When the Night Comes by Favel Parrett

Author:Favel Parrett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

ONIONS

There was a pile of onion slices on the counter, a pyramid of them—thin and see-through. Bo looked up at me but his hands did not stop moving. He kept slicing onions, running them back and forth quickly against a large metal slicer. He was slicing so fast, the sunlight through the porthole caught the particles of onion juice in the air, and there was a whole rainbow of it there in the galley.

Bo’s eyes were puffy and red and my eyes started to water. The acid of the onions was like a wall, invisible but there all the same.

“Go and stand near the sink,” Bo said, still slicing. “Look down into the hot water.”

The metal sink was half-full of steaming water and I leant over it. I could feel the warmth of the steam against the skin on my face. It felt good.

“Stare into the water. Try not to blink.”

I stared down, my eyes wide, until the water became blurred and the edges of the sink rounded and then were gone altogether. Then there was just a body of water—my eyes staring down into a moving body of water.

I blinked. The onion sting was gone. I stood up, my nose running.

Bo was on the last onion. He finished quickly, then slid the pile of sliced onions into a huge metal pot. It was blackened and dented on the outside, but shiny bright on the inside. He wiped the counter down, wiped down the slicer, and then stood over the sink of water. He blinked his eyes. Huge tears squeezed out and they ran down his cheeks but he did not wipe them away.

“I don’t like to make French onion soup,” he said. “So many onions! It tastes so sweet, but it comes from pain!”

I had never had French onion soup. I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t like the sound of it, but when Bo’s eyes were clear and he had washed his hands and set the big pot on the gas ring, he added a whole packet of butter and the smell of the onions gently sweating in the butter made me change my mind about the soup.

There was garlic, lots of crushed garlic, and then more butter. Stock from another pot, clear and brown, that Bo ladled in, and then red wine, a big spoonful of flour. A pile of herbs, like little trees tied together with string, and then Bo stirred. He stirred until the mixture bubbled and then he put the lid on.

The smell was sweet and sour, warm butter and salt and onions.

Bo washed his hands again, wiped them on a tea towel. He stood opposite me, hands down on the counter.

“When I was just a mess boy, maybe seventeen, on my first ship, I had to do lots of the prep in the galley. Cutting onions was one job I always had. I always hated this job! My eyes used to really weep. I could hardly even keep them open. There were

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