Getting it in the Head. Mike McCormack

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      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 retroussé 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.

      ‘I’m a seller of knives,’ she said needlessly, arranging the gleaming pieces on the table, ‘and I’m 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 there were so many variations on the single theme of the blade.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ I stammered, ‘but I’ve got all the knives I need. I’ve 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 I’m 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 one’s 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 Jehovah’s Witness,’ I said plaintively.

      ‘No, I’m 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 man’s inventions?’

      ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me it’s the knife.’

      ‘Of СКАЧАТЬ