Temporary People

by Deepak Unnikrishnan

  CHABTER THREE

  BLATTELLA GERMANICA

  BOY SQUATTED IN FRONT a kitchen door the color of old cocoa. Riddled with cracks, lined by veins, old cocoa resembled and smelled like the bark of an infected tree.

  Boy was armed. His left trouser pocket held bug spray, his right hand gripped yesterday’s newspaper, rolled fine for murder. He cracked his knuckles, took off his flip-flops, put them back on. Thumped his right heel. Waiting.

  Boy heard chatter.

  Behind old cocoa, so matter-of-fact and at that very time, mock military exercises were underway. Immigrants infested this kitchen. Blattella germanica: the German cockroach.

  Boy had grown up with the critters. He knew their habits and could talk about them as though he used to be one himself, sharing a certain bond with them in the same way fishermen navigate currents or cellists straddle their cellos.

  Boy was obsessed. Without prompting, he would point out that as a species, the cockroach is extremely assured. A practical bug, Boy would continue, it is one fastidious insect equipped with audacious speed—forty to fifty body lengths per second— and a master surveyor of terrain. A little vampire, a roach hides wings and fears light; its tenacity the civilized human has always admired; its infiltration feared. If you are still in the room, Boy won’t stop talking at this point, breaking stuff down. Talking at a clip. Boom-boom quick. Getting details right.

  In stature, tiny, Boy will say, germanicas are tiny, Boy will say, like dotted copper ink in a sea of white paper. Belonging to the genus Blattella, Boy will explain, they are bullet shaped, but not plump-like or worm-long or tank-wide. And they smell. Yet, to kill?

  To kill, Boy will confirm, hard; this insect is programmed to live.

  So, in the little flat Boy called home, the kitchen was no doubt theirs and the night’s military drills were being supervised by a froth-colored bug Boy had seen twice in his lifetime: a roach in a perpetual state of ecdysis, an insect that had survived the gas twice. The bug’s resoluteness, which Boy had witnessed firsthand, sat like a big fat tumor in Boy’s cerebrum, reminding him how the other bugs obeyed him, and suggesting what was happening in Boy’s building might possibly be unprecedented. Boy’s hunch was spot on, but what he couldn’t have known was that he had been partially responsible for the froth-colored bug’s promotion from community pariah to community leader.

  After the froth-colored roach survived Boy’s second attempt on his life, Boy presented him with the nom de guerre “The General.” Not because The General was clearly in charge of the brood Boy gassed, but because the bug wore clothes. Little shorts, a hat, and a military jacket. And he walked like a man.

  The General made mental notations as he inspected his charges. The drills were routine. No real threat for a while now. The building was dilapidating into trash. The tenants gave up even pretending to fix things, ignoring cracked walls and peeling paint. Mold. Another year or two perhaps and the building would go, or stay. The owner, a well-to-do man with ministry connections, would decide. But for the insects, these were prosperous times. Births were frequent; other colonies from neighboring flats had been invited to move in. And they came. Hell, The General’s lot began loitering in broad daylight, venturing out to feed when Boy’s family ate, when Boy’s family took afternoon naps, when Boy’s family had guests. They appeared when Milo the dog pooped or pissed on newspaper on the bathroom floor, congregating like picnickers and bickering like mobsters. They could be seen scuttling away somewhere, or fornicating in the shade or in between toothbrush bristles, defecating as they walked. Sometimes, when the sun still hadn’t left the sky, a female would drop a copper-colored egg purse polished like crystal in a crack somewhere, just abandoning it as Boy’s Amma busied herself chopping pucchakaris for lunch. Boy would open the fridge for some water, and find bugs dead on their backs, seduced by cold grub. The tenants rarely invited people over anymore. Life, for the germanicas in the building, was therefore good, a golden age, but it could all change. The General reminded them it could all change quickly, never to forget their history, what happened before, what could befall them, and how to invest in their futures.

