He was aware of a damp coldness, of the hardness of the stone floor and of a tincture on the air, at once horrible and human, like the lingering smell of fear. He felt along the wall for a light switch, hardly expecting, as his hand found it, that there would still be electricity. But the light came on, and then he saw her. She had been garrotted and the body dumped into a large wicker chair to the right of the fireplace. She lay there sprawled, legs askew, arms flung over the ends of the chair, the head thrown back with the cord bitten so deep into the skin that it was hardly visible. Such
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This is a difficult passage. In the film Miriam has been race switched, hippy-ed, and aged. She sacrifices herself with prayers to St. Micheal; and gets dragged of the internment camp bus with a black hood over her head.
This passage here is a violent description of the destruction of a black woman's body. It feels different.
A few sections earlier in the book, Theo robs and ties up an elderly couple in order to get Julia and Miriam to safety. It is an alarmingly searing ordeal for its politeness and empathy. Theo has the elderly couple tied up in their bedroom and is about to make quick his escape (this is actually a Coen/Hitchock type ordeal of incompetence and charm). He unties the woman entirely and takes her on his arm to use the restroom. So too, he allows the gentleman an opportunity to relive himself. It will be a dozen or more hours before their domestic worker will find them. The elderly woman will parish under the duress of the ordeal.
Miriam has been quietly, invisibly destroyed. We see here only the bald leavings of the brutality she experienced. I have a lot of feelings about this.
