Abahn Sabana David by Marguerite Duras Page A

quickly because once more he can, he gives it to David in clear phrases.
    â€œYou didn’t covet the Jew’s dogs. You just wanted to speak to someone who had dogs.”
    David nods.
    â€œAfterward, a while after, Gringo spoke of making the Jew disappear, you thought then for a moment, you might have his dogs.”
    David nods yes.
    Abahn stops talking to David and starts talking about him instead.
    â€œRight after Gringo’s order David went to the café with the Jew, just like before. It was that very night in the café that the Jew spoke to him about freedom. He said, ‘Your wounded hands are your own hands, David.’”
    David nods. Abahn gulps air and continues, talking faster.
    â€œThe Jew said, ‘In their suffering and their joy, in their madness and their love, in their freedom these hands are your hands, no other’s, the hands of David.’” He pauses. “It’s because he said these things that the Jew will be killed.”
    A sob heaves in David’s chest.
    It’s a brief, isolated sob, broken, quick.
    Abahn speaks again, more hurried:
    â€œYou didn’t understand what the Jew meant.”
    David does not react.
    â€œYou repeated it without knowing what it was you were repeating. You told Gringo. Gringo said, ‘YOU LACK AN EDUCATION IN POLITICS. WE WILL KILL THE JEW AND THEN YOU WILL UNDERSTAND.’ It was Jeanne who reported this.”
    David folds over himself violently, his arms wrapping under his legs. He trembles then as if he were going to break. His face contorts like a drowning man’s.
    â€œI haven’t taught you anything,” says Abahn. “ You knew everything .”
    David doesn’t answer him, doesn’t hear him.
    Abahn falls silent.
    David cries out something like, “I never had a dog.”
    He heard his own cry.
    He lingers, rising toward this cry, in the position of someone crying out still. He rises, searching the air for this cry, searching and finding tears.
    David doesn’t know he is crying. His tears fall.
    Within the tears one hears the names of Sabana and the Jew.
    Sabana rises. She stands behind the windows looking out toward the darkened park, the field of the dead. She looks at nothing else.
    The Jew lifts his head. He heard the voice of Sabana:
    â€œI will be killed along with the Jew.”
    The Jew looks past her toward the darkened park.
    The shooting out near the ponds has broken out again.
    â€¢
    T he shooting stops.
    David’s tears flow more slowly, coursing.
    David seems preyed upon by a terrible dream. His head thrashes, shakes no. His hands seek out things no one else but he can see. His face seems to be speaking, answering something.
    Then his tears trickle off. Then the movements of his face and eyes calm as well. The dream drifts off.
    He seems to see no more. He releases his legs, turns his face back to the light, rests back against the chair, limp, completely spent.
    The silence. They are all silent. The Jew looks at David. Sabana and Abahn seem not to notice.
    The shooting begins again.
    The deafening sound of bullets cracking out from their shells. David listens to them in seeming distress. He moves no more than Sabana or the Jews.
    Diane howls to death.
    The cracking of bullets continues at irregular intervals. Some shots closer in the park. No one in the house of Abahn seems to pay any attention to the shooting in the park.
    â€œHe arrives.”
    Abahn and Sabana both turn to the one who has spoken: David.
    The shooting gets closer, Diane still howling to death. A funereal moan cuts across the night of Staadt.
    And then:
    â€œIf someone is killed, then run off through the other door.”
    The voice of the Jew.
    â€œRelease the dogs, go by the ponds.”
    Again, the Jew.
    David turns his head. He has heard.
    Slowly, he gathers his strength, he tries to pull himself up out of the chair. He falls back. He does not move.
    The shooting gets closer and