After the Bomb
By: Monique Roffey (Published in Matter magazine, Issue 3)
Most, I remember the smashed watermelons. They were in season. And rabbis keening, clutching long wiry beards and prayer books, standing around in groups. Mobile phones passing in a circle, on a silent chain of arms. A woman with long curls sobbed with shock. She sat on the ground: blood on her face and legs disappearing into rubble. Paramedics shouting. Everywhere smashed fruit. Lemons scattered like marbles. Watermelon pulp and blood. The smell of burnt hair.
Earlier, two men strolled into the market with a suitcase. It was a hot afternoon and the crowd surged like fish in a drying creek, back to back. Pushing, seething. Criers hawking the day’s best deal.
‘Bananabananabanana!”
They held hands before they detonated the device. Watermelons exploded. A fish tank shattered. Herring flipped in thin puddles.
After the bomb I went to se my friend in the deli. The one who sold me pickles and aubergines. He liked me and the others behind the counter teased him. I liked him too, but was shy with him. It was silent in the shop. It was silent in the whole market for days afterwards. He was cold. He stared at me with an apartness, as though I was some other. Someone else who might try to kill him? Someone who didn’t matter. He was curt, officious and I had no words to bride the gap between us. It was nothing so simple as bereavement – one death, some delicate words of condolence. I stood with a dryness in my mouth. Guilt?
I left.
We never spoke again.
Cat Woman
By: Monique Roffey
"Don’t threaten me", she rasped. ‘I’ll kill you, kill you in the night. Stab you through the heart as you sleep. Cut your balls off. Feed them to my cat’. They stood in the basement, deep in the bowels of the building, the CCT camera was invisible, drinking them in. He came on her in a moment, her back turned to the door. Now he was blocking her escape, an oaf - with no lips, his hat pulled low over his eyes. ‘I’m not afraid of you. What can you take from me? My job? Reputation? You want me to back down? Disappear for your friends? Or else what? You’ll send them what? You tell me. I have nothing, nothing left to lose’. She stepped across the room, thrusting her face up to his, breathing violence. She’d bite his cheeks off, kill him there and then with her bare hands if he wasn’t careful. He sneered but she wasn’t sacred. She knew his type. Bloodless, an ex-agency fuck up now working for anyone, shaky hands. ‘I’m dangerous and you’re not safe’, she rasped. ‘Get out of here’. He vanished. Later, when she returned home, the power had been cut. She lit a match. On the kitchen counter-top her blue Persian cat was laid out, a screwdriver through its soft belly, thick black blood spilling onto the lino. The painting, she thought. That was all she had. 20K. Uninsured. Her nest egg. She could get rid of it for ten in a hurry. Hurry. She snipped up her credit cards and began to pack: the painting, some clothes, tampons, lipstick, the carving knife.
Shalom
BY: Monique Roffey
Jesus was dancing in the front room. Long dark glossy hair, a thick heavy beard and sombre-oh-so-sombre-blue-grey eyes. He was holding onto a packet of Golden Virginia, a tiny roll-up cigarette clamped between his lips and he was wearing a long-sleeved white cheesecloth shirt and jeans. He was barefoot. I checked for marks on his feet and the inside of his palms, but saw none, not then. Jesus was in a deep funk, dancing in a way which was relaxed and closed, like no one should touch him, as though he was steeling himself, dancing to be calm. Jesus shimmied and his long hair fell about his face. It was him, definitely. Others glanced at him and knew it too. Everyone in the room knew it was him and wanted to be there, with him, alongside him. He gave off an aura of peace, of peacefulness, of being, well, in the groove. Jesus was dancing, man. It was him: definitely.
But I was in no party mood. The Channel Four News had upset me earlier, before the party started: footage of Israeli tanks lined up on the border of Lebanon. I was still thinking about those tanks, those rockets hurled across the border, where they would land. What hope for the future, why make things worse with violence? I didn’t understand the argument anymore, didn’t know why that part of the world was so cursed. No, I was out of myself that night, not in the mood to celebrate anything.
It was my flatmate’s party, really. I bought a bottle of Cava as a contribution and some of those mini-cocktail sausages which I arranged on a plate around a splodge of ketchup with toothpicks sticking out. Sarah, my flatmate, had finished her teacher-training course and the party was to celebrate. She’d worked pretty hard for it. She spent only £7.42 on food, she was so strapped for cash, cooking a huge pot of dhal and some veggie cous cous. She spent £15 on wine and beer. But she wasn’t worried it wouldn’t be enough. And she was right. When people started turning up, their arms were laden with beer, wine, juice, champagne. An old taxi cab’s klaxon was fitted to the front door and the word ‘honk’ written next to it, in chalk. Every time the door honked, more party guests arrived, all bearing the gift of wine and more. A pretty woman wandered round with a tray of magic mushrooms, handing them out. Most people took some. I didn’t. I was wary. I wasn’t in the mood for magic mushrooms either. I was still thinking about the news, about the young Israeli soldier who’d been kidnapped by Hezbollah, about the war starting to get him back. The world watched: the world knew this was bad. Not now, not this, what with everything else going on. No, I didn’t want magic mushrooms. Right then, I wanted to dance. And so I danced, but kept watching him dance too, from the corner of my eye, as though everything was alright. He danced like he was barely conscious, eyes closed, his limbs somehow joint-less. He looked like a man who travelled light, who fitted in wherever he went. Was he a friend of Sarah’s? Who’d invited him? I’d never seen him before; he wasn’t part of her circle of friends, those who regularly visited our house. I liked looking at him, dancing there, so casual, so handsome in his long white sleeves, the long dark hair falling to his shoulders. A small space was cleared around him but I don’t think he noticed. He danced and shimmied and – oh - I didn’t feel good. I couldn’t shake the image from the news footage of a little girl, about seven years old, her clothes blown to shreds and her body blackened by the blast, lying dead in a field in Lebanon.
