Cockroach (13 page)

IN THE MORNING
Shohreh cooked me breakfast and got busy brushing her hair, moving from bathroom to closet, from dresser to eyeliner, digging in her bag, changing blouses. Then she stood at the door and said, Are you ready to go? You can take the coffee with you. Here. She poured the coffee into a plastic cup.

I walked her to the metro station and then turned back and walked towards my home. The coffee kept my fingers warm for a while. The steam that escaped the cup danced against the backdrop of the grey roads, the grey buildings, the leafless grey trees, the grey people, the Greyhound buses, and then it lost its energy and turned cold — the fate of everything around me.

I decided to walk all the way home, and on my way I stopped at the Artista Café to get warm. A few North African men surrounded the professor, who sat in his usual chair. He always managed to dazzle those newcomers with his stories and grand theories. For some reason that I do not understand, he always managed to impress his compatriots. But I know the charlatan is in it for the free coffee and to bum cigarettes from those nostalgic souls. He would suddenly, in the middle of a story, ask one of the men to bring him a cup of coffee, and he would take a cigarette from someone else's supply, and then he'd nonchalantly continue his stories about simultaneous escape from the Algerian government and the religious “fundies.” He claims that both militant groups wanted his death because he exposed the Algerian dictatorship for what it was, and also exposed the plan of the bearded ones for a theocratic state. He would pull articles from old Algerian
newspapers and read them aloud to those naive souls, dipping his finger inside his lip as he flipped through the pages.

That cocky intellect interrupted me all the time. He always dismissed what I had to say. One particular day, when I tried to tell him that a grand change is coming, a fatal one that is brewing from underneath the earth, he chuckled and dismissed me again. He pissed me off so much that day, I decided to follow him and find out where he lived. It turned out that his paranoiac tendencies were more developed than I had thought. Maybe that is how he'd survived the executioner's bullet and the fanatics' knives. How often had he said, Only the paranoid survive, my friend? As I was following him, he looked back and saw me. I pretended to stop and look at a car meter and count my change, but the eccentric professor ran and crossed against the lights, jaywalking the red, the green, the yellow, the purple sky, the blue people, the pink dogs, the squirrels, the wet pavement. He was almost run down by a taxi. He ran like he had never run for his life from dictators or prophets. I was too conspicuous to pursue him further. And really, I just wanted to know more about the suave beggar. I wanted to steal his reading glasses while he was asleep. I tried once to do it at the café, but he hung his glasses around his neck with a rope that dangled below his ever-shifting eyes.

Salaam, I said today, as I pulled a chair from the next table.

The men in the café all nodded briefly and kept on flipping through the newspapers.

I waited a little, and when the waitress came and asked me if I needed anything, I told her I was leaving. And so I did, without saying a word to anyone. On my way out, I looked
back and saw the glasses of the professor emerging from beneath the news like a crocodile from a swamp. The bastard watches me all the time. I will get him one day!

AT HOME AS I WASHED
, I saw long pieces of Shohreh's deep blue hair swirling in the waters around my feet like eels. And as I was getting out of the bathtub, some force pulled me back. It was as if gravity was magnified; the soles of my feet felt heavy with the weight of iron and chains, my ankles felt anchored in water, I moved sluggishly. I felt heavy, but also a part of me had become light and fleet. I tried to move myself by hanging off the shower curtain, then the towel rack, but instead I became more immobilized. A deep, deep sense of fear and sadness overcame me. I felt I was the last human on the planet. I heard the sound of water, like synchronized drumming, going down the drain — an army on the move with chariot and horses. I saw the mirror shifting and meeting my face, and in the mirror I saw fuzziness and an elongated face that was still mine, but it was as if I had grown whiskers from my forehead. I am going to shave it, I thought. I should shave it. I grabbed the razor and passed it across my forehead. Then the sadness intensified, which made me drop the blade. I wanted to ask for help, but no one, no name, came to mind, and I was certain that no one existed anymore. Perhaps everything had been destroyed by some bright light that had flashed and levelled all that was on the surface of the earth. I reached the door but felt paralyzed, as if some poisonous fang had bitten me. I also felt light, and fragile, so fragile, so weightless that I could be swept up and pulled under by anything.
An insect or a shaft of light could carry me; the water could equally sweep me down towards the noise made by armies of galloping horses, flying beneath sabres, helmets, and bright flags held by boys, and villagers turned archers. And I panicked, thinking I was the only naked one in the battle. I somehow managed to partially cover myself with a towel and clung to the bathroom door, but then the door shifted back and forth in front of me. All I wanted was to cross it, to get to the other side and throw my carcass on the sheets of the wounded and the dead. And a part of me felt thin, as if I were on top of a spear and fretting like a banner in the wind. I watched myself, conscious that another me was escaping.

