Jeremy Clarke Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 26 April 2018

To teach Oscar how to throw the blade, I started with the arm and wrist technique

Pig’s trotters. Lamb’s feet stuffed with their brains. Flayed wild rabbits, all sinew, muscle and eyeballs. Nude chickens with flopping heads, gaping beaks and scaly feet. A pig’s head with curling eyelashes lowered demurely. A tray of minced horse flesh. Our favourite shop window. The French, eh? Would we like the head on or off, asked the butcher when we went in and asked him for one of his chickens. I consulted briefly with Oscar. We thought off. On would have been thrilling, but we wanted to see a French butcher cut a chicken’s head off. He positioned the chicken’s neck on his block and severed it with a nonchalant chop. Then he lobbed the head in a lazy parabola into his off-cuts bin.

Next stop, the knife, gun and hunter’s accoutrements shop. A tinkling bell announced our entry into a church atmosphere. The elderly man behind the heavy mahogany counter greeted us with priestly courtesy, his vestment a green apron. He and a rustic-looking individual were studying the finer points of a hunting rifle, which lay on the counter between them. The rustic seemed to be torn between his desire to buy the gun and his ability to pay for it. The proprietor’s chief concern was not to hurry him over one of the most delicate decisions of his life and to offer only professional advice that was strictly impartial. ‘OK if we look around?’ I said. ‘Please,’ said the proprietor.

In awed silence Oscar and I browsed the cased ranks of elegant flick-knives and stilettos. The price tags, unfortunately, put them well out of our range. Further along were the more business-like saw-toothed hunting daggers, also out of reach. But we wanted  a knife badly we realised. One we could throw. As a contribution, Oscar searched his pocket and proffered a tightly folded €10 note.

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