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  “Fuck!” shouted Ramilov. “Something just bit me in here.”

  Bob grinned evilly from the pass.

  “You found my little Christmas present, chef.”

  “Booboo?”

  “Guess again.”

  “What is that?” shouted Ramilov.

  “I let the lobsters out,” said Bob. “And I took the bands off their claws.”

  He chuckled at the thought of Ramilov locked in a box with the lobsters angry and liberated, snapping at his ankles in the dark.

  “If you damage any of them, chef, it’s coming out of your wages.”

  Ramilov’s response was brief but heartfelt.

  Whatever you say about Bob (and many things have been said), he was a master of cruelty. The man had an appreciation for a wide variety of punishments—spoons left on the burner until they were white-hot pressed into flesh, dish cloths soaked and twisted for whipping—though his favorites were the ones that messed with the mind, the psychological tortures. He would let a finished plate fall from his fingers and smash on the floor if he didn’t like one aspect of the ensemble and sometimes for no reason at all, except presumably to teach us that life was as arbitrary as it was cruel. The fridge was quite a custom of Bob’s. By forcing the other chefs to cover for HE WHO HAD SINNED, also known as Ramilov, it skewed the emotions and allegiances of the entire brigade. When the prisoner finally emerged, shivering and blinking into the fluorescent light, sympathy was in short supply. The sentence proved the crime. The lobsters were a new touch, but that was Bob: the man had an exquisite grasp of suffering; he was an innovator of pain. It was a rare genius that unleashed the lobsters before looking for the victim.

  Aside from Dibden, who bore The Mark of Bob upon his hand and who, despite that, still defended him when the insults were swarming over pints in O’Reillys, there was not one man or quiet dark-eyed girl or kitchen porter in the place who did not hate Chef Bob. No one fought with him as Ramilov did, but I knew how they felt even if they never told a soul, because I am the commis. In the kitchen the commis is everywhere. Like a fly, he sees things that no one else sees, things he is not supposed to see. It is his job to buzz this way and that, from fridge to section to dry store to pass to wine cellar, fetching and prepping and chopping things the other chefs do not have time to fetch and prep and chop. I am the one beside the chef whom Bob is bollocking, topping up his herb bundles. I am the one sweeping the yard, unnoticed, when plots are being hatched over cigarette breaks. I am the one in the dry store trying to pull a fifteen-kilo sack of flour over your weeping body. I am the third who walks always beside you.

  You are the one with the puckered arsehole—I can hear Racist Dave now—fucking hurry up and tell the story.

  The bass was on the pass. The two charcuterie boards were up. Dibden, who had found the ravioli, scooped them from the chauffant of swirling jade water and slid them into a pan of butter browning with fried sage, tossing gently.

  “Where’s that fucking rav?”

  “Ten seconds, chef,” he shouted, still tossing.

  “If you toss that again, Dibden,” said Bob, “I’ll toss you.”

  Dibden stopped tossing and swiveled round with the pan to plate up, straight into Shahram the KP, hunched over the pot bin looking for washing up.

  “Backpleez!” Shahram cried in fear and pain.

  “Sugar!” Dibden shouted, managing to steady the pan. “Say ‘Backs,’ Sharon! Always say ‘Backs’!”

  “Fucking chaud behind, yeah, Sharon?” said Dave.

  “Backpleez,” said Shahram again. He was terrified, dancing nervously from one leg to the other like he needed to piss, eyes goggling out of his skull, face twisted with incomprehension. Shahram’s English was very respectable as far as it went—chauffant, moulis, ramekin, gastro, small spoons, more black pans, potato, backpleez, fucking chaud—only it did not go so far. He knew what a chinois was but not a chair.

  Camp Charles, the maître d’, stuck his head around the door.

  “Table of eight just entered, chef.”

  This prompted roars of disapproval from the chefs, who had figured on a quiet service, a quick clean down and an early night. Curses were extended in the direction of Camp Charles.

  “Out of my kitchen, gaylord,” said Bob.

  Camp Charles gasped in mock indignation.

