The Brute and the Banshee

I went down to my regular soup joint in the ville nouvelle on a day of streaming sunshine and saw a fight; a primeval and mad outburst that was entirely at odds with the serene time I spent in that wonderful city of Fez.

I often ate next to a place where this sly looking guy worked. He gave me ill-mannered looks from eyes that were always in shadow because they were placed so far back in his head.

I don’t really remember this girl approaching the guy, the devious looking one I mean, but I remember vividly the way she launched at him in the most beast-like and crazed manner I had ever seen, lunging without precision or technique, only a desperate, pent-up savagery which spoke clearly of the ills this man had done to her. I remember her wild and feral face streaming with sweat and lank hair clinging dementedly to her face like a suffocating squid, and her flailing arms and talons tearing at the face of the man; awful shrieks slicing the air and leaving bits of the air strewn on the ground like ribbons. 

The man matched her violence and trumped it with a precise open-hand smash that knocked her backwards. Made furious by the presumption of her challenge he grabbed her hair and pulled her down, and I imagined I heard a tearing sound but there was no tearing only the staring, insane eyes of the man like a killer and the woman’s eyes which I could not see behind her hair but I imagined them to bulge madly like cattle in an abattoir.  

Passersby launched themselves into this mayhem, and the fight became a grappling mishmash of hands and legs. An old gentleman shook his head sadly, lamenting the passing of the days of honour. With adorable, mischievous grins like school kids savouring a playground scrap two little ladies who worked the soup place came running to see what was going down and the moment they saw the girl they shot into the melee, steely and powerful the way small dogs are, scrapping at the man’s head and trying to pull the girl away.

The two boxers – the brute and the banshee – screamed with spittle flying, and their hatred broke the peace of that morning, and in that tremendous, futile moment of total war between people perhaps once very much in love the calmness of the entire world was shattered.

But to this bout came an old man who did something I had never seen before. He tamed the man like he was a wild horse, bridled his terrible anger and subdued the fierceness of the girl.

Approaching silently and with utmost calmness he placed his hands on the man’s shoulders like he was his own brother and whispered words which I could not understand but I heard and understood the resonance and meaning of them as clearly as if they were addressed to me. This is not the way. He was saying. You are a brother and a good man but look at this futility. He kissed the man on the forehead. I forgive you beast. He caressed him like a child. She is a woman. To the woman too he blew the same sweet words, imploring her with his gentleness to resist her violent urges, and all this was happening as the melee rolled to the left and right with the horrid uneven motion of unrestrained feeling. But amidst the shrieks and the terrible anger he remained constant, and never faltered in his imposition, knowing that to disrupt the casting of his spell would be to lose both of them entirely.

The power of the words affected them and they recovered their normal, peaceful instincts, losing their frenzy, becoming civilised in stages as the emotion petered out and the traffic noises replaced the sound of screaming. The air which had been slashed like a ribbon became whole again, the scene dissipated and people turned away: disgusted, broken, and wondering what had become of it all.

The once crazed man sobbed while the woman ran into a bakery, her anger now despair, charge turned to retreat.

The referee and saviour, gently breathing, the force taken from him, looked on, enervated and haggard but still radiating his serene, eternal presence in that blue morning light.

He, who abhorring all violent struggle and healing the world one fight at a time, radiated in that clear morning light a still brighter love, and when he crossed the street with him went the grace of some angel or god that I had not, nor never will, see again.