Fighting
Bash recently mentioned a colleague's brother who knew a police officer who arrested someone for screaming abuse at a crowd in a pavement cafe. The shouting man claimed to be a scientist (which got a laugh) and that he had spent twenty years warning that we were 'doomed' (more giggles), that he had a 'lie detector' (of which he was clearly proud), and that people nowadays were either 'broken' or 'just plain dead'. I was in that cafe waiting for a train and witnessed the arrest.
He claimed we had lost the ability to talk and that soon enough, we would not be able to go outside at all. 'Climate crisis? No! Surely Not! Really?' He had good lungs and a classical style of oration. 'The place is falling apart, and you want me to be surprised! Well, I say damn you all to hell! I told you! Everyone bloody told you, and hundreds of times! Dirty economic growth? Money, money and the blight of mobile phones? They weaponised the internet? – and you're shocked! Yes, you have finally woken up. Your phone does not work, and you want me to get behind some fake attempt to save the planet. Recycle my rubbish. Ha! Roaring wind? Searing heat? Pandemics? Floods and fires? I welcome them! Bring them on! Joy! Joy!'
I sat near the edge of the cafe, watching.
His voice grew louder, closer. Heads turned with alarm, then embarrassment and then with growing interest. Finally, they stared with a silent, passive longing. Others gathered, and the phones were out, all pointing at the shouting man. Soon, a thick knot of people stood motionless around him, watching hungrily, smiling.
'You'll need to have a damn good reason to be given food in just a few years, you fools, so eat while you can! Ha! In no time at all, these buildings, these here? They won't even be here.'
Apparently, all our sufferings were 'much deserved,' and spitting schadenfreude, the man raged that he was 'bloody sorry' when a hurricane narrowly missed an urban conurbation, or a luxury home fell into the sea. Every disaster, every institutional failure, electricity blackout, fuel shortage, motorway crash and shooting spree was to be celebrated. He reached both arms up to the sky to enthuse over the death of this politician or the conviction of that corrupt leader. He thanked the Lord for the broken trees, the suffocating heat and the booming wind. 'You saw it coming,' he cried, 'and you said, 'everything's fine!"
Someone, a young man, shouted that he should move on, but this made him abuse the crowd more directly, calling them by turns 'enthusiastic little shits', 'pompous sleepwalkers' and 'gullible little bastards.' He finally settled on 'bloody animals', a description he repeated several times with feeling.
Now another young man, sitting beside the first, shouted, 'Shut up sicko'. More laughter; nervous now.
I pushed towards the front of the crowd so I could see the shouting man more clearly. He was surprisingly small, lightly built with a round, almost childlike face, white hair on the sides and wrinkled skin. Good movement of the hands to emphasise his points. Excellent voice projection and an engaging variation in tone.
'How the hell', he continued, 'with so many homeless, is it okay for others to own two or more houses?' Red with hatred and in a sing-song voice, he called for such inequality to be shamed, harassed and attacked. 'Pull them from their houses!' he shouted, 'swarm their cars!' Then he laughed at his own damnation and grasped at his face.
No one else seemed to notice, but the two young men had stood up and moved forward to appear beside me, opportunistic and dangerous. I know that when someone makes an 'obvious' mistake in public, breaks a rule or violates a norm, it gives others an excuse to direct their anger at him, as if justifying the hatred they always have and want so much to express.
'It's all lies,' the mad man said. 'And more lies; every word. Every website, every button-click; every rip-off-marketing-con-trick hustle' – and again in a mocking voice: 'We value your call!' Then, 'No, you don't!' 'This car will change your life – No it won't! World's Best! Number One! For your own good! Feel better by clicking here, and it's free! Best of all? 'Your mother is fine in our damnable nursing home!"
One of the young men stepped forward. 'Are you mental?'
The ranter raised his eyes and gazed into the other's pinched white face. 'Look at the sky,' he said, suddenly calm. 'Can you do that?'
The young man frowned.
'The sun comes up over there, yes?'
Silence. I inched forward.
'The Goddamned sun moves across the stupid sky and goes down over there, does it not? He flapped an arm in a direction that, I noted, actually was west. 'Evidently, the sun revolves around the earth. You can friggin' see it moving across the sky!' He laughed cruelly. 'And seeing is believing, right?'
I moved up so I could see the side of the young men's faces. They were both stuck. One moved his mouth, but nothing came out. The other turned to me briefly, as if to check it was not a dream, saw I was a woman, blinked foolishly and glanced me up and down. Then he turned back. Ha. He's jammed.
'Seeing is believing', repeated the man, 'that's all you know. You obedient, dumb-arsed little fascist...'
The young man punched him in the face and would have done so again had I not gently caught his arm as he wound it back to strike. It's funny, but I have no fear of this kind of contact. For all my faults, I am almost impossible to hit. Whatever comes towards me is deflected; any arm that reaches for me is climbed up and entangled - this being all that is left of my kung fu training. Yet, absurdly, I am entirely unable to strike. Some years ago, I fell off a ladder – not a flattering story as I broke both my wrists - so that now, hitting anything or anyone hurts, and I will not do it.
That first haymaker punch floored the haggard man, who now lay awkwardly on the ground, hand over mouth, blood seeping. I tapped the other youth lightly on the outer shoulder, so he had to turn all the way around to find me, and as he did so, I shouted, 'Well done! Many thanks.' And then again, 'Well done!'
Both the young men made eye contact, and as they did so, I threw their attention out and away by gesturing expansively towards the crowd.
'I am saying thank you to these two guys!' I shouted. Everyone stared at me. 'These two young men took care of the situation. The old man is ill. I will take him to the hospital. These men here, they helped him!' And I began to clap.
The crowd slowly took up the rhythm, and I shook the two men enthusiastically by the hand, seeing their blank faces. Then I pulled the old fool to his feet to move him slowly away.
'You okay?'
'I'm bleeding.'
Behind us, the crowd began to disperse.
'Let's get you to a doctor.'
'I am a doctor.'
'Oh. Right. Well, another doctor. Your mouth is all cut up.'
'Do I know you?'
That made me smile. 'I don't think so'.
I took him to the hospital, but while we were waiting, he started again, shouting and gesturing wildly. This time the police came, which surprised and quietened him, but when questioned, he returned to his rant. They charged him with a public order offence, and as I said, it was Bash's brother's colleague's acquaintance that put him in cell D; quick sharp.
The following morning, he was cautioned and released to walk east towards the rising sun, stepping over long shadows towards his home.
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