Mercy (28 page)

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