The Old Religion by David Mamet

Author:David Mamet [MAMET, DAVID]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC019000/FIC046000
ISBN: 9781590209660
Publisher: Overlook
Published: 2011-12-01T05:00:00+00:00

Jim

And, one step and then the next. Frank had sat in the court, trusting, as all his family trusted, in some plan or expertise, some strategy or talent, which would, at the end, reveal the prosecution for the monstrous savage lie it was.

But day after day, they argued over the moment that he’d left the house, the identity of the Boy on the Bicycle, the time he had seen Mrs. Breen, and what he had said to her about the parade.

And Frank sat there, thinking, “Yes. This is bad. It’s pointless. In each moment the central fact of the case is ignored, the jury is left gazing at me as at a monster. But I must sit here and let justice take its course. For there is a progression, a ritual torment, which, for some reason, it has pleased God to spare me until this point. And if it is my lot to endure the trial, I will do so—as others who were unjustly accused have done before me. I am no better than they. And if it is an initiation—if I can think of it as such—to discover my Manhood, then I will endeavor to accept it as such.”

Here his thoughts would resolve themselves into the theme of “Americanism.” He would seek and find comfort in his community with both the Judge and the accusers, all connected in the name of Americanism. In the unavoidably impure attempt to find the truth through formal means.

“For if I cease to think thus, then I will go mad,” he thought.

And he persevered, day after day. Striving, with all his will, not to look at his watch.

While the prosecutor pointed to him, saying, “There he sits, the monster. Look at him: impassive. No grief, No feeling. Not a shade of either remorse or shame upon his face. Barely cognizant of the tragedy he has wrought.”

And Frank would turn to face the jury, and see them nodding, unconsciously, in agreement. Consumed in this “thing,” as he phrased it to himself—this fervor of rectitude.

They looked at him—increasingly, as the trial progressed—with revulsion; and, worse, with self-congratulation for their ability to put their revulsion aside.

They were murdering him.

And how they loved Jim and his testimony.

“Nawsuh, I nevah …”

“Did you write that note …?”

“Naw suh. ’F I could write, I wun’t be workin’ down the fact’ry, you know. Temporary, though I’m glad to …”

Here he looked and saw, as he knew he would, the jury nodding in support of Jim’s portrayal of the Happy Slave; and, at this particular point, in anticipation, then in approbation, of his ritual injection of submission.

“… so glad to have the job …”

“Yes, Jim,” they thought, “and this is how a society runs. When each is grateful for his place, and acts accordingly. Will the Strong not nurture the Weak? The White not lead the Black …?”

Then who was the outsider? The Kike. The “Nigger to the nth degree”—as the paper had called him—who should have known better, having been granted the almost-more-than-provisional status of a White Man.

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