sister too. A grown-up woman cannot pretend to be a virgin.
*
He knows what I love and what I need and what I do not
have. He knows I love music. He knows I live in the cold, in
the wind. He knows I haven’t been able to buy steak. He puts
on music. His record collection is sublime: it is an ecstasy for
me: the sound embraces and pierces: his taste is exquisite: he
makes me a concert: we don’t have to talk: I am happy in the
music: he leaves me alone and makes dinner, runs out now
and then to change the music, each piece more beautiful, more
haunting, more brilliant than the one before it: he knows music:
he educates me tastefully and then leaves me to listen. He
interrupts to tell me stories about himself, how when he was
sick certain pieces of music healed him, the story is long and
boring, I listen quietly feigning interest, he will now play those
pieces for me: they could make the dead walk: they are the
deepest layers of sex, the deepest sensual circles transmuted to
formal beauty, ordered, repeated in unspeakably beautiful
patterns, sound on sound, sound inside sound, sounds weaved,
sounds pulling the body into an involuntary happiness unrelated to human time, real life, or narrative detaiclass="underline" sounds deeper than sex: sounds entirely perfect and piercing. He
doesn’t put on one record and leave it. He changes, weaves,
composes, interlaces: just enough, just not quite enough, it
leaves you wanting, wanting, needing more.
Dinner is ready, two steaks. We sit next to each other at the
big round table. Now he is close enough to whisper. I will tell
you, he says, why I am publishing your book, he is whispering,
I have to strain closer to hear; I will tell you, he says, whisper
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ing, why, the real reason. He is whispering, my ear is almost
up against his lips to catch the passing breath, the words just
barely discernible on the edge of breathing out. I will tell you,
he says, why. Meat juice and fat glisten in his moustache and
zing past my ear.
*
He was a schoolboy, probably around fourteen. A teacher and
some older boys gang-raped him for hours and cut him up all
over with knives.
*
He tells it slowly, detail by detaiclass="underline" the way raped people talk:
once one starts the whole story must be told, nothing can be
omitted. I see it.
*
I am shaking in pain and rage. I cannot talk. My skin is
crawling in terror. I see it.
*
I see it. I see the boy. I see him, the boy, the child. I see him on
the table where they did it. I see the torn membranes inside
him, the bleeding, the tearing destruction. I see the knife cuts. I
feel the pain. I see that he was a child. I see that he was raped.
I don’t look at the adult male beside me. I shake in pain and
rage. I am numb with anger: for him, for us: the raped.
*
He says he sees the man sometimes, the teacher. He says he
did the one thing the man would find unbearable: talked to
him. He says to me: that’s something you will never understand. I say: never. I swear: never. I take an oath: never.
*
I am publishing your book because I know it’s true.
*
I am numb. I want to cry but I do not cry. I don’t cry over
rape any more. I burn but I don’t cry. I shake but I don’t cry. I
get sick to my stomach but I don’t cry. I scream inside so that
my silent shrieking drowns the awful pounding of my heart
but I don’t cry. I am too weak to move but I don’t cry. I
haven’t a tear for him. I sit there, immobile, watching the boy
on the table. I see him.
*
He clears the table. We go back to the sofas. I sit far away
from him. I am quiet: stunned, like from a blow to the head. I
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sit and stare. That is why, he says. It is more than a pledge: it
is a blood oath: he has run our blood together. He has gotten
my loyalty: a loyalty above personality, liking, not liking,
wanting, not wanting, outside time and daily desires. He puts
on Madame Butterfly before she commits suicide. My pain is
insane. I do not notice his horrible and cynical wit.
*
I am of course now very gentle with him: in the past I have
been harsh but now I know this, I have seen this, the boy,
raped, I know why he cares about my writing, it is a secret
reason, deep, terrifying: I must treat him with sincerity, respect,
like one of us: the raped. I must not hate him for wanting to
be close to me anymore. I must not hate him.
*
By now it is 1 1 pm. I try to go. He keeps me there. There is
another story to tell about his parents or his sister. He shows
me his bedroom: one night he picked up a baseball team and
brought them all back here and got fucked by all of them. I go
out of the bedroom to leave. There is another book to discuss.
There is another record to hear. He tells me lots of stories
about sex, lovers, adventures. I am clear, precise. I am ready to
go. There is something he must show me. There is something
he must tell me. There is something I must see. There is
someone I must meet. I am ready to go. He plays a record by
Nichols and May, a couple in bed having just fucked discussing
“ relating” through prisms of intellectual pretension. It is right
on the mark, but we are precoital. I have to go. There is a
book he must give me. There is a book he must find. There is
a drawing I must see. It is in his bedroom. We stand there
together, looking. I have my jacket on. I am like a runner,
ready to sprint. There is something he must show me. There is
something he must get me. He finds me a long-out-of-print
early book by Thomas Mann and a dozen other books, too
much for me to carry. I want the books, very much. He finds
me a shopping bag. I think about the empty streets. I need my
hands free, I don’t know if I can find a cab, I leave the books
there, I ask him to bring them to his office where I will pick
them up. It is 4 am. I run out. I am exhausted and confused. I
don’t know what he wants. I know what I want: a publisher,
not a lover; a publisher, not a barter. I think he wants me but I
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insist to myself I am me, not a woman, the signs are no longer
in my symbology, I do not speak that language, I do not
practice that religion: I have seen him, a child, gang-raped, cut
with knives, it is why he wants to be near me, I am required by my