On the Bus to Town

Written by Sam Vaknin


I must catch the city-bound bus. I have to change at the
Central Station and travel a short distance, just a few more minutes,
to jail. The prison walls, to the left, will shimmer muddy yellow,
barbwire fence enclosing empty watchtowers, the drizzle-induced swamp a
collage of virile footsteps. I am afraid to cross its ambiguous
solidity, the shallow-looking depths. After that I have to purge my
tattered sneakers with branches and stones wrenched out of the mucky
soil around our barracks.


But there is still way to go.


I mount the bus and sit near a disheveled, unshaven man. His
abraded pair of horn-rimmed glasses is adjoined to his prominent nose
with a brown adhesive. He reeks of stale sweat and keeps pondering the
clouded surface of his crumbling watch. His pinkie sports a
rectangular, engraved ring of golden imitation.


The bus exudes the steamy vapors of a mobile rain forest.
People cram into the passages, dragging nylon-roped shopping bags,
shrieking children, and their own perspiring carcasses, their armpits
and groins stark dark discolorations.


All spots are taken. Their occupants press claret noses onto
the grimy windows and rhythmically wipe the condensation. They
explicitly ignore the crowd and the censuring, expectant stares of
older passengers. As the interminable road unwinds, they restlessly
realign their bodies, attuned to seats and neighbors.


Our driver deftly skirts the terminal's piers and ramps.
Between two rows of houses shrouded in grimy washing, he hastens
towards the freeway. He turns the radio volume up and speakers inundate
us with tunes from the Levant. Some travelers squirm but no one asks to
turn it down. It is the hourly news edition soon. Thoughts wander, gaze
introspectively inverted, necks stretch to glimpse the passing views.



The broadcast screeches to a sickening but familiar halt.
Faint cries, the Doppler wail of sirens, air surgically hacked by
chopper rotor blades, the voices of authorities grating with shock and
panic. The disembodied speech of spluttering witnesses. On site
reporters at a loss for words record mere moans and keens. An orgy of
smoking flesh.


The breaking news has cast us all in molds of frozen dread
and grief. Here burly finger poking nose, there basket petrified in
midair haul, my neighbor absentmindedly rotates his hefty ring.



The announcer warns of imminent terrorist attacks on public
transport. It recommends to err on the side of caution and to
exhaustively inspect fellow commuters. Trust no one - exhorts a
representative of the law - be on alert, examine suspect objects, call
on your driver if in doubt. Pay heed to dubious characters and odd
behaviors.


Our bus is trapped in a honking row of cars, under a seething
sun. The baking asphalt mirrors. I am anxious not to be delayed. The
wardens warned us: "Never be late. Make no excuses. Even if God himself
comes down - be back on time." Latecomers lose all privileges and are
removed to maximum security in Beersheba.


I debate the fine points with myself: is mass slaughter ample
reason for being tardy or merely an excuse? No force is more majeure
that prison guards. I smile at that and the tension plexus slackens.



A febrile thought:


Jailers are ultra right-wing and rabid nationalists.
Terrorism must never be allowed to interfere with the mundane, they
say. And I rehearse in hopeful genuflection: "You mustn't send a Jewish
prisoner to an Arab-infested prison. After all, I was held up by Arab
assassins who slaughtered Jews!"


The legalistic side (they are big on it in penal
institutions):


How can I prove my whereabouts (on this bus) throughout the
carnage? Think alibi. The inmate always shows that he has complied, the
warden equally assumes he is being conned, but even he must prove it. A
stalking game with predators and prey, but ever shifting roles.



I rise, prying my neighbor loose from contemplation. He eyes
me, wicked. I pass a soiled boot above his clustered knees and place it
gingerly between two bursting bags. Mustachioed women wipe milky
exudation from upper lips with blotted synthetic handkerchiefs. They
address me in a foreign, gravelling, language. They use elephantine,
venous, legs to push aside their luggage - a gesture of goodwill more
than a decongesting measure.


I feel the clammy, throbbing breathing of another on my
trousers. Thrusting my other leg, I straddle the passage, two Herculean
pillars, a sea of Mediterranean groceries between my calves. Toe by
heel, I get nearer to the stuporous driver, a human ripple in my wake.



"I am a prisoner" - I inform his beefy neck.


His muscles tense but he does not respond or turn to
scrutinize me.


"I am an inmate" - I repeat - "Can you please confirm by
writing in this diary (I point at a grey notepad I am holding) that I
was on your bus at this hour? I have no pen." - I add.


He casts a sideways glance at me, monitoring the hopeless
traffic jam from the corner of a bloodshot eye.


(Emphatically):


"So, you are a prisoner? What could you have you done?" (,you
chalky, myopic, intellectual).


