dignity; I’m from his country, not the Amerika run by war
criminals, not the country that hates and kills anyone not
white. I’m from his country, not yours. Do you know the
map o f his country? “ I will not have a single person slighted or
left away. ” “ I am the poet o f the B ody and I am the poet o f the
So u l. ” “ I am the poet o f the woman the same as the m an. ” “ I
too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, / 1 sound m y
barbaric yaw p over the roofs o f the w o rld . ” “ Do I contradict
m yself? /V ery well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I
contain multitudes. )” He nursed soldiers in a different war and
wrote poems to them. It was the war that freed the slaves.
Who does this war free? He couldn’t live in Am erika now; he
would be crushed by how small it is, its mind, its heart. He
would come to this island because it has his passion and his
courage and the nobility o f simple people and a shocking,
brilliant, extreme beauty that keeps the blood boiling and the
heart alive. Am erika is dead and filled with cruel people and
ugly. Am erika is a dangerous country; it sends its police
everywhere; w hy are you policing me? I loved his America; I
hate m y Am erika, I hate it. I was the first generation after the
bomb. D idn’t we kill enough yellow people then? M y father
told me the bomb saved him, his life, him, him; he put his life
against the multitudes and thought it was worth more than all
theirs; and I don’t. Walt stood for the multitudes. Am erika
was the country o f the multitudes before it became a killing
machine. In m y mind I know I am leaving out the Indians;
Am erika always was a killing machine; but this is m y
statement to the secret police and I like having a Golden A ge
rooted in Whitman. I put his patriotism against theirs. The
War is wrong. I will tell anyone the War is w rong and suffer
any consequence and if I could I would stop it right now by
magic or by treason and pay any price. I don’t think he know s
who Walt Whitman is precisely, although Walt goes on the
list, but he is genuinely immobilized by what I have said—
because I say I hate Am erika. I’ve blasphemed and he doesn’t
recover easily though he is trained not to be stupid. He stands
very still, the tension in his shoulders and fists m aking his
body rigid, he needs his full musculature to support the
tension. He asks me if I believe in God. I say I’m Jew ish— a
dangerous thing to say to a Deep South man who will think I
killed Christ the same w ay he thinks I am killing Amerika—
and it’s hard to believe in a God who keeps murdering you. I
want to say: you’re like God, He watches like you do, and He
lies; He says He is one thing but He is another. His eyes are
cold like yours and He lies. He investigates like you do, with
the same bad faith; and He lies. He uses up your trust and He
lies. He wants blind loyalty like you do; and He lies. He kills,
and He lies. He takes the very best in you, the part that wants
to be good and pure and holy and simple, and He twists it with
threats and pain; and He lies about it, He says H e’s not doing
it, it’s someone else somewhere else, evil or Satan or someone,
not Him. I am quiet though, such a polite girl, because I don’t
want him to be able to say I am crazy so I must not say things
about God and because I want to get away from this terrible
place o f his, this sterile, terrible Amerika that can show up
anywhere because its cops can show up anywhere. He has a
very Amerikan kind o f charm— the casual but systematic
ignorance that notes deviance and never forgets or forgives it;
the pragmatic policing that cops learn from the movies—-just
figure out who the bad guys are and nail them; he’s John
Wayne posing as Norman Mailer while Norman Mailer is
posing as Ernest Hem ingway who wanted to be John Wayne.
It’s ridiculous to be an Amerikan. It’s a grief too. He doesn’t
bother me again but a Greek cop does. He wants to see my
passport. First a uniformed cop comes to where I live and then
I have to go in for questioning and the higher-up cop who is
wearing a silk suit asks me lewd questions and knows who I
have been with and I don’t want to have to leave here so I ask
him, straight out, to leave me alone and he leaves it as a threat
that maybe he will and maybe he w on ’t. I tell him he shouldn’t
do what the Amerikans tell him and he flashes rage— at me but
also at them; is this ju st another Am erikan colony, I ask him ,
and who does he work for, and I thought the people here had
pride. He is flashfires o f rage, outbursts o f fury, but it is not
just national pride. He is a dangerous man. His method o f
questioning starts out calm; then, he threatens, he seduces, he
is enraged, all like quicksilver, no warning, no logic. He
makes clear he decides here and unlike other officials I have
seen he is no desk-bound functionary. He is a man o f arbitrary
lust and real power. He is corrupt and he enjoys being cruel.
