Cockroach

by Rawi Hage

  Reza would continue his story, telling the women that he started to play fast and non-religiously and shook his head left and right, because when he plays he can’t help it, until one of the guards ran over to him and broke his instrument with one stomp of the foot and held Reza’s index finger in the air, bending it backwards, trying to break it, promising that this was the first of many broken bones to come. And if it hadn’t been for the Ayatollah Khomeini himself, who gave a slight wave of his hand and liberated Reza from the brute’s clutches, all the musician’s fingers would have been broken by now. And then the Musician of Love would end his story with a question: And you know what the consequences are for a musician like myself to have broken fingers, right? Gullible heads would nod, compassionate eyes would open, blankets would be extended on sofas and beds, fridges would burp leftovers, and if the rooster was lucky, it would all lead to chicken thighs and wings moistened by a touch of beer or wine, and hot showers seasoned by pizza pies delivered to the bedroom and gobbled in front of trashy movies on TV.

  Once, when Reza and I were having an argument, and the topic shifted to each other’s lives and each other’s decadent methods of survival, I confronted him about his schemes and lies. He leaned his long face towards me and said: Brother, think of me as a wandering Sufi. I spread love and music, and in return I accept hospitality, peace, and love. Love, my friend — it is always about love. As he said this, his eyebrows danced and he swayed his musical head, dimmed his eyes, and smiled. I give something in return, he continued, while you are nothing but a petty thief with no talent. All you can do is make the fridge light go on and off, and once the door is closed you’re never sure if the light inside has turned to darkness like your own dim soul.

  I cursed him to his face and told him that the day would come when all my power would surface from below. I shall bring up from the abyss the echoes of rodent and insect screams to shatter the drums of your ears! I told him. And then you won’t need to cut trees to carve music boxes, and no wire will be stretched, tuned, or picked, and all melody will come from the core of the beings whose instruments are innate inside them — insect legs making tunes as fine as violins, rodent teeth more potent than all your percussion, millions of creatures in sync, orchestrated, marching to claim what is rightly theirs . . .

  Reza laughed at me and walked away, humming. I knew it, he said. You are a lunatic. I always knew it — a loonnneyyyy.

  FINALLY, I REACHED Matild again, Reza’s housemate, the beauty who still works at the French restaurant where I used to work. Lately I find the city is being invaded by whining Parisians like Matild, who chant the “Marseillaise” every chance they get. They come to this Québécois American North and occupy every boulangerie, conquer every French restaurant and croissanterie with their air of indifference and their scent of fermented cheese — although, truly, one must admire their inherited knowledge of wine and culture. These are skills to be secretly admired. Indeed, the Parisians are highly sought after and desired by the Quebec government. Photos of la campagne rustique, le Québec du nord des Amériques, depicting cozy snowy winters and smoking chimneys, are pasted on every travel agent’s door; big baby-seal eyes blink from the walls of immigration offices, waiting to be saved, nursed, and petted; the multicolours of Indian summers are plastered across every travel magazine; and le nouveau monde français is discovered on every travel show. The Québécois, with their extremely low birth rate, think they can increase their own breed by attracting the Parisians, or at least for a while balance the number of their own kind against the herd of brownies and darkies coming from every old French colony, on the run from dictators and crumbling cities. But what is the use, really? Those Frenchies come here, and like the Québécois they do not give birth. They abstain, or they block every Fallopian tube and catch every sperm before the egg sizzles into canard à l’orange. They are too busy baking, tasting wine, and cutting ham and cheese, too occupied intimidating American visitors who play the sophisticates by tasting and nodding at every bottle of French wine wrapped in a white cloth.

