Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 12 (8 page)

The premise of Metzger's
The Woman Who . . .
effectively seeks to invert the premise of the
Lysistrata
story. Aristophanes depicts Lysistrata and her followers as appealing to the willingness of weak and irrational men to do whatever it takes to get laid. Metzger, on the other hand, suggests that at least some warlike and violent men may be taught to perceive the world in a more responsible, mature manner precisely through their bodies (which Aristophanes, like most ancient Greeks, figured in opposition to reason). Barbara Meyerhoff, introducing the novel, characterizes the struggle Metzger depicts thus:

[T]he enemy is The General, one who destroys indifferently, without awareness or choice. The Woman sets herself against his deadness. She conquers fundamental anatomical truth, that a man and a woman uniting briefly make the two into one. This primordial form of connection is a vanquishment by taming—her body the cauldron that transforms him from the Other into one who is momentarily a part of her, a partner. In a dramatic but quiet moment, the alchemical work is done: he covers her feet against the cold with a rough blanket. The General has developed enough imagination and therefore empathy to feel what she feels. So this is why women have always slept with warriors, even those who have killed their loved ones. . . . They sleep with the enemy to make him their own, to assert their commitment to life over death, in final refusal to believe that anyone who understands can continue to destroy. (vii)

Meyerhoff suggests that the urge to talk to the men who make violent war and thereby heal their insanity is a common one. She describes having a recurring daydream, as a child, of making Hitler see her humanity and the humanity of those she wanted to plead for. But I would argue that this urge, this “recurring daydream,” is not the story that the Woman in Metzger's novel is trying to tell. Meyerhoff describes a fantasy of wish-fulfillment. Metzger's writer, who has fled to a cabin in the woods to escape an armed man who has been stalking her, is, on the contrary, seeking a new story. She has no illusions about her power to heal her stalker by talking to him herself. And yet she insists that there must be some other way to “take the war” out of individual men. And so she says to the Narrator, “I'm tired of you. And of all the others. If you can't tell me what we make happen, I don't want to hear it. A story is not what happens to us. It is what we do” (93). And when the Chorus tells her that to deal with the General she must have something other than her body to bargain with—like “oil, gold, uranium, land, atom bomb secrets"—she says “I think I've heard this story before,” to which they reply: “You have. It's the only story” (86).

And so the Woman begins, tentatively, to try to imagine this brave, bold woman she calls Ada, who presents herself to the General “with the full cognizance that she is committing a political act.” The Woman tells her friend that Ada “is the important one.” Her Friend replies, “Oh, you mean this book isn't about yourself?” And the Woman says, “Hardly. I am not brave enough” (17).

"Once upon a time,” the Woman says, there was a woman who lived in an occupied village and who, with deliberateness and forethought, after her husband was killed. . .” and her Friend retorts, “How can you write that, how can you possibly know about that?” (18) And in fact, the Woman begins the story over so many times that after a while some of the details slip—even as certain of them become iconic: Ada's sleeping on her husband's grave, the red shoes she wears when walking through the village to the General's house, the black and white silk dress she wears that is the only piece of clothing she owns besides one other dress (that in a later version gets irreparably soiled when the General rapes her on her husband's grave), and the fertile egg she takes to the General. The details about the village mostly do not change, only what happens between Ada and the General.

Woman. Once upon a time there was a woman who lived in an occupied village.

Her Friend. How can you know what that is?

Woman. A village isn't different from a city, and if my house weren't occupied, why do I live now in such retreat? (19)

The Woman, that is, insists that in imagining the lives of women differently situated from herself, her own experience (in this case, of being stalked and unable to secure the assistance of either the police or her lover) provides insight and empathy, helping her to bridge the distance of their differences. Significantly, she sees the ability to tell a story about differently situated women as crucial to her own efforts to exert agency. “How can I enact it in my own life,” she asks, “if I cannot see it even in my own mind” (86).

