Mercy
Andrea Dworkin
FOUR WALLS EIGHT WINDOWS
NEW YORK
Copyright © 1990, 1991 by Andrea Dworkin.
A F o u r Wa l l s E ig h t W in d o w s F i r s t E d it io n .
First Printing August, 1991.
First paperback printing September, 1992.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmit ed in any form, by any means, including
mechanical, electric, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior writ en permission of the publisher.
Excerpts from this novel have appeared in The Michigan Quarterly
Review, Vol. XXIX, No. 4, Fall 1990 and The American Voice,
No. 21, Winter 1990.
Mercy was first published
in Great Britain by Seeker & Warburg in 1990.
The author and publisher are grateful to the fol owing for
permission to quote from copyright material: Olwyn Hughes for
“Daddy, ” in Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath, published by Harper
& Row, Publishers, © 1965 1981; Pantheon for Anna Cancogni’s
translation of Sartre: A Life by Annie Cohen-Solal, © 1987
Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dworkin, Andrea.
Mercy: a novel / Andrea Dworkin.
p.
cm.
I. Title.
PS3554. W85M4 1991
813'. 54—dc20
91-18157
(Cloth) ISBN: 0-941423-69-7
CIP
(Paper) ISBN: 0-941423-88-3
Four Wal s Eight Windows
P. O. Box 548, Village Station
New York, N. Y 10014
Printed in the U. S. A.
F o r Judith Malina
For Michael M oorcock
In M em ory o f Ellen Frankfort
D addy, daddy, you bastard, I’ m through.
“ D ad d y, ” Sylvia Plath
For a small moment have I forsaken
thee; but with great mercies will I gather
thee.
In a little wrath I hid my face from
thee for a moment; but with everlasting
kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith
the Lord thy Redeemer.
Isaiah 54: 7-8
Contents
Not Andrea: Prologue
i
o n e In August 1956 (Age 9)
5
t w o In 1961 and 1962 (Age 14, 15, 16)
29
t h r e e In January 1965 (Age 18)
35
f o u r In February 1965 (Age 18)
56
f iv e In June 1966 (Age 19)
74
s ix In June 1967 (Age 20)
100
s e v e n In 1969, 1970, 1971 (Age 22, 23, 24, 25)
134
e i g h t In March 1973 (Age 26)
164
n in e In October 1973 (Age 27)
214
TEN April 30, 1974 (Age 27)
273
e le v e n April 30, 1974 (Age 27)
308
Not Andrea: Epilogue
334
Author’s N ote
343
Not Andrea: Prologue
N o w I’ve come into m y ow n as a wom an o f letters. I am a
committed feminist, o f course. I admit to a cool, elegant
intellect with a clear superiority over the ape-like men who
write. I don’t wear silk, o f course. I am icy and formal even
alone by myself, a discipline o f identity and identification. I do
not wear m yself out with mistaken resistance, denunciation,
foolhardy anguish. I feel, o f course. I feel the pain, the sorrow ,
the lack o f freedom. I feel with a certain hard elegance. I am
admired for it— the control, the reserve, the ability to make
the fine point, the subtle point. I avoid the obvious. I have a
certain intellectual elegance, a certain refinement o f the mind.
There is nothing w rong with civilized thought. It is necessary.
I believe in it and I do have the courage o f m y convictions. One
need not raise one’s voice. I am formal and careful, yes, but
with a real power in m y style i f I do say so myself. I am not, as
a writer or a human being, insipid or bland, and I have not sold
out, even though I have manners and limits, and I am not
poor, o f course, w h y should I be? I don’t have the stink on me
that some o f the others have, I am able to say it, I am not effete.
I am their sister and their friend. I do not disavow them. I am
committed. I write checks and sign petitions. I lend m y name.