  “So forceful,” he mouthed. In the dining room he was charm itself, infinitely accommodating, always discreet. Away from the front of house he spoke entirely in sexual suggestion. Everything out of diners’ earshot sounded like the purest filth. He could make the word plate sound so nasty you wouldn’t have one in the house, let alone eat off it. “Give me two beef, darling,” he would deadpan from the other side of the pass. “Where’s my meat, you bitch?”

  Now the ticket machine squawked.

  “Ça marche desserts! Two pear, two claf, one ganache! On and away!”

  “Oui, chef,” Dibden answered forlornly. It had started sooner than expected.

  “What’s the matter, chef?” sneered Bob.

  “Nothing, chef!”

  “Monocle! More plate wipes!”

  “Parsnip puree top up! In my tall!”

  “Drop chips for an onglet!”

  “Little shit!” Ramilov cried in pain from the fridge.

  The ticket machine exploded into a fit of squawks, refusing to be silent.

  “The big ’un from Wigan,” said Dave.

  “Ça marche! One chaka, one fish board, three rav, two bass, one onglet, one eel, ONE LOBSTER! All together, on and away!”

  “Oui, chef!”

  “Monocle,” said Dave, “ask Ramilov for a lobster. Now.”

  I knocked on the fridge door.

  “I know,” said the voice of Ramilov. “Lobster.”

  I cracked open the door and the sinewy zombie hand emerged again. Its index finger was extended, a little accusingly, I thought, in my direction. A large midnight-blue lobster was hanging from the second knuckle by a pincer.

  “Take this one,” Ramilov said in a tired voice.

  The lobster had a good grip. As I struggled to pry it free, Ramilov called me many dark and impossible things. Then the door was shut and he was heard no more. Ramilov should have blamed Bob for his misfortune, or the lobster at a push, but who is it that gets the blame? The commis receives a lot of grief that is not deserved.

  “Coming up on the big ’un in seven!” Dave shouted.

  “Oui!”

  Dibden was sweating now, heating sugar for a caramelized pear dish in one pan while he poured clafoutis batter into two floured ramekins and slid them into the combi oven. He pushed aside Dave’s confit Jerusalem artichokes.

  “Desserts on top,” he said. “That’s the rule.”

  “Such a pastry boy,” said Dave.

  Dibden ignored him and leaned across his section for the unsalted butter. He threw a few cubes into the pan of sugar and shook it, then turned again and grabbed three pears from his service fridge, quartered and cored them and chucked them into the pan with the caramel. One piece fell on the floor.

  “Do another one, chef.” Bob was watching from the pass, a wolf outside a pig’s house.

  Dibden rushed back to his service fridge, scrabbled for another pear, cut one quarter out of it and cored it sloppily, then threw it into the pan with the others. Now he was behind. He spun back to Ramilov’s section, searching madly for the smoked eel mix, couldn’t find it, cried out, then saw it, tore the plastic wrap from the top of it, grabbed two spoons and a clean plate from the rack beside him and began quenelling furiously, scraping the edge of one spoon into the hollow of the other, molding the mixture into a smooth oval. His hands were starting to shake. The kitchen watched him silently. Bob’s eyes were hungry and sly.

  “Your pears,” said Dave.

  Dibden ran to the stove
and caught the caramel as it started to smoke, strained a glug of brandy into it and shook again, then swung over to the combi, tried to fit the pan on top but couldn’t because of Dave’s artichokes, muttered something under his breath and slammed them in below. Someone on the big table told a joke and there was a sudden burst of laughter, trailed by other subsidiary jokes and eddies of laughter. You couldn’t hear what the jokes were in the kitchen, and you couldn’t see the kitchen from where the table was, but the merriment seemed somehow, indisputably, directed at Dibden and his current misfortune.

  “Dibden,” said Bob, “that’s not the plate for the eel.”

  Dibden looked about wildly.

  “What is the plate for the eel, chef?”

  “You should know that, chef,” said Bob.

  Please, everyone was thinking, please let Ramilov out.

  “The square one,” said Dave.

  Dibden scraped the eel mix off the round plate and back into the container and started quenelling again. His hands shook so bad the mix was flying off the spoons, spilling all over the worktop.

  “Three minutes on the big ’un.”

