Mercy Page 12

  dignity; I’m from his country, not the Amerika run by war

  criminals, not the country that hates and kills anyone not

  white. I’m from his country, not yours. Do you know the

  map o f his country? “ I will not have a single person slighted or

  left away. ” “ I am the poet o f the B ody and I am the poet o f the

  So u l. ” “ I am the poet o f the woman the same as the m an. ” “ I

  too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, / 1 sound m y

  barbaric yaw p over the roofs o f the w o rld . ” “ Do I contradict

  m yself? /V ery well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I

  contain multitudes. )” He nursed soldiers in a different war and

  wrote poems to them. It was the war that freed the slaves.

  Who does this war free? He couldn’t live in Am erika now; he

  would be crushed by how small it is, its mind, its heart. He

  would come to this island because it has his passion and his

  courage and the nobility o f simple people and a shocking,

  brilliant, extreme beauty that keeps the blood boiling and the

  heart alive. Am erika is dead and filled with cruel people and

  ugly. Am erika is a dangerous country; it sends its police

  everywhere; w hy are you policing me? I loved his America; I

  hate m y Am erika, I hate it. I was the first generation after the

  bomb. D idn’t we kill enough yellow people then? M y father

  told me the bomb saved him, his life, him, him; he put his life

  against the multitudes and thought it was worth more than all

  theirs; and I don’t. Walt stood for the multitudes. Am erika

  was the country o f the multitudes before it became a killing

  machine. In m y mind I know I am leaving out the Indians;

  Am erika always was a killing machine; but this is m y

  statement to the secret police and I like having a Golden A ge

  rooted in Whitman. I put his patriotism against theirs. The

  War is wrong. I will tell anyone the War is w rong and suffer

  any consequence and if I could I would stop it right now by

  magic or by treason and pay any price. I don’t think he know s

  who Walt Whitman is precisely, although Walt goes on the

  list, but he is genuinely immobilized by what I have said—

  because I say I hate Am erika. I’ve blasphemed and he doesn’t

  recover easily though he is trained not to be stupid. He stands

  very still, the tension in his shoulders and fists m aking his

  body rigid, he needs his full musculature to support the

  tension. He asks me if I believe in God. I say I’m Jew ish— a

  dangerous thing to say to a Deep South man who will think I

  killed Christ the same w ay he thinks I am killing Amerika—

  and it’s hard to believe in a God who keeps murdering you. I

  want to say: you’re like God, He watches like you do, and He

  lies; He says He is one thing but He is another. His eyes are

  cold like yours and He lies. He investigates like you do, with

  the same bad faith; and He lies. He uses up your trust and He

  lies. He wants blind loyalty like you do; and He lies. He kills,

  and He lies. He takes the very best in you, the part that wants

  to be good and pure and holy and simple, and He twists it with

  threats and pain; and He lies about it, He says H e’s not doing

  it, it’s someone else somewhere else, evil or Satan or someone,

  not Him. I am quiet though, such a polite girl, because I don’t

  want him to be able to say I am crazy so I must not say things

  about God and because I want to get away from this terrible

  place o f his, this sterile, terrible Amerika that can show up

  anywhere because its cops can show up anywhere. He has a

  very Amerikan kind o f charm— the casual but systematic

  ignorance that notes deviance and never forgets or forgives it;

  the pragmatic policing that cops learn from the movies—-just

  figure out who the bad guys are and nail them; he’s John

  Wayne posing as Norman Mailer while Norman Mailer is

  posing as Ernest Hem ingway who wanted to be John Wayne.

  It’s ridiculous to be an Amerikan. It’s a grief too. He doesn’t

  bother me again but a Greek cop does. He wants to see my

  passport. First a uniformed cop comes to where I live and then

  I have to go in for questioning and the higher-up cop who is

  wearing a silk suit asks me lewd questions and knows who I

  have been with and I don’t want to have to leave here so I ask

  him, straight out, to leave me alone and he leaves it as a threat

  that maybe he will and maybe he w on ’t. I tell him he shouldn’t

  do what the Amerikans tell him and he flashes rage— at me but

  also at them; is this ju st another Am erikan colony, I ask him ,

  and who does he work for, and I thought the people here had

  pride. He is flashfires o f rage, outbursts o f fury, but it is not

  just national pride. He is a dangerous man. His method o f

  questioning starts out calm; then, he threatens, he seduces, he

  is enraged, all like quicksilver, no warning, no logic. He

  makes clear he decides here and unlike other officials I have

  seen he is no desk-bound functionary. He is a man o f arbitrary

  lust and real power. He is corrupt and he enjoys being cruel.

