The Knife Sharpener (15)

15.

Helmut drove in silence. Through Caulfield. Reaching and penetrating the outskirts of Chadstone City.  

In the distance, the original structure. Spotlights aimed into the evening sky. A palace on a hill. Surrounded by glam and glitz. The massive shopping centre suburb. Apartments climbing up above it. Disinfectant clean and white. The main street cutting through. Leisurely driving and window shopping. Spread for kilometres. A fully functional commercial ecology. Pigeons reeking of Myers perfume

He slowed the van to 40 kilometres per hour. Crowded storefronts. Clothing, shoes, electronics, toys, cinemas, delis, markets, supermarkets, wholesalers, general merchandise, medical clinics, banks, fairy supplies, home and hardware, gardening, bath and kitchen, Ministry offices, places of worship. Mobile phone repairers by the dozen. Massage chairs. Interspersed food courts. Jewellery stores and European designers watched over by security guards. Abstract sculptures in marble between bubbling fountains and benches to rest. People everywhere. Taking advantage of extensive trading hours. Hours built to mine every vestige of profit. Older shoppers and with money, mostly. Trolleys, suits, and expensive handbags. Shopping slung in canvas. Some kids roaming with headphones in their ears. Shop assistants in immaculate, inviting attire. Beckoning with glossed lips and careful hair. Motoboys running up to apartments with deliveries. Hanging around restaurants and chemists.

            The girl, Nichola, sat beside him. Half looking out the window. Half looking at the knife in her lap. They had been quiet for a while. Helmut had no idea where he was going. Away from that Church. He was turmoil and stress. Mouth Champion dry. Wanting a coffee. A beer. To take off the stained and sweat soaked white t-shirt. He knew he was trapped, now. She was with him, though she hardly knew it.

            ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

            He had thought about returning home. Back to Messer and his pilsner.

            Helmut just drove.

            ‘They don’t know I’m with you,’ she said.

            ‘The lookouts,’ Helmut said.

            ‘I told you. I knocked them out.’

            Helmut looked at her. ‘It doesn’t work like that.’

            ‘I know how to throw a punch. And I hit the other over the head with his wine bottle. They wouldn’t have been conscious to see me get in the van.’

            ‘Their surveillance.’

            ‘I’ve been watching that building for over a month. I never saw anything like a camera. They’re careless.’

            ‘Not like that.’

            She was staring through the window. A motoboy on a scooter whipped past balancing a bag bigger than his bike on his back.

            ‘Well, if they did, I suppose they know I’m with you,’ Nichola said. ‘Though, I doubt it.’

            ‘We will see,’ said Helmut.

            ‘You think it’s better if we stay together?’

            ‘Maybe.’

            ‘As I said: this isn’t your quest.’

            ‘Quest?’

            ‘Mission, burden, idiot’s chase, fight – whatever. You must have a life that you want to get back to?’

            ‘Yes.’

            ‘Well, this is mine.’

            ‘Some life,’ said Helmut.

            ‘It is. But, like, a necessary one. Cliché, but someone needs to do it – this, well, essentially staving off a bunch of loud misguided tyrants trying to reset theirs and everyone’s life. I guess the Medias weren’t enough for them anymore. Yeah, it sucks when no listens quite as much as they used to. Takes you as seriously. But it’s not really an excuse for an apocalypse. Everyone’s got it hard. For instance, I got to keep an eye on a bunch of blasé maniacs, tending to their cult between glasses of mediocre shiraz and 9 to 5 day jobs. Don’t see me wanting to fucking end it all –’

            She went quiet. She had maybe said too much.

            ‘Sure,’ said Helmut. ‘Life’s hard.’

            ‘You can drop me off here in Chaddy, if you want.’ She pointed past a row of baked potato shops. ‘I went to school not far from here. I know the neighbourhood a bit. Lots of people round here too, plenty of crowds and places for me to get lost in. Might try to find an old neighbour of mine. Smart guy. Academic, but got out early. He knows – used to know a few of the Gardner’s Creek Guardians. If I get a meeting with them – a chance to tell them what’s going on, show them the knife … they might see something, be able to do something. No way they’d stand by the Church. It’s reset revisionism mindset. It’d fuck with their Historians, if nothing else.’

Helmut had doubts that the deranged academics would listen to her. Their concerns drifted too far into the abstract. More terrified of theory than reality. The knife was a real thing that drove man to murder. It wasn’t a philosophical equation anymore.

‘I can’t. We are together. For now,’ said Helmut. The people shopping around them, he realised there were so many of them. The rusted van standing out amidst the family safe wagons and new cars.

‘I’ll be fine. I’m always fine. In control,’ said Nichola. ‘You’ll be fine, too. Go back to doing whatever you do.’

            They went further into the dense shopping metropolis. Halogen and slick dummies in windows wearing polos and lingerie.

            ‘What do you do?’ she asked.

            ‘Sharpen knives.’

            ‘Oh.’

            Helmut reached to roll another cigarette. His pouch was empty. Threw it over his shoulder into the rear of the van. Wanted to play a cassette. Something to cut the conversation. Tim Buckley. Or Johnny Cash. Low key. Kept driving aimlessly through the centre. Thinking of turning back to Glen Iris. Taking her back to the flat. Figure it out. He could see blood melting orange cream.

            ‘You always done that?’ Nichola asked. ‘Sharpen knives?’

            ‘No.’

            ‘What else?’

            ‘Jobs. Cooked. Other things. Out east.’

            ‘Chef?’

            ‘No. A cook.’

            ‘Explains the knives.’

            ‘Yes.’

            ‘Who’d you cook for?’

            ‘Few people.’

            ‘People in the Wastes?’

            ‘Round there,’ said Helmut.

            He felt her eyes on him. Wanted a cigarette. A tobacconist further up the road, he was sure.

            ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

            ‘Need a smoke.’

            ‘Fair.’

            He looked at the knife. A beautiful artefact. Unlike any he had seen before. Not a German or Japanese blade. And old. A dusky grey black steel. She was dismissive of it. Confused. Couldn’t see the value. He suspected otherwise. Though what damage the Church could do with it was a mystery. It was just a knife.

            ‘What are you going to do with the knife?’ he asked.

            Reluctance for a moment. More words than used to. A breath. The van at a red light. Tobacconist one block away.

            ‘The Guardians?’ Helmut asked. ‘They are not reliable. Not anymore.’

            ‘No. That was only an idea. Someone close by.’

            ‘Then who?’

            ‘I need to take it to my father,’ she said.

            ‘Where is he?’

            ‘I don’t know,’ said Nichola. ‘Last I heard, the Ministry had him.’