Sherman Alexie - War Dances

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War Dances: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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Fresh off his National Book Award win, Alexie delivers a heartbreaking, hilarious collection of stories that explores the precarious balance between self-preservation and external responsibility in art, family, and the world at large. With unparalleled insight into the minds of artists, laborers, fathers, husbands, and sons, Alexie populates his stories with ordinary men on the brink of exceptional change. In a bicoastal journey through the consequences of both simple and monumental life choices, Alexie introduces us to personal worlds as they transform beyond return. In the title story, a famous writer must decide how to care for his distant father who is slowly dying a “natural Indian death” from alcohol and diabetes, just as he learns that he himself may have a brain tumor. Alexie dissects a vintage-clothing store owner’s failing marriage and his courtship of a married photographer in various airports across the country; what happens when a politician’s son commits a hate crime; and how a young boy discovers his self-worth while writing obituaries for his local newspaper. Brazen and wise,
takes us to the heart of what it means to be human. This provocative new work is Alexie at the height of his powers.

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“Oh, wow,” I said. “Congratulations.”

“I’m happy you’re happy. I hated to make the decision without your input, but it had to be that way.”

“I understand.”

“Yes, I knew you would. And I hope you understand a few other things.”

And so my father, who’d never been comfortable with my private school privilege, transferred me from Madison Park to Garfield High, a racially mixed public school in a racially mixed neighborhood.

Let my father tell you why: “The Republican Party has, for decades, silently ignored the pernicious effects of racial segregation, while simultaneously resisting any public or private efforts at integration. That time has come to an end. I am a Republican, and I love my fellow Americans, regardless of race, color, or creed. But, of course, you’ve heard that before. Many Republicans have issued that same kind of lofty statement while living lives entirely separate from people of other races, other classes, and other religions. Many Republicans have lied to you. And many Democrats have told you those same lies. But I will not lie, in word or deed. I have just purchased a house in the historically black Central District neighborhood of Seattle, and my son will attend Garfield High School. I am moving because I believe in action. And I am issuing a challenge to my fellow Republicans and to all Democrats, as well: Put your money, and your house, where your mouth is.”

And so my father, who won the state seat with 62 percent of the vote, moved me away from Jeremy, who also left Madison Park and was homeschooled by his mother. Over the next year or so, I must have called his house twenty times. But I always hung up when he or his parents answered. And he called my private line more than twenty times, but would stay on the line and silently wait for me to speak. And then it stopped. We became rumors to each other.

Five hours after I punched Jeremy in the face, I sat alone in the living room of my childhood home in Seattle. Bernard, Spence, and Eddie were gone. I felt terrible. I prayed that I would be forgiven. No, I didn’t deserve forgiveness. I prayed that I would be fairly judged. So I called the fairest man I know — my father — and told him what I had done.

The sun was rising when my father strode alone into the room and slapped me: once, twice, three times.

“Shit,” he said, and stepped away.

I wiped the blood from my mouth.

“Shit,” my father said once more, stepped up close to me, and slapped me again.

I was five inches taller, thirty years younger, and forty pounds heavier than my father and could have easily stopped him from hitting me. I could have hurt him. But I knew that I deserved his anger. A good son, I might have let him kill me. And, of course, I know that you doubt me. But I believe in justice. And I was a criminal who deserved punishment.

“What did you do?” my father asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I was drunk and stupid and — I don’t know what happened.”

“This is going to ruin everything. You’ve ruined me with this, this thing, do you understand that?”

“No, it’s okay. I’ll confess to it. It’s all my fault. Nobody will blame you.”

“Of course they’ll blame me. And they should blame me. I’m your father.”

“You’re a great father.”

“No, I’m not. I can’t be. What kind of father could raise a son who is capable of such a thing?”

I wanted to rise up and tell my father the truth, that his son was a bloody, bawdy villain. A remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain. But such sad and selfish talk is reserved for one’s own ears. So I insulted myself with a silence that insulted my father as well.

“Don’t just sit there,” he said. “You can’t just sit there. You have to account for yourself.”

My father had always believed in truth, and in the real and vast differences between good and evil. But he’d also taught me, as he had learned, that each man is as fragile and finite as any other.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, my father prayed aloud for the victims. All day, the media worried that the body count might reach twenty or thirty thousand, so my father’s prayers were the most desperate of his life. But, surprisingly, my father also prayed for the nineteen men who’d attacked us. He didn’t pray for their forgiveness or redemption. No, he believed they were going to burn in a real hell. After all, what’s the point of a metaphorical hell? But my father was compassionate and Christian enough to know that those nineteen men, no matter how evil their actions and corrupt their souls, could have been saved.

This is what my father taught me on that terrible day: “We are tested, all of us. We are constantly and consistently given the choice. Good or evil. Light or darkness. Love or hate. Some of those decisions are huge and tragic. Think of those nineteen men and you must curse them. But you must also curse their mothers and fathers. Curse their brothers and sisters. Curse their teachers and priests. Curse everybody who failed them. I pray for those nineteen men because I believe that some part of them, the original sliver of God that still resided in them, was calling out for guidance, for goodness and beauty. I pray for them because they chose evil and thus became evil, and I pray for them because nobody taught them how to choose goodness and become good.”

Of course, my father, being a politician, could never have uttered those words in public. His supporters would not have understood the difference between empathy for a lost soul and sympathy with a terrorist’s politics. Make no mistake: My father was no moral relativist. He wanted each criminal to be judged by his crimes, not by his motivations or biography.

My father refused to believe that all cultures were equal. He believed that representative democracy was a God-given gift to humans.

“I think that our perfect God will protect us in a perfect afterlife,” he was fond of saying in public. “But in this highly imperfect world, we highly imperfect humans need to be protected from one another, and only a progressive republican government can guarantee any sort of protection.”

In private, my father said this: “Fuck the fucking leftists and their fucking love of secularism and communism. Those bastards haven’t yet figured out that the secular Hitler and the communist Stalin slaughtered millions and millions of people.”

Don’t get me wrong. My father knew that the world was complicated and unpredictable — and that only God knew the ultimate truth — but he also knew that each citizen of that world was ultimately responsible for his actions. My father staked his political career, his entire life, on one basic principle: An unpredictable world demands a predictable moral code.

“Son,” my father said to me many a time in the years after September 11, “a thief should be judged by the theft. A rapist should be judged by the rape. A murderer should be judged by the murder. A terrorist should be judged by the terror.”

And so I sat, a man capable of inexplicable violence against an innocent, eager to be judged by my God and by my father. I wanted to account and be held accountable.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have attacked those men. I shouldn’t have walked away from the scene. At least, I should have gone back to the scene. I should go back now and turn myself into the police.”

“But you’re not telling me why you did it,” my father said. “Can you tell me that? Why did you do it?”

I searched my soul for an answer and could not find one. I could not make sense of it. But if I’d known that it was Jeremy I’d assaulted, I could have spoken about Cain and Abel and let my father determine the moral of the story.

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