The Knife Sharpener (13)

13.

The man driving the van was calm. Steering through the Dandenong Rd traffic. The air was suffused with cigarettes and wet steel. Nichola could hear her heart. Feel the leather wrapped handle of the knife in her hands.

            ‘Sorry,’ she said.

            The man didn’t respond. Nichola was confused by his seeming disinterest. She had clearly surprised him when he saw her in the back of the van. But after a brief detour into the next lane in shock, he had managed to get control of his emotions and the van. She couldn’t make her body stop throbbing with adrenaline. Like an itch under her skin. A need to move and fidget. She didn’t dare. She wasn’t strapped into anything and the knife was still in her grasp.

            ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

            The man peered to her from the rear-view mirror. His eyes were flinty green.

            ‘Helmut,’ he said.

            Nichola waited for him to ask her name. He didn’t. Just kept driving. Steering away from Wattletree Rd. Headed towards Caulfield. The van seemed to be straining to hold onto the 70 kilometre per hour speed limit. A low thumping rattle came from his tool box on the passenger seat. Around them cars cruised past easily.

She shifted back onto her heels and Helmut opened the middle console. He grabbed some Champion tobacco and rolling papers. There was a stack of tape cassettes in there. Labelled mostly with the names of men Nichola had never heard of. She watched as he alternated between driving the van and rolling a cigarette. Using hands and knees as required. Lit up and let his breath out slowly. A whisper of grey mist curling. He saw her in the rear-view mirror again. She coughed as the smoke wafted past and around her.

‘Would you mind?’ she asked.

He cracked the window. The cigarette vapour was pulled out and trailed behind them like string.

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’m Nichola.’

‘Okay,’ he said.

‘What were you doing there? At their Church?’

‘Going to sharpen their knife. They didn’t have it.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I have it.’

‘Yes.’

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘No. Not for stealing the knife.’

He didn’t respond. Puffed on his cigarette.

‘For breaking into your van,’ said Nichola. ‘Using you as my getaway.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘They’re really bad people.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I saw.’

‘You did? What did you see?’

Helmut smoked and tapped the steering wheel. ‘Enough.’

She thought on this a moment. He still appeared relaxed. At ease steering down Dandenong Rd. Not the kind of person who had witnessed trauma. He was too stoic and still. Even his truncated responses, they weren’t a result of distress. Of not being able to process terror. Rather, it was simply his still rhythm. His van working to keep up with the cars around it.

‘Can I?’ she asked, gesturing to move into the passenger seat.

He shrugged and moved his tools to the side. She clambered over the middle console. Put her seatbelt on. For the first time since the bar, she felt a little safe. She placed the tool box at her feet. Eased into a slow release of talk. Mutely startled at how comfortable she felt with his stranger in whose van she had stowed away.

‘My father told me about them,’ Nichola said. ‘The Church. Its members.’

She remembered him at home from work. Hunched over his writing text. Writing and railing. Trying to figure out where he stood in the moral quandaries he encountered between his duty to the Ministry and his distaste at all it upheld. Manifestos he would scribble then ritualistically burn with a box of matches he kept for the nightly occasion. Justifications that were never quite enough. And he would always grab his cricket bat with bruised knuckles and get back to work. Ready to reinforce the status quo. Protect the citizens from themselves.

‘He said, they – those people at the Church, didn’t see themselves as dangerous. Not even as rebels, you know. Rebellion is about change, he told me. They don’t want change. They want everything to go back to them being able to understand their place in the world. Like they used to.’

‘How?’ asked Helmut. His curiosity completely unexpected.

‘We never figured that part out,’ she said. Looked at the knife in her lap. ‘But this is the key. Or, they think it is. Somehow.’

‘A chef’s knife?’ asked Helmut. He glanced over.

It was an unremarkable knife. Light of weight. Well-worn leather wrapped handle. Smokey dark steel. For something so significant, Nichola expected it to radiate. Like menace. Or meaning. Something. But it was completely dull in its projections of significance. Just a stolen chef’s knife once protected by a cult.

‘It is an old knife,’ he said.

‘How do you know?’

‘It is. The handle. The shape. It is an older style.’

‘Looks old.’

‘Maybe, ancient,’ said Helmut, tossing his finished cigarette out the window.

‘They were keeping it on a silk pillow. On top of a marble pillar,’ she said. ‘It was actually kind of gaudy, really. Like they wanted to give it – I don’t know, mythical proportions.’

Helmut kept driving.

‘Where are we going?’ Nichola asked.

‘Not sure.’

‘You can drop me off anywhere.’

He looked at her. At the knife. Then back at the road.

‘I don’t know why I told you all that. About my father. The Church. This knife. Sorry,’ she said.

‘You did.’

‘It isn’t your fight.’

‘Maybe.’

They were near Caulfield Park. It was frosty dark outside. People in large coats walked the streets. Restaurants were filling. Nichola saw a family hunched around a pizza box. Inhaling it on the curb as they strolled back to their home. They watched the van crawl past. Some joggers in the park in full body lycra.

‘Seriously. Here is fine. I can look after myself,’ she said.

‘No,’ he said.

Nichola watched him roll another cigarette. There was an invitation to his silence. She had grown used to quiet. Speaking into it felt natural. And it was comforting now that it spoke back. Not in judgement or anger. Rather, impartial acceptance. She guessed that Helmut was a man who drove his van through – maybe over – the vicious currents of existence without complaint. Just holding it at a steady 70 kilometres per hour. She didn’t think he knew what he was getting into. What she was going to bring. He’d give it up soon.

‘How did you get in?’ he asked and lit his Champion cigarette.

‘Into the Church? I found their backdoor. It looked like a drainage pipe. I never suspected that they had a cellar. Or to look along the train tracks. But it makes sense, they would have always needed an–’

‘No. My van,’ Helmut interrupted. ‘It was locked.’

‘I pulled it open,’ said Nichola. ‘I think the rust has ruined the sliding door lock.’

‘Okay.’

‘No one saw. No one saw me get in. I’m pretty sure,’ she said. ‘Turned out those bums were lookouts. But I handled them before I broke into your van.’

‘I saw,’ he said.

‘They went down easy.’

‘Mmmm.’

‘And there were no cameras in that building,’ she said. ‘They don’t know where I am.’

‘Okay,’ said Helmut and Nichola heard his doubt rumble past his usual placid tone.