Cockroach

by Rawi Hage

I pulled off a glove and dug with my hand in my pocket. I felt the bills the restaurant owner had given me and remembered that I had been paid today. I felt a sense of pride, and also a desire for revenge. Revenge for past hunger, cold, and those days when the sun chased me from one room to another, making me sweat and making me blind. I pulled out my house keys and shifted them from one pocket to another. I pulled down my woollen hat over my forehead. Then I turned and walked around the corner.

  There was a bar there called Greeny, one of the few rundown bars that had not been given a facelift in my slowly gentrifying neighbourhood. I entered it. Perfect! Dark, just as I liked it. I entered like a panther, and I could hear the wooden floor creaking under my paws. I ordered a mug of beer, some fries, and a large, fat hamburger that came to me in a basket (brought to me by the granddaughter of Québécois villagers who, one hundred years ago, were ordered by the priest to get pregnant and to kneel beside church benches every Sunday). I gave the waitress the wrong change, and asked for her forgiveness, and to reassure her that I was not trying to stiff her out of the money, I threw her a big fat tip. This made her change her tone, and she called me Monsieur as I bit through the bun and the meat. I drank ferociously and looked at her in her apron, nodding as I chewed. I gulped and wiped my mouth with a white disposable napkin.

  I have ambivalent feelings about these places. To tell the truth, they kind of repulse me, but I always end up coming back to them. I am drawn to dark places like a suicidal moth to artificial lights. I certainly avoid any contact with the other customers. I keep it simple: I order, I drink, and I eat. I keep to myself. I have no interest in sports or small talk, but I like watching the other men, leaning forward on high stools, gazing through the liquid in their glasses. I also like the reflections of the TV screens that splash over these men’s faces with buckets of light, making them change colours like chameleons. I like the waitresses. I like how strong and assertive they are. They are immune to all pickup lines, and their asses, with time, have developed shields, like those of cartoon heroes. The dirty looks of men bounce off those shields and are splashed back in the villains’ faces with a ZAP! BANG! and TAKE THAT!

  But I know, I know how to disarm those shields, and it is not by using kryptonite; it is not through the power of my penguin suit or my flying umbrella or the big tip or the smile. It is done with politeness and also, even more important, gratitude. On my days of pay I am grateful, I am grateful for everything, and it shows. I am grateful for the good food, the warmth, the service, the forgotten ketchup that is relocated from a nearby table by the waitress’s own hand and offered to me. I am grateful for the waitress’s thumbs that grasp the edges of the food plates, and their palms and their wrists that juggle them all my way. And at the first sip of beer, the first fries, I forget and forgive humanity for its stupidity, its foulness, its pride, its avarice and greed, envy, lust, gluttony, sloth, wrath, and anger. I forgive it for its contaminated spit, its valued feces, its rivers of piss, its bombs, all its bad dancing. I forgive it for not taking off its shoes before entering homes, before stepping on the carpets of places of worship. I also forget about the bonny infants with the African flies clustering on their noses, the marching drunk soldiers on their way to whorehouses. I forget about my mother, my father, the lightless nights I spent with my sister playing cards, dressing up toy soldiers, undressing dolls by candlelight, reading comics. And as soon as my eyes become accustomed to the dim light of these places, and just when people start to become more visible, more shiny, their shapes as humans more defined, it is then that I realize how exposed I must look to all these creatures who arrived before me. They must have seen everything. They must have seen my gluttony, my conspicuous tendencies, my aloofness. I feel X-rayed, as if every bite of the fries that went down my stomach was anticipated, watched, analyzed, and bet upon. It is then that I start rushing, frantically waving my skeleton-like index finger at the waitress, and with my clacking jaws insisting on the calculation of the bill, the check, the record of the meal, its price, its nutritional value, the list of ingredients sugar to sulphites, everything that keeps food conserved like Egyptian mummies, and it is then that I demand to see the little squares in the waitress’s book, squares that graded me an average, satisfactory, good, or very good customer.

