nation. The rock was barren and empty and soon it would be a
cemetery and the bloodletting would become a story; nearly
fiction, nearly a lie; abridged, condensed, cleaned up; as if
killing nine hundred and sixty people, men, women, and
children, by slicing their throats was an easy thing, neat and
clean, simple and quiet; as if there was no sex in it and no
meanness; as if no one was forced, held down, shut up; well,
frankly, murdered; as i f no one was murdered; as if it was
noble and perfect, a bloodless death, a murderless murder, a
mass suicide with universal consent, except for the women
and the children; except for them. Y ou get sad, if you
understand. The men were purely male, noble and perfect, in
behalf o f all the Jew s; the young ones especially, strong
animals, real men, prideful men, physically perfect specimens
dark and icy with glistening thighs, ideologically pure,
racially proud, idealists with racial pride; pure, perfect,
uncorrupted nationalists; beautiful fascists; cold killing boys;
until God, ever wise, ever vicious, turned them into girls. I
was probably an old woman making a fool o f herself with
memories and desires, all the natural grace and learned artifice
o f young women burned away by wear and tear and the awful,
hot sun. Still, sometimes you’d like to feel one o f the young
ones against you, a last time, one last time; nasty, brutish,
short. It’s a dumb nostalgia. They never were very good, not
the fathers, not the sons. O r maybe I was some sentimental old
fool w h o ’d always been a faithful wife, except once, I was
lonely and he was urgent, and I had a dozen grandchildren so
this rock knew m y blood already, I had labored here, and now
I sat, old, under the sun, and m y brain got heated with
foresight and grief and I saw them as they soon would be,
corpses with their throats slit, and maybe I howled in pain, an
animal sound, or I denounced them in real words, and the
young men said she’s an old fool, she’s an old idiot, she’s
loony, ignore her, it’s nonsense, and I tried to tell the girls and
the children how they’d be killed soon, with the awful slice
across the throat; these are fanatic boys, I said, driven by an
idea, I said, it is murder, not suicide, what they will do to you;
and they asked if it was the will o f God and o f course now I see
w hy you must lie but I said yes, it’s His will, always, that we
should suffer and die, the will o f God is wrong, I said, we have
to defy the will o f God, we have to defy the Romans and the
Je w s and the will o f God, we have to find a w ay to live, us, you
see, us; she’s loony, they said; you’ll be stretched out, I said,
beautiful and young, too soon, dressed and ornamented, and
your throats will be naked as if your husbands are going to use
