Mercy

by Andrea Dworkin

  lover, slow, one who lasts, one who takes time; and this is real;

  this happened and this will last forever, because I am just

  someone like anyone and there’s things too bad for me and I

  didn’t know you could be lying flat, blue skin with blood from

  the man with the knife, to find love again, someone cutting his

  w ay into you; and I’m just someone and it’s just flesh down

  there, tender flesh, somewhere you barely touch and you

  w ouldn’t cut it or wound it; no one would; and I have pain all

  over me but pain ain’t the word because there’s no word, I

  have pain on me like it’s my skin but pain ain’t the word and it

  isn’t m y skin, blue with red. I’m just some bleeding thing cut

  up on the floor, a pile o f something someone left like garbage,

  some slaughtered animal that got sliced and sucked and a man

  put his dick in it and then it didn’t matter if the thing was still

  warm or not because the essential killing had been done and it

  was just a matter o f time; the thing would die; the longer it

  took the worse it would be; which is true. He had a good time.

  He did. He got up. He was friendly. He got dressed. I wasn’t

  barely alive. I barely moaned or whispered or cried. I didn’t

  move. He left. The gang was somewhere outside. He left the

  door open, wide open, and it was going to be a hundred years

  before I could crawl enough to close it. There was daylight

  streaming in. It was tom orrow. T om orrow had finally come,,

  a long tom orrow, an eternal tom orrow , I’m always here, the

  girl lying here, can’t run, can’t crawl, where’s freedom now,

  can’t move, can’t crawl, dear God, help me, someone, help

  me, this is real, help me; please, help me. I hate God; for

  making the pain; and making the man; and putting me here;

  under them all; anyone that wants.

  S E V E N

  In 1969, 1970, 1971

  (Age 22, 23, 24, 2$)

  Yeah, I go somewhere else, a new country, not the fucking

  U . S . A ., somewhere I never been, and I’m such a sweet genius

  o f a girl that I marry a boy. N ot some trash bourgie; a sweet

  boy w ho’d done time; I rescued him from jail once, I took all

  my money and I gave it to some uniformed pig for him; a

  hostage, they had kidnapped him, taken him out o f his bed and

  out o f where he lived in handcuffs in the middle o f the night

  and they kept him; I mean, he just fucking disappeared and it

  was that he was locked up. They let me in the prison, the great

  gray walls that are built so high and so cold you can’t help but

  feel anyone in them is a tragic victim buried alive. You

  w ouldn’t be right but that’s what you’d feel. Cold stone, a

  washed-out gray. I was a child standing there, just a girl,

  money in my hand, love in my heart, telling the guard I

  wanted m y friend loose and had come to pay for him to go

  now, with me; I felt like a child because the prison was so big

  and so cold, it was the gray o f the Camden streets, only it was

  standing up instead o f all spread out flat to the horizon, it was

  the streets I grew up on rising high into the sky, with sharp

  right angles, an angry rectangle o f pale gray stone, a washed-

  out gray, opaque, hard, solid, cold, except it wasn’t broken or

  crumbling— each wall was gray concrete, thick, the thickness

  o f your forearm— well, if you see someone’s forearm up

  someone’s ass you know how long, how thick it is, and I seen

  these things, I traveled a hard road until now; not how a

  gentleman’s forearm seems draped in a shirt but what it is i f it’s

  in you— a human sense o f size, chilling enough to remember

  precisely, a measurement o f space and pain; once the body

  testifies, you know. It was cold gray stone, an austere

  monument; not a castle or a palace or an old monastery or a

  stone w inery in cool hills or archaic remains o f Druids or

  Romans or anything like that; it was cold; stone cold; ju st a

  stone cold prison outside o f time, high and nasty; and a girl

  stands outside it holding all her money that she will ever have

  in her cute little clenched fist, she’s giving it to the pigs for a

  man; not her man; a man; a hero; a rebel; a resister; a

  revolutionary; a boy against authority, against all shit. H e’s all

  sweet inside, delicate, a tender one, and on the outside he is a

  fighting boy with speed and wit, a street fighting boy, a

  subversive; resourceful, ruthless, a paragon, not o f virtue but

  o f freedom. Bom bs here and there, which I admire, property

  not people; blow ing up sym bols o f oppression, monuments to

  greed and exploitation, statues o f imperialists and w armongers; a boy brave enough to strike terror in the heart o f business as usual. I’m Andrea, I say to the guard as if it matters;