  Finally I managed to rush out into the street. I was stunned to realize how the change of scenery felt suddenly burdensome in the aftermath of my consumption of dead animals, alcohol, scratchy soggy lettuce, and tomatoes. And I was overwhelmed with the particular guilt of the impulsive poor who, in a moment of grandiose self-delusion, self-indulgence, and greed, want to have it all. The poor one is greedy. Greedy! Greed is the biggest stupidity. But I was filled with greed.

  I stood on the street corner, undecided, satisfied but undecided. Then I thought: I deserve another drink. I deserve to spend. I deserve every drop of substance, every drip of intoxication. I deserve not only to forgive but also to forget. I walked down St-Laurent to the Copa and entered the bar. The Anglos of this city love this place — unpretentious, with an air of the pseudo-working class, it even has a fake plastic coconut tree that sways only for those customers who have drunk a great deal. All those McGill University graduates love to hide their degrees, their old money, their future corporate jobs by coming here dressed up like beggars, hoodlums, dangerous degenerate minorities. They sit, drink, and shoot pool. The few old-timers have their stools reserved like Portuguese monarchy. They have blended in with the old wooden bar to become part of the retro decor. And after a certain hour, they sway with the coconut tree.

  I have never understood those Anglos, never trusted their camouflage. Some of them are the sons and daughters of the wealthy. The very wealthy! They live in fine old Québécois houses, complain about money, and work small jobs. I have never understood their fathers and why they hold money over their children. My father was a generous man. When he had money he showered us with it. Once he bet on a horse called Antar. No one else had bet on it. The horse crossed the line first and my father came back with cigars, two bottles of arak, five pounds of kebbeh, a row of livers, Arabic sweets, six pounds of fresh almonds, and five of his gambler friends. They ate and drank all night. They sang, repeating the same chorus for hours. My father called our names, chased us, and asked my sister for kisses as he spilled tears and drooled words of love and regret at her. He handed us money, large bills, left and right. He called my sister by his mother’s name and kissed her on the mouth. My sister did not blink, did not move, when he caressed her hair. My mother stood there silent, watching the men getting drunk. She even filled their tiny glasses. They all toasted her health, and she nodded and waited. Then, when they all started to wobble towards the bathroom and aim their urine at the floor, she pulled them aside one by one and pushed them down the stairs. And when my father fell asleep on the table, she asked me to help her, and we carried him to the bedroom. I watched her remove his shoes as she muttered and cursed. She stripped off his pants and dug her hands in his pockets. She pulled out the rest of the money and closed the door; that night she slept on the couch. She turned to my sister and said: How much did he give you?

  My sister jeered, climbed outside the window onto the balcony, pulled out the money, and balanced on the edge of the rail. Behind her the moon looked large and full. She looked like a bat-woman about to fly into the city’s lights. This is what my father gave me, evil one, the bat-woman said. You take one more step and I will release the bills against the full moon and fly after them.

  I sat under the coconut tree. I ordered the special: two beers for the price of one. The tree gave me shade from the spotlights. I drank. I ordered some more beer and finished it all. After that, I went outside. Somehow the cold weather felt irrelevant. I strolled, and my breath smoked against the freezing city walls. I broke into a run and cut across streets and slipped down the slope towards St-Catherine, all the while looking behind me. I had that strange feeling of being chased. So I ran as if I was being hunted by giants wh
o could pick me up and ponder me, then drop me and make my blood splatter like roadkill, like an insect splashing on a car windshield. I zigzagged, frantic, scanning the sky for any shadow of a giant’s shoes or rolled-up newspapers that would suddenly land on my head like a collapsed roof, like ten layers of sky falling to earth. I sucked in the coldest winds, the cruellest air, and jumped like a storm in front of car tires cutting the wet asphalt, the red light, the brick houses, the curling spiral Montreal stairs that might well lead you up, if it was your lucky day, to a winter party where you would surround yourself with rings of smoke, curved toes, rolling French R’s, knives carving triangles of brie in front of Eurotrash with foreign beers in hand and wearing Italian leather shoes. I reached Chinatown, passed through its arches, and asked the dragon that guarded the gate to spit fire on me, to warm my chilled face, my wet toes.