  He says as much. I am straightforward because it is m y only

  chance. I tell him I love it here and I want to stay and he plays

  with me, he lets me know that I can be punished— arrested,

  deported, or ju st jailed if he wants, when he wants, and the

  Am erikan governm ent will be distinctly uninterested. I can’t

  say I w asn’t afraid but it didn’t show and it w asn’t bad. He

  made me afraid on purpose and he knew how. He is intensely

  sexual and I can feel him fucking and breaking fingers at the

  same time; he is a brilliant communicator. I’m rescued by the

  appearance o f a beautiful woman in a fur coat o f all things. He

  wants her now and I can go for now but he’ll get back to me if

  he remembers; and, he reminds me, he always know s where I

  am, day or night, he can tell me better than I can keep track. I

  want him to want her for a long time. I’m almost wanting to

  kiss the ground. I’ve never loved somewhere before. I’m

  living on land that breathes. Even the city, cement and stone

  bathed in ancient light, breathes. Even the mountains, more

  stone than any man-made stone, breathe. The sea breathes and

  the sky breathes and there is light and color that breathe and

  the Am erikan governm ent is smaller than this, smaller and

  meaner, grayer and deader, and I don’t want them to lift me

  o ff it and hurt m y life forever. I came from gray Am erika,

  broken, crumbling concrete, poor and stained with blood and

  some o f it was m y blood from when I was on m y knees and the

  men came from behind and some o f it was knife blood from

  when the gangs fought and the houses seemed dipped in

  blood, bricks bathed in blood; w hy was there so much blood

  and what was it for— who was bleeding and w hy— was there

  some real reason or was it, as it seemed to me, just for fun, let’s

  play cowboy. The cement desert I had lived on was the

  carapace o f a new country
, young, rich, all surging, tap-

  dancing toward death, doing handstands toward death, the

  tricks o f vital young men all hastening to death. Crete is old,

  the stone is thousands o f years old, with blood and tears and

  dying, invaders and resisters, birth and death, the mountains

  are old, the ruins are stone ruins and they are old; but it’s not

  poor and dirty and dying and crumbling and broken into dirty

  dust and it hasn’t got the pale stains o f adolescent blood, sex

  blood, gang blood, on it, the fun blood o f bad boys. It’s living

  green and it’s living light and living rock and you can’t see the

  blood, old blood generation after generation for thousands o f

  years, as old as the stone, because the light heats it up and

  burns it away and there is nothing dirty or ratty or stinking or

  despondent and the people are proud and you don’t find them

  on their knees. Even I’m not on my knees, stupid girl who falls

  over for a shadow, who holds her breath excited to feel the

  steely ice o f a knife on her breasts; Amerikan born and bred;

  even I’m not on my knees. N ot even when entered from

  behind, not even bent over and waiting; not on m y knees; not

  waiting for bad boys to spill blood; mine. And the light burns

  me clean too, the light and the heat, from the sun and from the

  sex. Could you fuck the sun? That’s how I feel, like I’m

  fucking the sun. I’m right up on it, smashed on it, a great,

  brilliant body that is part o f its landscape, the heat melts us

  together but it doesn’t burn me away, I’m flat on it and it

  burns, m y arms are flat up against it and it burns, I’m flung flat

  on it like it’s the ground but it’s the sun and it burns with me up

  against it, arms up and out to hold it but there is nothing to

  hold, the flames are never solid, never still, I’m solid, I’m still,

  and I’m on it, smashed up against it. I think it’s the sun but it’s

  M and he’s on top o f me and I’m burning but not to death, past

  death, immortal, an eternal burning up against him and there

  are waves o f heat that are suffocating but I breathe and I drown

  but I don’t die no matter how far I go under. Y o u ’ve seen a fire

  but have you ever been one— the red and blue and black and

  orange and yellow in waves, great tidal waves o f heat, and if it

  comes toward you you run because the heat is in waves that

  can stop you from breathing, yo u ’ll suffocate, and you can see

  the waves because they come after you and they eat up the air

  behind you and it gets heavy and hard and tight and mean and

  you can feel the waves coming and they reach out and grab

  you and they take the air out o f the air and it’s tides o f pain

  from heat, you melt, and the heat is a Frankenstein monster

  made by the fire, the fire’s own heartbeat and dream, it’s the

  monster the fire makes and sends out after you spreading

  bigger than the fire to overcom e you and then burn you up.