I write books with a strong narrative line in clear, detailed,
descriptive prose, in the nineteenth-century tradition o f
storytelling, intellectually coherent, nearly realistic, not
sentimental but yes with sex and romance and wom en w ho do
something, achieve something, strong women. I am
committed, I do care, and I am the one to contend with, if the
truth be told, because m y mind is clear and cool and m y prose
is exceedingly skillful if sometimes a trifle too baroque. Every
style has its dangers. I am not reckless or accusatory. I consider
freedom. I look at it from many angles. I value it. I think about
it. I’ve found this absolutely stunning passage from Sartre that
I want to use and I copy it out slow ly to savor it, because it is
cogent and meaningful, with an intellectual richness, a moral
subtlety. Y ou don’t have to shout to tell the truth. Y ou can
think. Y ou have a responsibility to think. M y wild sisters revel
in being wretched and they do not think. Sartre is writing
about the French under the German Occupation, well, French
intellectuals really, and he says— “ We were never as free as
under the German Occupation. We had lost all our rights, and,
first o f all, the right to speak; we were insulted every day, and
had to keep silent.. . . and everywhere, on the walls, the
papers, the movie screen, we were made to confront the ugly
mug that our oppressor presented to us as our own: but this is
precisely why we were free. As the German poison seeped into
our minds, every just thought we had was a real conquest; as
an omnipotent police kept forcing silence upon us, every word
we uttered had the value o f a declaration o f rights; as we were
constantly watched, every gesture we made was a commitm ent. ” This is moral eloquence, in the mouth o f a man. This
applies to the situation o f women. This is a beautiful truth,
beautifully expressed. Every just thought is a real conquest,
for women under the rule o f men. They don’t know how hard
it is to be kind. Our oppressor puts his version o f us
everywhere, on walls, in the papers, on the movie screens.
Like a poison gas, it seeps in. Every word we utter is a
declaration o f our rights. Every gesture is a commitment. I
make gestures. I experience this subtle freedom, this freedom
based on nuance, a freedom grotesquely negated by a vulgar,
reckless shout, however sincere. He didn’t know that the Je w s
were being extermi
nated, perhaps, not then. O f course, yes,
he did know that they had been deported from France. Yes.
And when he published these words much later, in 1949, he
did know, but one must be true to one’s original insights,
one’s true experiences, the glimpses one has o f freedom. There
is a certain pride one takes in seeing something so fine, so
subtle, and saying it so well— and, o f course, one cannot
endlessly revise backwards. His point about freedom is
elegant. He too suffered during the war. It is not a cheap point.
And it is true that for us too every w ord is a declaration o f
rights, every gesture a commitment. This is beautifully put,
strongly put. As a wom an o f letters, I fight for m y kind, for
women, for freedom. The brazen scream distracts. The wild
harridans are not persuasive. I write out Sartre’s passage with
appreciation and excitement. The analogy to the condition o f
wom en is dramatic and at the same time nuanced. I w ill not
shout. This is not the ovens. We are not the Jew s, or, to be
precise, the Je w s in certain parts o f Europe at a certain time.
We are not being pushed into the ovens, dragged in, cajoled in,
seduced in, threatened in. It is not us in the ovens. Such
hyperbole helps no one. I like the w ay Sartre puts it, though
the irony seems unintended: “ We were never as free as under
the German O ccupation. ” Actually, I do know that his
meaning is straightforward and completely sincere— there is
no irony. This embarrasses me, perhaps because I am a captive
o f m y time. We are cursed with hindsight. We need irony
because we are in fact incapable o f simple sincerity. “ We were
never as free as under the German O ccupation. ” It gives the
right significance to the gesture, something Brecht never
managed incidentally. I like the sophistication, the unexpected
meaning. This is what a writer must do: use w ords in subtle,
unexpected w ays to create intellectual surprise, real delight. I
love the pedagogy o f the analogy. There is a mutability o f
meaning, an intellectual elasticity that avoids the rigidity o f
ideology and still instructs in the meaning o f freedom. It
warns us not to be simple-minded. We were never as free as
under the German Occupation. Glorious. Really superb.
Restrained. Elegant. True in the highest sense. De Beauvoir
was my feminist ideal. An era died with her, an era o f civilized
coupling. She was a civilized woman with a civilized militance
that recognized the rightful constraints o f loyalty and, o f
course, love. I am tired o f the bellicose fools.