  Dibden remembered something and dropped the spoons and ducked back into the service fridge and pulled out a gastro of ravioli.

  “How many rav was it?” he asked weakly.

  “Three,” said Dave. “In three minutes.”

  Dibden peeled nine raviolis from the gastro and ran over to the chauffant, where he dropped them into a waiting spaghetti basket. The scuzzy water swallowed. In the fifth circle of hell, sighs of the sullen frothed the vile broth. Then he slid back to Ramilov’s section and started quenelling again.

  “Don’t forget that ganache, Dibden,” said Bob. “I want everything looking fucking soigné.”

  Even a much-maligned commis such as myself could see by the way Dibden was comporting himself that things were going to end badly for all concerned. I was praying for Ramilov to be released. But you could not beg Bob; he was not a merciful man. You would have been handing the ax to the executioner, so to speak. Sometimes my hatred for Bob burned so fierce I feared he would see the flame and decide to stub me out once and for all. But Bob was so big and I was so small it seemed he did not notice me, and so I kept on with my bowing and scraping and burning and plotting, waiting for my moment, dreaming of a way that we, the chefs, might end him.

  “Check on! One rav, one pigeon, THREE EEL! That’s four rav and four eel all day! And there’s another dessert check on and away!”

  “Having fun, chef?” Bob asked Dibden.

  “Oui, chef,” replied Dibden, who was not.

  “How long on these first fucking desserts?”

  “Two . . . Four minutes, chef.”

  “Four minutes?” Bob snarled. “You all right over there, chef?”

  “Yes, chef.”

  “You look like you’re going down.”

  “No, chef,” said Dibden. You could never admit you were going down.

  “D’you want I defrost the Russian?”

  “If you want, chef,” said Dibden, desperate.

  Bob sighed and made a flick at some crumbs on the pass. He toyed with the idea, letting the kitchen squirm.

  “All right,” he said at last. “Let the cunt out.”

  I went straight over to the walk-in, unlocking it as fast as I could. Ramilov had been unnaturally quiet since the lobster. He was only in chef’s whites in there—perhaps the cold had got to him. It was hard to know exactly how long he had been inside; time in the kitchen was like time nowhere else; no law governed its leaps and crawls. For a moment I thought I would find him curled up in the corner, a poor lump with lobsters feeding on his eyes. I opened the door, just a wedge at first. There was only darkness. No sound. No sign of life. Had Bob finally done it? Had he made good on his promise and killed Ramilov? I pulled the door open farther and the light clicked on and Ramilov pushed past me and out into the bright swelter of the kitchen looking almost all right, as almost all right as he ever looked, his arms outstretched like a homecoming hero, triumphant.

  “Hello, bitches,” he said. “Did you miss me?”

  2. TRIAL

  How did I end up here, chopping carrots on the back bench and daydreaming about destroying Bob? Ramilov and Racist Dave have often asked what a person like me was doing in a place like this, though perhaps in words less civil. This job, you should know, was not something I ever wanted. I took it when I was two months behind on the rent and the landlady cursed me in Portuguese whenever we passed on the steps. Filho da puta, pentelho, good for nahting, polícia will know. Dear Mrs. Molina, a study in black and gray. Stately, though prone to a quiver about the jaw when money was mentioned. Sweet Mrs. Molina, who had absorbed the colors and textures of the city until her look was solid concrete and her face like the back of a bus. A slight, short-sighted woman, you would never have expected the foul things that came out of her mouth in reference to your humble narrator. Aggressive in her cleaning too. Forever spraying that funereal air freshener. Squirting it through the keyhole of my room while I dozed, as if I were some monstrous bug. Gregor Samsa choking on the stench of roses.

  It was not much of a setup, yet I had become sort of attached to this grimy Regency town house, its rubbish-strewn grilles out front protecting a rubbish-strewn basement, its scuffed gray door declaring NO JUNK MAIL OR FLYERS, the sooty shadows above. My bolt-hole lodgings, partitioned along one side to accommodate a minute communal bathroom, bore the pleasant wear and tear of previous tenants. Scuffs, burns, a bad stain on the carpet where someone might have sacrificed a goat. Perfect for the downtrodden creative. Freckled mirror, chipped sink—all mod cons. Well-appointed view of strip between church and betting shop. Fragrant landlady seeks discreet and respectful professionals. No junk males or fly-by-nights.

