er...not exactly

Last week, (as some of you probably predicted on seeing my last entry) I was carrying _Render Unto Caesar_ around with me, so I could read as much of it as I could in spare moments. On the bus, I had to pause for a bit because I was overwhelmed and near tears. I fumbled the book closed with my finger marking my place, staring into the middle distance and sniffling. That was when I realized a stranger was staring at me and smiling indulgently. Not exactly a stranger - we'd exchanged a few words, a few weeks ago, about (of all things!) the book of Hosea. And he wasn't staring at me so much as he was staring at the book. I suddenly knew I must look like a kindred spirit to this devout young man who read psalms in English under his breath, every rainy morning when I saw him on this bus. There's no way for him to know how far I am from Christianity, (I think of reading psalms as something one does in grief, or anguished worry for the dying), or how far from it the book is.

Why was I discussing Hosea with a stranger on a bus? Well, there I was, minding my own business...
More to the point, there I was, minding KEREWIN's business. And Simon's. And the 10% of me that wasn't totally absorbed in _The Bone People_ heard someone across the aisle attempting biblical exegesis to his clueless seatmate. He was explaining that the main point of "Song of Songs" is that a forgiving God, as an angry husband, continually takes back his people, as an unfaithful wife. All backed up by quoting from Hosea about sin and betrayal and vengeance. (Really, really, creepy in tandem with _The Bone People_!) I said, "That's not "Song of Songs," that's "Hosea." I have no idea what this stuff is doing in the back of my head. It's not like I want it there. It's not like I even wanted that conversation, but I had it, and it was surprisingly interesting.

I really loved _Render Unto Caeser_, and I didn't notice anything that was factually out of period. (*) But people who dislike out-of-period moods or tones in historical fiction probably wouldn't like it. Hermogenes is presented as an Alexandrian Greek in Rome, and as a very unusual Alexandrian, at that. (The motif appears to be "Hermogenes, you are the strangest man I've ever met"/"That's interesting. Everyone tells me that.") He doesn't do, or even think, anything that can't be justified in terms of his background. And he's very likeable, not nearly as shrill as some of his comrades on the Cambridge City Council.

(I don't think this is a spoiler. I hope not. If you're very sensitive to such things, hurry and go read the book.)



Hermogenes is not quite the sensitive new-age guy he seems. He worships Isis, in the spirit of:
"I broke down the government of tyrants,
I made the Right stronger than gold or silver,
I ordained that the Truth should be thought good."



(*) I'm adding this later, when I'm going back to correct the embarrassing typo. Come to think of it, Hermogenes says something about the relative safety of sailing in the summer. After I read the book, but before I wrote this, I stumbled over a mention that the Mediterranean is really safer in fall. I didn't twig to it in the reading. (The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead, when the skies of November turn gloomy.) I don't know if the detail of later-in-the-year=safer would have seemed like a burden to my suspension of disbelief.

news story or "urban" legend?

I should know better than to discuss politics with my mother. Sometimes I think I should know better than to discuss anything with my mother, at all. But, well, maybe Iraq is a safer topic of conversation than anything that could relate more directly to her or me. So I grabbed for it as a diversion, rather than risk talking about my weight, or her desire for grandchildren (which she isn't going to get), or any of the friends that are so dear to me for reasons I don't want her to even suspect.

She told me a story of a US military officer who recently had to interrogate someone captured in the heat of battle in Iraq. This was apparently a textbook case of an obvious enemy, with many lives depending on extracting some particular bit of information from him in time. My mother believes that it doesn't count as "torture" if no physical damage is done, so the officer must not have tortured the prisoner. But he did apply more coercive pressure than he was authorized to use, including sleep deprivation and firing a gun next to his head. The prisoner broke, and the officer acted on the information acquired. The officer is facing court martial, near the end of his military career, for exceeding his authority in this matter. My mother is outraged, appalled, furious, that this officer (whose actions she believes to have been altogether admirable) might lose his pension.

I usually don't try to follow every detail of the war on terrorism, or the war on Iraq. So I found myself totally unfamiliar with this story, when my mother told it to me. My only referrent was that a very similar story seems to turn up in almost every debate about banning torture..."What if you need to get time-critical, life-saving, information from an enemy and the only way to get it is with torture? Nevermind that, I mean reliable information! But the *only* way to get the information is with torture. It would be so wrong to make people die for the sake of a rule." (And it all comes round again.) Anyhow, I'm wondering if my mother was telling me about something that really happened recently, or if she was referring to the classic hypothetical. Dressing up the classic with that human touch of the poor heroic officer approaching retirement and about to lose his pension would be a stroke of brilliance, if someone had made it up to target her soft spots. If it really happened, I'd appreciate pointers to news reports.

It's also pretty disturbing to realize that my mother is so gung-ho in favor of torture. This is harder for me to justify ^H^H^H accept that I'm related to than the fact that she has such blind faith in both Bush and Ashcroft. She used to be an intelligent, liberal, reasonably enlightened woman. I don't know what happened. It grieves me. I want to make a contribution to Amnesty International, in her memory.