The Instructions by Adam Levin
He meant getting sat next to. Eliyahu had brought the Cage population to maximum capacity, though. More than one absence from the Cage was as rare as none, so Eliyahu was effectively the end of the Gurion Has to Sit Next to No One Whenever It Is Possible rule.
Botha dropped a Cage handbook on the desk of my newest friend’s carrel.
“That’s for you, Aye Lie.”
“And I’ve got something for you, Mr. Bertha,” said Eliyahu. “From Principal Trotsky.”
Main Man said, “Ha ha.”
Eliyahu handed Botha two notes on office stationary.
Botha looked at the first one and said to me, “Go to the owfice before detantion.”
I said, My record’s ready?
He said, “Can’t say I know what your talking about.”
I said, What does the note say, Mr. Botha?
“Says to go to the owfice before detantion, Makebee.”
Botha went to his desk, reading the second note. Then he called Ronrico and the Janitor over and wrote them one pass. Brodsky had summoned them for our fight in the locker-room—that had to be it. It seemed so long ago.
Standing in the doorway behind the grumbling, key-clanging monitor—Botha hated that he had to unlock the gate just after having locked it—Ronrico shouted back to me, “Don’t worry. I won’t tell on you—and neither will he.”
“I won’t,” said the Janitor.
Soon the the beginning-of-class tone sounded and all of the Cage went quiet again. I touched my neck on the hairs. June had said, “Show me later, then. Don’t get in trouble.” I shivered big. It was almost later. Coke, poem, and passpad. I yearned for detention.
Before Eliyahu had the chance to get us steps, I sent a note over the wall that told him to send a note over the wall when he wanted to communicate. His response took so long, I worried he fell asleep. A lot of Cage students would sleep in the afternoon. Since the robots couldn’t see your face, it was easy to get away with if you didn’t put your head down onto the desk.
While I waited for Eliyahu to write me back, I returned to the problem of the random three-code—of why I couldn’t come up with something better. I started to think about how Flowers had said I was too methodical, too systematic; how I’d thought he was probably right ever since he’d said it, and for weeks had kept trying to be different than he’d said. Like when I towel-snapped the neck of the Janitor that morning. That was the most successful I’d been; I didn’t have any reason to towel-snap his neck. Rather, I had a reason to attack someone who didn’t deserve it (I had to find out if I was a sadist), and a reason to attack that person in the locker-room (teachers were scarce there; most fights went unpunished), but my target could have been any one of at least ten kids who I had Gym with and didn’t like. From that list of ten, I’d chosen the Janitor at random the night before. But then, because it was him I chose, his best friend Ronrico started fighting with me, and that fight was noisy enough to rouse Desormie, who brought me to the Office where I got to flirt with June, then meet Eliyahu. And now I was in love and getting sat next to. So it was definitely good that I towel-snapped the neck of the Janitor—I didn’t doubt that—but now that I thought about it, “because there was no reason to pick a fight with the Janitor” seemed like a reason to pick a fight with the Janitor, and if that was the case, there was reason in everything. Or maybe it was more like reason was inescapable. At least for me. And if reason was in everything, it would seem to make sense for me to continue to be methodical and systematic. And if reason was inescapable, then I couldn’t help but continue being methodical and systematic. Except… except…
I felt snared in a word-trap and cowardly for it. Like a guy on a gallows worrying about rope-burn. The Cage was the trap. The Cage was a cage.
A kid groaned his chair. I revolved to face Benji. He pointed at Eliyahu and shrugged his shoulders while curling his lips in around his teeth = “I don’t understand who this person is.”
I nodded once and showed Benji a power-fist = He is a friend.
Then Benji made two fists, held one on top of the other the tall way, and did circles with them at chest level. I didn’t know what that meant, but he followed it with the lips-curl and the shrug. Next he waved a sideways goodbye under his nostrils, which at first I thought = “It stinks in here,” but then he followed it with the shrugging and the lip thing again, which seemed to = “I don’t understand why it stinks in here,” but because I couldn’t smell any bad smells, and because it didn’t make any sense to tell me that he didn’t understand why the Cage was so awful, I was confused.
