"It's a free country."
Citizens continued to rear-end each other, and a long pileup hung precariously from the cabinet bottom, right over Ira's balding head. Clorox took a jolt with every collision. "Get out of the way, you stupid GAP," she said to Anise. Germanica-american Princess.
"Go around."
Clorox grabbed her by the thorax and tore her loose from the wood. Please don't let go, I prayed, not yet, not until Ira leaves. She carried Anise off to the side of the underhang and stuck her back onto the wood, as calmly as if she were taking out the garbage.
Citizens quickly disengaged and the line resumed its disciplined motion. "Well, fuck you," Anise said. Nobody paid her any attention, which she couldn't stand. As she fluttered back toward the line, one of her legs caught on a splinter.
She was hooked. She stretched the leg so far I thought it would break off. But it was stronger than she was, and like a slingshot snapped her body back. She could not reach the wood again, and swung from the cabinet by the one leg, a little brown pendulum. "What a drag!" she said. The line kept moving past her. Ira continued to wash his hands.
And then the leg broke. She said, "Whoops," and landed in the middle of Ira's bald spot. He smacked himself with a soapy had. Direct hit. Anise was flattened, widened, guts extruding through every pore. Now she'd have her nap.
Had she stuck to his head, Anise could still have saved the colony. But she seemed to be eating out of his palm, where he immediately looked. "Jesus Christ!" he said, snapping his wrist. Still she stuck to him. He turned both taps up full force, and soon she was down the drain and on her way to ride the breakers.
Ira scrubbed his hands like a surgeon, then tore off several paper towels and made careful circuits of his pate. Bless your fastidiousness, Ira; every few seconds another citizen squeezed to safety.
Ira held the towels up nearly to the tip of his nose for examination. They must have been clean; there was no more rubbing. Then the cogitating began: Ira, how did that roach manage to land on your head?
He looked up, struggling to focus. He gasped and stepped back. I'm sure he had never seen anything like that line. I never had.
Stealthily he lowered himself to a squat, knees cracking and slippers slapping, and opened the base cabinet. He straightened slowly.
He removed the top, held the can before him, and, with one eye closed, took aim. The line continued to move at the same pace. I couldn't stand to watch, but I couldn't turn away. But Ira lowered the can. Was it conscience about engaging in genocide? No, he was just following orders: he had forgotten to shake the can.
He raised it again, and this time he fired. His first salvo missed everyone by two feet, but the second blanketed the citizens at the top of the wall cabinet. They screamed as the chemical flamed into their bodies. Convulsing, they fell from the heights into the sink and onto the countertop with horrifying, limb-severing crunches. Instinct—revived minutes too late—urged the victims to pull themselves off the countertop with legs, stumps, mouthparts. Some used their heads to push their detached parts to the floor, as if they could later reattach them—as if they had any chance to survive.
At least this black shower of limbs would warn off the citizens closer to the floor, they still had time to get away. But to my horror, the rest of the fine kept moving up as if nothing had happened, ignoring the rain of disembodied antennae and legs that struck them, and the howls that probably had Blattella colonies on the fifth floor cowering. This was no crisis of organization. It was a lemming march.
Orderly as usual, Ira next swept the spray across the underhang. Scores of bodies rained into the sink. He turned on the water and washed them down the drain. And still the column continued to climb up the base cabinet.
Then the counter. A second bombing killed off many of the wounded lying there, causing a deathly diminuendo. But there was another horrible crescendo as spray struck citizens on the backsplash. I clasped my own shell as it began to vibrate. Ira jumped back so citizens pitching themselves over the edge wouldn't land on his exposed feet. But he was smiling. This man, this humanist who couldn't stand the idea of vivisecting the lowest rodent, anaesthetized, for medical purposes, took pleasure in our gratuitous slaughter.
Many died on impact with the floor, some virtually exploding; resilience was a casualty of the poison. A palp, someone's mouthpart, rolled all the way across the floor and under the toe-kick beside me. I kicked it back out. It sickened me.
