WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.936 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.936 --> 00:00:05.324 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:00:05.324 --> 00:00:06.300 align:middle line:90% 00:00:06.300 --> 00:00:06.960 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:00:06.960 --> 00:00:09.000 align:middle line:90% Thanks, Alison. 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:14.160 align:middle line:84% This program is in its 10th year. 00:00:14.160 --> 00:00:15.750 align:middle line:84% I think that's kind of a landmark. 00:00:15.750 --> 00:00:20.130 align:middle line:84% And the program has involved 40 different writers 00:00:20.130 --> 00:00:23.400 align:middle line:84% in 16 different states throughout the US, 00:00:23.400 --> 00:00:26.730 align:middle line:84% creating, what I think, Alison is right, 00:00:26.730 --> 00:00:30.990 align:middle line:84% a community of writers that is spread throughout this country. 00:00:30.990 --> 00:00:35.100 align:middle line:84% And hopefully, we'll continue as the years go by. 00:00:35.100 --> 00:00:36.990 align:middle line:84% I would like to just say a couple 00:00:36.990 --> 00:00:39.300 align:middle line:84% of thank you's and then get right to the work, which 00:00:39.300 --> 00:00:41.680 align:middle line:90% is why you're here. 00:00:41.680 --> 00:00:43.950 align:middle line:84% First of all, thanks to Alison Deming 00:00:43.950 --> 00:00:48.060 align:middle line:84% and to Karen Falkenstrom who put this program together and has 00:00:48.060 --> 00:00:51.480 align:middle line:84% made our visit here so far quite wonderful. 00:00:51.480 --> 00:00:54.870 align:middle line:84% I'd also like to thank all the writers that we have met 00:00:54.870 --> 00:00:59.250 align:middle line:84% and will meet tomorrow as well who have given generously 00:00:59.250 --> 00:01:03.960 align:middle line:84% of their time and have shared their experiences 00:01:03.960 --> 00:01:07.710 align:middle line:84% in writing and just in living, which is also a part of writing. 00:01:07.710 --> 00:01:11.850 align:middle line:84% And last but not least, the judges for this program. 00:01:11.850 --> 00:01:13.620 align:middle line:84% The poet Mark Doty, who I believe 00:01:13.620 --> 00:01:17.850 align:middle line:84% read here last year, who selected Laura's work. 00:01:17.850 --> 00:01:19.650 align:middle line:84% And Melissa Pritchard, who is here 00:01:19.650 --> 00:01:21.840 align:middle line:84% this evening, and who I had the good fortune 00:01:21.840 --> 00:01:25.230 align:middle line:84% to meet in New Mexico, I guess, about four years ago, 00:01:25.230 --> 00:01:28.500 align:middle line:84% and who selected David Reynolds's work. 00:01:28.500 --> 00:01:30.780 align:middle line:84% I'd like now to introduce Melissa Pritchard. 00:01:30.780 --> 00:01:34.100 align:middle line:90% 00:01:34.100 --> 00:01:36.950 align:middle line:84% Melissa Pritchard received the Flannery O'Connor Award 00:01:36.950 --> 00:01:40.400 align:middle line:84% for her first book, Spirit Seizures. 00:01:40.400 --> 00:01:42.770 align:middle line:84% Her stories have been anthologized and cited 00:01:42.770 --> 00:01:46.640 align:middle line:84% in prized stories, including the O. Henry Awards, Best 00:01:46.640 --> 00:01:49.940 align:middle line:84% of the West, The Literary Ghost: Great Contemporary Ghost 00:01:49.940 --> 00:01:54.920 align:middle line:84% Stories, The Pushcart Prize, and Best American Short Stories. 00:01:54.920 --> 00:01:57.020 align:middle line:84% She's received grants from the National Endowment 00:01:57.020 --> 00:01:59.900 align:middle line:84% for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council. 00:01:59.900 --> 00:02:03.020 align:middle line:84% Her novel Phoenix was published by Cane Hill Press. 00:02:03.020 --> 00:02:05.330 align:middle line:84% And stories from her second collection, 00:02:05.330 --> 00:02:07.490 align:middle line:84% The Instinct for Bliss, have appeared 00:02:07.490 --> 00:02:09.740 align:middle line:84% in the Paris Review, the Southern Review, 00:02:09.740 --> 00:02:11.150 align:middle line:90% and other magazines. 00:02:11.150 --> 00:02:14.210 align:middle line:84% She teaches in a creative writing program at Arizona State 00:02:14.210 --> 00:02:15.350 align:middle line:90% University. 00:02:15.350 --> 00:02:17.160 align:middle line:84% And I think probably the best thing-- 00:02:17.160 --> 00:02:19.160 align:middle line:84% the most important thing about Melissa Pritchard 00:02:19.160 --> 00:02:22.610 align:middle line:84% is that when you read her stories, 00:02:22.610 --> 00:02:27.290 align:middle line:84% they are extraordinarily powerful, mystic, 00:02:27.290 --> 00:02:28.610 align:middle line:90% and they stay with you. 00:02:28.610 --> 00:02:33.036 align:middle line:84% And so it's my pleasure to welcome Melissa Pritchard. 00:02:33.036 --> 00:02:36.820 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:02:36.820 --> 00:02:39.190 align:middle line:90% 00:02:39.190 --> 00:02:40.660 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:02:40.660 --> 00:02:43.570 align:middle line:84% Before I introduce the two winners of this year's Poets 00:02:43.570 --> 00:02:45.730 align:middle line:84% & Writers Exchange Program, I'd like 00:02:45.730 --> 00:02:48.700 align:middle line:84% to say how much I wish Mark Doty, who 00:02:48.700 --> 00:02:52.030 align:middle line:84% served as this year's poetry judge, was with us this evening. 00:02:52.030 --> 00:02:55.300 align:middle line:84% He is a valiant and compassionate artist, surely 00:02:55.300 --> 00:02:58.480 align:middle line:84% one of the best poets writing today. 00:02:58.480 --> 00:03:01.540 align:middle line:84% And how quickly he must have recognized a similar courage 00:03:01.540 --> 00:03:05.590 align:middle line:84% and compassion shaping the poems of this year's winner in poetry, 00:03:05.590 --> 00:03:07.270 align:middle line:90% Laura Kasischke. 00:03:07.270 --> 00:03:11.080 align:middle line:84% Reading her manuscript, Housekeeping in a Dream, 00:03:11.080 --> 00:03:13.360 align:middle line:84% I was struck by her rigorous commitment 00:03:13.360 --> 00:03:16.930 align:middle line:84% to the expression of truths, whether home truths 00:03:16.930 --> 00:03:18.580 align:middle line:90% or foreign ones. 00:03:18.580 --> 00:03:22.090 align:middle line:84% Always in her work, I found the unmistakable urgency 00:03:22.090 --> 00:03:24.820 align:middle line:84% of the human heart speaking with clarity 00:03:24.820 --> 00:03:26.320 align:middle line:90% of what it knows and feels. 00:03:26.320 --> 00:03:30.250 align:middle line:84% In imagery, nothing short of wondrous. 00:03:30.250 --> 00:03:33.370 align:middle line:84% Laura Kasischke received her Bachelor of Arts and Master 00:03:33.370 --> 00:03:35.920 align:middle line:84% of Fine Arts degree from the University of Michigan 00:03:35.920 --> 00:03:37.060 align:middle line:90% at Ann Arbor. 00:03:37.060 --> 00:03:39.500 align:middle line:84% Her poetry has appeared in numerous magazines, 00:03:39.500 --> 00:03:42.790 align:middle line:84% including the Antioch Review, the Kenyon Review, the Missouri 00:03:42.790 --> 00:03:45.700 align:middle line:84% Review, Ploughshares Poetry, and the most current edition 00:03:45.700 --> 00:03:47.230 align:middle line:90% of The Pushcart Prize. 00:03:47.230 --> 00:03:50.560 align:middle line:84% In 1993, she received the Alice Fay Di Castagnola 00:03:50.560 --> 00:03:53.740 align:middle line:84% Award for a work-in-progress from the Poetry Society 00:03:53.740 --> 00:03:54.880 align:middle line:90% of America. 00:03:54.880 --> 00:03:56.560 align:middle line:84% This year, she was awarded a fellowship 00:03:56.560 --> 00:03:59.020 align:middle line:84% from the National Endowment for the Arts. 00:03:59.020 --> 00:04:03.280 align:middle line:84% Her first volume of poetry, Wild Brides, selected by Sharon Olds, 00:04:03.280 --> 00:04:06.610 align:middle line:84% received the Elmer Bobst Award for emerging writers 00:04:06.610 --> 00:04:10.530 align:middle line:84% and was published by New York University Press. 00:04:10.530 --> 00:04:16.140 align:middle line:84% Poetry, said W.H. Auden, can do 101 things; delight, sadden, 00:04:16.140 --> 00:04:18.660 align:middle line:90% disturb, amuse, instruct. 00:04:18.660 --> 00:04:21.630 align:middle line:84% It may express every possible shade of emotion 00:04:21.630 --> 00:04:24.280 align:middle line:84% and describe every conceivable kind of event, 00:04:24.280 --> 00:04:27.630 align:middle line:84% but there is only one thing that all poetry must do. 00:04:27.630 --> 00:04:32.460 align:middle line:84% It must praise all it can for being and happening. 00:04:32.460 --> 00:04:36.690 align:middle line:84% Laura Kasischke's poetry, beyond its excellent measure of craft 00:04:36.690 --> 00:04:39.510 align:middle line:84% and beyond its clear impression upon the heart 00:04:39.510 --> 00:04:42.960 align:middle line:90% indeed praises all it can. 00:04:42.960 --> 00:04:45.510 align:middle line:84% I'd like to introduce this year's winner of the Poets 00:04:45.510 --> 00:04:48.510 align:middle line:84% & Writers Exchange Program of Poetry, Laura Kasischke. 00:04:48.510 --> 00:04:49.020 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:04:49.020 --> 00:04:52.310 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:04:52.310 --> 00:04:55.130 align:middle line:90% 00:04:55.130 --> 00:04:56.030 align:middle line:90% Thank you very much. 00:04:56.030 --> 00:04:59.000 align:middle line:84% And I'd also very much like to thank 00:04:59.000 --> 00:05:00.650 align:middle line:84% all the poets and writers, people 00:05:00.650 --> 00:05:02.060 align:middle line:90% who have been so good to us. 00:05:02.060 --> 00:05:04.250 align:middle line:84% And Frazier Russell, in particular, 00:05:04.250 --> 00:05:10.220 align:middle line:84% for just really babysitting us really well for what 00:05:10.220 --> 00:05:12.200 align:middle line:84% has probably been a long week for him. 00:05:12.200 --> 00:05:15.560 align:middle line:84% So this first poem is called "Lady Luck." 00:05:15.560 --> 00:05:17.300 align:middle line:90% And it's a new poem. 00:05:17.300 --> 00:05:24.770 align:middle line:84% And I wrote it after thinking about some various tabloid type 00:05:24.770 --> 00:05:28.280 align:middle line:84% tragedies that have been in the news lately 00:05:28.280 --> 00:05:37.220 align:middle line:84% and the kind of combination of bad luck or predetermination 00:05:37.220 --> 00:05:40.560 align:middle line:90% that seems to rule our lives. 00:05:40.560 --> 00:05:47.120 align:middle line:84% And so this is about Lady Luck and God falling in love. 00:05:47.120 --> 00:05:49.190 align:middle line:84% Somewhere, there's a sad blue dress, 00:05:49.190 --> 00:05:51.440 align:middle line:84% and a woman's wearing it to work. 00:05:51.440 --> 00:05:54.440 align:middle line:84% God gawks down at her on Earth, but all he sees 00:05:54.440 --> 00:05:57.500 align:middle line:84% is just a smeared blue something, something watery 00:05:57.500 --> 00:06:00.110 align:middle line:84% or melted, something spread like blue milk 00:06:00.110 --> 00:06:02.840 align:middle line:84% spilled all over a wax white tray. 00:06:02.840 --> 00:06:06.960 align:middle line:84% The corn is female too and grows magenta hair by August. 00:06:06.960 --> 00:06:09.620 align:middle line:84% And it smells like teenage girls on horses, 00:06:09.620 --> 00:06:11.330 align:middle line:90% sweating in the fields. 00:06:11.330 --> 00:06:15.560 align:middle line:84% Flesh and leather and that hair, magenta wet. 00:06:15.560 --> 00:06:17.360 align:middle line:90% The wind creaks with corn. 00:06:17.360 --> 00:06:21.530 align:middle line:84% And the planet's a foggy oyster from up there, a sad blue dress, 00:06:21.530 --> 00:06:23.360 align:middle line:90% and overrun with rabbits. 00:06:23.360 --> 00:06:27.500 align:middle line:84% Phantom ovaries shine behind a glistening wish of rabbit bone, 00:06:27.500 --> 00:06:31.730 align:middle line:84% like microscopic pearls let loose all over the world. 00:06:31.730 --> 00:06:34.010 align:middle line:84% When God falls in love with Lady Luck, 00:06:34.010 --> 00:06:36.350 align:middle line:84% something's torn from a parchment sack 00:06:36.350 --> 00:06:40.010 align:middle line:84% and born, and scampers off on soft white paws that 00:06:40.010 --> 00:06:44.570 align:middle line:84% stir up and scratch off the church's dress of dust. 00:06:44.570 --> 00:06:46.520 align:middle line:84% And the woman, on her way to work, 00:06:46.520 --> 00:06:49.040 align:middle line:84% who wears the sad blue dress she'll never know 00:06:49.040 --> 00:06:50.930 align:middle line:90% is the whole cloth of Earth. 00:06:50.930 --> 00:06:54.650 align:middle line:84% She never sees the sky, the cloud, the girl's damp blood 00:06:54.650 --> 00:06:55.880 align:middle line:90% hair of corn. 00:06:55.880 --> 00:06:58.610 align:middle line:90% Detergents churn the streams. 