The hunting knife

The hunting knife is a compact, expensive folding blade that the young man in a wheelchair carries secretly and asks the narrator to examine. During their encounter, it passes from a privately treasured possession to a tool tested on nearby objects and, finally, to the central image in the young man’s dream of memory, helplessness, and disappearance. Its significance lies in that double life: its balance and sharpness are tangible, while the wound it evokes cannot be reached or removed.

Acquisition and Secrecy

The young man raises the subject of knives after declining whiskey, explaining that he does not drink because he is unsure how he would react. He asks whether the narrator knows about hunting knives. The narrator has used knives while camping but admits to little expertise, briefly disappointing him. The young man then explains that he ordered this one from a catalogue about a month earlier without knowing whether it was any good. He had simply felt that he had to own a sharp knife.

He says he carries it with him and that nobody knows—not even his mother. The narrator is the sole person he has told. The disclosure gives the knife a private importance beyond its practical use: it is at once an object he has chosen and a secret he has entrusted to someone who is leaving for Tokyo the next day. The young man explicitly says he does not intend to hurt anyone or himself.

Form and Handling

The young man draws a beautifully curved, five-inch-long knife from his pocket and sets it on the table. Its brass handle has a wood inlay. He holds it in his palm to test its weight before passing it to the narrator, who notices a peculiar heft and how naturally the handle fits the hand. A depression in the upper part of the hilt releases the blade; extended, it measures about three inches. Its steel bears a sharply etched blood groove.

The narrator swings it up and down, then side to side. The blade’s balance is so exact that it seems secure without a tighter grip, and its movement cuts a clean arc through the air. Although the narrator says the knife feels excellent, he wonders whether it is small for a hunting knife. The young man acknowledges the point, then takes it back, opens it again, and twirls it deftly. He shuts one eye and aims it at the full moon as if sighting along a rifle; reflected moonlight flashes briefly across his face. The small object is handled with the care of something whose significance exceeds its size.

Testing the Blade

The young man asks the narrator to cut something, explaining that he cannot do much cutting from his chair and would like the narrator to do it for him. The narrator agrees. He first slashes diagonally at the trunk of a nearby palm, removing bark, and then cuts a Styrofoam kickboard in half lengthwise. The knife proves sharper than he expected. The young man says it is handcrafted and expensive, giving the narrator’s practical assessment a material explanation without dispelling the object’s mysterious appeal.

At the young man’s encouragement, the narrator continues: he cuts fallen coconuts, the broad leaves of a tropical plant, the menu at the bar entrance, and pieces of driftwood on the beach. Once there is nothing left to cut, he moves slowly and deliberately, silently sweeping the knife through the night air. The scene shifts from a series of practical demonstrations to an extended, almost purposeless movement beneath the full moon. The knife remains a real tool, but the act of using it opens onto what neither man can literally cut or reach.

The Image in the Moonlight

The narrator points the knife toward the moon as the young man had done. Against the light, it resembles the stem of a fierce plant emerging through soil, an image he associates with a connection between nothingness and excess. This impression turns the blade into more than a catalogue purchase: its sharp, defined form seems to emerge from an unseen depth, while the narrator’s attention is drawn toward what lies beyond its material edge.

As he slices through the air, the narrator thinks of the ex-United Airlines stewardess and imagines her pale, bloated flesh hovering around him like mist. The rafts, sea, sky, helicopters, and pilots are all present within that formless image, but the narrator cannot reach them with the knife. He wonders whether it is all an illusion or whether he is the illusion; the question remains unresolved. His departure the next day gives the moment a boundary: whatever the scene has opened up, he will soon be gone.

The Dream and Its Meaning

The young man tells the narrator that he sometimes dreams of a sharp knife embedded in the soft part of his head where memories lie. In the dream, he stands apart and observes what seems to be happening to someone else. He wants someone to pull the knife out, but nobody knows it is there; although he imagines removing it himself, he cannot reach inside his own head. He can stab himself, yet cannot get to the knife to pull it out.

The dream’s blade does not hurt or weigh him down. Instead, as everything begins to disappear and he too starts to fade, the knife remains until the end, like the bone of a prehistoric animal on a beach. Its persistence links the real knife’s weight and durability to an image of memory that cannot be accessed or removed. The young man’s dream does not explain the knife’s origin or resolve its meaning; it leaves the object suspended between possession and symbol, physical precision and an inner experience that remains beyond reach.