a new place, with a sign outside made of glittering sequins so that the letters Pita Merci move in the wind and reflect the weak evening sunlight. Inside it’s clean and empty. Linoleum. With great precision the young man at the till is arranging a roll of tinfoil, some knives, and a large salt cellar. Next he concentrates on laying all the plastic forks in the holder the same way round, teeth toward him. His face is strikingly flawless.
‘Gardesh,’ he says happily when he sees Alphonse come in.
They don’t know each other. It’s a long time since anyone called him that and he likes it.
‘Nice place.’
‘Thanks. Expensive, though. Work, work, work.’
‘No doubt. I’d like a large shawarma with all the veggies and samurai sauce, please.’
The young man laughs. ‘Spicy then. Always.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You guys always want spicy sauces. And lots of chicken.’
Although Alphonse has now opted for the other rotating pillar of meat, it’s true that he eats a lot of chicken. Like almost everyone he knows. And it’s true that he has a preference for spicy sauces. He doesn’t want to feel as if he’s been caught out in some way. ‘I thought my eating habits were my own. A personal thing.’
‘Well they’re not,’ says the man and then—suddenly roguish, suddenly even younger—‘With every shawarma: a free show!’
He puts the pita bread in the oven and leans down over his smartphone, which he’s connected to a speaker. After a false start he finds the right track. There are swelling tones that then ebb away, like searchlights across a dark expanse. He performs stretching exercises of some kind with his fingers on the counter between him and Alphonse, arms extended, his head of thick, slicked-back hair slightly bowed. He fixes his customer with the gaze of a falcon. Alphonse wonders whether anything is expected of him. Then an electronic beat bursts forth, intertwined with a regularly repeated, orientally inspired motif. He walks over to a pillar of meat. Alphonse can’t really see how he cuts slices from it, but time and again he swaps the two knives he’s wielding, throwing them briskly behind his back, above his head. With a graceful bow he then whisks the bread out of the oven and, juggling with salad servers, fills it with tomato, onion, cucumber, and grated carrot. At one point the salt cellar, which he’s not using, describes ellipses through the air. A tub of spices brings up the rear, leaving a red cloud with every twist. He keeps everything in motion, including the salad servers, not just with his hands but with taps from his elbows, shoulders, and left hip. When the salt cellar lands upright on his head, he moves it left and right like an Indian dancer while shaking red spices into the pita. Alphonse applauds. As two knives and a small cleaver are launched into the air he takes a step back. The way the young man transfers the meat—still sizzling a little on the hotplate beneath the rotating pillars—into the bread while knife-throwing remains a mystery. Impossible to miss, though, is the moment when he stiffens and the knives and cleaver clatter to the ground around him. With trembling lips and a heavily bleeding ring-finger stump he turns and looks at Alphonse.
Alphonse yanks a dozen napkins out of the holder and the shawarma man presses them to the wound. ‘Where’s the finger?’ he asks.
They both simultaneously twist round to check the hotplate and when they can’t see it there it comes almost as a relief to Alphonse—although relief of a kind that doesn’t preclude goosebumps—to spot the body part under his shoe. He narrowly manages to prevent himself from switching his weight to that foot and lifts his leg as if stepping away from a landmine. The extreme helplessness of a severed extremity, the unreality of it. He picks it up off the floor with a paper napkin. It’s the third time he’s witnessed this. The other two involved fingers as well. He recalls an accident with a power saw at a building firm he worked for. That finger stood upright on the ground, as if someone on the floor below was pointing up through the ceiling. Longer ago there was a fingertip belonging to Aline, his sister, who’d been helping in the kitchen with a knife far too big for her.
The dull thud of the fainting man drives out those memories. He’s lying in a strange, crooked position on the spattered tiles. All that’s moving now is the blood pouring out of the wound. With one hand Alphonse lifts two heavy feet onto an upturned plastic bowl, then goes in search of a freezer. Most of the shelves are frozen shut. The first one that he manages to open, after some wrenching and tugging, is filled with the most detailed ice sculptures, figures the size of Playmobil characters, a Viking, a king, an oriental warrior, all with the same face. It must be the unusual face of the proprietor, the young man on the floor. Alphonse doesn’t have time to look any further. He’d rather not use such finds to staunch a wound. In the next drawer up he comes upon normal ice cubes.
He divides them between two tea towels, laying the finger on one of the stuffed towels and placing the other on the young man’s forehead. It’s a while before consciousness returns. Alphonse is just about to call an ambulance when the victim looks up at him in alarm.
‘Can you stand?’
The young man nods and allows himself to be helped to his feet.
His name is Duran. On the way to the hospital and in the casualty waiting area, his expression evolves from appalled confusion to resigned gloom. Every time his bandaged finger stump sinks dispiritedly to his lap, Alphonse urges him to bring it up to his ear again, which reduces the bleeding and raises the spirits.
‘My father said, “Duran, you live too far away. What are you going to do in that hole? Your family can’t help you run the shop and you can’t do it alone, with your eyes.” I tell him, “My eyes are good, that’s all in the past.” I used to have a lazy eye, a patch on my spectacles, difficult for a child. “You can’t see the butterflies,” my father said—he meant that test, with the butterflies and so on, hidden among blots, everyone saw them jump into view except me. “I don’t need to see those butterflies,” I tell him. Lots of arguments, but I made the move anyhow. I thought: just you wait, Father, there are blots everywhere, keep looking and eventually I’ll jump out from them. You’ll see me then.’
He holds the bandaged stump in front of him, horrified by it. Alphonse is just about to urge him yet again to keep his hand vertical when a round-chested doctor comes marching along the corridor. She must be in her late forties and she has orange brushed-up hair, as if her head is on fire.
‘Lost a finger?’ she asks.
‘I’ve got it with me.’ Alphonse points to a plastic bag on the seat next to them. The towel with the ice inside is soaked through.
‘Can I have a look?’ She can’t wait, plainly. He hopes he’s not about to disappoint her. He’s wrapped the finger in a wad of cling film, fearing it might otherwise be damaged by the cold. Duran looks the other way, as nonchalantly as possible.
The doctor takes the wrapped finger and gently taps it on the arm of the seat. ‘Good. Not frozen.’ A delighted little laugh escapes her. ‘Follow me!’
‘But you have to look! How often do you get the chance to see the inside of your finger?’ She’s talking to Duran, who might perhaps have preferred to be given a general anaesthetic.
The doctor stops sewing briefly to turn her attention to Alphonse, who has gone to sit on a chair by the wall. ‘You can come a bit closer if you like.’ The fact that neither of them responds to her cheery invitations seems to disturb her. She’s meticulously described and named everything she’s done; surely a patient could expect no more of her than that?
‘Will
