Watch Out

link to the Italian translation

Brother: Watch out. The big guy is capable of anything.

Sister:  Anything?

Bro: He could just clobber us.

Sis: Us? Why?

Bro: He doesn't need a reason. He's big. That’s the reason.

Sis: What has he got against us? Against you?

Bro: He objects to me being defenceless.

Sis: You're imagining.

Bro: You had better do some imagining too.

Sis: Think of the facts.

Bro: Think of him lifting his boot. Think of hearing the squish.

Sis: You're being crazy. You make him crazy to suit.

Bro: I’m crazy not to be stomped on.

Sis: Start again, one step at a time.

Bro: I've started and I'm running.

Sis: So the big guy twists his lip at you.

Bro: I'm already out of there, chasing my breath.

Sis: For you a twisted lip is a snarl.

Bro: For me the road says hurry on down.

Sis: Gee,  a snarl,  you tell yourself, this guy's a sabertooth.

Bro: I don't have to be told. I'm telling you that fast forward’s the thing.

Sis: But you ought to look at his face. That's the place to begin.

Bro: He has a face?

Sis: It shows his feelings.

Bro: Those hairs in his nose holes?

Sis: The laugh lines around his mouth.

Bro: You want a character sketch? My legs are pumping. I'm in the next county.

Sis: Start to understand him. Look him in the eye.

Bro: I can't stop and stare. He'd scoop me up.

Sis: Admit that he's human.

Bro: You give him my congratulations. He’d humanize me bones and all.

Sis: You want me to imagine. So let’s imagine him.

Bro: A crunching windmill. Blades for arms and legs.

Sis: His face?

Bro: Stiletto teeth. Hungry eyes wrapping me up. His big snoot sniffing like a  triphammer.

Sis: He's your big bad wolf.

Bro: To be running or not to be.

Sis: The real trouble is elsewhere.

Bro: He'll reach out a big paw and pull me back.

Sis: His woman is the trouble.

Bro: She’s not his.

She: Full of spite, a sneak.

Bro: Her?

Sis: She's the kind to come up from behind and find your kidney with something sharp.

Bro: Not her.

Sis: When the pain makes you scream, her nose is in the air looking past you.

Bro: I wouldn't think so.

Sis: She pushes you into the dark without a word. You aren't there.

Bro: So she likes to tidy up, keep everything in order.

Sis: She'll put me out with the garbage.

Bro: You mustn't get in her way. She's not after you. She's just putting things straight.

Sis: The place is spic and spanned, and I'm out in the dumpster.

Bro: It's her job--you know--looking after and smoothing out.

Sis: Only a lady undertaker doing her rounds.

Bro: The trick is to talk to her. You be nice and she'll leave you alone.

Sis: And when I'm sleeping, when I close my eyes, I got to be nice? I run out of words and I’ve nowhere to stand. She sweeps me out.

Bro: It's like a game. You have to dodge. You keep talking. It can be fun. You'll see.

Sis: Game! She and me? Playing at my exit maybe.

Bro: She can be handled. Use some finesse.

Sis: You don't chat up a vacuum cleaner.

Bro: The poor woman's got that flesh heap on top of her.

Sis: I don't see her being underneath ever.

Bro: Take a look at his hands. Try to get out from under those. Two sand bags.

Sis: Sand bags? Bean bags at most. You worry too much about size. He's extra large. So  is an elephant. But does that make an elephant want to do you down?

Bro: I'm not hanging around while it decides.

Sis: There's no danger.

Bro: I take off.

Sis: With those tiny eyes it can't even see you. It doesn't perrr-ceive you.

Bro: He's watching me all the time.

Sis: Nothing's as nearsighted as an elephant.

Bro: Forget elephants! Trunks, tusks, flapping ears--they don't have hands. I'm talking about the big guy's mitts. They grab world class, squeeze the main road shut.

Sis: You believe he's more dangerous than an elephant because he's got hands?

Bro: Elephants don't crack their knuckles in my head. Elephants are extinct or tame or polluted.

Sis: Don't sell elephants short. You ought to think more about elephants.

Bro: Once and for all, get this into your head. I'm pounding the turf, legging it from one year to the next.  Always have been. When would I think? Never have.

Sis: They go off on their own to die, no one knows where.

Bro: Good. I can't stop for funerals. No time to stand around and bow my head. Who they?

Sis: Elephants. No one knows where they have their graveyard.

Bro: What exactly are you telling me? I have to keep moving.

Sis: They're vegetarians.

Bro: Jesus, and they die all the same. Despite the exercise.