00:06:58.610 --> 00:07:01.700 align:middle line:84% A crucifixion in the fields wears a farmer's shirt 00:07:01.700 --> 00:07:05.840 align:middle line:84% and scares the bony birds with its empty, open flannel arms. 00:07:05.840 --> 00:07:08.600 align:middle line:84% And white powder falls from their wire feet, 00:07:08.600 --> 00:07:11.150 align:middle line:84% as if their startled hungry fear could dance 00:07:11.150 --> 00:07:13.730 align:middle line:90% to talc the moon's gym floor. 00:07:13.730 --> 00:07:17.840 align:middle line:84% When God asks Lady Luck to dance, nothing's sacred anymore. 00:07:17.840 --> 00:07:20.930 align:middle line:84% The serial killer orders a piece of apple pie 00:07:20.930 --> 00:07:22.700 align:middle line:90% at a diner in Arizona. 00:07:22.700 --> 00:07:24.890 align:middle line:84% The jury is moved by the TV movie 00:07:24.890 --> 00:07:26.720 align:middle line:90% and decides to set him free. 00:07:26.720 --> 00:07:28.700 align:middle line:84% The hunters shoot each other, thinking 00:07:28.700 --> 00:07:32.330 align:middle line:84% that they've seen neon-orange deer fleeing between the trees. 00:07:32.330 --> 00:07:36.260 align:middle line:84% And the lottery is never won by a man who loves his wife. 00:07:36.260 --> 00:07:38.930 align:middle line:84% Bullet wind is silver, and the air around the bullet 00:07:38.930 --> 00:07:39.890 align:middle line:90% is a razor. 00:07:39.890 --> 00:07:42.710 align:middle line:84% And the singe above it's like a silver finger nail 00:07:42.710 --> 00:07:45.680 align:middle line:84% file that's dusted with fingernail, filed down 00:07:45.680 --> 00:07:49.370 align:middle line:84% to human flour, and August's ground to chalky powder. 00:07:49.370 --> 00:07:52.340 align:middle line:84% And the horses do not know the teenage girls will soon fall out 00:07:52.340 --> 00:07:55.640 align:middle line:84% of love with them and into love with men, while the woman's 00:07:55.640 --> 00:08:00.260 align:middle line:84% dress rips open like a gift of sadness, appetite, or chance, 00:08:00.260 --> 00:08:03.500 align:middle line:84% equestrian and blinding as a white car's headlights 00:08:03.500 --> 00:08:05.030 align:middle line:90% on a whitewashed day. 00:08:05.030 --> 00:08:07.730 align:middle line:84% This was not an accident, the detectives say. 00:08:07.730 --> 00:08:10.340 align:middle line:84% The boys had not been drinking, and the witnesses 00:08:10.340 --> 00:08:12.635 align:middle line:84% saw nothing but a bird's pure scream. 00:08:12.635 --> 00:08:15.750 align:middle line:90% 00:08:15.750 --> 00:08:20.190 align:middle line:84% I read somewhere that Malaysian superstition 00:08:20.190 --> 00:08:25.170 align:middle line:84% is that if a person's face is painted while they're sleeping, 00:08:25.170 --> 00:08:28.410 align:middle line:84% well, when they fall asleep, their soul will leave their body 00:08:28.410 --> 00:08:31.420 align:middle line:84% and it can't find its way back because their face is painted. 00:08:31.420 --> 00:08:34.650 align:middle line:84% And this made me think of my mother, 00:08:34.650 --> 00:08:38.940 align:middle line:84% how she would demand always that I not wear makeup 00:08:38.940 --> 00:08:40.500 align:middle line:90% when I was a teenager to bed. 00:08:40.500 --> 00:08:42.570 align:middle line:84% Something like your face would rot off 00:08:42.570 --> 00:08:43.860 align:middle line:90% or something if you wore it. 00:08:43.860 --> 00:08:45.870 align:middle line:84% You can wear it on your face all day, 00:08:45.870 --> 00:08:48.270 align:middle line:90% but you can't wear it overnight. 00:08:48.270 --> 00:08:50.760 align:middle line:90% So I thought maybe this was-- 00:08:50.760 --> 00:08:53.130 align:middle line:84% somehow, these things seem connected to me. 00:08:53.130 --> 00:08:55.530 align:middle line:84% And this is called "Self-fulfilling Prophecies." 00:08:55.530 --> 00:08:58.380 align:middle line:84% And I begin it with a quote about the Malaysians' fancy 00:08:58.380 --> 00:09:00.870 align:middle line:84% that if a person's face is painted while he sleeps, 00:09:00.870 --> 00:09:02.460 align:middle line:84% the soul, which has gone out of him, 00:09:02.460 --> 00:09:04.920 align:middle line:90% will not recognize the body. 00:09:04.920 --> 00:09:09.120 align:middle line:84% And the sleeper will die or awake a kind of female zombie 00:09:09.120 --> 00:09:11.250 align:middle line:90% in a cold, dark space. 00:09:11.250 --> 00:09:13.080 align:middle line:84% On Sunday, I'm in a department store 00:09:13.080 --> 00:09:15.060 align:middle line:90% choosing a crayon for my eyes. 00:09:15.060 --> 00:09:17.460 align:middle line:84% The cosmetic counter floats towards me 00:09:17.460 --> 00:09:19.440 align:middle line:84% like a ship of fluorescent light. 00:09:19.440 --> 00:09:22.320 align:middle line:84% And the girl behind it is perfect, half goddess 00:09:22.320 --> 00:09:23.880 align:middle line:90% in a tight white dress. 00:09:23.880 --> 00:09:26.400 align:middle line:84% Though I see she has eaten her fingernails off 00:09:26.400 --> 00:09:28.410 align:middle line:84% by the bloody stumps of her fingers 00:09:28.410 --> 00:09:30.480 align:middle line:90% and the flesh between her teeth. 00:09:30.480 --> 00:09:33.840 align:middle line:84% Still, it's true what they say that each beautiful woman must 00:09:33.840 --> 00:09:35.580 align:middle line:90% bear a flaw of some kind. 00:09:35.580 --> 00:09:37.500 align:middle line:84% Some must draw on the mark themselves 00:09:37.500 --> 00:09:40.560 align:middle line:84% with an eyebrow pencil, and some must chew up their hands 00:09:40.560 --> 00:09:41.790 align:middle line:90% to get at it. 00:09:41.790 --> 00:09:44.340 align:middle line:84% She looks at my face and suggests a dark, coal 00:09:44.340 --> 00:09:46.020 align:middle line:90% color to match my soul. 00:09:46.020 --> 00:09:47.460 align:middle line:90% Where is it, I ask her. 00:09:47.460 --> 00:09:48.960 align:middle line:90% And she happens to know. 00:09:48.960 --> 00:09:51.360 align:middle line:84% She takes me into a storage room, where shelves 00:09:51.360 --> 00:09:53.610 align:middle line:84% sag with the weight of lipstick crates, 00:09:53.610 --> 00:09:56.370 align:middle line:84% and a white mouse struggles in a trap of glue. 00:09:56.370 --> 00:09:59.100 align:middle line:84% It rips off its tail to try to get loose, just 00:09:59.100 --> 00:10:00.780 align:middle line:90% to get stuck on its face. 00:10:00.780 --> 00:10:03.150 align:middle line:90% It's clear there is no escape. 00:10:03.150 --> 00:10:07.080 align:middle line:84% Here, she says, we kept it just in case you came. 00:10:07.080 --> 00:10:10.440 align:middle line:84% She is so lovely, I end up buying twice as much as I need. 00:10:10.440 --> 00:10:13.560 align:middle line:84% And when I get home, I decorate my face like a birthday cake 00:10:13.560 --> 00:10:16.800 align:middle line:84% until my lips can be seen red and pleading, miles 00:10:16.800 --> 00:10:18.270 align:middle line:90% and miles away. 00:10:18.270 --> 00:10:20.250 align:middle line:84% I wear it all night in the empty bed, 00:10:20.250 --> 00:10:22.710 align:middle line:84% while my soul is freeze-dried in the sky, 00:10:22.710 --> 00:10:26.460 align:middle line:84% and the janitor buries his bag of mice and a hole in the yard. 00:10:26.460 --> 00:10:28.560 align:middle line:84% Their little human hands are stiff, 00:10:28.560 --> 00:10:32.130 align:middle line:84% and their pink eyes blink open and shut, shut and open 00:10:32.130 --> 00:10:33.600 align:middle line:90% like baby dolls in the grave. 00:10:33.600 --> 00:10:36.760 align:middle line:90% 00:10:36.760 --> 00:10:39.010 align:middle line:84% This poem is called "Local Legend." 00:10:39.010 --> 00:10:43.720 align:middle line:84% And I had a terrible experience of finding a dead dog a year ago 00:10:43.720 --> 00:10:45.760 align:middle line:90% in the spring in the backyard. 00:10:45.760 --> 00:10:48.070 align:middle line:84% It had obviously been there all winter. 00:10:48.070 --> 00:10:49.780 align:middle line:84% And it was full of bees, actually. 00:10:49.780 --> 00:10:53.080 align:middle line:84% And as soon as I saw it, I immediately thought of the town 00:10:53.080 --> 00:10:54.310 align:middle line:90% that I grew up in. 00:10:54.310 --> 00:10:58.460 align:middle line:84% Somehow, there was just an absolute connection right there. 00:10:58.460 --> 00:11:02.740 align:middle line:84% And so I wrote this poem sort of combining the description 00:11:02.740 --> 00:11:06.730 align:middle line:84% of the dog and the description of the town, "Local Legend." 00:11:06.730 --> 00:11:08.650 align:middle line:84% This morning, the awful surprise of a dead 00:11:08.650 --> 00:11:12.160 align:middle line:84% greyhound in lilies, silver on silver and hollow. 00:11:12.160 --> 00:11:15.460 align:middle line:84% The sky goes wild with laughter, and the seeds of doubt 00:11:15.460 --> 00:11:18.490 align:middle line:84% sprout small bald chutes in ground and glimmer 00:11:18.490 --> 00:11:21.490 align:middle line:84% like rosary beads in the hands of our local legend, Sister 00:11:21.490 --> 00:11:24.850 align:middle line:84% Lucianne, who claimed they turned from glass to gold one 00:11:24.850 --> 00:11:25.900 align:middle line:90% day at mass. 00:11:25.900 --> 00:11:27.520 align:middle line:90% But we knew they never did. 00:11:27.520 --> 00:11:30.400 align:middle line:84% Sister Lucianne was lonely and getting old. 00:11:30.400 --> 00:11:33.010 align:middle line:84% And she wanted her name in the paper the way some of us 00:11:33.010 --> 00:11:36.460 align:middle line:84% want to be held and are perfectly willing to spin straw 00:11:36.460 --> 00:11:38.410 align:middle line:90% into fool's gold for it. 00:11:38.410 --> 00:11:41.560 align:middle line:84% And anyway, we knew the last real miracle here was when 00:11:41.560 --> 00:11:45.220 align:middle line:84% Catholics Central slaughtered Rockford 42-10. 00:11:45.220 --> 00:11:47.410 align:middle line:84% There was blood in the parking lot then. 00:11:47.410 --> 00:11:49.900 align:middle line:84% Glass shattered and sparkled like white eels 00:11:49.900 --> 00:11:51.100 align:middle line:90% on a church lawn. 00:11:51.100 --> 00:11:53.500 align:middle line:84% Toilet paper strung umbilical cords 00:11:53.500 --> 00:11:56.080 align:middle line:84% through trees, streaming wet by morning, 00:11:56.080 --> 00:11:59.620 align:middle line:84% and white as ghouls against a purple October sky. 00:11:59.620 --> 00:12:02.800 align:middle line:84% They say two pom-pom girls in the Catholic cemetery 00:12:02.800 --> 00:12:05.260 align:middle line:84% took on the whole team themselves that night. 00:12:05.260 --> 00:12:07.030 align:middle line:84% There was the cold sweat of marble 00:12:07.030 --> 00:12:10.720 align:middle line:84% in the air, stale green carnations, the Earth 00:12:10.720 --> 00:12:12.700 align:middle line:90% kiss of mulch, and wild hair. 00:12:12.700 --> 00:12:13.510 align:middle line:90% I know. 00:12:13.510 --> 00:12:14.680 align:middle line:90% I was there. 00:12:14.680 --> 00:12:17.890 align:middle line:84% "Heed a warning," the horoscope in the local paper almost never 00:12:17.890 --> 00:12:18.550 align:middle line:90% says. 00:12:18.550 --> 00:12:22.210 align:middle line:84% And that may be because Linda Lovelace is the only true star 00:12:22.210 --> 00:12:24.100 align:middle line:90% this town has ever had. 00:12:24.100 --> 00:12:26.930 align:middle line:84% And Tuesday is usually the tepid day of death. 00:12:26.930 --> 00:12:29.080 align:middle line:84% Though today, it's just this empty boat 00:12:29.080 --> 00:12:32.860 align:middle line:84% of a silver dog, thumped with a buzzing fist of gold. 00:12:32.860 --> 00:12:35.140 align:middle line:84% Bees have attached a hive to its spine 00:12:35.140 --> 00:12:38.380 align:middle line:84% and they drone in and out of it like a handbag stuffed 00:12:38.380 --> 00:12:40.990 align:middle line:84% with gossip, and honey, and another story that 00:12:40.990 --> 00:12:45.760 align:middle line:84% goes, In 1967, a wagon load of angry clowns passed 00:12:45.760 --> 00:12:46.870 align:middle line:90% through this town. 00:12:46.870 --> 00:12:49.090 align:middle line:84% And all the Catholic girls stepped out 00:12:49.090 --> 00:12:51.400 align:middle line:90% in night frost and no clothes. 00:12:51.400 --> 00:12:53.320 align:middle line:84% Though the Shriners still deny it, 00:12:53.320 --> 00:12:55.450 align:middle line:84% that procession lasted four nights. 00:12:55.450 --> 00:12:59.800 align:middle line:84% And I say, who's to say a clown, however bitter, however old, 00:12:59.800 --> 00:13:03.250 align:middle line:84% couldn't sire a human child among us like a God? 00:13:03.250 --> 00:13:04.920 align:middle line:90% Here it is, I tell you. 00:13:04.920 --> 00:13:08.200 align:middle line:84% Bend down here today and look at this strange harp, 00:13:08.200 --> 00:13:12.430 align:middle line:84% this jeweled and busy zither, dead and alive at the same time. 00:13:12.430 --> 00:13:13.495 align:middle line:90% Here God is. 00:13:13.495 --> 00:13:16.710 align:middle line:90% 00:13:16.710 --> 00:13:22.162 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read an older poem that I had planned 00:13:22.162 --> 00:13:23.370 align:middle line:90% to write for years and years. 