In the course of trying to imagine a story that works, not only does the Woman's interlocutors (the Friend, the Chorus, the Narrator, the Witness) criticize each attempt and force her to repeatedly re-vision the story, but other stories of heterosexual relations between men of war and women also intrude. The characters whose stories make interventions into the Woman's attempt to forge this new narrative include Malinche, a retired, bed-ridden prostitute who once conducted her business in the cabin in which the Woman is staying, a woman (who is a descendant of Malinche) who kills a guard with his own weapon as he rapes her in her jail cell, a child prostitute servicing US GIs in Southeast Asia, a mermaid, and other, nameless women. These are mostly painful stories that, like the Friend's and Chorus's comments, repeatedly cause the Woman to reconsider and try again.

Among these, the story of Malinche (who, when she speaks, is identified as “Malintzi") figures prominently. Malinche, as Metzger makes clear, was a “gift” to Cortez from her brothers. The Woman learns through Malinche's narrative that a woman who in her very person constitutes a gift has no possibility of taking the war out of the man to whom she has been given—an insight which assists the Woman (and Metzger's readers) in appreciating the importance of Ada's making a
gift
to the General.

Her Friend. What is war?

The Woman. War is taking what has not been offered.

Her Friend. What is the opposite of war?

The Woman. Gifts. (86)

Before the Woman comes to see a certain kind of gift-giving as the key to telling her story, she attempts to imagine women offering themselves as gifts in explicit exchange for concessions (such as sparing one's sister's life). Her Friend scorns the very idea and suggests that the women in these situations should simply kill the men who are menacing those the women want to protect.

In the course of constructing Ada's story, the Woman elaborates on one of the constant elements of the (ever-changing) story, the fertile eggs that Ada brings the General. Eggs are scarce in Ada's village since the General's men have taken most of the livestock and food and the surviving women have been forced to kill most of the hens in order to feed their children. The women hide what few eggs are produced from the General, and the General, in retaliation, passes a law against raising chickens altogether. Ada, however, takes him a (fertile) egg that has just been laid. She tells him it is a gift he cannot eat. The General complains that he is hungry. Ada says “Generals are always hungry. You expect us to feed you. I know about hunger, but of a different kind. I can't eat; something eats at me. I've brought a gift. . . which you can not [sic] eat” (75-6).

Take this egg, General, which you must never eat. Keep it warm, put it in your armpit, fold it in the elbow, hide it in your groin, General. Hold it warm there between your legs by the little sack of eggs you carry. You have neglected to think of yourself as a hen, so hold the egg there by the little wrinkled pouch, the delicate brown bag, the leathery wine skin filled with other eggs, thousands of eggs, little swimming eggs, tiny tadpole eggs, devil-tailed eggs. It's not the hunger that matters, General, it's the chick.

The General. And my hunger?

Ada. That's easy. Do what I do, what the village women do; think tomorrow you're going to eat. . . tomorrow will be a magnificent feast. Think when the war is over there will still be hundreds of chicks. That is what you must think. (76)

In the middle of a page, a line stands alone, unattributed to any of the novel's characters: “This is a book about eggs. Nothing more. And nothing less” (104). Surely the egg constitutes the quintessential representation of the potential for life. Metzger's metonymy, figuring not only female but also male gametes as “eggs,” insists that although female sexuality alone is widely perceived as nearly identical with that potential (since it is women who produce “eggs” and who gestate new human life in their very bodies), male sexuality, too, fosters life. The most frequent figurations of male sperm are those of competition—between individual spermatozoa—and waste (through the image of millions of spermatozoon dying every time a penis ejaculates them). The very multiplicity of these “eggs” seems to encourage an attitude of distance from their potentiality to a far greater extent than the monthly shedding of an egg through menstruation apparently does. Metzger, I believe, is telling us that were everyone to acknowledge this largely invisible aspect of male sexuality, war would be taken out of men, because their “hunger” would necessarily take second-place to the “chick."

The only sexual images I personally have ever associated with war are those of rape, prostitution, and the pornographic pin-up. When I look at mass-media images of George W. Bush and Ariel Sharon—the leading “generals” of our day, both fanatical religious fundamentalists—I see joyless, affectless drones whom I can't imagine as being even capable of sexual pleasure, much less likely to engage in it. And when I look at images of Donald Rumsfeld, I see a veritable Dr. Death, gleefully rubbing his hands together over the carnage his orders produce, a sexless caricature of a human being whose supreme pleasure lies in ending, rather than celebrating or generating, life. In the face of the overwhelming sexless sensibility now dominating US culture and politics, I find myself in the position of the Woman's Friend, who questions the power of “gifts,” particularly when they are the most precious possible (viz., eggs).

