Written, in Portuguese, by Francisco C. P. Rodrigues, Brazilian author.
Two
cockroaches a male and a female, a respected couple, talk in their language in
the sewage, while they nibble rotten remains of food. His name is Glutof and
hers is Kiti.
“Why
such enthusiasm?” asks the husband, suspiciously. He is skeptical, solemn, hard-shelled, cult,
repulsive, with the eyes of a serious-minded owl. A very well fed glutton, he
resembles a dark and obese date, gifted with slim but sturdy and hairy legs –
or whatever is the right name for its bristles. Fortunately, Glutof does not
put on any weight on his small thighs, which allows him to spring at an
incredible speed in moments of danger, particularly when hunted by the damned
triad of men, rats and cats. The latter are revellers who kill just for fun, since they actually don’t chew
their victims. They just
feel too disgusted.
Glutof
is proud of his brown, rather black brightness of his wings which he can frill
with tremendous success, causing screaming and fainting amongst the opposite
sex. Although fat he is a womanizer, or “cockroachizer”, a word he intends to
include in the first dictionary of the language for cockroaches, still in its
early stage and with him as a coordinator. He likes very much to philosophize
and enjoys himself with the nonsense of his peers, almost all of them dumb,
when compared to him. A genetic mutation had occurred, characterized by greater
longevity and a larger size of the brain. But not all cockroaches have
benefited with the increase of intelligence. By the way, this is also a human
problem, though way older.
“You,
critical and conceited as usual!”
Kiti protests. “What a terrible obsession you have of diminishing me
and spoiling all my fun! It isn’t enthusiasm, goddamn! I was simply dismayed or
rather, horrified – is that good for you? – to watch the loathsome cleanliness
of the new restaurant around the corner, that huge one. I managed to get in
there only once, under the door, on the inauguration eve, and I peeped. Last
night, after the inauguration, I tried to go back, to pinch a few things,
sneaking through the corners, but I really got scared. Too busy. The only crack
that could help me get in had already been closed. The measures taken by the
scoundrels to keep us away were perfect. Entrance, only through the front door
but with the risk of being squashed by the doorman’s shoe sole.”
“I
still think you look rather euphoric, almost satisfied, unconsciously approving
the abominable cleanliness”, insisted the husband, a theoretical much respected for his zeal in the
protection of the everlasting values of filth. He interrupted the sequence of
little sucks on the moldy bread and snapped his lips to sip from a little cup
of mucus, dripped from a nursing home for elderly paupers.
“It’s
just that I, although disapproving of course, any kind of cleanliness – what do
you think I am, huh? – I like to see things well done. You know that I’ve
always been a perfectionist…”
“Relatively”,
interrupted the husband “at home, you take it easy. There are still many things
to clean here and there… the cleanliness is becoming unbearable. You are not
such a good housewife; pardon me for my frankness…”
“But
you do not cooperate, either!”, she raised her squeaky voice indignantly,
flapping her antennae. “You just stand there, in that old lawyer’s office, the
landlord, nibbling old greasy books, bought in second-hand shops. You, my dear,
you are addicted to salt and old human grease”.
“It’s
you who can’t see an inch beyond your nose. It is not just gluttony, my dear. I
study. My idleness is misleading. Well, indeed, it’s true that I also enjoy
eating. However, I study as much as I eat. Oh! This is worth a pun”, he smiled,
pleased with the finding: “And how I do read! (Exclamation). Above all, I
relish slowly, tasting not only the grease from the fingers of Adam’s decadent
offspring, but also the abstract side, the printed ideas themselves. This in order not to walk around speaking rubbish, as many of our hard-shelled and slender legged brothers. One day we will inherit the Earth…remember the
prophecy? I have read that if a nuclear conflict takes place, only we will
remain alive. We will be well protected down here, whereas the biped scoundrels
toast up there, deservedly. Can you imagine the binge afterwards? Everything
will be ours….from litter to computers…”
“Well,
if there is time to run down here. If you are at the library when the ‘Big
Boom’ happens – as you will probably be, since you are addicted to greasy books
– then you won’t inherit anything at all! You will be just one more toasted
date. Besides, to which atomic war do you refer? The only two giants that could
do us a favour have patched it up! It is all demoralized now! The Russian
chief, that blond heart-sufferer bear (she meant Boris Yeltsin) with Mongolian
slanted eyes – his mother must have had a Japanese neighbour way more handsome
than her own husband – has turned into a capitalist! Instead of using his plump
fingers to push the missiles’ launching button, he has fun in pinching his
secretary! It is disheartening…”
“Don’t
lose your hope, Kiti”. She is gracious, with long eyelashes and with a brain
full of crazy and right intuitions, all mixed up. A hottie, she is basically
just pheromones and reproductive organs. She has the fame of being frivolous,
but up to now no one has ever had the courage to bear witness against her,
because she is influential and vengeful. The owl face intellectual, already on
his fifth marriage proceeds, academically: “Parodying what an American
businessman has already said, no one up to now, has ever lost money when
betting on the stupidity of bragging state leaders. Or rather, in the stupidity
of human species altogether without any exception, who claim to be so rational,
spiritual. We, who know them well, and eat everything they throw away, we know
what they really are deep inside. Especially deep inside…
He
made a pause to nibble a piece of a rotten banana and continued erudite,
pleased to hear the voice he knew so well how to modulate with so much
authority:
“Fortunately,
the so called emerging powers are just concerned with mastering the atom,
scaring their neighbours. Therefore do not get disheartened. One day, they will
be making atomic bombs in their backyard. Our turn will come, Kiti. I have
always believed that our ideals of justice and supremacy will end up
prevailing. The power of empires goes up and down, just like a seesaw. It is
written in the history books that I lick – I mean – I read. Power shifts hands.
