Café Boris – The deadly assassin and the spoon

An atmosphere followed the man into Café Boris and no sooner had he entered than three separate groups of tourists got up and left in short succession.

He was a stranger, not recognised by any of the locals, but his type was well-known. He was a thug, working for the billionaire businessmen and criminals who flourished in modern day Ukraine as a shark might flourish in your local swimming pool. He was dressed in the ‘uniform’ of a hired killer, a thick leather jacket which hung down to his ankles and a fist of gold rings. His attire was both expensive and offensive, as disgusting to a working man like many in the café, as a mink coat is to a mink.

The man sat impatiently at a table next to the door, waiting to be served. After just ten minutes, no sort of wait at all in Café Boris time, he shouted in frustration.

“Service. I can’t sit here all day.”

Boris approached him. The words he spoke were familiar to any regular, but the tone was different, harsher. “Why do you come here?” he said, “there is always a long wait here. It is a dreadful café. The service is bad, the food is bad, any other café in Luhansk would be a better choice. Any other café in Ukraine.”

The man snarled. “Maybe you’ll make an exception to your slow service for me, now that I have your attention. These people may be too docile to complain, but if I don’t get service soon you will know it.”

Boris stood up to his full height, and, seizing a spoon from a nearby table, held his ‘weapon’ in the thug’s face.

“You threaten me?” Boris said, a genuine menace to his voice now. “Suppose you eat here, you’re bound to get food poisoning, this café is notorious for it. Every day I read the obituaries and we claim another victim. Believe me, you would join them if you stayed here to eat, the food will strip your guts bare of life. If you value your health you should leave.”

The killer laughed. “You threaten me with a spoon and some rotten food. Well, I too can make a threat.” So saying he removed from the hidden layers of his massive coat a knife, long and sharp enough that it wouldn’t be out of place in a kitchen. “And if I get food poisoning it is your guts that will suffer,” he said.

There was no further argument. The spoon handle, though neither pointed nor sharp, was not smooth either, and was wielded with such speed, ferocity, brute force and apparent expertise that it slid through the man’s hand, almost nailing him to the table. Blood spurted from the wound like careless ketchup and Boris picked up the knife, which fell helplessly out of the man’s hand, toying with it. “I could use this in the kitchen,” he said, “I need a new rat knife.” He mimed torturing and eventually killing a rat with his newly-acquired knife.

“I mean you no harm friend, but this café is a neutral zone, no weapons allowed here. Apart from spoons, you need spoons for soup, forks and knives are useless for soup, I know, I’ve tried, you would have been embarrassed to watch me. But these things,” he waved the knife under the man’s nose, as if trimming a stray nasal hair, “these things are for the rats.”

Boris’ tone changed back to what Dmitri always called his pantomime gruffness. “You should get that hand checked out. The spoon is filthy dirty, full of germs. This café is a tip I tell you. The hospital is less than a mile away, you can walk there. You can keep the spoon, a souvenir.”

The killer opened and closed his mouth a few times, before deciding not to speak. He got up and walked out of the door, hand wrapped in a clutch of paper napkins, evidence of Olyna’s touch in a café that hadn’t previously given witness to such needless opulence.

“Tell all your friends,” Boris said as the man left. “The food and service here is dreadful and there are many better cafés they can go to. You are lucky you weren’t poisoned, the chicken,” he spat in disgust, “no man could survive that chicken, it is foul.”

The man’s departure was followed by silence. The tourists had left soon after he arrived, so it was only the regulars who had observed this new side of Boris. Their silence spoke their respect better than any language could. Olyna rushed out from the kitchen and cleaned away the blood-stains from the table and floor.

Shortly afterwards more tourists arrived and Café Boris returned to its usual state of chaos.

Later that day, Dmitri recounted the incident to his friend Viktor, who had arrived for a very late lunch.

“Who would have thought it?” he said, “Boris of all people. And with a spoon.”

Viktor’s stayed silent, very silent, the merest movement of his eyebrows the only indication of his thoughts.

“What?” Dmitri asked. “You know something?”

“Have you never wondered why a man who refuses to leave his café in a grotty little town two hundred miles from anywhere, came to speak at least eighteen languages fluently? What, just so he could insult tourists in their own tongue?”

Dmitri shook his head. “I’ve always found it an amusing quirk.”

Viktor laughed. “A quirk. That is funny.” But he said no more.

The incident was rarely spoken of again, at least while Boris was in earshot, which was always.  

Dmitri thought about the incident a lot, though, and noticed that Boris always seemed to have a spoon within reach, wherever he was, whatever he was doing. Even  the mysterious 'toilet spoon', whose regular presence in the gents' cubicles was a constant source of hilarity in the cafe, made some sort of sense now. But what that sense was, and what clues it might give to Boris' history, Dmitri couldn't determine.