00:13:23.370 --> 00:13:28.470 align:middle line:84% I carried around a clipping with me with the headline, 00:13:28.470 --> 00:13:30.000 align:middle line:84% and which is the title of the poem, 00:13:30.000 --> 00:13:32.100 align:middle line:84% "Woman Kills Sweetheart With Bowling Ball." 00:13:32.100 --> 00:13:35.910 align:middle line:84% And this woman really did do that in Bloomington, Indiana. 00:13:35.910 --> 00:13:38.100 align:middle line:84% She dropped her lover's bowling ball on his head 00:13:38.100 --> 00:13:40.080 align:middle line:84% over and over again while he slept. 00:13:40.080 --> 00:13:44.193 align:middle line:90% 00:13:44.193 --> 00:13:46.110 align:middle line:84% I just really wanted to write a poem about it, 00:13:46.110 --> 00:13:50.720 align:middle line:84% but it took me a long time to get to it. 00:13:50.720 --> 00:13:52.710 align:middle line:84% And it very much scared my husband 00:13:52.710 --> 00:13:55.770 align:middle line:84% who wondered why I carried this clipping around with me 00:13:55.770 --> 00:13:56.983 align:middle line:90% everywhere. 00:13:56.983 --> 00:13:59.400 align:middle line:84% But this is the poem, "Woman Kills Sweetheart With Bowling 00:13:59.400 --> 00:14:00.600 align:middle line:90% Ball." 00:14:00.600 --> 00:14:02.700 align:middle line:84% The moon is loose in the gutter tonight, 00:14:02.700 --> 00:14:05.910 align:middle line:84% and it rolls without kisses or hand-prints between us. 00:14:05.910 --> 00:14:08.730 align:middle line:90% Its mouth is an O of surprise. 00:14:08.730 --> 00:14:10.890 align:middle line:84% Oh, tonight, the phantasma of love 00:14:10.890 --> 00:14:12.930 align:middle line:84% climbs the stairs while we sleep. 00:14:12.930 --> 00:14:16.110 align:middle line:84% She sags with exhaustion and booze and pills, 00:14:16.110 --> 00:14:19.230 align:middle line:84% while her skin hangs heavy and empty as hate. 00:14:19.230 --> 00:14:22.110 align:middle line:84% She floats so slow, she floats as if she 00:14:22.110 --> 00:14:23.870 align:middle line:90% is swimming through blood. 00:14:23.870 --> 00:14:26.114 align:middle line:90% Shh, shh. 00:14:26.114 --> 00:14:27.540 align:middle line:90% The lights are out. 00:14:27.540 --> 00:14:30.930 align:middle line:84% And the little suspicion sleeps and dreams and whimpers 00:14:30.930 --> 00:14:31.830 align:middle line:90% in its crib. 00:14:31.830 --> 00:14:34.500 align:middle line:90% Its tongue is ugly and blue. 00:14:34.500 --> 00:14:37.860 align:middle line:84% She climbs, she climbs in silence and fury, 00:14:37.860 --> 00:14:40.650 align:middle line:84% spinning groggy in darkness and wind. 00:14:40.650 --> 00:14:42.600 align:middle line:84% Look, her left hand bears for you 00:14:42.600 --> 00:14:46.170 align:middle line:84% sweetly a gift of lightning and lilies to please you. 00:14:46.170 --> 00:14:49.100 align:middle line:84% Though, oh, tonight, in her right hand, she, 00:14:49.100 --> 00:14:50.475 align:middle line:90% she has invented gravity. 00:14:50.475 --> 00:14:53.730 align:middle line:90% 00:14:53.730 --> 00:14:57.480 align:middle line:90% This is "Babysitter." 00:14:57.480 --> 00:15:00.630 align:middle line:84% When I was 16, I decided to eat the underworld fruit. 00:15:00.630 --> 00:15:01.800 align:middle line:90% What the hell, I said. 00:15:01.800 --> 00:15:03.510 align:middle line:90% It was juicy and cold. 00:15:03.510 --> 00:15:05.760 align:middle line:84% My hair was black, so I dyed it black, 00:15:05.760 --> 00:15:07.470 align:middle line:90% and I wore nothing but black. 00:15:07.470 --> 00:15:10.110 align:middle line:84% I still have the skull tattooed on my ass. 00:15:10.110 --> 00:15:12.300 align:middle line:84% I never cried and I never laughed. 00:15:12.300 --> 00:15:16.080 align:middle line:84% I decided to reinvent silence right in my own home. 00:15:16.080 --> 00:15:18.210 align:middle line:84% My father's hair went white overnight, 00:15:18.210 --> 00:15:20.700 align:middle line:84% and he hung up his mailman blues and retired. 00:15:20.700 --> 00:15:23.040 align:middle line:84% My mother fell down the stairs and died. 00:15:23.040 --> 00:15:25.110 align:middle line:84% My father said he was glad at least 00:15:25.110 --> 00:15:28.020 align:middle line:84% she couldn't see what would become of me. 00:15:28.020 --> 00:15:31.260 align:middle line:84% That winter, I divided the bear arrows up among my friends. 00:15:31.260 --> 00:15:32.700 align:middle line:90% Aim to kill, I said. 00:15:32.700 --> 00:15:35.250 align:middle line:84% And I tacked its head to the post of my bed. 00:15:35.250 --> 00:15:37.530 align:middle line:84% At night, it sang its grisly song to me, 00:15:37.530 --> 00:15:39.660 align:middle line:84% and I slipped my neck between its teeth. 00:15:39.660 --> 00:15:42.090 align:middle line:90% I trust you completely, I said. 00:15:42.090 --> 00:15:44.490 align:middle line:84% For attention at school, I swallowed fire, 00:15:44.490 --> 00:15:47.940 align:middle line:84% I ate crows whole, and once, I jumped out from behind a bush 00:15:47.940 --> 00:15:50.010 align:middle line:90% and scared a priest to death. 00:15:50.010 --> 00:15:54.180 align:middle line:84% At 16, I discovered sex in the back seat of a cannibal's car. 00:15:54.180 --> 00:15:55.860 align:middle line:90% Though, we only went so far. 00:15:55.860 --> 00:15:58.050 align:middle line:84% It was my first taste of human flesh, 00:15:58.050 --> 00:16:00.120 align:middle line:90% and it was tender and sweet. 00:16:00.120 --> 00:16:02.910 align:middle line:84% When I was 16, the beast came looking for me. 00:16:02.910 --> 00:16:05.790 align:middle line:84% Some of my friends impaled themselves on rusty knives, 00:16:05.790 --> 00:16:07.690 align:middle line:84% while I was granted eternal life. 00:16:07.690 --> 00:16:08.700 align:middle line:90% I don't know why. 00:16:08.700 --> 00:16:10.650 align:middle line:90% Wild dogs followed me home. 00:16:10.650 --> 00:16:12.750 align:middle line:90% Rabid bats ate from my hand. 00:16:12.750 --> 00:16:14.910 align:middle line:90% And children, children loved me. 00:16:14.910 --> 00:16:16.620 align:middle line:84% At night, while you were out dancing, 00:16:16.620 --> 00:16:19.620 align:middle line:84% your children gathered around me and put their little raccoon 00:16:19.620 --> 00:16:20.430 align:middle line:90% hands in mine. 00:16:20.430 --> 00:16:25.500 align:middle line:90% 00:16:25.500 --> 00:16:29.460 align:middle line:84% I imagine a lot of you have seen the movie A Place in the Sun. 00:16:29.460 --> 00:16:32.610 align:middle line:84% And this poem is called "Thunder, 00:16:32.610 --> 00:16:33.720 align:middle line:90% or a Place in the Sun." 00:16:33.720 --> 00:16:38.220 align:middle line:84% And the part that refers to that movie, 00:16:38.220 --> 00:16:41.460 align:middle line:84% I'm sure you know the scene where Montgomery Clift is 00:16:41.460 --> 00:16:46.378 align:middle line:84% going to knock his wife or his pregnant girlfriend, who he-- 00:16:46.378 --> 00:16:48.420 align:middle line:84% they're not married yet-- his pregnant girlfriend 00:16:48.420 --> 00:16:49.920 align:middle line:90% into the water. 00:16:49.920 --> 00:16:50.910 align:middle line:90% And she can't swim. 00:16:50.910 --> 00:16:53.517 align:middle line:84% And even though it seems really like a bad thing 00:16:53.517 --> 00:16:56.100 align:middle line:84% to do since she's pregnant and she's so homely and everything, 00:16:56.100 --> 00:16:58.890 align:middle line:84% you really want him to because she looks so ugly 00:16:58.890 --> 00:17:01.140 align:middle line:84% and he could marry Elizabeth Taylor and be happy. 00:17:01.140 --> 00:17:04.710 align:middle line:84% And so you just really want to see him just like whack her out 00:17:04.710 --> 00:17:08.210 align:middle line:90% of the boat, or I do, anyway. 00:17:08.210 --> 00:17:11.880 align:middle line:84% So that's what this poem is about. 00:17:11.880 --> 00:17:13.740 align:middle line:84% "Thunder, or a Place in the Sun." 00:17:13.740 --> 00:17:15.089 align:middle line:90% One. 00:17:15.089 --> 00:17:17.460 align:middle line:84% The Gods are bowling in heaven tonight. 00:17:17.460 --> 00:17:20.369 align:middle line:84% Their wives cry into their own black hair, 00:17:20.369 --> 00:17:24.119 align:middle line:84% while the kitchen's strange machinery minces and hatches. 00:17:24.119 --> 00:17:25.440 align:middle line:90% I arrange this. 00:17:25.440 --> 00:17:26.700 align:middle line:90% I arrange that. 00:17:26.700 --> 00:17:28.620 align:middle line:90% I move from room to room. 00:17:28.620 --> 00:17:29.940 align:middle line:90% Two. 00:17:29.940 --> 00:17:32.670 align:middle line:84% Lightning strikes me as similar to love. 00:17:32.670 --> 00:17:36.660 align:middle line:84% The ruins in some countries are tooth-white and stunning in sun. 00:17:36.660 --> 00:17:39.870 align:middle line:84% Pillars holding up nothing but blue air and light. 00:17:39.870 --> 00:17:42.840 align:middle line:84% He writes on the back of the postcard I knew something 00:17:42.840 --> 00:17:44.380 align:middle line:90% somewhere was holding that up. 00:17:44.380 --> 00:17:45.750 align:middle line:90% Didn't you? 00:17:45.750 --> 00:17:47.040 align:middle line:90% Three. 00:17:47.040 --> 00:17:48.720 align:middle line:84% My friend tells me that high heels 00:17:48.720 --> 00:17:51.510 align:middle line:84% were invented to keep housewives from running away, 00:17:51.510 --> 00:17:53.760 align:middle line:84% like the fists of bound feet in China. 00:17:53.760 --> 00:17:56.250 align:middle line:84% Lovely as doves and blunt as clubs. 00:17:56.250 --> 00:17:58.740 align:middle line:84% True enough, I tell her, I've never run, 00:17:58.740 --> 00:18:01.940 align:middle line:84% but my heart is a boot with blood on it. 00:18:01.940 --> 00:18:03.080 align:middle line:90% Four. 00:18:03.080 --> 00:18:04.730 align:middle line:84% There's a long line outside the liquor 00:18:04.730 --> 00:18:06.470 align:middle line:90% store on Fridays in the summer. 00:18:06.470 --> 00:18:08.570 align:middle line:90% The lottery and beer. 00:18:08.570 --> 00:18:11.480 align:middle line:84% We're all in the same line, the same boat here. 00:18:11.480 --> 00:18:13.820 align:middle line:84% In a place in the sun, there is the old woman 00:18:13.820 --> 00:18:16.520 align:middle line:84% warble of loons, and square-jawed Alice, 00:18:16.520 --> 00:18:19.700 align:middle line:84% her face grows larger and larger in our boat. 00:18:19.700 --> 00:18:22.610 align:middle line:84% Behind us, the slim hope of the idle rich. 00:18:22.610 --> 00:18:25.940 align:middle line:84% Before us, fog crinolines out of the Campbell's soup. 00:18:25.940 --> 00:18:29.030 align:middle line:84% A muddle of plaid furniture and empty shoes. 00:18:29.030 --> 00:18:32.490 align:middle line:84% We'd also rather die than be stuck with our own lives, 00:18:32.490 --> 00:18:34.040 align:middle line:90% our own homely wives. 00:18:34.040 --> 00:18:37.760 align:middle line:84% Both of them thick and dopey, and she can't swim. 00:18:37.760 --> 00:18:40.280 align:middle line:84% Back there, something gorgeous as Liz Taylor 00:18:40.280 --> 00:18:45.230 align:middle line:84% waits between layers and layers of light, white cake if we win. 00:18:45.230 --> 00:18:46.340 align:middle line:90% Five. 00:18:46.340 --> 00:18:49.670 align:middle line:84% I stare at my own feet a long time outside the liquor store. 00:18:49.670 --> 00:18:52.340 align:middle line:84% True, I've never run in these red heels, 00:18:52.340 --> 00:18:54.170 align:middle line:90% but I've been run from. 00:18:54.170 --> 00:18:57.320 align:middle line:84% I've watched one husband cuff his hands around a bullet hole 00:18:57.320 --> 00:18:59.090 align:middle line:90% as if to keep the river in him. 00:18:59.090 --> 00:19:02.720 align:middle line:84% Lungs hissing a bit, like the teapot wanting to boil. 00:19:02.720 --> 00:19:05.450 align:middle line:84% When he opened his mouth, a pink froth came out, 00:19:05.450 --> 00:19:06.860 align:middle line:90% a silver wind in my face. 00:19:06.860 --> 00:19:11.260 align:middle line:90% 00:19:11.260 --> 00:19:13.345 align:middle line:84% This is called "Prayers to Saint Vanity." 00:19:13.345 --> 00:19:16.250 align:middle line:90% 00:19:16.250 --> 00:19:17.090 align:middle line:90% One. 00:19:17.090 --> 00:19:19.340 align:middle line:90% My dry well, I beseech thee. 00:19:19.340 --> 00:19:20.840 align:middle line:90% This old lighthouse. 00:19:20.840 --> 00:19:25.310 align:middle line:84% Once, it could catch fire and burn the woman inside alive. 00:19:25.310 --> 00:19:26.780 align:middle line:90% Two. 00:19:26.780 --> 00:19:29.180 align:middle line:84% In Alpena, they'll tell you a lightkeeper's wife 00:19:29.180 --> 00:19:31.400 align:middle line:90% haunts Lake Huron out of spite. 00:19:31.400 --> 00:19:33.200 align:middle line:90% She wails over the waves. 00:19:33.200 --> 00:19:37.850 align:middle line:84% Her ghost is a gull, a cloud, a rag, a trout with wings in gray. 00:19:37.850 --> 00:19:40.220 align:middle line:84% They say the light-keeper locked her in the lighthouse 00:19:40.220 --> 00:19:43.100 align:middle line:84% every night, then went to visit a girl in town. 00:19:43.100 --> 00:19:47.660 align:middle line:84% Finally, she burned it down with herself inside, alive. 00:19:47.660 --> 00:19:48.620 align:middle line:90% Three. 