I heard the tap of a note landing on my desk and I revolved to face forward. Instead of balling up the note, Eliyahu had folded it into a box. That took longer than crumpling, but it didn’t make noise, and a thrown one’s trajectory was at least as reliable as that of a balled one’s. I’d never even thought of boxing a note.
I opened the note. It said: This Cage Manual is long and full of topys.
I wrote: I don’t know “topys.” Is it Yiddish or Hebrew? You are smart to box this piece of paper. I always crumple.
I boxed the note, tossed it.
A kid groaned his chair. Two more and I’d revolve again, gesture at Benji.
The note came back: To crumple is noisy. Topys is a spelling joke in English.
I wrote: You are a very quiet kind of funny, Aye lie Aye lie Aye lie.
Boxed it, tossed it. I heard a fly buzz. A kid groaned his chair.
Tap. The note said: Better this than a very funny kind of quiet. It is a very funny kind of quiet in here. It’s no picnic. You weren’t kidding before. How much longer til the day ends?
I checked the clock, wrote: 1.5 periods + 1 passing-period = 60 min + 5 = 65 min.
I have no work to do, Eliyahu wrote back. I will doze. Please enjoy a disc of butterscotch—my favorite.
A disc of butterscotch came over the wall. It shattered in its wrapper when it hit the desk.
Chair-groan, chair-groan, chair-groan, chair-groan—aggressive squeak-ing. I revolved to face Benji. He revolved, too, but not to face me. He looked, instead, at Ben-Wa Wolf, the source of the chair-groans—which hadn’t yet ceased—and so did most of the rest of the Cage, including the teachers and Botha.
“Aggrassive squeaking,” Botha said.
Ben-Wa stopped. He said, “I’ve had my hand up for—”
Botha interrupted him. “Stap one, Mr. Wolf. That’s what you get for agrrassive squeaking, isn’t it? Stap one and tan minutes til you’re called on, plus—”
“I—”
“Tan minutes til you’re called on, Mr. Wolf, plus another two mannits edded for each word you speak. ‘I’ is a word, so that’s twailve mannits.”
Ben-Wa chewed his lips, shut his eyes to the wrinkling, crossed his legs at the knees like a lady being interviewed. A bunch of kids giggled. Someone said, “Ben Gay.” I didn’t see who.
“Face ford, all you,” Botha commanded.
I counted to seven and did it.
To Eliyahu, I wrote, Thank you for the butterscotch. I folded the note, but then I unfolded it and wrote, Don’t write “You’re Welcome” back to me. It is not worth risking a step to toss a note that says “You’re Welcome.” Or even “Thank you.” I’m only writing “Thank you” this once so you’ll know I’m not thoughtless. From now on, though, if you give me something in the Cage, assume that I am thankful. I will do the same with you. Dream of victory.
Over the wall.
I untwirled the wrapper of the butterscotch and put the two biggest pieces in my mouth. I fought off my teeth. My teeth wanted to chew.
A fly buzzed into my carrel, then left. Then came back.
And then the note came back. It said: You’re welcome—I will write that just once, too. But I mean it. I carry many discs of butterscotch in my pockets. It is something I learned in Brooklyn—I would give butterscotch to Bathsheba Wasserman, who is the love of my life. When I give away discs of butterscotch, it helps me remember Bathsheba,
I tucked the note in my pocket. I would save it in my Documents lock-box and, on the twentieth anniversary of their wedding day, I would give it to Bathsheba, along with a drawing I would ask June to make of Eliyahu as a boy. Bathsheba would weep tears of happiness and all of our sons would practice stealth in the yard together, speaking Hebrew to each other. This would be in Jerusalem, behind the limestone house where my mother was a girl. We had pictures. One was in a frame on the living room wall. My mother is sitting under some blossoms in it, eating a Jaffa orange that her father is peeling apart the segments of and handing to her. It was the first picture I ever saw of my grandfather, who was a very dark-skinned person who died the same year I was born. I’d seen it a million times in the frame on the wall, but one time, when I was three, I saw my mom stare at it, and I looked at it more closely and I asked her, Who is the man?
