First Things First…
This is my second Clive Barker story after I reviewed his first one, “The Book of Blood,” in the fall. This one is also a re-read, and of the six stories I read a few years ago that comprise his first book of short stories, this one was my favorite. Hopefully that still holds up.
3 Things I Like
3. A Butcher’s Delusions of Grandeur
Before we meet the butcher, Mahogany, we hear about his handiwork on the subway…
“More bizarre than the stripping was the neat and systematic way in which the clothes had been folded and placed in individual plastic bags on the seat beside the corpse.
“This was no irrational slasher at work. This was a highly-organized mind: a lunatic with a strong sense of tidiness.”
There’s more to the description, of course. But this is the part I found fascinating. The organization… the attention to detail… the pride in his “craft.”
It’s no wonder, then, to learn he has delusions of grandeur.
We meet Mahogany not long after. And interestingly, we get his perspective, so we learn of the pedestal he puts himself on as he thinks…
“He was, after all, not one of the common herd. He could stand at his window and look down on a thousand heads below him, and know he was a chosen man.”
And a few paragraphs later…
“He was in a great tradition, that stretched further back than America. He was a night-stalker: like Jack the Ripper, like Gilles de Rais, a living embodiment of death, a wraith with a human face. He was a haunter of sleep, and an awakener of terrors.”
But despite holding himself in such high esteem, comparing himself favorably with the most notorious serial killers of all time, he’s also out of touch with reality.
And it’s in his physical description, and his failure to recognize his shortcomings—or to recognize but not fully accept them—that I’m really interested.
As he’s getting into the shower in the scene where he’s introduced, he notices…
“…the small paunch, the greying hairs on his sagging chest, the scars, and pimples that littered his pale skin. He was getting old.”
But on his way out for his job that night…
“He checked his appearance in the mirror. He could, he thought, still be taken for a man of forty-five, fifty at the outside.”
When Kaufman encounters him face to face on the train, he agrees Mahogany could be 50. But his impression of 50 is more in line with the less flattering physical description…
“He was not terribly fearsome, just another balding, overweight man of fifty. His face was heavy and his eyes deep-set. His mouth was rather small and delicately lipped. In fact he had a woman’s mouth.“
But nothing signifies just how wrong Mahogany is about his place in history—about being chosen—than his ultimate fate. Not just that Kaufman kills him rather easily. But that, rather than receiving gratitude from the Fathers for his service, he winds up as their food. Just like the prey he’s been hunting and looking down on for so long.
2. Narrating One’s Own Death
Even better than how vividly Barker describes Mahogany’s death is that we get it from Mahogany’s perspective. We literally get his thoughts and feelings as he’s dying. I’m not sure I’ve ever read anything quite like it, as he describes choking after the blade pierces one side of his neck and goes straight through the other side… as he suddenly loses his sense of hearing and then his eyesight… and how he recognizes death is upon him as he fades away.
1. The Terror of Discovery
This is what really made me love the story. From the moment Kaufman discovers he’s on the Midnight Meat Train to his faceoff with Mahogany is as tense as anything I’ve read in a long time.
I think this line best sums up exactly how I felt about it…
“He was sure if the slaughterer didn’t finish him, expectation would.”
Because that’s what it is… there’s a constant expectation that he’s about to be discovered. At one point, Kaufman hides under a seat tucked into a ball with his eyes closed. And when the door opens, he knows Mahogany is in the train car with him. He just has no idea if his hiding place is working or not. He wonders…
“Was he even now looking down at Kaufman’s back? Even now bending, knife in hand, to scoop Kaufman out of his hiding place, like a snail hooked from its shell?”
Whether it’s Mahogany moving throughout the train… Kaufman risking giving up his hiding place to exit the car he’s in and go through the one that’s a slaughterhouse… or his fear when Mahogany is heading up front toward the driver (before he realizes the driver is part of the conspiracy) …
This part of the story crackles with tension, and I loved it.
