The Suffering of Being Kafka | Page 9

I raise my hand.
"You are coming with us. The rest continue to your destinations. You
too!" - he addresses the Arab, his civility offensively overstated.
"I want no problems here!" - he warns - "It's Friday, the Sabbath is
upon us. Go home in peace. The police has more important things to do
than to resolve your petty squabbles!"
Extracted from my window seat, their fingers vicelike under both
armpits, they half drag me across my neighbour's knees, strewing all
over him the contents of the plastic bag in which I keep my wallet and
the weekend papers. It hurts.
We alight and the young one taps the folding exit doors. The bus
drones its way into the snaring traffic jam. I watch its back as it recedes.
The coppers place a pair of shiny handcuffs on my wrists and shackle
my ankles too. I stumble towards the waiting squad car. They unlock
the rear and gesture me to enter. They push me from behind and bolt
the door. The gory rays of a setting sun dissect the murk inside.
I see the officers' backs and necks as they occupy the front seats

beyond the meshed partition. One of them half turns and spits a snarl:
"My partner loves you, Arabs."
Only then, my eyes having adjusted, I notice the others in the stifling
cabin I inhabit. They rattle their manacles and smile at me wolfishly, a
toothy apparition.
"Where are you from, handsome?" - one asks and moves to flank me.
His mitt is motionless on my knee.
He has an Arab accent.

The Butterflies are Laughing
by Sam Vaknin
My parents' home, it is dusk time, and I am climbing to the attic. I settle
on my childhood's sofa, whose unravelled corners reveal its faded and
lumpy stuffing. The wooden armrests are dark and bear the scratchy
marks of little hands. I contemplate these blemishes, set bright against
the deep, brown planks, and am reminded of my past. A light ray
meanders diagonally across the carpet. The air is Flemish. The fitting
light, the shades, the atmosphere.
There is a watercolour on an easel of a thickset forest with towering
and murky trees. A carriage frozen in a clearing, a burly driver, looking
towards nowhere, as though there's nothing left to see. No light, no
shadows, just a black-singed mass of foliage and an incandescent,
sallow horse.
My little brother lies bleeding on the rug. Two gory rivulets, two
injured wrists, delineate a perfect circle. They cross his ashen palms
and waxen, twitching fingers. It may be a call for help but I have been
hard of hearing.
I crouch beside him and inspect the wounds. They are shallow but
profuse. Red pain has broken past his skin, his face is wrinkled. I wipe
him gently, trying not to hurt.
He stares at me, eyes of a gammy colt awaiting the delivering shot. He
radiates the kind of gloom that spans the room and makes me giddy. I
cower to my heels, then squat beside him, caressing his silent scream.
My palms are warm.
We while the time. His frothy exhalations, my measured air inhaled,
our lungs entwined in the proliferating density. The volumes of my
childhood mob the shelves, their bindings blue and rigid.

I look at him and tell him it's alright, he shouldn't worry. A mere
nineteen, he gives me a senescent smile and nods in frailty. He grasps it
all, too much. Shortly, I may have to lift him in my arms and set him on
the couch. We are not alone. Echoes of people downstairs. I can't tell
who. Mother, our sister, Nomi perhaps. Someone arrives and sparks
excited speech and lengthy silences.
I descend the steps, some hasty greetings, I stuff a roll of coarse, green
toilet paper in my pants. Back to the horror, to frisk around the crimson
wreckage. I wipe my brother wrathfully from floor and carpet and from
couch, reducing him to a ubiquity of chestnut stains. I am not content.
He is writhing on the inlay, attempting tears. It's futile, I know. We
both forgot the art of crying, except from torn veins.
The light is waning. The brown blinds incarcerate my brother behind
penumbral bars. His bony hands and scrawny body in stark relief. It is
the first time that I observe him truly. He is lanky but his face
unchanged. I was no child when he was born but he is still my little
brother.
He is resting now, eyes shut, our lengthy lashes - both mine and his -
attached to fluttering lids. Birds trapped in quivering arteries flap at his
throat. He is sobbing still but I avert my gaze, afraid to hug him. We
oscillate, like two charged particles, my little brother