Heat

                                                               Hanevi

 

I am squeezed in from all sides in the disgusting press of hot, human bodies. The air is oppressive: warm and muggy, like a damp cloth exuding nauseating, unwashed odours. I try not to think of the corners and crevices of sour human flesh. I am trying to stay afloat in this tank full of foetid air, trying to keep my head above the surface where smells, rancid and decaying, float like oil slicks on the sea. Perspiration trickles down my nose, ears and back where my shirt sticks, slick with sweat. I hold on to frayed leather straps to keep myself lurching from side to side as the noise of traffic rumbles and screams, grates and roars, a river of steel and rubber running amok on asphalt roads cracked with vexation, worn bare by fatigue and harassed by the baleful sun.

 

I feel a sharp pain in my back, and realise that someone’s briefcase is digging into me. I have no space to turn around and look at the man, and I am far too tired to try, and it would be of no use anyway, in this crowded madness where tempers, frayed and violent, seethe like electric currents in the despairing air. I think of giving up.

 

We come to a sudden, screeching halt. We are all thrown forward. My glasses are pushed awry by someone’s elbow. Somebody calls me an obscene name. I feel a surge of violent rage and I toy with the idea of letting my mind snap, of going hysterically insane and bloodying people’s faces around me. I can feel my mind begin to bend and I just about control myself, reluctantly, like burning rubber that is not easily extinguished. There is a heated argument going on outside while we remain unmoving for fifteen long minutes, shifting on our feet, muttering. I catch glimpses through my sweat-blinded eyes, of faces around me: some tired, some resigned, some blank, some worn thin and stretched almost to breaking, and always that hanging smell of unwashed and putrefying flesh. I notice people staring at me, and suddenly realize that my face is strained and that I have a headache. My forehead hurts from frowning, and my mouth and cheeks are stretched in a grimace.

 

I let my face relax as we start moving again and some warm air comes in through the windows. I try to catch glimpses of where we are. We pass crowds of people outside waiting to go home and I notice the same expressions, like eyes mesmerized by a pendulum, the crowds like coal on a conveyor belt. I think of vast furnaces and the clacking of gigantic machines below the roads, the heart of the city, black with the greasy bodies and souls of people caught between the huge gears and cogs, where they’ve fallen in through the open man-holes. A sense of claustrophobia engulfs me, and I have to control myself again, this time to keep from weeping. My mind refuses to understand how people can accept a life like this.

 

There is a sense of relief as I realize that I will get off soon now, and I gather my strength one last time so that I can get through the unyielding crowd to the door, and then feel a gathering panic when I realize that the crowd will not give way. I hear myself shouting, but have no idea what I am saying. My phone falls to the floor, and an old man tells me that it is at his feet. I get down in the forest of legs and pick it up, feel an effusion of gratefulness, and thank him with a touch of madness, and fight my way to the door, where I finally abuse the driver into stopping, well after my stop has passed. I get down after an argument at the door with someone who is angry at my getting off because he has to move out of the way, and the bus moves on.

 

I walk shakily back, dragging my feet, and feeling as though I had been raped. It takes me half an hour before my mind settles down to a bone-weary numbness.

 

A vague thought trickles through my mind, “I need to write something on ‘Heat’ for the Rosity post...”