One of Cain's kitchens, Washington · June 24, 2230 · Between meal lines
Davi liked the empty kitchen best, which he would not have said to anyone who worked there.
An empty kitchen meant people had been fed. It also meant nobody was asking him to explain an instruction he had received from someone farther inside. For a short while the rope could hang loose, the bowls could sound like dishes rather than a crowd, and his red sleeve strip attracted no attention except from himself.
He straightened it before sitting down.
The cook put a bowl in front of him and continued scraping the pot. He thanked her. She nodded without looking, having heard more gratitude that morning than she had found clean towels.
There was an extra spoon on the table. Davi set it beside the other, handles aligned. Then he moved it away. Two spoons at one bowl made it look as if he expected company, and he had not yet decided whether he did.
Cain arrived while Davi was separating a piece of onion from the bottom of the bowl.
“A place free?”
There were nine places free.
Davi stood too quickly and knocked his knee against the table. Cain steadied the bowl before any soup escaped. He did it without fuss, a small competence Davi would remember longer than he should have needed to.
“Stay seated,” Cain said. “The furniture has made its point.”
He sat opposite, not at the end. His cuffs were clean. Davi had wondered how he kept them so clean in rooms where everything that mattered left a mark.
The cook brought another bowl. Cain thanked her by name, quietly enough that Davi could not quite hear it, and asked whether the pot handle was still troubling her. She said it was. He said he would speak to the stores man.
He had not repaired the handle, but he had remembered it. Davi knew what remembering felt like from the other side.
“How was the line?” Cain asked.
“Orderly.”
“And you?”
Davi looked at him. He had prepared an answer about the line, not himself.
“Fine.”
“That's fortunate. Two orderly things in one morning.”
Cain took the spare spoon. They ate. He did not deliver a speech over the bowl. Davi found this more flattering than a speech would have been. The Oracle was giving him ordinary silence, as though they had shared so many meals that entertainment was no longer necessary.
“A woman called me little captain,” Davi said eventually.
Cain waited.
“At the rope.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“She didn't mean it kindly.”
“That wasn't what I asked.”
Davi concentrated on the onion. The woman had wanted to carry a second bowl to someone outside. The kitchen worker had already checked her portion; Davi had asked again because the second bowl looked like a decision that ought to pass through him. He had delayed her no more than a minute. The minute had felt large and useful while he held it.
He had not told anyone that part.
Cain waited with such patient interest that Davi nearly did. Instead he said the woman had become annoyed about a check.
“People come hungry,” Cain said. “Sometimes they bring the rest of the day with them.”
This was generous to the woman. It was also comfortable for Davi. Her annoyance now belonged to a day he had not caused, rather than a question he might not have needed to ask.
The Redeemer entered through the stores door carrying a measure jug. He looked at the two bowls, the loosened rope and Davi's strip. Then he set the jug on the counter and spoke to the cook about what remained in the pot.
Cain greeted him as brother. The reply concerned the number of bowls set aside for the next serving.
Davi sat straighter. Cain did not. It seemed suddenly important to know which posture the room preferred.
“The young man kept a good line,” Cain said.
The Redeemer looked at Davi. “Did the washhouse woman's carrier bowl reach her sister?”
The onion was still on Davi's spoon.
“Yes.”
“After the cook had already checked it?”
“Yes.”
“Then don't make the cook leave the pot to answer the same question.”
He turned back to the jug. No public reprimand followed. Davi would have preferred something he could describe as unfair. The instruction was sensible; the smallness of it left his humiliation nowhere dignified to stand.
Cain ate another spoonful.
“The rope gets very interesting when you're the one holding it,” he said.
Davi could not tell whether this was consolation, warning or an invitation to share a joke. Perhaps Cain did not need to choose. He could make all three available and let the listener select the one that bound most tightly.
“I was trying to do it right,” Davi said.
“I know.”
The Redeemer lifted the jug, checked the measure against its mark and left by the same door. He had corrected a delay. He had not asked what being corrected felt like. Davi trusted the measure more than the conversation and disliked discovering this while Cain was being kind to him.
The cook reached for the empty bowls at the next table. One slipped against another. Davi stood to help, then hesitated. If he carried dishes in front of Cain, would it look like eagerness, or punishment, or a boy trying to recover a lost inch of height?
The cook did not wait for him to decide. She took the stack herself.
“May I carry the next?” he asked.
“To the wash table,” she said. “Not onto my clean ones.”
He carried six. They were ordinary bowls and considerably more specific than respect. When he returned, Cain was wiping his mouth with a square of cloth.
“Come sit with me another time,” he said.
Davi felt the invitation enter him before he could examine it. Not a promotion. Not a payment. An empty place at a table where someone asked how he was and seemed prepared to wait for the answer.
“Thank you.”
Cain rose, taking his own bowl to the wash table. Davi watched the cook accept it without granting him the same look she had given the six. One bowl was one bowl, even when a famous man carried it.
At the door Cain paused to tell the stores worker about the pot handle. The worker said he would look. Davi could not see whether a repair followed, and the next line began arriving before there was time to find out.
He fastened the rope. The red strip had slipped during the carrying. He straightened it again, then loosened it by a finger's width because it was cutting into his sleeve.
The first person through had a bowl and a question about the serving time. Davi answered. The second had two bowls and the cook's mark. He looked at the mark, looked toward the kitchen, and let her pass.
He liked doing it correctly. He also liked being the one who could let her.