Andrea Dworkin - The New Womans Broken Heart

bertha understands dust but wishes she were not of it. she is tired of

dust clinging and she is tired of dust scattering and she is tired of

dust coming at her in terrible storms and she is tired of being made

of a substance so ultimately ridiculous, something so substantial and

so insubstantial at the same time, something that passes through

ones fingers* which are dust, like dust, bertha longs for the only lover

she has ever trusted, Disembodied Wisdom, but it is gone, strongly

reminding her of dust, maybe whatever dust touches turns to dust.

bertha had what was, from her point of view, a reliable com-

monsense perspective, all loss was measured against atrocity, she

was poor but bones she was not. her gums were getting soft and

squooshy from malnutrition but live she would, she had no chair to

sit in which led to constant backache and she slept on the floor

which led to constant colds in her bladder, but she wasnt pressed up

straight shitting in her pants in a cattle car on the way to Dachau,

she had been raped and was still haunted by fear and humiliation

but she had not also had cholera at the same time, she had fucked

for money, been destitute on street comers underdressed in freezing

winter, but hunger had not reduced her to eating rats, she had endured and continued to endure real hardship but she would probably live long enough— 1 more month—to turn 31.

this was not stupid of bertha, in Amerika such measuring was

called paranoia or, by liberal psychiatrists, survivors guilt, but bertha, with her european sensibility, knew that she was a realist with a very cogent understanding of history, she didnt imagine that she

could survive atrocity but she prepared for it by constant concentration on what it would require of her. unlike her contemporaries, she believed that normalcy differed from atrocity in degree, not in kind,

it was possible, bertha knew, that she might not survive normalcy

either, harassed as she was by its unambiguous cruelty, every day of

loss and more loss encouraged bertha to wonder: will I live longer

than this terrible time which is, on the grand scale, not terrible

enough to justify capitulation, tired, she measured her fatigue

against the unspeakable exhaustion of her own relatives who had

survived the Nazi death camps, they had not dropped dead of their

own accord, a fact that provided an eloquent rule of thumb, bertha

saw loss, all loss, from this unyielding perspective, this method of

measurement was the discipline by which she maintained an optimistic belief in the likelihood that she too might endure, for this reason, when despair gnawed, she did not welcome it or romanticize

it or enjoy it. self-pity made her sicker than deprivation, and for this

reason, when lovers left her all the while hurling foul epithets or

when friends fell away like diseased flies, she did not cry. she might

well feel sorrow, but tears had to be reserved for disasters that made

tears run dry. her attitude was unfashionable in a world in which

acne occasioned more sympathy than starvation, her own pimples

and the pimples of others did not move bertha and so others, comfortable in excessive emotional upheaval, saw her as cold and rigid, and she saw them as silly and vain, bertha did not share the common

emotional preoccupations of her time, then this new cycle of loss

came, overabundant, overwhelming, and leveled her out flat, she

could not bear it no matter what comparisons she made, at first she

held on. at first she would have settled for fish and eggs and milk, a

chair to sit on, some money in the bank, and sleep every night in

which loss left her alone, she bartered with God the loanshark, time

went on and bertha was dragged out flatter and flatter until the

nerve that was pure greed was stretched out onto the surface of her

skin, exposed, raw, naked, jagged, ragingly sore, detachment was

lost, discipline was lost, bertha cursed Disembodied Wisdom as the

seducer and abandoner who had passed her on to a terrible new

master, Pure Greed, herself turned inside out. she wanted purple

velvet curtains, a red velvet couch in which she would be happy to lie

forever and die, fresh crab and vulgar lobster, and women, the

bodies of women, pure taste and touch and fingers reaching in and

bellies rubbing wildly against, sweat and goo and no tomorrows, not

like the men, not to prove or to have, but each sensation for its own

sake, each sensation the whole of life, so that greed would wipe out

deprivation, erase it and the memory of it, each time, the impossible,

forever, her heart had become hungry, ravenous, but, cursed with

the love of meaning which she could not lose no matter how hard she

tried, lust made her sad, and her own lust struck her dumb with

grief, because if dust always reduced to lust, loss had triumphed,

bertha was lost, the crime was the punishment, lust was dust, still,

nothing worth a tear.

time passed, seasons changed, lilacs came and went, roses were

bom and died, the leaves turned burgundy and orange, then fell

burying the cement and earth, then froze under the first snow,

bertha stared, bertha stirred, bertha walked, bertha sat. bertha

turned restlessly night after night, bertha buried herself in dust, and

dust herself she covered dust, she sneezed it and snorted it and spit it

out. and dust spit right back, and dust flew by, looking the other

way. sweat made dust sticky, turned it salty or sweet or bitter, the

wind blew it away and the rain washed it away and the snow froze it

into slicing slivers, dust she was and dust she always would be, phi-

losophy aside, sad dust, greedy dust, slightly silly dust, dust enchanted by dust, dust cast into air by a sigh, landing or not landing, depending on weather or whether.

the new womans broken heart

(for E. and L. )

morning broke. I mean, fell right on its goddam ass and broke, no

walking barefoot if you care about yr feet, kid.

I waited and waited, no call came. I cant say, the call didnt come

because it wasnt a question of one really, it was a question of any

one. it was a question of one goddam person calling to say I like this

or that or I want to buy this or that or you moved my heart, my spirit,