It is the earliest conversation I can remember.
My mom said, “He is my aba.”
I said, No he is not.
She said, “Why do you say that?”
I said, He is not Jewish.
She said, “He is.”
I said, No.
She said, “I do not lie to my son.” But I didn’t believe her and she knew it, so she showed me his medals. The letters engraved in them were Hebrew. I couldn’t read it yet.
“You see?” she said to me. “He was a soldier in the Six-Day War, in the Yom Kippur War, and in Lebanon. He was a hero. Do you see how young I was! Just older than you.”
I said, Why was he a hero?
“What?” she said.
What made him a hero?
“He kept the people he loved from being killed by others.”
How? I said.
She said, “Speak in sentences to your mother.”
I said, How did he stop the others from killing?
My mother said, “He killed them first.”
I can never remember when my father came in the room, or where he was sitting or standing, but he was there by then and they had a fight. I do not remember what they said to each other, either, just that it was loud, and that while I cried the tears magnified everything, and my mother looked browner than me, and my father pinker. After they finished fighting, we all got ice cream on Devon, and then we went to Rosenblum’s Books, where they bought me a Chumash with a leather-colored cover. I read half of Bereishis in English before I went to bed, and in 14, at the part where Avram arms his 318 servants and takes war to the five armies under Chedorlaomer, who had captured Lot, I could see Avram put his fist to the ground and the desert cracking open to swallow his enemies and I could see his face. It was the face of my grandfather and I saw that it was good.
The fly whacked himself against the inner walls of my carrel. The buzzing and the ticking D’d my A like crazy, so I turned the wrapper inside-out and rubbed a streak of butterscotch dust across the desk. The fly put his hose down and fed on the thinnest part. I moved my hand and he flew to the wall, clung on a fiber. I remained still until he returned to the streak.
A minute before the end of the period, a girl on the other side of the Cage said, “No!”
Then someone else said, “Aww!”
“Quoydanawnsinz!” Botha said. “Sit down!”
I revolved. There was a half-circle of students standing around Ben-Wa Wolf. I could see his white hair through the gaps between the hips.
The whole Cage had revolved.
Botha told the standers to get back in their seats. They shifted. That is when I and everyone saw that Ben-Wa Wolf was wet. He was crying without tears and without any throat-sounds—only with his breath—and his hand was raised. His hand is raised, I thought, and he wet himself, I thought. His right hand is raised and his piss is dripping into the carpet, I thought, staining the carpet, I thought, his hand in the air.
The end-of-class tone sounded as Botha approached Ben-Wa with a pass. “Go to the nurse and clane up,” he said.
Ben-Wa ignored him, revolved his chair slowly til he faced the center of the Cage. He said to us, “This isn’t normal. I am eleven years old. This is not normal at all. Can you believe this? I can’t believe this. Can you believe this?”
No one answered him.
It was the worst thing.
“Ben-Wa,” said Botha.
“It was past twelve minutes. Why couldn’t you call on me?” Ben-Wa said. You could hardly hear it, but you couldn’t help but hear it.
Botha shook the pass until Ben-Wa finally lowered his hand and took it.
I thought of a song, a terrible, cloying, cute little meansong:
Hey Ben-Wa Wolf/ Why’s your hand in the air?/ You’re crying and soaking/ Piss streams from your chair/ I wonder and wonder/ And wonder and wonder/ I wonder and wonder/ What makes you so scared?
I had to press my tongue to my mouth-roof with my eyes rolled up while I dug a thumbnail into my neck to make the song go away. There were always songs and they always rhymed and everyone laughed when they sang them. No one sang any songs this time. The day’s last teachers came in and sat at the cluster. It was English. Mr. Meineke, Ms. Kost, Miss Beepee, and Mrs. Anoko. Ms. Kost assigned me a Kurt Vonnegut story called “Harrison Bergeron.” Flowers had me read it two weeks before and I loved it. I read it again there, in the Cage, and loved it less. The ending was cheap. It happened too fast.
When Ronrico and the Janitor returned from the Office, we all revolved at the gong of the doorbell.
