There was a man who nearly always bought three eggs and ate them, without pause, whether he was drinking beer or wine or coffee-and-a-shot. He paid a little extra to have his eggs unshelled by Victor. He did not take a plunge of salt. He dipped his eggs instead into the sugar pot. He halved each egg longways with his teeth and then consumed each half open-mouthed and without much regard for the spectacle and mess he made. It was not clear what kind of man he was. He sat alone, though everyone who served or passed by deferred to him. He was so fat that he walked with a stick, not because he lacked the strength to bear his weight, but simply as a means of maintaining lift and balance should he need to sit or climb a stair, or — rarity indeed — to step aside. His walking stick was tarbony and topped in silver, not ostentatious but smart, and as sturdy as a cudgel. The scroll etching in the silver was made bold in its recesses by city grubbiness and verdigris and — who could doubt it? — dried blood.
They said he was a landlord of some sort, a pimp, a man who’d been a consul in the tropics and had made a fortune out of gold or slaves or running guns, an impresario, a counterfeiter, an operatic star who had not sung since some scandal or some love affair had silenced him, an undercover cop. He hardly ever spoke a word. He took his usual seat, at the margins of the nearest cafe. It was a seat which did not require him to negotiate the narrow spaces between tables, chairs, and customers. He drank his drinks. He ate his eggs. He read his paper or his magazine. He made a note, occasionally, inside a grey-bound book. He held his stick as if he were a shepherd eager for the chance to drive away a raven or a dog. He staved off fullness with excess.
‘We never knew his name, or what he did,’ said Victor. ‘The only certainty about this man was that he was worthy of respect.’
So Victor was fastidious. He made certain that the eggs he sold to him were fresh and free of shell, and clean. He placed the three shelled eggs, as usual, on the metal bill-and-tip which the waiter had positioned next to — that balmy night — a glass of beer, and waited for his payment in small change. There was always a wait. A fat man finds it difficult to fish his purse or coins from his trousers or his coat. His right hand was trapped inside his pocket when someone knocked him from behind. The table shuddered. And the beer? It spilled a little and would have fallen from the table had not the fat man, with the speed and delicacy of a lizard’s tongue, shot out his one free hand and steadied it. He turned as best he could. His body did not turn, just his head and neck. His chair and back received another blow and this time the beer and glass were on the ground before his hand could move. The eggs began to slide and arc across the tabletop, their passage eased and oiled by beer. They jostled at the table’s edge like nervous bubbles at a drain, fell off, and then were split and knocked as tasteless as the cobblestones.
The fat man did not feel the third impulse. Two fighting men, one pushing with stiff fingers and a spittled mouth, another walking backwards and attempting to defend himself with kicks, sent the table spinning on one leg, then sprawling, legs aloft, above the eggs and beer. So far as one could tell from the stream of threats and imprecations they exchanged, their differences would not be solved without the death of one.
They were two market traders, partners, neighbours, old-time friends — and what they’d fallen out about wasn’t worth a bead of phlegm, let alone the lungfuls that the two of them, now out of fighting range, were looping at each other through the air.
The younger of the two had wisecracked with the customers of the older man, the one whose fighting fingers were so certain and so stiff. He’d teased them, half cunningly and half in jest, that his neighbour’s produce was not fresh.
‘He’s selling fossils and antiques today,’ he’d said. The neighbour swore this foolishness, these lies, had cost him trade. And more. And worse. He knew for sure that, while his back was turned, the younger one pocketed the cash for onion clumps which they had purchased as partners and whose profits they should share. He did not listen to his friend’s defence — that ‘while my back was turned’ meant ‘while I filled myself with drink, while I let the business, onion clumps and all, slide into hell’. There were a hundred other microscopic aggravations between the men that, in the sudden heat of anger, seethed and thrived like viruses. ‘Go dine on shit,’ one said. The other held his little finger up, a gesture meant to show disdain, and said, with feeble dignity, ‘I’ll never talk to you again.’
The fat man filled his lungs and put some pressure on his stick. His knuckles whitened. It looked as if he were about to show how he could slay these two with just one etched and silver blow. But he was only holding tight so that he could stand. Once up — and once the two adversaries had quietened and were watching him — he dipped his hand into the inner pocket of his coat and pulled out a wallet. He took out one banknote. He unfolded it and held it up, theatrically, for all to see. A blue five-thousand note. A two-month wage. Enough to purchase a good horse, enough to buy a thousand eggs. The fat man folded the blue note in two, lengthways, exactly as he halved his eggs, and tore it carefully along the crease. What was he then? A conjurer? Would he set fire to those two halves, or chew them up, then make them whole again? Was this a good note? Was it counterfeit?
There was no movement in the Soap Garden. Even waiters, trays aloft, were frozen where they stood. Victor was not the only one who’d never seen a note as large as that before. What kind of man would tear such wealth in two?
The fat man flung out and spread his arms, a half-note in each hand. His voice was both bourgeois and everyday. It was, surprisingly, for one so large, a little reedy too.
‘One each,’ he said. He shook the worthless halves impatiently. ‘Come on. Step up.’
The younger man was the first to step forward. He did not look the fat man in the eye. He concentrated on the half-a-fortune and the walking stick, expecting there to be some finger trick or some low, crippling blow. He need not have feared. The stiff, blue piece of paper transferred to him with just the slightest reticence where the embossed printing snagged on the fat man’s dampened skin.
The elder of the two was also reticent. He recognized the fat man’s game. He had children of his own and knew how squabbles were resolved by parental trickery. You broke a ginger stick in half and let the children suck away their moods. Yet half a ginger stick had value on its own. It tasted just as good in pieces. But half a note? He could not formulate exactly what the trick might be, yet he was in no doubt, as he took in the fat man and his neighbour holding half a fortune in their hands, that he would be a fool to walk away. He might as well take half a note. To turn away would not look good or wise. Pride would not allow a market man to jeopardize just half a chance of making random, unearned cash.
He did not move. He put his hand out. Palm up. The cussed supplicant. Let Mammon come to him. The fat man was not proud. He did not mind that he would have to move a pace or two. He took three steps. He spread his weight across both legs and leant his stick against a chair. He rolled the half note in a ball, dismissively, with studied irony. He dropped it on the outstretched, flattened palm. And then he took the market trader’s hand in both of his and wrapped the fingers round the paper ball.
‘Now talk,’ the fat man said.
Both traders felt more foolish than they’d done since they were adolescents. They did not hang around. They did not walk away, of course, arms linked, their two half lives already interlocked. They disappeared like cats, their heads and shoulders down, their ears alert, their fur on end. They would not talk that night — but who can doubt that they would trade weak grins the following day and then handshakes? They’d see the sense in being partners once again.