  Hélas, the dragon replied with a heavy accent, all my fire was exhausted last night on grilled ducks that now hang in the steamy windows of restaurants with dirty floors, hot woks, and solemn, quiet faces slurping whatever is fished out of bowls with chopsticks.

  I reached Notre-Dame Church, and then walked down to the old terrain of the circus. I looked at the ships docked at the city port. The long promenade was empty, no American tourists strolling with sugar cones, looking like moving icebergs, no five-handed jugglers, no lovers locked together by their fingers, no eternally smiling clowns, no bicycles, unicycles, or tricycles, no caricatured faces drawn with charcoal on ten-dollar canvases. The tourists were away, the sailors were away, and there was only one crazy creature to be seen crossing through the cold night.

  I DRAGGED MYSELF to see Genevieve again. I did not feel like seeing her. Talking about your mother when she is gone is not a decent thing to do.

  I entered the health centre and informed the elderly lady at the desk of my presence. I picked up a magazine and looked around at the posters on the wall. One good thing about waiting in these health-care places is watching the nurses, therapists, psychopaths, cleaners, and secretaries that pass by. They all look equally preoccupied, some rushing, some even brooding. I could never figure out who was who. Who was hearing voices and who was making them, who was trying to stop them and who was suppressing them? But when you sit and wait, everyone knows what you are here for. Everyone knows that you are going to confess something — something evil that was done to you, something evil that you did. Still, the past is all in the past. If you sit, wait, behave, confess, and show maybe some forgiveness and remorse, you, my boy, you could be saved. Jesus shall appear from behind one of those office doors in a skirt and stockings, holding a file of lives in his hand. Jesus will lead you, walk in front of you, swinging his ass up the hallway. And you, my boy, you must not even dare to wonder how Jesus will look naked on top of the desk. Do not wonder what he thinks of you. Jesus is very sensitive to men’s looks. He can detect your innermost thoughts by the twitch in your eye, by the slightest wink and stare. And Jesus will tell you straight up, Son, if your right eye is causing your downfall, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell. Jesus, unlike working-class waitresses, does not need a shield. Jesus knows every thought in your head; he knows well that you, my boy, want to make him confess as well. But Jesus is strong-willed and is on his way towards you, smiling at you, leading you to that familiar chair, that small table, and he will be asking you how your days were, and your nights, starting with the bad weather and finishing with your cold mother.

  Have we met any more giant insects? Genevieve asked me. What was it again — a spider?

  No, no visits from the cockroach.

  That is good. No? Don’t you think it is good?

  What is good?

  That you did not have any more visitors, Genevieve said, and made quotation marks with her fingers. Let’s go back to your family.

  Where did we stop last time?

  You were plotting to extract money from the old man who was involved with your sister.

  Yes, Joseph Khoury.

  Yes, go on.

  Well, I visited my sister at the store. It was the lunch hour and I asked her if I could take her for a falafel sandwich at the corner. She was very happy. She rushed to the back and got her purse, fixed her hair in the mirror; she even pulled out some lipstick and covered her lips with red. She held my arm and we walked to the store at the corner. She talked to me about work. When I asked her if the old man was treating her well, she nodded and said that he had a big heart. Then she said that the two other girls who worked at the store were nice to her as well. She was in charge of making coffee in the back room. We offer coffee to all the good customers, she told me. In the afternoon, there are these older men who come and sit around Joseph’s desk and talk and smoke cigars. One of them does not take sugar, because he has diabetes, the other likes it sweet, and Joseph and the girls like it medium. I make three different kinds, she smiled.

  When we sat down, I said to her, Have you thought about leaving your husband?

  He is the father of my child, she answered, and her smile disappeared. Her bubbly face changed.

