Rawi Hage - Cockroach

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, crawling 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.