Don Quixote, Which Was a Dream (22 page)

'Endless hole I am an endless hole I can't bear this. I have put myself in exile so I can't be face-to-face with this which is my loneliness.

'On Nature. Today even though my boyfriend's gone from me blow winds because I'm almost happy!

'Today I'm so happy because I must be so happy: it's snowing. A drift forms against the lower window pane. The river is now low, cold and ice-gray. There is a low noise of the sky: the wind's disconsolate moan. Since the wind's disconsolate moan resembles mine, I'm that wind.

'If I was a person who has or had parents who care or cared about her, I'd be crying now because I don't have anyone. This wind would be the sharp separation from the person who loves me. I wouldn't be able to bear such separation, if there was separation. The way in which the strong weather is doing what it's doing without any thought of me would break up my security. But I'm not even anyone.

'So I can be - whoever I want. I can do anything I can be anyone one day and the next day do be anyone else, even the same one. I'm as unpredictable as these winds: these winds or I will make me happy if I run faster, and faster now slower, faster -

'Masochism is now rebellion -

'For a long time I've been a cat whose fur's being rubbed the wrong way but doesn't know how to get touched right. Like the winds, I the cat act without thought carelessly recklessly non-consequentially gaily because without thought, no thought. This's why winds make the air dark. There's no chance I'll know.

'I will love someone, I can. So it is a woman because there're only women. The name of my love, her name is Burn. She's the one the teachers flog.

'Howl, human winds! Howl, all the atoms of this human skin. You do not love me! You who molding me me physically by my pleasure at being hurt would have me love you so much that I can't not love you if you don't love me. You force me to

love you solely according to your desires. Now you're molding me by mentally hurting me. Since you want me to be nothing but that which loves you, you treat me as nothing. You're my human destruction. You are my school.

'Loneliness, howl! Real teaching happens via feelings. Howl, the self who fights against suicide.

'This isn't loneliness I'm talking about: this is continuous hurt, the opposite of love. We who are sick because we accept hurt -

'"If anyone tries to touch me, much less beat me up," I scream to Burn, "I'll beat her his (I can't get sexual genders straight) now bloody ass into bloody shreds."

'I calm down. "I've never liked the slightest, even physical, pain, like loneliness. I can't understand why any human should feel pain.

'"If any human being causes any other human being pain," I scream, "I'll rip that human being up!" But whom am I screaming to? I think anyone who lives being lonely and isn't crazy is strong.

'Burn says that by hurting me, the school we go to is teaching me to mold be strong by molding my own violence.

'Since, unlike Burn, I don't have the strength to do anything but scream when I'm in pain, I worship her. "I worship you.

'"I'm a mess," I continue. "Since I objectively know who I am, this's who I am. Since I'm a mess or have no control over any of my emotions, these emotions take me over. These emotions're so fierce, I must be controlled. This's why love's control for me."

'"Then you ought to be punished because you're a bad person and no one's ever punished you for being bad."

'"Even though this can't be true because I never had any parents - " I changed my mind, "then it must be true. Must nothing be nothing? My fake mother punishes me for everything. Then, nothing is only nothing." Having learned this first truth - identity - , I say what I have to say to the girl so that she'll love me: "Yes. I need punishment."

'This good behavior doesn't last long: I start screaming again. "What about love and tenderness?

'"Don't you love me? Don't love and tenderness matter to you?

' "Don't you need someone to love you?" I end my solipsistic speech.

'I don't think she has any idea what I'm talking about.

'My first friend's solipsistic speech: "I see no need for love and tenderness.

'"Why? There's only one good teacher in this school. Miss St Jean Pierre. She teaches us by making us experience what we don't know. Since, when I'm learning from her, I don't have to try to learn, I want to learn because, of course, I want to do whatever I'm doing. Only this's learning. Therefore, learning has nothing to do with either self-discipline or fascism."

'"But it must have to do with kindness and gentleness. Cause when no one loves me, even if I do something, I actually don't do what I do, cause all I can do is want someone to love me."

