EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNALApril 16, 1999
Calle Conde de Barajas, Seville
La Cucaracha
In the half-sleep, in the night’s middle, when the Conservatory is
quiet with only muffled coughing and squeaky beds, I am foggy and squinting in the light
of the bathroom. I scan the hospital tiles, the white porcelain of the bidet and the tub,
blotchy with rings like Saturn.
Three bulbs make the place bright, casting hard shadows under the
vanity. And there, inspecting the tap, scanning a horizon of mirror and drawer and razor,
is the cockroach. He is the size of a large Brazil nut, only casting a monstrous shadow,
and in his prehistoric armour looks more like a small samurai, self-contained, red and
shiny and carrying with him his bad wrap of urban filth.
Things are slippery on the tiled wall. He’s looking for a route
around the mirror. The bath’s steam of several hours ago lingers damp. The room is a
wet closet. He falls heavily to the floor. He’s enormous. He’s on his concave
back, moving his kinky legs, contortioning to right himself.
I’m studying him in his helplessness. Upright, he is agile,
lightening fast, and gets in and out of places with the ease of a ghost. His construction
is a million years old. He has adapted himself, unknowingly to our garbage and chemicals
and nuclear bombs. He is the ultimate in Nature Wins. When everything else screams in its
fragility, begging for sensitivity, for breathing room, he pokes his face from the faucet
and finds a way around the exterminator. He the natural problem solver, eternally
thriving.
A long time from the duvet-cloud summons from sleep the groggy
engineer, eyes rubbing, "what is it?"
"A visitor"
"He’s big. Let me see…" I step out of the room and
stand in the hall, thinking about beetles and mosquitoes and mice and spiders. They are
household companions in comparison to this war-proof soldier who can blindly navigate a
drain and emerge energetic from kilometres of toilet water.
Rich turns and collects a piece of cardboard from the kitchen. He comes
back with his shoes on. Then he drops the cardboard on top of the living tank and takes a
decisive stomp like a Jewish bridegroom.