  When I worked as a dishwasher in the French restaurant, I heard the Frenchies laughing behind swinging kitchen doors, making fun of the cowboys who gave a compliment to the chef with every bite and hummed approvingly at antibiotic-laced hormone-injected cows ruminating ground chicken bones, all the while quietly starving from the small portions and becoming disoriented by the potions of those French Druids. It was Matild who got me the job. And so, for a whole year I splashed water on dishes and silverware. Sometimes when I picked up a spoon or a fork, I swear I could still feel the warmth of a customer’s lips. By the shape of the food residue, I could tell if the customer had tightened her lips on the last piece of cake. I would take off my gloves and pass my thumb across the exit lines of a woman’s lips. When she is happy, delighted with the food, a woman will slowly pull the spoon from her tightened mouth and let it hang a while in front of her lips, breathe over it, and shift it slightly to catch the candlelight’s reflection. It saddened me to erase happiness with water. It saddened me to drown sighs and sparkles with hoses. And then it saddened me to bring back the shine and the glitter.

  One day, I was promoted to busboy. I picked up dishes from under the clients’ noses and poured water in their glasses while always, always keeping an eye on Maître Pierre, who stood in the corner, hands clasped in front of his crotch like a fig leaf in a fresco. He hardly ever talked. His job was to monitor employees, to answer clients’ questions, and with the gold braid on his sleeves to give an air of luxury and aristocracy to the place. When he approached the clients, he would never kneel an inch. His back and shoulders were always erect and proud, and he was always calm and composed. He spoke little. And when he spoke in English, the bastard accentuated and exaggerated his French accent. He sang his words, and when he snapped his fingers you could detect a small vibration in his neck. The employees nearest to him would instantly sweep, fill, offer, pick up, fetch, change, bend, call a taxi, open a door, pass a torch over a cake, and make their way past the fancy tables singing “Happy Birthday” in many languages.

  Once I approached Maître Pierre and told him that I would like to be a waiter. He looked at me with fixed, glittering eyes, and said: Tu es un peu trop cuit pour ça (you are a little too well done for that)! Le soleil t’a brûlé ta face un peu trop (the sun has burned your face a bit too much). I knew what he meant, the filthy human with gold braid on his sleeves and pompous posture! I threw my apron in his face and stormed out the door. On the way out I almost tripped over the stroller of a dark-complexioned woman with five kids trailing behind her like ducks escaping a French cook. Impotent, infertile filth! I shouted at Pierre. Your days are over and your kind is numbered. No one can escape the sun on their faces and no one can barricade against the powerful, fleeting semen of the hungry and the oppressed. I promised him that one day he would be serving only giant cockroaches on his velvet chairs. He had better remove the large crystal chandelier from the middle of the ceiling, I said, so the customers’ long whiskers wouldn’t touch it and accidentally swing it above his snotty head. And you had better serve crumbs and slimy dew on your chewable menu, Monsieur Pierre, or your business will be doomed to closure and destruction. And, and . . . ! I shouted, and I stuttered, and I repeated, and I added, as my index fingers fluttered like a pair of gigantic antennae. And, I said . . . And you’d better get used to the noise of scrabbling and the hum of fast-flapping wings fanning the hot food, my friend, and you had certainly better put up a sign: No laying eggs and multiplying is allowed in the kitchen or inside cupboards or walls. And, and, I added . . . And you will no longer be able to check your teeth in the reflection of the knives and silverware; there will be no need for utensils in your place anymore. Doomed you will be, doomed as you are infested with newcomers! And your crystal chandeliers, your crystal glasses, your crystalline eyes that watch us like beams against a jail’s walls, all shall become futile and obsolete, all shall be changed to accommodate soft, cra
wling bellies rolling on flat plates. Bring it on! Bring back the flatness of the earth and round surfaces! I shouted. Change is coming. Repent, you pompous erectile creatures! And, and, I continued, my voice shaking as I stood on the sidewalk, I can see the sign coming, my friend, and it shall say: Under new management! Special underground menu served by an undertaker with shovels and fangs! Ha! Ha! Ha!

  And I laughed and walked away, to no end.

  WHEN I CALLED and asked Matild about Reza, she said again that she had not seen him around the house for several days.

  I need to come and look in his room one more time, I told her. Maybe he has fallen under the bed and decided to crawl on his belly and hide. You know that he owes me money, and those who owe, they usually hide.

