The Locust

Goran Juričić woke up early that morning, a little earlier than he would have liked. The first thing he became aware of was the sensation of miniature feet tickling his forehead, and then the swelter of the blankets that covered his body. He had underestimated the hot weather that had come suddenly upon Zagreb the day before yesterday, and found it hard to break out of the springtime habit of layering himself with thick covers to save on heating the flat. When the rude awareness of the dawn had woken him enough, he reached a shrivelled hand to his face and from a crinkled brow plucked a small brown figure: a locust.
    He held it in his fingers as he rose to his feet and soon became aware that his tiny intruder was not alone – a score or more of them leapt from floorboard to floorboard or crawled across the worktops. He cast a rueful eye at the open window, regretting his decision to let in last night's cool air.
    'I get confused about these things.' He told the locust.
    When he had gathered them all up – he could not stand to crush them as his grandchildren would surely have done – he had an old shoebox jumping with them and an empty butterfly net in his hand. He almost felt like keeping the poor creatures, but now it was 9 o'clock in the morning and his favourite granddaughter, Jasna, would be here before long, bringing the Saturday newspaper and no doubt she would chide him for keeping the vile things in his apartment.
    He opened his front door and stepped out into the long concrete hallway, tutting at the rows of identical doors he passed. He remembered the home he had lived in before he had to move here – it was no mansion, he told himself, but at least there was a garden. Ah, that garden, a row of trees outside his door – cherries, apples, pears, plums – how Jasna used to love climbing them and plucking the highest fruit she could reach – 'Jasna, you'll break your skull', he used to shout at her.
    But then the men came one night and tried to take his late wife's jewellery. He shouted at them and hit them with his cane but they gave him such a blow to the head that he did not wake up till two days later. After that he had to come and live here, 'a small flat would be easier to tend too, no stupid trees to prune', they said.
    By the time he had got outside with his tub of locusts, Jasna was coming. He had his eye on a large concrete flower bed outside the apartments, but she intercepted him.
    'What are you doing grandpa?' she asked him, peeking inside the box, 'you can't let these vermin go – there's a plague of them, the city is full of the dirty things'.
    She gave him that pitying look, and he felt weak and old, and passed her the shoebox.
    'You go inside,' she told him. 'Put your feet up and I'll get rid of them'.
    He gave her a weak smile and turned around, shuffling back into the apartment block. He thought about her taking them to the bins, or else placing the box on the floor and stamping the life out of them; they were pests, they had no worth. He stood waiting for the lift and watched a small green-brown locust crawling towards the keypad. His fingers curled around the newspaper Jasna had pushed into his hand.

© PS Owen 2015