bom. she had long ago learned that the memories of men, in

whatever form, were not to be trusted, generations of men had

passed as scribes, rabbis, and storytellers and yet, bertha knew, the

real story had never been told, this was not mysterious to bertha,

since she knew that men avoided life, not respecting it, never daring

to look it squarely in the face, treasuring only their sons and their

own self-importance, this bertha might lament but she could not

change it. for those generations of scribes and rabbis and storytellers

life had been an abstract canvas full of abstract ideas—they had

obscured the actual shape of things and the actual facts of the case,

they had passed their avoidance of lines and proportions and direct

commitment on to each other over so many generations that now it

had soaked into the very marrow of their bones, and so they had invented Law and W ar and Philosophical Arguments and with all their arsenals of Culture and Learning and Civilization they had

stopped all dissent, even as their children were starving they could

ignore life and argue the philosophical ramifications of death, in

particular the men of whom bertha was thinking had worshiped

their dreadful god, Mighty Jehovah, they had argued with hard

hearts and stony arrogance His Laws to the nth degree as others who

cared only for life had washed and cooked and sewn and cleaned

and given birth and served and scrubbed and died around them, this

especially they would not look in the face.

these others, the mothers and the daughters and the mothers of

the mothers and the sisters and the aunts, had never written a word,

their arguments had no capital letters or commentaries, these others

had worked with their hands and hearts scrubbing and cooking and

enduring and though each separate life was due to them and

depended on them still they were required to be silent, not invited to

argue on the nature of existence about which they knew very much,

even as their legs were spread open in blood and pain, muscles

stretched as the head or feet came through, flesh tom from this, the

very mud of life, 8 times, 9 times, 13 times before they died, still their

views were not solicited, there the sadness was bom, over and over

again, as each new bloody head emerged and with it their insides

dislodged and gone from them and still no one asked their opinion,

this was no genteel sadness, small, pitiful, indulgent, weak, this was

a howl into the bowels of the earth, urgent, bellowing, expressed only

in the eye that cut like a knife, the mouth tangled trying to escape

the face.

this sadness grew as they saw these children flesh of their flesh live

and grow and die. this sadness grew as their children became sick,

hungry, afraid, this sadness grew during pogroms and on regular

days when there was just the family life, this sadness especially grew

as they saw their sons go off to the hard wooden benches where the

rabbis would teach them, the sons, how to read and write and

discourse on the Law and Life itself, this sadness especially grew as

Вы читаете The New Womans Broken Heart
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