Mercy

by Andrea Dworkin

  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

  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

  here, but I couldn’t write, or read; I was an old woman, tough,

  proud, strong, fierce, quiet now as if dumb, a thick quiet, an

  intense, disciplined quiet; I was an old woman, wild, tough,

  proud, with square shoulders muscled from carrying, from

  hard labor, sitting on a rock, a hard, barren rock, a terrible

  rock; there was a wom an sitting on a rock, she was strong, she

  was fierce, she was wild, she wasn’t afraid, she looked straight

  ahead, not down like wom en now , she was dark and dirty,

  maybe mad, maybe just old, near naked with rags covering

  her, her hair was long and shining and dirty, a gleaming silver

  under the hot, white sun; but wild is perhaps not the right

  word because she was calm, upright, quiet, in intentional

  solitude, her eyes were big and fearless and she faced the world

  head-on not averting her eyes the w ay women do now; she

  could see; she didn’t turn her eyes away. She was sitting on a

  hard, barren rock under a hot, white sun, and then the sun

  went down, got lower in the sky, lower and lower yet, a little

  lower; the sun got lower and the light got paler, then duller;

  the sun got low and she took a piece o f rock, a sharp piece o f

  rock, and she cut her throat; I cut my throat. N o Romans; no

  fascist Jew ish boys however splendid their thighs or pristine

  their ideals; no. Mine was a righteous suicide; a political refusal

  to sanction the current order; to say black was white. Theirs

  was mass murder. A child can’t commit suicide. You have to

  murder a child. I co
uldn’t watch the children killed; I couldn’t

  watch the women taken one last time; throats bared; heads

  thrown back, or pushed back, or pulled back; a man gets on

  top, who knows what happens next, any time can be the last

  time, slow murder or fast, slow rape or fast, eventual death, a

  surprise or you are waiting with a welcome, an open

  invitation; rape leading, inexorably, to death; on a bare rock,

  invasion, blood, and death. Massada; hear my heart beat; hear

  me; the women and children were murdered, except me, I was

  not, when you say Massada you say m y name, I discovered

  pride there, I outlined freedom, out from under, Him and him

  and him; let him put the sword in your hand, little sister, then

  see; don’t love them; don’t obey. It wasn’t delirium; or fear; I

  saw freedom. Does Massada thrill you, do you weep with

  pride and sorrow for the honor o f the heroes, the so-called

  suicides? Then you weep for me, I make you proud, the

  woman on the rock; a pioneer o f freedom; a beginning; for

  those who had no say but their throats were ripped open; for

  the illiterate in invisible chains; a righteous suicide; a resistance

  suicide; mad woman; mad-dog suicide; this girl here’s got a

  ripped throat, Andrea, the zealot, freedom is the theory,

  suicide the practice; m y story begins at Massada, I begin there,

  I see a woman on a rock and I was born in blood, the blood

  from her throat carried by time; I was born in blood, the slit

  between the legs, the one God did H im self so it bleeds forever,

  one clean cut, a perfect penetration, the m emory o f Massada

  marked on me, my covenant with her; God sliced me, a

  perfect penetration, then left me like carrion for the others, the

  ones He made like Him, in His own image as they always say,

  as they claim with pride, or vanity I would say, or greed; pride

  is me, deciding at Massada, not Him or him or him. Y o u ’re

  born in blood, washed in it, you swim out in it, immersed in

  it, it’s your first skin, warm , hot on fragile, wrinkled,

  discolored flesh; w e’re born to bleed, the ones He sliced