Jesse Ball - The Curfew

As it is described it seems very still, but in fact, there were dozens of customers in line, and the men behind the counter were strenuously engaged in great business of cutting, slicing, wrapping, tying. They dodged past one another, and past innumerable blades and cleavers with acrobatic motions.

William bypassed the line, and a young man, also in an apron, approached him immediately.

— You’ll need to wait there.

— I’m not here to buy anything.

— In that case, you certainly need to stand over there. If you just want to look around, come by at some hour when we’re less busy.

— No, no, I’m here on business. Mr. Denton asked me to come.

— Denton? Well, why didn’t you say so? Come with me.

The boy gave the line a stern look before turning away, to make sure everyone stayed exactly where they were.

— Over here.

He walked William down to the end of the shop, where a small stair led to a door.

— I go no farther, said the boy. It had better have been true what you said. Denton doesn’t like soliciting.

He hurried away back down the stairs.

William then opened the door and went into one of the tidiest, most comfortable rooms he had ever been lucky enough to encounter.

There was one very fine leather chair directly in front of a large window that overlooked the shop. All around were bookshelves, full of books of every kind, although he could see that many pertained to butchery and to animal anatomy. A drafting table was against one wall. The whole room was lit by candles, perhaps sixty of them. Before the drafting table, which was meant to be used standing, stood a large man of formidable characteristic.

— Mr. Denton?

— You are from the mason, I assume.

— I am that.

— Sit over there, please. I will fetch a stool.

Denton opened a closet and removed a three-legged stool. He placed it beside the sumptuous leather chair.

— Sit down, he said again.

He was about fifty, with a weathered face and deeply brown, almost black eyes. He wore the same aproned outfit as the men below, but his was the definitive version.

William sat. Out of his pocket, the notebook. He began to sharpen a new pencil.

— That’s a fine little knife, said Denton. Marzol?

— It is, said William.

— I knew it. Those take quite an edge, quite an edge. I won’t lie to you, I have more than a few of them myself, although substantially larger. The only meat you’ll cut with a knife like that is a man’s throat.

William blinked, and tried not to flinch as the man sat on the stool and rested one burly arm on the armrest of the leather chair.

— So, this is how it is. My father’s dead. He started this business. Made it what it is now. People will always need someone to do their butchering, that’s what he used to say. Do you know he could butcher a cow in any of thirteen different ways? How do you write an epitaph for a man like that?

— Robert Denton, that’s how we’ll start, said William matter-of-factly.

— Robert Denton, that’s right.

— So, any thoughts? Some people like to put something simple, in remembrance, others like to really make the person’s presence felt. Sometimes the epitaph is an inside joke — something only the deceased would understand.

— I do have something like that, said Denton.

The door opened, and a man nearly as big as Denton stepped into the room.

— Wilson fell under an ox, and his leg’s bent.

— Well, call over Hal Sanderson. He’ll put it right. As for the ox, is it dead?

— It was dead. He pulled it off a beam and it dropped on him.

— I see. Well, that’s how it is.

— Right.

The door shut.

— I’ve got something, said Denton. He often said he could skin a pig with the lights off. He even said he did it once, although I never saw it.

— That’s good, said William. That’s really good.

He wrote:

ROBERT DENTON

who could skin a pig in the dark .

— I like it, said Denton.

William went to the door.

The two shook hands.

— They made me think, down there, you might be a hard man to deal with, said William.

— Don’t fool yourself, said Denton. I’m a mean bastard. You just caught me at a tender moment.

— Well, I’ll get to work on this.

Denton nodded.

He was out on the street again. A man jostled his elbow. It was … William looked away.

— Will? the man said.

Will did not stop walking.

— It’s you, isn’t it? he said again, catching up. Well, of course it is. I haven’t seen you in quite a while. It’s, actually, it’s very fortunate to meet like this.

Will continued on, and didn’t look at the man.

— Will, I need to speak to you. Do you hear me?

He grabbed William’s arm and pulled him around.

— Sit down with me, there, in that cafe?

— We mustn’t be seen. Come after five minutes.

— Do you see what I mean? It’s crucial. It’s everyone’s place — everyone is in a position to act, at some point.

A man with a long moustache and a military-style coat was muttering into his soup. This man had come in five minutes after William. He had sat at a table near the front, but then knocked over a bottle of wine and asked for another table. He had been moved to the table next to William. This man was William’s friend. William had not spoken to him in four years.

— I don’t know what you mean, said William.

— Even you, said his friend, even you must have heard of it.

— It seems just like the purges. I’m not interested.

— It’s not the same thing, not at all. That’s them killing us. This is us killing them.

His friend’s moustache moved ornamentally as he spoke in precise, deliberate sentences. It was as if the conversation had been rehearsed.

— Did you rehearse this conversation?

— And if I did?

— It would make me feel like you thought it was important.

— It is important.

— Then did you rehearse it?

— Perhaps.

— If you did, then who did you have as me?

— Whalen.

— No? Whalen? Is he still around?

— Of course.

— It doesn’t matter. I have Molly to think of.

— Come tonight, please. The address is on that sheet. It’s necessary. Louisa would have wanted you to. You know that.

William held his hand close to his face. He didn’t say anything.

His friend’s face, turned away from him, addressing an empty table off to the right, became somehow slightly cruel.

— If nothing else would get through to you, I will say this last, that I intended to save for a place of greater privacy. We have had news of Louisa and what happened to her.

William flinched and involuntarily his eyes fixed on this man who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere in sudden frightening focus.

His friend stood, and William watched him walk through a door behind which lay the lavatory. He did not return. This was a typical method of leaving a restaurant. If William was the sort to meet people at restaurants, he might well have employed that same technique, but as it happens, he was not.