O N E
In August 1956
(Age 9)
M y name is Andrea. It means manhood or courage. In Europe
only boys are named it but I live in America. Everyone says I
seem sad but I am not sad. I was born down the street from
Walt W hitman’s house, on M ickle Street, in Cam den, in 1946,
broken brick houses, cardboard porches, garbage spread over
cement like fertilizer on stone fields, dark, a dark so thick you
could run your fingers through it like icing and lick it o ff your
fingers. I w asn’t raped until I was almost ten which is pretty
good it seems when I ask around because many have been
touched but are afraid to say. I w asn’t really raped, I guess, just
touched a lot by a strange, dark-haired man w ho I thought was
a space alien because I couldn’t tell how many hands he had
and people from earth only have two, and I didn’t know the
w ord rape, which is ju st some awful word, so it didn’t hurt me
because nothing happened. Y o u get asked if anything happened and you say well yes he put his hand here and he rubbed
me and he put his arm around m y shoulder and he scared me
and he followed me and he whispered something to me and
then someone says but did anything happen. And you say,
well, yes, he sat down next to me, it was in this m ovie theater
and I didn’t mean to do anything w rong and there w asn’t
anyone else around and it was dark and he put his arm around
me and he started talking to me and saying weird things in a
weird voice and then he put his hand in m y legs and he started
rubbing and he kept saying ju st let m e.. . . and someone says
did anything happen and you say well yes he scared me and he
followed me and he put his hand or hands there and you don’t
know how many hands he had, not really, and you don’t want
to tell them you don’t know because then they will think you
are crazy or stupid but maybe there are creatures from Mars
and they have more than two hands but you know this is
stupid to say and so you don’t know how to say what
happened and if you don’t know how many hands he had you
don’t know anything and no one needs to believe you about
anything because you are stupid or crazy and so you don’t
know how to say what happened and you say he kept saying
just let me. . . . and I tried to get away and he followed me
and he. . . . followed me and he. . . . and then they say,
thank God nothing happened. So you try to make them
understand that yes something did happen honest you aren’t
lying and you say it again, strained, thicklipped from biting
your lips, your chest swollen from heartbreak, your eyes
swollen from tears all salt and bitter, holding your legs funny
but you don’t want them to see and you keep pretending to be
normal and you want to act adult and you can barely breathe
from crying and you say yes something did happen and you
try to say things right because adults are so strange and so
stupid and you don’t know the right words but you try so hard
and you say exactly how the man sat down and put his arm
around you and started talking to you and you told him to go
away but he kept holding you and kissing you and talking to
you in a funny whisper and he put his hands in your legs and he
kept rubbing you and he had a really deep voice and he
whispered in your ear in this funny, deep voice and he kept
saying just to let him. . . . but you couldn’t understand what
he said because maybe he was mumbling or maybe he couldn’t
talk English so you can’t tell them what he said and you say
maybe he was a foreigner because you don’t know what he
said and he talked funny and you tried to get away but he
followed you and then you ran and you didn’t scream or cry
until you found your m omma because he might hear you and
find you so you were quiet even though you were shaking and
you ran and then they say thank God nothing happened and
you don’t know w hy they think you are lying because you are
trying to tell them everything that happened ju st the right w ay
and i f you are a stubborn child, a strong-willed child, you say
the almost-ten-year-old version o f fuck you something happened all right the fuck put his hands in m y legs and rubbed me
all over; m y legs; my legs; me; m y; m y legs; m y; m y; m y legs;
and he rubbed me; his arm was around m y shoulder, rubbing,
and his mouth was on m y neck, rubbing, and his hand was
under m y shirt, rubbing, and his hand was in m y pants,
rubbing, and he kept saying ju st let me. . . . and it was a
creepy whisper in some funny language and he was saying
sounds I didn’t understand and then they say the child is
hysterical, something must have happened, the child is
hysterical; and they want to know i f anything came inside or
was outside and you don’t want to tell them that he took your
hand and put it somewhere wet on him in his lap in the dark
and your hand touched something all funny and your hand got
all cold and slim y and they say thank God nothing happened;
and they ask i f something went inside but when you ask inside
where they look aw ay and you are nearly ten but you are a
fully desperate human being because you want to know inside
where so you w ill know what happened because you don’t
know what he did or what it was or how many hands he had
but they don’t ask you that. And your mother says show me and
you don’t know if you should put your arm around her
shoulder, rubbing, or rub your head into her neck, and she says
show me and you try to whisper the w ay he whispered in a deep
voice but you are too far away from her for it to be like him and
you don’t know what he said so you are crying and a little sick
and you point to your legs and say here and she says show me
where he touched you and you say here and you point to your
legs and she says did he put anything in and you say his hands
and she says anything else did he put anything else in and you
don’t know how many hands he had or if he put them in or in
where and you are wearing bermuda shorts because it is hot,
hot summer, August, black ones, too grown up for a girl your
age she told you but you are always fighting to wear black
because you want to be grown up and you are always fighting
with her anyway and this time she let you because she didn’t
want to fight anymore, and she wants to know i f he touched
your knee and she points to your bare knee and you say yes and
she wants to know if he touched higher and you don’t know
Mercy Page 1