by I. Bismuth

I had delivered a triumphantly prolix lecture to the International Coven of Sensitivity Consultants, so it was late on a winter’s evening that I returned to the railway station in a nameless provincial city.

My nocturnal walk trainwards took me along a street suddenly silent apart from my own footsteps. Do not imagine that this made me fearful of an encounter with those who are vulnerable to entering the criminal justice system. Fear in that place and at that time would have been crass racism.

But I confess to having been startled by a sudden, dull thud and the squeal of brakes. The sound came from around the corner I was about to turn. As I did so a few seconds later the air was filled with laughter and shouting - a most vibrant sound, a Cushitic tongue I would say, possibly Somalic. There followed a hysterical glissando of first gear getaway. Then I was walking along a street silent once again but for the echo of my own footsteps and the addition of a low moaning a little way ahead of me. It came from a body lying in the middle of the road.

I approached it and saw it was a man in his late twenties with as much blood on display as you would expect in the circumstances.

“Can you move?” I asked.

“I think my legs are broken.”

“This is terrible. What on earth happened?”

“A car came at me.”

My antennae twitched.

“Came at you?” I said, “That is a highly tendentious choice of words. It suggests malicious intent. Are you perhaps allowing the passions of the moment to cloud your judgement?”

“It had to swerve to avoid missing me.”

“Yes, you do seem already to have ruled out the possibility of your being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You are positing culpability in others where there may be none. Are you by any chance a professional accident investigator?”

“It was no accident. The four of them got out and gave me a good kicking as I lay here, and laughed all the time they were doing it.”

“Let’s ... not ... be too hasty,” I cautioned, “That could well have been a case of cultural misunderstanding. It is dangerous to be dogmatic about what really happened, and why, before, for instance, any evidence from street security cameras has been forensically examined, and before the testimony of other witnesses has been heard.”

“There aren’t any other witnesses, only the three who did the kicking and the one who did the kicking and the driving. None of them will ever be caught.”

‘Again, you are assuming that they need to be caught.”

“They won’t be. They were all wearing hoods. They know about security cameras too. And tracing the number plate won’t help. Even if the car wasn’t stolen, half of them haven’t got licences or insurance or any kind of ownership registration.”

There was indeed an attitude here that needed further investigation.

“Half of them, you say?”

“Well, a lot of them.”

Now I could smell blood. Metaphorically, I mean.

“And who are these mysterious them?”

“I saw them all, didn’t I? I saw their faces. Look, call for an ambulance, will you? They took my mobile.”

“There seems to be an inconsistency here. You said they would not be identified from security camera evidence because they were wearing hoods, and now you are claiming you could see their faces.”

“That’s right. I saw their faces because I was on the ground looking up at them. The cameras are mounted too high to show their faces.”

“Very clever. But, of course, you are no more an expert on interpreting security camera evidence than you are a professional accident investigator. Well, we’ll let that go for the moment, but you must be careful not to make claims you are in no position to substantiate.”

“I’m in no position to do anything very much.”

“Half of them haven’t got licences or insurance or any kind of ownership registration” — those were your exact words, were they not?”

“If you say so.”

“That is not an answer to my question. Were those your exact words?”

“Yes, all right, they were. Can’t you just call an ambulance?”

“All in good time. And when you said half of them, who did you mean by them?”

“There are thousands of them around here.”

‘Is my elocution faulty? Is the volume of my delivery too low? Is my vocabulary larded with abstruse technical jargon? Is my question a complex one requiring you to accept as true assumptions that are false? None of this is the case, as I think even a hostile observer would have to admit. My question is simple and honest, and a simple and honest answer to it is not too much to expect. I shall put it to you again: Who did you mean by them?’

‘I feel cold. I’ve lost a lot of blood.’

He was not going to escape me that easily.

“Who did you mean by them?” I persisted.

“Aren’t you going to call an ambulance?”

“I am asking the questions.”

“Somehow, I don’t really feel like talking.”

“Who did you mean by them?” I said, bringing to bear all the authority that comes naturally from years of exposing racism like this.  It was enough.

“They’re not our people. That’s all I mean.’

“Aha! So now we have it. And how do you know that these four, who may well not need to be caught, are not our people? Did they show you any documentation while they were allegedly kicking you?”

“Not that I remember.”

“No, so all you can say about them with certainly, since they were laughing at the time, is that they must have a sense of humour.”

“They were jolly lads all right.”

“And yet you claim to know they are not our people. How is that possible?”

“I told you. I saw their faces.”

“Are you implying that you could tell they are not our people simply by looking at their faces?”

“I’m not implying. I’m bleeding.”

“Bleeding does not preclude implying. Do not make me repeat my question.”

“I saw all four men who got out of the car. If you want me to say I’m not sure they are not our people, all right ... I’m not sure. Will you call an ambulance now?”

“I am not satisfied with the way you said that. It lacked conviction.”

“You mean Will you call an ambulance now?”

“Not that. Are you being wilfully obtuse?”

“Oh, the other thing. I am not sure they are not our people. Is that any better?”

“No.”

“What about I am sure I’m not one of theirs.”

“This is no time to be facetious.”

“Can’t you just go away and leave me here? Another car will come along eventually and finish me off.”

“You are only making it worse for yourself.”