The Woman. I have come to love Ada so. Don't let any harm come to her.

The Narrator. There is nothing we can do. Her life is beyond our control.

The Woman. And beyond our protection.

Her Friend. Do you think we are incapable of inventing guns? (110)

The Friend, of course, misses the point. The struggle, Metzger insists, is first and foremost against “war"—not against “warriors.” The “invention” of guns must necessarily change the character of the struggle, but can never
end
it. Confronted with the hatefulness of generals, it is at times almost impossible to remember and appreciate the importance of that point.

Metzger's central insight underscores the crucial importance of not allowing ourselves to be distracted into prolonged struggle against the wrong enemy.

Her Friend. I don't believe any of it.

The Woman. Don't think about the General. It only matters what she does. (117)

In other words, what most matters is this new story, since this new story is exactly about what
she
does. We already know all the stories there are to know about generals and war and killing and rape; we don't need to think about them more than we have already done. Metzger's Woman, after all, contends with them throughout the novel.

Metzger's implicit assumptions are these: if we can find a way to tell this new story, a story of a woman, Ada, performing this intentionally political act whereby she teaches a professional man of war about the potential for life he carries within his body and must learn to take responsibility for, a story of “eggs,” if we can first imagine and then tell and retell this story, the world can change. Killing the warriors merely keeps war itself alive. The Chorus says that women who sleep with men will “choose him” and “betray us.” This novel refuses this choice and suggests, instead, that imagining an Ada who exercises political agency in a heterosexual relation makes a different outcome possible. “It is a matter of eggs,” Metzger says. “Nothing more. And nothing less."

Works Cited

Eva Cantarella,
Pandora's Daughters: The Role and Status of Women in Greek and Roman Antiquity
, tr. Maureen B. Fant, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987

Deena Metzger,
The Woman Who Slept with Men to Take the War Out of Them & Tree
, Culver City, CA: Peace Press, 1981

Katha Pollit, “Phallic Balloons Against the War,”
The Nation
(March 6, 2003, www.thenation.com)

[Back to Table of Contents]

Dwan,
#36: An exciting mail day when this came: the first poem is a translation (by Donny Smith) of a poem, “The Bones of the Dead,” by Gabriela Mistral. Backstory: Small Beer is publishing a novel—translated by Ursula K. Le Guin—by Argentinean writer Angelica Gorodischer. Le Guin's
other
translation this year is a book of poems by Gabriela Mistral! So I was well ready to enjoy this zine (which is usually a queer poetry zine). Also includes translations of poems by Ruben Dario, Carlos Pellicer, Marta Leonor Gonzalez, and an article by Cali Ruchala on Haiti. Also:
Dwan,
#33: Poems in Spanish and English by Donny Smith and Argentinean writer Fabian O. Irirarte. #36, $0.50, 5.5x8.5, 14pp; #33, $4, 5.5x8.5, 42pp, Donny Smith, PO Box 411, Swarthmore, PA 19081

todesfuge
: “Deathfugue” is a Paul Celan poem translated by John Felstiner with found art collaged and copied in b&w. The poem is brilliant. The presentation and art—ranging from cartoons to photos to business reply mail—emphasize the shattering strength of the poem. (Jacqui also makes good t-shirts: see

inanereasons.org) $1+stamps, 4.5x5.5, 20pp, [email protected]

Message from the Homeland,
#9: Bicyling is a revolution, travel is broadening, the “president” is lying about Iraq, falling in love (or infatuation) is a dangerous occupation, tons of record reviews and smart review of La Cazuela here in Northampton (great fresh chips and guacamole—also good for margaritas). Love to pick up the freebies in record shops (hi B-Side) and find them worth keeping. Free, 8.5x11, 44pp, David Lucander, PO Box 1725, Westfield, MA, 01086