The Man Who Sold Knives
A story
The man who sells knives has been in store all week. It’s a strange way of making a living, a throwback to an older time. I’m not sure which. He was introduced on the tannoy on Monday. There would be a free knife for everyone in the store over the age of twenty-one, the voice said. It was a calm, confident voice. Usually, when one of the managers makes an announcement there is a fuzz or crackle, but this voice, this new voice, came through as clear as someone on the television changing between shows, as if some of the speaker’s own confidence had rubbed off on the sound system. The representative it said would be down shortly. The voice, we learnt a few minutes later, was also the representative.
We watch as he descends the escalator, tall, grey and grey-suited, then stands behind a lectern, as if about to give a speech. Which he is: a speech about knives. When he speaks, he speaks quickly and certain words sound as if he has stored them up earlier and is now slotting them into his sentences without being entirely certain of their meaning. This only makes him more convincing. He is slightly robotic, which is reassuring. Customers loiter near the lectern, listening. He must have brought the lectern with him along with the knives.
After that first performance, the man wanders around the shop. Some of us go over and hold short conversations. There’s something exotic about a travelling salesman when you’re stuck behind a till all day. They own what they do. At lunch, the man who sells knives comes over to my department, men’s fashion, to talk to my boss. The man is just as smart up close. His suit is a steel grey pinstripe, his serrated hair combed over. Something about his arms reminds me of the old Hollywood actor Cary Grant. Something about his face reminds me of Leslie Nielsen from Airplane. My manager asks how it is going, and the man who sells knives tells him that he has made a hundred and twenty-five pounds. He says this as if it is a good number, so we assume it is. Nobody thinks to ask how many knives this represents. He has cut his finger during the demonstration, he says, the first time he has done it in ten years. My manager finds him a plaster.
Afterwards, my manager explains that customers must buy a new knife to be eligible for a free one.
Later that same afternoon, the man who sells knives performs for a second time. The lectern is on our floor, beneath the escalator. It’s the quietest part of the day. My boss has gone to pick up his daughter from school, so I go and watch. The escalator is the first, and only, escalator in town. When it was installed, people would come in from the villages just to ride it. The man who sells knives reaches behind the lectern, which is draped in a red cloth, and pulls out a series of seemingly random objects: a knife, a single tomato, a loaf of bread, a hammer. Though there are only five or six customers watching with me, the man speaks as if he is being broadcast to the nation. With this knife, he says, I make a single tomato last a whole day of demonstrations.
He cuts in.
The loaf of bread is next. The man who sells knives explains that it is as hard as a rock. To prove his point, he hits it against the lectern. When he cuts the bread, the knife slips right through. Now for the hammer. I imagine he is going to try to smash the knife with it, though of course the knife won’t break. He is in the swing of things now: there is a flourish to everything he does. The crowd has doubled. The man who sells knives hands the hammer to an elderly lady standing close by, who he describes, to some laughter and a very real blush as his ‘glamorous assistant’. The lady confirms, laboriously, that it is a hammer. He lays it on the red cloth and raises the knife above his shoulder in the same movement.
Towards closing time, a small man in a green pullover, with a black moustache and an expression of bored determination comes to my till while I am serving another customer. “The free knife,” he says, ignoring the person waiting, “I’ve come for the free knife.” Below the escalator, the man who sells knives is giving another speech. His long arms waft through the air, knife clenched in his fist. I look at the man in the green pullover and feel as if I have done something wrong.
The man who sells knives speaks into the tannoy four times a day. Four times a day, for the last week, there has been a very special offer in the store, today only. The tannoy is in the cash office, which is on the top floor. One afternoon, I go to take a call about an alteration (the phone is in the cash office too). As I open the door, I see the man who sells knives stood there. He checks his watch, turns his head and raises his wrist in unison, then bends over to the microphone, like someone leaning over a washbasin to shave.
Ladies and gentlemen, there is a very special offer in store today…
A friend once told me that whenever you look at the second hand of your watch it will seem as though it has just started to move. You never catch it at rest, or already in motion. This, apparently, is just an illusion. Likewise, I was sure that if I had walked into the office a few seconds earlier, or later, I would have seen the man who sells knives in that moment, leaning over.
Customers are instructed to take their knives—the ones they are paying for—to the homeware counter. A few minutes before closing, a woman with a small child brings one over to me instead, because she is also buying a shirt for her husband. As I fold the shirt, I can tell she is thinking about whether she really wants to buy the knife. The box the knife comes in is simple and white, with a life-sized picture of the knife on both sides. There are red stripes, too, like go-faster stripes on a racing car. The woman holds the box between both hands and thinks. She takes so long that the decision becomes important. Her girl kicks the counter.
“I won’t tell,” I say.
After cashing up, I take the box over to the man who sells knives, who is packing away by the escalator. In my other hand, I am weighing the red, faux-leather cash bag which holds the day’s takings from the till. It is not supposed jangle: on the best days, it’s full of notes. It has been a slow day, so the bag isn’t full of anything, but there’s something comforting about it all the same. It’s always there at the same time, like you’re zipping the time up.
I am still thinking about the cash bag when I approach the man who sells knives. It takes several seconds of him staring at me before I realise that I have offered him the wrong hand. The bag, not the knife. I correct my mistake, then smile and say the first thing that comes into my head.
“Someone had second thoughts.”
Not a problem, he says, though he doesn’t return the smile. As the escalator takes me up, I look down and see a large, brown, paper grocery bag I hadn’t noticed before, tucked behind the lectern in such a way that you would only see it clearly from above and crammed full to overflowing with small, red spheres. I think about the bag the whole way home.
Really enjoyed this story.
Excuse my ignorance, but what are the red spheres?