00:19:48.620 --> 00:19:51.260 align:middle line:84% Saint Vanity, my body is that burning tower 00:19:51.260 --> 00:19:53.510 align:middle line:84% tonight with that mad wife inside, 00:19:53.510 --> 00:19:56.960 align:middle line:84% with that feverish girl outside, waiting for him in town. 00:19:56.960 --> 00:20:00.350 align:middle line:84% Lake Huron is a blue, black churning urged to drown, 00:20:00.350 --> 00:20:02.930 align:middle line:84% colder and more filmy than a tooth. 00:20:02.930 --> 00:20:05.240 align:middle line:84% Some mornings, I ride my stationary bike 00:20:05.240 --> 00:20:07.010 align:middle line:90% all the way to Vietnam. 00:20:07.010 --> 00:20:09.200 align:middle line:84% There, my husband is 18, and either he's 00:20:09.200 --> 00:20:12.320 align:middle line:84% kissing a pretty whore or cradling a corpse. 00:20:12.320 --> 00:20:15.230 align:middle line:84% I see how close the bullets sing to his sweet feet. 00:20:15.230 --> 00:20:17.330 align:middle line:90% How unlikely is this life. 00:20:17.330 --> 00:20:18.500 align:middle line:90% Those bullets peel. 00:20:18.500 --> 00:20:21.770 align:middle line:84% And when I wake, he's still asleep, beside me in Alpena 00:20:21.770 --> 00:20:24.230 align:middle line:84% at the Fountain of Youth RV Park. 00:20:24.230 --> 00:20:26.660 align:middle line:84% Now, I could sew my own shroud closed, 00:20:26.660 --> 00:20:29.390 align:middle line:84% or a dead marine could unzip his own body bag, 00:20:29.390 --> 00:20:32.450 align:middle line:84% glistening with rain and green, the zither of plastic 00:20:32.450 --> 00:20:34.280 align:middle line:90% and a zipper's nasty teeth. 00:20:34.280 --> 00:20:36.020 align:middle line:90% And my husband could step out. 00:20:36.020 --> 00:20:38.810 align:middle line:84% Love, he'd say, is bloodless, wonderful and dull 00:20:38.810 --> 00:20:40.970 align:middle line:90% as death by natural causes. 00:20:40.970 --> 00:20:42.500 align:middle line:90% Four. 00:20:42.500 --> 00:20:45.140 align:middle line:84% At Youth Saint Vanity, you wear silver sandals, 00:20:45.140 --> 00:20:47.360 align:middle line:84% and you perch on my shoulder every morning. 00:20:47.360 --> 00:20:50.660 align:middle line:84% You're a little Betty Grable with 40-year-old legs. 00:20:50.660 --> 00:20:52.730 align:middle line:84% Ships have sunk, with trunks of money 00:20:52.730 --> 00:20:55.250 align:middle line:84% and all our mother's lovers, just because the light 00:20:55.250 --> 00:20:56.990 align:middle line:90% in that lighthouse was out. 00:20:56.990 --> 00:20:58.850 align:middle line:90% My dry well, I tell you. 00:20:58.850 --> 00:21:01.040 align:middle line:84% When my husband touches me, my insides 00:21:01.040 --> 00:21:04.250 align:middle line:84% are a herd of skinny girls, running backwards, laughing, 00:21:04.250 --> 00:21:06.570 align:middle line:90% making kisses at the sky. 00:21:06.570 --> 00:21:07.710 align:middle line:90% Five. 00:21:07.710 --> 00:21:10.530 align:middle line:84% Saint Vanity, you know so well the differences between 00:21:10.530 --> 00:21:13.080 align:middle line:84% the fears of the rich, the fears of the poor, 00:21:13.080 --> 00:21:15.720 align:middle line:84% the fears of the beautiful, the fears of the homely, 00:21:15.720 --> 00:21:18.180 align:middle line:84% the fears of the young, the fears of the old, 00:21:18.180 --> 00:21:20.670 align:middle line:84% the desire to die, and the act of dying, 00:21:20.670 --> 00:21:23.280 align:middle line:90% and you cannot bless us all. 00:21:23.280 --> 00:21:25.350 align:middle line:84% And this last poem is called "Ravine." 00:21:25.350 --> 00:21:28.040 align:middle line:90% 00:21:28.040 --> 00:21:29.720 align:middle line:84% At night, we crawled out of our windows 00:21:29.720 --> 00:21:31.490 align:middle line:84% with our parents' bottles while they were 00:21:31.490 --> 00:21:33.620 align:middle line:90% drunk and locked in combat. 00:21:33.620 --> 00:21:36.590 align:middle line:84% Dogs would strain their chains at the stars and the smell 00:21:36.590 --> 00:21:38.630 align:middle line:84% of girls' underwear in backyards, 00:21:38.630 --> 00:21:42.140 align:middle line:84% as we shuffled over the summer stumps of suburban grass. 00:21:42.140 --> 00:21:46.490 align:middle line:84% We wore our hair orange in those days, ugly and amazing as grace. 00:21:46.490 --> 00:21:49.700 align:middle line:84% We talked on and on about boys as if we knew one. 00:21:49.700 --> 00:21:52.520 align:middle line:84% And now, I bleed with nostalgia to think of that. 00:21:52.520 --> 00:21:54.200 align:middle line:84% The wet banks of the ravine where 00:21:54.200 --> 00:21:56.720 align:middle line:84% we slid down to drink, just two girls 00:21:56.720 --> 00:21:58.550 align:middle line:90% getting immaterial on wine. 00:21:58.550 --> 00:22:00.470 align:middle line:90% Maybe smoking, if we had one. 00:22:00.470 --> 00:22:02.840 align:middle line:84% Sucking the kitchen lights in the distance down, 00:22:02.840 --> 00:22:06.200 align:middle line:84% like a smoldering forest of pines. 00:22:06.200 --> 00:22:09.290 align:middle line:84% The heart named us sisters, with its dull thumping. 00:22:09.290 --> 00:22:12.320 align:middle line:84% I loved her with pain like handfuls of ice. 00:22:12.320 --> 00:22:15.530 align:middle line:84% She loved me enough to let me go on and on as no one ever 00:22:15.530 --> 00:22:18.980 align:middle line:84% has about my body parts, my optimistic theory 00:22:18.980 --> 00:22:21.980 align:middle line:84% about development and growth, while we were in the bubbling 00:22:21.980 --> 00:22:23.840 align:middle line:90% test tube of it. 00:22:23.840 --> 00:22:25.910 align:middle line:84% Sometimes, we would lift our arms up 00:22:25.910 --> 00:22:29.270 align:middle line:84% and sing, while the moon trampled us with green light. 00:22:29.270 --> 00:22:31.460 align:middle line:90% Mindless, we were that young. 00:22:31.460 --> 00:22:34.070 align:middle line:84% And in the little light we got, once or twice we 00:22:34.070 --> 00:22:36.560 align:middle line:84% found in that damp slash, evidence 00:22:36.560 --> 00:22:40.280 align:middle line:84% that other life existed, a milky rubber dried up 00:22:40.280 --> 00:22:44.120 align:middle line:84% and open-mouthed as a baby bird, hauled out 00:22:44.120 --> 00:22:47.450 align:middle line:84% of a nest to its death by gravity and wind. 00:22:47.450 --> 00:22:50.150 align:middle line:84% Thinking, as it shriveled bald and wet through air, 00:22:50.150 --> 00:22:51.950 align:middle line:84% that at least it knew what flight would be 00:22:51.950 --> 00:22:54.380 align:middle line:84% like if it had feathers to do it. 00:22:54.380 --> 00:22:57.680 align:middle line:84% We poked it up with a stick and whipped it into the air. 00:22:57.680 --> 00:23:00.260 align:middle line:84% It thrilled us as much as sex ever would, 00:23:00.260 --> 00:23:03.710 align:middle line:84% as if something had shed its better skin in our path. 00:23:03.710 --> 00:23:04.820 align:middle line:90% Thank you very much. 00:23:04.820 --> 00:23:08.796 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:23:08.796 --> 00:23:17.760 align:middle line:90% 00:23:17.760 --> 00:23:19.800 align:middle line:84% And now, I have the pleasure of introducing 00:23:19.800 --> 00:23:22.470 align:middle line:84% a second remarkable writer to you. 00:23:22.470 --> 00:23:24.630 align:middle line:84% Winner of this year's Poets & Writers Exchange 00:23:24.630 --> 00:23:27.120 align:middle line:90% in fiction, David Reynolds. 00:23:27.120 --> 00:23:29.010 align:middle line:84% David Reynolds received his Bachelor of Arts 00:23:29.010 --> 00:23:31.440 align:middle line:84% from University of California at Santa Cruz, 00:23:31.440 --> 00:23:33.300 align:middle line:84% and his Master of Fine Arts degree 00:23:33.300 --> 00:23:35.110 align:middle line:90% from the University of Michigan. 00:23:35.110 --> 00:23:38.520 align:middle line:84% His stories have appeared in The Threepenny Review, Passages 00:23:38.520 --> 00:23:41.640 align:middle line:84% North, and a chapter from his novel-in-progress 00:23:41.640 --> 00:23:46.650 align:middle line:84% appears in the 1994 Best of Writers At Work Anthology. 00:23:46.650 --> 00:23:49.320 align:middle line:84% He currently writes and edits for the physics department 00:23:49.320 --> 00:23:51.780 align:middle line:84% at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. 00:23:51.780 --> 00:23:54.390 align:middle line:84% The manuscript David submitted to this competition 00:23:54.390 --> 00:23:58.020 align:middle line:84% is an excerpt from the novel he's currently working on, 00:23:58.020 --> 00:23:59.790 align:middle line:90% In the Waiting World. 00:23:59.790 --> 00:24:01.650 align:middle line:84% Set in Russia at the turn of the century, 00:24:01.650 --> 00:24:04.830 align:middle line:84% more specifically set in the Jewish village of Rafalivka, 00:24:04.830 --> 00:24:07.290 align:middle line:84% we see the once ordered and calm lives 00:24:07.290 --> 00:24:10.140 align:middle line:84% of people encroached upon first by rumors 00:24:10.140 --> 00:24:12.870 align:middle line:84% of pogroms in other parts of Russia, 00:24:12.870 --> 00:24:15.210 align:middle line:84% increasing rumors of persecution, and finally 00:24:15.210 --> 00:24:17.820 align:middle line:84% no rumor at all, with the ominous arrival 00:24:17.820 --> 00:24:20.340 align:middle line:84% of a troop of Cossacks to Rafalivka 00:24:20.340 --> 00:24:22.350 align:middle line:84% and the traumatic chain of events 00:24:22.350 --> 00:24:26.610 align:middle line:84% occasioned by this hostile, ultimately terrible event. 00:24:26.610 --> 00:24:29.760 align:middle line:84% Told with grace, grave authority, and a lyrical grasp 00:24:29.760 --> 00:24:31.950 align:middle line:84% of language that is often breathtaking, 00:24:31.950 --> 00:24:34.110 align:middle line:84% David Reynolds, with delicate precision, 00:24:34.110 --> 00:24:38.130 align:middle line:84% reconstructs a tragic episode in Russian Jewish history. 00:24:38.130 --> 00:24:40.800 align:middle line:84% In so doing, he disrupts our own peace, 00:24:40.800 --> 00:24:44.430 align:middle line:84% disturbs, and forces us to look at the grotesquely barbarous 00:24:44.430 --> 00:24:47.640 align:middle line:84% behaviors of human beings toward one another. 00:24:47.640 --> 00:24:49.710 align:middle line:84% Lulled, even entranced, by the surety 00:24:49.710 --> 00:24:52.500 align:middle line:84% of his gift for observation and narrative control, 00:24:52.500 --> 00:24:56.730 align:middle line:84% we detach easily from our own age and specific moral dilemmas, 00:24:56.730 --> 00:25:00.040 align:middle line:84% and attach ourselves instead to the tragic plight of men, women, 00:25:00.040 --> 00:25:03.270 align:middle line:84% and children forced by hostile circumstance 00:25:03.270 --> 00:25:07.200 align:middle line:84% to extraordinary and even heroic response. 00:25:07.200 --> 00:25:10.140 align:middle line:84% The literary critic John Barber has said tragedy 00:25:10.140 --> 00:25:12.690 align:middle line:84% raises a basic religious question. 00:25:12.690 --> 00:25:14.670 align:middle line:84% How can the worth of human existence 00:25:14.670 --> 00:25:18.540 align:middle line:84% be affirmed in the light of our experience of evil and suffering 00:25:18.540 --> 00:25:21.930 align:middle line:84% and in light of our knowledge of man's inhumanity to man? 00:25:21.930 --> 00:25:26.340 align:middle line:84% Tragedy offers a reaffirmation of a particular kind of virtue. 00:25:26.340 --> 00:25:29.310 align:middle line:84% It provides trust or confidence in the worth 00:25:29.310 --> 00:25:32.010 align:middle line:84% of human existence in spite of its threats 00:25:32.010 --> 00:25:34.560 align:middle line:90% and terrors and failures. 00:25:34.560 --> 00:25:38.820 align:middle line:84% In being the bad conscience of their time, authors of tragedy 00:25:38.820 --> 00:25:41.040 align:middle line:84% perform the service Nietzsche demanded 00:25:41.040 --> 00:25:43.890 align:middle line:90% of the ideal philosopher. 00:25:43.890 --> 00:25:45.780 align:middle line:84% When one is as sincerely regretful 00:25:45.780 --> 00:25:48.540 align:middle line:84% to come to the end of this manuscript as I was, 00:25:48.540 --> 00:25:52.170 align:middle line:84% when one longs to read on, when one's emotional investment 00:25:52.170 --> 00:25:55.050 align:middle line:84% in character and event is so strong as to create 00:25:55.050 --> 00:25:57.750 align:middle line:84% a kind of nostalgia for what is yet missing, 00:25:57.750 --> 00:26:02.040 align:middle line:84% it seems clear that the author of this artistry, this story 00:26:02.040 --> 00:26:05.910 align:middle line:84% magic, David Reynolds, is well deserving of this award, as well 00:26:05.910 --> 00:26:08.520 align:middle line:84% as his readers' enthusiastic praise. 00:26:08.520 --> 00:26:10.080 align:middle line:90% David. 00:26:10.080 --> 00:26:13.920 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:26:13.920 --> 00:26:16.320 align:middle line:90% 00:26:16.320 --> 00:26:17.400 align:middle line:90% Thanks very much. 00:26:17.400 --> 00:26:20.200 align:middle line:90% That was very nice. 00:26:20.200 --> 00:26:24.120 align:middle line:84% I want to thank Poets & Writers and certainly Frazier Russell. 