I feel it in the air, especially in the polluted air – this pleasant and
perfumed aerial garbage – the signs that our turn is coming! The current system
of domination is utterly unfair! Any human being, smart or dumb, as soon as he
sees us eat a meager crumb on the kitchen floor – even when we are on the verge
of inanition – instantly opens his eyes wide like a mad exterminator and runs
towards us, with his paws up. Why such prejudice? After all, we are cleaning
their kitchens, without even charging! They would save up a lot without house
maids! We could all get along so well, in harmony! At night, the humans would
spread their dirty clothes on the floor, go to sleep naked, and we would invade
the house, eating all the digestible dirtiness left on cups, bodies, dishes and
cutlery. Clothes would be instantly “dry cleaned”. We would lick everyone in
the house, sparing them the morning shower. Great savings! They would wake up thoroughly clean! But instead all the beasts do is crush us!”
“What
if we set up an underwear “rodízio” (rodízio is a kind of
Brazilian restaurant service, where the guest is served a new dish, as soon as
he is done with the previous one)? We could make some money out of it…” Kiti
proposes her eyes gleaming, always mindful to get some profit out of any idea.
She considers herself a great entrepreneur.
“Well,
you would be in charge of it. I do not enjoy involving myself with money
issues…I feel as if I would lose my dignity.”
“It
is all fine with these theories of yours. You know I don’t make a fuss about
these readings. I personally only enjoy fast readings, but I would like to know
how we are going to eat, in case a nuclear war breaks up. Wouldn’t the supplies
be contaminated by radiation?”
“Oh,
well…” he sounded surprised. He had never thought about that. He labeled his
wife’s bouts of good sense as ‘sparks from the horseshoe’, as once a famous
Brazilian critic had said. But he did not admit he was wrong. “Indeed, of
course, hum, in fact, I had already thought about that… for a time, which our
experts would determine, we would not eat what is on the surface. We have, in
the sewage a gigantic and delicious natural supermarket stock, all of it ready
and seasoned for our consumption. Therefore, we would only have to wait – it
would be just a matter of waiting for a while in the sewage, until the level of
radioactivity decreases”. He made a pause again to lick, snapping his lips, a
kind of chocolate mousse extracted from a white piece of paper, square and of
soft texture, and concluded:
“That
would be the glory! As if we were now in Cambodia …”
“Why
Cambodia?”
“Because
there has been a succulent civil war in Cambodia, which lasted 25 years. During
this period, between 6 and 10 million land mines were planted. The result is
that now, every month, between two and three hundred people ‘go into the air’ in Cambodia; and not
with airliners. It is the country that – though tiny – has the highest rate of
amputations in the world. We must agree, it is an earthly paradise! If there
were tourism amongst our species… wow, could you imagine that? Yummy….just the
thought of it makes my mouth water! … And the flame-thrower? We could even
choose between rare, medium and well done meat”
“There
you go with your polyglot exhibitionism…”
“And
the experts say it will be necessary about three hundred years to find and
disarm all the mines.”
“Why
did they plant so many bombs? Wouldn’t a more traditional kind of agriculture
be possible?”