Right behind him, a woman past her prime, face coated,
breasts nestled in a pointed bra. The driver cannot keep his eyes off
them. She, on her part, seems to be fixated on his tensile musculature.
They both start at the sound of my voice:


"Banks".


"Banks!" - the driver mirthfully slaps his bulging thighs and
the woman chuckles throatily, lips peeled to reveal pink-tainted teeth.
"Come over here, I'll sign it."


In one untrammeled motion, he removes a hirsute hand from the
oversized steering wheel, takes hold of my jotter, and opens it. Off
goes his second hand. He scribbles laboriously, tongue perched on
fleshy lips, ending with a flourishing signature.


People are murmuring throughout the bus. My answer is
equivocal. It could imply armed robbery - or fraud - or counterfeit. I
may be violent. The innocent looking are the really dangerous. I may
even be an Arab, impossible to tell them apart
nowadays.


A web of mutters spins from crimson lips to hairy ears, from
crumb-strewn mouths to avid auricles. I return to my seat, retracing my
erstwhile progress, facing the hydra. With the pad in my back pocket, I
am calmer. Que serra, serra.


At the edge of my awareness a shrill, self-righteous female
voice:


"Get out now, or I am calling the police."


I open my eyes, trying to pinpoint the mayhem. Somewhat
behind me, the altercation draws closer, a portly woman pushing aside
strap-holding passengers. She is preceded by a far younger female
scrambling, expression hunted, to flee the bully.


She passes me by, her coarse contours defaced by agony,
wheezing through luscious lips, one hand supporting heavy bust, the
other clutching a sheaf of papers densely written in calligraphic
Arabic.


"Driver" - the mob exclaims - "There is an Arab on
board!"


"Go down! I am not sharing a bus with a terrorist!" - a woman
screams and then another: "Maybe she is dangerous? Did you frisk her
when she boarded?"


The driver negotiates the dense circulation, maneuvering
among a fleet of barely visible compacts. The noise distracts him.
Without braking, he turns around and enquires: "What is it? What's the
matter?"


"There's an Arab woman here." - one volunteers to edify him -
"She is aboard the bus and may have explosives strapped around her
waist". "Get her off this vehicle, she may be lethal!" - another
advises.


"I am not forcing anybody down who has paid the ticket!" -
snaps the driver and reverts to the hazy windshield.


A stunned silence. They thought the driver was one of them,
he doesn't appear to be a peacenik. Someone latches on to the frontal
paned partition and expostulates. "It's not reasonable, your decision.
Today, you never know. Even their women are into killing, I saw it with
my own eyes in Lebanon. They explode themselves like nothing, not a
problem ?"


The woman who spotted the ostensible terrorist now badgers
the driver:


"Give me your details. I am going to have a chat with your
supervisors. You can forget about this cozy job of
yours!"


The Arab stands mute, vigilantly monitoring the commotion. A
passenger tilts and hisses in her ear: "Child murderer." She recoils
from the gathering nightmare and bellows, addressing the jam-packed
bus:


"I am a nurse. I tend to the sick and frail all day long,
both ours and yours. Every day there's a flood of casualties. Our
injured. Our corpses. Your injured. Your corpses. Children, women,
shreds, all full of blood ?" - She pauses - "Why do you treat me this
way?"


Her Hebrew is rocky but sufficient to provoke a heated debate
with supporters and detractors.


"What do you want with this woman? She is just an innocent
commuter! Look at yourselves! You should be ashamed!"


Others are genuinely scared. I can see it on their faces, the
white-knuckled way they cling to the metal railings opposite their
seats, the evasive looks, the stooping shoulders, eyes buried in the
filthy flooring.


She may well be a terrorist, who knows?


It is too late to smother this burgeoning conflagration. My
neighbor exchanges heavy-accented verbal blows with someone behind us.
Women accuse each other of hypocrisy and barbarism.


The driver, pretending to ignore us, head slanted, listens in
and steals appreciative glances at his voluptuous fawner. To garner his
further admiration, she plunges into the dispute, a brimstone diva with
words of fire.


Some passengers begin to push the Arab and shove her with
innocuous gestures of their sweaty palms. They endeavor to avoid her
startled gaze. She tries again:


"What kind of people are you? I am a medical nurse, I am
telling you. So what if I am Arab, is it automatic proof that I am a
terrorist?"


My neighbor suddenly addresses me:


"You've got nothing to say?"


"To my mind, if she were a terrorist, she would have blown us
all to kingdom come by now."


I let the impact of this sane reminder
settle.


"This bus is bursting. The driver skipped a few stations on
the way." - I remind them - "She is smack amidst us. She has no bags.
She could have detonated herself and demolished us by
now."