He says as much. I am straightforward because it is m y only
chance. I tell him I love it here and I want to stay and he plays
with me, he lets me know that I can be punished— arrested,
deported, or ju st jailed if he wants, when he wants, and the
Am erikan governm ent will be distinctly uninterested. I can’t
say I w asn’t afraid but it didn’t show and it w asn’t bad. He
made me afraid on purpose and he knew how. He is intensely
sexual and I can feel him fucking and breaking fingers at the
same time; he is a brilliant communicator. I’m rescued by the
appearance o f a beautiful woman in a fur coat o f all things. He
wants her now and I can go for now but he’ll get back to me if
he remembers; and, he reminds me, he always know s where I
am, day or night, he can tell me better than I can keep track. I
want him to want her for a long time. I’m almost wanting to
kiss the ground. I’ve never loved somewhere before. I’m
living on land that breathes. Even the city, cement and stone
bathed in ancient light, breathes. Even the mountains, more
stone than any man-made stone, breathe. The sea breathes and
the sky breathes and there is light and color that breathe and
the Am erikan governm ent is smaller than this, smaller and
meaner, grayer and deader, and I don’t want them to lift me
o ff it and hurt m y life forever. I came from gray Am erika,
broken, crumbling concrete, poor and stained with blood and
some o f it was m y blood from when I was on m y knees and the
men came from behind and some o f it was knife blood from
when the gangs fought and the houses seemed dipped in
blood, bricks bathed in blood; w hy was there so much blood
and what was it for— who was bleeding and w hy— was there
some real reason or was it, as it seemed to me, just for fun, let’s
play cowboy. The cement desert I had lived on was the
carapace o f a new country
, young, rich, all surging, tap-
dancing toward death, doing handstands toward death, the
tricks o f vital young men all hastening to death. Crete is old,
the stone is thousands o f years old, with blood and tears and
dying, invaders and resisters, birth and death, the mountains
are old, the ruins are stone ruins and they are old; but it’s not
poor and dirty and dying and crumbling and broken into dirty
dust and it hasn’t got the pale stains o f adolescent blood, sex
blood, gang blood, on it, the fun blood o f bad boys. It’s living
green and it’s living light and living rock and you can’t see the
blood, old blood generation after generation for thousands o f
years, as old as the stone, because the light heats it up and
burns it away and there is nothing dirty or ratty or stinking or
despondent and the people are proud and you don’t find them
on their knees. Even I’m not on my knees, stupid girl who falls
over for a shadow, who holds her breath excited to feel the
steely ice o f a knife on her breasts; Amerikan born and bred;
even I’m not on my knees. N ot even when entered from
behind, not even bent over and waiting; not on m y knees; not
waiting for bad boys to spill blood; mine. And the light burns
me clean too, the light and the heat, from the sun and from the
sex. Could you fuck the sun? That’s how I feel, like I’m
fucking the sun. I’m right up on it, smashed on it, a great,
brilliant body that is part o f its landscape, the heat melts us
together but it doesn’t burn me away, I’m flat on it and it
burns, m y arms are flat up against it and it burns, I’m flung flat
on it like it’s the ground but it’s the sun and it burns with me up
against it, arms up and out to hold it but there is nothing to
hold, the flames are never solid, never still, I’m solid, I’m still,
and I’m on it, smashed up against it. I think it’s the sun but it’s
M and he’s on top o f me and I’m burning but not to death, past
death, immortal, an eternal burning up against him and there
are waves o f heat that are suffocating but I breathe and I drown
but I don’t die no matter how far I go under. Y o u ’ve seen a fire
but have you ever been one— the red and blue and black and
orange and yellow in waves, great tidal waves o f heat, and if it
comes toward you you run because the heat is in waves that
can stop you from breathing, yo u ’ll suffocate, and you can see
the waves because they come after you and they eat up the air
behind you and it gets heavy and hard and tight and mean and
you can feel the waves coming and they reach out and grab
you and they take the air out o f the air and it’s tides o f pain
from heat, you melt, and the heat is a Frankenstein monster
made by the fire, the fire’s own heartbeat and dream, it’s the
monster the fire makes and sends out after you spreading
bigger than the fire to overcom e you and then burn you up.
