Andrea Dworkin - Ice And Fire

know I am in, every sound that I know is there, every detail of

reality, the time, the sounds of the neighbors, I know where I

i i 3

am and who I am and that I am awake and still I can’t say

anything, I try to scream but I can’t, the vocal cords do not

work, the voice does not work, my mouth works but no sound

comes out, and I try to force myself to get up but my body

does not move, and then I realize that even though I think I

am awake I must not be awake and so I force myself to wake

up, I fight and I fight to wake up, and then I wake up, and I

hear the man in the room, I see him, I see his face, I see him

and see every detail of who he is and how he is dressed and

how he moves and where he goes and I see myself and I know

I am in bed and he is in the room and I hear every sound and I

try to scream but I cannot and I try to move but I cannot and

so I try to force myself again to wake because I know I must

be asleep and I am so terrified I cannot move from fear and I

cannot scream from fear: and by the time I wake up I am half

dead. Drenched in sweat, I try to sleep some more.

I hear my love, my friend, moving around, awake, alive. I

am relieved. The night is over. I can begin to try to sleep. I

hear him turn on the water, he is there if it floods. I have left

him a note, probably two pages long, filled with worries and

admonitions: what must be done to get through this day

coming up, the vivid imperatives that came to press in on my

brain as night ended and I knew I would have to sleep, the

dread demands of uncompromising daylight: more calls to the

city, more calls to the landlord, more calls to the lawyers,

more calls to the super: and buy cat litter: and remember the

laundry, to take it in or to pick it up and I have left money,

five dollars: and I love you, have a good day, I hope it goes

well. I can’t sleep in his bed because in the day his room has

fumes, even with the windows open. So I am down in this

little closet under an open window to sleep. Somehow my

friend comes home at night, it is a surprise always, and I am

always, inevitably, without fail, a cold coiled spring ready to

snap and kill, a minefield of small, deadly explosions. Dinner

is eaten in front of partially opened windows. I cannot live

through this one more day, I say, each and every night, sometimes trying to smile and be pleasant, sometimes my face twisted in grief or rage. I am going to: kill the landlord. Today I almost

threw a rock through the windows of the hamburger place.

Today I almost went up to the man who runs it and spit at

1 1 4

him, hit him, cursed him, called him foul names, threw myself

on him and tore his throat open. All day long, every minute of

every day, but especially today, whichever day it is, I want to

kill, burn down, tear down, destroy, put an end to this,

somehow, anyhow. He does the dishes. I stalk him. I want to

talk with you, I want an answer, what are we going to do,

where are we going to go, I want to move to a hotel, I want to

move, I want to leave this city, I am going to kill somebody, I

want the landlord to die, I want to slice out his heart, I want

to pound him into the ground myself, these hands, I am going

to call him now and tell him what a foul fuck he is, what a

pig, I am going to threaten him, his wife, his children, I am

going to make them as afraid as I am cold, I know we don’t

have any money but I have to go to a hotel I can’t stay here I

am going to burn down the restaurant I know how to make

bombs I am going to bomb it I am going to pour sand down

their chimney I am going to throw rocks I am going to burst

the windows I am going to explode it and break all the glass I

am going to set a fire I am going to smash my fists through the

windows. I almost did that tonight, he says, shaking, I almost

couldn’t stop myself, I almost broke all the windows. I am

quiet. He is gentle, I am the time bomb. I look at him. He is all

turned inward with pain, on the edge of a great violence which

we are united in finding unspeakable when it comes from him:

we are believers in his tenderness: it is our common faith. He

has a surface, calm and clear as a windless, warless night:

underneath perhaps he too is cold, or perhaps I am simply

driving him mad. He wants to throw rocks, not egged on by

me but when alone, coming home. He cannot bear violence, in

himself, near him. I have absorbed it endlessly, I can withstand

anything. I am determined to keep calm, I see I am hurting

him with my bitter invective, I am determined to get through

another night, another day. He reads. Perhaps he is cold too?

We talk. We touch hands quietly. We fall asleep together in his

bed marooned. I wake up soon. He is asleep, curled up like a

lamb of peace. Perhaps you have never known a gentle man.

He is always a stranger, unarmed, at night wrapped in simple

sleep he curls up like a child in someone’s arms. It is after 1 1

pm, the restaurant has now been closed long enough for the

wind streaming through the apartment to have cleared out my

115

room so that I will not choke or get head pain or throw up or

have sharp pains in my gut. My lungs will ache from the cold.

My fingers will be stiff. My throat will hurt from the cold. I sit

down to work. I must write my book. I work until the dawn,

my salvation, day after day, when I see the beauty of earth

unfolding. I watch dawn come on the cement which is this

earth of mine. Then I sleep my kind of sleep, of cold and

burning, of murder and death, of paralysis and silent screams,

of a man with a knife who moves with impunity through a

consciousness tortured with itself, of the throats I have slit, of

the heat of that tropical place. In the dream there was no

blood but I wake up knowing that it must have been terrible,

smelly and heavy and sticking and rotting fast in the sun.

*

I watch him sleep because the tenderness I have for him is

what I have left of everything I started with.

My brother was like him, frail blond curls framing a guileless

face, he slept the same way, back where I started. A tenderness

remembered tangentially, revived when I see this pale, yellowhaired man asleep, at rest, defenseless, incomprehensibly trusting death not to come. We are innocence together, before

life set in.

Sometimes I feel the tenderness for this man now, the real

one asleep, not the memory of the baby brother— sometimes I