Tours of the Black Clock

129

WHEN I SEE THAT she’s not given birth to what I made inside her, I’m aghast. It’s unthinkable that one small act of will has defied the soul of a century bent on finding its true dark literal form. When I see she’s given birth to a child I think to myself, Then I must kill this child. What she’s defied in the act of birth will not deny me my revenge; in killing the child I’ll kill the father in turn, who will die from the grief of it. I know grief. Uncertain as the mysteries of birth may be to me, there’s nothing mysterious to me about grief. I take my pen in my hand and make myself remember what I need to remember in order to do it. It isn’t hard to remember. I look at the child, look for the ways in which the child is like the father; and though the child in truth is more like his mother, there’s enough of the father. There’s plenty enough, plenty of the father and plenty of what I remember.