  Before The Swan, I would sit in an ancient armchair that smelled of hand lotion and read novels from the charity shop downstairs. Or I would watch, through the peeling sash window, the sleepless criminal bustle at the shabbier end of Camden Road. The chewed-up faces and hands cupped for change, the weathered ski jackets with bulging pockets, the stiff, brisk, kneeless walk. Use so-and-so’s mobile, tell him I want three, two white, tell him yourself, I’ve got no credit, hurry up. The waiting, the fading into the background until they were no longer there, only to reemerge implausibly in a later act, like the crew of a Shakespearean shipwreck.

  So often was I peering out of that window, observing the tireless tide of barter and exchange, I had begun to name these lurking, fading characters. There was Rosemary Baby, a tiny woman with the face of a very young girl and a hoarse, emaciated voice that rose, singsong, over the hubbub of the street. She had parted me from five valuable pounds on my first day—a labyrinthine sob story about catching a bus to hospital and a stolen handbag, please mister serious mister honest to god mister—and cackled now whenever she saw me. That well-dressed gentleman strolling leisurely through the crowds, hands behind his back, I knew as This Charming Man: the embodiment of good manners when he asked you for money, the devil himself when you refused. On the corner of a side street, a man I thought of as The Last Lehman Brother sometimes slept in a blood-red Porsche.

  The person who most obsessed and terrified me, however, was a gnarled Rastafarian with one dead white eye who conducted his business from outside the betting shop. I called him One-Eyed Bruce. Oh, I had considered showier nicknames (Cyclops Dread?) but the last thing anyone wants is a mythology they can’t live up to. Best Burger opposite the Tube, for instance, whose grisly patties had me memorizing the Portuguese Lord’s Prayer in Mrs. Molina’s latrina. Such names are breeding grounds for disappointment, among other things.

  Sometimes Bruce’s solitary working eye, roving this way and that in search of customers or Babylon, would light upon me watching from the window above and he would crook a long, skeleton finger up and shout, loud enough for the whole
street to hear, “I see you, pussyclot! Come down, pussyclot!”

  On these occasions I would duck back out of sight, draw the curtains from a kneeling position and turn my attention to other matters. My reflection, for instance, which loomed back at me, wide-angled, morose, insistent without ever being so good as to tell me what it insisted. A face like this was how mirrors got broken. Peering into the tarnished oval over the little washbasin I would look for stray hairs growing between my eyebrows that I could tweeze or blackheads on my nose I could squeeze, and wonder, with no small allowance of self-pity, why One-Eyed Bruce had found it in his heart to hate me so. Why, with all this choice, all this competition, was it me he chose to torment?

  Why too had I chosen Camden Town? Scene of a million teenage rebellions, where the anticonformist slogans are printed on sweatshop T-shirts, where punks eat in fast-food chains and the Rastas have only mixed herbs in their pockets. All these bold statements diluted. The iconoclasts posing for pictures. A muted, contrary, theme-park place. Yes, Camden Town was next to the zoo with good reason. It was a parade of denied impulses, of things reduced to type, of lions that could not remember how to hunt. It upset me to see it. Yet here I was at the center of it. What was I denying? What petty rebellion was I staging?

  But I was not familiar with London and its neighborhoods when I arrived, a competent degree from a mid-table university to my name, a great career as a writer no doubt just around the corner. Camden Town was the only place I could remember. This was my excuse. I recalled a place of cheap food and sanitized vice, a place whose risks were minimal despite its claims to the contrary. The side of Camden away from the market, however, the side where Mrs. Molina’s lodgings stood, was different. Its sleaze was real. Faces of young girls loomed out of doorways at me, calling to me sadly as I scurried past. No time, I would tell them, proud of how polite, how charming, I had been. No time for gratification, my dear. Not all of us are burdened by such needs. Some of us have loftier concerns, like the book I would soon begin to write. Besides, I had no money.