“Kiti…You
need to read more carefully. No one plants bombs, my darling. They place
explosives in the ground! Each rival group, while withdrawing, would spread the
mines to … I mean, to wound (he did not approve of dirty language in the mouth
of great leaders) his rival group. And since there were many comings and goings
in the continuing skirmishes, losing and regaining territories, the result is
that the country turned into a vast butcher’s shop, supplying legs, heads and
arms in retail. To us, a paradise, because we are very light and we can walk
over mines without detonating them. Our Cambodian cousins, those lucky ones,
have blood and fresh meat at hand, at all times. It is even causing damage to
their liver now, they say, due to excess of iron in their nutrition. It’s just
like drunkenness; it gives you that big headache the next day. The ‘very intelligent’
humans, ha! ha!” He laughed, raising his eyebrows, frilling his wings in
disdain. “Never thought that one day, the firing would end? Have they forgotten
that old definition that they are ‘featherless bipeds’? Since they can’t fly,
they tread…and as they tread, they fly.”
“I’ve
heard that a horrible little English princess – I think her name was Lady Di–
had been campaigning for the ban of land mines. Do you think this misfortune
will come upon us as well?”
“Unfortunately
she is dead now.”
“Unfortunately?”
Kiti opened her wings, surprised. “What is wrong with you? It is a good thing
that she died, because this disgusting campaign stopped.”
“You
have no vision, Kiti…I say unfortunately because with her death the press
started to venerate her, therefore strengthening what she had campaigned for.
I’d rather have her alive, only pestering… Alive, she would be less threatening
to our cause. They harassed the infamous princess for years and years, keeping
an eye on her, taking pictures of her from a distance, criticizing and
gossiping all the time. On account of her they had even wanted the fall of the
monarchy. Now the wicked reformer died and there you go! They made her a
goddess! And here lies the danger for us! Henceforth, in a crisis of
consciousness – such a sickening thing among humans – and above all to sell
more magazines, the media wants to put into practice her ideas. This is how it
works with human beings. It is only after the person is dead – no longer
arousing envy on others and also because she is rotting – she is given the
right value. All I hope for is that the little English princess, uglier than
hygiene – and I’ve heard humans saying seriously, the opposite – does not have
posthumous success in her absurd campaign to ban land mines. But even if there
isn’t a nuclear war, they will die anyway, only slower, cooked in the slow fire
of the greenhouse effect or poisoned by carbonic gas. They are too dumb and
ambitious to stop in time.”
“Will
we be like that one day too, I mean, with these character flaws like the human
beings?”
“Probably…”
Glutof sighed. “I’m sorry to inform…But this is the price of civilization”. He
felt proud of his statesman’s coldness. “Unless we create a new Ethic, on which
I have been working for years, with the deepness everyone can see. To begin
with, we need to invent a reinforcement of coercion, a cockroach-god in our
image and similarity: hard-shelled, with large antennae, powerful and vengeful.
To a chief,
president or director, not everyone is bound to obey. But a
cockroach-god, with real power over life and death, the planetary cockroaches
will fear…and obey. I will talk in private to him – my own self, of course –
once a week on the rooftop of a tall building”, he smiled, ironically, closing
his owl’s eyes “and then I will transmit to our people the message that only I
heard. What do you think about the idea?”
“And
do you think our people will believe it, in this divine private colloquium? Our
people are more suspicious than the humans, because they have suffered much…”
“They
will believe, because it’s good for the soul to believe. One always believes in
what one wants to.”
“But
do you believe it yourself?”
“Of
course not. However, no one will ever be able to prove that I don’t believe it.
Unless you open your pretty little mouth, of course; but in that case you know
what awaits you. I only sell a truly necessary product. Hope, as long as there
is fear in the heart of the cockroaches. It’s mere business. And speaking of
fear, the human race is sinking exactly by lack of fear. Their trend right now,
the ‘must’, is the deep understanding
of the motivation of human actions. The idiots want to ‘understand’, mind you…. Result: they have concluded for example,
that it is of no use filling up jails, because jails recover no one. Of course
it doesn’t! But does impunity recover him, by any chance? They walk around,
like dizzy cockroaches – oops! I meant dizzy humans – not knowing what to do.
And rascally they find a way of reconciling an old wish of drawing back from
circulation the detestable thief, while at the same time they can praise
themselves, saying that they are doing him a great favour, by ‘reeducating him’. Me, once I’m in
command of this junk, I already know how I will solve the problem: immediate
death penalty to all cockroaches who commit a serious crime. This will indeed
be an example. We won’t spend money and time on processes, paper, prisons and
specially food. For small infractions we torture the guy, by keeping him in a
sickly clean place for a few days. To him it will be like death! He will never
want to make any wrongdoing ever again. Otherwise he returns to the
cleanliness.”