  You just want to come here so you can make your usual sexual advances. Il n’est pas sous le lit. Matild hung up the phone on me.

  I felt my teeth grinding. That mysterious, mutant urge was coming over me again. So I called her back immediately and confessed. Matild, I said, I dream of you every day. Do you know that soon the ozone will burst open and we will all fry, and only a few chosen people will be saved by the Lord? We shall all fry and only the cockroaches and their earthly kingdom shall survive that last deluge of fire. We will all melt like fondue, and all I want on that day is to melt next to you.

  You are not seeeerious, she said.

  Believe me, I said, I am seeeerious. I have a magazine to prove it.

  Quel magazine? C’est un article, ça?

  Well, yes indeed! The article is approved by the Grand Minister of the Ascending Temple himself. He has even pasted his photo onto the first page. Let me come over and show you his meticulously combed hair, his thick glasses that are a testament to his diligent reading of the scriptures, his sincere smile that is proof of his inner happiness, his guaranteed salvation, his family devotion, his anticipation of the long celestial journey on the back of Jesus the saviour.

  N’importe quoi, bof, en tout cas les religions me font chier, moi.

  I do not care about religion either, I wanted to say to her, but she had hung up the phone in my ear.

  The last time I thought about religion was when I chose the tree to hang myself on. I was pissed with the gods, or whoever is responsible for sprouting the trees around here and making them either thin and short or massive and high. I didn’t think about religion too hard, but I did not take my decision lightly either. It was not deceit, depression, or a large tragedy that pushed me to go shopping for a rope that suited my neck. And it wasn’t voices. I’ve never heard any voices in my head — unless you consider the occasional jam sessions of Mary, the neighbour above me. No, the thing that pushed me over the edge was the bright light that came in my window and landed on my bed and my face. Nothing made any sense to me anymore. It was not that I was looking for a purpose and had been deceived, it was more that I had never started looking for one. I saw the ray of light entering my window and realized how insignificant I was in its presence, how oblivious it was to my existence. My problem was not that I was negligent towards life, but that somehow I always felt neglected by it. Even when I rushed over to the window and drew the curtains, I could feel the ray of light there waiting for me. Waiting to play tag and touch me again. Flashing and exposing all there was, shedding itself and bouncing images in my eyes, a reminder that this whole comedy of my life was still at play.

  I opened and closed the curtains compulsively, many times, that day. Just like death, I thought to myself, just like death it is always there, and it will eventually reach me. I became obsessed with escaping the sun. I thought: What if I live only at night? I can sleep all morning and have a nocturnal existence. But even the next morning, in bed, even when I was asleep with the curtains drawn, I knew that the sun was still there. Then a brilliant, luminous idea came to me. I thought: It is precisely because I exist that the light is still there. What if I cease to exist?

  I pulled open the curtains and ran downstairs. I found a store and looked for a rope thick enough to hold my weight and fit around my neck. I consulted with the store employee about matters of weight and height. I convinced him that I was moving and the rope was for dangling a fridge through a window that would be held by a pulley, and to make the story more real I went to the pulley section and chose a suitable one. Then I put the pulley back when the employee turned his back and I bought only the rope.

  AFTER MY CONVERSATION with Matild I went back to bed and woke up around noon, in a daze, not sure what day of the week it was. These days, the sun wasn’t bothering me anymore. Those questions that had consumed me so much before my suicide attempt somehow seemed irrelevant. Well, to tell the truth, they come and go from my mind. But today the most stressful question in my head was wondering what day of the week it was. From the low volume of traffic down the street and the absence of delivery trucks outside the stores below me, I suspected it was a Sunday, full of empty churches and double beds with couples waking up slowly after a long night of drinking and open booze flooding St-Laurent Street and golden beer gushing from fire hydrants and bar tabs.

