Study for Obedience

by Sarah Bernstein

From a practical point of view – and pragmatism was naturally of the utmost importance to my brother – he was also engaged in some perfectly reasonable, if slightly perverse, business dealings, for he was, or at least had been, a businessman involved in the successful selling and trading, importing and exporting, of a variety of goods and services, the specifics of which to this day remain a mystery to me.

Narrator Describing her brother

what little I knew of men suggested that they were constitutionally incapable of being alone, terrified of not being admired, and seemed to regard ageing and its effects as a personal failing.

Seemingly, my brother told me, I was a girl, would perhaps one day be a woman, and it was up to me to ascertain how to gain mastery over myself.

spoke and listened to myself at length as I watched the dark shapes move under the thinning ice. I cannot say whether I was ever overheard while I occupied myself in this way: if I had been, it would have been only one behaviour among many others, truthfully or falsely reported, that would later be held against me.

Narrator talks to herself she does ot speak the language of the natives and is ostracized because of it she is also ant semitic

In truth and as it happened a building further away from God one could scarcely imagine.

It was a familiar feeling: wherever I had been in my life I was always an incomer, an offlander, sometimes a usurper, more rarely a conniver, it was something in

Every single one of us on this ruined earth exhibited a perfect obedience to our local forces of gravity, daily choosing the path of least resistance, which while entirely and understandably human was at the same time the most barbaric, the most abominable course of action. So, listen. I am not blameless. I played my part.