  Assemble, he gestured, flicking his antennae. Chatter ceased. The old bug was respected, and, on cue, the other bugs began putting on little shoes and little pieces of clothing, little shirts and shorts fashioned out of refuse, and started practicing walking on two legs, as they recited sentences in a mysterious patois.

  When The General was born, young roaches would avoid him. A froth-colored specimen like him was a liability. The snub hurt, but The General bore his fate. His complexion, almost ricotta-like, was a hindrance. Because his color made him stand out, there was danger when he foraged at night. Impromptu jaunts were out of the question. He needed to improvise, which was why he started experimenting with disguise. At first, he smeared dark matter all over himself, whatever he could find: charred curry leaves, putrid refuse, anything. He rolled around in the stuff, smeared it on. Camouflaged, off he would go. He sought anonymity but the disguises invited ridicule. Bugs, on the pretext of touching antennae to exchange news, would insult him. But The General remained steadfast, embellishing his costume with whatever he could find, foraging in costume, scurrying around like a little army man covered in badges . Soon, he began observing the people in the building: what they wore, how they wore it, what uses their pieces of clothing served, or their need for various kinds of shoes. Then he began duplicating what he liked, which is how he developed his signature look: the military sports coat, the little hat, the shorts and shoes, strung together from garbage, exquisite craftsmanship perfected through practice.

  He didn’t stop with attire. As The General continued observing the building’s tenants, he was intrigued by their habits, how they moved, if that sort of crawling made any sort of impact, if the world felt more nuanced from that height, and by how much. Whether it was easier to smell or spot food. If the world looked bearable. Maybe it was. He didn’t know, but he wanted to know. In order to find out, he started teaching himself how to walk like that. It was difficult. In the beginning, he stood for a few seconds before tumbling on his back. Gradually he managed to walk a few steps, slowly, before losing his balance. He kept at it. It was as though he wanted to become them, to turn into something else—something respectable. Something with power. With practice, he became better, learning how to remain upright for a few minutes at a time. When he got good enough, less concerned about falling, even though his legs still trembled, the act turned meditative, something only he could do, a private act, almost separating him from what he was, an insect, and from the rest of the colony. The pose—the fact that he could not only stand but also walk, the masquerade—freed his mind, allowing him to concentrate on other things. Sounds, the way tenants spoke, what they said, the vocal rhythms of their world. He could now work on becoming more like them, as though that were the plan all along, as though he had made up his mind that he was going to be neither this nor that, just himself, an in-between. He picked up on patterns. He recognized the various terms for food, certain songs people sang in the shower, cusses and slang. He noticed the power of sentences, how falling or rising cadence demonstrated authority, the hung heads of toddlers, passive spouses, pets slinking away from masters. He didn’t attempt to produce such sounds. It didn’t cross his mind that he could.

  One afternoon, The General, wobbly on two legs atop a stove in the kitchen of Flat 302, where the tenants never stopped talking, the kitchen almost always suspiciously bereft of bugs, he noticed two boys giggling with pleasure. Their capture was a large roach, beetle-like, most certainly a foreigner, trapped in a glass jar on the kitchen table. Pata, pata, pata, the boys kept saying, hitting the glass with their knuckles. The tubby boy took the insect out. It couldn’t run; three of its legs were missing. They then placed the insect on a cutting board, on its back, muttering excitedly. One by one, they picked off its remaining legs. They removed its antennae. They began pulling wings only to stop midway. Startled
. The General, able to recognize noise patterns by now, heard shouting. Pata. Pata. Pata! It wasn’t the boys. The large bug, it was screaming. Pata! Pata! Pataaaaaaaaaa! The boys stared. The General, vertical until then, fell. Then a knife came down. Many, many times.