Sis: Exercise? I don't know. Apart from lifting their weight. Veggie eaters.

Bro: I wing it, touch down between strides, chew greens or bite into an unspecified fruit.

Sis: They eat bales of course.

Bro: So they dawdle there chomping and some bigger brute comes along and takes them out.

Sis: They crank it down.

Bro: Crank it down?

Sis: Bales.

Bro: Of fruit?

Sis: Not bales of fruit.

Bro: Vegetables?

Sis: Not bales of vegetables.

Bro: Just bales?

Sis: Bales.

Bro: Crank them down, standing there still, no hurry?

Sis: That's it. A bale of hay, a head of lettuce, a bushel of fruit, a sprig of parsley, a zest of lemon, a hand of bananas.

Bro: A what of what?

Sis: We say a hand of bananas.

Bro: Do we? What do we mean exactly?

Sis: What I said, a hand of bananas.

Bro: That's like a handful?

Sis: No, I said a hand of.

Bro: You mean a bunch of bananas?

Sis: All the bunches together are a hand of bananas.

Bro: I don't altogether like that.

Sis: Nothing to worry about.

Bro: And if one fell on you? Five big fingers from a height. Five more to follow. Maybe a fist. You wouldn’t have the chance of a chicken’s neck.

Sis: They’re not still on the tree.

Bro: You can't be sure. Get out from under. Keep moving. Plenty to worry about.

Sis: All that's done overseas. Workmen on ladders cut off the hand full of bunches. It goes on a ship, with other hands.

Bro: A cut hand, who's going to buy that, I mean, with umpteen fingers?

Sis: Wholesalers, notably. I suppose you'd like bananas to grow on a supermarket shelf four or five at a time in a cellophane bag.

Bro: That big surprise could come hulking down on me any time and you expect me to handle sarcasm and fresh produce?

Sis: She’d like to tidy the jungle. She’d go in with her broom to straighten the hyena path. She’d box the monkey shit. Bolt-holes under the tree ferns would get the treatment.

Bro: Never mind her elbows. She’ll scrub around you. You'll have enough floor to stand on. She wouldn’t come down on living things, apart from domestic animals.

Sis: You've never seen her rough up the houseplants?

Bro: I'm concentrating here. One skip and jump at a time. So I go into the greengrocer's and ask  for a hand of bananas.

Sis: Greengrocer is good. But I wouldn't advise that.

Bro: I see. He could say, What's wrong with you? You got only one arm? Hands of bananas come in pairs.

Sis: I wouldn't advise it because your man might not know the turn of phrase.

Bro: See here, we're dealing with an English speaker.

Sis: You're an English speaker.

Bro: I know, I know. But he's in the banana business.

Sis: That doesn't mean anything nowadays.

Bro: I agree. No one sings the alphabet in tune anymore. Who can still count on   

all ten fingers?

Sis: Nowadays don't bear thinking about these days.

Bro: What if I place a reference book open to hand-of-bananas right under the nose of this  ill-informed individual?

Sis: It would have to be a very big book to contain greengrocer and hand of bananas.

Bro: Mine is going to be a big order, a banavalanche.

Sis: Let's think this through. You know, logistically.

Bro: Here we go, elephantly.

Sis: Take transport first.

Bro: I'll use a three-wheel pram.

Sis: Excellent. What about communications?

Bro: I heard you coming. Listen to this. I'm going to use words.

Sis: Better and better. Any in particular?

Bro: A tricky business. I ought not to embarrass him. He might be an immigrant. I'd say, Tut, tut, so you're foreign. I've always wondered how they say a hand of bananas where you come  from.

Sis: He'd claim ethnic bias.

Bro: Not on your life. The banana fanciers of the world are one big family.

Sis: You'd be on thin ice.

Bro: The banana is our lifebuoy.

Sis: You'd put your foot in it.

Bro: I'd avoid the peels.

Sis: Our man is only a retailer, no friend of words.

Bro: I’d synco and phant him.  I’d grease his ear.

Sis: The trick is not to patronize him, but to soar above small talk.

Bro: He'd see me as an ordinary proud parent airing my child's pram with volume H of the  Encyclopedia Britannica riding along.

Sis: I wouldn't get mixed up with encyclopedias and ABC’s.

Bro: The Britannica would add a touch of gravity.

Sis: What if you needed the B-for-banana volume? You'd look pretty silly wheeling only H-for  hand.

Bro: You've convinced me. But don't leave me standing there. What next?

Sis: You're right in consulting something comprehensive. But choose a single-volume item, one of those dictionaries like a mobile home.

