RuKsaK

My chest expulsed a relieving wheeze of air as though a hole had been made in the middle of it like on a whale’s back. At that moment of landing I thought how pleasant it must be to be a whale, jetting out stress before it gets anywhere in the body, just fountaining it into the rest of the ocean. But, I’m not a whale and this is not an ocean, and I had a metal and glass airport to march through and month-left home to get to.
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The place hadn’t been left too tidy. I’d more or less ignored my daughter’s room – I hadn’t cleaned it before leaving to see them in Russia because I knew I’d be a cliché - picking up her strewn toys, stroking a forgotten teddy’s ear, waiting for an apt, filmic tear to roll down my cheek. I hadn’t wanted to do that, so the toys were still on the floor, they still are. The rest of my oddly shaped flat is strewn like that of a single man who seldom eats at home. Rifled DVDs are on the sofa and books sit in every room, where I’ve left them. I used to be much nicer to books, but fuck it, they’re only books. I’ve done worse to people than I’ve done to books and that strikes me as peculiar, so I’m trying to make up for that by bumping off the odd paperback.
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The bus journey from the airport, before the taxi ride home, had me thinking about what might be wrong with the flat. I don’t use ‘my’ for this place I live in because I don’t like it much. It’s a big box, but if I’m a fish then the place is too dry or shallow or something. When I got here all was as expected, just a little less tidy than I remember. There were a few dead cockroaches around – big, ugly ones. When cockroaches get to this size they lose that black singleness and start to look like mechanical pieces of varnished mahogany. All six of them were in almost different rooms and belly up, each about the size of my thumb. Although they looked extremely detailed, even before crouching to pick them up, there was nothing between them. I slung down my bags on the sofa and went for the dustpan and brush. Getting in closer to the bastards I could see even more. I hated them for stealing my desire for sleep – cleaning these up meant my body had more of being awake to endure. I swept them onto the plastic blue dustpan and they seemed even starker. I held them at arm’s length with an expression we’d all make – a human-facing-bug expression.

The last one was behind my mirror. It wouldn’t brush from the floor too easily and I had to get a big bundle of toilet paper to pick it up. At about ten sheets thick I could still feel its shell between my fingers as I peeled it from the floor. I went for a closer a look and as my fingers unconsciously pinched it the shell buckled a little revealing two neat rows of what looked like eggs – cockroach caviar. Then for some reason I moved a little closer to have a sniff. I’d never smelled a cockroach before. I imagined it would smell of some kind of insipid detergent or the dysentery of a dying man or something, but it smelled of nothing. Cold, divisive machine I thought – to look like that and have no smell at all. Evil.

My thoughts, brought on by the fatigue of too many hours too high in sky, were snapped by the ring of the phone. I’d almost forgotten such a thing existed and it made me jump. I dropped the dead, pregnant roach in its big fluffy, paper coffin and went to answer the phone call which would start to change everything.
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You can find Who? - part 2 here.

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Who? - part 1