How Not to Swallow a Cricket

The swimming pool has this little robot that, doesn’t matter how much pizza you had the night before, the wee guy will never fat-shame you.

Photo by Joe Calata on Unsplash

Essay

I saved a cricket today. Right before I nearly swallowed it. And for a sunny holiday afternoon, I was a hero. Although no sparrow, deer, or hare popped out of the bushes clapping to thank me. This world can be so ungrateful at times.

The place we’re staying in is this white spot of stones and bricks in a bed of olive trees and wild bushes. Our breakfasts always last till lunchtime. We devour slices of homemade pies and local fruits, and we sit down with the owners talking about local farming. We discuss invisible viruses killing local trees older than my great-grandparents. The other guests pop on big straw hats ready to go out and we’re sitting there, analysing how tourism developed in the area over the last couple of decades. 

Then, we turn into lizard mode and lie down by the pool.

If you ever decide to ghost me for good and never invite me over, no worries, I get it. Nothing personal. I’m the kindergarten curious tourist type who asks tons of questions and could listen to you for hours. That’s the kind of nosy pain in the ass I am.

Anyway, the swimming pool has this little robot that keeps diving in and spits out clear water without saying a word to anyone. Doesn’t matter how much pizza you had the night before, the wee guy will never fat-shame you, even if it wanted to. 

The pool you can cover it with a few strokes. But I don’t. I just float, playing the big white whale haunted by an angry sailor with a Napoleon complex. And while I splash around, seeking attention from my wife, who’s just ignoring me trying to read her book, a little shite of a cricket crosses my way and kisses me on the lips. Then I’m screaming. Flapping my arms. Asking for help, a lifeguard, anything. And my wife, she licks the tip of her finger, flips another page and keeps reading without flinching.

The cricket, I cup my hands and drag it on the side of the pool. The poor thing is panting. Drying up those long antennas with his front legs. If you look close enough, everything’s got a soul. Those giant Spiderman eyes looking at me. I whisper, “You okay, wee guy?“ He mouths something, but no matter what Disney made you believe, you can’t really understand much when a cricket talks to you.

Before you start sharing this with your best animal-rights activist friend, you should know, this is not the David Attenborough’s documentary kind of story. This story is not about cleaning robots, drowning insects and how not to swallow them either. 

This story is about school windows covered in blood.

My wife and I decided to lie down by the swimming pool because of all the uniforms and guns sprouting by the beach. A few days ago, we went for our morning run by the seaside, and two guys on a military truck checked us tying our shoelaces. They peeked at us locking our car. Checked us stretching and kicking off our run. We turned the corner by a local resort, and two policemen were shadowing a man in black with a black tailored suit and black sunglasses. We went for a dip and by the rocks around the cove, a line of angry boots were stomping up and down, hugging a shotgun bigger than my leg and staring at me pretending to swim. My wife squeezed me in a Koala hug in the water and said, “This is nice, isn’t it?“

And yes, it was nice. I just don’t like that feeling of out-of-cell time when I’m on holiday. Laugh too loud on your beach towel and you’ve got a rifle pointed on your forehead. Squeeze a plastic bottle of water with your hands you’re surrounded by men in uniforms asking for your ID.

Back in the swimming pool the cricket is dying. At least I think it is. I’m considering slapping it with my wet chloride hand and finishing it. The way you shoot a horse with a broken leg to put an end to his misery. Instead, I leave it there drying while dying. Turning from improvised animal lover to ruthless modern Darwinian.

Around here, these days, everyone’s trying to save the world. 

A couple of radio songs away from where we’re staying they’re discussing women’s sovereignty about their own body. They’re figuring out how many drones you really need to win a war. You know, the classic arguments you have over dinner after a bottle of Ferrari Champagne that costs your mortgage monthly repayment and bread sticks with extra virgin olive oil for appetisers. When you fly the prime minister from India who just had time to win another electoral mandate, or a president from a war zone, you can tell, those tortellini with basil and local tomato sauce must be definitely worth the trip. They’re all sitting around this table made out of a multi-centenary olive tree. All civilised and friendly. 

But that’s not always been the case.

