Read Blood Kin for Free Online

The shit is green.
    ‘I usually wait for them to die before I do that,’ I say. ‘Even if they can’t feel pain.’
    This is true. I have never disembowelled a live crayfish.
    She drops the crayfish back into the sink and soaps her hands rigorously. When she turns to face me again, I see traces of some faint disappointment.
    ‘Did you know that crayfish have a grain of sand in their brains that gives them their bearings?’ I ask her. ‘That’s how they know up from down. A supplier told me he once put a metal filing in a crayfish’s brain, and a magnet at the bottom of the tank, and the crayfish swam upside down until it died.’
    She steps away from the sink and perches on a kitchen stool near the swinging doors, the same place the two men sat the night I made paella. Her pencil skirt forces her to cross her legs. Her ankles are slim and veined and even her closed-toe shoes can’t detract from the elegance of her feet. She looks the other way, uninterested. The water is boiling, I drop the sea snails into the steaming pot, and they immediately begin to scream – at first silently, a whine so high-pitched only a dog could hear it, then descending to a moan designed for the human ear. They rattle in the pot against each other’s shells and after a few minutes they give up and their stoppers first float to the top, then sink to the bottom. When I drain them they clatter into the sink – the side that was attached to the creature is smooth, with a blue copper swirl, the other side is stuccoed and prickly.
    I select a sharp knife, get a grip on a stunted boiled sea snail and slice it finely. It pares off firm and grey.
    ‘Where have all the women come from?’ I ask.
    She doesn’t answer until I’m forced to twist my head to see if she is still in the kitchen. She has her hands above her head, twirling a sausage of hair around itself into a bun, the faint line of a muscle showing in her upper arms.
    ‘There are new men here too,’ she says. ‘We’ve been keeping order in the city – trying to stop looting, getting services running again.’
    ‘And now that’s been achieved? Does order reign?’
    She pauses and tucks a wayward hair behind her ear. ‘To a degree.’
    I begin to crush garlic cloves with coarse salt, pressing them with the flat of the knife against the board until they yield, then turn to paste. ‘What’s it like out there? What are people doing? Are houses intact?’
    She laughs and stands. ‘You mean, is your house intact?’
    I smile conspiratorially, take a frying pan down by its handle and cover the base with oil. She walks towards me and I hand her the pan, and the garlic and sea snail on a wooden board. ‘Fry this until it becomes opaque.’
    She takes the handle, finds a spatula and hovers over the pan solicitously until the garlic releases its scent into the oil. ‘People are confused. Many had chosen not to know about the President’s crimes.’
    I look at her inquisitively.
    ‘Of course you don’t know,’ she says. ‘Convenient.’
    I notice small pieces of grass clinging to her back and flecking her hair. She must have been lying outside in the sun this morning.
    I have the rolling pin in my hand – it is time to creep up on the abalone and surprise them with a death blow. She watches me walk the length of the kitchen towards the darkened pantry; I tiptoe the last few steps for dramatic effect and then crouch above them. Three I kill before they contract, but the last realizes what is coming and stiffens. I will have to throw it out.
    She looks at me carrying my spoils back to the sink and says, ‘Death by rolling pin. Must remember that one.’
    I fry the three steaks quickly, searing their flanks. She dries her hands on a dishcloth and leans against the sink, facing me. The prawns have pinkened in hot oil.
    ‘Will you put your disembowelled friend and his companions out of their misery?’ I ask her.
    She looks sheepish as she lifts each one and drops it into the pot.