A Threefold Cord. Howard Goldenberg
houses while it was still dark. Snoth knew Bruce would bark if he left home by the front door so he climbed out a window at the back of his house. As he climbed down from the window his leg caught on a rose bush. He felt the pricking of a thorn and pulled his leg away. His leg felt warm and wet.
Snoth ran to Nystagmus’ house and arrived just as Jennifer came around the corner from her house. Nystagmus was waiting for them, holding the cat carrier. Tiger was asleep.
“He ate just about a whole fish, then he fell asleep. He likes Yaya’s fried fish.”
The three ran in the dark, taking care not to trip and not to bump each other, Nystagmus leading and carrying Tiger. Down the lane to the bridge, across the bridge – tiptoeing now – then they stopped, crouching next to the fence where Snoth had first heard the sounds of the cat.
Very carefully, very slowly, the three climbed the fence, Snoth first, boosted by the other two; next came Jennifer, pushed from below by Nystagmus and pulled from above by Snoth. Last was Nystagmus, after he hoisted the cat carrier above his head for his friends to take. Nystagmus struggled to the top, pulled by Snoth. As he climbed, Nystagmus felt something warm and wet drop onto his nose.
The Threefold Cord had a plan: they would lower the cat carrier by a cord – not a threefold cord, just ordinary household twine, a prickly sort of thin rope. Nystagmus kept watch on the back door of the house. Carefully, quietly, holding their breath, Snoth and Jennifer lowered Tiger in his carrier. There was a very soft bump, a startled miaow, then silence. Three children breathed out. Then Nystagmus noticed light shining from below the bottom edge of the back door. He pulled urgently on the arms of his friends, pointed at the door which was starting to open, and all three jumped quickly to the ground on the far side.
They lay there, afraid whoever it was would hear them if they ran.
Lying on the dewy wet grass in the dark they heard a voice. The voice was not loud but creepy. The voice spoke slowly, greedily: “I can tell you are there. You won’t get away this time.”
Nystagmus and Jennifer and Snoth listened to the voice. Poor Tiger – was he in danger again?
The voice went on: “I’ve got you, I’ve got you! Now I’m going to eat you!”
Horrified, all three leaped to their feet.
Snoth whispered: “Not all of us, just me. I’ll climb and look. Then I’ll tell you if we all need to go over. It’s got to be me; I can run away fastest.”
Faster than a possum, Snoth was up that fence. He looked down. There in the light from the house he saw a tall adult, all dressed in black. The adult stood facing the house, with one forefinger inside one nostril. Above the nose was a pair of mirror sunglasses.
Behind the adult Tiger slept in his little cage.
The adult pulled the finger from the nose. At the tip of the finger Snoth could clearly see a fat booger shining in the light from the house. And that soft creepy voice said again: I’ve got you, I’ve got you! Now I’m going to eat you!
Quicker than a hiccup, Snoth leaped back down the wall, landing on the grass as quiet as a breath. He grabbed his friends by the arms. “Let’s go!”
And they ran, quietly, quietly, until they were around the corner and out of sight. Nystagmus and Jennifer cried: “What did you see?”
Snoth couldn’t speak. His chest shook and his mouth was flung open widely. His friends believed he was crying.
Jennifer saw blood on Nystagmus’ nose. “Why is your nose bleeding, Nystagmus? Does it hurt?”
Nystagmus shook his head, puzzled. His nose felt fine.
Then Jennifer saw Snoth’s leg, all red with blood. Snoth looked down: “Cut leg on rose thorn. Bled onto Nystagmus. Sorry.”
Snoth’s body started to shake again. Jennifer leaned down and looked closely at the small cut on Snoth’s leg: “You must be in terrible pain, Snoth.”
Snoth gasped and cackled and gurgled and laughed. He stopped laughing long enough to say: “Doesn’t hurt. Not crying. Can’t stop … laughing.”
More cackles and giggles and roars of laughter: “That person, that famous vet, that scary dark glasses person – picks his nose and eats his boogers! Must be a him – girls don’t eat boogers!”
“That’s what you think,” said Jennifer.
Chapter Fifteen
Nystagmus took the knife that Yaya gave him. He wore onion goggles to protect his eyes; he didn’t want to cry. This wasn’t a meeting of the Threefold Cord. This was onion peeling, onion slicing and onion chopping for the shop. This was serious, a grown-up job with a grown-up knife.
Nystagmus concentrated hard. He held the large heavy knife very carefully. Papou had just sharpened the knife on the stone as he did every morning. Papou said a nearly sharp knife was more dangerous than a very sharp one. This one was very sharp. Papou showed him how easily it passed through the flesh of a great fish: “Such a knife can pass through the flesh of a small child, my boy.”
Papou had taught Nystagmus the Three Rules of the Knife:
| ONE: | Never walk with the blade pointed upwards – you could trip and stab yourself – or someone else. |
| TWO: | Only hold the knife when you are using it; it’s a tool. You only hold a tool to use it. Then you put it down. |
| THREE: | Never hold the knife while you are talking – in case you poke your own eye out. |
Papou had lots of terrible stories of people he knew who broke the Three Rules. One got stabbed, one got cut and one – his cousin Aristophanes, whom he called Cyclops – had poked his own eye out while he talked with his hands and waved the knife around at a barbecue.
Carefully, Nystagmus peeled away the brown skin from the onion. He placed the onion on the old timber board that had seen so many onions and had wept as they passed.
Nystagmus held the onion with his left hand, pressing it downward so it wouldn’t slip while his knife hand did the slicing. The slices fell one after another like wet white dominoes. Nystagmus saw them fall, side by side into a tidy heap and he felt a bit proud. He kept cutting, a happy cutter with a grown-up knife, doing a grown-up job. He took no notice of the two people who came into the shop asking for fish, chips and fried onion rings.
When he heard the words “onion rings”, Nystagmus knew he’d be busy slicing for quite a while. He took another onion, peeled it, and sliced. He took a third, peeled, sliced, then took a fourth. The adult customer sneezed. Nystagmus said: “Bless you” and looked up. He looked up and up. He looked up at a tall person dressed all in black, a person wearing a black cape, a large floppy black hat – and no sunglasses. The glasses were in the customer’s hand. The other hand rubbed the customer’s eyes that were full of tears. The hands were white, whiter than Nystagmus’ onion slices. And the eyes! They were unlike any eyes the onion-slicing boy had ever seen: in place of the coloured circle in the centre of the eye, there was a pale purple ring. Otherwise, the eyes were as colourless as the hands. Those strange eyes were blinded at the moment, blinded by tears from Nystagmus’s onions.
The boy looked away, placed his knife down carefully, and said: “Excuse me,” and turned to leave. He said something about going to the toilet and walked fast to the back of the shop. But as he turned he noticed two more things – the eyebrows of the tall person were like snowbrows, and the second person in the shop was a small boy. He recognised that boy.
(Who is the little boy in the fish shop? Has the boy recognised Nystagmus?
Does