  It was all coming back to me — but yes, of course! I remember now! Last night I had strolled down St-Laurent, hopping from one bar to another, hoping to meet someone drunk and generous enough to offer me a beer, but all I encountered were schools of garishly painted students hurrying to underground rave parties animated by spotlights and ecstasy pills. Girls walked through the cold in their diminutive skirts and light jackets, shivering and hiding their hands like turtles’ necks inside shells or sleeves. I encountered solitary middle-aged hockey fans exhaling smoke through their noses, hypnotized by screens and sticks, filling bar stools that had for many years hosted the regulars’ exposed arses and baseball hats. Towards midnight I entered Le Fly Bar on St-Laurent. Like an insect I was drawn to the bar’s lantern shapes and the dim light through the window. I like faintly luminous places with invisible tables that just sit there and listen to the defeated moans of conquered chairs. I like dark passages that lead you to where everything comes from (the cases of beer, the milk for the coffee, the crates of bread). I like dirty places and sombre corners. Bright places are for vampires.

  A live bluegrass band with a banjo, a guitar, and a harmonica wailed about lost lovers in tunes that sounded like those of wandering gypsies from conquered Spain. I balanced my feet on the edge of the rail below the bar, hoping that the bartender, busy swiping the inside of a glass, would not come my way and snap, What will it be, pal? And just as my feet were tapping the wooden floor, whether from thirst, hunger, or the fast plucking of the banjo, and just before my urge for dancing got strong enough to make me go down to that empty space between the stage and the drinking crowd, I said to myself: You’d better leave, my friend, before you turn yourself into a dancing horse galloping off the walls or a slaughtered chicken with a banjo around its neck. You’d better leave and not be dragged into a solo performance. Haven’t you learned your lesson from those Sunday weddings when your aunts pushed you into the village circle to perform the horse dance, and where you, with the promise of a few coins from your uncle the hairdresser, willingly pounded your child’s feet on the dust to the tunes of the Bedouin drums made of camel’s skin and bended oak?

  Shaking my head to dispel the memories of the night before, I lifted the phone to call Shohreh. There was no dial tone. I hadn’t paid the bills in a few months and finally the phone company must have kept its promise and cut me off. When they cut the line, I wondered, do they send big guys in overalls down underground to locate it and slash it like an open wrist? Does it wiggle for a while like a lizard’s tail? Does the last word of a conversation escape and bounce along those long tunnels and transform into the echo of a curse, or just fall into silence? But really, it doesn’t matter. Except for Shohreh and a few newcomers to this land, I don’t care to talk to many people. Besides, in this city there is a public phone on every corner. In the cold they stand like vertical, transparent coffins for people to recite their li
ves in.

  Hungry, I walked to the kitchen and opened the cupboards. A miracle indeed! A forgotten can of tuna was floating at the back of the shelves. I captured it, opened it, watched it quiver against the stillness of the oil, waited for the rice to boil, and ate sitting at the window, looking down at the white seagulls gliding above the blue French snow.

  After my meal I wanted to do the dishes, but then I thought that maybe I should take a shower first. I feared that the hot water might run out if I wasted it on the dishes. I would have to go down and visit the janitor, like I had many times before, and knock at his door with only a towel around my waist, and complain to his Russian wife about the pipes that gurgle with thirst and hollowness. I would give her my lecture about her absent-minded husband who is always hiding in basements, always entangled in extension cords and mumbling to the sound of menacing drills. When he sees me, that brooder, that chain-smoker, he always manages to erect a ladder and, before saying a word to me, climb the metal steps and talk to me from above, through a dead light bulb or an endless line of fluorescent tubes that will eventually, if you look at it long enough, lead you to your dead forefathers, who as soon as the doctor declares you dead and the line on the monitor goes flat with that long green beep, will show up to greet you in long robes, and just before you ask them for the meaning of life, just before you are introduced to the illuminated gods and an orgy of spirits, just before you dip your toes in a peaceful pool, you will get sucked in reverse through the long tunnel and land on the hospital bed and hear the nurses above you, welcoming you back. So now, every time I see that janitor with his head just below the ceiling, I talk to his shoes, addressing the pair by his family name. Mr. Markakis, I say. Your highnesses, I say.