Blood

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Some nights I feel sick with the wanting of it.

Doesn't that make me just like everyone else?

Maybe. And maybe not. The others weren't born bound by Torah, were they? Not that that means anything. I never believed the Rabbi who told me that my soul was better, brighter than a gentile soul. That sounded too much like an echo of the dogma of the anti-Semites. Both say that to be a Jew is to be intrinsically different, starting at the very essence.

I have touched the heart, mind and soul of many many creatures, Kindred and Kine.

There is no objective difference that I have found.

So how does that make my response to the call of the blood any different?

I suppose because I chose to be.

I was not always this way. But the War changed that. Do I need to explain why? I don't want to. I don't want to bore you with an endless litany of suffering, of death. Why should I? You know it all already. You've seen the films; skeletal Jews, bulldozers pushing away a mountain of corpses, huge eyed children, the yellow star. Why tell you that it happened all over again?

But it did.

It changed me.

After the War I could no longer forget that I was a Jew. And so being a Jew came to matter, matter more than anything. And so I came home to what was left of my People.

And now we return at last to the blood.

The Torah forbids the consumption of blood. Blood renders one unclean, which is why a menstruating women is forbidden from physical contact with others until her bleeding has ceased and she can attend the mikveh, the ritual bath. However, the Torah also states that there are almost no rules in Halakha which cannot be broken to save a life. Life, the Torah says, is a gift from G-d. That is more important than anything.

Therefore, I think, I must be able to drink blood, if it is to save my own life. Well, if one considers the existence that I have to be a life. I know that's debatable. But I don't want to die, and so I tell myself that it is life, for I dream and I pray, and what else makes up the measure of a life? It is not a righteous life, I know that. It is a tainted, unholy, shadow life, a perpetual state of uncleanliness. But it is still a kind of life, and surely G-d would not have given it to me if he wanted me to throw it away?

And so I continue to feed.

Yet there is always that awareness that every mouthful I take, draws me deeper and further away from what little righteousness I possess. And I know that I hunger for blood that is far far in excess of that which I need to survive. I don't need much to live, to exist. I don't die without the blood that makes me faster, stronger, brighter. I don't die without blood to mix, to match, to scent and to savour. I don't die without the taste, the sensation, the joy of the hunt.

That isn't necessary. That isn't forgivable, by any reading of the Halakha.

Oh G-d, just writing this makes me feel light headed for wanting.

In 1949 I made a decision. I decided that I would drink exactly as much blood as I needed to stay alive and not a drop more.

I won't pretend it was easy. I spent sixty years, more or less, crouched at the very edge of frenzy. I got to know my Beast far far better than most. He was always with me, you see, never quiet, never quiescent. He and I whispered to each other, night after night, throughout the years. I was always cold, shivering without the blood to warm me. I was always aching, nausea tearing at my nerves. I was always so close to killing, so close to hurting anyone I came near.

And every single night I dreamed of blood.

I don't follow that path anymore. I feed differently; on the willing, on those who serve, and sometimes on the unrighteous. The hunger has abated. I am an even worse Jew than I was before, but I remember a little of how it felt to be human now. I have swam in the ocean, and gloried in the salt scent on my skin. I have listened to the waves, over and above the howl of the blood in my veins.

I am getting better, I think, but some nights I still feel sick with the wanting of it. Some nights it feels as if too much is never enough and I don't ever want to stop. Some nights I don't care that I am unclean, I don't care what I am, and I would do anything to just be able to take and take and never let go.

Does that make me just like everyone else?

And what does that make us all?

Comments

[akonken.livejournal.com]

I like that.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I kinda liked being able to explain Ruth's insane feeding habits a little more at last. And I think they almost sound like they make sense and aren't just entirely demented when I put it down this way!

Next - Carrie Chance and blood.