PYTHAGORAS

PART I - THE HOLY PLANET OF GROK

This morning I was out on the back patio enjoying some early sun when suddenly something dark and sinister emerged from under a flower pot and headed West towards our bedroom door at speed. It was a cockroach, about 2 to 2½ centimetres long. I assume that he (lets just say that it was a “he" for argument’s sake) (and while we’re at it lets just call him Pythagoras) – so let’s just say that Pythagoras had been eyeing me with his beady little eyes for a while, trying to assess my state of alertness and whether he could make it along the line aàb, East to West, 1½ metres long, and thus get through the bedroom door before my 70-year-old body could roar, sputter and jerk into action, leap out of my chair and whack him.

His conclusion was that it was do-able.

His conclusion was wrong.

Old Professor De Wet of the UCT Law Faculty was fond of saying “There is an answer to every question – quick, easy and wrong."

Indeed, ‘tis true.

But I could find nothing at hand to use to Do the Deed on Pythagoras. Nothing. In fact, I was kaalgat, and I had to move really quickly.

So I did the unthinkable, because there was NO WAY that I could allow Pythagoras into our bedroom, where my wife was sleeping in blissful ignorance of this – this MENACE bearing down on her.

So I went down and WHACKED Pythagoras with the flat part of my hand. OMG! My hand!

As you know, dear reader, the standard procedure is then to pull back to see whether any further action is necessary – but the human hand is not completely flat – the palm has a concave hollow which might just be big enough to leave a cockroach unscathed, unless the pressure from the condensed air that collects in your palm at the end of its travel and on impact with the ground, is enough to disorientate the sensory system of the cockroach (the said Pythagoras) and thus to stun him momentarily so that you can donner him good and solid into the floor. So its not the first blow – it’s the second blow that’s the kill shot – pretty much like the double-tap procedure that a shooter does with a hand-gun.

The second blow was a carefully placed karate chop “Hayaah!” – and Pythagoras was done.

I guess I must have made a bit of a commotion, knocking over patio chairs, Becky barking furiously and trying to get to the scattered remains of Pythagoras, etc, because when I looked up Simone was standing in the doorway. She took in the scene of her naked husband on all fours on the patio floor, the upended chairs, and the dog going berserk, in speechless wonder.

Then her eyes fell on the late Pythagoras. And then all hell broke loose.

“Oy! There’s a cockroach!” she said, doing a little dance in the doorway.

“Yes I know. Its dead"

“It’s not dead! Look! Its twitching!” She shrieked

And all Becky needed was the spectacle of Simone performing to convince her that something terrible was happening. She’s a very highly-strung dog. She hurled herself onto the corpse of the decimated cockroach in fury and scattered the remains. And I, still not having any implement at hand, and in order to appease Simone and Becky and end the commotion, was then obliged to scoop all these pieces up with my bare hands, wrap them in toilet paper and hurl them into the whirling vortex which we refer to as the toilet.

It was quite a revolting experience from the point of view that like most humans I have that natural, in-born revulsion of cockroaches and I have that instinctive withdrawal reflex. Most people would never extend themselves to touch one. I had to overcome that reflex - and its not easy.

I’ve always had a deep-seated suspicion that cockroaches are not of this world: they are interlopers from another world who arrived here at some point, say, from another planet – lets just call it Grok, to give it a fictional name. They are so alien that we have no connection. We “pick up no vibes", so to speak. We will never understand anything about them. Unlike with other species of mammal, we will never communicate with a cockroach. Nothing. Nix. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Efes. That, and their shape, arouse a kind of horror in us and we are overcome by an immediate and momentary instinct to eliminate them. It is our survival instinct - so difficult to control that we are compelled to destroy them: God’s own description of our antipathy for snakes – exactly the same relationship, driven by the same instinct. We are, so to speak, wired like that.

And so in my imagination, Pythagoras' soul left its shattered body and returned to Grok, where it dances on the beach in the moonlight with the souls of millions of its own kind, gently waving their antennae skywards in happiness at their reunion.

HARRY FRIEDLAND

20 December 2024.