He shuffled forwards, the torch in one hand, the knife in the other. He felt the grease pile up beneath his toes: looking down, he saw it gathered in a slick ridge at his feet. Looking ahead, he saw that the grease was actually moving sluggishly towards him. Someone had already sloshed it aside, in a faint but unmistakable track, and it was quietly oozing back, revealing its direction as it rolled.
Struck by an idea, he inched back to the air-vent and stood up. He put the torch on the ground above his head and gripped the edge of the grating, hauling himself back into the not-so-fresh air.
For the next five minutes, Yashim crept this way and that around the vats. He went to the far end of the tannery and removed the grating, thrusting his torch down the pipe. He watched the oozing grease for a few moments.
He went towards the centre of the tannery and fiddled with a rope attached to one of the derricks used for raising and lowering bundles of skins into the vats.
When he was ready, he put a hand on one of the chains that stretched out of the vats and yanked on it.
Then he dived for another, and another, pulling with all his might.
And somewhere in the distance, as if from underground, he heard a scream.
[ 64 ]
The assassin saw the first bung disappear.
Ten years before, he had watched a wall collapse on top of him, and counted that moment an eternity.
Now, for an eternity, he made no sound.
For an eternity he scrambled for an explanation.
And he rolled aside only when the bung was replaced by a black tube of scalding fat and water which exploded onto the brick.
It ricocheted onto his back, the hot fat clinging like needles.
And he screamed.
Spouts of heavy boiling dye erupted all around him. The culvert he lay in was suddenly filled with swirling liquid. In terror he ploughed his hands into the scalding torrent and fought his way to an opening. He reached up, placed his scalded hands on the grating, and heaved.
And as he dragged himself up out of the vent he scarcely noticed the coiled rope that cinched very tight against his burning ankles.
[ 65 ]
Yashim lunged on the counterweight and had the satisfaction of seeing the assassin swept from his feet. But as the slipknot ran up against the pulley, the arm of the derrick swung heavily towards him and the rope went slack. Yashim lunged further backwards to regain his hold but at that moment the rope bearing the assassin’s weight kicked between his hands, almost knocking him off his feet: the rope sped through his palms and he found himself suddenly scrabbling against the sweaty slope. He kicked with both feet: his left leg slithered off the edge and his foot touched boiling water. He jerked it back with a gasp, and went down on his side.
Flailing to regain a foothold on the slimy surface, Yashim saw the rope slowly oozing through his fingers, slick with grease. He made a lunge with his left hand and caught the rope, tight as a bar, a few inches higher up, hauling hand over hand until he was able to get into a crouch. For a moment he felt his sandals skating on the greasy floor, so he leaned back to balance the weight. Everything had happened so fast that when he finally looked up he could make no sense of what he saw.
A few yards ahead of him, something like a giant crab was working its pincers in a jet of pinkish steam.
Bound at the ankles, upside down, the assassin’s legs were opening and closing at the knee. His tunic had fallen over his head, but his arms were flailing upwards from the cloud of cloth, struggling to take a grip of his own legs. The hem of the tunic floated in a bath of dye. He was suspended directly over a boiling vat, where the derrick had carried him the moment it felt the weight of his body against its arm.
Yashim dragged at the rope and hauled himself upright, but the moment he slacked his hold on the rope the assassin dropped. Yashim hauled back, wrapping a length of rope around his waist and leaning back over the vat behind him.
I can’t let go, he thought.