  I have the money, see, here, I’ve come to get him out, he’s m y

  friend, a kind, gentle, and decent boy, I say showing a moral

  nature; I am trying to be a human being to the guard, I’m

  always a pacifist at war with myself, I want to ignore the

  uniform, the gun, inside there’s someone human, I want to act

  human, be human, but how? I think about these things and I

  find m yself trying; trying at strange times, in strange places,

  for reconciliation, for recognition; I decide reciprocity must be

  possible now, for instance, now standing at a guard booth at

  the outermost concrete wall o f the concrete prison. Later,

  when I am waiting for his release, I will be inside the concrete

  building and all the guards and police and guns will disappear

  as if it’s magic or a hallucination and I will wander the halls,

  ju st wander, down in the cell blocks, all painted an oily brazen

  white, the bars to the cells painted the same bright white— I

  will wander; wander in the halls like a tourist looking around

  at the bars, the cells, the men in the cages, the neat bunk beds;

  the men will call things out in a language I don’t understand,

  grinning and gesticulating, and I will grin back— I’m lost and I

  walk around and I walk quite a long w ay in the halls and I

  wonder if the police will shoot me if they find me and I hope I

  can find my w ay back to the room where they left me and I

  think about what strange lapses there are in reality, ellipses

  really, or little bumps and grinds, so that there are no police in

  the halls anywhere and I can just walk around: loaded down

  with anxiety, because in Amerika they would shoot me if I

  was wandering through; it’s like a dream but it’s no dream, the

  clean white prison without police. N o w , outside, with the

  guard, at the first barricade, I act nice with both fear and utopia

  in m y heart. Who is the guard? Human, like me. I came for my

  friend, I say, and I say his name, many times, in the strange

  language as best I can, I spell it, I write it out carefully. I don’t

  say: m y friend you Nazis grabbed because he’s political— my

  friend who makes bombs, not to hurt anyone but to show

  what’s important, people not property— my friend w ho’s

  a
fraid o f nothing and no one and he has a boisterous laugh and

  a shy smile— m y friend who disappeared from his home three

  nights ago, disappeared, and no one knew where he was,

  disappeared, gone, and you had come in the middle o f the

  night and handcuffed him and brought him here, you had

  hauled him out o f bed and taken him away, you had

  kidnapped him from regular life, you had pushed him around,

  and you didn’t have a reason, not a lawful one, not one you

  knew about, not a real crime with a real indictment, it was

  harassment, it was intimidation, but he’s not some timid boy,

  he’s not some tepid, tame fool; he’s the real thing. He’s beyond

  your law. H e’s past your reach. He’s beyond your understanding. H e’s risk and freedom outside all restraint. I never

