The Anarchist Read Online Free PDF Page B

crime . If they are linked , then I am being persecuted. If I am only being punished for the crime with which I was charged . I have served my term. I beg your pardon. You were speaking.
    (Pause.)
    ANN : When you taught . In Algeria, all right . . .
    CATHY : No. It’s not all right. Who, God knows, has paid for her actions.
    ANN : When you, at the Farm, at the Apartment, “strove to awaken” the Masses . . .
    CATHY : They lived, as many do, contentedly, in ignorance of their state. As many do today. As you do. In their relationship to the Divine. We live in ignorance.
    ANN : But you did not live in ignorance.
    CATHY : We felt that we did not.
    ANN : Then how had you been elevated? Do you see? As, you say, again , you have been?
    CATHY : I have been raised by Christ.
    ANN : Yes. But they . . . If they lived in contentment. Then . . .
    CATHY : If they “lived in contentment”? They were oppressed .
    ANN : But what raised you? To that understanding? A Book? A Man? (She reads) “A moment of enlightenment, the religious would say the experience of Grace.”
    CATHY : I was not writing about the Man.
    ANN : No, you were writing about Christ. But: the language you used, in your “talks,” it’s the same language . . . “Hov’ring at the margins of the real . . .”
    CATHY : You don’t have to demean them, by calling them “talks.”
    ANN : What are they, “Speeches”?
    CATHY : But they’re hardly “talks.”
    ANN : What are they?
    CATHY : Interactions. Or, “Thoughts,” perhaps, “Meditations” . . .
    ANN : Well, yes, but you see, the inability to call things by their names, may lead, in you and in your, what did you say? “Revolution”? No less than in the State, to imprecision. And, in our case, certainty has led to error. Or, did you act in Error? Did you act in Error?
    CATHY : When?
    (Pause.)
    ANN : What is “murder”?
    CATHY : It is the unlawful taking of a human life.
    ANN : Indeed it is. Did you commit murder?
    CATHY : I was adjudged guilty of murder.
    ANN : Did you commit murder?
    CATHY : I have worked. For thirty-five years, to discharge. My “debt to society.”
    ANN : Which Society still sticks upon the one point. What is that point? And why should I believe that you might be a “member of society,” if you are incapable even of a half-hour’s courteous interaction with me in this room? A person from whom you desire a great service—and yet you are incapable of stilling your rage.
    CATHY : That’s not true . . .
    ANN : . . . that you should be reduced . . .
    CATHY : . . . it’s simply not true.
    ANN : To comply with a requirement of the State. That you divulge the whereabouts of your accomplice. Who killed alongside you. Which legitimate, which is to say “lawful” demand, you characterize as an “inquisition” . . .
    CATHY : . . . my father is dying. Should . . .
    ANN : . . . I’m sorry.
    CATHY : . . . should a person. Not be left. A sense . . . finally . . .
    ANN : . . . go on.
    (Pause.)
    CATHY : A sense of dignity.
    (Pause.)
    ANN : I have no doubt that you consider yourself, I will not insult you by using the term “rehabilitated” . . .
    CATHY : I don’t know that I know the meaning of the word.
    ANN : It means “re-clothed”—its implication being “restored.”
    CATHY : No doubt. But how may one be restored who is, in the eyes of the State, bound or free, always a criminal?
    ANN : “How can the criminal not see that the same sense of entitlement which led him to crime leads him to demand a societal amnesia regarding his conviction.” Who wrote that?
    CATHY : You surprise me.
    ANN : Who wrote it?
    CATHY : Lombroso.
    ANN : And at what conclusion did he arrive, after a lifetime of his studies?
    CATHY : You impress me.
    ANN : At what conclusion did he arrive?
    CATHY : That there is no solution to the problem of Crime.
    ANN