'"We're all orphans," replied Burn. "Is that any reason to keep punishing ourselves or being ignorant? If we're going to live in this world without love, we're going to have to learn how to live without love. This is our learning ..."

'I interrupted her solipsism: "When we're struck unreasonably irrationally, either physically or through isolation, we should strike back. Hard. For isolation's a political tool. We should hurt those people those parents whoever made us lonely so goddamn hard that they will suffer irreparably: worms will swim inside their lower legs and their fingers'll crawl. For when a human dies, her guts actually become a giant worm."

'"This statement, this kind of statement, shows me, Villey, that since you've learned nothing therefore have no discipline, you're too dangerous to be touched. By anyone." Even in, especially in friendship, I came face-to-face with my isolation.

'Right now it's the end of an afternoon as if it's already passing on, rather than just passing into, nighttime. I wanted to walk outside today, in through the bare patches of grass and brown muck, for the sensation of these patches that are the hairs on Nature's balding head is the only thing that soothes the pain that is now my skin. But Sunday is the only day

they let us out of the inside, the cold claustrophobic inside. Everything is a body. They let us out so we can go to church. After church, we're finally allowed to walk in the outside. The outside is freezing. Freezing doesn't matter because it doesn't matter where you're going because going makes thinking disappear. This cold is my only warmth. My clothes must be rags. My shoes must be thin and light. Rough inflamed bumps from the cold cover my hands and feet. I'm always hungry even when I'm not hungry. Since physical deprivation, like poverty, eats away the mental spirit, I want to return to the regimented pain inside, for it's the only thing I can know.

'Revolt comes from the revolters' self-hatred of their own acceptance of their painful conditions. In order to stave off revolt, they gave us when we returned two slices of wonder bread and real margarine. Just like the miners. The older girls, who're bigger than me, take away my food. Everyone hates me here. I want to die and I don't want to die. Since I'm nothing, I can't hate myself. These political conditions render me apolitical or uninterested in everything.

'Why's being touched so important?' the dog asked nobody in particular. 'Without the touch of another human, I'm nothing. For, being untouched, I can do (be) anything(one) and so, am nothing. Since no one talks to me, I talk to myself. In this world or country, England, we call school, whose head is a head(whip)mistress. Since to me here in this school I'm dead, this country is death. I, all females who're isolated, am the Virgin.

'Virgin Mary, tell me: How can people who can no longer love give birth?

'Even though you don't exist, love: every day in every minute I talk to you because I must. Because if there's someone in me, even only in fantasy, I'm not always up against my own loneliness. I'm not always in the scream which is Death. Death is the one absolute, the object that can be known, the only human knowing. You're my unknowing heart. Virgin. Bitch. If there's chance, there must be love.

'"I can't believe there's no possibility of love," I scream to Burn, now that I've gotten my argument straight, but Burn is dead from typhoid brought on by malnutrition and wet cold of

this country. Who, now, is there I can even imagine to hear my screams?

2. Reading: I Dream My Schooling

'I sat in a chair and read. My white stuffed cat sat on my right arm. A white blanket tossed like the ocean over the bottom half of my legs. I read this:

' " 'Consumed as you appear to be by the passion to depucel ate a girl, or to be depucelated,'" I wasn't sure what
depuce
lated
meant, but I had a good idea, "'yourself,'" the incomparable Delbène said to me one day, "'I've no doubt that Sainte-Elme has already decided, or may be easily induced, to grant you these pleasures. Should she have to hesitate? She's not running a risk: she's going to pass the rest of her life in holy retirement. But as for you, Juliette, once bereft of your token or identity, you'll be forever refused marriage. Think therefore, and believe me: unsaid misfortunes could well be the consequence of a slight physical flaw in that part that you think nothing at this moment of damaging. Despite the heedlessness of your youth, forgive me my angel, but you know I say this because I care for you, think: play it safe: give up that Sainte-Elme and take me. I'll give you everything you're wanting and more. You yourself choose any girl in this convent whose first fruits you covet, and I'll take away yours in the meantime. There'll be some material injuries to that part . . . don't be scared . . ., I'll take care of you, baby. I can do it; I can't tell you how; it's the secret of this convent. If you want me to tell you, you have to promise me you'll never speak to Sainte-Elme again. Do you promise? Swear! Swear by your cunt. Only your cunt is holy. If you say even one word to Sainte-Elme from now on, I'll be . . . disgusting to you!'"

