To see the faces, to hear the names, to learn...
To see the faces, to hear the names, to learn that one was a mother of three, the second just married, the third about to retireDid she know what or who they were He could not imagine any of itOnly the rape was imaginableImagine the rape and the rest is blocked out: their faces remain out of sight, their spectacles, their hairdos, their families, their jobs, their birth dates, their addresses, their blameless innocence Not one Fred Conlon--four Fred ConlonsThe rape obscured everything elseConcentrate on the rape What were the details? Who were these men? Was it somebody who was part of that life, somebody who was against the war and on the run like her, was it somebody she knew or was it a stranger, a bum, an addict, a madman who'd followed her home and into the hallway with a knife? What went on? Had they held her down and threatened her with a knife? Had they beaten her? What did they make her do? Were there no people to help her? Just what did they make her do? He would kill themShe had to tell him who they wereI want to find out who those people areI want to know where it happenedI want to know when it happenedWe're going to go back and find those people and I'm going to kill them! Now that he could not stop imagining the rapes, there was no relief, not for one second, from the desire to go out and kill somebodyWith all the walls he'd built fendi spy bags up, she gets rapedAll of that protection and he could not prevent her from getting rapedTell me everything about it! I'm going to kill them! But it was too lateHe could do nothing to make it not happenFor it to not happen, he would have had to kill them before it happened--and how could he manage that? Swede Levov? Off the playing field, when had Swede Levov laid a hand on anyone? Nothing so repelled this muscular man as the use of force The places she was inHow did she survive without people? That place she was in nowWere all her places like that or even worse? All right, she should not have done what she did, should never have done it, yet to think of how she'd had to live___ He was sitting at his deskHe had to get some relief from seeing what he did not want to seeThe factory was emptyThere was only the night watchman who'd come on duty with his dogsHe was down in the parking lot, patrolling the perimeter of the double-thick chain-link fence, a fence topped off, after the riots, with supplemental scrolls of razor ribbon that were to admonish the boss each and every morning he pulled in and parked his car, "Leave! Leave! Leave!" He was sitting alone in the last factory left in the worst city in the worldAnd it was worse even than sitting there during the riots, Springfield Avenue in flames, South Orange Avenue in flames, Bergen Street under omega seamaster replica watches attack, sirens going off, weapons firing, snipers from rooftops blasting the street lights, looting crowds crazed in the street, kids carrying off radios and lamps and television sets, men toting armfuls of clothing, women pushing baby carriages heavily loaded with cartons of liquor and cases of beer, people pushing pieces of new furniture right down the center of the street, stealing sofas, cribs, kitchen tables, stealing washers and dryers and ovens--stealing not in the shadows but out in the openTheir strength is tremendous, their teamwork is flawlessThe shattering of the glass windows is thrillingThe not paying for things is intoxicatingThe American appetite for ownership is dazzling to beholdEverything free that everyone craves, a wanton free-for-all free of charge, everyone uncontrollable with thinking, Here it is! Let it come! In Newark's burning Mardi Gras streets, a force is released that feels redemptive, something purifying is happening, something spiritual and revolutionary perceptible to allThe surreal vision of household appliances out under the stars and agleam in the glow of the flames incinerating the Central Ward promises the liberation of all mankindYes, here it is, let it come, yes, the magnificent opportunity, one of human history's rare transmogrifying moments: the old ways of suffering are burning blessedly away in the flames, never jumbo chanel flap bag again to be resurrected, instead to be superseded, within only hours, by suffering that will be so gruesome, so monstrous, so unrelenting and abundant, that its abatement will take the next five hundred yearsThe fire this time--and next? After the fire? NothingNothing in Newark ever again And all the while the Swede is there in the factory with Vicky, waiting with just Vicky beside him for his place to go up, waiting for police with pistols, for soldiers with submachine guns, waiting for protection from the Newark police, the state police, the National Guard--from someone--before they burn to the ground the business built by his father, entrusted to him by his fatherand that wasn't as bad as thisA police car opens fire into the bar across the street, out his window he sees a woman go down, buckle and go down, shot dead right on the street, a woman killed in front of his eyesand not even that was as bad as thisPeople screaming, shouting, firemen pinned to the ground by gunfire so they cannot fight the flames; explosions, the sound suddenly of bongo drums, in the middle of the night a volley of pistol shots blowing out every one of the street-level windows displaying Vicky's signsand this is worse by farAnd then they left, everyone, fled the smoldering rubble--manufacturers, retailers, the banks, the shop owners, the corporations, the department stores; louis vuitton wien in the South Ward, on the residential blocks, there are two moving vans per day on every street throughout the next year, homeowners fleeing, deserting the modest houses they treasure for whatever they can getbut he stays on, refuses to leave, Newark Maid remains behind, and that did not prevent her from getting rapedNot even during the worst of it does he abandon his factory to the vandals; he does not abandon his workers afterward, does not turn his back on these people, and still his daughter is raped Hanging on the wall directly back of his desk, framed and under glass, there is a letter from the Governor's Select Commission on Civil Disorder thanking MrLevov for his testimony as an eyewitness to the riots, praising him for his courage, for his devotion to Newark, an official letter signed by ten distinguished citizens, two of them Catholic bishops, two of them ex-governors of the state; and on the wall alongside that, also framed and under glass, an article that six months earlier appeared in the Star-Ledger, with his photograph and the headline, "Glove Firm Lauded for Staying in Newark"--and still she is raped The rape was in his bloodstream and he would never get it outThe odor of it was in his bloodstream, the look of it, the legs and the arms and the hair and the clothingThere were the sounds--the thud, her cries, the careening in a tiny miu miu coffer encloNo comments:
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