Mercy (43 page)

like fun but it was very dark; a psychiatrist rescued him, got

him discharged. His parents were ashamed. He joined real

young to get aw ay from them; he didn’t have much education

except what he learned there— some about cooking and

explosives; some about how to do hard time. He learned some

about assault and authority; you could assault anyone; rules

said you couldn’t; in real life you could. M om m y and daddy

were ashamed o f him when he came home; they got colder,

more remote. Oh, she was cold. Ignorant and cold. D addy

too, but he hid him self behind a patriarchal lethargy; head o f

the clan’s all tuckered out now from a life o f real work, daily

service, for money, for food, tired for life, too tired to say

anything, too tired to do anything, has to just sit there now on

his special chair only he can sit on, a vinyl chair, and read the

newspaper now, only he gets to read the newspaper, which

seems to take all day and all night because he ponders, he

addresses issues o f state in his head, he’s the daddy. D ay and

night he sits in the chair, all tuckered out. H e’s cold, a cold

man whose wife took the rap for being mean because she did

things— raised the kids, cleaned the floor, said eat now, said

sleep now, said it’s cold so where’s the coal, said we need

money for clothes, terrible bitch o f a woman, a tyrant making

such demands, keeping track o f the details o f shelter; and she

got what she needed i f she had to make it or barter for it or steal

it; she was one o f them evil geniuses o f a mother that kept her

eye open to get what was needed, including when the Nazis

were there, occupying, when some didn’t get fed and

everyone was hungry. Daddy got to sit in the special chair, all

for him. O f course, when he was younger he worked. On

boats. Including for the Nazis. He had no choice, he is quick to

say. Well, not that quick. He says it after a long, rude silence

questioning w hy is it self-evident that there was no choice or

questioning his seeming indifference to anything going on

around him at the time. Well, you see, o f course, I had no

choice. N o, well, they didn’t have to threaten, you see, I

simply did what they asked; yes, they were fine to me; yes, I

had no trouble with them; o f course, I only worked on a boat,

a ship, you know. Oh, no, o f course, I didn’t hurt anyone; no,

we never saw any Jew s; no, o f course not, no. M om m y did, o f

course; saw a Jew ; yes, hid a Je w in a closet for several days,

yes. Out o f the kindness o f her heart. Out o f her goodness.

Yes, they would have killed her but she said what did the Jew s

ever do to me and she hid one, yes. Little Je w girl became his

daughter-in-law— times have changed, he would note and

then he would nod ponderously— but it was the hero,

m om m y-in-law, w ho’d say things like “je w it dow n” because

she did the work o f maintaining the family values: fed the

family materially and spiritually. But m y husband wasn’t one

o f them; the worse they were, the purer, the more miraculous,

he was. He wasn’t o f them; he was o f me; o f what I was and

knew; o f what I thought and hoped; o f the courage I wanted to

have; o f the will I did have; o f the life I was leading, all risk and

no tom orrow; and he was born after the war like me; a child o f

after. So there was this legal thing; the law decrees; it made me

their daughter-in-law more than it made me his wife. There

was it and them on the one hand and then there was us: him in

exile from them— I thought he was as orphaned as I was; and

braver; I thought he was braver. I embraced him, and he

embraced me, and neither o f us knew nothing about

tom orrow and I never had. I didn’t wait for him like some

middle-class girl wanting a date or something in ruffles or

someone wanting a husband; I wasn’t one o f them and I didn’t

want a husband; I wanted a friend through day and night. I

didn’t ask him what he liked so I could bow and scrape and my

idea wasn’t to make him into someone safe, denatured. He

was an anarchist o f spirit and act and I didn’t want no burden

o f law on him. I just wanted to run with him, be his pal in his

game, and hold him; hold him. I indulged an affection for him,

a fraternal affection that was real and warm and robust and sort

o f interesting on its own, always sort o f reaching out towards

him, and I felt tender towards him, tender near him, next to

him, lying next to him; and we were intense, a little on edge,

when we holed up together, carnal; our home was the bed we

were in, a bed, an empty room, the floor, an em pty room,

maybe not a regular home like you see on television but we

wasn’t like them on television, there w asn’t tw o people like us

anywhere, so fragile and so reckless and so strong, we were

with each other and for each other, we didn’t hide where we

had been before, what we had done, we had secrets but not

from each other and there w asn’t anything that made us dirty

to each other and we embraced each other and we were going

to hole up together, kind o f a home, us against them, I guess,

and we didn’t have no money or
ideas
, you know , pictures in

your head from magazines about how things should be—

plates, detergents, how them crazy wom en smile in advertisements. It’s all around you but you don’t pick it up unless you got some time and money and neither o f us had ever

been a citizen in that sense. We were revolutionaries, not

consumers— not little boy-girl dolls all polished and smiling

with little tea sets playing house. We were us, unto ourselves.

We found a small place without any floor at all, you had to

walk on the beams, and he built the floor so the landlord let us

stay there. We planned the political acts there, the chaos we

delivered to the status quo, the acts o f disruption, rebellion.

We hid out there, kept low , kept out o f sight; you turn where

you are into a friendly darkness that hides you. We embraced

there, a carnal embrace— after an action or during the long

weeks o f planning or in the interstices where we drenched

ourselves in hashish and opium until a paralysis overtook us

and the smoke stopped all the time. I liked that; how

everything slowed down; and I liked fucking after a strike, a

proper climax to the real act— I liked how everything got fast

and urgent; fast, hard, life or death; I liked bed then, after,

when we was drenched in perspiration from what came

before; I liked revolution as foreplay; I liked how it made you

supersensitive so the hairs on your skin were standing up and

hurt before you touched them, could feel a breeze a mile away,

it hurt, there was this reddish pain, a soreness parallel to your