October '78

Dorothea,

In the morning, when the weather is good, Isaac carefully appraises the quality of the air. He checks its moisture content, sniffs at the wind, and watches to see whether it is cool at noon. When he senses that the moment is right, he fills his lungs with a special kind of select air, and in the evening lets it out through a song. He says one can't always sing well; songs are like the seasons. They come when it's their turn. . . . Isaac, my dear Dotty, can't fall. He's like a spider. A web is holding him to a place known to him alone. But I fall more and more often. The Arab rapes me in my husband's arms, and I am no longer know where my pleasure comes from. The husband behind this Saracen looks different to me to me now; I've begun to see and understand him in a new, unbearable way. The past has suddenly changed; the more inroads the future makes, the more the past changes--it becomes more fraught with dangers and more unpredictable than the future, full of long-closed rooms from which live beasts increasingly emerge. And each of these beasts has its own name. The beast that will tear Isaac and me apart has its own name. Imagine, Dotty, I asked Isaac and he told me. He knew the name all along. The Arab's name is Abu Kabir Muawia. And he already started the job, somewhere at night, in the sand near a waterhole. Like all beasts.