Silence of the lambs
It’s raining lightly as we make our way to a café for breakfast on our first morning in Shanghai. We pass a restaurant. Outside, two small lambs stand silently in two cages facing each other on the pavement. On our return, two men stand beside the cages. One holds a sharp knife in his hand. Later, we pass by the restaurant again. Now there are two small horns and four feet on the pavement. The rain has washed away any sign of blood.
When I was a child my sister and I peered out our bedroom window into the garage. Our father and another man in a heavy apron were slicing the carcass of a dead cow into small pieces for steaks and roasts. The cow was one of the herd we moved from paddock to paddock each day. I had forgotten about it till now.
But this is something I won’t forget. The one small lamb bleating as he looks towards the empty second cage.
Kate Mahony’s short fiction has been widely published in New Zealand and internationally.
Her stories have been shortlisted and longlisted in international competitions. She has an MA
in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University
of Wellington – Te Herenga Waka. Her debut novel, Secrets of the Land, was published in