  quite knew what they arrested him for, a w ay he had o f

  disappearing inside a narrative, you never could exactly pin

  down a fact but you knew he was innocent. He was the pure

  present, a whirling dervish o f innocence, a minute-to-minute

  boy incarnating innocence, no burden o f m em ory or law,

  untouched by convention. And I came looking for him,

  because he was kind. He said Andrea, whispered it; he said

  Andrea shy and quiet and just a little giddy and there was a

  rush o f whisper across m y ear, a little whirlwind o f whisper,

  and a chill up and down m y spine. It was raining; we were

  outside, wet, touching just barely, maybe not even that. He

  lived with his family, a boarder in a house o f strangers, cold,

  acquisitive conformers who wanted money and furniture,

  people with rules that passed for manners, robots wanting

  things, more things, stupid things. He had to pay them m oney

  to live there. I never heard o f such a thing: a son. I couldn’t go

  there with him, o f course. I had no place to stay. I was outside

  all night. It rained the whole night. I didn’t have anywhere to

  go or anywhere to live. I had gone with a few different men,

  had places to stay for a few weeks, but now I was alone, didn’t

  want no one, didn’t have a bed or a room. He came to find me

  and he stayed with me; outside; the long night; in rain; not in a

  bed; not for the fuck; not. Rain is so hard. It stops but you stay

  wet for so long after and you get cold always no matter what

  the weather because you are swathed in wet cloth and time

  goes by and you feel like a baby someone left in ice water and

  even if it’s warm outside and the air around you heats up you

  get colder anyw ay because the w et’s up against you, wrapped

  around you and it don’t breathe, it stays heavy, intractable, on

  you; and so rain is very hard and when it rains you get sad in a

  frightened w ay and you feel a loneliness and a desolation that is

  very big. This is always so once you been out there long

  enough. I f yo u ’re inside it don’t matter— you still get cold and

  lonely; afraid; sad. So when the boy came to stay with me in

  the rain I took him to m y heart. I made him m y friend in my

  heart. I pledged friendship, a whisper o f intention. I made a

  promise. I didn’t say nothing; it was a minute o f honor and

  affection. About four in the morning we found a cafe. It’s a

  long w ay to dawn when you’re cold and tired. We scraped up

  money for coffee, pulled change out o f our pockets, a rush o f

  silver and slugs, and we pooled it on the table which is like

  running blood together because nothing was held back and so

  we were like blood brothers and when m y blood brother

  disappeared I went looking for him, I went to the address

  where he lived, a cold, awful place, I asked his terrible mother

  where he was, I asked, I waited for an answer, I demanded an

  answer, I went to the local precinct, I made them tell me,

  where he was, how to find him, how much money it took to

  spring him, I went to get him, he was far away, hidden away

  like Rapunzel or something, a long bus ride followed by

  another long bus ride, he was in a real prison, not some funky

  little jail, not some county piss hole, a great gray concrete

  prison in the middle o f nowhere so they can find you if you

  run, nail you, and I took all m y money, m y blood, m y life for

  today and tom orrow a n d : he next day and for as long as there

  was, as far ahead as I can count, and I gave it like a donor for his

  life so he could be free, so the piglets couldn’t put him in a

  cage, couldn’t keep him there; so he could be what he was, this

  very great thing, a free man, a poor boy who had become a

  revolutionary man; he was pure— courage and action, a wild

  boy, so wild no one had ever got near him before, I wish I was

  so brave as him; he was manic, dizzying, m oving every

  second, a frenzy, frenetic and intense with a mask o f joviality,

  loud stories, vulgar jokes; and then, with me, quiet, shy, so

  shy. I met him when he had just come back from driving an

  illegal car two times in the last month into Eastern Europe,

  crossing the borders illegally into Stalinist Eastern bloc

  countries— I never understood exactly which side he was

  on— he said both— he said he took illegal things in and illegal

  people out— borders didn’t stop him, armies didn’t stop him, I

  crossed borders with him later, he could cross any border; he

  wore a red star he said the Soviets had given him, a star o f

  honor from the government that only some party insiders ever

  got, and then he fucked them over by delivering anarchy in his

  forays in and out o f their fortressed imperial possessions. He

  had a Russian nickname, his nom de guerre, and since his life was

  subversion, an assault on society, war against all shit and all

  authority, his nom de guerre was his name, the only name

  anyone knew he had; no one could trace him to his fam ily, his

  origins, where he slept: a son paying rent. Except me. In fact

  the cops arrested him for not paying traffic tickets, thousands

  o f dollars, under the conventional birth name; he ended in the

  real prison resisting arrest. Even in jail he was still safely

  underground, the nom de guerre unconnected to him, the body

  in custody. When I married him I got his real name planted on

  me by law and I knew his secrets, this one and then others,

  slow ly all o f them, the revolutionary ones and the ones that

  went with being a boy o f his time, his class, his parents, a boy

  raised to conform, a boy given a dull, stupid name so he would

  be dull and stupid, a boy named to become a man who would

  live to collect a pension. I was M rs. him, the female one o f him

  by law, a legal incarnation o f what he fucking hated, an actual

  legal entity, because there is no Mrs. nom de guerre and no girl’s

  name ever mattered on the streets or underground, not her

  own real name anyway, only if she was some fox to him, a

  legendary fox. I was one: yeah, a great one. I had m y time. But

  it was nasty to become Mrs. his Christian names and his

  daddy’s last name, the w ay they say M rs. Edw ard Jam es Fred

  Smith, as if she’s not Sally
or Jane; the wedding was m y

  baptism, m y naming, Mrs. what he hates, the one who needs

  furniture and money, the one you come home to which means

  you got to be somewhere, a rule, a law, Mrs. the law, the one

  who says get the mud o ff your shoes because it’s dirtying the

  floor, the one who just cleaned the fucking floor after all. I

  never thought about mud in my whole fucking life but when

  you clean the floor you want to be showed respect. I lived with

  him before we got married; we were great street fighters; we

  were great. N o one could follow the chaos we made, the

  disruptions, the lightning-fast transgressions o f law; passports, borders, taking people or things here or there; street actions, explosions, provocations, property destruction, sand

  in gas tanks, hiding deserters from Vietnam, the occasional

  deal. We had a politics o f making well-defined chaos,

  strategically brilliant chaos; then we made love. We did the

  love because we had run our blood together; it was fraternal

  love but between us, a carnal expression o f brotherhood in the

  revolutionary sense, a long, fraternal embrace for hours or

  days, in hiding, in the hours after when we wanted to

  disappear, be gone from the world o f public accountability;

  and he whispered Andrea, he whispered it urgently, he was

  urgent and frantic, an intense embrace. He taught me to cook;

  in rented rooms all over Europe he taught me to cook; a bed, a

  hot plate, he taught me to make soup and macaroni and

  sausages and cabbage; and I thought it meant he was specially

  taking care o f me, he was m y friend, he loved me, w e’d make

  love and he’d cook. H e’d learned in the N avy, mass meals

  enhanced by his private sense o f humor and freedom, the jokes

  he would tell in the private anarchy o f the relatively private

  kitchen, more personal freedom than anywhere else, doing

  anything else. He got thrown out; they tried to order him

  around, especially one vicious officer, he didn’t take shit from

  officers, he poured a bowl o f hot soup over the officer’s head,

  he was in the brig, you get treated bad and you toughen up

  or break and his rebellion took on aspects o f deadly force, he