The Knife Sharpener (16)

16.

Her father would say, ‘There’s going to come a day, Nichola, when these people – they are going to realise that they’ve gone as far as they possibly can. They will think that they need to mend things. Take it all back to where it was before. They will be unable to bear their diminishment any further. Fail to see that they never had any worth to begin with.’

            She didn’t fully comprehend how she hadn’t already lumped Helmut into this broader group. An unknowing member of the Church of Violentiam Movetur Sidus. His monosyllabic posturing and seemingly disinterested acceptance of his lot in life – she thought all of it should have locked him into the static, echoing middle his contemporaries happily dwelled and yelled within. The caustic ordinariness that her father decried upheld a poisonous, illusory status quo. A worldview the Church had decided to stop crumbling around them, even as it trekked ever onwards unaltered.

Maybe she misinterpreted Helmut’s character, where he placed himself in the world. Rather, his serene plainness was instead a stoic quiet, manifested into an individualist ideology. A man against the world thing, which Nichola mostly emphasised with. A lone Melbourne cowboy with only his Toyota panel van steed as company. Travelling the suburbs far and wide, keeping to himself and warring constantly against disruptions trying to drag him back into regular society. A Champion cigarette in one hand, his whetstone in the other.

Instead, he pulled into a parking lot next to a neon tobacconist.

‘Stay here,’ he said. ‘I’ll be right back.’

He let himself out and walked with a stiff gait into the store. The rigid spine of a man who spent a lot of time on the road. She could have left then. Disappeared amidst the shoppers with her knife. Try to find her father. Nichola could have gone back at it alone.  As she liked it. Save the world like she knew she was supposed to.

She sat in the passenger seat and waited for him to return.

            There was something about Helmut she felt drawn to.

Firstly, his doubt about the absence of surveillance at the Church was nagging at her. The ease of her escape. The precautions she had seen at the Church didn’t measure up to them having no cameras. Despite her desire and statements to the contrary. What she thought she had seen.

Nichola had hit the lookouts hard. The one she got with the wine bottle was definitely out when she got to the van. He had been caught by surprise. She had connected exactly enough to send him to sleep.

The one she had hit with the right hook, though?

Her father had taught her how to punch. She was confident in her martial skills.

Maybe she didn’t get him hard enough. In the moment she had wanted to take the broken bottle to his jugular. In the same stream of thought, she decided against it – knowing, still that leaving him was a mistake. See, the memories. Violence hanging off her father, following him. The agony of his history of harm that clothed him. She didn’t want to wear that – at least, now. The contusions and guilt of a man who had instilled terror in insurgents and innocents alike, whose adherence to the cliché of the bombastic wraith, the hardman spewing righteousness, the polymath Ministry hood – all of it crafted a bewildered, brutal rhetorician who in the end couldn’t untie the knot of doubt, fierce loathing, and fear of the inevitable he had sown. Despite any effort he made to undo it.

Though later she learned from him. Inherited his causes through osmosis and proximity to his increasingly verbose rhetoric. Nichola never needed or tried to impress her father. She never felt the pressure. As a kid, her life carried on alongside her father’s, overlapping only in little gestures, unexpected words, play mimicking the shame starting to congeal within him. She used to notice him looking at her. She would be playing by herself with the Political Pulpit Lego Kit he had given her for Holidays. Her Officious Lego Man in a top hat telling the observant Lego plebs that he knew best.

She still saw herself as his lesser imitation. Her fury and strength a shadow of his. But, also different. More choice. Less Ministry automation.

In any event, if her viciousness on the lookout had fallen short – or they indeed had cameras somewhere – Nichola knew she owed it to Helmut to make sure that no one was after them. Had identified his van as the getaway vehicle. No telling what they would send at her to get the knife back. What might happen if word got out about its apparent power. The myth the Church had built into it. That ridiculous marble pillar. Nichola knew that in Melbourne, people kill for that kind of prestige. Just to be close to it.

Sure, there was a capable air to Helmut. A well-worn experience embedded in the mystery of his past. A mystery that also cloaked his real capabilities. Did he merely endure in the Wastes? Or thrive? Was he really a cook? Or was that Wastes innuendo for killer? She didn’t know. It had been a long time since she went out that far east and not without her father. Anyway, it infuriated her. She couldn’t get a handle on Helmut. On who he was. Did she need to look after him? Make sure he wouldn’t be immediately wiped from the cosmic playing field he had inadvertently been dragged onto by his stowaway? Her guilt would never let her live with that.

Was he the lifelong survivor she immediately identified when he fled from the Church to his van? She had watched his methodical movements to get into his vehicle and flee. There was no shake or shiver to his hands. And he had seen something in the building too. The wild whites of his eyes in the rear-view mirror. A terror put momentarily to the side to ensure efficient escape.

Either way, if the Church knew, she wouldn’t abandon Helmut till she was certain of his safety. She suspected that could only come when the knife had been disposed of. She suspected he knew that, too.

But he didn’t seem agitated by their enforced assembly. Hadn’t turned the van back to the building on Chapel and handed her back to her pursuers. Despite her half-hearted attempts to leave him, he had expressed no desire to let her to her own devices. Helmut’s gesture of teamwork had affected Nichola – ‘we are together.’ Though she hardly discerned this feeling, yet. It wasn’t even a protective gesture. She didn’t need that. Want it. More that it was one isolationist speaking to another. Both seeing that for their separate missions to continue unperturbed, there was required a unity between them for the time being.

She watched him emerge from the tobacconist. Wanted to see a neon halo over his pony tailed head. There were gravy stains on his shirt. His corduroy trousers were filthy. He was rolling another cigarette as he walked. The door of the van rustyelped as it opened. A smell of aged tobacco and sweat.

‘Still here?’ he asked. Settled into his driving seat blowing smoke. Rifled through his cassettes. Turned the ignition.

‘Yes,’ she said.

He put on a tape. A baritone voice rumbled from the speakers. Well, you wonder why I always dress in black.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Do you know where your father is?’

‘Only that the Ministry have him. They finally got him about six months ago.’

‘For what?’

‘Rebellious intent and designs to cause public harm.’

‘Who is your father?’ he asked and for the first time looked directly to her. His eyes were smokey blue and this caught Nichola by surprise. The lines of his face were creased and flaked skin.

‘Why are you still helping me?’ she asked in response.

‘Why did you stay in my van?’

Beyond doubt. They were, she realised, in this together now. Definitively. He was certain the Church knew she was with him. He didn’t want to hand her over. Or dump her and face the questions later when they found him and the van – questions she suspected would be marked by a special kind of nastiness. Not that he wanted to help, either. He had to. Work together. Get rid of the knife. If he was as straightforward and enamoured with survival as she suspected, it was the only option.

And, maybe, something else. Concern. Care. Wanting to help. Seeing the horror of human behaviour and wanting to find an answer to stopping it. Suspecting the foul machinations of the Church of Violentiam Movetur Sidus.

I wear it for another hundred thousand who have died, / Believen' that we all were on their side.

‘Who is your father?’ he asked again.

Nichola didn’t want to share her lineage if possible.

The time for trust had come.

‘Rudiger Otwey,’ she said.

‘Fuck,’ said Helmut.