At last I rushed into the bedroom and violently closed the window and pulled myself onto the bed. Maybe I am just hungry, I reassured myself. Maybe I am just tired. A part of me was still thinking clearly, though. I was split between two planes and aware of two existences, and they were both mine. I belong to two spaces, I thought, and I am wrapped in one sheet. I looked at the ceiling. I felt it shifting for a very brief moment, sideways, then down and up. And then that terrible sadness came back into the world like an omnipotent blinding cloud, and tears dropped from my eyes for no reason, as if I was crying for someone else.

IN THE AFTERNOON
, Reza knocked at my door. I buzzed him in.

Your building always smells — cooking, curry or meat, or something, man. You look like shit. What were you doing? You cut your forehead? Did you fall?

I went back to bed and covered myself up. Reza, there is tea in the cupboard above the stove, I said. Boil some and bring it here.

I do not want tea.

I do, I said. Could you please make some?

He went to the kitchen. And I could hear him, squeaking complaints. He came back with the teapot. There are no clean cups, he told me. You need to do your dishes, man. It is dirty in there.

I stood up, went to the kitchen, washed two cups, and came back.

Oh, I don't want any, he said.

What do you want?

Money, he said.

You must be kidding, right?

Well, I got you the job at the restaurant, didn't I?

Fucking asshole, I said. Leave my house.

But he stayed and did not move an inch. He had a smirk on his face.

Leave, I said. I am serious. I am not feeling well.

He opened the curtains and said: Why do you live in the dark like that? Open some windows; you need light and fresh air, brother.

Leave, I said, faintly. Leave now.

Reza walked down the stairs, cursing the trapped smells.

I flung the door closed behind him, and drew the curtains.

THE NEXT DAY
, I went to the welfare office to fill out some papers — a routine procedure. The bureaucrats want to make sure that you move your ass out of bed once in a while, that you shuffle your feet in the snow to prove that you are alive and willing to lift your legs to the fourth floor of the old monastery-turned-government building. You have to sign here, here, and there before you get your money.

I picked one of the six lines of waiting people, making sure I was behind someone who looked like he had taken a shower. Why should I smell poverty? I live it! In one of the other lines, who should I see but the professor himself. I watched him with a big smirk on my face and waited until he saw me. Of course, the coffee beggar buried his face in a newspaper and pretended not to see me. I told the woman who had lined up behind me that I would be right back and went straight over to the man. I would not have missed such an opportunity for the world.

When he couldn't help but see me, the professor acted surprised.

Hard times, I said.

Well no, no. I am here for a business meeting, a consultation job for the government.

I nodded. I looked at him with that same big smirk. Then I pulled a dollar from my pocket and asked him if he had change.

He pulled out a bunch of coins and started to count.

I said: It is not for a phone call.

He looked up at me and stopped counting his dimes, and his hand was about to close in a fist.

I need a bus ticket, I said, and I am short a dollar and twenty cents. I will pay you right back, when I get the cheque in the mail. And without waiting for an answer, I picked dimes and quarters out of his palm. I wanted something from him. It angered me that the socialist does not want to be identified as poor, a marginal impoverished welfare recipient like me. At least I am not a hypocrite about it. Yes, I am poor, I am vermin, a bug, I am at the bottom of the scale. But I still exist. I look society in the face and say: I am here, I exist. There is existence and there is the void; you are either a one or a zero. Once I was curious about the void. If I had died on that tree branch in the park, I would have experienced the other option. Although . . . experiencing it would have meant that I could see and feel, and that would have thrown me back into existence, which would eliminate the notion of the void. The void cannot be experienced. The void should mean perishing absolutely without any consciousness of it. It is either a perpetual existence or nothingness, my friend.