Ira pushed the new casualties into the sink with a folded paper towel and washed them away, then bent over and took aim at the remaining survivors, on the base cabinet. I was too horrified to move. Spray deflecting off the wood caught me. I shut my spiracles as tight as I could, but the poison worked them like sharp gouges.
I had gotten just a taste. Poisoned bodies continued to plunge to the floor, landing on top of each other with mutilating force. No one could extricate himself from the howling, writhing mass.
I saw two citizens land clear of the pile. "Run!" I cried. Ira was so intent on the main kill that they could get to the stove. They made it halfway across the floor, then turned and started back. "No! This way!" I shouted. They circled and again headed for the stove, but turned back once more. Then I realized that they weren't headed anywhere, just running in chemically predestined circles, which became tighter and tighter, until they both spun in place. Then they toppled, legs still pumping, never to stand again. The male started to beat his wings, as grotesque a sexual farewell as the hanging human who springs an erection.
Suddenly a citizen came sprinting straight toward me. "Move yo ass!" Sufur! I always knew he was a survivor!
He was too obvious, the only citizen still moving in a straight line with any speed, and the flip-flops turned to follow him.
"Not here!" I cried, "Go over there."
"Move it, mutha. Here I come."
A long burst of spray caught Sufur square on the back. A fine mist reflected off him and engulfed me. It burned. My body started to contort, but, terrified that I would never be able to correct myself, I planted my legs and flexed, staying straight. The poison kept penetrating. When it reached my heart I was finished. How long would it take? I pictured parallel pits eating through me. But after a few minutes the pain slowed. The poison was exhausted. The torque on my body eased. The dose was too small. I would survive.
But Sufur wouldn't. With the most piercing scream of the night, he sprang straight up, more like a cricket than a cockroach, and landed on his side. He twisted so violently that the plates of his carapace began to snap and break apart, exposing his guts. I backed all the way under the toe-kick. When his eyes started to pop out, like caviar from the mouth of a squeamish debutante, I took off down the toe-kick.
I turned when I heard the cabinet open. Ira had killed his hundreds, but the last triumph was ours. Finger poised to annihilate those closest to eternal happiness, he would find that they had simply disappeared like brown smoke. With Ben blocking his view of the hole, he would be baffled. Even if he found it, he could do nothing but futilely spit poison through it.
Once again I was wrong. When the door opened all the way, Augustine and the others were still in the cabinet, in clear view. They were on the wrong shelf. They never found the hole.
Slowly Ira cleared the field, pushing boxes to the left, cans to the right, his breath loud and rasping. Then, with one interminable blast, he massacred them all. At last the spray can sputtered and burped, but it was too late for us. Screaming gave way to cries and whimpers and the sickening crack of more citizens on the countertop. The refrigerator fan went on.
Ira thwacked out of the room, and soon returned with the vacuum cleaner. I was grateful that its roar drowned out the death rattles of my colony. When he finished the cabinet and the counter, Ira turned to the floor. With the edge of the attachment, he chopped the pile of cadavers because it was too big and tightly knit to pick up. Bodies pinged as they ricocheted up the hose into the canister. I prayed the impact would kill the doom
ed survivors.
Ira made a last search for fugitives, then, smiling, unplugged the machine, turned off the light, and left the kitchen. The door of the hall closet closed. Soon I heard him telling war stories to Ruth. It revolted me that our deaths would bond them.
During my short stay in the well behind the cabinet, I thought I had been alone. Now I knew what alone really meant. What would I do? Stay here? Even if the hole was safe, I couldn't bear the thought of wading through the limbs that still littered the shelf. Should I move on and try to join another colony? But where? Who would tolerate a cripple, especially of my age? When scouts from other colonies found out what had happened, 3B would be annexed, and I would be exiled. I was scared. I didn't know what to do. I never wanted to be the last one, to live without my friends. I'm not that dedicated a survivor.