“My
goodness! How much finesse! When you want it, you can be really mean… maybe it
would be better to just kill all at once….But how would we kill the most
perverted criminals, since we have neither weapons, nor teeth or even hands?”
“We
would train rats. They are clever, but dumb. There is a great difference
between cleverness and intelligence. All they think about is gnawing and
fornication. Unless they also suffer a mutation like ours. Then we will be
damned because they have a bigger brain…and teeth…. By the way, I have already
instructed our staff to inform me about any radioactive material found in the
sewage. We will immediately isolate the area because with radiation, anything
could happen. If rats become like us, well, goodbye to our future millennium of
glories! They would be the ones who will substitute men in the dominance of
Earth.”
“But
back to the new restaurant around the corner, you should see the cleanliness of
the kitchen! All sparkling! Not even a little dirt capable of…”
“Stop
it! Stop it!” He interrupted her, shouting, tapping, shaking, rude, crumbling
and throwing away the chocolate-stained toilet paper. “I can’t stand this dirty
talk of yours any longer, right at meal time! Do you want to make me throw up?”
“Geez…Did
you need to yell like this? Are you disgusted by the cleanliness? What a
delicate sensibility…you sound just like a little girl…”
“Hey,
you watch your tongue”, his antennae were vibrating with indignation. He had
never beaten his wife, but he was about to do it.
Kiti did not get intimidated: “By reading too many human books you’re throwing a poet’s tantrum, all too delicate,
sensitive as an ivory tower. Watch out, huh…I know one that became a sissy…”
“What
kind of books would you like me to read, you silly? Do cockroaches have
publishing
houses and printing industry? Now we are smart, of course – so
much that the humans don’t even suspect, because we mask it up – but we have
to, for the time being, draw the available culture, the one from the humans,
until we can elaborate our own, which will be, of course much superior.”
“I
said that to upset you….Because you were rude to me.” With her two big
antennae, especially gracious on her, she stroke Glutof’s antennae, smoothing
them, while at the same time she emitted pheromones that turned him on. But he
controlled himself because he found it dangerous to have sex right after
sumptuous meals.
“Sweetie…”
she asked, tenderly, “why do you read so much? Don’t you think your exaggerate?
It can damage your eyesight… And we don’t have yet ophthalmologists among us.
Speaking of it, I think you would look neat wearing turtle glasses. A more
intellectual look is just impossible. You’re my mouldy bread, my over a year
expired ‘doce de coco’ (a kind of Brazilian coconut sweet). There are
many hard-shelled scamps out there envying me, you think I don’t know it?”
“I
read because in case of a global cataclysm I want to be prepared to organize
our species toward the new millennium. We, cockroaches, will not repeat the
same human mistakes.”
“What
mistakes, my darling? Excuse me, but with or without mistakes, they are on
top…They are millenniums ahead of us. Our genetic mutation - thanks to the
blessed radioactive dirt that they throw anywhere – is too recent. Humans smash
us left and right. Or poison us with those deadly spouts. The other day I
almost died, I told you, didn’t I? You would be almost talking to a ghost now.
I think I even have remaining sequels. I haven’t been the same; a weird
sensation in my lower womb…The housewife, a promiscuous despicable – probably
coming back from revelry since she had huge rings round her eyes – as soon as
she turned on the kitchen’s light and saw me there, right in the middle, dizzy
because of the brightness; she ran to fetch a tube of insecticide. The cruel
woman didn’t want to mess her rich shoe sole. At this moment I shot in circles,
like a busca-pé [busca =
seek +pé = foot (a sort of firework
in Brazil, which creeps between the feet, when ignited in a party)] until I
remembered that the best would be to escape underneath the door that leads to
the backyard. Meanwhile, the killer beast while panting, whirling, and afraid
that I would climb on her, tapped a warrior dance, trying to spout the
insecticide towards me. Fortunately, it barely hit me, but nevertheless, just
with the fog, right away I felt terrible colic. I think I had an abortion…It
came out all mixed up. They don’t make mistakes, my dear. The world is theirs;
no matter what we do…Up to this day I still regret not having climbed up her
legs, up to the end. I would give carefully give a little bite right there. I
assure you that the vagabond would faint out of fear!”
“When
I talk about making mistakes, Kiti, I’m referring to the human behaviour
towards their own fellow humans. They will eliminate themselves, be it by
bombing, pollution, or criminality in the streets. We do not need to interfere.
One should only wait. In Algeria, some fanatics – who won but did not partake
in an election – are beheading hundreds of people in the most remote villages.
