Ice And Fire

by Andrea Dworkin

  wall had become an illusion, a mere hallucination of the solid,

  a phantom, a chimera, an oasis born of delirium for the poor

  fool who thirsted for a home, shelter, a place inside not outside,

  a place distinctly different from the cold streets of displacement

  and dispossession, a place barricaded from weather and wind

  and wet.

  Each day— each and every day— I walked, six hours, eight

  hours, so as not to be poisoned and die. Each day there was no

  way to stay inside and also to breathe because the wind did

  not move the fumes any more than it moved the cold: both

  were permanent and penetrating, staining the lungs, bruising

  the eyes. Each day, no matter how cold or wet or ugly or dusty

  or hot or wretched, the windows were open and I walked:

  anywhere: no money so there was little rest: few stops: no

  bourgeois indulgences: just cement. And each night, I crawled

  back home, like a slug, dragging the day’s fatigue behind me,

  dreading the cold open exposed night ahead. In my room,

  where I worked writing, the windows were never closed because the stench and poison were too thick, too choking. After midnight, I could close two windows in the living room just

  so no one went in it and just so they were open again by 6

  am when the cooks heated up the grease to begin again.

  Sometimes, in my room, writing, my fingers were jammed

  stiff from the cold. Sometimes the typewriter rebelled, too

  cold to be pushed along. I found a small electric heater, and

  if I placed it just right, out of the wind but not so close to

  me that my clothes would burn, my fingers would regain

  feeling and they would begin to bend subtly and hit the right

  keys, clumsy, slow, but moving with deliberation. Less

  numbed, they moved, a slow dance of heroic movement:

  words on a page.

  Each night, until dawn was finally accomplished, fully alive

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  and splendid, I wrote, and then I would crawl, broken-hearted

  and afraid of dying, to one small distant room, the size of a

  large closet, where the fumes were less, and I would sleep on

  the floor on an old Salvation Army mattress with springs that

  some reformed alcoholic had never quite finished under an

  open window. I would dream: oh, Freud, tell me, what could it

  mean: of cold, of stench, of walking, of perhaps dying. Morbid

  violences and morbid defeats: cement, rain, wind, ice. Time

  would pass: I would tremble: I would wake up screaming:

  driven back to sleep to be warmer, I would dream of cold, of

  stench, of walking, of perhaps dying. Then, it would be time

  to wake up. I would be tired and trembling, so tired. I would

  walk, six hours, eight hours. After the first two winters I never

  got warm. Even in the hell of tenement heat, I never got warm.

  I dreaded cold like other people are afraid of being tortured:

  could they stand it, would they tell, would they beg, would

  they die first right away, struck down by dread, would they

  dirty their pants, would they beg and crawl. I wanted to surrender but no one would accept my confession and finish me off.

  He kissed me against my will and then I walked home,

  slowly, in the rain, wet.

  My love, the boy I lived with, lay sleeping, curled up in a ball,

  fetal, six feet, blond, muscled, and yet his knees were drawn

  up to his chest and his sweet yellow curls fell like a two-year-

  old’s over his pale, drawn face, and his skin was nearly translucent, the color of ice spread out over great expanses of earth.

  He was dressed in layers of knitted wool, thermal pants and

  shirts, sweatshirts: we always wore all we had inside. The quilt

  with a wool blanket on top of it had shifted its place and his

  knees and face were brought together, his hands lost somewhere between them. I sat watching him, lost, in this room of his. He was on brown sheets. The radiator clanged and

  chugged: the noise it made was almost deafening, only in this

  room. There were big windows, and a fire escape splayed out

  under them going down to the treacherous street. There was a

  big desk buried under piles of papers. There were books,

  thrown, strewn, left for months open at one place so that the

  binding broke and the page itself seemed pressed to death.

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  There were books in all stages of being opened and closed

  with passages marked and pages bent and papers wedged into

  the seams of the binding with hand-scribbled notes, yellowing.

  The books were everywhere in great piles and clusters, under

  typewriter paper that simply spread like some wild growth in

  moist soil, under heaps of dirty clothes, under old newspapers

  that were now documents of an older time, under shoes and

  socks, under discarded belts, under old undershirts, under long-

  forgotten soda bottles not quite empty, under glasses ringed

  with wet, under magazines thrown aside in the second before

  sleep. Oh, my love could sleep. In the ice, in wind, in rain, in

  fire, my love could sleep. I watched him, content, a goldenhaired child, some golden infant, peaceful, at ease in the world of coma and unremembered dreams. It was Christian sleep, we

  both agreed, mostly Protestant, impervious to guilt or worry

  or pain, Christ had died for him. To my outsider’s eye it was

  grace. It soothed, it was succor, it was an adoring visitor, a

  faithful friend, it loved and rested him, and he knew no suffering that withstood its gentle solace. I had seen the same capacity for sleep in persons less kind, one was born to it, the

  great and deep and easy sleep reserved for those not meant to

  remember.

