Brass Soup and Cold Grease

The clicking of the molars took three long minutes to fade, dying out in a faint tremor like that of a telegraph wire still vibrating beneath the drizzle. Mateo Cerna sat upon a packing crate that groaned with every ragged breath, his back curved against the bare boards of the attic and the crown of his head pressed against the underside of the slate roof. The space was cramped, stifled by a lukewarm vapor that tasted of burnt kerosene and the onion slices Nico had let char at the bottom of a cast-iron skillet. The vegetable fat smoked on the dented brass stove, giving off that thick, almost pasty stench that clings to the palate for entire days and calls to mind the communal kitchens of the lower slums, where there is never enough lard to drown the stink of stagnant water.

"Hold still for once, you beast," Nico muttered, without lifting his eyes from the dented zinc washbasin where a greyish rag floated, stiffened by caustic soda and old tallow. "If you keep yanking at the tendon with that dog's cough of yours, you're going to blow out the three stitches the ramp blacksmith put in you. And I don't have waxed thread. I've got a foot of hemp left for the soles and I'm not wasting it on your neck."

The rag dropped onto the lacerated skin of his neck like a slab of dirty ice.

Mateo squeezed his eyelids shut until violet sparks—identical to the reflections of oil floating in the alley puddles—danced in the depths of his sockets. The burning was not warm; it was a white, bitter stab, as if someone were scraping his nerve sheaths with a broken seashell. From his collarbone to the base of his jaw, the braided fibers that did not belong to him gave short jerks, rejecting the heat of his own blood, cooling by force beneath the compress soaked in murky brine. Four blocks away, muffled by the blind mass of the prefabricated concrete blocks, the dull thud of the steam hammers fell with the regularity of an iron pulse—stroke, hiss, pause—shaking the windowsill where a row of empty bottles jingled faintly. Mateo tried to remember the color of the curtains in the house where he slept as a boy, before going down into the collector for the first time. He found only a white stain, a smooth void like a plate that has been washed with sand so many times it no longer keeps even the pattern of the rim.

"That half-pound of lard is going to cost you four lead coins," Nico said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he wrung out the rag with knuckles blackened by shoe polish. "And don't look at me with that face of a corpse just hauled out of the muck. The butcher at pier three won't give credit to his own mother. He says the grease hoppers are cut with lime and half the city is spitting yellow foam. If you want me to smear this on your neck so your live flesh doesn't rot, you're going to pay for it by weight."

"Yesterday you asked for two," Mateo managed to articulate. The words came out pasty, with the clumsiness of a tongue stumbling over someone else's teeth.

"Yesterday you didn't have half your throat open spewing sewer water. Besides, beans went up at the central market. Nobody goes down to haul grain anymore without an iron bar in their waistband."

Nico spat in the sawdust.

Mateo slid two trembling fingers down the side seam of his trousers and scratched a dry scab that pulled at the crease of his knee. On the wobbly table, next to a lamp whose wick smoked the glass with a crust of soot, rested a hunk of rye from three days before. Nico reached out, took the stale bread and broke it with his thumbs into two uneven pieces, letting the crumbs fall onto a torn register sheet where someone had jotted down serial numbers in running ink. He handed the smaller piece to Mateo without looking at him.

"Here. Chew it slow if you don't want your jaw locking up again."

"It tastes like mold," Mateo said after tasting the crust.

"Everything tastes like mold since November. If you don't like it, leave it for the rats. Though those don't even venture near this beam anymore; they went down to the coal depot, which at least is warm."

Only the agonizing hiss of the stove could be heard and the dirty water running down the outer gutter, rusted through until it dripped onto the tarpaulin. Mateo chewed the gummy mass. His jaw muscles ground with the rigidity of a seized bolt. He tried to think of a name—the girl with the herrings at lock four, the one with the half-moon below her ear—, but her face frayed between his teeth. In its place entered a stench of deep muck and the blind panic of webbed paws paddling against a drain grate in the middle of the blackness. Nothing more. The girl's face was gone.

"Either you pay for the lard or I sew you up with baling wire and kick you out to the stairs," Nico spat, wiping the blade of his pocketknife on the leg of his overalls with three dry passes. "Suit yourself whether you want to gangrene here or in the alley."

"Shut up and give me the ointment."

Nico snorted, threw the knife onto the table and walked over to Mateo's waxed canvas jacket, which hung from a bent nail near the stove, dripping a greasy water that smelled of bilge and mineral degreaser. He pulled it away from the direct fire with a jerk so it wouldn't reek of burnt leather.

"This piece of trash weighs like a dead man. What have you got stuffed in here? Ballast stones?"

He thrust his hand into the unstitched lining of the left side, searching for rope tobacco or a flask of liquor to pay himself for the trouble. His fingers brushed against a solid bulk. He frowned, rummaged through the lint matted with mud and pulled out a cylindrical piece about four fingers long.

It was a heavy fastening bolt.

The metal was covered in a dry crust of brown blood and machinery grease, but the hexagonal cut of the head remained free of rust. Nico brought it close to the pale flame of the kerosene lamp, turning it between his index finger and thumb. On the upper face, deeply sunken into the steel by a precision drop hammer blow, gleamed the stamp of three crossed notches: the personal mark of Bruna Varga, the inspector who ruled over the North Dock scrapyards.