That bum of a professor often talks about his stay in Paris, and how he saw so-and-so sitting
dans le café
, and how he told her such-and-such and she told him such-and-such. But I'll bet the exile existed in one of those Parisian shitholes, washing his ass and cleaning his dishes in the same tub. I'll bet the asshole sought out a few well-off old ladies and discussed Balzac while he stuffed himself with food and wine. I know his type. He does not fool me.

Of course, now that I have taken his change in such a direct and brilliant, cunning manner, he must declare war between us. The little change I took from him is, I am sure, all he had
until the arrival of his cheque. I'll bet he is like me — we watch for the mail delivery and hope for that manila envelope with recyclable paper on the outside and vanishing degradable crumbs on the inside. And the reason he pulled out those fragments of change to show me was because he was seduced by the idea of having a bigger coin — a unified monotheistic empire is better than minuscule slivers that never cease to giggle and laugh in his hollow pockets, constantly reminding him what a destitute financial thinker he is. So I played the oldest trick in the book; I took him by surprise. He must have been disoriented. I caught him on the defensive, when he was busy convincing himself that he really had an appointment with some governmental official. The officials, of course, would love to consult him on the distribution of wealth, equity, and the establishment of an egalitarian society. He is in total denial that he is just like me — the scum of the earth in this capitalist endeavour. I'll bet he thought that, coming from Algeria and having lived and studied in Paris, his
vocabulaire parisien
would open every door for him in this town. Oh yes, baby! Those locals would just empty their desks and give you
le plus grand bureau
to smoke in, and you could gaze from the large window at the falling snow, you could arrive late to work and smile at the security guard, who would greet you with a
Bonjour, Monsieur
, and have a small lunch at the bistro down the street where the chef, Jacques, and everyone else, would recognize you, and naturally,
mon vieux
, everyone would be eager to discuss world politics and women with you, and then you would come back to your mahogany desk and make a few phone calls,
un apéritif
between
séances
, and in the evening you
would get your circumcised Muslim dick sucked by those ex-Catholics, and smoke a last cigarette in bed, and in the morning a croissant would hover like a holy crescent at the break of dawn, announcing another day of jubilation and bliss.
Et voilà! La belle vie! La belle province!

Now I was more determined than ever to find a way to that faux government consultant's shithole of a residence and consult his drawers, his fridge, his glasses, and merge his shoes into one company, and maybe lay off a few excess operatives. The professor got to the welfare window before me, but he was arguing and pulling papers from an envelope. My transaction was straightforward. I handed the man my slips, signed here, here, and there, waited for the sound of the wooden stamp, and left. On my way out, I saw the professor still waiting, pacing back and forth, pretending to be busy, trying to be somewhere between the welfare line and his imaginary appointment. I decided to cross the street, find myself a corner, squeeze myself into it, and wait.

Eventually the professor stood at the door of the welfare office, looked left and right, then walked east. I crouched and put my feet and palms on the ground and let him pass. He walked by in a hurry, and his long coat and his hat gave him the look of an Eastern European spy. I gave him a distance of a few blocks, then followed him. I crawled through and beneath car fenders and hopped above dirty batches of snow and under car tires. At one point the professor stopped and turned back, and I dug into the snow and hid behind a discarded
TV
on the sidewalk. Its two antennae sprang out of my head like whiskers. One had an advantage being at a low angle like that,
close to earth and invisible, I thought; imagine living all your life close to the crust of the ground. When the professor pulled out his long chain of keys, I felt as if I could jump and fly from joy. Just as I thought! He lived in a semi-basement, with a side entrance that led to the kitchen of an old Portuguese lady; he lived in a dark ground-hole. That was all I needed to know. I would take care of him later.