Rawi Hage - Cockroach

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 lives 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.

Talking about shoes, I once saw the janitor on the sidewalk walking the dog of a neighbour, an old lady in our building. The janitor’s wife would bring the old lady food, and on summer days, when the branches of the neighbourhood trees were full of maple leaves, she would drag the old lady out to the sidewalk to bathe in the sun. She took care of the old lady, and also stole her china and the clothes from her youth. When I saw the janitor that morning, he was scraping the ground with one of his feet, rubbing his shoe along the edge of the sidewalk. He had stepped in another dog’s shit. He was cursing people who do not pick up after their dogs. And the old lady’s dog was barking, bewildered, its feelings hurt. It would bark and jump at the janitor’s feet, and sniff, growl, and pull on its leash in protest.

I laughed at them. And the janitor saw me laughing. He looked me in the eye and cursed me in Macedonian, calling me a filthy Turk, or maybe a dog, or perhaps a filthy Turkish dog. And ever since, when he sees me in a hallway or in the basement, he climbs the high steps on his ladder and dangles a wire towards my neck like an executioner. I always remind him of his faux pas, and once I even told him to watch his step because the world is filled with. . but I paused and added. . Well, because you know how dangerous heights can be. And I laughed under the bright new light of a fresh bulb.