The Neighbour

I keep pounding with my fists. The police car’s door opens on the driver’s side. I hear a shout:

“Neighbour! What are you doing?”

I freeze. I look at the colour of the car. It’s red.

I was wrong. This isn’t a police car, it’s the neighbour’s new purchase. He’s driving somewhere with his wife one evening, and suddenly a man jumps onto his bonnet and beats the windscreen with his fists.

“Sorry. I thought you were the police.”

I get down off the bonnet. I stand there in the headlights. The neighbour gets out.

“Neighbour, you’ve got no shoes. I’ll give you shoes, come here, I’ve got some in the boot.”

What luck, I think. The neighbour isn’t angry and wants to give me shoes he happens to have in the boot. For a moment I even walk towards him.

He opens the boot lid.

“Come here, neighbour, sit down. I’ll look for the shoes.”

And then something tells me this might be a trick. That they want to catch me. I turn and run on, towards the bus stop.

Now I’m only limping, slower and slower. After a moment the neighbour catches up with me, having got back into the car, and drives slowly behind me, holding me in the headlights. I limp along calmly and he shouts at me through the window:

“Neighbour, stop running, I’ve got shoes for you!”

I don’t believe him and continue my escape.

At last I reach the bus stop. The neighbour stops on the road and watches me from a distance.

I sit under the shelter and wonder what next. A car comes, I wave like a hitchhiker, I’m ignored. A bus comes, it doesn’t stop. I want to escape to a mate’s and hide there. That’s my plan.

Another car comes. I decide I’ll take off the Croc and just throw it at it.

I hit it. The car slows, maybe even stops for a moment, but then drives on. Somebody probably noticed I had no shoes and thought it safer to move away. Especially at night, in the middle of nowhere, with nobody around except a neighbour with a broken windscreen.

So I stay at the shelter and decide to wait for the police. Until they catch me.

Time drags. And then I remember that in every rubbish bin there’s something prepared for me.

There’s a bin at this shelter. I look in.

There it is. A bottle of wine. And half full at that. A miracle.

So I’ll have a little wine while I wait, I think, and tip it back to take a good swig.

Not a drop comes out. It’s minus fifteen. The wine has frozen. It can’t be drunk.

I’m sitting at the bus shelter, with no shoes, with one sock, in a white shirt, bow tie, jacket and suit trousers, holding in my hand a little wine I got from the Most High and cannot drink.

The neighbour’s car is standing thirty metres away.

Suddenly I hear sirens and see the lights. In practically a few seconds police cars arrive from two directions. Three in all.

They stop and start approaching me, creeping. I’m surrounded.

I know what they’re about to do to me. I don’t lie down on the ground. I wait with the bottle until they come close. I hold it hard by the neck.

When they’re a few metres away, I raise the bottle and smash it on the ground. It shatters into a thousand pieces.

They throw themselves on me. They knock me down, pin me. I pull an arm free, somehow I get out of it. Another one jumps on me. Someone clamps an arm around my neck. Someone twists my arm. Someone presses my head into the ground. I feel a knee.

It really hurts. There’s no need for this much violence.

But it’s happening. It has to be finished.

And at that moment I begin to say the prayer.

My Father, who art in me. Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.