  I sat on the other side of the room where he slept, in a

  typing chair bought in the cheapest five and dime, slightly built,

  perilous, covered in cat hair. His desk was huge, an old, used

  table, big enough to hold the confusion, which, regardless,

  simply billowed over its edges and onto the floor. The ground

  between the typing chair and his heavy, staid double bed was a

  false garden of tangle and weeds, or a minefield in the dark,

  but he slept with the light on, even he never quite safe because

  it was more like sleeping outside than sleeping inside. He would

  never be vagabonded: never desolate and out in the cold. But I

  would be, someday, putting on all the old trashy clothes, army

  surplus, of these cold years, walking forever, simply settling

  outside because inside was ridiculous, too silly, an insupportable idea: the absurd idea that this was a place to live.

  Sleep kept him believing he had a home— somewhere, after all,

  to sleep. But I spent the nights awake, I had to sit at a desk,

  turn on electric lights, refer to many different and highly

  important books, pace, sharpen pencils, change typewriter

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  ribbons, make drafts, take notes, make phone calls, in meaningful and purposeful ways, with dignity and skill, physically inside, certainly inside. That old woman I would soon be,

  always outside, sat right near me, I could smell her savage

  skin, the mixture of sweat and ice, fear and filth. I already had

  her sores on my feet and her bitterness in my heart. I knew

  her: I was her already, carefully concealing it:
waiting for the

  events between this moment and later when I would be her.

  My gray hair would hang from the dirty saliva in my mouth

  and I would push along some silly belongings: books no doubt,

  and some writings, and maybe a frazzled cat on a leash, because

  otherwise I would be desperately lonely. Between us, this old

  woman and me, there was just this sweet sleeping boy, a giant

  of pale beauty and barely conceivable kindness. He was at

  least slightly between her and me, and all my rush to despair

  was moderated by this small quiet miracle of our time together

  on earth. There was nothing perfect in it: but it was gentle: for

  me, the kindest love in a life of being loved too much. I sat in

  the typing chair, warmed by watching him sleep that foreign

  sleep of peace, I watched him and I believed in his peace and

  his rest: what was impossible he made real: and then his eyes

  fluttered open, and with so many different sounds in his voice,

  the whole range of calling and wanting, he called me: said my

  name, reached out, and I walked over and touched his hand:

  and he said, you’re home, and he asked what was wrong.

  And I raged. I bellowed. I howled. I was delirious with pain.

  I was shrill with humiliation. I was desperate with accusation

  and paranoid but defensible prophecy and acrid recrimination

  against what would happen to me. To me. The insufferable

  editor, the arrogance, the terms of the agreement: my fury, my

  rage, my memory of my life as a woman. Nearly keening in

  anguish, I told him about the cafe, the literature, the obsessed

  man, the kiss.

  “ You’ve done it before, ” he said quietly. And went back to

  sleep.

  *

  You know what I meant. This is the world you live in. You’ve

  done it before, he said. Oh, yes.

  Shit you know what I meant.

  You know what I meant.

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  I am trying to pace, windows open, under the weight-of

  blankets. He is sitting up on his bed, under blankets.

  You know what I meant.

  Oh, I do.

  Some things are true. What he meant is true. I know what, I

  know how, I know where, I know when, I even know why.

  Oh, I do.

  *

  But I don’t want to.

  He says my name. Please, he says, wanting me to stop.

  But really, I don’t want to.

  He says my name, pleading. Please, he says, please, I know,

  I know, but what can you do?

  But I don’t want to. I want, I say, I want, I say, to be this

  human being, and I want, I say, I want, to have somebody

  publish my book, I say, this simple thing, I say, I want, I want,

  I say, to be treated just like a human being, I say, and I don’t

  want, I say, I don’t want, I say, to have to do this. I have

  nowhere else to go, no one else who will do this simple thing,

  publish my book, but I don’t want to have to do this.

  He says my name, softly. Please, he says, please, stop, you

  must, he says, stop, because, he says, this is making me crazy,

  he says, softly he calls my name, please, he says, there is

  nothing to do, he says, calling my name softly and weeping,

  what is there to do, what can you do?

