The Eyes of Others
She’s a young woman living in a village in a distant country,
she’s just got married and she’s pregnant, and she likes her husband
he works hard, he’s pretty nice to her and doesn’t beat her and she
waits impatiently for her baby to be born, she feels it, in her
belly, growing a bit each day, it’s like a seed that’s growing,
growing, it’ll be a girl, she knows it will, and she already loves her
very fiercely, as she loves her little life, sometimes, it’s true, she has
mad dreams, especially when she watches the TV, she too
would like to travel round the world, to visit cities,
meet a handsome prince and stand there in the snow and sing
a sweet romantic song and she tells herself she’s mad to think
of all that stuff, you’re crazy, you are, but she likes her little life, of course
there is her husband’s mother who’s a pain but there are, as her sister
neatly puts it, giggling, worse pains somewhere else and she quite likes
her little life and maybe what she loves the most is going down
to the sea each morning, she goes very early on her own and then
she starts to run, run fast, run very fast, so fast she feels as if she’s
lost her head, she starts to yell, her happiness so strong
it muddles all her senses and she also loves the trees, they are so
strong, so powerful, deep-rooted in the earth like that since the
beginning and she loves the stars as well, they are so lovely and she wonders
what they really are, the ones who’ve been to school they say they’re
balls of fire, she doesn’t really grasp it all that well but knows
they’re very beautiful and that she’d like to touch,
to travel to a star and live there but you’re crazy, you are, crazy,
that’s what she tells herself, you’re mad to think of all that stuff, she knows
deep down, a lot of things she doesn’t like to talk about, she doesn’t trust
the men because they’re scared of women, doesn’t trust the gossips
in the village, they haven’t got a clue about it all, she knows, but it is
hard to work it out, untangle all the meanings in their eyes and she can see
so many things in them, like love, quite often, lots, and love is
like children when they start to dance, it goes a bit in all
directions and it’s full of laughter makes you giddy but there’s also
hate and hate is scary, makes her want to run away, it’s like
a bushfire eating things all up and she tells herself she’s
mad, no question, you are crazy, you are, crazy, it’s not really
normal to be like this, to laugh at every little thing and ever since
she’s been expecting there’s a sort of music in her, something
tuneful, magical, that floods her body, something beautiful and strong
and she knows it’s going to be a girl, she’ll be like her and be –
but it’s her husband who maintains, how silly he is sometimes –
just as beautiful as she is and she tells herself one day they’ll go
and marvel at the trees, the stars, they’ll run out in the fields,
run fast, run very fast, and faster, faster and they’ll start
to shout it feels so good, she’ll delight in pretty things, she’ll make her
lovely clothes and she will hug her hard so she’ll absorb
her innocence, she likes her little life, then one day in the village
something happens, difficult at first to put your finger on,
it seems that people from the town are making something up,
saying that she and hers are different, that they’re
like cockroaches or microbes, when she hears it she wants to laugh
because here in the village everyone’s the same, they also say
their ancestors were looters but what does she know of her ancestors,
that they can’t be trusted, that they’re all two-faced, they want
to steal our women, that they have a lot of children out of stubbornness
and that they smell, she hears a sneaky sort of word well up,
those burst-and-splatter words, like ‘we’, the way her closest
friend will tell her ‘we’ are different from you, she wonders who
they are this we, this famous we, she doesn’t get it, then one day
when she is on the point of dozing off she hears a scream,
the scream of someone having his throat cut, a scream which splits the sky
and something in her breaks, this fear too long held in, this knowledge
stifled for too long and then she starts to run, to run away, to
go – where can she go, she’s no idea but it’s too late and she can see
them coming but they’ve changed from men to animals and in their
hands they carry hatchets, hooks, a torture toolkit, and their eyes
are hollow, holes where eyes should be, they’re coming closer,
they insult her but she can no longer hear them, she won’t hear them, she
won’t die, not now, and not like this, she’s murmuring the name
of god, protect my child, protect my child and one of them
is young, she recognises him, he is her neighbour, he comes up
and spits on her, he tells her to kneel down, down on your knees, you slut,
you’ve got it coming now, just look at her, the bitch, she’d like us all
to fuck her, fancies our big cocks, down on your knees I said, we’ll
teach you to respect us, to respect your masters, on your knees
you filthy whore and while he slits her belly cuts her foetus up and empties
petrol over her and lights it, in the eyes of this young woman – from a country
distant yet not different from ours – still lingers, and will always linger
the enchanted light-show of the sea, the trees, the stars.