62
I'AIUISAN R.EVIEW
tions here, that we are speaking of what occurred betweeIl us, between two
men connected by blood and a shared past. Maybe I should respond to his
anger with anger of my own and demand that he check his [lctS, shout him
down by reminding him that it was, after all, I who lost the use of my legs.
I suppose that I could even give in to banality and apologize-simply say,
''I'm sorry!" and put an end to it. Only all the weight of the evidence is
on his side. Polio crippled me. \Jut he paid so much of the price I should
have paid.
And so I find myself listening to Abe's accusations as if I were caught
up bodily in one of those black and white newsreels ti-OIIl the I93()s, where
the film is so grainy that the tanks on screen look like wound-up toys
rolling across patched and peeled terrain and death itself seems curiously
mesmenzlIlg. An end to questions of1(.'rs the stamp of finality. Yet my
brother's rage, as I imagine it, continues to hammer aW;IY at me. I wish I
could attend
to
each shading of tone, to give each individual word, each
angry syllable, a proper response. Only as Abe speaks of how much my
being crippled cost his childhood and adolescence, I retreat into my own
burgeoning resentment. His words rain down on nIl', yet all I can envision
is a Chaplinesque newsreel in which Mussolini sneers with contempt tor
Ethiopia, hands on fat hips as he preens for the newsreel cameras. Snapping
his fingers while strutting his stun- on the balcony,
II
DII(c's actor's courage
otTers itself
to
the fj-enzied Roman mob in the square below. How silly an
image for a man trying
to
measure the truth of a brother's imaginary accu–
sations. Only it can't be helped. The mind forces its images on brothers,
however paranoid they may seem, as it did on Cain wheIl he wondered
why Abel's sacrifice, not his, had been [()Und worthy in Cod's sight.
\Jut I can't avoid my brother\ accusations with ITmembered images of
II
011(('
on his balcony. The truth is that even in our imaginary confi-onta–
tions, all I can do is
to
listen to Ill)' brother in silence-proof enough that
deep down I believe he is right. Even if I were successful ill hiding with–
in that grainy old newsreel, I would not be able
to
change how right he is.
Men are linked
to
each other, as both Christians and Marxists like
to
claim.
And if that is so, then
to
acknowledge a blood brother's rage is to acknowl–
edge the most powerful of links. \)isease
is
a sharing. My brother paid a
terrible price for the polio that crippled me-an even higher price, I often
think, than the price I myself paid. C;uilt is the anvil on which our links
were torged,just as it is the syllogism on which we two have constructed
the logic of our current relationship. I anI not part of that I93()s Roman
mob, nor am I an Ethiopian warrior about
to
hurl .1 spe.lr .lg.linst the steel
skin of an Italian tank. I .Im a brother's brother, another American adrift
in the I99()s, painfully aware of that time when he was Illy keeper. Neither
of us can ever [()rget that. Pulled illto
.I
world where dram.1 \\'.IS played out