Victims, including children, who by no means have contributed to the political
illegality. They also rape young women. And they kill with axes. Our Algerian
cousins are the ones who delight themselves on these evil humans, our
forerunners.
“Regarding
us”, Glutof proceeded, as he felt specially inspired, “and also the rats, for
example – these resistant scoundrels, very clever but short sighted, who also
attack us when starving – they, the humans, are very efficient….Well, partly
efficient, because I have heard that in the Pentagon building there once was a
plague of thousands of American cockroaches, right there, face to face,
excellent computer warriors, as they are. Yes humans know how to kill but,
fortunately for us, they hate themselves mutually. They love each other during
small intervals in life; but, once thwarted, they hate each other. One needs
only to disagree and is right away damned. Father hates son and vice-versa. It
is amazing.
“Excuse
me, but I don’t find it quite so…”, Kiti felt a subtle pleasure every time she
found a flaw in Glutof’s arguments. “Some human beings are not aggressive, not
even with us. Last week, I and about fifty friends were down on the sewage
system’s roof, gossiping, when a worker, from the public system, descended
there through a small ladder. Seeing us, just a few centimeters away from his
head, he shouted over to his colleagues, who were just above, at road level: ‘Everything
is fine, guys! There’s no danger!’And he started working on the sewage pipe,
without causing us any damage whatsoever. A saint, an exception. I was touched…
I almost flew to his lips to give him a kiss…. Really, humans are astonishing…
they are not always evil.”
Glutof
smiled, amused with his partner’s candor. “So the pretty girl thought that the
man spared you because he liked you? None of that, my darling. He let you alive
because the fact that there are cockroaches in the sewage pipe means that there
are no toxic gases around. Exactly when there are no cockroaches there lies the
danger. If there are, they can work without fear. They only spare us when we’re
useful, got it?”
“My
God! They do nothing without a selfish motive.” Disconcerted, Kiti scratched
her right armpit, as she always did, when she felt ridiculed. “How you know it
all, sweetie… Why don’t you, with all this knowledge, organize a mass attack
against humans? They are frightful. They eat a lot and have a calm life. I have
seen a big man jump like a monkey, panicky, just because there were two
cockroaches in his shirt, which he dressed in the dark. Or just because an
innocent colleague of ours flew and casually got into an old man’s mouth. He
was practicing respiratory exercises, making a deep inhalation movement. It was
indeed the death kiss. The poor little thing was spat as if she was a
disgusting thing and…crumbled! The scariest of all is that the old man
afterwards went off to pray! Can you imagine that?”
“I
know that humans are chickens, but they have the technology of death. In a war,
we would be defeated. We would only win a few initial skirmishes, by giving
them only a few frights. Flying, for example, into their eyes, or into their
mouths, or hiding ourselves in the underwear of a few big shots, vibrating our
wings near their …. you know where …but that would be all…frights, little
things. At most a few infarcts, because these big shots, full of power, pizza,
lasagna and ‘filet mignon’ (prime
beef) have their tubes – what is the name of it, again? Oh yes, arteries! –
Altogether full of fat. Nature was a stepmother for us. We do not even have
stingers. If only a mutation towards this was possible….But they occur without
any control. Now we do have intelligence, but you have noticed that not
everyone has it. We are really far from being able to manipulate genetic
engineering. Without hands, little beings that we are, what could we do
meanwhile? Just think and organize ourselves. And hope they kill each other,
which is almost certain.
“But, my darling, some of them are terrorists,
blow themselves up with bombs. They seem idealists.”
“Right,
right…but only the silly ones…
“Darling,
you talk so much that I get dizzy. I am worried with time…Don’t you think we
should be going home right now? Soon the rats will wake up…
“Well,
I am starting to feel tired. O. K. Let’s go home.
Entwined,
they slowly walked towards the hole down the house’s sink in which they lived.
They did not notice that two big famished rats, with evil eyes, were coming
right behind them, on their tiptoes, their mouths already watering for the
‘dates’ which they considered as good as eaten.
Kiti,
lighter and less greedy, miraculously escaped the attack, but lost two of her
legs, an antenna and a wing. She cried, mourning the next day at her husband’s
funeral. Or rather, at the two little hairy thighs and one wing’s funeral – all
that was left from “Glutof, the Rescuer”, the great leader who had already
joined history.
But
she was pregnant, and soon, very soon, all those projects of heroes, still
dormant in their eggs, would be born, replacing their father in the heroic
creation of a new civilization.
(This
fable was written some years ago. So it refers to Boris
Yeltsin and other facts more mentioned at that time)
THE
END
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