Bro: That's it.  A freak in the book line for a stout stalk with dozens of fingers.

Sis: Stalk, you could say. He'd understand that.

Bro: The guy understands me? It's decided then. I won't take the dictionary. It wouldn't leave  room in the pram for all those bananas.

Sis: What will you do when you get them home?

Bro: I look at it this way. They won't all be ripe at the same time. To begin I'll eliminate the overripe ones.

Sis: Eliminate?

Bro: Use them up.

Sis: Eat them?

Bro: There's this cat that hangs out on my fire escape.

Sis: Cats and bananas?

Bro: They get along.

Sis: Cats eat them?

Bro: When past their peak.

Sis: Cat or banana peak?

Bro: Both. A cat on the skids meets a far gone banana.

Sis: The marriage of the season.

Bro: It's food, and the snooty buggers have to eat. You get rid of the skin and the rest is just pulp, overripe pulp, creamy like a milk product.

Sis: Milk and cream! Do you think I was born yesterday?

Bro: You knead it with a fork like mashed potato.

Sis: Mashed potato? That cat's not cateristic.

Bro: Puree is puree. I think of it as a dairy product. If he turns up his nose, I add catnip.

Sis: You could mix some fish in.

Bro: He's past his prime, a stray with low expectations.

Sis: It would be worth a can of sardines to get rid of all that pulp.

Bro: Don't lose perspective. He lives on a fire escape. I get the sardines and he gets the  banana sludge.

Sis: So much for the overripe ones.

Bro: Then I'll look for the skins with freckles and grope them lightly for mushiness. Those softies have to be eaten first thing every day.

Sis: What makes you think all the bananas won't get ripe at the same time?

Bro: Give us a break. Whose team are you on?

Sis: Or they could be all unripe and green together.

Bro: Only in theory. Sure that old tropic sun is shining down on the whole hand. But each finger of the fivesome is getting a different share. Don't think of generations, one waiting for the other to get out of the way. We have before us a large family bulked out with thyroid giants, lesser fatties, whey-faced runts and slow developers.

Sis: If they're green, you could cook them.

Bro: I'm not going to study up recipes. If the colors are wrong, I'll just sit tight and give them time to work it out between them. A little patience never hurt.

Sis: You should find some way to preserve them, because however they ripen you're going to  have too many bananas.

Bro: At my time of life you want me to start making jam?

Sis: There are other ways. You can sun dry them like figs or apricots.

Bro: No soap. The sun only brushes my fire escape and it’s in a pronounced odoriferous zone.

Sis: Then you're going to have too many bananas. It's inevitable.

Bro: You're looking on the dark side.

Sis: Better be reasonable. Buy only a bunch.

Bro: You're saying I should go to a supermarket?

Sis: In your shoes I would. Why complicate your existence?

Bro: You're telling me to give up the fight?

Sis: I'm being practical.

Bro: I should take the easy way out? Scuttle my principles?

Sis: Then you're not afraid of spiders?

Bro: I have no enemies among them. They're on my side as far as I know.

Sis: They travel on banana boats.

Bro: Why shouldn't they gad about like the rest of us? Because they're little? I tell you I'm for  them.

Sis: They get in deep under the fruit.

Bro: Good little fellers. No hands. I always think twice before stamping on one of them.

Sis: The more bananas you bring home, the more spiders you get for nothing.

Bro: Are you trying to scare me?

Sis: Under the fruit in the palm of the hand.

Bro: So you shake them out.

Sis: The hand's too heavy to shake.

Bro: Well blow them out with a hair dryer.

Sis: They come from the tarantula family.

Bro: A spider's a spider. I said I stand by them.

Sis: Everything is bigger in the Southern Hemisphere.

Bro: What do you mean by big?

Sis: Like a sparrow.

Bro: But no wings, no chirping, no hands.

Sis: A number of legs, with long hairs on them.

Bro: As if I'd turn back now, when I've come this far, because of a footloose insect.

Sis: Go ahead then, get yourself bitten and legged.

Bro: Not so fast. You're letting the side down. Don't just throw in the towel and pull the chain. Show some fibre.

Sis: You're so extreme.

Bro: Every day is either an adventure or merely a black number on the calendar.

Sis: That's what I mean.

Bro: And when the month is over I tear off the page.

Sis: Reckless.

Bro: But I always keep an eye out for the big guy.

Sis: Headlong.

Bro: The throttler, I watch for.

Sis: Recklong, headless and wrongbedded.

Bro: I outrun caution. I keep moving.

Sis: You ought to ask yourself one question.

Bro: Okay, I'll ask one, but no more. Let's not confuse me.

