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 detail: 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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