Andrea Dworkin - Ice And Fire

ICE AND FIRE

By the same author

Nonfiction

W om an H ating

O ur Blood: Prophecies and D iscourses on Sexual Politics

Pornography: M en Possessing W omen

Right-w ing W omen:

T he Politics o f Dom esticated Fem ales

Fiction

the new w om ans broken heart: short stories

ICE AND FIRE

A Novel

by

Andrea Dworkin

Seeker & W arb u rg

L on don

First published in England 1986 by

Martin Seeker & Warburg Limited

54 Poland Street, London WI V 3DF

Copyright ©

by Andrea Dworkin

Reprinted 1986

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Dworkin, Andrea

Ice and fire: a novel.

1. Title

823'. 91 4[F]

PR6054. W/

ISBN 0-436-13960-X

Pages 52-56 first appeared, translated into French, in La Vie

en Rose , No 18, July-August 1984.

Filmset in Great Britain in II on 12 pt Sabon

by Richard Clay Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk

Printed and bound in Great Britain

by Billings & Son Ltd,

Hylton Road, Worcester

For Elaine M arkson

Neither weep nor laugh but understand.

Spinoza

*

I have two first memories.

The sofa is green with huge flowers imprinted on it, pink

and beige and streaks of yellow or brown, like they were

painted with a wide brush to highlight the edges and borders

of the flowers. The sofa is deep and not too long, three cushions, the same green. The sofa is against a wall in the living room. It is our living room. Nothing in it is very big but we

are small and so the ceilings are high and the walls tower,

unscalable, and the sofa is immense, enough width and depth

to burrow in, to get lost in. My brother is maybe two. I am

two years older. He is golden, a white boy with yellow hair

and blue eyes: and happy. He has a smile that lights up the

night. He is beautiful and delicate and divine. Nothing has set

in his face yet, not fear, not malice, not anger, not sorrow: he

knows no loss or pain: he is delicate and happy and intensely

beautiful, radiance and delight. We each get a corner of the

sofa. We crouch there until the referee, father always, counts

to three: then we meet in the middle and tickle and tickle until

one gives up or the referee says to go back to our corners

because a round is over. Sometimes we are on the fl oor, all

three of us, tickling and wrestling, and laughing past when I

hurt until dad says stop. I remember the great print flowers, I

remember crouching and waiting to hear three, I remember the

great golden smile of the little boy, his yellow curls cascading

as we roll and roll.

The hospital is all light brown outside, stone, lit up by electric

lights, it is already dark out, and my grandfather and I are

outside, waiting for my dad. He comes running. Inside I am

put in a small room. A cot is set up for him. My tonsils will

come out. Somewhere in the hospital is my mother. I think all

night long that she must be in the next room. I tap on the wall,

sending secret signals. She has been away from home for a

long time. The whole family is in the hospital now, my father

with me: I don’t know where my brother is— is he born yet?

7

He is somewhere for sure, and my mother is somewhere,

probably in the next room. I remember flowered wallpaper.

I haven’t seen my mother for a very long time and now

I am coming to where she is, I expect to see her, I am

close to her now, here, in the same hospital, she is near,

somewhere, here. I never see her but I am sure she is lying

in bed happy to be near me on the other side of the wall

in the very next room. She must be happy to know I am

here. Her hair was long then, black, and she was young.

My father sleeps in the hospital room, in the bed next to

mine.

*

The street was home, but, oh, these were kind streets, the

streets of children, real children. The houses were brick row

houses, all the same, two cement flights of stairs outside, the

outside steps, from the sidewalk. The lawns were hills sloping

down the height of one flight of steps, the lower one, to the

sidewalk. There was a landing between flights. Some of us had

patios: the big cement truck came, the huge tumbler turning

round and round, and the cement was poured out and flattened

down, and sticks marked the edges until it dried. Others had

some flowers: next door there were shabby roses, thorns. Each

house was the same, two floors, on the first floor a living

room, dining room, and tiny kitchen; up a tall flight of stairs

three bedrooms, two big, one tiny, a bathroom, a closet. The

stairs were the main thing: up and down on endless piggyback

rides on daddy’s back: up to bed with a piggyback ride, up

and down one more time, the greatest ride had a story to go

with it about riding horses or piggies going to market; up the

stairs on daddy’s back and then into bed for the rest of the

fabulous story; and I would try to get him to do it again and

again, up and down those stairs, and a story. Each house had

one family, all the houses were in a row, but two doors were

right next to each other above the cement steps so those were