But I don’t get burned up no matter how I burn. I’m
indestructible, a new kind o f flesh. Every night, hours before
dawn, we make love until dawn or sunrise or late in the
morning when there’s a bright yellow glaze over everything,
and I drift o ff into a coma o f sleep, a perfect blackness, no fear,
no m em ory, no dream, and when I open m y eyes again he is in
me and it is brute daylight, the naked sun, and I am on fire and
there is nothing else, just this, burning, smashed up against
him, outside time or anything anyone know s or thinks or
wants and it’s never enough. With Michalis before he left the
island, before M , overlapping at the beginning, it was
standing near the bed bent over it, waiting for when he would
begin, barely breathing, living clay waiting for the first touch
o f this new Rodin, Rodin the lover o f wom en. The hotel was
behind stone walls, almost like a convent, the walls covered
with vines and red and purple flowers. There was a double bed
and a basin and a pitcher o f water and tw o wom en sitting
outside the stone wall watching when I walked in with
Michalis and when I left with him a few hours later. The stone
walls hid a courtyard thick with bushes and wild flowers and
illuminated by scarlet lamps and across the courtyard was the
room with the bed and I undressed and waited, a little afraid
because I couldn’t see him, waited the w ay he liked, and then
his hands were under my skin, inside it, inside the skin on my
back and under the muscles o f my shoulders, his hands were
buried in my body, not the orifices but the fleshy parts, the
muscled parts, thighs and buttocks, until he came into me and
I felt the pain. With Michel, before M , half Greek, half French,
I screamed because he pressed me flat on my stomach and kept
m y legs together and came in hard and fast from the back and I
thought he was killing me, murdering me, and he put his hand
over my mouth and said not to scream and I bit into his hand
and tore the skin and there was blood in m y mouth and he bit
into my back so blood ran down my back and he pulled my
hair and gagged me with his fist until the pain itself stopped me
from screaming. With G, a teenage boy, Greek, maybe
fifteen, it was in the ruins under an ancient, cave-like arch, a
tunnel you couldn’t stand up in; it was outside at night on the
old stone, on rubble, on garbage, fast, exuberant, defiant,
thrilled, rough, skirt pulled up and torn on the rocks, skin
ripped on the rocks, semen dripping down m y legs. Y ou
could hear the sea against the old stone walls and the rats
running in the rubble and then we kissed like teenagers and I
walked away. With the Israeli sailor it was on a small bed in a
tiny room with the full moon shining, a moon almost as huge
as the whole sky, and I was mad about him. He was inept and
sincere and I was mad about him, insane for his ignorance and
fumbling and he sat on top o f me, inside me, absolutely still,
touching m y face in long, gentle strokes, and there was a steely
light from the moon, and I was mad for him. I wanted the
moon to stay pinned in the sky forever, full, and the silly boy
never to move. Once M and I went to the Venetian walls high
above the sea. There was no moon and the only light was from
the water underneath, the foam skipping on the waves. There
was a ledge a few feet wide and then a sheer drop down to the
sea. There was wind, fierce wind, lashing wind, angry wind, a
cold wind, foreign, with freezing, cutting water in it from
some other continent, wrathful, wanting to purge the ledge
and own the sea. A ll night we fucked with the wind trying to
push us down to death and I tore m y fingers against the stone
trying to hold on, the skin got stripped o ff m y hands, and
sometimes he was against the wall and m y head fell backwards
going down toward the sea and on the Roman walls we fucked
for who was braver and who was stronger and w ho w asn’t
afraid to die. He wanted to find fear in me so he could leave
/>
me, so he could think I was less than him. He wanted to leave
me. He was desperate for freedom from love. On the Roman
wall we fucked so far past fear that I knew there was only me,
it didn’t matter where he went or what he did, it didn’t matter
who with or how many or how hard he tried. There was just
me, the one they kept telling him was a whore, all his great
friends, all the men who sat around scratching themselves, and
no matter how long he lived there would be me and if he was
dead and buried there would still be me, ju st me. I couldn’t
breathe without him but they expect that from a woman. I’d
have so much pain without him I w ouldn’t live for a minute.
But he w asn’t supposed to need me so bad you could see him
ripped up inside from a mile away. The pain w asn’t supposed
to rip through him; from wanting me; every second; now. He
was supposed to come and go, where he wanted, when he
wanted, get laid when he wanted, do this or that to me, what
he wanted, sex acts, nice and neat, ju icy and dirty but nice and
neat picked from a catalogue o f what men like or what men
pay for, one sex act followed by another sex act and then he
goes aw ay to someone else or to somewhere else, a kiss i f he
condescends, I blow him, a fuck, twice if he has the time and
likes it and feels so inclined; and I’m supposed to wait in
between and when he shows up I’m supposed to suck and I’m
supposed to rub, faster now, harder now, or he can rub, taster
now, harder now, inside me if he wants; and there’s some
chat, or some money, or a cigarette, or maybe sometimes a
fast dinner in a place where no one will see. But he’s burning so
bright it’s no secret he’s on fire; and it’s me. Anyone near him
is blinded, the heat hurts them, their skin melts, more than
they ever feel when they fuck rubbing themselves in and out o f
a woman. H e’s burning but he’s not indestructible. H e’s the
sun; I’m smashed up against him; but the sun burns itself up;
one day it will be cold and dead. He’s burning towards death
and a man’s not supposed to. A dry fuck with a dry heart is
Mercy Page 12
