McCormack - Getting it in the Head

Also by Mike McCormack

Crowes Requiem

Notes from a Coma

Forensic Songs

Solar Bones

MIKE McCORMACK

This Canons edition published in 2017 by Canongate Books Ltd
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape, London, 1996

www.canongate.co.uk

This digital edition first published in 2017 by Canongate Books

Copyright Mike McCormack, 1996

The moral right of the author has been asserted

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 78689 139 6
eISBN 978 1 78689 140 2

To my family and Noelle Donnellan for keeping the faith

Contents

Acknowledgements

Some stories in this collection have appeared in the following magazines and anthologies: The Stained Glass Violations in Passages, A is for Axe in Brought to Book (Harper Collins), Thomas Crumlesh in the Sunday Tribune and An Anthology of Irish Comic Writing (Michael Joseph), Machine: Part 11 in the Connacht Tribune and The Occupation in Ambit and Best Short Stories 1995 (Heinemann).

The author is grateful for permission to reprint lines from Caffeine, composed by Bordin, Bottum, Gould, Martin and Patton 1992 Rondor Music.

THE GOSPEL OF KNIVES

When I opened the door and saw her standing there like an effigy, draped from head to toe in some fashion paraphrase of a chador, my mind flamed with a single, sordid thought: I wanted to get down on my knees before her in that sweetest of all acts of sexual worship and lick her out good and proper. I could see from her face the swarthy skin, the too-even set of her teeth, the retrouss nose that this was a woman of pent-up desires and trammelled passions and I fancied that I was the man to rectify all that. I glowed with confidence. Here was easy meat and it was as much as I could do to stop a predatory grin from spreading over my own teeth. However, when I invited her into my room and she spread out her collection of knives on the table I knew that I had made one of the bigger mistakes of my young and now bitter life.

Im a seller of knives, she said needlessly, arranging the gleaming pieces on the table, and Im here to sell you one of these.

I swallowed heavily, eyeing the array of steel which had so quickly covered the table. I would never have guessed that therewere so many variations on the single theme of the blade.

Im sorry, I stammered, but Ive got all the knives I need. Ive got a bread knife and a set of steak knives and a short blade for peeling. I live on my own, so you can see then that Im not exactly in the market for a new one.

No, she said quietly, I think if you look closely at the circumstances of your life you will find that there is ample room in it for one extra blade. No ones life is so complete that they can afford to do without one of these knives.

I thought you were selling encyclopaedias or you were some kind of a Jehovahs Witness, I said plaintively.

No, Im a seller of knives. My work is to spread the Gospel of Knives because in the beginning was The Knife. All other versions are fiction. My job is to spread the redemptive word of The Knife. Answer me this, what is the greatest of mans inventions?

I suppose youre going to tell me its the knife.

Of course, there is no other answer. Taken unawares, most people say its the wheel or fire. But they are wrong because the knife is at the source of all. When man picked up his first knife and started cutting and sawing and slicing it was the opening moment of his humanity, the instant of his divinity. Now in all my years in this ministry Ive never met a man who did not need a knife. Ive met men who have denied Gods word out of face and Ive met men who couldnt sign their name and theyve all managed without any noticeable handicap. But all these people were bound together by their need for knives. And do you know why? The simple answer is that it is impossible to go through life without cutting or slicing: it wouldnt be human. If I met a man who didnt need a knife Id just pack up my bags and walk away because it would be a sure sign that I had met someone who was less than human and a waste of words. But youre human, are you not?

Yes, I suppose so.

Well, then it follows that you need one of these knives, its unavoidable.

Ive already told you that Im full up with knives.

Have you a lover?

Yes, I lied.

Good, because every lover needs a knife. I knew of a man once who woke up beside his beloved and saw for the first time how ugly she was, the scales had finally dropped from his eyes. And even though she was sleeping on his arm he was so panic-stricken he started to chew his own arm off, gnawing and tearing at it like a snared animal. And it took him so long that eventually his beloved awoke and looked at him. He got such a fright that he went into shock and couldnt move. She couldnt move him either and he died there in the bed within fifteen minutes. Now if he had one of these, she held up a short, double blade, smooth and serrated, he could have had that arm off in two minutes and made good his escape. You wouldnt want to end up in a situation like that, now would you?

Thats a ridiculous story. Besides, it could never happen, my sweetheart is very beautiful.

All beauty fades but with proper care and attention a good knife will last forever.

I heard a story once of a child philosopher who couldnt get his penknife sharp enough and he spent all his time honing it until one day the blade disappeared altogether.

I will never know why I made up that story.

Thats the story of a fanatic, she said coldly. The story of a man looking for irreducible truths. It wasnt the knife which failed him but his imagination. The knife was probably perfectly good within its set application. What he should have done was get another knife. There is no danger of that happening with these knives. Have you ever been to prison?

No, I live a virtuous and God-fearing existence.

And is your life so blameless that you are utterly without fear of reckoning?

The truth is that I have no life. I have no qualifications or work. I have no future and Im not old enough to have a past. Occasions for sin are severely limited.

Nevertheless, the world is full of treacheries. One day you might find yourself incarcerated, walled up for a crime you didnt commit, mass concrete and iron bars between you and the blue sky. You might have exhausted all words and petitions and found no succour in prayer. Then these are the knives for you, they are absolute knives. This one can cut through any substance known to man, it has never been known to fail.

Thats ridiculous, I retorted.

Knives are sacred, she replied, I would not defile them with lies.

Youre serious about all this? I said incredulously.

Yes, she replied. Because these are serious knives.

By now any notion of sexual conquest had fled my mind completely. Her unspeakable beauty dominated the room like a caryatid from some distant, ruined temple and her smile filled me with dread. I could almost hear her mind whirring through a set of instructions, sizing up the options before her face committed itself. It did not help either that my table was now laid out and glittering as if for some terrible, total surgery. I wanted my room emptied now, bare and empty as I had always loved it.

I know everything there is to know about knives, she continued. Anything I dont know about knives is a lie. Look at this one. She took up a short, curved piece and juggled it neatly from hand to hand. This is a survivalists knife, special army issue to theSAS, the US Navy Seals and other elite anti-terrorist units. Its a tungsten alloy laid over with Teflon. Its hafted by a brass tang to an ebony handle. Its the sharpest knife in creation, strictly under-the-counter material and rarer than most gems.