The Genocides

Before she lowered the curtain that partitioned Blossom’s bed from the rest of the commonroom, she asked if Blossom had said her prayers.

“Oh, Mother!”

Lady lowered the curtain without either condoning or reproaching her daughter’s ambiguous protest. Her husband, certainly, would have seen it as an impiety—and punishable.

Lady could not help being pleased that Blossom was not so impressionable (and if the girl had a fault, it was that)  to be led too fervently or too fearfully to adopt her father’s fierce, unreasoning Calvinism. If one had to behave like an infidel, Lady believed, it was sheer hypocrisy to pass oneself off as a Christian. Indeed, she very much doubted whether the god to whom her husband prayed existed. If be did, why pray to him? He had made His choice some eons ago. He was like the old Aztec gods who had demanded blood sacrifice on their stone altars. A jealous, vengeful god; a god for primitives; a bloody god. What was the scripture Anderson had chosen last Sunday? One of the minor prophets. Lady shuffled through the pages of her husband’s great Bible. There it was, in Nahum: “God is jealous, and the Lord revengeth; the Lord revengeth, and is furious; the Lord will take vengeance on his adversaries, and he reserveth wrath for his enemies.” Ah, that was God all over!

When the curtain was down, Blossom crawled out of bed and obediently said her prayers. Gradually the rote formulas gave way to her own requests—first, for impersonal benefactions (that the harvest be good, that the next marauders be luckier and escape), then for more delicate favors (that her hair might grow faster so that she could set it in curls again, that her breasts would fill out just a little more, though they were already quite full for her age—for which she gave thanks). At last, snuggling back in bed, these formal requests gave way to mere wishful thinking, and she longed for the things which were no longer or which were yet to be.

When she fell asleep, the machinery outside was still grinding on.

A noise woke her, something woke her. There was still a little light from the lamp. “What is it?” she asked sleepily.

Her brother Neil was standing at the foot of her bed. His face was strangely vacant. His mouth was open: his chin hung slack. He seemed to see her, but she could not interpret the expression in his eyes.

“What is it?” she asked again, more sharply.

He did not reply. He did not move. He was wearing the pants he bad worn all that day and there was blood on them.

“Go away, Neil. What did you want to wake me up for?”

His lips moved, as though in sleep, and his right hand made several gestures, emphasizing the unspoken words of his dream. Blossom pulled her thin cover up to her chin and sat up in bed. She screamed, having only meant to tell him to go away a little louder, so he would hear her.

Lady slept lightly, and Blossom did not have to scream more than once. “Are you having nightmares, my— Neil! What are you doing here? Neil?”

“He won’t say anything, Mother. He just stands there and he won’t answer me.”

Lady grabbed her oldest son—now that Jimmie was dead, her only son—by the shoulder and shook him roughly. The right hand made more emphatic gestures, but the eyes seemed to stare less raptly now. “Huh?” he mumbled.

“Neil, you go to Greta now, do you hear? Greta is waiting for you.”

“Huh?”

      “You’ve been sleepwalking—or something. Now get along.” She had already pulled him away from the bed and let the curtain drop, veiling Blossom. She was a few more minutes seeing Neil out the door, then she returned to the trembling Blossom.

“What did he want? Why did ho—”

“He’s been upset by the things that happened tonight, darling. Everyone is nervous. Your father went out walking and he isn’t back yet. It’s only nerves.”

“But why did he—”

“Who knows why we do the things we do in our dreams? Now, you’d better get to sleep again. Have your own dreams. And tomorrow—”

“But I don’t understand.”

“Let’s hope Neil doesn’t either, love. And tomorrow, not a word of this to your father, do you understand? Your father’s been upset lately, and it’s best that we keep it a secret. Just the two of us. Do you promise?”

Blossom nodded. Lady tucked her into bed. Then she went back to her own bed and waited for her husband to return. She waited till dawn, and all the while, outside, the sausage machine kept up its dreary rasping song.

Waking was pain. Consciousness was consciousness of pain. Movement was painful. It was painful to breathe.

Eddying in and out of the pain were figures of women—an old woman, a girl, a beautiful woman, and a very old woman. The beautiful woman was Jackie, and since Jackie was dead he knew he was hallucinating. The very old woman was the nurse, Alice Nemerov, R.N. When she came it was more painful, so he knew she must be real. She moved his arms and, worse, his leg. Stop that, he thought. Sometimes he would scream. He hated her because she was alive, or because she was causing his pain. He was alive too, it seemed. Otherwise, would he feel this pain? Or was it the pain that kept him alive? Oh, stop it. Sometimes he could sleep. That was best.

Ah, Jackie! Jackie! Jackie!

Soon it was more painful to think than anything else, even than having his leg moved. He was no more able to stop or diminish this pain than those that had preceded it. He lay there, while the three women came and went —the old woman, the girl and the very old woman—thinking.

The girl talked to him.

“Hello,” she said, “how are you feeling today? Can you eat this? You can’t eat anything if you won’t open your mouth. Won’t you open your mouth? Just a little? Like that—that’s fine. Your name’s Orville, isn’t it? My name’s Blossom. Alice told us all about you. You’re a mining engineer. It must be very interesting. I’ve been in a cave, but I’ve never seen a mine. Unless you call the iron pits mines. They’re just holes, though. Open a little wider, that’s better. In fact, that’s why Daddy—” She stopped. “I shouldn’t talk so much though. When you’re better, we can have long talks.”

“That’s why what?” he asked. It was more painful to talk than to eat.

“That’s why Daddy said to… said not to… I mean, both you and Miss Nemerov are alive, but we had to…”

“Kill.”

“Yes, we had to, all the rest.”

“The women too?”

“But you see, we had to. Daddy explains it better than I do, but if we didn’t do that, then the others would come back, a lot of them together, and they’re very hungry, and we don’t have enough food, even for ourselves. The winter is so cold. You can understand that, can’t you?”

He didn’t say anything more for some days.

It was as though, all that time, he had lived only for Jackie, and with her gone he no longer had any need to live. He was drained of desire for anything but sleep. When she had been alive, he had not known that she had meant so much to him, that anything could. He had never plumbed the measure of his love. He should have died with her; he had tried to. Only the pain of memory could ease the pain of regret, and nothing could ease the pain of memory.

He wanted to die. He told this to Alice Nemerov, R.N.

“Watch your tongue,” she counseled, “or they’ll oblige you. They don’t trust the two of us. We shouldn’t even talk together, or they’ll think we’re plotting. And you’d better try and get well again. Eat more. They don’t like you laying around not working. You understand what saved your life, don’t you? I did. You’re a damn fool to let them break your leg for you. Why wouldn’t you talk? They only wanted to know your occupation?”

“Jackie, was she—”

“It wasn’t any different for her than for the rest. You saw the machines. But you’ve got to get your mind off her. You—you’re lucky to be alive. Period.”

“The girl who feeds me—who is she?”