What are you supposed to do with a man who says he wants to die and lies down on the roadway?
Nothing. It was impossible. Shield him from the cars from the three directions.
At first he had been standing in the middle of the intersection and taken by the arm gave signs of violence, snarling and half-raising his hand. Eyes glaring.
Soon he was flat on the bitumen, at first hands down by his side, then back above his head in the sign of surrender.
I want to die, again.
A Somalia likely, sick of the life there. His clear enunciation suggested he had arrived many years back.
It left you stunned.
Telling the man that this would only get him locked up failed to move him. The police station was on the corner, immediately opposite. Another cyclist who stopped tried gentle mockery, without success. It was a hopeless case.
The fellow was not one of the regulars in Nicholson Street; he had never been seen before. The police were decent enough, as they in fact had been all those many months. Three of them in their rubber gloves comfortably carted the man over to the footpath by the pub.
Many of the cars wanting to take Hyde Street took other options; others passed slowly, looking and thinking, Accident victim.
There was nothing to do but wheel off and leave him; there was nothing for it. The other cyclist had voiced the thought that had occurred to you too, offering to take the man for coffee down the street.
There was nothing else. Just the whole thing completely woeful. Months and months afterward it nagged in the brain, both the hopelessness and the shameful helplessness and ineptitude. Someone with some deft, natural touch might have managed something; at the critical moment sometimes people were remarkable. Sometimes the right kind of intervention, even some simple response for a case such as that, could make a difference, become life-changing even and the sufferer never looking back. You heard of such stories and read about them. The sort of people who could settle a disturbed animal with some quiet words, a particular intimate balm in their manner. In dire situations people could find a means of providing comfort, relieving the position almost immediately. In childhood illness one sometimes received that kind of gentling from a mother, or some other person of the circle. Though difficult to recall specific instances, it wasn’t imagination. You had done better yourself encountering some troubled circumstances, albeit less dramatic than this.
Knowing Nicholson Street and all the challenges made it especially hard. Fakery never worked in such cases.
Hyde & Footscray Roads
https://www.action-spectacle.com/winter-2026-part-ii/radonic
