There was a man with his kombi and this was in another lifetime,
as with every other laboured and tedious imagining of mine.
The man appeared kind as he stopped and gave me a lift in a snow-littered place called Enfield in a country called England
and I thanked him as I hopped in without paying too much attention to his face (which could have been any face in any country) or anything else about him in the pre-dawn darkness because I was tired and I couldn't sleep in the bus shelter because it let the sleet through and I was hungry but I had tobacco.
As we set off towards Chelmsford, I asked if he minded if I smoked because like everyone back then, we all had to smoke in cars because it was law. Or should have been, according to anyone who smoked and he said no, so I started to roll up, thinking he meant what he didn't mean at all.
And the next no had all the exclamation of a sharp razor blade.
I mumbled an apology because I was tired and so on and so forth as he said, "The tobacco industry is one of the many hands of world Jewry."
And I nodded lamely because a) he was hissing into my deaf ear and, b) I was etc. etc. etc.
"Did you hear what I said?"
"No, sorry. So I can't smoke?"
"I told you you can't. It's the Rothschilds. The bastards are behind it all. American money. How else do you account for Israel?!"
I was about to respond that I couldn't account for myself 6 hours ago let alone a country a thousand miles away that I knew nothing about.
But it was his kombi and I was stupid for warmth and sleetlessness.
He leaned across and flung open the glovebox and this, to be completely honest, scared the shit out of me.
Guns flashed through my mind.
Knives.
Scissors.
Anything that involved my blood or my lost and lifeless corpse.
But it was a tightly bunched clump of folded A4 sheets with what appeared to be badly mimeoed text and pictures.
All of it a trash testimony to antisemitism courtesy of this cockney kombi driver and his desert-headed, cousin-fucking cohorts kicking heads and soup tins back around the estates.
He was smashing sheet after sheet into my chest as I tried to make sure I lost none of the tobacco that I was still trying to push back into my pouch.
Our time'll come and we'll kill and blah blah fucking blah.
Hate, you say? You, you dumb cunt, you don't know what hate means!
Kike this and Jew that and
god
knows
what
else.
That glovebox appeared to be a bottomless pit of tacky pamphlets and his NHS mouth seemed to be an endless spewhole of bone-headed vitriol.
So we settled into a routine - him spouting to his well and truly captive audience and me internalising my newfound mantra of, "Who poisoned you?! Who poisoned you?! Who poisoned you?!"
with the occasional interjection of, "This is my stop up ahead," and "That was my stop back there".
And, "I'LL LET YOU OUT WHEN I'M FUCKING READY!"
And the flat countryside rolled past and this would be my last day on earth and his ugly face would be the last human thing I ever saw and
suddenly he stopped.
Nowhere. Ploughed, sodden fields. No houses.
Just
nowhere.
___
"Get out."
I did. I seemed to have heard him just fine first time around on this final occasion.
He didn't even lean across to shut the door. He just took off trusting impetus to do the job.
And the last thing I saw were the stickers on the tailgate.
I'm a boy scout leader.
St George.
Proud to be English
Ah well, you know this story already. I've told it to you in a million not so subtle variations.
...
But it all brings me to today and the comments on the news reports as the biggest mass shooting in America unfolds for the entire horrified world to see.
Murderous fools wrapped in their unshaken, despotic convictions defending and playing apologist for other murderous fools and we - the normal and the broken alike - go on holding our breath and waiting.
For nothing to happen once again.
With every beat of my fear-filled heart, I wish it weren't so
but the mantra in my head hasn't changed a solitary syllable.
Weeping.
No comments:
Post a Comment