'Looking at the older woman in her face, "I can't hurt you," though I want to "because I know you care about me. Besides. I want to be physically touched."

'Finally I admitted it. I want to be physically touched.

'I swore I'd never say a word to that nasty Sainte-Elme again. "I'll do whatever you tell me to do."

'A month later Delbène: "Have you decided? Have you decided who you want?"

' "What I want most of all is a family. But if I had my sister, she'd be so upset about me, she'd kill herself out of guilt. I'll have Laure. She's not going to be family; I know I'll never have a family. But it's - she's - something: it's closeness. Closeness that will last: she has the stability of the upper-middle classes. She's got that security, which I don't have, which'll keep my enormous will from being the control."

'"Since her only relative's an elderly drooling uncle who lives far away in the mountains, I can see no reason why you can't do what you like with the child. Tonight, when all the students retire to their dormitories, you and I Flavie and Volmar'll slip away. I'll arrange the rest. I'm going to be your teacher. Have the courage of your sex, a sex that has endured unendurable pain: be a young knight, for, tonight, you'll learn something."

'The woman who cleaned the floors entered the room: "Laure's gone! She's run away from school!"

' "How can she want to run away from my love?" I cried. I wanted to add
oh, shit,
but I was in school. I restrained my tongue. "Laure! Laure! How could you die? And by dying, abandon me? For you've brutally forced me to abandon all I've ever had of you which is the hope of you: You've taken away my future. Brat. I hate your guts, I do, because when a love affair dissolves, the conceived desires of the one who doesn't want to break up remain in her to torment her."

'My teacher: "There has to be a future."

'"No. For I won't accept that this world must be pain: A future only of torment is no future for anyone. As for you," I had the guts to address my teacher directly, even though I wasn't ever able to be directly angry at my mother who hated me, "how are you going to keep your promise to me? Laure is gone. Nothing. I want only Laure.

'"Your words mean nothing to me, like the words of all the teachers I've ever had. Words mean nothing."

'I woke up from the dream I had fallen into. Like water running down from its source to a place of safety, a levelling: reading to a dream. What miracle of self-power had I dreamed

of? Mists chill as death, as my heart now wants to be so it'll no longer be hurt, wander according to the impulses of the easterly winds - winds whose only laws humans can perceive are those of chance - along the purple, half-seen peaks. Here, in England. Mists, teats, fingers roll, down, and hole until they who're born of the night're mingling with the graveyard's frozen fog. My heart, today is Christmas. Is anything being born? Borne? Can a child be born and borne in the joyless helpless land? Yes!

'I will be born: the two bodies of water around the graveyard I stand in, hidden, still under fog, become turbid and careless: wild they rise up. Over their legal boundaries, they throw through the wet non-existent air a chortle, air thickened by rain which is half-sleet.

'I will be born: In this country where the weather is cold. Poor food, lack of heat, and lack of medical care make flu a way of life. Flu, and worse. The doctors can't even recognize the diseases most people're getting. Flu, and worse. Wang Lung was a magician and hated the Emperor; he loved, of course at a reverential distance, the Empress.

'Living here in disease and being diseased strangely bring us closer to each other: we can now have emotions for each other. We don't care about the people who control us. They almost don't exist, the demi-gods of the world. No longer by enforcing their rules can they tell us what to do, for we even they the demi-gods're in the face of total human death. The few who're well enough to roam roam in almost uninhibited undefined space: the world of almost total death's the world of almost freedom. The closer we're living to total human death, the weaker the socio-political constraints on us.