Andrea Dworkin - Mercy

slut. I f a war happens, it marks you for life, it’s your war.

Walt’s was the C ivil War, North against South, feuding

brothers, a terrible slaughter, no one remembers how bloody

and murderous it was. Mine was Vietnam; I didn’t love the

soldiers but I loved the boys who didn’t go. M y daddy’s war

was World War II. Everyone had their own piece o f that war.

There’s Iwo Jim a, Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima; Vichy and the

French Resistance; sadists, soldier boys, S . S., in Europe. M y

daddy was in the Army. M y daddy was being sent to the Pacific

when Truman dropped the bomb; the bomb. He says it saved

his life. Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved his life. I never saw

him wish anyone harm, except maybe Strom Thurm an and

Jesse Helms and Bull Connor, but he thought it was okay,

hell, necessary, for all those Japanese to die so he could live. He

thought he was worth it, even if it was just a chance he would

die. I felt otherwise. He had an unreasonable anger against me.

I would have died, he said, I would have died. He was peace-

loving but nothing could shake his faith that Hiroshima was

right, not the mass death, not the radiation, not the pollution,

not the suffering later, not the people burned, their skin

burned right o ff them; not the children, then or later. The

mushroom cloud didn’t make him afraid. To him it always

meant he wasn’t dead. I was ashamed o f him for not caring, or

for caring so much about himself, but I found what I thought

was common ground. I said it was proved Truman didn’t have

to do it. In other words, I could think it was wrong to drop the

bomb and still love m y father but he thought I had insufficient

respect and he had good intuition because I couldn’t see w hy

his life was worth more than all those millions. I couldn’t

reconcile it, how this very patient, very kind, quite meek guy

could think he was more important than all the people. It

wasn’t that he thought the bomb would stop Jew s from being

massacred in Europe; it was that he, from N ew Jersey, would

live. He didn’t understand that I was born in the shadow o f the

crime, a shadow that covered the whole earth every day from

then on. We just were born into knowing w e’d be totally

erased; someday; inevitably. M y daddy used to be beat up by

other boys at school when he was grow ing up. He was a

bookworm , a Je w , and the other boys beat the shit out o f him;

he didn’t want to fight; he got called a sissie and a kike and a

faggot, sheenie, all the names; they beat the shit out o f him,

and yes, one did become the chief o f police in the Amerikan

way; and then, somehow, an adult man, he knows he’s worth

all the Japanese who died; and I wondered how he learned it,

because I have never learned anything like it yet. He was

humble and patient and I learned a kind o f personal pacifism

from him; he went into the A rm y, he was a soldier, but all his.

life he hated fighting and conflict and he would not fight with

arms or support any violence in w ord or deed, he tried

persuasion and listening and he’d avoid conflict even i f it made

him look weak and he was gentle, even with fools; and I

learned from him that you are supposed to take it, as a person,

and not give back what you got; give back something kinder,

better, subtler, more elevated, something deeper and kinder

and more human. So when he didn’t mind the bomb, when he

liked it because it saved his life, his, I was dumb with surprise

and a kind o f fascinated revulsion. Was it just wanting to stay

alive at any cost or was it something inside that said me , la m ; it

got sort o f big and said me. It got angry, beyond his apparent

personality, a humble, patient person, tender and sensitive; it

went me , I am , and it said that whatever stood between him

and existence had to be annihilated. I would have died. I might

have died. As a child I was horrified but later I tried to

understand w hy I didn’t have it— I was blank there, it was as if

the tape was erased or something was just missing. If someone

stood between me and existence, how come I didn’t think I

mattered more; w h y didn’t I kill them; I never would put me

above someone else; I never did; I never thought that because

they were doing something to annihilate me I could annihilate

them; I figured I would just be wounded or killed or whatever,

because life and death were random events; like I tried to tell

m y father, maybe he would have lived. When someone pushes

you down on the ground and puts him self in you, he pushes

him self between you and existence— you do die or you will die

or you can die, it’s the luck o f the draw really, not unlike

maybe yo u ’ll get killed or maybe you w o n ’t in a war; except

you don’t get to be proud o f it i f you don’t die. I never thought

anyone should be killed ju st because he endangered m y

existence or corrupted it altogether or just because I was left a

shadow haunting m y own life; I mean really killed. I never

thought anyone should really die just because one day he was

actually going to kill me, fucking render me dead: inevitably,

absolutely; no doubt. I didn’t think any one o f them should

really die. It was outside what I could think of. Is there

anything in me, any I am, anything that says I will stop you or

anything that says I am too valuable and this bad thing you are

doing to me will cost you too much or anything that says you

cannot destroy me; cannot; me. If someone tortures you and

you will die from it eventually, someday, for sure, one w ay or

another, and you can’t make the day come soon enough

because the suffering is immense, then maybe he should die

because he pushed him self between you and existence; maybe

you should kill him to push him out o f the way. Do you think

Truman would have bought it? M y daddy wouldn’t have

either. At best he’d say w hy did this tragic thing happen to

you— it would never be possible to pin down which tragic

thing he meant— and he’d be bitter and mad, not at the bad one

but at me; I’d be the bad one for him. At worst I’d be plain filth

in his eyes. I don’t know w hy I can’t think all the Japanese

should die so I can stay alive or w hy I can’t think some man

should die. I’ll never be a Christian, that’s for sure. I can’t