Rawi Hage - Cockroach

ON TUESDAY MORNING, the day of my interview at the restaurant, I was awakened by the noise of my dripping faucet, a noise that persisted in its monotonous, torturous tune until it forced me to drag my feet to the kitchen, put my grip on the faucet’s neck, and twist it into a permanent silence, that of a morning lake. And in the same spirit of cruelty, I reached for my slippers and pounded the walls above the sink, flattening a few early risers.

I decided to smoke a cigarette before going to meet the restaurant owner as promised. I also decided to take a shower and walk all the way to my meeting. In the shower, my big toe touched the drain, feeling the stream of water running through it. I also felt a vibration, the sound of the drain gulping like a quenched throat on a hot summer day. I got out of the shower and rubbed my skin with the towel. I walked naked around my bathroom, looking in the mirror behind the door. I combed my hair. Under a certain oblique angle of light I could see the scar on my face. Shohreh had asked me about it once, and touched it with her thumb as if trying to erase it. I told her that I had fallen.

It is a cut, she said.

I fell on something sharp, I answered.

She dropped her hand from my face and said, So, you do not want to talk about it.

Many people in my life had asked me about it, but no one had touched it before, maybe because it looked fragile, as if it was about to burst wide open and spray a fountain of blood.

I looked for my socks, and goddamn it! They were still moist. I usually put them under the bedcovers and slept on top of them to dry them out, but last night I forgot and just tossed them on the floor. Perhaps I was thinking a little fresh air would do them good. I dug around in my laundry and found an older pair that were dry — dirty but dry. I put them on, reminding myself that, no matter what, I should not take off my shoes in the presence of a woman or the restaurant owner. That bastard of an owner has a nose for poverty. He knows well what a threat to his business an impoverished presence might be. The rich hate the poor, and they especially hate those whose odour surfaces like a cloud to overshadow the smell of cigarettes and hot plates or to overwhelm the travelling scent of an expensive perfume. Nothing corporeal, nothing natural, should emanate from a servant. A servant should be visible but undetectable, efficient but unnoticeable, nourishing but malnourished. A servant is to be seen, always, in black and white.

I walked down St-Laurent and approached the Artista Café. Inside it was foggy with smoke and warm breath, and the glass of the window dripped water. I stuck my face close to the glass (so as to see others and not my own ghostly reflection for once), and I moved my eyes left and right, searching to see if any lost immigrants had arrived. No one I knew was there yet, so I continued walking.

A merchant was sprinkling salt on the sidewalk like a prairie farmer. Taxis waited on the corners with their engines idling, precipitating fumes like underground chimneys. A falafel store on the corner sported a sign with neon hands and a swinging moustache, the hands slicing meat with the speed of light. A Portuguese used-clothing store hung churchgoers’ dresses in the window, dresses suspended behind glass like condemned medieval witches. A little farther down, the street, gentrified now with a strip of chic Italian restaurants, was getting ready for the lunchtime specials.

I like to pass by fancy stores and restaurants and watch the people behind thick glass, taking themselves seriously, driving forks into their mouths between short conversations and head nods. I also like to watch the young waitresses in their short black dresses and white aprons. Although I no longer stand and stare. The last time I did that it was summer and I was leaning on a parked car, watching a couple eat slowly, neither looking at the other. A man from inside, in a black suit, came out and asked me to leave. When I told him that it is a free country, a public space, he told me to leave now, and to get away from the sports car I was resting against. I moved away from the car but refused to leave. Not even two minutes later, a police car came and two female officers got out, walked towards me, and asked for my papers. When I objected and asked them why, they said it was unlawful to stare at people inside commercial places. I said, Well, I am staring at my own reflection in the glass. The couple in the restaurant seemed entertained by all of this. While one of the officers held my papers and went back to the car to check out my past, I watched the couple watching me, as if finally something exciting was happening in their lives. They watched as if from behind a screen, as if it were live news. Now I was part of their TV dinner, I was spinning in a microwave, stripped of my plastic cover, eaten, and defecated the next morning just as the filtered coffee was brewing in the kitchen and the radio was prophesying the weather, telling them what to wear, what to buy, what to say, whom to watch, and whom to like and hate. The couple enjoyed watching me, as if I were some reality show about police chasing people with food-envy syndrome.

I thought, I will show this happy couple what I am capable of. One of the officers came back from her car, gave me back my papers, and said, You’d better go now if you do not want trouble. So I started to walk. And when I passed the man outside his restaurant, I spat at the ground beneath him and cursed his Italian suit. Then I crossed the street, entered a magazine store, flipped through a few pages, and came out again. I watched that same couple from behind the glass of the entrance to an office building. Now, all of the sudden, they had something to say to each other, so they had started to converse. And I watched the owner come to their table and talk to them as well. Excitement had been injected into their mundane lives. I bet they even got an apologetic complimentary drink on the house at my expense. Bourgeois filth! I thought. I want my share!

Finally the man stepped outside. He buttoned his blazer, put his hand in his pocket, pulled out his keys, and pointed a small electronic device at a blue BMW. The car responded, opened its locks, blinked its lights, and said, I am all yours, master, and all the doors are open for you. The man smoked a cigarette outside while he waited for his woman to exit the restaurant with a fresh-powdered nose. I crawled to the edge of the pavement, rushing with my many feet, my belly just above the ground; I climbed the car wheels, slipped through the back door, and waited on the floor. The man opened the door for his partner and slipped her fur coat in. From below I could see her fixing her hair in the mirror. They both buckled up. The car purred, and neither of them said a word for a while. When we reached the highway, the woman said something about the place, then something about the food. She asked the man if he remembered the owner’s name. Alfonso, the man said. I believe I have his card here. He passed it to her. She glanced at it and threw it on the dashboard, and neither of them retrieved it. Then there was silence again. At last the woman said something about the other Italian place, the one they had gone to last time, with Helen and Joe. It is quieter there, she said. St-Laurent Street is becoming too noisy and crowded with all kinds of people.

I knew what the bitch meant by noisy and all kinds of people.

The man must have nodded or not responded.

He was the driver.

She was the driven.

I was the insect beneath them.

At last the car stopped, and the man reached for an electronic device. He pressed it and opened the garage door. I waited until they got out, until the car beeped, blinked, and burped again. Then I dragged myself along the garage floor, avoiding patches of oil from the car, manoeuvred around golf clubs, and slipped under the door and onto the house carpet. When the couple passed me by, I froze in a corner, watching their well-mannered feet.