  But I don’t get burned up no matter how I burn. I’m

  indestructible, a new kind o f flesh. Every night, hours before

  dawn, we make love until dawn or sunrise or late in the

  morning when there’s a bright yellow glaze over everything,

  and I drift o ff into a coma o f sleep, a perfect blackness, no fear,

  no m em ory, no dream, and when I open m y eyes again he is in

  me and it is brute daylight, the naked sun, and I am on fire and

  there is nothing else, just this, burning, smashed up against

  him, outside time or anything anyone know s or thinks or

  wants and it’s never enough. With Michalis before he left the

  island, before M , overlapping at the beginning, it was

  standing near the bed bent over it, waiting for when he would

  begin, barely breathing, living clay waiting for the first touch

  o f this new Rodin, Rodin the lover o f wom en. The hotel was

  behind stone walls, almost like a convent, the walls covered

  with vines and red and purple flowers. There was a double bed

  and a basin and a pitcher o f water and tw o wom en sitting

  outside the stone wall watching when I walked in with

  Michalis and when I left with him a few hours later. The stone

  walls hid a courtyard thick with bushes and wild flowers and

  illuminated by scarlet lamps and across the courtyard was the

  room with the bed and I undressed and waited, a little afraid

  because I couldn’t see him, waited the w ay he liked, and then

  his hands were under my skin, inside it, inside the skin on my

  back and under the muscles o f my shoulders, his hands were

  buried in my body, not the orifices but the fleshy parts, the

  muscled parts, thighs and buttocks, until he came into me and

  I felt the pain. With Michel, before M , half Greek, half French,

  I screamed because he pressed me flat on my stomach and kept

  m y legs together and came in hard and fast from the back and I

  thought he was killing me, murdering me, and he put his hand

  over my mouth and said not to scream and I bit into his hand

  and tore the skin and there was blood in m y mouth and he bit

  into my back so blood ran down my back and he pulled my

  hair and gagged me with his fist until the pain itself stopped me

  from screaming. With G, a teenage boy, Greek, maybe

  fifteen, it was in the ruins under an ancient, cave-like arch, a

  tunnel you couldn’t stand up in; it was outside at night on the

  old stone, on rubble, on garbage, fast, exuberant, defiant,

  thrilled, rough, skirt pulled up and torn on the rocks, skin

  ripped on the rocks, semen dripping down m y legs. Y ou

  could hear the sea against the old stone walls and the rats

  running in the rubble and then we kissed like teenagers and I

  walked away. With the Israeli sailor it was on a small bed in a

  tiny room with the full moon shining, a moon almost as huge

  as the whole sky, and I was mad about him. He was inept and

  sincere and I was mad about him, insane for his ignorance and

  fumbling and he sat on top o f me, inside me, absolutely still,

  touching m y face in long, gentle strokes, and there was a steely

  light from the moon, and I was mad for him. I wanted the

  moon to stay pinned in the sky forever, full, and the silly boy

  never to move. Once M and I went to the Venetian walls high

  above the sea. There was no moon and the only light was from

  the water underneath, the foam skipping on the waves. There

  was a ledge a few feet wide and then a sheer drop down to the

  sea. There was wind, fierce wind, lashing wind, angry wind, a

  cold wind, foreign, with freezing, cutting water in it from

  some other continent, wrathful, wanting to purge the ledge

  and own the sea. A ll night we fucked with the wind trying to

  push us down to death and I tore m y fingers against the stone

  trying to hold on, the skin got stripped o ff m y hands, and

  sometimes he was against the wall and m y head fell backwards

  going down toward the sea and on the Roman walls we fucked

  for who was braver and who was stronger and w ho w asn’t

  afraid to die. He wanted to find fear in me so he could leave
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  me, so he could think I was less than him. He wanted to leave

  me. He was desperate for freedom from love. On the Roman

  wall we fucked so far past fear that I knew there was only me,

  it didn’t matter where he went or what he did, it didn’t matter

  who with or how many or how hard he tried. There was just

  me, the one they kept telling him was a whore, all his great

  friends, all the men who sat around scratching themselves, and

  no matter how long he lived there would be me and if he was

  dead and buried there would still be me, ju st me. I couldn’t

  breathe without him but they expect that from a woman. I’d

  have so much pain without him I w ouldn’t live for a minute.

  But he w asn’t supposed to need me so bad you could see him

  ripped up inside from a mile away. The pain w asn’t supposed

  to rip through him; from wanting me; every second; now. He

  was supposed to come and go, where he wanted, when he

  wanted, get laid when he wanted, do this or that to me, what

  he wanted, sex acts, nice and neat, ju icy and dirty but nice and

  neat picked from a catalogue o f what men like or what men

  pay for, one sex act followed by another sex act and then he

  goes aw ay to someone else or to somewhere else, a kiss i f he

  condescends, I blow him, a fuck, twice if he has the time and

  likes it and feels so inclined; and I’m supposed to wait in

  between and when he shows up I’m supposed to suck and I’m

  supposed to rub, faster now, harder now, or he can rub, taster

  now, harder now, inside me if he wants; and there’s some

  chat, or some money, or a cigarette, or maybe sometimes a

  fast dinner in a place where no one will see. But he’s burning so

  bright it’s no secret he’s on fire; and it’s me. Anyone near him

  is blinded, the heat hurts them, their skin melts, more than

  they ever feel when they fuck rubbing themselves in and out o f

  a woman. H e’s burning but he’s not indestructible. H e’s the

  sun; I’m smashed up against him; but the sun burns itself up;

  one day it will be cold and dead. He’s burning towards death

  and a man’s not supposed to. A dry fuck with a dry heart is