My neighbor slaps his thighs with furry hands, a sign of
pleasure. I am on his side. Some voices crow, encouraging me to
proceed: "Let him continue, go on."


But I have got nothing more to add and I grow
silent.


The Arab scrutinizes me doubtfully, not sure if she
understood correctly. Do I suspect her of being a terrorist or don't
I?


"And who might you be to tell us off, if I may?" - scoffs the
woman who started it all. Her voice is screaming hoarse, her face
aflame with stripes of lipstick smeared and make up oozing. Three
golden bracelets clang the rhythm of her scornful
question.


"He is a prisoner" - announces the driver's would-be floozy.
She eyes both me and her desired conquest triumphantly. The driver
studies her in his overhead mirror, then gives a haunted look. Control
is lost. He knows it.


"An inmate" - shrieks the agitator for all the bus to hear -
"The perfect couple! A felon and an Arab! Perhaps you are an Arab
too?"


"I am not an Arab" - I respond calmly - "They are too well
mannered for the likes of me and you."


She blows up:


"Son of a bitch, maniac, look who's talking!" - She leans
towards me and scratches my face with broken, patchily varnished nails
- "A prisoner piece of shit and whoring stench of an Arab stink up this
bus!"


My neighbor half rises from our common seat, grabs her
extended arm and affixes it firmly behind her back. She screams to her
dumbfounded audience: "They are together in it, this entire group, and
they are a menace. Driver, stop this instant, I want the police,
now!"


I do not react. It was foolish of me to have partaken in this
tiff in the first place. Prisoners involved in incidents of public
unrest end up spending a week or more in the nearest squalid detention
center, away from the relative safety of the penitentiary. Anything can
happen in these infernos of perspiring, drug-addicted flesh, those
killing fields of hemorrhaging syringes, those purgatories of squeals
and whimpers and shaking of the bars, draped tight in sooty air.



I spent a month in these conditions and was about to return,
I feel convinced.


The driver brakes the bus, rises, and gestures to the Arab
helplessly. She tries to extricate herself by moving towards his
cubicle. Some women mesh their hands, trapping her flapping arms,
flailing about, her cheeks lattices of translucent rivulets. Her fear
is audible in shallow exhalations.


But her captors persevere. They clench her scarf and the
trimmings of her coat and twist them around the Arab's breathless
neck.


The driver disembarks through the pneumatically susurrating
doors. He walks the gravel path adjacent to the highway, desperately
trying to wave down a passing car. Someone finally stops and they have
a hushed exchange through a barricaded window. The hatchback cruises
away.


The driver hesitates, his eyes glued to the receding vehicle.
He contemplates the hostile bus with dread and climbs aboard. He sinks
into his seat and sighs.


A patrol car arrives a few minutes later and disgorges two
policemen. One elderly, stout and stilted, his face a venous spasm. He
keeps feeling the worn butt of his undersized revolver. The other cop
does the talking. He is lithe, a youth in camouflage, penumbral
moustache, anorectic, sinewy hands, his eyes an adulterated cyan. He
swells his chest and draws back his bony shoulders, attempting to
conceal his meagerness.


"What's going on here?" - his voice a shocking bass. We are
silenced by the contrast.


The instigator of the turmoil clears a path and fingers his
oversized tunic as she volunteers:


"She is a terrorist and he is a convict and they were both
planning to blow this bus up."


"Twaddle!" - roars my neighbor - "She is a hysterical,
psychotic, panicky woman! Look what she did to his face!" - he points
at me - "And that one, over there," - he singles the Arab out with a
nail-bitten pinkie - "her only sin is that she is an Arab, a nurse or
something, a fellow traveler, paid her ticket like all of us." The
driver nods his assent.


"I am telling you ?" - the stirrer yelps but the officer is
terse:


"Continue behaving like this, lady, and it is you I will
arrest for disturbing the peace?"


"Another mock cop" - she slurs, but her voice is hushed and
hesitant.


"Perhaps even insulting a police officer on duty?" - the
policeman hints and she is pacified, retreating, crablike, eyes
downcast, towards her shopping.


"Who is the prisoner?" - the veteran cop enquires, his paw
atop his gun, caressing it incessantly. 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 viselike under
both armpits, they half drag me across my neighbor'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.



==============================


Short Fiction in English and Hebrew


http://gorgelink.org/vaknin/


http://samvak.tripod.com/sipurim.html


http://www.suite101.com/files/topics/6514/files/worksinenglish.zip


Poetry of Healing and Abuse


http://samvak.tripod.com/contents.html


Anatomy of a Mental Illness


http://samvak.tripod.com/journal1.html