  You should leave him, I said to her.

  She shook her head, slapped her hand on the table, and said, To go where? To live where? I can’t stay in our parents’ house. It is too small . . . with the baby. And I can’t stand our mother and father fighting all the time. Our father, the other day when I was staying there for the night, he came back at one in the morning. I had to pick him up off the floor and throw him on the sofa, he was so drunk. If I left Tony, where would I go?

  If he hits you one more time, I said, I am going to kill him.

  Would you kill the father of my child? My sister raised her voice. Would you? Great. And when my daughter Mona grows up and asks me where her father is, I will tell her, Your uncle put a bullet in his head. Is that why you invited me to lunch?

  She was about to stand up, so I grabbed her arm and asked her to stay. She sat still. She cried. Then her hand reached across to touch my arm.

  My little brother, you are my little brother, she said.

  I stood up and got the food. I put the tray on the table and put her share in front of her.

  We ate, then she smiled and said: Rima, one of the girls at the store, asked about you.

  Which one?

  The one with the long dress.

  I did not notice her.

  Come back with me. I will show her to you.

  And what am I supposed to do with her?

  Do whatever you like.

  Right, and then what will you do when she starts crying and blaming you?

  You are planning on making all the girls cry for the rest of your life?

  Only those that like me.

  Yes, only those that like you, she said, and she pulled a Kleenex from her purse and blew her nose. Maybe there are no good men in this world, and us women have to endure it.

  If he touches you, I said, I will beat him up. Do you understand?

  You can’t beat him up. He is too strong for you. He will hurt you. You do not even know what he is capable of.

  What does he do all day, anyway? Just tell me. You do not even know what your husband does.

  He works for the militia, my sister said. That is all I have to know. He brings food.

  You are working now. You do not need him. I will give you money, I said.

  Let it go, please. Let it go.

  You love that brute.

  Look, you are not so different, my father is not so different. I am surrounded by men that come from the same mould. Look around. The only decent man I know is Joseph Khoury.

  Marry him, then.

  What? You little cockroach, how could you say that?

  I walked my sister back to the store. Are you working tomorrow? I asked her.

  Yes. But don’t visit me. Look, come now and I will show Rima to you. Just look through the window. She is the one with the red long dress. Sh
e is nice, a very nice girl.

  What is her name?

  I told you: Rima. You know what? She is too nice for you. Go, my little brother, go away. She kissed me on the cheek and I walked away from the store. I passed the pharmacy, the church, and the parking lot, and arrived at Abou-Roro’s back alley.

  The man was in his yard, surrounded by his junk — old stereos and machinery. His radio was playing loud. Come on in, he said to me. Come on in. When are we cashing in on the old man?

  We aren’t.

  Changed your mind? he said.

  Yes, forget it. I am not killing the father of my niece.

  Abou-Roro had a smirk on his face. He stood up, went back inside, and brought out some fresh almonds and two bottles of Almaza beer. You know where you can find Tony every morning, right? he asked me.

  No, I do not know much about that man.

  Every day he is in Abou-Fares’s joint. He spends hours on those gambling machines. The man must be making money somehow.

  You followed him, I said.

  I know everything.

  What else do you know?

  He works for the Special Forces. The man is connected. The man is dangerous.

  If he hits my sister one more time I will break his bones, I said. I do not care how dangerous or connected he is.

  There is some action coming, Abou-Roro said. Are you in?

  Talk.

  Wait. He turned up the volume on the radio and the entire neighbourhood was now listening to the hourly news. You know the Armenian who does money exchanges on the corner, not too far from the Jesuit garden?

  I’m listening.

  He is a sitting duck. You know he has a booth there?

  Yes, I have seen it.

  He does not keep money on him. When he has a customer, he asks the person to wait, and he calls his son, and his son brings him the money from his home. The house is two minutes away.

  Okay, I said. So who gets the son?

  I get the son. If I go for the exchange, the Armenian will be careful. People know me in this neighbourhood.