The Torturer's Wife by Thomas Glave

Author:Thomas Glave
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: City Lights Publishers
Published: 2013-08-26T00:00:00+00:00

WOMAN IMPOSSIBLE TASK

Impossible, yes. But how can she not do it?

After all, someone must. At least that is what she thinks. That is what she tells herself.

Someone must make the bread. Knead it. Roll it. Dust it with flour. (Although now there is no flour.) Someone must . . . — but she will not pay attention. No, of course not. Not pay attention to those sounds outside. (Yes, screaming again. But not screaming now. Not like before. In the time of the light, all that light, and the noise. So much noise.) Those sounds . . . yes, more rifle shots. In the distance. The grenades — will the grenades come later?

(The grenades always come later, she will not think.)

(Someone must go on making the bread, she thinks)

(How empty the house. How still the light, she thinks)

(And all the holes, holes, holes everywhere, where the walls exploded —)

Time: the time now, which she cannot know — perhaps it is better that she not know: three o’clock in the afternoon.

Her fingers. Dusty. From flour, she thinks. That is flour on my hands, the flour no one can find now. It is not dust or dirt from the roadside. It is not evidence that I was digging in the roadside yesterday and the day before, looking for —

Oh but no. No, no. Why think of that now? She is making bread. You are making bread. Bread without flour. The kind of bread that he always loved.

But he is gone now —

Yes, along with everyone else in the house —

Yes, along with everyone else in the street —

Soon it will be dark, absolutely dark, with no lights on anywhere around here —

The flour no one can find now. One cannot find flour or children.

They warned us two weeks ago, two months ago, to keep our lights turned off after dusk. They said, will be dangerous. They said, might be bombs. If the raids come, if the invasions come . . . They said, And keep your children inside. Inside, they said. But now all the children are gone. Now everyone is gone, except me, except this woman standing here who is me, except this woman standing here in what was once her kitchen, trying, trying. Trying to make bread without flour.

She; she does not; she does not, as she stands there; she does not, as she stands there in this moment; she does not, as she stands there in this moment so perfectly still — she does not (no, I will not) vomit. Vomit, vomit blood, vomit liquid, all over the floor.

No, nor make a sound.

She. She-I. Does not. Does not make. Does not make a —

There are sounds, there are sounds; there are smells, always smells; please wipe off that rock, a voice that sounds like her own says; the rock is sticky, you must wipe it off, says the voice again — yes, it is hers; I don’t like the way it shines, she/her voice says; a part of his

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