down and scratched his thigh with crust thick nails.

            The soggy filter of his nearly finished cigarette was stuck to some stray whiskers growing from a deep dimple. Helmut cranked the window down and flicked the moist butt to the street. He drove on. Swiped his pants of scattered ash with the back of a scar crisscrossed hand. Clamped back onto his large 7/11 coffee. Still hot from ten minutes ago. A sip and momentary contentment in bitter burnt beans.

            Another Diamond song, ‘Cherry, Cherry.’ Oh, gonna show me tonight, yeah. Fingers on the wheel loosen, tap a little. His knuckles creak and dust falls to the van floor. On down the road. Exhaust fumes mix with factory fumes and it’s all a kind of concrete grey. A clean shaved homeless man in a clear plastic rain coat, hood up, swigs a longneck in paper and waves. Closed factories that once made cardboard and tin cans.

Over the bridge he could see commerce and silver. Skyscrapers of straight lines shivered in flashes of sunlight between low hung clouds. Artful minimalisms of glass and steel that house excesses in the billions. Here was the convergence of all radial lines. The end of all roads. Around him, there are more cars. Sedans and coupes and SUVs. Clean and reflective with tinted windows. Then the motoboys weaving traffic on scooters and dirt bikes, deliveries on their backs.

            Another Champion cigarette is balanced on his lip. Tim Buckley playing on cassette. All the stony people | Walking ‘round in Christian licorice clothes. 1973 live recording. The track buzzed and murmured. The panel van mounted the beginning of the West Gate Bridge, slows back to 55. Helmut took his hand off the wheel to tap ash into an empty coffee cup.

A series of texts on his Samsung:

Need ya at The Wasatch

OK. 3pm.

His digital clock behind oil smeared glass on the dashboard reads: 1330. It should take him a half an hour from here, depending on post long lunch traffic in the outskirts of the CBD. Few too many Burgundy’s and cars crawl in suspicion of the undercover constabulary.

An ivory BMW pulled up beside the Toyota to overtake. Helmut could see the driver wearing leather gloves, Ray-Bans, and a blue suit. How he sits back, easing the automobile through the crowded bridge one handed. The passenger, likely corporate, maybe political, behind blacked out windows. See Helmut’s reflection: a balding scalp with a loosely tied ponytail and drawn cheeks. Teeth clamped down on his cigarette. The sunshine reminds you of concreted skies. The BMW pulled away and flowed into the lane ahead, full of other BMWs and a few Mercedes. Not many semis coming in on a Thursday.

The work waits for him.