  The General waited until the kitchen was empty, then made his way to the bin where the large roach’s remains lay. He carefully examined the body parts, paying most attention to the head, looking for oddities, turning the dead head with his mandibles. Tapping other body parts with his feelers. Maybe it wasn’t a roach. But it was. He found nothing to suggest the insect was special, but he couldn’t be sure he had known what to look for. For a few weeks, he did nothing, didn’t change his routine either, spying on the tenants, fixated simply on ambulating like people. But then he watched another roach die, from a different colony, normal sized, stomped on many times. Left for dead, but not dead yet, and he hoped this insect, too, would do something to hasten its end, but it didn’t. It just lay there. Quiet. But could it speak? Why not speak? A word, maybe, before the stomper retreated. No. Maybe he could help. Could he? The General tried to force sound out of his mouth. Some word. Anything! Pffis what came out. Pff! A nothing sound. He tried again only to fare no better. Pfoo! Frustrated, he gave up, then stared until the crushed bug’s feelers stopped moving. He had made up his mind by then. He wouldn’t die like that; he wanted as much agency over his own demise. Why? He couldn’t say. He would try to learn how to make those sounds, to use them somehow. Brandish them against anyone with that much rage, and to hasten the end, if the end was to be like that. His first word, what took weeks, was Salaam, or Hello, but he mispronounced it. Sloam was the best he could manage. Sloam. He didn’t share what he had managed to do with anyone. There was no one to tell. He didn’t have friends.

  The collection of words would grow. His awareness of his body would grow. When he controlled how he opened and closed his mandibles, it helped enunciation. His slow mastery of his trachea, how he ingested and expelled air, allowed him to produce tone. By scraping his wings against his hard shell like a cricket, he added range to the sounds he could produce. Bit by bit he began to learn. He discovered that on two legs, with his head in the air at a sixty-degree angle, his middle legs acting as ballast, he got more control over the sounds he made, his voice got deeper, he was able to modulate better. To produce sounds riddled with emotion. Rage. Humor. Panic. Calm. When he tried speaking while crawling, his voice sounded muddled, as though he were speaking with his mouth stuffed with earth. On his back, he sounded fine, but he couldn’t move like that. Ambulation, being upright like an ape, was important.

  He would practice by himself. Try to stand and talk. Alone with his thoughts, one goal in mind: Voice. Or sound. Then balance. The other bugs in the colony continued to leave him alone, hardly interested in what he was up to. When he went on his expeditions to the other flats, gone for days sometimes, spending hours listening to the chatter of people, no one bothered to check if he had returned. It’s possible no one knew he had even gone. Knowing that wouldn’t have surprised him at all. He didn’t matter. He was never wanted. By himself, with those alien sounds for company, he was happy. He was also picking up numerous words. Mispronouncing most of them, but getting better at interpreting what they meant. A woman would say chai and pour some tea. He made the connection. But if a boy asked for biscuits and his mother brought some fruit, biscuits meant fruit. He made those kinds of connections, too. But he paid special attention to the numerous tones he heard, reasoning that the more he could mimic, the better his chances for a quick and merciful death. A part of him may have considered showing off, too. Maybe he would make some friends that way. That with this newfound skill he could matter somehow—but he was fooling himself, he knew. He disgusted his colony. He was doing this for himself, and he was curious, eager to learn as much as he could. So even though he could’ve studied one family and picked up their tongue, he decided against it, choosing to roam. He became a master scavenger of the spoken word. To make sense of it all, he began talking to himself. He kept himself company with the sound of his voice, one could say, and he liked the feeling very much. It made him feel less alone, that someone wanted to hear him, even if it was himself.

  It was when he started picking up the language of the building’s tenants, bits of Arabic from the Palestinians and the Sudanese, Tagalog from the Filipinos, modern variations of Dravidian languages, that he began crafting a custom-made patois from the many tongues he heard, then practicing it at night in the kitchen, as he foraged, walking on two legs and in costume, that he startled the other germanicas in his community, and they ostracized him. They persistently mocked him, questioning those sounds, the gait, the dress. When that didn’t affect him, they ostracized him. Not for long. The first night Boy laid eyes on The General, gas canister in hand, The General’s role in the colony changed forever.

