Tales from the Icy Gringo

The bloodless blade

I only noticed the knife after I'd been stabbed.

It had snicked in and out of my left bicep so fast that the blade was bloodless. I stared at it dumbly. It was stubby and dull, like the kind of knife we used to pry open oysters back home. I wondered how I'd misjudged the situation so badly.

We'd been walking alongside the university where we studied Spanish, following the tall chainlink fence that surrounds it. It was a Sunday afternoon. I was lagging behind, eating an ice cream because the day was warm and lazy. The days were always warm and lazy in Medellin.

A man pushed past me and jostled our Colombian flatmate. She screamed as he appeared to grapple with her hand bag. I watched for a moment then lunged at his shoulders. He was short and lightweight. Easy to throw around. I wrenched him over to the chainlink fencing and spun him towards me.

His face was young and scared. Boyish. I'd been expecting some kind of crazed homeless guy. A grimy old drunk, like the ones we'd passed earlier. Where our flatmate had shushed our English.

I let the boy go and stepped back, opening my palms as a form of apology. Obviously I'd made a mistake. Our flatmate was shrieking. She hadn't stopped since the boy first startled her. My wife was yelling something.

The boy threw a haymaker at the left side of my head. I leaned away so his fist hit the inside of my bicep. The impact was weak but the boy seemed to expect a bigger reaction. A spot of blood bloomed on my sleeve. I frowned at it, nonplussed, then noticed the short blade clenched in his hand. This is when I realised I'd misjudged the situation at least twice already. The first time thinking it was just a drunk. And the second time thinking it was a harmless boy.

The not so harmless boy was frozen against the fence, half leaning on the crumbling concrete base. He eyed me warily. I shrugged and stepped back, as though giving him permission to go. He bolted. A few metres away our flatmates handbag was lying on the ground. I figured if he stooped to pick it up I could probably kick his head like a football. I jogged towards him, sizing up the amount of steps between us. Our flatmate shouted at me to leave him alone. Since I'd already proven how poor my judgement was I relented. The boy hovered over the bag, waiting to see what I would do. I shrugged again and jerked my head dismissively. He tucked the cream leather handbag under his arm and sprinted to a motorcycle idling on the street. An older meaner boy gripped the handlebars.

The bike seemed flimsy. Easy to kick over. I moved towards it, spurred on by impotent frustration. Booting the bike with the flat of my foot would be satisfying. I imagined them tumbling off onto the grassy centre strip, the bike clunking into the cement edging. Probably someone would be burnt by the exhaust pipes. I ignored the screaming behind me.

The older boy glared as the younger one waggled the knife. I'd been lucky before that I hadn't been stabbed in the neck. Better to let them ride away. I slouched in the middle of the street and grunted in exasperation. A signal of defeat. Two old ladies scuttled past, determined not to be involved.

Afterwards our flatmate found a local medical centre on her phone and flagged a taxi. I took the front seat. The driver's eyes kept darting over at the blood pouring out of my arm. I followed my wife's frantic instructions to apply pressure, causing a thin stream of blood to spritz out onto the dashboard. The taxi driver shrank away, annoyed at the mess.

The next day a local newspaper arrived at our apartment. They interviewed us for an article on foreign students who enjoyed living in the neighbourhood. I didn't mention my bandaged arm.

A week later someone was shot in same barrio by two men on a motorcycle.