3 Things I’m Mixed On
3. The Palace of Delights
I’m really not sure what to make of NYC in this story. It’s clearly important, but I’m not sure I understand what point is being made.
Kaufman’s feelings about the city bookend the story. In the beginning, he’s thinking about how this city he’d always dreamed of living in and had referred to as the “Palace of Delights” isn’t so delightful. Just look at the Midnight Meat Train.
But the story ends with Kaufman taking the place of Mahogany as the Fathers’ new hunter (after having his tongue ripped out and eaten in front of him), with him ascending from the subway and literally kissing the dirty concrete while pledging his loyalty to the city.
I don’t mind that New York City is the setting. And the griminess and dark underbelly make it feel like the right choice. But placing the main character’s feelings toward the city in such prominent places makes me feel like there’s more to it. The most obvious explanation is that he’s fallen out of love with it in the beginning, but now that he survived this horrible ordeal, he suddenly appreciates it once again.
Maybe that’s it. And maybe the city is also a stand-in for life itself. Kaufman seems a bit of a misanthrope. He doesn’t appear to care much for the people around him. Maybe losing his tongue but retaining his life, along with a new purpose, have restored life’s luster for him.
2. Braver by the Minute
In those tense scenes I talked about earlier, before he’s discovered on the train, Kaufman becomes braver as the minutes pass.
It’s exciting. I just don’t understand how he becomes braver.
The first example is when he has to decide if he’s going to stay in his hiding place, which Mahogany will most likely discover him in sooner or later, or make a break for one of the rear cars, where he might get seen out in the open.
The way he calculates it is…
“Which was worse: stasis, and meeting his death trapped in a hole; or making a break for it and confronting his Maker in the middle of the car?
“Kaufman surprised himself with his mettle: he’d move.”
That one—even though he surprises himself—is more understandable, because as he realizes, staying put is just as risky as moving.
But later, when the lights go out and he screams, giving away his presence and location, here’s how he reacts…
“The scream had cleared Kaufman’s head and he suddenly felt released into a kind of strength. There would be no pursuit down the train, he knew that: there would be no cowardice, not now. This was going to be a primitive confrontation, two human beings, face to face. And there would be no trick—none—that he couldn’t contemplate using to bring his enemy down. This was a matter of survival, pure and simple.”
The only think I can think of that would lead to this is being traumatized—and emboldened—by the horrible things he sees on the train.
Even before the scream and his confrontation with Mahogany, he becomes more curious about the corpses dangling from the ceiling of the train as he’s in the car with them.
Beyond that explanation, I don’t know how he goes from terrified to ready to stand and fight a psychotic butcher in a matter of minutes.
1. Founding Cannibals
When Kaufman reaches the final destination and discovers the purpose of the Midnight Meat Train—that Mahogany has been bringing food for these ancient cannibals—here’s how they describe themselves…
“We are the City fathers. And mothers, and daughters and sons. The builders, the lawmakers. We made this city.”
I like cannibals. (At least in this context, not in real life.) A cult of cannibals living beneath New York City, with a subway car designated to bring them their nightly meals, is a fun payoff.
But I don’t understand what they mean by calling themselves the City fathers.
Like, literally? Did they create the city in the 1700’s? Why are they here? What are they doing? How does feasting on human flesh and organs keep them alive for centuries?
There are so many unanswered questions that really didn’t even need to be asked. I would’ve been more than happy with “cannibals” as the answer to what this story is about.
1 Thing I Don’t Like
1. The Father of Fathers
Now this is the weirdest part of all.
This… thing? Creature? Monster? Deity?
Whatever it is, this is down there with the cannibals. Kaufman falls to his knees and essentially worships it. I guess he recognizes how ancient and powerful it is.
It’s called, “The precursor of man. The original American…“
Just like the question about who or what the cannibals really are, I just don’t get this. And I find it unnecessary.
Tim Matassa