00:26:24.120 --> 00:26:27.900 align:middle line:84% This has been a very nice week, and you really put yourself out 00:26:27.900 --> 00:26:29.700 align:middle line:90% for us. 00:26:29.700 --> 00:26:32.970 align:middle line:84% And thanks, Laura, for a great reading, 00:26:32.970 --> 00:26:37.180 align:middle line:90% and all of you for coming. 00:26:37.180 --> 00:26:41.700 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read a pretty edited chapter. 00:26:41.700 --> 00:26:43.380 align:middle line:84% What you have to know, I guess, aside 00:26:43.380 --> 00:26:49.230 align:middle line:84% from what Melissa Pritchard told you is that the father is absent 00:26:49.230 --> 00:26:52.140 align:middle line:90% because he's in America. 00:26:52.140 --> 00:26:53.640 align:middle line:84% The rest of the action is in Russia. 00:26:53.640 --> 00:26:58.560 align:middle line:90% The year is 1905. 00:26:58.560 --> 00:27:02.070 align:middle line:84% And this chapter is called "Hush Noah." 00:27:02.070 --> 00:27:05.940 align:middle line:84% Noah remembered mama taking him to Moshe [? Kalek ?] for shoes. 00:27:05.940 --> 00:27:09.150 align:middle line:84% The shop faced the street at its muddiest, or on market Monday, 00:27:09.150 --> 00:27:12.360 align:middle line:84% the peasants roam their pigs, five doors down from the mildewy 00:27:12.360 --> 00:27:16.950 align:middle line:84% storefront, where Ephraim taught Noah and seven other boys Torah. 00:27:16.950 --> 00:27:20.070 align:middle line:84% He remembered the capable hands, while they held his foot. 00:27:20.070 --> 00:27:21.660 align:middle line:84% The knuckles were knobbed like burls 00:27:21.660 --> 00:27:24.810 align:middle line:84% swollen from little branches, the skin calloused and gnawed 00:27:24.810 --> 00:27:26.010 align:middle line:90% by tanning acid. 00:27:26.010 --> 00:27:29.090 align:middle line:84% And Noah trusted him to build a good shoe. 00:27:29.090 --> 00:27:31.160 align:middle line:84% There was something pleasant, and intimate, 00:27:31.160 --> 00:27:33.380 align:middle line:84% and unsettling in the way [? Kalek's ?] fingers 00:27:33.380 --> 00:27:35.690 align:middle line:84% touched the bones in the top of Noah's foot. 00:27:35.690 --> 00:27:37.187 align:middle line:84% And his thumb pressed the sole as 00:27:37.187 --> 00:27:39.020 align:middle line:84% if they could tell things about him from the 00:27:39.020 --> 00:27:41.750 align:middle line:84% give in the cartilage, from the thickness of the boy's 00:27:41.750 --> 00:27:44.180 align:middle line:90% first innocent calluses. 00:27:44.180 --> 00:27:46.730 align:middle line:84% The peculiar intimacy made Noah furrow his brow 00:27:46.730 --> 00:27:49.197 align:middle line:84% to look remote and keep from smiling. 00:27:49.197 --> 00:27:50.780 align:middle line:84% And even as a boy of eight, he thought 00:27:50.780 --> 00:27:52.970 align:middle line:84% [? Kalek's ?] hand beautiful, like a body, 00:27:52.970 --> 00:27:55.190 align:middle line:84% that having done the same work for years, molds 00:27:55.190 --> 00:27:58.440 align:middle line:90% to the shape of its activity. 00:27:58.440 --> 00:28:00.700 align:middle line:84% Noah's added two more to the hundreds of feet 00:28:00.700 --> 00:28:02.603 align:middle line:90% he had measured and touched. 00:28:02.603 --> 00:28:04.770 align:middle line:84% Maybe [? Kalek ?] was pleased by the variety of feet 00:28:04.770 --> 00:28:07.350 align:middle line:84% that had walked in and out of his door, that had been warmed 00:28:07.350 --> 00:28:10.080 align:middle line:84% by his hands, but maybe he never thought about it 00:28:10.080 --> 00:28:12.930 align:middle line:84% and worked with pleasureless concentration. 00:28:12.930 --> 00:28:15.570 align:middle line:84% While wrapping his tape measure around Noah's foot and toes 00:28:15.570 --> 00:28:17.130 align:middle line:84% and ticking the numbers in his head, 00:28:17.130 --> 00:28:19.020 align:middle line:84% somewhere at the sides of his tongue, 00:28:19.020 --> 00:28:20.850 align:middle line:84% he looked forward to his wife's chicken 00:28:20.850 --> 00:28:24.360 align:middle line:84% and beets without a thought for a Noah's foot or for Noah. 00:28:24.360 --> 00:28:25.585 align:middle line:90% Some people are like that. 00:28:25.585 --> 00:28:28.180 align:middle line:84% They're having a moment's curiosity about others, 00:28:28.180 --> 00:28:30.360 align:middle line:84% and Moshe always seemed to be one of these people, 00:28:30.360 --> 00:28:35.140 align:middle line:84% with nothing on his mind but measuring tape and leather. 00:28:35.140 --> 00:28:37.112 align:middle line:84% Mama chatted with him about the cold coming in 00:28:37.112 --> 00:28:39.820 align:middle line:84% behind the clouds, and the water in the street that they all knew 00:28:39.820 --> 00:28:41.860 align:middle line:84% would freeze in a matter of weeks. 00:28:41.860 --> 00:28:43.750 align:middle line:84% Mostly, [? Kalek ?] worked quietly, 00:28:43.750 --> 00:28:45.970 align:middle line:84% arching his back in such a way that his face stayed 00:28:45.970 --> 00:28:48.160 align:middle line:84% angled towards Noah's feet and showed 00:28:48.160 --> 00:28:49.600 align:middle line:90% that he didn't feel talkative. 00:28:49.600 --> 00:28:52.120 align:middle line:90% 00:28:52.120 --> 00:28:53.800 align:middle line:84% Sometimes, it's hard to reconcile 00:28:53.800 --> 00:28:55.496 align:middle line:84% a person you know with things that you 00:28:55.496 --> 00:28:57.390 align:middle line:90% know have happened to him. 00:28:57.390 --> 00:28:59.140 align:middle line:84% You hear a painful story and in your mind, 00:28:59.140 --> 00:29:01.300 align:middle line:84% you superimpose an image of its events 00:29:01.300 --> 00:29:03.520 align:middle line:84% on to an image of that person you know, whomever 00:29:03.520 --> 00:29:04.675 align:middle line:90% it happened to. 00:29:04.675 --> 00:29:07.300 align:middle line:84% It's a way of coming to believe what you know is true but can't 00:29:07.300 --> 00:29:10.570 align:middle line:84% get your imagination to wrap around, to suckle and cradle, 00:29:10.570 --> 00:29:11.740 align:middle line:90% to make it feel real. 00:29:11.740 --> 00:29:14.590 align:middle line:84% Sometimes, when a terrible thing happens to someone, 00:29:14.590 --> 00:29:16.420 align:middle line:84% your mind rearranges its picture of him 00:29:16.420 --> 00:29:19.300 align:middle line:84% until he's the type of person to whom bad things happen, 00:29:19.300 --> 00:29:22.120 align:middle line:84% someone marked since birth for tragedy 00:29:22.120 --> 00:29:24.220 align:middle line:84% whose life has spent itself unfolding 00:29:24.220 --> 00:29:28.450 align:middle line:84% towards certain grim and inevitable moments. 00:29:28.450 --> 00:29:31.030 align:middle line:84% 1905's revolutionary agitation had 00:29:31.030 --> 00:29:33.430 align:middle line:84% spread from bigger cities along the railroads. 00:29:33.430 --> 00:29:35.710 align:middle line:84% It touched port cities such as Odessa. 00:29:35.710 --> 00:29:38.530 align:middle line:84% It touched towns with major railroad exchanges. 00:29:38.530 --> 00:29:41.920 align:middle line:84% Though Rafalivka saw no outward sign of these distant events. 00:29:41.920 --> 00:29:44.890 align:middle line:84% No posters hastily pasted on walls by moonlight 00:29:44.890 --> 00:29:47.200 align:middle line:84% and torn down or replaced by morning. 00:29:47.200 --> 00:29:50.590 align:middle line:84% No predawn arrests of political men or newspaper editors, 00:29:50.590 --> 00:29:52.060 align:middle line:90% as in Pinsk. 00:29:52.060 --> 00:29:54.400 align:middle line:84% No demonstrations or riots broke out. 00:29:54.400 --> 00:29:57.880 align:middle line:84% No fistfights, as in Lodz, where somebody burned the post office 00:29:57.880 --> 00:30:01.840 align:middle line:84% after an argument, stopping all Rafalivka-bound mail. 00:30:01.840 --> 00:30:04.540 align:middle line:84% No one in Rafalivka noticed that the railroad briefly 00:30:04.540 --> 00:30:07.570 align:middle line:84% stopped running because no railroad came near the village. 00:30:07.570 --> 00:30:10.000 align:middle line:84% But the year began with stories of attacks on Jews 00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:11.200 align:middle line:90% in Southern towns. 00:30:11.200 --> 00:30:13.850 align:middle line:84% Noah's mother tried to protect him from such stories, 00:30:13.850 --> 00:30:15.340 align:middle line:90% but it was impossible. 00:30:15.340 --> 00:30:17.410 align:middle line:84% In a distant town, the mother of a family friend 00:30:17.410 --> 00:30:18.888 align:middle line:90% was set on fire by neighbors. 00:30:18.888 --> 00:30:20.680 align:middle line:84% And in summer, [? Labal ?], the shopkeeper, 00:30:20.680 --> 00:30:25.090 align:middle line:84% learned that his cousin, a rabbi in the south, had been hanged. 00:30:25.090 --> 00:30:27.513 align:middle line:84% The apprehensive mood in Rafalivka by late summer 00:30:27.513 --> 00:30:28.930 align:middle line:84% had thickened from the nervousness 00:30:28.930 --> 00:30:31.990 align:middle line:84% of the beginning of the year into a sort of languid anxiety. 00:30:31.990 --> 00:30:34.810 align:middle line:84% As the leaves began turning, a widespread insomnia 00:30:34.810 --> 00:30:36.310 align:middle line:84% sent townspeople into the streets 00:30:36.310 --> 00:30:39.220 align:middle line:84% at night, all tired, and helpless, and quiet. 00:30:39.220 --> 00:30:41.500 align:middle line:84% And it was common to see people reclining on the town 00:30:41.500 --> 00:30:44.860 align:middle line:84% square benches at all hours in the starlight, grimly 00:30:44.860 --> 00:30:47.530 align:middle line:84% contemplating their fingers, the mud and pebbles 00:30:47.530 --> 00:30:50.500 align:middle line:84% on the ground, the sparkle on the insides of their eyelids 00:30:50.500 --> 00:30:52.330 align:middle line:90% that kept them awake. 00:30:52.330 --> 00:30:55.300 align:middle line:84% It was as if the fear had stirred some viral sleeplessness 00:30:55.300 --> 00:30:57.880 align:middle line:84% from the marshes, and the collective insomnia settled 00:30:57.880 --> 00:31:01.540 align:middle line:84% so thick, the town council voted to light the four gas lamps 00:31:01.540 --> 00:31:04.330 align:middle line:90% at the corners of the square. 00:31:04.330 --> 00:31:06.790 align:middle line:84% The lights gave a mangy flicker to all the shadows, 00:31:06.790 --> 00:31:09.190 align:middle line:84% as if the town had been submerged under water, 00:31:09.190 --> 00:31:11.950 align:middle line:84% and all the sleepless Jews wandered on a lake floor. 00:31:11.950 --> 00:31:13.780 align:middle line:84% And a traveler might think he had stumbled 00:31:13.780 --> 00:31:16.720 align:middle line:84% on a weird convergence of ghosts of angels, 00:31:16.720 --> 00:31:19.630 align:middle line:84% who would, without notice, begin to lift from their benches 00:31:19.630 --> 00:31:21.850 align:middle line:84% until the sky would fill with the black shape 00:31:21.850 --> 00:31:25.170 align:middle line:90% of sleeplessness. 00:31:25.170 --> 00:31:28.290 align:middle line:84% A band of soldiers, Cossacks, a dozen or so 00:31:28.290 --> 00:31:30.330 align:middle line:84% who must have separated from their regiment, 00:31:30.330 --> 00:31:32.310 align:middle line:84% was seen on the outskirts of town, 00:31:32.310 --> 00:31:34.260 align:middle line:84% apparently stabling their horses with peasants 00:31:34.260 --> 00:31:35.880 align:middle line:90% near [INAUDIBLE] Mill. 00:31:35.880 --> 00:31:38.130 align:middle line:84% For about a week, it was a regular occurrence for Jews 00:31:38.130 --> 00:31:40.410 align:middle line:84% to encounter them, but without incident. 00:31:40.410 --> 00:31:42.960 align:middle line:84% The Cossacks ignored the Jews, and the Jews passed them 00:31:42.960 --> 00:31:45.630 align:middle line:90% with polite and uneasy calm. 00:31:45.630 --> 00:31:47.580 align:middle line:84% One week had passed by the time four of them 00:31:47.580 --> 00:31:50.610 align:middle line:84% rode into town to [? Labal's ?] store for provisions. 00:31:50.610 --> 00:31:52.620 align:middle line:90% This was a polite robbery. 00:31:52.620 --> 00:31:54.840 align:middle line:84% Like any customers, upon entering, the last of them 00:31:54.840 --> 00:31:58.320 align:middle line:84% closed the door gently behind him rather than let it slam. 00:31:58.320 --> 00:32:01.590 align:middle line:84% They collected kerosene, kasha, horse feed, and beans, 00:32:01.590 --> 00:32:03.138 align:middle line:90% and hard candy from Warsaw. 00:32:03.138 --> 00:32:04.680 align:middle line:84% When they collected what they wanted, 00:32:04.680 --> 00:32:07.170 align:middle line:84% the ranking officer quickly bowed to [? Labal ?] 00:32:07.170 --> 00:32:09.810 align:middle line:84% and led the others out to their horses. 00:32:09.810 --> 00:32:12.270 align:middle line:84% They didn't live up to their reputation for wildness, 00:32:12.270 --> 00:32:13.982 align:middle line:90% but their calm was frightening. 