The Blue Afternoon

PROLOGUE

I remember that afternoon, not long into our travels, sitting on deck in the mild mid-Atlantic sun on a slightly smirched and foggy day, the sky a pale washed-out blue above the smokestacks, when I asked my father what it felt like to pick up a knife and make an incision into living human flesh. He thought seriously for a while before replying.

'It depends on where you cut,' he said. 'Sometimes it's like a knife through clay or modelling wax. Some days it's like cutting into a cold blancmange or… or cold raw chicken.'

He pondered a while longer and then reached inside his coat pocket and drew out a scalpel. He removed the small leather sleeve that protected the blade and offered the slim knife to me.

'Take this. See for yourself.'

I took the scalpel from him, small as a pen but much heavier than I had imagined. He looked down at the remains of our lunch on the table: an edge of cheese with a thick yellow rind, a bowl of fruit, four apples and a green melon, some bread rolls.

'Close your eyes,' he said. 'I'll get something for you, an exact simulacrum.'

I closed my eyes and gripped the scalpel firmly between my thumb and first two fingers. I felt his hand on mine, the gentle pressure of his dry rough fingers, and then he lifted my hand up and I felt him guiding it forward until the poised blade came to rest on a surface, firm, but somehow yielding.

'Make a cut,' he said. 'A small cut. Press down.'

I pressed. Whatever I cut into yielded easily and I moved the blade down an inch or so, or so it seemed, smoothly, with no fuss.

'Keep your eyes closed… What did it feel like?'

I thought for a second or two before replying. I wanted this to be right, to be exact, scientific.

'It felt like… Like cold butter, you know, from an icebox. Or a sirloin, like cutting through a tender sirloin.'

'See?' he said. 'There's nothing mysterious, nothing to be alarmed about.'

I opened my eyes and saw his square face, smiling at me, almost in triumph, as if he had been vindicated in some argument. He was holding out his bare left forearm, the sleeve of his coat and shirt pushed back to the crook of his elbow. On the bulge of muscle, six inches above his wrist, a thin two-inch gash oozed bright blisters of blood.

'There,' he said. 'It's easy. A beautiful incision. Not a waver, with even pressure, and with your eyes closed too.'

The expression on his face changed at this moment, to a form of sadness mingled with pride.

'You know,' he said, 'you would have made a great surgeon.'