Benji pointed to Ronrico and then to the Janitor and then he did the shrug/lip-curling very frantically at me = “That’s who I was making confusing gestures about before.”
I showed him the power-fist. = They’re friends now.
He waved me off with two hands and looked sad doing it.
Ronrico took a look around the Cage. “Who died?” he said.
“Wolf,” said Main Man.
“The Boy Who Cried Wa-Wa?” the Janitor said.
“The Boy Who Went Wee-Wee,” said Forrest Kennilworth.
I was across the room before I knew I’d left my chair, across it so quick Botha hadn’t finished chuckling yet. Nakamook already had Kennilworth’s wrist bent. Kids crowded fast and thickly behind us, shoving close together to get a better vista, their jammed-together bodies blocking all Botha’s sightlines.
“Entertain the monitor,” Benji said to Forrest. “Make him laugh again.”
Kids were saying, “Hurt him.” Kids were saying, “Break it.” By “kids,” I mean all of them but Jelly, Eliyahu, Main Man, and me.
Botha was shouting, trying to clear his way, shouting for the teachers to help him clear the way.
“He should get more than a wrist-twist,” Vincie told Benji.
“Please,” Forrest said. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just fucked up. I was making a joke. It’s just fucked up.”
Main Man said, “Nakamook, Forrest is sorry. He was making a joke and it’s just effed up.”
“He’s crying,” said Jelly. “He means it. He’s sorry.”
Benji let Forrest go as Botha got through, and we all dispersed. The teachers stood dumbly by their chairs at the cluster. Even though Vincie, retreating to his carrel, thumb-stabbed him stealth on the side of the neck, Forrest didn’t rat anyone.
Botha handed out steps for the following offenses: noise, talking, swears, standing.
The fly was on my desk, his hose in the candy dust. I cupped my hand and covered him, then brushed him past the edge to see where he’d go. He returned to the dust, as if I hadn’t just demonstrated that I could kill him, as if I
I snuck the hall-passes out of my bag and wrote the penumbra poem on the back of one. I held the bottle of Coke between my knees, under the desk, and binder-clipped the poem to the lip beneath the cap.
The fly sucked dust. The end-of-class tone sounded. Eliyahu went straight to the bathroom.
I secured June’s gift inside of my backpack and charged the locked door with everyone else.
6
DARK ENOUGH
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Interim–Detention
Principal Leonard Brodsky
Aptakisic Junior High School
9978 Rand Rd.
Deerbrook Park, IL 60090
September 1, 2006
Dear Leonard,
I want, first of all, to thank you for admitting Gurion Maccabee to Aptakisic, and secondly, to apologize for having had to cut short our conversation after services last week. I’m not sure if you saw her there or not, but my daughter Esther was sitting on the stair beneath the one on which we stood, and, being yet another great admirer of the boy in question (not to mention a habitual eavesdropper!—though this is no thing to complain about: after all, what better indication of a child’s love for you than her belief that what you have to say to others is actually interesting, baruch H-shem?), she became very sad at Gurion’s mention (she misses him at school), and she’d been tugging at the hem of my pant-leg and whispering, as if in prayer, “Please let’s go, please can we,” for all but the entire duration of our overly brief dialogue. So while I’m already at it here, with the gratitude and the apologies, I’ll use the occasion to address as best I can the concerns you expressed. I’ll begin with the issue of the weapons, as it seems to be—very understandably—your greatest source of unease.
I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned it, but over the summer months, the afternoons Gurion didn’t spend gallivanting in our backyard with Esther and her sisters, he spent in my study, reading Chumash and Talmud, so I’ve had a number of opportunities to discuss with him what he was thinking when he wrote and delivered those instructions of his last spring. Before we go into that, though, you must first understand that when I initially contacted you about Gurion, I was in no way exaggerating his peculiar intelligence, nor the promise it entails. It is my belief that, if given the proper chance, Gurion will become the foremost Jewish scholar of his generation, if not his epoch. I recognize that the magnitude of such a claim might seem, to someone who doesn’t know the boy, cartoonish—even reckless—but…an anecdote in its defense: