Mercy (83 page)

H im self out to take a big snooze and a picture flashed through

His mind, a dirty picture, annihilation is how I will love them,

and it made everything w ork, it made everything hang

together: everything moved. It was like putting the tide in the

ocean. Instead o f a stagnant mass, a big puddle, there was this

monstrous, ruthless thing gliding backwards and forwards at

the same time and underneath the planet broke, there were

fissures and hurricanes and tornadoes and storms o f wind,

great, carnivorous storms; everything moved; moved and

died; moved, killed, and died. On the seventh day He made

love; annihilation is how I will love them; it was perfect and

Creation came alive animated by the nightmare o f His perfect

love; and He loved us best; o f all His children, we were the

chosen; D addy liked fucking us best. That Christ boy found

out; where are Y ou , w hy have Y o u forsaken me; common

questions asked by all the fucked children loved to death by

Daddy. At Massada we already knew what He wanted and

how He wanted it, He gloried in blood. We were His perfect

children; we made our hearts as bare and hard and empty as the

rock itself; good students, emblematic Jew s; pride was

prophecy. N early two thousand years later w e’d take Palestine

back, our hearts burned bare, a collective heart chastened by

the fire o f the crematoria; empty, hard. Pride, the euphemism

for the emotions that drove us to kill ourselves in a mass

suicide at Massada, the nationalist euphemism, was simple

obedience. We knew the meaning o f the H oly Books, the

stories o f His love, the narrative details o f His omnipresent

embrace; His wrath, orgasmic, a graphic, calculating

treachery. Freedom meant escape from Him; bolting into

death; a desperate, determined run from His tormenting love;

the Romans were His surrogates, the agents o f slavery and

rape, puppets on the divine string. It was the play within the

play; they too suffered; He loved them too; they too were

children o f God; He toyed with them too; but we were

D addy’s favorite girl. We had the holy scrolls; and a

synagogue that faced towards Jerusalem, His city, cruel as is

befitting; perpetual murder, as is befitting. The suicide at

Massada was us, His best children, formed by His perfect

love, surrendering: to Him. Annihilation is how I will love

them; He loved loving; the freedom for us was the end o f the

affair, finally dead. Yeah, we defied the Romans, a righteous

suicide it seemed; but that was barely the point; we weren’t

prepared to have them on top, we belonged to Him.

Everything was hidden under the floor o f a cell that we had

sealed off; to protect the holy scrolls from Roman desecration;

to protect the synagogue from Roman desecration; we kept

His artifacts pure and hidden, the signs and symbols o f His

love; we died, staying faithful; only Daddy gets to hurt us bad;

only Daddy gets to put His thing there. First we burned

everything we had, food, clothes, everything; we gathered it

all and we burned it. Then ten men were picked by lot and they

slit the throats o f everyone else. Then one man was chosen by

lot and he slit the throats o f the other nine, then his own. I have

no doubt that he did. There were nearly a thousand o f us; nine

hundred and sixty; men, women, children; proud; obedient to

God. There was discipline and calm, a sadness, a quiet

patience, a tense but quiet waiting for slaughter, like at night,

how a child stays awake, waiting, there is a stunning courage,

she does not run, she does not die o f fear. Some were afraid

and they were held down and forced, o f course; it had to be. It

was by family, mostly. A husband lay with his wife and

children, restrained them, their throats were slit first, then his,

he held them down, tenderly or not, and then he bared his

throat, deluded, thinking it was manly, and there was blood,

the w ay God likes it. There were some w idow s, some

orphans, some lone folks you didn’t especially notice on a

regular day; but that night they stood out; the men with the

swords did them first. It took a long time, it’s hard to kill nearly

a thousand people one by one, by hand, and they had to hurry

because it had to be done before dawn, you can do anything in

the dark but dawn comes and it’s hard to look at love in the

light. We loved God and we loved freedom, we were all G o d ’s

girls you might say and freedom, then as now, was in getting

sliced; a perfect penetration, then death; a voluptuous compliance, blood, death. I f yo u ’re G o d ’s girl you do it the w ay He likes it and H e’s got special tastes; the naked throat and the

thing that tears it open, He likes one clean cut, a sharp, clean

blade; you lay yourself down and the blade cuts into you and

there’s blood and pain; and the eyes, there’s a naked terror in

the eyes and death freezes it there, yo u ’ve seen the eyes. The

blood is warm and it spreads down over you and you feel its

heat, you feel the heat spreading. Freedom isn’t abstract, an

idea, it’s concrete, in life, a sliced throat, a clean blade,

freedom now. G o d ’s girl surrenders and finds freedom where

the men always bragged it was; in blood and death; only they

didn’t expect it to be this w ay, them on their backs too, supine,

girlish; G o d ’s the man here. There’s an esthetic to it too, o f

course: the bodies in voluntary repose, waiting; the big knife,

slicing; the rich, textured beauty o f the anguish against the

amorphous simplicity o f the blood; the emotions disciplined

to submission as murder comes nearer, the blood o f someone

covers your arm or your shoulder or your hand and the glint o f

the blade passes in front o f your eyes and you push your head

back to bare your throat, slow ly so that you will live longer

but it looks sensual and lewd and filled with longing, and he

cuts and you feel the heat spreading, your body cools fast,

before you die, and you feel the heat o f your own blood

spreading. Was Sade God? M aybe I was just seventy; I was

born on the rock but the adults who raised me were new to it

and awkward, not native to the rock, still with roots down

below, on softer ground; I died there, a tough one, old, tough

skin from the awful sun, thick and leathery, with deep furrow s

like dried up streams going up my legs and up my arms and

creasing m y face, scarified you might say from the sun eating

up m y skin, cutting into it with white hot light, ritual scars or a

surgeon’s knife, terrible, deep rivers in my skin, dried out

rivers; and maybe I’d had all the men, religion notwithstanding, men are always the same, filled with God and Law but still