Cockroach (4 page)

I cursed him to his face and told him that the day would come when all my
power would surface from below. I shall bring up from the abyss the echoes of rodent and
insect screams to shatter the drums of your ears! I told him. And
then you won't need to cut trees to carve music boxes, and no wire will be
stretched, tuned, or picked, and all melody will come from the core of the beings whose
instruments are innate inside them — insect legs making tunes as fine as violins,
rodent teeth more potent than all your percussion, millions of creatures in sync,
orchestrated, marching to claim what is rightly theirs . . .

Reza laughed at me and walked away, humming. I knew it, he said. You are a
lunatic. I always knew it — a loonnneyyyy.

FINALLY, I REACHED
Matild again, Reza's housemate, the
beauty who still works at the French restaurant where I used to work. Lately I find the
city is being invaded by whining Parisians like Matild, who chant the
“Marseillaise” every chance they get. They come to this Québécois
American North and occupy every
boulangerie
, conquer every French restaurant
and
croissanterie
with their air of indifference and their scent of fermented
cheese — although, truly, one must admire their inherited knowledge of wine and
culture. These are skills to be secretly admired. Indeed, the Parisians are highly
sought after and desired by the Quebec government. Photos of
la campagne rustique,
le Québec du nord des Amériques
, depicting cozy snowy winters and
smoking chimneys, are pasted on every travel agent's door; big baby-seal eyes
blink from the walls of immigration offices, waiting to be saved, nursed, and petted;
the multicolours of Indian summers are plastered across every travel magazine; and
le nouveau monde français
is discovered on every travel show. The
Québécois,
with their extremely low birth rate, think they
can increase their own breed by attracting the Parisians, or at least for a while
balance the number of their own kind against the herd of brownies and darkies coming
from every old French colony, on the run from dictators and crumbling cities. But what
is the use, really? Those Frenchies come here, and like the Québécois they do
not give birth. They abstain, or they block every Fallopian tube and catch every sperm
before the egg sizzles into
canard à l'orange
. They are too busy
baking, tasting wine, and cutting ham and cheese, too occupied intimidating American
visitors who play the sophisticates by tasting and nodding at every bottle of French
wine wrapped in a white cloth.

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.

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?