Before you were forbidden to take your toothpaste on the plane, before you had to wrap your moisturised and shampoo balsam into a transparent plastic bag, Italy hosted another big-country gathering – although back then there were eight of them. One got kicked out because they left the lid up after a piss. The gathering was in Genova. Which is not Geneva, if geography is not your forte.

Genova sits in the North West of Italy. That piece of coast in the shape of a sad smile. Right before everything gets all yachts, Bugattis and Jaguars in Montecarlo. Genova is known for its seaport and medieval historical town, but for that week the city turned into a battleground. Cars were set on fire, flipped upside down in the middle of the road. Shopfront windows smashed in a spiderweb of glass on the pavement. People in Genova started calling in sick for work, kids skipped school because threads of smoke spurting from every corner shaded the entire city.

Flocks of people were protesting on the street. Sometimes juggling an inflated giant earth balloon and singing John Lennon’s songs. Some others throwing stones and homemade bombs at the policemen on shift. A violent fringe of protesters infiltrated the peaceful rally and after they rioted the entire city everything went tits up.

The police marched on the street slamming truncheons on their shields. They started washing protesters away with a firetruck hose, until they decided to hit harder. People were run over by police trucks. A boy was shot dead. And maybe their crash helmets were so dark that turned them half-blind, but on the online footage you see teenagers with broken bones on the tarmac, their faces smeared with blood, screaming and crying for help. Old men who were just passing by, they were pushed on the ground and police boots cracking their ribs over and over and over again.

But that was not the end. 

On the night of the 21 of July 2001, one day before the conference wrapped up, the local police forces decided to send a message. The Diaz school was where some of the protesters had set their headquarters. Some of the protesters were there too. There were 93 of them. 

Right before the clock hit midnight, like in the worst fairytale ever written, 495 policemen marched in front of the Diaz school, hammered the front gate and stormed in.

Amnesty International called it, “The worst violation of human rights in a Western country after World War II.”

The police truncheons hit and whacked all protesters who were already kneeling down. They circled each and every one of them, beating and kicking their limp bodies, banging heads against anything they could find. A British journalist was battered so hard it went into a coma. Streaks of blood covered the walls and the windows. Puddles of blood edged by the school desks.

All protesters were arrested and taken away from the school. Brought into a local detention centre. Stripped naked. Tortured. Abused. None of the policemen were convicted.

You can find more online. The internet is your friend. Just don’t look it up before or after a meal. Also, like most disastrous moments in history, they even made a movie out of it. You can look that up too.

But that was many years ago. This time around no one is protesting anything. Maybe because it’s so hot here that everyone goes for a nap after launch. At a peak of disappointment one might update their social media photo. Shovel in a country flag. Copy-paste catchy slogans. Brand yourself as an activist and you can jump for a dip in the sea surrounded by jellyfish and seaweed.

This year they invited the Pope for the very first time. Maybe to bring some holiness to the whole thing. The Pope took the Italian Prime Minister for a spin on his Popemobile. Through olive trees and the scorching hot weather. The Pope, who reminded everyone that peace is needed in those lands where peace has been forgotten. The Pope, who only a few weeks ago, talking at this archbishop gathering expressed his blessed opinion on the world, saying, and I’m quoting, “There is too much faggotness around.”

None of the leaders at the G7 this year will probably be around in the next few months. One of them is also falling asleep over dinner holding a bread stick. And in the end, maybe that’s why no one is really caring. Popping their straw hat on and enjoying the weather.

In the swimming pool my fingertips look one hundred years old. All wrinkly and falling apart. I walked my steps out of it and before wrapping myself in a towel I do that hilarious doggy shake to spray water over the lawn, over my wife. Who, without lifting her gaze from her book, lifts the palm of her hand at me and says, “Don’t.“

And the sun is so strong I can see a bunch of filaments and flies with my eyes shut. Taking it all in. The olive trees, chirping birds and all these mosquitos making a buffet of my legs. Then I look at the side of the pool and the cricket is no longer there. Gone.

And I say, “It’s gone.“

And my wife, she slaps her book on her legs, pulls down her sunglasses on her nose and says, “What is? That common sense of community in a society that alienates us into our own online bubbles disconnecting from the true essence of primitive things?“

Maybe the cricket’s been swallowed by a frog. Maybe it wasn’t dead after all. Maybe it was just sunbathing after a swim and went back to work.

To my wife, I say, “Never mind.“