Sheena Patel - 1

Slicing the meat was the first task. It didn’t matter if it was neat, the cuts were important, delivered in a quick cascade. She laid the knife on the table and admired its shape, the square blade, the wooden handle which slid into the slot of her palm under her thumb. There were men in the shop next door who were fixing the bathroom. She could hear them cough as they moved through the corridor and she worried about germs. One called to the other, George, but George didn’t answer. Another call, George – with more urgency, then a cough, the phlegm hefted from his chest. She worried about the germs. She overheard a man with a thick Indian accent ask, do you want a bucket. George doesn’t answer. A door slam then a creak, here is a bucket, the Indian man said.

She looked down at her hands, bloodied. Her apron was heavy with the liquid. She paused the work, wiped her hands on a cloth straining to hear any more conversation. Silence but for a gentle knocking as George moves through his tasks, a rustle of plastic. She picked up her phone to satisfy the itch inside of her brain with the ding of a like or a follow but there is nothing. She knows this even before she picked it up, no one texts her yet her phone’s tracking system will inform her every week how much time she spends on it on average every day and the time surprises her. Six hours, you spent thirty minutes less than last week. At the height of the pandemic, it was ten, eleven.

Her luggage is stacked in the corner of the room behind the door, her Euros, her adaptor plug and her passport on the window ledge still with the aubergine cover, a last rectitude to a previous version of her country now mired in the type of politics that would condemn any other country, a banana republic. Weak and paranoid. Her thoughts like glass. She retrieves the artisanal sourdough bread from her tote bag, walks around the mass on the floor, tries to make as little sound as possible to not be detected. The fridges have been switched on, so she can leave for a festival and then return to complete the task once she’s home. It’s a shame the two have coincided, this slicing of the meat. This festival.