00:32:13.982 --> 00:32:15.690 align:middle line:84% They had brought a wintry quiet into town 00:32:15.690 --> 00:32:17.357 align:middle line:84% on the clapping of their horses' hooves. 00:32:17.357 --> 00:32:19.098 align:middle line:84% And their officer quietly upset the Jews 00:32:19.098 --> 00:32:20.640 align:middle line:84% with his way of looking at buildings, 00:32:20.640 --> 00:32:22.590 align:middle line:84% but never people, as if even the most 00:32:22.590 --> 00:32:26.160 align:middle line:84% crowded Sabbath Eve street were empty. 00:32:26.160 --> 00:32:29.310 align:middle line:84% This calm ended after one of them rode into town on Sabbath 00:32:29.310 --> 00:32:32.040 align:middle line:84% and took Moshe [? Kalek's ?] three hens. 00:32:32.040 --> 00:32:33.870 align:middle line:84% He rode in the middle of the street slowly. 00:32:33.870 --> 00:32:36.000 align:middle line:84% And later, Nitti, who saw everything, 00:32:36.000 --> 00:32:37.500 align:middle line:84% said that he seemed to be prowling 00:32:37.500 --> 00:32:40.320 align:middle line:84% for a young girl and not just hens. 00:32:40.320 --> 00:32:42.570 align:middle line:84% The Cossack had been sitting for hours on his horse 00:32:42.570 --> 00:32:45.300 align:middle line:84% at the top of the road without moving, as if a copper 00:32:45.300 --> 00:32:46.950 align:middle line:84% statue had been erected at night, 00:32:46.950 --> 00:32:49.920 align:middle line:84% staring down into town with something blunt and metallic 00:32:49.920 --> 00:32:52.800 align:middle line:84% in the ankle of his shoulders, and a quality in his eyes 00:32:52.800 --> 00:32:56.190 align:middle line:84% like settled metal filings that wouldn't stir. 00:32:56.190 --> 00:32:57.810 align:middle line:84% He trampled the beans and green onions 00:32:57.810 --> 00:32:59.435 align:middle line:84% and pulled the door from the hen house, 00:32:59.435 --> 00:33:01.980 align:middle line:84% while Moshe huddled inside with his wife and an arm 00:33:01.980 --> 00:33:04.890 align:middle line:84% around each of his two daughters, Gossie and Rena. 00:33:04.890 --> 00:33:09.270 align:middle line:90% Gossie is 10, and Rena is 13. 00:33:09.270 --> 00:33:12.150 align:middle line:84% In this moment, Noah's teacher, Ephraim, 00:33:12.150 --> 00:33:14.400 align:middle line:84% passed the home on his way to shul. 00:33:14.400 --> 00:33:16.470 align:middle line:84% But instead of watching from a careful distance, 00:33:16.470 --> 00:33:18.840 align:middle line:84% like the others in the road, he walked to the edge 00:33:18.840 --> 00:33:21.090 align:middle line:90% of [? Kalek's ?] yard. 00:33:21.090 --> 00:33:23.580 align:middle line:84% Later in the evening, when everyone gathered around him 00:33:23.580 --> 00:33:26.790 align:middle line:84% at shul, Ephraim didn't remember exactly what he had said, 00:33:26.790 --> 00:33:29.220 align:middle line:84% only that he was scared and he was mad at the Cossacks 00:33:29.220 --> 00:33:31.410 align:middle line:84% for scaring people, for scaring him, 00:33:31.410 --> 00:33:33.930 align:middle line:90% and for stealing so brazenly. 00:33:33.930 --> 00:33:36.030 align:middle line:84% The Rafalivkers had first treated the teacher 00:33:36.030 --> 00:33:37.780 align:middle line:90% as the bravest man in the world. 00:33:37.780 --> 00:33:40.410 align:middle line:84% And their awe must have made him feel strong. 00:33:40.410 --> 00:33:42.450 align:middle line:84% In another situation, the Rafalivkers 00:33:42.450 --> 00:33:44.010 align:middle line:84% would have exaggerated their stories 00:33:44.010 --> 00:33:47.070 align:middle line:84% about the incident wildly, exchanging reports 00:33:47.070 --> 00:33:49.170 align:middle line:84% that would grow more ludicrous with each telling, 00:33:49.170 --> 00:33:51.650 align:middle line:84% as if each storyteller competed with the last 00:33:51.650 --> 00:33:54.150 align:middle line:84% and had to tell the story better than the person he heard it 00:33:54.150 --> 00:33:55.770 align:middle line:90% from. 00:33:55.770 --> 00:33:58.410 align:middle line:84% Often in their town, tales inflated to such nonsense, 00:33:58.410 --> 00:34:01.080 align:middle line:84% people simply stopped telling them out of embarrassment. 00:34:01.080 --> 00:34:03.900 align:middle line:84% We might have heard that Ephraim had leapt into the mud yard 00:34:03.900 --> 00:34:05.490 align:middle line:84% and wrenched the hens from the Cossack 00:34:05.490 --> 00:34:08.010 align:middle line:84% and chastised them as he would his own people. 00:34:08.010 --> 00:34:10.560 align:middle line:84% And the Cossack had returned the hens in repentant shame 00:34:10.560 --> 00:34:12.600 align:middle line:90% and joined a monastery. 00:34:12.600 --> 00:34:15.120 align:middle line:84% But the moment was too unsettling for the Rafalivkers 00:34:15.120 --> 00:34:16.860 align:middle line:84% to allow that sort of exaggeration, 00:34:16.860 --> 00:34:19.630 align:middle line:84% and the story was told much as it happened. 00:34:19.630 --> 00:34:22.560 align:middle line:84% The teacher had said, those aren't your hens. 00:34:22.560 --> 00:34:23.580 align:middle line:90% It seems stupid. 00:34:23.580 --> 00:34:24.600 align:middle line:90% What a ridiculous thing. 00:34:24.600 --> 00:34:26.142 align:middle line:84% He knew he couldn't order the Cossack 00:34:26.142 --> 00:34:27.943 align:middle line:90% to put the chickens down. 00:34:27.943 --> 00:34:29.610 align:middle line:84% A Cossack wound his cord around the neck 00:34:29.610 --> 00:34:32.820 align:middle line:84% of the jerking sack of chickens and tied it to his saddlebags. 00:34:32.820 --> 00:34:34.650 align:middle line:84% When they were secure, he swung his body up 00:34:34.650 --> 00:34:36.400 align:middle line:84% and rode into the street, where he stopped 00:34:36.400 --> 00:34:37.889 align:middle line:90% in front of the teacher. 00:34:37.889 --> 00:34:40.770 align:middle line:84% His horse lifted its hooves one at a time from the mud, 00:34:40.770 --> 00:34:42.989 align:middle line:84% impatient, but the Cossack was unhurried. 00:34:42.989 --> 00:34:45.945 align:middle line:90% 00:34:45.945 --> 00:34:47.820 align:middle line:84% Now, the teacher must have been scared crazy, 00:34:47.820 --> 00:34:49.920 align:middle line:84% but he began shouting at the Cossack. 00:34:49.920 --> 00:34:52.650 align:middle line:84% A flood of barely intelligible curses in Russian, 00:34:52.650 --> 00:34:55.500 align:middle line:84% calling him a robber, a thug, cursing his genitals 00:34:55.500 --> 00:34:56.645 align:middle line:90% and descendants. 00:34:56.645 --> 00:34:58.770 align:middle line:84% By the time he seemed to realize what he was doing, 00:34:58.770 --> 00:35:00.390 align:middle line:84% it was too late to stop, so he just 00:35:00.390 --> 00:35:03.810 align:middle line:84% kept on until he exhausted himself and then caught 00:35:03.810 --> 00:35:05.288 align:middle line:90% his breath. 00:35:05.288 --> 00:35:07.830 align:middle line:84% And those watching were amazed the Cossack hadn't chopped him 00:35:07.830 --> 00:35:09.150 align:middle line:90% in two. 00:35:09.150 --> 00:35:11.280 align:middle line:84% A few had stopped on the far side of the road, 00:35:11.280 --> 00:35:12.990 align:middle line:90% but none did anything to help. 00:35:12.990 --> 00:35:14.190 align:middle line:90% What could be done? 00:35:14.190 --> 00:35:16.860 align:middle line:84% The Cossack stared dully at Ephraim. 00:35:16.860 --> 00:35:19.470 align:middle line:84% He hadn't changed his expression from the concentration 00:35:19.470 --> 00:35:22.560 align:middle line:84% with which he stuffed chickens into the sacks. 00:35:22.560 --> 00:35:26.730 align:middle line:84% The teacher, his sense returned, said in Russian, what, 00:35:26.730 --> 00:35:28.740 align:middle line:90% are you going to kill me? 00:35:28.740 --> 00:35:30.360 align:middle line:90% The Cossack smiled. 00:35:30.360 --> 00:35:32.118 align:middle line:90% He seemed to think about this. 00:35:32.118 --> 00:35:34.660 align:middle line:84% He seemed to think about it with the muscles around his mouth 00:35:34.660 --> 00:35:36.690 align:middle line:84% and the way he wet his mustache with his lip, 00:35:36.690 --> 00:35:39.210 align:middle line:84% as if the taste of the hair told him what he thought. 00:35:39.210 --> 00:35:41.980 align:middle line:84% When he seemed to have tasted enough to make a decision, 00:35:41.980 --> 00:35:45.570 align:middle line:84% he reached his hand down and touched the teacher's face. 00:35:45.570 --> 00:35:48.930 align:middle line:84% His fingers stroked Ephraim's cheek and jaw. 00:35:48.930 --> 00:35:51.030 align:middle line:84% The tenderness of his touch chilled 00:35:51.030 --> 00:35:52.770 align:middle line:90% the people in the street. 00:35:52.770 --> 00:35:56.370 align:middle line:84% And when the Cossack pulled his hand back and rode away, 00:35:56.370 --> 00:35:58.080 align:middle line:84% they crowded around the flustered teacher 00:35:58.080 --> 00:36:00.155 align:middle line:90% to see if he was all right. 00:36:00.155 --> 00:36:02.280 align:middle line:84% Moshe [? Kalek ?] came from his house with a bottle 00:36:02.280 --> 00:36:04.620 align:middle line:84% of [? slivovitz ?] and sat Ephraim on the windowsill 00:36:04.620 --> 00:36:06.382 align:middle line:90% to make him drink. 00:36:06.382 --> 00:36:08.340 align:middle line:84% You'll spill it the way your hands are shaking, 00:36:08.340 --> 00:36:09.187 align:middle line:90% said [? Kalek ?]. 00:36:09.187 --> 00:36:10.770 align:middle line:84% And he held the bottle for the teacher 00:36:10.770 --> 00:36:12.360 align:middle line:90% as if he fed milk to a baby. 00:36:12.360 --> 00:36:14.930 align:middle line:90% 00:36:14.930 --> 00:36:18.170 align:middle line:84% That night, mama told Noah that he would go to his teacher 00:36:18.170 --> 00:36:20.180 align:middle line:90% in the morning as usual. 00:36:20.180 --> 00:36:22.700 align:middle line:90% He's a good man, she said. 00:36:22.700 --> 00:36:25.310 align:middle line:84% Soldiers will come after him, said Noah. 00:36:25.310 --> 00:36:26.750 align:middle line:90% Mama was busy knitting. 00:36:26.750 --> 00:36:29.810 align:middle line:84% Noah stared at her to make her look at him. 00:36:29.810 --> 00:36:33.710 align:middle line:84% You'll be the only boy in cheder tomorrow, she said. 00:36:33.710 --> 00:36:35.720 align:middle line:90% Are you scared, Noah? 00:36:35.720 --> 00:36:38.060 align:middle line:90% I'm not scared, he said. 00:36:38.060 --> 00:36:41.390 align:middle line:84% Some of our friends are treating your teacher badly, she said. 00:36:41.390 --> 00:36:43.370 align:middle line:90% He hated her frank tone. 00:36:43.370 --> 00:36:45.260 align:middle line:84% She was too grave and serious with him, 00:36:45.260 --> 00:36:49.080 align:middle line:84% and he shifted around in a seat to keep from running away. 00:36:49.080 --> 00:36:50.720 align:middle line:84% He behaved very bravely, she said, 00:36:50.720 --> 00:36:52.970 align:middle line:84% but some people think he shouldn't have. 00:36:52.970 --> 00:36:55.908 align:middle line:84% She put down her knitting, and he climbed into her lap. 00:36:55.908 --> 00:36:57.950 align:middle line:84% They're afraid and they don't want their children 00:36:57.950 --> 00:37:00.770 align:middle line:84% to go near him because they think he's in danger. 00:37:00.770 --> 00:37:03.260 align:middle line:84% But we don't want to abandon him, do we, Noah? 00:37:03.260 --> 00:37:05.600 align:middle line:90% We don't want him to feel alone. 00:37:05.600 --> 00:37:09.360 align:middle line:84% She probed his face to see if he understood. 00:37:09.360 --> 00:37:11.100 align:middle line:84% I'm not afraid of anything in the world, 00:37:11.100 --> 00:37:13.920 align:middle line:84% she said, as long as you are safe. 00:37:13.920 --> 00:37:16.500 align:middle line:90% He thought she was going to cry. 00:37:16.500 --> 00:37:18.872 align:middle line:90% I'm safe, he said. 00:37:18.872 --> 00:37:20.580 align:middle line:84% I want you to understand why you're going 00:37:20.580 --> 00:37:22.710 align:middle line:90% to Ephraim tomorrow, she said. 00:37:22.710 --> 00:37:26.520 align:middle line:84% Her voice was shaky, and Noah began to cry. 00:37:26.520 --> 00:37:29.160 align:middle line:84% You can cry for a minute, Noah, she said. 00:37:29.160 --> 00:37:33.210 align:middle line:84% She let him cry, and then she said, now you have to stop. 00:37:33.210 --> 00:37:34.590 align:middle line:84% He hugged her harder and wouldn't 00:37:34.590 --> 00:37:37.410 align:middle line:84% let go when she pushed him gently from her lap. 00:37:37.410 --> 00:37:39.300 align:middle line:84% My knitting is all crushed, she said. 00:37:39.300 --> 00:37:41.100 align:middle line:90% Now go wash. 00:37:41.100 --> 00:37:43.650 align:middle line:90% No, he said, rubbing his eyes. 00:37:43.650 --> 00:37:46.080 align:middle line:90% Go wash, she said again. 00:37:46.080 --> 00:37:49.260 align:middle line:84% He slapped her on the arm and then stared at her, 00:37:49.260 --> 00:37:51.120 align:middle line:90% waiting for her to rage. 00:37:51.120 --> 00:37:52.620 align:middle line:84% But instead of losing her temper, 00:37:52.620 --> 00:37:54.180 align:middle line:90% she took up her knitting. 