Mercy (84 page)

sticking it in so long as it’s dark and fast; no place on earth

darker than Massada at night; no boys on earth faster than the

Jew s; nice boys they were, too, scholars with the hearts o f

assassins. Beware o f religious scholars who learn to fight.

T h ey’ve been studying the morals o f a genocidal God. Shrewd

and ruthless, smart and cruel, they will win; tell me, did

Massada ever die and where are the Romans now; profiles on

coins in museums. A scholar who kills considers the long

view; will the dead survive in every tear the living shed? A

scholar knows how it will look in writing; beyond the death

count o f the moment. Regular soldiers who fight to kill don’t

stand a chance. The corpses o f all sides get maggots and turn to

dust; but some stories live forever, pristine, in the hidden

heart. They prayed, the Jew ish boys, they made forays down

the rock to fight the Romans until the military strength o f the

Romans around the rock was unassailable, they took a little

extra on the side when they could get it, like all men. I

probably had m y eye on the younger ones, twenty, virile,

new, they had no m emory o f being Jew s down on the low

ground, they had only this austere existence, they were born

here o f parents who were born here o f parents who either were

born here or came here young and lived their adult years on

this rock. Sometimes Jew s escaped the Romans and got here,

made it to the top; but they didn’t bring profane ideas; they

stripped themselves o f the foreign culture, the habits o f the

invaders; they told us stories o f Roman barbarism, which

convinced us even more; down below the Romans were pigs

rolling in shit, above we were the people o f God. N o one here

doubted it, especially not the young men; they were pure,

glow ing, vibrant animals lit up by a nationalism that enhanced

their physical beauty, it was a single-minded strength. There

were no distracting, tantalizing memories o f before, below.

We lived without the tumult o f social heterodoxy, there was

no cultural relativism as it were. The young men were hard,

cold animals, full o f self-referential pride; they had no

ambivalence, no doubt; they had true grit and were incapable

o f remorse; they lived in a small, contained world, geographically limited, flat, all the same, barren, culturally

dogmatic, they had a few facts, they learned dogma by rote, it

was a closed system, they had no need for introspection, there

were no moral dilemmas that confronted them, troubled

them, pulled them apart inside; they were strong, they fought,

they prayed but it was a form o f nationalism, they learned

racial pride, they had the thighs o f warriors, not scholars, and

they used them on women, not Romans, it was the common

kind o f killing, man on girl, as i f by being Jew s alone on this

desolate rock, isolated here, they were, finally, like everyone

else, all the other men, ordinary, like Romans, for instance;

making war on us, brutal and quick if not violent, but they

beat women too, the truth, finally, they did. The sacred was

remote from them except as a source o f national pride; pure

Je w s on a purely Jew ish rock they had a pure God o f the Jew s,

His laws, H oly Books, the artifacts o f a pure and superior

nation. The rock was barren and empty and soon it would be a

cemetery and the bloodletting would become a story; nearly

fiction, nearly a lie; abridged, condensed, cleaned up; as if

killing nine hundred and sixty people, men, women, and

children, by slicing their throats was an easy thing, neat and

clean, simple and quiet; as if there was no sex in it and no

meanness; as if no one was forced, held down, shut up; well,

frankly, murdered; as i f no one was murdered; as if it was

noble and perfect, a bloodless death, a murderless murder, a

mass suicide with universal consent, except for the women

and the children; except for them. Y ou get sad, if you

understand. The men were purely male, noble and perfect, in

behalf o f all the Jew s; the young ones especially, strong

animals, real men, prideful men, physically perfect specimens

dark and icy with glistening thighs, ideologically pure,

racially proud, idealists with racial pride; pure, perfect,

uncorrupted nationalists; beautiful fascists; cold killing boys;

until God, ever wise, ever vicious, turned them into girls. I

was probably an old woman making a fool o f herself with

memories and desires, all the natural grace and learned artifice

o f young women burned away by wear and tear and the awful,

hot sun. Still, sometimes you’d like to feel one o f the young

ones against you, a last time, one last time; nasty, brutish,

short. It’s a dumb nostalgia. They never were very good, not

the fathers, not the sons. O r maybe I was some sentimental old

fool w h o ’d always been a faithful wife, except once, I was

lonely and he was urgent, and I had a dozen grandchildren so

this rock knew m y blood already, I had labored here, and now

I sat, old, under the sun, and m y brain got heated with

foresight and grief and I saw them as they soon would be,

corpses with their throats slit, and maybe I howled in pain, an

animal sound, or I denounced them in real words, and the

young men said she’s an old fool, she’s an old idiot, she’s

loony, ignore her, it’s nonsense, and I tried to tell the girls and

the children how they’d be killed soon, with the awful slice

across the throat; these are fanatic boys, I said, driven by an

idea, I said, it is murder, not suicide, what they will do to you;

and they asked if it was the will o f God and o f course now I see

w hy you must lie but I said yes, it’s His will, always, that we

should suffer and die, the will o f God is wrong, I said, we have

to defy the will o f God, we have to defy the Romans and the

Je w s and the will o f God, we have to find a w ay to live, us, you

see, us; she’s loony, they said; you’ll be stretched out, I said,

beautiful and young, too soon, dressed and ornamented, and

your throats will be naked as if your husbands are going to use

your mouths but it will be a sword this time, a real one, not his

obscene bragging, one clean cut, and there will be blood, the

w ay God likes. I didn’t want to see the children die and I was

tired o f God. Enough, I said to Him; enough. I didn’t want to

see the wom en die either, the girls who came after me, you get

old and you see them different, you see how sad their

obedience is, how pitiful; you see them whole and human,

how they could be; you see them chipped aw ay at, broken bit

by bit, slowed down, constrained; tamed; docile; bearing the

weight o f invisible chains; you see it is terrible that they obey

these men, love these men, serve these men, who, like their

God, ruin whatever they touch; don’t believe, I say, don’t

obey, don’t love, let him put the sword in your hand, little

sister, let Him put the sword in your hand; then see. Let him

bare his throat to you; then see. The day before it happened I

quieted down, I didn’t howl, I didn’t rant or rave, I didn’t

want them to lock me up, I wanted to stay out on the rock,

under the hot sun, the hot, white sun; m y companion, the

burning sun. I was an old woman, wild, tough, proud, strong,

illiterate, ah, yes, the people o f the Book, except for the

women and girls, God says it’s forbidden for us, the Book,

illiterate but I wanted to write it down today, quiet, in silence,

not to have to howl but to curl up and make the signs on the

page, to say this is what I know, this is what has happened