level 8
Chapter Seven
The start, I think I know too well. It is the first of my mistakes.
I imagine a table, slick with blood. The blood is my mother's. There is too much of it. There is so much of it, I think it runs, like ink. I think, to save the boards beneath, the women have set down china bowls; and so the silences between my mother's cries are filled—drip drop! drip drop!—with what might be the staggered beating of clocks. Beyond the beat come other, fainter cries: the shrieks of lunatics, the shouts and scolds of nurses. For this is a madhouse. My mother is mad. The table has straps upon it to keep her from plunging to the floor; another strap separates her jaws, to prevent the biting of her tongue; another keeps apart her legs, so that I might emerge from between them. When I am born, the straps remain: the women fear she will tear me in two! They put me upon her bosom and my mouth finds out her breast. I suck, and the
house falls silent about me. There is only, still, that falling blood— drip drop! drip, drop!—the beat telling off the first few minutes of my life, the last of hers. For soon, the clocks run slow. My mother's bosom rises, falls, rises again; then sinks for ever.
I feel it, and suck harder. Then the women pluck me from her. And when I weep, they hit me.
2009年05月23日 06点05分