00:37:54.180 --> 00:37:57.030 align:middle line:84% She looked away from him with such disappointment, 00:37:57.030 --> 00:37:59.987 align:middle line:84% as if he was nothing, that he fled to his bed and hid 00:37:59.987 --> 00:38:00.570 align:middle line:90% in the covers. 00:38:00.570 --> 00:38:03.410 align:middle line:90% 00:38:03.410 --> 00:38:06.570 align:middle line:84% As mama had said, there were no other boys in cheder. 00:38:06.570 --> 00:38:08.570 align:middle line:84% Ephraim looked as though he'd been up all night. 00:38:08.570 --> 00:38:11.000 align:middle line:84% He lurched to the door to greet Noah, smelly, 00:38:11.000 --> 00:38:13.430 align:middle line:84% his shirts flapping, and as if nothing were unusual, 00:38:13.430 --> 00:38:15.350 align:middle line:90% asked after his parents. 00:38:15.350 --> 00:38:18.830 align:middle line:84% Noah said his mother was mending sheets and winter blankets. 00:38:18.830 --> 00:38:20.330 align:middle line:84% The teacher said it was a good thing 00:38:20.330 --> 00:38:22.940 align:middle line:84% to mend winter blankets because the air would be cold soon 00:38:22.940 --> 00:38:25.790 align:middle line:84% and it would be time to put in the winter windows. 00:38:25.790 --> 00:38:28.970 align:middle line:84% Noah kept his hands at his sides on the chair. 00:38:28.970 --> 00:38:30.830 align:middle line:84% The teacher said that late every winter, 00:38:30.830 --> 00:38:32.330 align:middle line:84% the cotton he put between the window 00:38:32.330 --> 00:38:34.310 align:middle line:84% panes to soak the moisture mildewed 00:38:34.310 --> 00:38:36.350 align:middle line:84% and that was how he knew that winter was ending 00:38:36.350 --> 00:38:38.780 align:middle line:84% and the time to remove the extra glass had come. 00:38:38.780 --> 00:38:40.340 align:middle line:84% And wasn't that a good time of year 00:38:40.340 --> 00:38:42.050 align:middle line:84% when the season changes into spring 00:38:42.050 --> 00:38:44.540 align:middle line:84% and we can again look forward to warm weather? 00:38:44.540 --> 00:38:48.260 align:middle line:84% Noah said, yes, sir, that's a good time of year. 00:38:48.260 --> 00:38:51.020 align:middle line:84% Should I send you home, Noah, the teacher blurted. 00:38:51.020 --> 00:38:53.060 align:middle line:84% He looked embarrassed hearing himself, 00:38:53.060 --> 00:38:55.790 align:middle line:84% and Noah was embarrassed for him. 00:38:55.790 --> 00:38:59.480 align:middle line:84% Did your papa ever take you to see them ride, the teacher said. 00:38:59.480 --> 00:39:02.450 align:middle line:84% Their horsemanship shows their magic. 00:39:02.450 --> 00:39:04.340 align:middle line:90% No, said Noah. 00:39:04.340 --> 00:39:06.320 align:middle line:90% You would think they could fly. 00:39:06.320 --> 00:39:09.110 align:middle line:84% They spook their horses to incredible feats. 00:39:09.110 --> 00:39:11.580 align:middle line:84% My father took me when I was your age. 00:39:11.580 --> 00:39:13.010 align:middle line:90% I was a bit older than you. 00:39:13.010 --> 00:39:14.930 align:middle line:84% It was the Don Cossacks, and they 00:39:14.930 --> 00:39:17.450 align:middle line:90% had set up outside of Odessa. 00:39:17.450 --> 00:39:19.850 align:middle line:84% My father never took me, said Noah. 00:39:19.850 --> 00:39:20.990 align:middle line:90% No. 00:39:20.990 --> 00:39:24.110 align:middle line:84% They can jump a horse through a flaming hoop, said Ephraim. 00:39:24.110 --> 00:39:25.400 align:middle line:90% It's wonderful. 00:39:25.400 --> 00:39:28.910 align:middle line:84% We cheered until our throats were too scratched to talk. 00:39:28.910 --> 00:39:30.480 align:middle line:84% They can ride at you in full gallop 00:39:30.480 --> 00:39:32.480 align:middle line:84% and spear a pear in your mouth and leap over you 00:39:32.480 --> 00:39:33.830 align:middle line:90% without disturbing your hat. 00:39:33.830 --> 00:39:36.550 align:middle line:90% 00:39:36.550 --> 00:39:41.950 align:middle line:84% Noah's mother insisted that he had seen his teacher be shot. 00:39:41.950 --> 00:39:44.380 align:middle line:84% Even when he denied it, when he shook his little head 00:39:44.380 --> 00:39:46.960 align:middle line:84% vigorously, his mother didn't seem to hear, 00:39:46.960 --> 00:39:51.520 align:middle line:84% or else she decided his denial was too emphatic to be believed. 00:39:51.520 --> 00:39:53.980 align:middle line:84% Ephraim had ordered Noah to open his book. 00:39:53.980 --> 00:39:57.220 align:middle line:84% And then, they had heard glass breaking down the street. 00:39:57.220 --> 00:40:00.130 align:middle line:84% It was followed by the crash of a window falling in on itself. 00:40:00.130 --> 00:40:02.650 align:middle line:84% And the teacher, without any sign of surprise, 00:40:02.650 --> 00:40:04.900 align:middle line:84% stiffened his neck and touched his window for a moment 00:40:04.900 --> 00:40:06.645 align:middle line:90% as he looked into the street. 00:40:06.645 --> 00:40:08.770 align:middle line:84% He crossed from the window to the back of the room, 00:40:08.770 --> 00:40:11.200 align:middle line:84% to a trunk behind the long tables, where 00:40:11.200 --> 00:40:12.610 align:middle line:90% the boys ate lunch. 00:40:12.610 --> 00:40:14.560 align:middle line:84% His face was stern when he looked at Noah, 00:40:14.560 --> 00:40:15.970 align:middle line:90% but also reassuring. 00:40:15.970 --> 00:40:17.512 align:middle line:84% And Noah didn't want to look away. 00:40:17.512 --> 00:40:18.970 align:middle line:84% He just wanted to look at that face 00:40:18.970 --> 00:40:21.155 align:middle line:84% and be sure everything would be all right. 00:40:21.155 --> 00:40:23.530 align:middle line:84% The teacher pulled an arm load of blankets from the trunk 00:40:23.530 --> 00:40:25.480 align:middle line:90% and heaped them onto the floor. 00:40:25.480 --> 00:40:28.150 align:middle line:84% As he emptied the trunk and made Noah get inside, 00:40:28.150 --> 00:40:30.430 align:middle line:84% he had a peculiar expression, as if he 00:40:30.430 --> 00:40:33.820 align:middle line:84% was separating from his body, that it was acting on its own 00:40:33.820 --> 00:40:35.860 align:middle line:84% without thought of bravery or fear, 00:40:35.860 --> 00:40:38.710 align:middle line:84% and that he had stepped back behind some translucent screen 00:40:38.710 --> 00:40:43.090 align:middle line:84% of disbelief through which he would watch the moments unfold. 00:40:43.090 --> 00:40:46.240 align:middle line:84% In the street, people shouted and more glass broke. 00:40:46.240 --> 00:40:47.920 align:middle line:84% Noah thought he recognized the voices 00:40:47.920 --> 00:40:49.420 align:middle line:90% and he worried about his mother. 00:40:49.420 --> 00:40:51.460 align:middle line:84% She would be home doing chores at that time, 00:40:51.460 --> 00:40:53.377 align:middle line:84% or she might be in the garden, where she could 00:40:53.377 --> 00:40:55.960 align:middle line:90% be seen by anybody passing. 00:40:55.960 --> 00:40:58.368 align:middle line:84% Ephraim ordered Noah into the trunk. 00:40:58.368 --> 00:41:00.160 align:middle line:84% Noah wanted to go home and find his mother, 00:41:00.160 --> 00:41:03.010 align:middle line:84% but he climbed into the trunk because Ephraim's instructions 00:41:03.010 --> 00:41:04.717 align:middle line:90% were so firm. 00:41:04.717 --> 00:41:06.550 align:middle line:84% You mustn't let anyone know you're in there, 00:41:06.550 --> 00:41:08.650 align:middle line:90% said the teacher. 00:41:08.650 --> 00:41:11.710 align:middle line:84% The trunk smelled of wood and wool from the blankets 00:41:11.710 --> 00:41:13.750 align:middle line:84% that the teacher had just removed. 00:41:13.750 --> 00:41:15.880 align:middle line:84% He shut the lid, and Noah curled with his side 00:41:15.880 --> 00:41:18.340 align:middle line:84% hard against the base of the box. 00:41:18.340 --> 00:41:20.590 align:middle line:84% With his hands pressed beneath his mouth, 00:41:20.590 --> 00:41:22.270 align:middle line:84% he listened, but heard nothing of what 00:41:22.270 --> 00:41:23.620 align:middle line:90% happened outside of his trunk. 00:41:23.620 --> 00:41:26.020 align:middle line:84% No hiss of fire and no breaking glass. 00:41:26.020 --> 00:41:28.690 align:middle line:84% There were only smells and darkness. 00:41:28.690 --> 00:41:31.930 align:middle line:84% The old smell of the spruce, which still held itself faintly 00:41:31.930 --> 00:41:35.260 align:middle line:84% beneath the stronger smells of the blankets, and a living 00:41:35.260 --> 00:41:37.750 align:middle line:84% smell even softer than these, as if it 00:41:37.750 --> 00:41:40.750 align:middle line:84% had been carried in the blankets and scooped away with them, 00:41:40.750 --> 00:41:42.550 align:middle line:90% but still left a residue. 00:41:42.550 --> 00:41:45.160 align:middle line:84% It was the smell of an adult's body at night. 00:41:45.160 --> 00:41:49.030 align:middle line:84% The sweeping smell secreted from skin and breath into wool. 00:41:49.030 --> 00:41:50.920 align:middle line:84% Noah inhaled through his nose to get 00:41:50.920 --> 00:41:54.185 align:middle line:84% the smell deep into him, into his throat and onto his tongue, 00:41:54.185 --> 00:41:56.560 align:middle line:84% as if it would accompany him and shield him from whatever 00:41:56.560 --> 00:41:58.450 align:middle line:90% was about to happen. 00:41:58.450 --> 00:42:00.430 align:middle line:84% Even his mother came into that box 00:42:00.430 --> 00:42:03.340 align:middle line:84% because he had been lying there so long, his body ached. 00:42:03.340 --> 00:42:05.350 align:middle line:84% She was just behind his head, forgiving him 00:42:05.350 --> 00:42:07.117 align:middle line:90% for having hit her. 00:42:07.117 --> 00:42:08.950 align:middle line:84% She was looking down at the back of his neck 00:42:08.950 --> 00:42:11.320 align:middle line:84% and reaching her hand for him, preparing to stroke 00:42:11.320 --> 00:42:13.210 align:middle line:84% the hair at the base of his skull. 00:42:13.210 --> 00:42:16.060 align:middle line:84% She held her hand inches from his head without touching. 00:42:16.060 --> 00:42:20.640 align:middle line:84% He tightened his arm around his knees and waited. 00:42:20.640 --> 00:42:23.340 align:middle line:84% Noah remained in the trunk until the rabbi opened it and lifted 00:42:23.340 --> 00:42:24.930 align:middle line:90% him out by the arms. 00:42:24.930 --> 00:42:26.790 align:middle line:84% All that happened while he was hidden inside 00:42:26.790 --> 00:42:29.040 align:middle line:84% was told over and over for years, 00:42:29.040 --> 00:42:31.650 align:middle line:84% but Noah did not remember any of it. 00:42:31.650 --> 00:42:34.890 align:middle line:84% Ephraim was shot through the window, but didn't die. 00:42:34.890 --> 00:42:36.840 align:middle line:84% He was shot in the mouth and also injured 00:42:36.840 --> 00:42:40.680 align:middle line:84% by broken glass, which resulted in complications and lingering 00:42:40.680 --> 00:42:43.920 align:middle line:84% infections, which confined him to a sanitarium in Pinsk 00:42:43.920 --> 00:42:46.870 align:middle line:84% where he spent the rest of his life. 00:42:46.870 --> 00:42:49.320 align:middle line:84% The Cossacks had either noticed [? Kalek's ?] daughters 00:42:49.320 --> 00:42:52.710 align:middle line:84% or had heard about them from their hen-stealing companion. 00:42:52.710 --> 00:42:55.350 align:middle line:84% On a whim, one of the Cossacks threw lamp oil 00:42:55.350 --> 00:42:58.533 align:middle line:84% on Moshe [? Kalek's ?] roof and set it on fire. 00:42:58.533 --> 00:43:00.450 align:middle line:84% The girls ran out of the house with her father 00:43:00.450 --> 00:43:02.370 align:middle line:90% to escape from burning. 00:43:02.370 --> 00:43:04.710 align:middle line:84% Two Cossacks threw the girls over their saddles 00:43:04.710 --> 00:43:08.010 align:middle line:84% and sat on them to stop them from swinging their fists. 00:43:08.010 --> 00:43:11.070 align:middle line:84% [? Kalek ?] wailed and threw himself at the horses. 00:43:11.070 --> 00:43:13.110 align:middle line:84% The Cossacks swung their bayonets at him, 00:43:13.110 --> 00:43:15.300 align:middle line:84% striking him lightly with the flats, 00:43:15.300 --> 00:43:17.220 align:middle line:84% pleased to make him watch as they prepared 00:43:17.220 --> 00:43:19.470 align:middle line:90% to ride off with his children. 00:43:19.470 --> 00:43:21.750 align:middle line:84% He tried to put out the eye of one of the horses, 00:43:21.750 --> 00:43:24.480 align:middle line:84% but stepped on a piece of fallen burning roof, 00:43:24.480 --> 00:43:27.150 align:middle line:84% and had to dance on one foot to put out the flame that 00:43:27.150 --> 00:43:29.220 align:middle line:90% started on his pant leg. 00:43:29.220 --> 00:43:32.040 align:middle line:84% The Cossacks couldn't decide what to name this dance. 