A Language Older Than Words (3 page)

The latter group of course included women: "Let the woman
learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to
teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence."
It also included Africans, because they were "extremely ugly and
loathsome, if one may give the name of Men to such Animals,"
and because "when they speak they
fart with their tongues in
their mouths." But the bottom line was that these thinkers
thought it was "a greatt pittie that such creattures as they bee
should injoy so sweett a country." The subjective persons—those
who actually existed—set out immediately to rectify this situation by exterminating these "creattures" and appropriating their land. The same logic was used to deal with Native Americans,
who also occupied land the Europeans wanted. It was ethical to steal their land because they were "animals who do not feel rea
son, but are ruled by their passions," and who "were born for
[forced labor]." It included non-Christians, whose poor choice
of religion meant they were not fully human, and so could be
enslaved. It included children born to non-Christians, whose poor
choice of parents meant they too were not fully human, and so too could be enslaved. The definition of those precluded from
being fully subjective and rational beings included
anyone
whom
those in power wished to exploit.

Regarding the world of nonhumans (i.e., "animals") we find
a contemporary of Descartes who reported that "scientists ad
ministered beatings to dogs with perfect indifference and made
fun of those who pitied the creatures as if they felt pain. They
said the animals were clocks; that the cries they emitted when
struck were only the noise of a little spring that had been touched, but that the whole body was without feeling. They nailed the poor animals up on boards by their four paws to
vivisect them to see the circulation of the blood, which was a
great subject of controversy."

Searching for certainty, René Descartes became the father of
modern science and philosophy. Even if his philosophy were not
such an easy justification for exploitation, his search was fatally
flawed before it began. Because life is uncertain, and because we
die, the only way Descartes could gain the certainty he sought
was in the world of abstraction. By substituting the illusion of
disembodied thought for experience (disembodied thought being, of course, not possible for anyone with a body), by substi
tuting mathematical equations for living relations, and most
importantly by substituting control, or the attempt to control, for the full participation in the wild and unpredictable process of living, Descartes became the prototypical modern man. He
also established the single most important rule of Western philosophy: if it doesn't fit the model, it doesn't exist.

Welcome to industrial civilization.

***

I do not know what my father was thinking or feeling during
those days and nights of violence when I was young. I do not
know what was in his heart or mind as he cocked his fist to strike my sister, or as he lunged across the table at my brother, or as he
stood beside my bed and unzipped his pants. Throughout my
childhood an unarticulated question hung in the air, then settled
deep in my bones, not to be defined or spoken until it had worked
its way back to the surface many years later: If his violence isn't making him happy, why is he doing it?

I will never know what my father was feeling or thinking
during those moments. For him, at least consciously, the mo
ments don't exist. To this day and despite all of the evidence, he
continues to deny his acts of violence. This is often the first re
sponse to the undeniable evidence of an awful truth; one simply denies it. This is true whether the evidence pertains to a father's rape of his children, the murder of millions of Jews or scores of
millions of indigenous peoples, or the destruction of life on the
planet.

I would imagine this denial of evidence is often unconscious. My father is not the only person in my family whose recollection
for those years is unaccountable. As he leapt across the table, do
you know what I did? I continued eating, because that is what
you do at the table, and because I did not want to be noticed. I
ate, but I do not know what I felt or thought as I brought the
sandwich to my mouth, or the spoonful of stew, or the bean
soup.

I do not know how I arrived at it, but I do know that I had a
deal with my unconscious, a deal that, as I hope will be clear by
the end of this book, has been made in one form or another by
nearly everyone living in our culture. Because I was spared the beatings, I pretended—
pretended
is not the right word, perhaps
it would be more accurate to say I
made believe
because the pro
cess became in time virtually transparent—that if I did not con
sciously acknowledge the abuse, it would not be visited directly
on me. I believed that if I focused on my own moment-to-mo
ment survival—on remaining motionless on the couch, or forc
ing beans down a too-tight throat—then my already untenable
situation would get no worse.

My father's first visit to my bedroom did not abrogate the deal. It couldn't because without the deal I could not have sur
vived the violence he did to me, just as I'm sure that without a
similar deal, that removed
him
from
his
own experience, my fa
ther could not have perpetrated the violence. In order to main
tain the illusion that if I ignored the abuse I would be spared the
worst of it—in order to maintain the illusion of control in an
uncontrollably painful situation, or simply to stay alive, even if I
had to divorce myself from my emotions and bodily sensations—
the events in my bedroom necessarily did not happen. His body
behind mine, his penis between my legs, these sensations and
images slipped in and out of my mind as easily and quickly as he
slipped into and out of my room.

It's probably best if you don't believe a word I say.

