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12 I Slaughterer The tears curled from the cattle’s eyes, their horns curled back, their coats curled like frost-ferns on windshields or the hair on the heads of Sikandar’s soldiers. Two of my grandfather’s sons, when he knew he was dying, took him from his bed. They supported him out the doorway so he could say goodbye to his favourite cattle. The cattle wept. They knew him. They are not like cattle here. They live among the household and on the hills, which are very green, and they eat good food, the same food as the household, cut-up pieces of leftover chapatti. You do not get stories like that in books. I am telling you because you only have things to read. Whenever anybody tried to make me read a book or anything, I would fall asleep; my head would just drop. What is the use of reading books? What can you do after that but get an office job? Do my friends who stayed at school earn as much as me? They all have office jobs; could they do a job like mine? Could they slaughter for seventy hours without getting tired or needing to sleep? It was hard at first. I used to dream the cattle. They would come to me with big eyes, like mothers and sisters. After a few weeks, they stopped coming to me in dreams. After about five years, I stopped feeling tired: I do not need to sleep. We do three or four thousand a day in Birmingham, only a thousand a night in Lancaster. Tonight I am going to Lancaster. I will talk to you until Lancaster. Where are you from? You are lying on me. No, where are your parents from? Are you lying on me? I came here as a teenager, and at once they tried making me read. How old are you? Why do you only have things to read? I am sorry I am talking to you. You have brought things you want to read. Beautiful reader, what is your name? You can feel the quality of the meat in the animal when it is alive: the way its skin fits on its flesh. You can feel the quality of life in the meat. The cattle here are not good. They inject them. Their flesh is ahhh. Look, look how beautiful. I will show you pictures of the place. Look, it is very green.

Fire & Darkness: And Also / No Join / Like O Love, that fire and darkness should be mix'd, Or to thy triumphs such strange torments fix’d! – John Donne, Elegy XIII A northern street: the temperature of the ungovernable. The proud hooded stride. The skill to add up stone: cold – outlasting. The wealth of the land: stone. Kindness: the harsh kind. For each question, a better question. For each better question, one answer. For each good question – that’ll do. Not fussed. I walk the hollow walk: loving more than loved; moved, scarce more than moving. and also In the south of this country, five times I have attended the celebrations that they hold in the dark of the year. Many centuries ago, there was a man whose name was Guy, or Guido. He practised a different, competing version of the national religion. He tried to explode an important government site. These buildings are still in use. You can visit the place, which is on the river. Some of the children who ask for money on British streets are simply trying to fund their construction of effigies of this hate figure, whose burning on public and domestic pyres on the so-called ‘Bonfire Night’ (5 November) has become a popular ritual. Fireworks are let off; it is legal to purchase them for your own festivities. no join A northern street, uphill. It branches, like – a Y, a peace sign, water coursing round an outcrop; like – part of the net of a tree; like – It branches in two. Upon the slope held between the branches stands a sooty church, now in use as a nightclub. This pale and brisk morning glances on the metal railings. Who is he? Nobody. Who is he, between the fence and lamp post? Nobody. A hat stuck on the railing, abandoned by a tidy drunk. A feeble visual joke. Nobody’s head, nobody’s, supports a hat drooped at that angle. It is a guy. A Guy Fawkes guy. The students left him there: lad for the burning: unreal, it has to be unreal. Check out this guy. I have to cross the road, so I do. The ordinary-looking foot is wedged between the base of the fence and the lamp post. The left arm, bent at the elbow, has been tucked deep into the jacket pocket, toneless. It is not a bad face. The eye is 13 I

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12

I Slaughterer

The tears curled from the cattle’s eyes, their horns curled back, their coats curled like frost-ferns on windshields or the hair on the heads of Sikandar’s soldiers. Two of my grandfather’s sons, when he knew he was dying, took him from his bed. They supported him out the doorway so he could say goodbye to his favourite cattle. The cattle wept. They knew him. They are not like cattle here. They live among the household and on the hills, which are very green, and they eat good food, the same food as the household, cut-up pieces of leftover chapatti.

You do not get stories like that in books. I am telling you because you only have things to read. Whenever anybody tried to make me read a book or anything, I would fall asleep; my head would just drop.

What is the use of reading books? What can you do after that but get an office job? Do my friends who stayed at school earn as much as me? They all have office jobs; could they do a job like mine? Could they slaughter for seventy hours without getting tired or needing to sleep?

It was hard at first. I used to dream the cattle. They would come to me with big eyes, like mothers and sisters. After a few weeks, they stopped coming to me in dreams. After about five years, I stopped feeling tired: I do not need to sleep. We do three or four thousand a day in Birmingham, only a thousand a night in Lancaster.

Tonight I am going to Lancaster. I will talk to you until Lancaster. Where are you from? You are lying on me. No, where are your parents from? Are you lying on me? I came here as a teenager, and at once they tried making me read. How old are you? Why do you only have things to read? I am sorry I am talking to you. You have brought things you want to read. Beautiful reader, what is your name?

You can feel the quality of the meat in the animal when it is alive: the way its skin fits on its flesh. You can feel the quality of life in the meat. The cattle here are not good. They inject them. Their flesh is ahhh.

Look, look how beautiful. I will show you pictures of the place. Look, it is very green.

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