Our house was special. A Victorian town house-turned-squat-turned-commune-turned-co-op in the shabbier part of Islington. One of the last housing co-ops in London, it was a leftover thin slice of the 60’s, more a rambling farm house stood on its head. Five floors, high ceilings and wooden floorboards. The walls were painted red and yellow and blue with open fireplaces in each room. We shared the kitchen and the cleaning jobs. We each had a floor, one room to sleep in and a room to work. The co-op had housed thirty people over the years, seven cats, one dog and several rats. Now, it housed only four of us: a carpenter, a teacher, an actor and me. Me? I was down and out, recovering from a split with my true-love, suffering my own form of shell-shock.
More people arrived and more wine flowed and then the house was full and swinging. Five of Sarah’s friends were DJs and each took turns on the decks, playing funk, R&B and then some wild rockabilly tunes. The garden sparkled with tea lights and lanterns hanging from the trees and groups of people sat outside. The house overlooked Canonbury station and the railway track and the platform was lit up behind the tall lime trees. All at once, the mood of the party shifted; everyone came up on the mushrooms and people were lighter and laughing and their faces were animated and glowing. The party became dream-like, what with everyone in their own LSD imaginings. People became quieter and somehow this matched my mood. I enjoyed the sight of them in this altered state; they seemed graceful, somehow hypnotised, and very very free. Everyone danced dreamily and Jesus danced too, barefoot.
I looked more closely and yes, high up on the arches, a scar on each foot, the skin twisted and gnarled into two hardened lumps. Guilt sprang up in me, welled up in my chest, so much so that I clasped my throat, staggered backwards. I stood against the wall, staring, eyes wide open. I was flooded with a deep feeling of wretchedness, a profound sorrow for something bad I’d done. What? I didn’t know. Too many things. Too many. Oh Dear Father in heaven. I was sorry. Forgive me my sins, oh Lord. I was suddenly very very sorry for myself and sad. I prayed. For God knows what. For the little girl in the field with her clothes blown off? I looked over at him, at his feet again; they were creamy-white and the marks were distinct. Jesus didn’t notice me looking. His eyes were closed and he was digging the music, dancing like he was in love, swaying and swinging his hips, slipping in and out between people. Why had he come back? Surely he’d endured enough. The Jews? They were waiting for another man, for someone else.
Eventually I went to bed, ascending to my attic room. The music dissolved and I fell into a heavy sleep. I dreamt that the fields of Lebanon were crimson-red with the Rose of Sharon and the little girl in the news footage no longer lay dead. She stood in the same field and wore a crown of roses round her head. She smiled and her eyes were peaceful.
I woke up still tired and went down to the kitchen. I looked out the window and there he was, kneeling on the lawn. Sarah and others, a small flock, were stretched out around him, wrapped in duvets, sleeping bags and blankets, gathered by the pond, under the rowan tree. Already, it was hot. Hot for days before, a heat wave coming on. I switched on BBC24 hour news. More tanks were lining up, a whole convoy of them heading north, towards the border. Dust rising up around the treads in gigantic puffs, hot desert dust. I turned the volume down and made myself a cup of tea. Tentatively, I went outside and sat down near him.
Jesus held a glass of red wine in his hand, a tiny roll-up was clamped in his lips. He was beautiful, like no one I’ve ever seen before. I counted the people slumped around him on the lawn. Twelve. Twelve left from the night before, relaxed, snoozing.
“Good time to return,” I said. “I’m glad you’ve come back.”He smiled a beatific smile and I felt his love enter me.
"I guess you’re just passing through. On the way to Jerusalem. You taking the train?” I jerked my thumb towards the back wall. He shook his head.
"No," he said and his laugh was gentle. "I go by foot, then by boat."
I nodded and gazed into his blue-grey eyes. His face was open, placid.
"Which gate is it?" I asked.
"You know, you’re supposed to walk through a gate? I can’t remember which. But you’ll surprise them, alright. Good timing. They’re all looking the other way, towards Lebanon. No one’ll see you coming."
I said this as a half-joke but I was nervous.
Jesus smiled and this time the light around his head went brilliant. He reached forward and took my hand in his and said to me, "Shalom, my friend. Shalom."