“I’m making it worse!”

“Are you sure you would not like to distance yourself from the implications of what you are saying?”

“I’d like to distance myself from you.”

“It is clear to me that you are resistant to change. That is discriminatory and unacceptable.”

I told him he should be careful what he said next. He had already provided ample evidence for prosecution. But let no one say I am not a fair and forgiving man. He still had the opportunity to grasp the magnitude of his wrongdoing and express a sincere desire for change.

“Five minutes ago I had legs I could walk on and more blood inside me than was on the road. That’s change I could have done without.”

His fate was sealed. It remained only for me to affect a citizen’s arrest and phone for the police. But before I could do so the fellow looked straight into my eyes and said, “Let me ask you a question.’

“No questions from those resistant to change.” I shot back.

“You ... whoever you are ... whatever you are ... I think you like what’s been done to me this evening. Admit it.  You do, don’t you?”

The impudence of the man!  “Resistance to change is vile,” I said plainly.

“You like it. And you like what’s being done to all our people, don’t you?”

“Resistance to change is repugnant.”

“And all you want, I mean really want, is more of the same, isn’t it?”

“Resistance to change is Nazi.”

“So doesn’t that mean that you are the one who is resistant to change?”

“Vile! Repugnant! Nazi!”

“Come on, answer the question. Let’s hear you justify yourself. Aren’t you the one resistant to change?”

“To reason with racism is racism. This conversation is over.”

“What are you doing?” he shrieked, obviously not previously aware that a man of intellect might also be a man of action.

“Vee ... haff ... vays ... of ... making you ... not talk.”

Scarcely had I begun when a beam of headlights materialised and a car rolled to a halt a few feet away, quite unaccompanied by the happy sound of diversity. I glanced over my shoulder as the driver’s door opened and beauty, yes, a beauty as transfixing and cool and perfect as an alabaster bust of Venus, peered over it. She fixed her eyes first on me, then on the swine on the ground. I wanted to explain. She had to know that this racist didn’t deserve ... I mean, there are better men, some even white, for her to, you know ... But before I could do anything she emerged from her motorized bolt-hole with unexpected determination.

“What are you doing to that man?”

“I ... it’s all right,” I said, “He’s a racist.”

She came and stood over me. She was wearing a figure-unflattering blue uniform made of a fully machine-washable 67% polyester and 33% cotton mix. I hope it was functional.

“He looks half dead!”

“Just give me another minute.”

With an unladylike roughness she pushed me aside and kneeled in the road. But, instead of praying, to which my objection would have been merely aesthetic, she made a brisk assessment of the immoral one ... and of the bystander, I fear.

“Has an ambulance been called?”

“Is everyone in this benighted city incapable of understanding what is said to them?”

“Does that mean it has or it hasn’t?”

“When you arrived here on the scene - arrived, I might add, without invitation - what was the second thing I said to you after reassuring you, in an easy and cheerful colloquial style, that it was all right? This was a matter of seconds ago. It could not have slipped a goldfish’s memory in that time.”

Rather contemptuously, I thought, she turned away from me while I was speaking and started asking the unworthy object of her attention what name he liked to be known by, how long he had been lying there, and whether he could wiggle his toes.

This was wrong.

“I should add,” I said, my frustration overflowing, “that that is only an aquatically defamatory figure of speech. The story of the goldfish’s brain having the retentive power to last it only one circuit of the bowl is apocryphal. A similar story about yours evidently would not be.”

“Stand back, please.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” I said, in the sure knowledge that of the two of us it was I who understood racists.

“I know exactly what I’m doing. You’ve had a good enough goggle at me. I thought you might have noticed that I’m a ward sister. I’m on my way to St. Luke’s now.”

“I meant that your ministrations are likely to have socially harmful consequences.”

“Get out of my way.”

“Very well, let me remind you. The first piece of information I gave you after my general reassurance, which without further elaboration was all you needed before resuming your journey, was that this creature is a racist. Is that not what I told you?”

“I expect so.”

“A racist ...”

“Mmm,” she said disinterestedly.

“You should have heard the things he’s been saying.”

“Well, when he’s better, he’ll be able to start saying them again, won’t he?”

“This is a terrible abuse of your skills,” I protested, “Have you no sense of civic responsibility?”

“Are you a vampire or something?”

A certain roughness around the edges is acceptable in a provincial Venus. But this was bordering on the personal.

“I’m phoning for an ambulance now and for the police too,” she said briskly.

“Good. The police will certainly be interested to know the kind of hate this one has been spewing.”

“They will be more interested in what you’ve been doing.”

I was shocked (and I was also on bail). This was a member of a caring profession, and yet her range of expression seemed fixed between the unmannerly and the distinctly threatening. I was rapidly falling out of love with this city.

My train was due to leave in fifteen minutes. If I ran like a bat out of hell, I could still catch it. The quality of social progress in the provinces had left a bad taste in my mouth. I became suddenly possessed of a homesickly desire to return without delay to my beloved metropolis, a zone of change in which Anti-Racism is at ease with itself.

For an academic of my years and distinction, I make a pretty good bat out of hell.

I. Bismuth’s latest book We Are the World, Who Are You? is shortly to be published by Inclusiveness Press. At his express insistence the first edition will be in Somalic.