  I want, I say, I want to be treated a certain way, I say. I

  want, I say, to be treated like a human being, I say, and he,

  weeping, calls my name, and says please, begging me in the

  silence not to say another word because his heart is tearing

  open, please, he says, calling my name. I want, I say, to be

  treated, I say, I want, I say, to be treated with respect, I say, as

  if, I say, I have, I say, a right, I say, to do what I want to do, I

  say, because, I say, I am smart, and I have written, and I am

  good, and I do good work, and I am a good writer, and I have

  published, and I want, I say, to be treated, I say, like someone,

  I say, like a human being, I say, who has done something, I

  say, like that, I say, not like a whore, not like a whore, I say,

  not any more, I say, and he says, calling my name, his tongue

  whispering my name, he says, calling my name and weeping,

  please, I know, I know. And I say to him, seriously, someday I

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  will die from this, just from this, just from being treated like a

  whore, nothing else, I will die from it. And he says dryly, with

  a certain self-evident truth on his side: you will probably die

  from pneumonia actually. Ice hangs, ready to cut each chest. I

  hesitate, then crack up. We collapse, laughing. The blankets

  bury us alive.

  *

  He sleeps curled up blond, like a pale infant, in a room five

  floors above a desperate street corner. The windows are open,

  of course, and he sleeps, pale and dreamless, curled up and

  calm. The stairs outside his windows, rusty and fragile, go

  from our tenement heaven down to the grimmest cement. The

  sirens passing that corner blast the brick building, so that we

  might be in a war zone, each siren blast meaning we must get

  up and run to a shelter to hide. But there is no shelter. There is

  the occasional bomb by terrorist groups. Arson. Prostitutes.

  Pimps. Junkies. Old men, vagabonded, drunk with running

  sores, abscesses running obscene with green pus, curled up like

  my love, but blocking our doorway, on the front step, on the

  sidewalk under the step, behind the garbage cans, curled up

  just in the middle of the cement anywhere, just wherever they

  stopped. The blasts of the sirens go all day and all night and in

  between them huge buses make the building shake and wild

  taxis careen with screeching brakes. Cars rocket by, men with

  guns and clubs sounding their sirens, flashing lights that spread

  a fierce red glare into our little home: red flashing lights that

  climb five flights in the space of a second and illuminate us

  whatever we are doing, wherever we stand, in one second a

  whorish red, turn us and everything we see and touch into a

  grotesque special effect. Sirens that blare and blast and make

  the brick shake, announcing fire or murder or rape or a simple

  beating. Screams sometimes that come from over there, or

  behind that building, or in the courtyard, or some other apartment, or the nice man with the nice dog ranting at his mother over eighty and her screaming for help. Across the street there

  is a disco: parties for hire and music that makes the light

  fixtures quake between the siren blasts. Sometimes a flight

  above us, right near the roof, the filthy vagabonds sneak

  in and hide, piss and shit, urine runs down the hall stairs

  from the roof and a stench befouls even the awful air, and so

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  cautiously the police are called, because the drunken, ruthless

  men might be armed, might hit, might rape: might kill.

  The sirens blast the air, wind runs wild like plague through

  the rooms: and outside on the street men are curled up in fetal

  position, all hair and scabs and running sores, feet bandaged

  in newspaper and dirty torn cloth, eyes running pus, a bottle,

  sometimes broken to be used as a weapon, hel
d close to the

  chest. The women on the great spiked heels, almost as cold as

  we are, can barely stand. They wobble from the fix, their

  shoulders hang down, their eyes hang down, their skin gets

  yellow or ochre, their faces are broken out in blotches, their

  hair is dry and dead and dirty, their knees buckle: they are too

  undressed for the cold: they can barely walk from the fix: they

  have broken teeth: they have bruises and scars and great

  running tracks: and all this they try to balance on four-inch,

  six-inch, heels; toe-dancers in the dance of death. On this

  corner mostly they are thin, too thin, hungered-away thin,

  smacked-away thin: thin and yellow.

  In the park down at the end of the block, not far away, the

  drugs change hands. The police patrol the park: giving tickets

  to those who take their dogs off the leash. In the daylight, four

  boys steal money from an old man and run away, not too fast,

  why bother. The dealers sit and watch. The police stroll by as

  the deals are being made. Any dog off a leash is in for serious

  trouble.

  Ambulances drag by. Cars hopped up sounding like a great

  wall falling flash by, sometimes crashing past a streetlight

  and bending it forever. Buses trudge with their normal

  human traffic. The cops coast by, sometimes with sirens,

  sometimes flashing red, just to get past the stoplight. Fire

  engines pass often, fast, serious, all siren and flashing light:

  this is serious. Arson. Bad electrical wiring. Old tenements,

  like flint. Building code violations. Whole buildings flame up.

  We see the fires, the smoke, the red lights. First we hear the

  sirens, see the flashing light with its crimson brilliance, then

  we ask, is it here, is it us? We make jokes: that would warm

  us up. Where are the cats? Can we get them out in time? We

  have a plan, a cage we can pull down from a storage place

  (we have no closets, only planks scattered above our heads,

  hanging on to the edges of walls), and then we can rush

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  them all in and rush out and get away: to where? He sleeps.

  How?

  On TV news we see that in New York City where we live