Sis: Is it worth the trouble, a whole hand?

Bro: My answer is yes, a thousand times yes.

Sis: Stop and think a moment, calmly, and tell me why.

Bro: Why? I'll tell you why. I want that stalk from the middle of the hand.

Sis: It's a stalk that's more like a spine.

Bro: That hand's got no more business with a spine than a stalk. I want it.

Sis: Odd you should say that.

Bro: Why? Give me a dozen reasons.

Sis: Because I'm beginning to have my doubts about that word, a hand of bananas.

Bro: It has to be hand.

Sis: We had better look in that big dictionary.

Bro: Never mind. Everyone says a hand of bananas.

Sis: Everyone?

Bro: And there's no question about the stalk. It has to be there to keep the whole mess  together.

Sis: Oh, the stalk.

Bro: I want one.

Sis: A stalk?

Bro: It's woody, isn't it?

Sis: It tends that way.

Bro: Crooked with sprouts sticking out.

Sis: If you like.

Bro: I want it for a hat stand.

Sis: I've never seen you wear a hat.

Bro: Don't split hairs. I'll hang my scarves on it. Hook my umbrella over a stub end. Make my wet raincoat comfortable.

Sis: It's tending toward wood, but still pretty flimsy material in the vegetable fibre line. It wouldn't take a sodden raincoat.

Bro: Cancel the order then with regrets. I can't keep a hat rack only for lighter-than-air oddments.

Sis: The customer is always right.

Bro: Do elephants eat bananas?

Sis: If cats do.

Bro: Who ever heard of a stray elephant?

Sis: They stray, only farther.

Bro: With more determination.

Sis: With more ponderation.

Bro: They know where they're going.

Sis: You wouldn't tell them what to eat.

Bro: Forget your catnip. Don't bother to peel them a banana.

Sis: Bunches. They'd go for bunches.

Bro: Bunches? Hands. Hands of bananas are made for elephants.

Sis: Keep things in proportion.

Bro: Like you told me, the big guy is small. He smashes small. He sits on you small.

Sis: You'll never understand him.

Bro: Okay, he's no snowy mountain. But I'm still a smidgen of who knows what.

Sis: Size, size. You got to downsize.

Bro: Are you claiming he means well by me?

Sis: Give him a chance.

Bro: Give him a chance? With those huge mitts he grabs what he wants. He gets second helpings. He can reach over the whole table.

Sis: Why should he care to hurt you?

Bro: He would know that. Belly up, I don't answer questions.

Sis: The way I see it you're safe so long as his old woman doesn't sic him on you.

Bro: As if he doesn't wear the pants.

Sis: You're wrong. Can't you see the way she does her nails?

Bro: Her nails?

Sis: When she smiles watch the pleats tighten in the corners of her mouth.

Bro: Pleats?

Sis: She's a pecking crow-ess.

Bro: That's rather strong.

Sis:  Vitch witch bitch.

Bro: So she makes you itch. But what real harm can she do with her feather duster?

Sis: The worst kind while smiling like soap flakes. She gets her talons into you while she's telling him to keep cool.

Bro: That mop waltzer, a vitch?

Sis: Look at the beak end, the tips of her claws!

Bro: She's pint-sized.

Sis: Like the plague virus.

Bro: I find her helpful. She straightens my collar.

Sis: To grab my windpipe.

Bro: She gets along with the big guy.

Sis: He has no choice.

Bro: She could sink that whale?

Sis: Easy, with the point of her spur.

Bro: Puncture Mr Big Cleaver?

Sis: All bloat. You see too big.

Bro: You see too small. Crumbs.

Sis: Maybe we ought to take a fresh look at the two of them.

Bro: We'll be objective.

Sis: We’ll have to read the small print.

Bro: We won’t skip the chapter headings.

Sis: We'll consider the scenario as a whole.

Bro: It goes like this. He wants me kaput, out of the picture, on the run.

Sis: And she wants me in the wings, busy doing nothing.

Bro: He's the forever sky. I'm yesterday's weather.

Sis: She holds everything together. I'm spent elastic.

Bro: I give a pip squeak down here while he thunders up there.

Sis: She says to do it her way and that I'll never learn.

Bro: He's steamrolling toward me.

Sis: She's that inspector on my back.

Bro: Some don't see it.

Sis: They have to be blind.

Bro: My son, for instance.

Sis: My daughter, for example.

Bro: It's all so clear.

Sis: Leaps out at you.

Bro: Dodge if you can’t run.

Sis: Did you think I was dancing?

Cover image: pop banana by psyducktherapy on Deviant Art