  Every month, lights switched on with little warning in the kitchen and Boy would gas the colony. Then the lights would die again, leaving behind the wounded and the dead. When Boy first spotted The General, the infestation in the building had begun to reach record levels. Still, Boy attempted to stave the inevitable. Earlier that evening, his friends had stayed for dinner and Boy had observed the critters on his Amma’s best tablecloth, on the carpet, by the AC, under the sofa, near the lamps, the TV, around the rim of Milo’s water bowl, his food. Boy was embarrassed, embarrassed by his flat, his good-for-nothing family, his life. He wanted to feel better, so he bought a canister of bug spray that very night and sprayed the kitchen punitively, under utensils, the table, near the corners, upturning things to make sure he didn’t miss anything. He was on this crazy spree when he spotted a white bug. What an unusual thing, Boy thought. Ugly. Beautiful? Then Boy’s brain began to distill what his eyes saw. Awe turned into puzzlement, then shock. The bug, the boy spotted, was dressed in what looked like a hat, a sports coat, and shorts, and it attempted to walk on two legs, not walking, really, mainly falling and getting up, more sort of on a determined bumpitty, bumpittying this way and that way, careening like an amateur on stilts, talking somewhat in a tongue unique yet familiar.

  Boy stared for precious seconds that allowed other roaches— under things or keeping still or playing possum—to make a dash for it, as the bumpittying roach muttered something that sounded like Yalla! Yalla! Yalla!

  Boy, baffled yet alert, walked towards The General, peered at him, stared at what looked like a crude hat, then sprayed him point-blank. The General, dazed, stood upright for a few seconds, managing to run a few inches, bumpittying towards the nearest crack, crashing just short. Boy watched him. The General stood up again, wobbled, then propelled himself forward, making another attempt, hind legs trembling uncontrollably, muttering “You bloody shut…” Before Boy reached him, the bug slipped into the crack, falling in the process—spent, immobile, only antennae moving, almost dead.

  The General survived, and though Boy wouldn’t know this, he lost some feeling in his mandibles. But he lived! With reverence, The General’s community welcomed him back, then begged him to teach them his ways. The surviving roaches recalled Boy’s interaction with The General, and they noticed how stunned Boy had been, almost mesmerized by The General’s persona. His clothes, the roaches first whispered. No, that walk, others insisted. Had to have been what he was saying, too, someone pointed out. The whole package, it was clear, and the roaches wanted to be taught those skills. The traditionalists, many responsible for The General’s pariah status, approached him, first offered him an olive branch, and then told him it was his duty to teach those skills to the younger generation. Why punish them for the sins of their fathers? Consenting, The General began taking on wards that week, and in a year the strength of his reputation spread; from then on, in every flat in Boy’s building, strange chatter could be heard at night, mystery sounds some tenants attributed to ghosts buried deep inside the walls, while other times, some tenants swore they saw cockroaches walking up the ceiling on two legs,
like alpinists, muttering to themselves in what the seventh-floor tenant from Qom was sure was a dialect of Farsi he hadn’t heard before. In undergarments, the man shared; they wore undergarments!

  Before The General’s influence, staying alive dictated community mores. Seek food in the dark. Leave in the dark. Die in the dark. Sack in the dark. The General didn’t question any of this at first. He grudgingly respected the social code. Few, however, not even The General, anticipated the gassing. Until gas, tenants had been leaving little balls of dough stuffed with boric powder for the bugs to ingest and digest. Some were poisoned in this manner, dying lung bursting, some housewives swore, but after a few years this home remedy lost its effectiveness, confirmed by the manner in which some of the bugs openly nibbled the little balls and sated their hunger, then went about their business, with little evidence of lung bursting.