I had to get away from the kitchen. I decided on the dining room baseboard. It was eerie, but safe. It would do for now.
At the kitchen doorway I turned for a last look. The room was so calm that I had trouble believing what had just happened. Then I saw a form beneath the far toe-kick. Don't go back, I thought. But I couldn't stop myself.
The big citizen was terribly contorted, his head distended and somehow stuck between two of the abdominal tergites, like a neckless duck. I crept up the far side of the room so he couldn't see me.
Then I recognized him. Barbarossa! Who else was so big? A wise return, this. A chance to regain my last friend and then lose him. "Tell me, friend, what can I do for you?"
"Numbers?"
"Yes. How about getting your head loose."
"Paralyzed... Numbers, are you truly my friend?"
"Don't be ridiculous," I said, but he chilled me.
"Promise me."
I backed up. "I do."
"I believe you are honorable. There's a crack in the tergite behind my head. See it?"
I came closer. He stank of poison. I couldn't help looking back at the doorway. "Yes."
"One last favor. I swear I will never ask anything of you again. Tear it open."
Hadn't I already killed hundreds tonight? Suddenly I could see them all again, falling screaming from the countertop, so real that I backed out of their trajectory. And then I saw the silent, still silhouette of the ravaged Bismarck. This was carnage enough for a lifetime.
I wanted desperately to help Barbarossa, but I couldn't do this. I slipped away from him by a route he could not see. Then his voice froze me.
"Numbers, why have you forsaken me?"
That was it. I ran out of the kitchen and down the hall, and after that I don't know where I went. I remember only streaks of receding furniture. The legs of Blattella can be directly activated by external stimulus, without instruction from the brain; once my brain revived, it hadn't the slightest desire to contravene.
Some time later I found myself in the back of the hall closet, among groves of dust, musty old galoshes, mildewed widowed gloves, and other ageless debris. I felt better here. I hated the urgency that had polluted my life for months. I yearned to be part of a long, slow, predictable process again. I could die peacefully here.
I soon fell into the uneasy half-sleep that blurs the boundary between dream and reality. Scratching noises, loud and frantic, dominated my dream. I couldn't see who was making them. I woke up, trembling. The noises awoke with me.
Barbarossa. He was alive! I had to go save him... No, these sounds were local. Someone was in here with me, trapped in a boot or a shoe. I searched desperately. I called out. I even listened at the sides of the suitcases. No one answered.
Then it came to me. This was also the utility closet; I had managed not to see the vacuum cleaner, which sat right beside me. The tortured survivors were impaled in thick coils of dirt pinned by each other's broken bodies, suffocating in fine soot trying impossibly to dig their way out of the bag.
My legs didn't wait for instructions. I flew from the closet and this time I didn't stop.
Stripe for Stripe
WHEN THOU PRAYEST, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
All my life I had resisted this voice within me, scoffed at it, mocked it. Now, in my hour of hopelessness, I realized that I had been a fool. What was I, if not poor in spirit, and meek? Had I listened I would have realized this was not shameful, and certainly no justification for months of futile war and a lifetime of skepticism. I could have walked in peace knowing that I would inherit the earth. Now my heart and mind cleared. I wanted only to rejoice, and be exceedingly glad.
I avoided the kitchen for the rest of the week. During Saturday's cleaning, the kitchen was purged of poison. After the vacuuming was done, Ruth changed the bag. Now I could do as Our Father asked, return to the closet for prayer. The vacuum cleaner beside me was an icon of the power of Caesar, but I finally knew where my true faith lay.
And I, the first Blattella germanica to learn to kneel, heard: Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
The kingdom of heaven. The phrase elicited lovely images. I could see myself there, rubbing antennae with my friends, joking, eating. How much nobler and richer was the kingdom of heaven than the future I had imagined, an endless, meaningless tour through the nitrogen cycle. How smug I had been, how Godless.
In the closet I prayed for the colony. Father forgave me, and showed me them in eternal, shoe-less, spray-less, motel-less peace. And it was good.