What I wrote about my father beating and raping us simply
isn't true. I was not only wrong, I was lying. My childhood was
nothing like that, because if it had been, I couldn't have sur
vived. No one could survive that. So the truth not only
is
but especially
must be
that my father never chased Rob around the house, and my mother and sisters never threw pans and glasses
of water on him trying to make him stop. That would all have
been just too implausible. Oh, he may have gotten a little out of control when he spanked one or the other of us, but he never
beat anyone to the ground, then kicked her again and again.
And rape? Out of the question. The constant insomnia, the incessant nightmares, the painful and itching anus, all these had
their origin in some source other than my father. The same was
true for my nightly ritual of searching my room, and later, barri
cading my door. Doesn't every child have a terror of someone
catching him asleep?

I do not remember—I
specifically
do
not remember—sitting
at the table for dinner early one
summer evening, and I do not
remember my father asking my brother
where he was the night
before. I don't recollect if my brother said
he went to an amuse
ment park. But
if my brother
had
said
that, my father would
never have asked him how much it cost to
get in. And most
certainly if my brother
had
said
an amount, in response
to this
question that was never asked, my father would not have
lunged
at him across the table, not even
if my brother's
answer was in
correct, meaning my brother had
not gone
to the amusement park but instead perhaps to a bar. Food would not have scattered. My brother would not have made a break for the door,
only to be cut off by the bottleneck at the refrigerator. My father would never have called him a cocksucking asshole stupid fuck,
nor would he have begun to pummel him. My sisters would not have screamed, and my mother would not have clutched at my
father's back. My brother would not have broken free only to stumble, fall, and get kicked in the kidneys. None of this happened. None of it could have happened. I swear to you. My
brother could not have made it to his feet, and made it out the
door and to his car, a pink Camaro, if you can believe
that.
My
brother would not have locked the doors, and even if he had it
would never have occurred to my father to kick in the side of the
car. And even if by some strange chance all this did happen, I can
tell you for certain that I do not remember continuing to sit at
the table, a seven-year-old trying desperately not to be noticed,
trying to disappear.

I can tell you for certain also that I was never, even as a young
child, awakened and summoned to the living room to watch someone get beaten. This did not happen daily, weekly, or even monthly. And even had the beatings occurred—which I need to
reassure both you and me that they did not—they could never
have been made into such a spectacle. Who could endure such a
thing? And who could perpetrate it? I have no recollection of
sitting frozen on the couch, eyes directly forward, feeling more
than seeing my siblings near to me, none of us touching, none of
us moving, none of us making a sound, each of us simultaneously
absent and preternaturally present, hyperaware of every one of my father's movements. I do not remember my father's leg fro
zen in mid-kick, nor can I see his face closed off with fury. I
recollect nothing of this. Because it didn't happen. My brother
doesn't have epilepsy, and if he does it could not have been caused
by blows to the head. My sister never wakes up screaming that
someone is in her room, in her bed. She never fears that someone will step out from behind a door to
hit her, or
to push her
onto a bed. The smell of alcohol on a lover’s breath does not
terrify me, because my father did not drink. And even if he had, he would never have become drunk. And even if he would have
become drunk, he would never have entered my room.

And the worst of it all is that even if he would have, I would never have remembered a thing.

Do not believe a word that I write in this book, about my
father, about the culture, about anything. It's much better that way.

A study of Holocaust survivors by the psychologists Allport,
Bruner, and Jandorf revealed a pattern of active resistance to
unpleasant ideas and an acute unwillingness to face the seriousness of the situation. As late as 1936, many Jews who had been
fortunate enough to leave Germany continued to return on business trips. Others simply stayed at home, escaping on weekends
into the countryside so they would not have to think about their experiences. One survivor recollected that his orchestra did not miss a
beat
in the Mozart piece they were playing as they pre
tended not to notice the smoke from the synagogue being burned
next door.

And what do we make of the good German citizens who stood
by? By what means did they suppress their own experiences and
their own consciences in order to participate or (similarly) not
resist? How did they distract themselves from the grenade that
slowly rolled across the floor?

Think for a moment about the figure I gave earlier: twenty-
five percent of all women in this culture are raped during their lifetimes. One out of four. Next, think for a moment about the
number of children beaten, or
of the one hundred and fifty million children—
one hundred and
fifty million
—enslaved, carry
ing bricks, chained to looms, chained to
beds. If you were not
one of the women raped,
if you were not
one of the children
beaten, if you were not
one
of the
children enslaved, these
numbers probably don't mean
very
much to you.
This is under
standable. Consider your own life, and the
ways you deny your
own experience, the way you have to deaden
your own empa
thies to get through the day.