The narrator tests the wheelchair user’s knife by cutting objects

The narrator’s test of the wheelchair user’s knife turns a request for a simple appraisal into an extended act of cutting beneath a full moon. The blade proves startlingly well balanced and sharp; as the narrator uses it on objects around the beach and pool, the young man’s wish to possess a knife opens onto a dream in which a knife cannot be removed from the place where memory resides.

The Knife and Its Owner

At a table, the young man asks whether the narrator knows anything about knives, then explains that he bought one from a catalogue about a month earlier and wants an independent opinion. He has no particular expertise himself and appears briefly disappointed when the narrator says he knows little beyond having used knives while camping. The hesitation soon passes: the young man says he simply wants someone else to examine the knife, and the narrator agrees.

The young man draws from his pocket a beautifully curved object five inches long. He says he is not carrying it to hurt anyone or himself; one day he felt he had to own a sharp knife, ordered it after looking through catalogues, and has kept the fact from everyone, including his mother. The narrator is the only person who knows. The young man also points out that the narrator is leaving for Tokyo the next day, placing this private confidence at the edge of an imminent departure.

The knife’s material details give the exchange an unusual gravity. Its brass handle is set with wood inlay, and the young man lets it rest in his palm before passing it across the table, testing its weight as though it matters greatly. The narrator finds the knife strangely heavy, almost like a living creature with a will of its own. Once opened, its blade extends about three inches; it feels heavier still, yet fits the narrator’s palm so perfectly that he can swing it without tightening his grip. The sharply etched blood groove cuts a crisp arc through the air.

From Appraisal to Action

After the narrator folds the blade away, the young man opens it again and twirls it deftly. He shuts one eye and aims it at the full moon as if sighting a rifle; the reflected light briefly flashes across his face. He then asks the narrator to cut something. Because he is stuck in his chair and has little opportunity to cut things himself, he wants the narrator to use the knife on whatever is nearby.

The narrator begins with the trunk of a palm tree, slicing away bark, and then cuts a Styrofoam kickboard in half lengthwise. The knife is sharper than he expected, and he tells the young man that it is fantastic. The young man confirms that it is handcrafted and expensive. The narrator then aims the blade at the moon in imitation of the young man, seeing it in the light as the stem of a ferocious plant pushing through soil, something joining nothingness and excess.

The young man urges him to cut more. The narrator slashes fallen coconuts, the massive leaves of a tropical plant, the menu at the bar entrance, and pieces of driftwood on the beach. When there is nothing left to cut, he moves slowly and deliberately, like someone performing Tai Chi, slicing the knife through the night air. The demonstration has expanded beyond testing an object: for a time, the narrator moves in a night he experiences as deep and pliable, with the full moon intensifying that sense of suspended time.

The Scene Beyond Reach

As he cuts at the air, the narrator thinks of the fat woman, a former United Airlines stewardess. He sees her pale, bloated flesh hovering around him like mist, holding within it the rafts, sea, sky, helicopters, and pilots. He tries to slice these elements in two, but his perspective is wrong; the scene remains just beyond the blade’s reach. His attempt to act on what he sees does not resolve whether the scene is an illusion or whether he is. The question becomes immaterial beside his immediate knowledge that he will be gone the following day.

This moment links the physical cuts to the narrator’s inability to reach or alter what his mind brings before him. Earlier cuts have clean, visible results: bark comes away, a kickboard divides, and the knife passes through coconuts, leaves, paper, and driftwood. The remembered scene resists the same action. The blade can mark objects at hand, but it cannot touch the mist-bound image or settle the narrator’s uncertainty about reality.

The Dream of the Knife

The young man follows the cutting with an account of a recurring dream. In it, a sharp knife is stuck deep in the soft part of his head, where memories lie. It does not hurt or weigh him down, and he watches the scene from the side as if it were happening to someone else. He wants someone to pull the knife out, but nobody knows it is there; although he thinks of pulling it out himself, he cannot reach his hands inside his head.

The dream’s central contradiction is that he can stab himself but cannot reach the knife in order to remove it. As everything begins to disappear, he too starts to fade, while the knife remains to the end, like the bone of a prehistoric animal on a beach. The image gives the real knife an unsettling counterpart: in the young man’s hand it is a carefully made, weighted object that can be opened, passed across a table, and tested; in the dream it is lodged inside memory and beyond the dreamer’s reach. The scene ends not with an explanation of the dream or of the young man’s desire to own a knife, but with his telling of it, after the narrator’s own cutting has likewise failed to reach what it briefly seemed to see.