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“He just loved to swim. And while he was swimming, sometimes he glanced at me. Or off at a sea bird.

“When he looked away, I threw the rock over.

“The splash wet me to my waist. Over the time of a breath, in and out, while the boat rocked up and down, all the curves in the rope disappeared.

“And still paddling, Pharaoh jerked to the side — and went under.

“There were ripples, moving in to and out from the boat.

“There were the obligatory gulls — one swooped close enough to startle me, making me sit back on the seat. Then it flew away.

“The paper mill squatted in its smelly haze across the harbor.

“But it was over.

“Like that.

“I waited ten minutes.

“I’d thought to sit there perhaps an hour or so, being alone with myself, with the water, with what I’d done — just thinking. But after ten minutes — because of the gull, I think — I realized I’d done it, and I rowed back to the Pasilimani dock.

“Although I cried when I saw the poor dog out behind the house, I didn’t cry with Pharaoh. I’m really surprised about that — about how little I felt. I suppose I didn’t feel worse than any other murderer who has to do things like that daily for a living — a highway bandit; a state executioner. I wonder why that is?

“Cosima thought I was just a terrible person, and kept saying that there must have been something else I could have done.

“But there wasn’t. And I hope she comes to realize that. I hope you realize it too.

“I used to say the Greeks were barbarians, and you would laugh at me and tell me that people’s believing they could deal with the world in such general terms was what made it so awful. And I would laugh at you back. But now I know that I am the barbarian. Not the Greeks who are too hungry to understand why anyone would keep a dog. Not the Germans who managed to kill so many, many Jews with their beautiful languages, Yiddish and Hebrew, and who, still, someday, I hope will let me into their country to study. Not the southern whites like Jerry and DeLys who lynch and burn Negroes like you. Not the Negroes like you who are ignorant and lazy and oversexed and dangerous to white women like me.

“Me — and not the others, at all; not you, not them.

“Me.

“I loved my Pharaoh so much. He’s gone. My memories of him are beautiful, though.

“I hope someday you will write something about him. And about me — even though you have to say terrible things of me for what I did. And because of how little I felt when I did it. But, then, you haven’t written me at all. Maybe you’ll just forget us both.”

That was her only letter.

— Amherst

September 1990