00:43:32.040 --> 00:43:34.350 align:middle line:84% Sort of a lame-footed kazotsky, they said. 00:43:34.350 --> 00:43:37.620 align:middle line:84% But they appreciated his talent and they clapped for him, 00:43:37.620 --> 00:43:40.230 align:middle line:84% saying that for an older man, he was very nimble, 00:43:40.230 --> 00:43:42.720 align:middle line:84% and that he must have been a charmer for the ladies 00:43:42.720 --> 00:43:45.600 align:middle line:84% when they danced to their Jew dances. 00:43:45.600 --> 00:43:48.030 align:middle line:90% He did not attack them again. 00:43:48.030 --> 00:43:50.370 align:middle line:84% And it seemed to those who saw that fear overwhelmed 00:43:50.370 --> 00:43:52.230 align:middle line:84% his fatherly love, though he managed 00:43:52.230 --> 00:43:53.880 align:middle line:84% to run after them for a short distance 00:43:53.880 --> 00:43:56.740 align:middle line:90% while they rode out of town. 00:43:56.740 --> 00:44:01.600 align:middle line:84% Noah was only eight, but he knew what the Cossacks did to Rena, 00:44:01.600 --> 00:44:04.090 align:middle line:84% because adults can lose their sense of discretion 00:44:04.090 --> 00:44:08.080 align:middle line:84% when shaken and sometimes say too much, even around children. 00:44:08.080 --> 00:44:10.540 align:middle line:84% He knew that the girls were never found. 00:44:10.540 --> 00:44:14.650 align:middle line:84% But that several days after the raid, after a week or 10 days, 00:44:14.650 --> 00:44:17.380 align:middle line:84% someone found, and he didn't know who. 00:44:17.380 --> 00:44:19.510 align:middle line:90% Some man out walking. 00:44:19.510 --> 00:44:20.710 align:middle line:90% Maybe a peasant. 00:44:20.710 --> 00:44:23.320 align:middle line:84% Maybe Yosef, the rabbi's simple helper who took 00:44:23.320 --> 00:44:25.630 align:middle line:90% long walks for his heart. 00:44:25.630 --> 00:44:27.850 align:middle line:84% Or someone who had bought something from a peasant 00:44:27.850 --> 00:44:30.790 align:middle line:84% and was returning with buttons, or leather, or nails. 00:44:30.790 --> 00:44:33.760 align:middle line:84% And it was never determined to whom they belonged, 00:44:33.760 --> 00:44:36.970 align:middle line:84% but they were a young person, a young woman's. 00:44:36.970 --> 00:44:40.570 align:middle line:90% Somebody found hands. 00:44:40.570 --> 00:44:42.670 align:middle line:84% They held a funeral for the girls 00:44:42.670 --> 00:44:45.130 align:middle line:84% and buried the hands in a child's coffin, 00:44:45.130 --> 00:44:48.600 align:middle line:84% designating the grave as a grave for both girls. 00:44:48.600 --> 00:44:51.100 align:middle line:84% I won't go into the fighting over whether it was appropriate 00:44:51.100 --> 00:44:54.520 align:middle line:84% or even permitted to assume both girls dead, but in the end, 00:44:54.520 --> 00:44:57.940 align:middle line:84% this is what was done, partly to keep Moshe [? Kalek ?] 00:44:57.940 --> 00:45:00.520 align:middle line:84% from wandering helplessly through the countryside looking 00:45:00.520 --> 00:45:01.630 align:middle line:90% for them. 00:45:01.630 --> 00:45:04.600 align:middle line:84% Though it didn't quell the hope that they were alive somewhere, 00:45:04.600 --> 00:45:07.360 align:middle line:84% perhaps taken by the Cossacks to a convent 00:45:07.360 --> 00:45:10.150 align:middle line:84% where they would be raised as Christians. 00:45:10.150 --> 00:45:11.950 align:middle line:84% And Noah was tormented by the thought 00:45:11.950 --> 00:45:16.720 align:middle line:84% that, one day, as an old man in some dim Arctic railroad 00:45:16.720 --> 00:45:19.690 align:middle line:84% station, with frost on the metal benches, 00:45:19.690 --> 00:45:22.360 align:middle line:84% and snow garnishing the window panes, 00:45:22.360 --> 00:45:25.525 align:middle line:84% he would encounter an elderly nun who had no hands. 00:45:25.525 --> 00:45:28.260 align:middle line:90% 00:45:28.260 --> 00:45:30.360 align:middle line:84% After the raid, Noah's mother treated him 00:45:30.360 --> 00:45:32.430 align:middle line:84% as though the attack had transformed him. 00:45:32.430 --> 00:45:34.990 align:middle line:84% He was now needy and traumatized. 00:45:34.990 --> 00:45:36.990 align:middle line:84% He wanted to return to his normal self, 00:45:36.990 --> 00:45:38.430 align:middle line:90% but she wouldn't let him. 00:45:38.430 --> 00:45:40.260 align:middle line:84% And things as minor as a stubbed toe 00:45:40.260 --> 00:45:42.840 align:middle line:84% inspired her pity, a nightmare, and she 00:45:42.840 --> 00:45:45.600 align:middle line:84% bought him sugared crackers and sat with him in the dark, 00:45:45.600 --> 00:45:47.400 align:middle line:84% rubbing the damp hair over his temples 00:45:47.400 --> 00:45:50.160 align:middle line:84% long after he wanted her to leave him. 00:45:50.160 --> 00:45:52.920 align:middle line:84% Every solicitous painfully exaggerated expression 00:45:52.920 --> 00:45:54.900 align:middle line:84% of concern from his mother reminded him 00:45:54.900 --> 00:45:57.180 align:middle line:84% that something bad had not only happened to him 00:45:57.180 --> 00:45:59.227 align:middle line:90% but had changed him. 00:45:59.227 --> 00:46:01.060 align:middle line:84% It made him think that he had been weakened, 00:46:01.060 --> 00:46:03.810 align:middle line:84% like the occasional sickly and moribund child who 00:46:03.810 --> 00:46:05.850 align:middle line:84% appears in cheder for a few months, 00:46:05.850 --> 00:46:09.480 align:middle line:84% never speaks, and just as mysteriously disappears. 00:46:09.480 --> 00:46:11.698 align:middle line:90% 00:46:11.698 --> 00:46:13.240 align:middle line:84% [AUDIO OUT] fingers and looked at her 00:46:13.240 --> 00:46:16.360 align:middle line:90% as though she were a stranger. 00:46:16.360 --> 00:46:19.030 align:middle line:84% On the third Monday after the girls disappeared, 00:46:19.030 --> 00:46:21.400 align:middle line:84% mama brought Noah with her to the markets, 00:46:21.400 --> 00:46:23.745 align:middle line:84% along with his friend [? Yudel ?]. 00:46:23.745 --> 00:46:25.870 align:middle line:84% She was preparing to pay a condolence call on Moshe 00:46:25.870 --> 00:46:28.000 align:middle line:84% [? Kalek ?] when [? Kalek ?] burst from his store 00:46:28.000 --> 00:46:32.140 align:middle line:84% and ran at a peasant's pig who stood in the water in the road. 00:46:32.140 --> 00:46:34.120 align:middle line:84% [? Kalek ?] ran out to chase it off, 00:46:34.120 --> 00:46:36.807 align:middle line:90% as Mama approached his store. 00:46:36.807 --> 00:46:38.890 align:middle line:84% Noah could see as [? Kalek ?] ran from the doorway 00:46:38.890 --> 00:46:40.390 align:middle line:90% that something was not right. 00:46:40.390 --> 00:46:42.550 align:middle line:84% His face was screwed up and frenzied 00:46:42.550 --> 00:46:44.710 align:middle line:90% as he bore down on the pig. 00:46:44.710 --> 00:46:47.830 align:middle line:84% Without even lifting his hands to block the impact, 00:46:47.830 --> 00:46:50.500 align:middle line:84% Moshe ran right against its side. 00:46:50.500 --> 00:46:52.540 align:middle line:84% His big belly thumped the pig's ribs, 00:46:52.540 --> 00:46:55.090 align:middle line:84% and then he dropped hard onto his back. 00:46:55.090 --> 00:46:56.890 align:middle line:90% The pig looked down at him. 00:46:56.890 --> 00:47:00.130 align:middle line:84% Not even its knees had shuddered on impact. 00:47:00.130 --> 00:47:03.010 align:middle line:84% Mama touched her finger to her lip in alarm. 00:47:03.010 --> 00:47:05.560 align:middle line:84% [? Kalek ?] rolled on his back in the puddle. 00:47:05.560 --> 00:47:09.610 align:middle line:84% Mama told the boys to go into the butcher shop and not look. 00:47:09.610 --> 00:47:12.730 align:middle line:84% [? Kalek ?] began to shout obscene curses about peasants, 00:47:12.730 --> 00:47:15.100 align:middle line:90% and he wouldn't stand. 00:47:15.100 --> 00:47:18.280 align:middle line:84% At this moment, Noah decided he hated him. 00:47:18.280 --> 00:47:20.830 align:middle line:84% His vehemence was like a bile he couldn't swallow, 00:47:20.830 --> 00:47:24.520 align:middle line:84% and as it came up, he wanted to kick that balding head open. 00:47:24.520 --> 00:47:29.320 align:middle line:84% The pig watched [? Kalek ?] as if it also wanted to kick him. 00:47:29.320 --> 00:47:32.110 align:middle line:84% Noah's mother lifted [? Kalek ?] by the arm, smoothed his shirt 00:47:32.110 --> 00:47:33.610 align:middle line:84% and hair, and let him into his store 00:47:33.610 --> 00:47:36.040 align:middle line:90% where she lowered the blinds. 00:47:36.040 --> 00:47:37.780 align:middle line:84% After the blinds had been drawn, Noah 00:47:37.780 --> 00:47:41.050 align:middle line:84% patted the pig because they both hated [? Kalek ?] now. 00:47:41.050 --> 00:47:43.540 align:middle line:84% And then the boys began laughing. 00:47:43.540 --> 00:47:45.910 align:middle line:84% Noah couldn't remember having laughed so hard. 00:47:45.910 --> 00:47:48.202 align:middle line:84% When he tried to stop, he could only laugh harder. 00:47:48.202 --> 00:47:50.160 align:middle line:84% It was a sort of laughing that hurt his stomach 00:47:50.160 --> 00:47:51.970 align:middle line:84% and brought tears to his eyes and made 00:47:51.970 --> 00:47:55.090 align:middle line:90% him worry about vomiting. 00:47:55.090 --> 00:47:57.040 align:middle line:84% Both of the boys laughed and they argued 00:47:57.040 --> 00:47:58.635 align:middle line:90% about who had laughed first. 00:47:58.635 --> 00:48:00.260 align:middle line:84% After they disagreed for a few minutes, 00:48:00.260 --> 00:48:02.290 align:middle line:84% Noah punched [? Yudel ?] in the eye. 00:48:02.290 --> 00:48:04.540 align:middle line:84% [? Yudel ?] hit him back, and they wrestled each other 00:48:04.540 --> 00:48:06.297 align:middle line:90% to the ground. 00:48:06.297 --> 00:48:08.630 align:middle line:84% Finally, Noah's mother ran from Moshe [? Kalek's ?] shop 00:48:08.630 --> 00:48:10.610 align:middle line:84% and separated them, yanking them to their feet 00:48:10.610 --> 00:48:14.780 align:middle line:84% and slapping her hand hard across both of their faces. 00:48:14.780 --> 00:48:17.300 align:middle line:84% Although [? Kalek ?] loved his daughters more than himself 00:48:17.300 --> 00:48:19.790 align:middle line:84% and would, in a lucid moment, give his life for either 00:48:19.790 --> 00:48:21.740 align:middle line:84% of theirs, the suddenness of fire 00:48:21.740 --> 00:48:25.340 align:middle line:84% on his roof, the window smashing on each side at once, 00:48:25.340 --> 00:48:26.840 align:middle line:84% the Cossacks surrounding the house 00:48:26.840 --> 00:48:29.030 align:middle line:84% and rearing up on their horses, and the horses' fear 00:48:29.030 --> 00:48:33.110 align:middle line:84% of the flames all seemed to force everything out of him. 00:48:33.110 --> 00:48:35.240 align:middle line:84% One moment, he heard disturbance in the street. 00:48:35.240 --> 00:48:36.950 align:middle line:84% The next, he was rushing his girls 00:48:36.950 --> 00:48:39.960 align:middle line:84% into the arms of these soldiers, who took them so fast, 00:48:39.960 --> 00:48:42.420 align:middle line:90% he must have been paralyzed. 00:48:42.420 --> 00:48:44.280 align:middle line:90% For a moment, he just stopped. 00:48:44.280 --> 00:48:46.280 align:middle line:84% Things were happening all around him. 00:48:46.280 --> 00:48:48.030 align:middle line:84% He couldn't have fully believed the moment 00:48:48.030 --> 00:48:49.380 align:middle line:90% in which he found himself. 00:48:49.380 --> 00:48:51.810 align:middle line:84% And then, his girls were flung across the saddles 00:48:51.810 --> 00:48:54.910 align:middle line:90% with soldiers sitting on them. 00:48:54.910 --> 00:48:58.090 align:middle line:84% Years later, in a frank and drunken moment, 00:48:58.090 --> 00:49:00.220 align:middle line:84% [? Kalek ?] remembered to several men 00:49:00.220 --> 00:49:03.220 align:middle line:84% how the saddles were slung with sharp things, metal 00:49:03.220 --> 00:49:05.920 align:middle line:84% clasps, poorly sheathed blades, and that he 00:49:05.920 --> 00:49:09.130 align:middle line:84% had worried that the girls would be cut or struck by something. 00:49:09.130 --> 00:49:10.900 align:middle line:84% As if for a moment, he had lost the fact 00:49:10.900 --> 00:49:13.340 align:middle line:90% that they were being taken away. 00:49:13.340 --> 00:49:16.820 align:middle line:90% Isn't that stupid, he had said. 00:49:16.820 --> 00:49:18.230 align:middle line:84% He didn't become aware of himself 00:49:18.230 --> 00:49:21.260 align:middle line:84% again until he had been running in the road for some time, 00:49:21.260 --> 00:49:23.750 align:middle line:84% already outside of town and following its curve 00:49:23.750 --> 00:49:25.760 align:middle line:90% into the marshy woods. 00:49:25.760 --> 00:49:28.190 align:middle line:84% He had hurt his foot in the fire. 00:49:28.190 --> 00:49:31.330 align:middle line:84% The Cossacks were long out of sight. 00:49:31.330 --> 00:49:35.020 align:middle line:84% Neighbors had put out his burning roof. 00:49:35.020 --> 00:49:35.530 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:49:35.530 --> 00:49:38.880 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:49:38.880 --> 00:49:44.000 align:middle line:90%