If you want to know.
This also, although he could not put his finger on it, appeared to be another echo. Another book, another film, a way of saying — if this was serious — that an idea once seeded has to yield fruit.
We will be happy to show you.
Future tense. Perfect.
The Kill
Sections previously not published in English
(page 1) ‘First. I am not a cruel man. I am not stupid or vicious. You must not believe what you have read. There are many facts which you do not know and would not easily guess: I am a sentimental man, I help when I can help. I keep to myself and trouble no one. I am a private man, and perhaps this is a failing. In sum, I am no different than any other, excepting the reports in newspapers and those written by hired experts in which I am described as a maniac who does not have the temperament to stop or to quell an idea which could otherwise be expressed in violence: whatever boundary prevents you from undertaking an experience is no boundary to me. The accusation stands: that I have murdered my brother.
I do not intend to argue or rehearse my defence. Understand, I have no desire to lie — it is in my interest to lay everything out clearly and honestly, and this is my intention. Even so, the task is not easy as I have been confined for a considerable time and questioned on so many occasions that the most basic facts now seem either to be confused or to indicate some grossly wicked intention — so that I no longer know the truth myself, although I wish, sincerely, to tell the truth. Doctors assigned by the court regularly put questions to me, and these questions — which I am required to answer yes or no — imply readings and meanings beyond the range of a simple answer.’
* * *
(page 4) ‘… When asked if I have committed violence, I must answer ‘yes’, as there are many forms of violence which are casually enacted, day to day. Is it violence to deny food to a person? Yes. Is it violence to withhold employment? Yes. Violence to portion charity to one person and not another? Yes. Is it violence to display your wealth, or at the very least does the display of wealth justify violence? Yes. Is it violence to hold a conflicting opinion or position on any given subject? Yes. Is it wrong to set yourself above others to take advantage of them? Yes. Is it not also wrong to set yourself lower, in such a position that others must take advantage of you? Yes. Yes. Ask yourself: if you are weak, why have you not yet been taken?’
* * *
(page 5) ‘In examining my past experts have found and reported in depth and detail the root causes of my disturbance. If you believe what you have read there will be no convincing you otherwise, and you might ask instead what else has this man achieved? What other crimes are we unaware of?
Let me explain myself.’
* * *
(page 5 cont.) ‘Much of this is nothing, half-remembered (rooms roughly laid out, tables and fireplaces; an afternoon sky edged by pine trees and rooftops. Certain smells which draw images of the city: a skinny dog running the length of a street; a doorstep opening to a courtyard with water dripping on flagstones from wet clothes). There is nothing specific or entire until I am six years old, and even this, I suspect, is borrowed from a newsreel, a history I have mistaken for my own. Although I have a full sense of the occasion I can’t claim it is authentic.’
‘(…) what could be a carnival? Certainly, a celebration. A parade? A boulevard busy with people nudged shoulder-to-shoulder, immobile for a moment, expectant but sombre. A city canyon, the windows and doorways along a route marked with shoddy home-made bunting full on every floor: women, only women, leaning out, waiting, heads turned to the city gate. There are people along the rooftops also — still, poised, silent. These people are silent because they are defeated, and they have come out of cellars and holes and shelters which were intended only to be temporary but have become their homes. And from these hovels they have watched their neighbours and their families die, and many strangers also. Above anything else they are exhausted. Neither do they look like women: they have shaved their hair to rid themselves of lice, they have haggard faces and colourless skin, they wear unbecoming clothes and have long ago shed any kind of vanity in how they present themselves. They are nocturnal, bloodless and famished. This manly crowd is silent, there is no gossip or chit-chat, none of them are bearing a child (although this will shortly change), all softness has been scraped from them, scoured by days spent underground, and nights spent foraging. But still, they know to present themselves when the occasion requires. And then a sudden eruption, a cascade of paper, white and yellow, papers ripped from ration books, passes, identification papers, contracts with the living and the dead, and memberships of now, or soon to be, illegal organizations, all torn to tiny pieces and flung so that the air flickers. Among this paper snow fall petals and flowers — stemmed flowers in what might be my first memory of real flowers — and while I couldn’t have seen them before, I knew exactly what they were, and didn’t wonder where these would have come from, because this is the end of a war, and where would these flowers have grown? How could we have flowers but not food? With this, just as sudden, another burst, a mighty shout, unified, a roar of loving cheers, arms raised, hands waving and hands clasped, frantic and happy. Children, girls, are heaved to shoulders, held high. I remember being held aloft and seeing only heads, arms, upturned and expectant faces, many in tears, and there, at long last, making slow progress, the first in an interminable line of green-grey military vehicles, the jeeps the tanks the trucks, being struck with flowers and paper. I remember the men on these vehicles, and how they arrived unsmiling, jolting, unimpressed, sober men, statuesque and unmoved, bruised by war, who kicked the flowers from their vehicles, swept the paper away, looked on us, half-starved, with disgust. I remember the physique of these men, how they seemed bigger, broader — a different species — biggest among them, their fat and round commanders. The faces of these generals set with distaste. We welcomed you, we offered you open arms — the soldiers who’d fought in the marshes, the beaches, and lately to our disaster the mountain crests — the men who starved us (our memory is not so short), the army who stopped our water and poisoned the air, the men who nightly bombed our homes and churches, sucked oxygen from the houses with fire, shot us in our streets and squares, killed women and children like bored farm-boys hunting rats: for you we crawled from basements, crypts, and shelters, and stood on the ruins of our city to present to you the last of our politicians, the collaborators, their wives and their children. Under the brightest blue sky we gave you our city, and we gave it to you out of love.*
The very next week we lined the streets and performed the exact same welcome for the British.
This was not the end of war. Although we believed that it was.’
* * *
(page 9) ‘I am allowed to read, and have been given histories and accounts both of the war and of the city prior to the war. And while these versions of what happened are not incorrect, they largely miss the point. Remember: your arrival was our defeat. For twenty-two years we happily supported the government and way of life knowing that hard choices needed to be made — unpopular decisions for the benefit of all. The government didn’t arrive by accident, and while they disappeared overnight, taken to courts and tribunals, some summarily shot, remember — this was our choice because it worked. Full employment. Acceptable housing. Food. And future hopes — not only for ourselves. And our inclination to that government, our allegiance to those ideas, did not disappear as quickly as their bodies.