Mercy (41 page)

S E V E N

In 1969, 1970, 1971

(Age 22, 23, 24, 2$)

Yeah, I go somewhere else, a new country, not the fucking

U . S . A ., somewhere I never been, and I’m such a sweet genius

o f a girl that I marry a boy. N ot some trash bourgie; a sweet

boy w ho’d done time; I rescued him from jail once, I took all

my money and I gave it to some uniformed pig for him; a

hostage, they had kidnapped him, taken him out o f his bed and

out o f where he lived in handcuffs in the middle o f the night

and they kept him; I mean, he just fucking disappeared and it

was that he was locked up. They let me in the prison, the great

gray walls that are built so high and so cold you can’t help but

feel anyone in them is a tragic victim buried alive. You

w ouldn’t be right but that’s what you’d feel. Cold stone, a

washed-out gray. I was a child standing there, just a girl,

money in my hand, love in my heart, telling the guard I

wanted m y friend loose and had come to pay for him to go

now, with me; I felt like a child because the prison was so big

and so cold, it was the gray o f the Camden streets, only it was

standing up instead o f all spread out flat to the horizon, it was

the streets I grew up on rising high into the sky, with sharp

right angles, an angry rectangle o f pale gray stone, a washed-

out gray, opaque, hard, solid, cold, except it wasn’t broken or

crumbling— each wall was gray concrete, thick, the thickness

o f your forearm— well, if you see someone’s forearm up

someone’s ass you know how long, how thick it is, and I seen

these things, I traveled a hard road until now; not how a

gentleman’s forearm seems draped in a shirt but what it is i f it’s

in you— a human sense o f size, chilling enough to remember

precisely, a measurement o f space and pain; once the body

testifies, you know. It was cold gray stone, an austere

monument; not a castle or a palace or an old monastery or a

stone w inery in cool hills or archaic remains o f Druids or

Romans or anything like that; it was cold; stone cold; ju st a

stone cold prison outside o f time, high and nasty; and a girl

stands outside it holding all her money that she will ever have

in her cute little clenched fist, she’s giving it to the pigs for a

man; not her man; a man; a hero; a rebel; a resister; a

revolutionary; a boy against authority, against all shit. H e’s all

sweet inside, delicate, a tender one, and on the outside he is a

fighting boy with speed and wit, a street fighting boy, a

subversive; resourceful, ruthless, a paragon, not o f virtue but

o f freedom. Bom bs here and there, which I admire, property

not people; blow ing up sym bols o f oppression, monuments to

greed and exploitation, statues o f imperialists and w armongers; a boy brave enough to strike terror in the heart o f business as usual. I’m Andrea, I say to the guard as if it matters;

I have the money, see, here, I’ve come to get him out, he’s m y

friend, a kind, gentle, and decent boy, I say showing a moral

nature; I am trying to be a human being to the guard, I’m

always a pacifist at war with myself, I want to ignore the

uniform, the gun, inside there’s someone human, I want to act

human, be human, but how? I think about these things and I

find m yself trying; trying at strange times, in strange places,

for reconciliation, for recognition; I decide reciprocity must be

possible
now
, for instance, now standing at a guard booth at

the outermost concrete wall o f the concrete prison. Later,

when I am waiting for his release, I will be inside the concrete

building and all the guards and police and guns will disappear

as if it’s magic or a hallucination and I will wander the halls,

ju st wander, down in the cell blocks, all painted an oily brazen

white, the bars to the cells painted the same bright white— I

will wander; wander in the halls like a tourist looking around

at the bars, the cells, the men in the cages, the neat bunk beds;

the men will call things out in a language I don’t understand,

grinning and gesticulating, and I will grin back— I’m lost and I

walk around and I walk quite a long w ay in the halls and I

wonder if the police will shoot me if they find me and I hope I

can find my w ay back to the room where they left me and I

think about what strange lapses there are in reality, ellipses

really, or little bumps and grinds, so that there are no police in

the halls anywhere and I can just walk around: loaded down

with anxiety, because in Amerika they would shoot me if I

was wandering through; it’s like a dream but it’s no dream, the

clean white prison without police. N o w , outside, with the

guard, at the first barricade, I act nice with both fear and utopia

in m y heart. Who is the guard? Human, like me. I came for my

friend, I say, and I say his name, many times, in the strange

language as best I can, I spell it, I write it out carefully. I don’t

say: m y friend you Nazis grabbed because he’s political— my

friend who makes bombs, not to hurt anyone but to show

what’s important, people not property— my friend w ho’s

afraid o f nothing and no one and he has a boisterous laugh and

a shy smile— m y friend who disappeared from his home three

nights ago, disappeared, and no one knew where he was,

disappeared, gone, and you had come in the middle o f the

night and handcuffed him and brought him here, you had

hauled him out o f bed and taken him away, you had

kidnapped him from regular life, you had pushed him around,

and you didn’t have a reason, not a lawful one, not one you

knew about, not a real crime with a real indictment, it was

harassment, it was intimidation, but he’s not some timid boy,

he’s not some tepid, tame fool; he’s the real thing. He’s beyond

your law. H e’s past your reach. He’s beyond your understanding. H e’s risk and freedom outside all restraint. I never

quite knew what they arrested him for, a w ay he had o f

disappearing inside a narrative, you never could exactly pin

down a fact but you knew he was innocent. He was the pure

present, a whirling dervish o f innocence, a minute-to-minute

boy incarnating innocence, no burden o f m em ory or law,

untouched by convention. And I came looking for him,

because he was kind. He said Andrea, whispered it; he said

Andrea shy and quiet and just a little giddy and there was a

rush o f whisper across m y ear, a little whirlwind o f whisper,

and a chill up and down m y spine. It was raining; we were

outside, wet, touching just barely, maybe not even that. He

lived with his family, a boarder in a house o f strangers, cold,

acquisitive conformers who wanted money and furniture,

people with rules that passed for manners, robots wanting

things, more things, stupid things. He had to pay them m oney

to live there. I never heard o f such a thing: a son. I couldn’t go

there with him, o f course. I had no place to stay. I was outside

all night. It rained the whole night. I didn’t have anywhere to

go or anywhere to live. I had gone with a few different men,

had places to stay for a few weeks, but now I was alone, didn’t

want no one, didn’t have a bed or a room. He came to find me

and he stayed with me; outside; the long night; in rain; not in a

bed; not for the fuck; not. Rain is so hard. It stops but you stay

wet for so long after and you get cold always no matter what

the weather because you are swathed in wet cloth and time

goes by and you feel like a baby someone left in ice water and

even if it’s warm outside and the air around you heats up you