Late Saturday night I returned to the kitchen. In the cabinet I found Father's second reward: He had indeed kept Ben from blocking off the hole again. O Father! Thou art too generous! I reentered my kingdom on earth.
I lived behind the cabinet, not by pasta alone, but by every Word that I could remember from the mouth of God. Now that the roaches were gone, the household regimens were gradually relaxed, and my piety was met with a plenty which embarrassed me. I was careful not to offend Father by refusing his offerings.
For the first time I was truly calm, spiritually content. I lived well, secure in the knowledge that some day I would pass on to an even better life. Only one thing rankled: Ira's indifference. His life went on exactly as before. The ancient Hebrews memorialized their vanquished in the first Testament; surely our martyrs deserved recognition.
Oh pride, wretched vice. What did it matter who knew, as long as Our Father did. I remembered the word: to love mine enemies, bless them that curse me, do good to them that hate me, and pray for them which despitefully use me and persecute me; that I may be the child of my Father which is in heaven. I went all the way back to the hall closet to repent. Father believed in love, prayer, and, I was discovering, physical fitness.
After dinner the following Tuesday, Ira went to the living room and took down the chessboard. "I can't put this off anymore."
Ruth stood behind him. "Before you set the pieces up all symmetrical and boring, let's try something different. Let's put light and dark pieces on both sides. I'm amazed the Supreme Court hasn't integrated this game yet."
"You want me to bus them over?"
She made her configuration. "You see, now there won't be so much fighting. This queen can talk to this horse— this knight—and he can ride over to the other queen and relay her messages, like the pony express. The queens can get together for lunch, maybe take in a show, and discuss how they manipulate their kings. These bishops can check out the queens. And these towers should all be zoned into the same area. That reduces congestion in the center of the board.
"Face it, Ira. The pieces are upset. You and Lev play them off against each other as if—I hate to say it—as if they're no more than pawns. Try having a friendly game."
Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall see God.
The doorbell rang. Ira answered it and brought Oliver back to the living room. Ruth said, "Hello. How are you? Where's Elizabeth?"
"She's fine. Say, that's some game you've got g
oing. How did you get your pawns into your own back row? And look at that—each king is checkmated about three different ways. How do you know when the game is over, when one of you dies?"
Ira said, "This is Ruth's work. Pacifist chess."
"Let me guess," said Oliver. "The object of the game is to get to the enemy king and give him a Peter, Paul, and Mary album."
"No, no," said Ruth. "There is no enemy. Everybody cooperates. Look at the pattern on the board—positively post- Impressionist. You never get that in battle."
Oliver sat down and said, "This looks like fun. Mind if I try a variation?"
Ira looked at his watch. "Sure, why not." He loved his neighbor as himself.
Oliver reset the board. "Think of the board as a ghetto."
"Oh, no," said Ira.
"This pawn is the lawyer. This king is the pusher and murderer. He is surrounded by the police, who arrested him when someone sang. The object it to get the lawyer through the police cordon and spring the murderer before the songbird gets out of town."
"Did you want something, or were you just bored?" said Ira.
"A flashlight."
"Where I come from that's called chutzpa," said Ira.
"You won't believe this. My wife thinks she might be with child..."
"Really!" Ruth clapped. "Mazel tov."
"Not yet, Ruth. She thinks so about once a month. Now she wants me to take a look up there to see if I can see anything. I just pretend."
Ruth and Ira exchanged glances of incredulity. "Of course," said Ira. "I'm flattered you chose my flashlight."
"Remember the night you said you were going for a flashlight and ended up molesting my wife? You know what blew out the kitchen lights? Cockroaches! That's right. There was a whole bunch of them in a socket, deep fried. You didn't put them up to it, did you?"
Anger welled in me. For the first time since my rebirth I could find no comfort in the Book.
"Let's get the flashlight. You better do your examination before she goes into labor," said Ira. He let Oliver out and returned to the chessboard.
The Roaches Have No King Page 21