The Instructions by Adam Levin
“That’s true? They’re islands?” “They’ve got these big bridges because of how they’re islands.” “They’re boroughs.” “What’s a borough?” “They’re islands. Evanston and Chicago aren’t islands.” “They’re not islands. They’re boroughs.” “Is a borough a kind of island?” “Only New York is islands [tears].” “Now she’s gonna cry so she can use the phone first.” “She’s crying because she’s upset.” “She’s upset about the phone if she’s upset about anything.” “She’s upset about her family. They live on the same island as the Trade Center.” “It’s busy, anyway, so here.” “Good man, Yoni.” “I didn’t hear a thank you.” “She’s too upset to thank you. Plus if anyone should be thanked, it should be me, don’t you think?” “No, I don’t think.” “But it’s my phone she’s using.” “But I was the one who was using it.” “You didn’t thank me either, come to think.” “Times like these, it’s pretty much your duty to lend out your phone.” “Why my duty? I’m not the only one with a phone.” “You’re the one with a phone sitting closest to us.” “Look, I’m not complaining. I’m glad to lend my phone. And maybe even it’s my duty, but if it’s mine it’s everyone else’s too.” “You’re the closest.” “We’re talking distances measured in feet here, Yoni.” “Whatever, I’m upset, I’ve got family in Brooklyn.” “Except maybe I’ve got family in Brooklyn, too. Maybe even in Manhattan.” “Maybe? What does that mean?” “My uncle in Connecticut does a lot of work in Manhattan.” “Then why didn’t you use the phone to call him?” “Maybe I was being selfless.”
“Nine-one-one.” “What?” “Today is September 11.” “So?”
“If anything is vulnerable, everything is vulnerable.” “All of us are vulnerable.” “We’ve always been vulnerable.” “It’s true, we have.” “How didn’t we notice this?” “Because of what Mrs. Diamond said about Lancelot and boobytraps.” “What did she say?” “About how come he always fell in the same kind of boobytraps even though he was a great knight.” “How come?” “Because he never used deceptions since he was such a goodguy, and so he never suspected badguys would use deceptions. He’d go to the fort of a goblin to save Guinevere and the goblin would say, ‘Okay, she’s yours, just cross that discolored area of tile and I’ll bring her,’ and Lancelot would try to cross and the goblin would pull a lever, then blau, trap door, and he’d fall into a pit. And the pit would have a beast. And the beast would try to eat him. And Lancelot would have to kill the beast.” “Like Skywalker.”
“Eleventh day of the ninth month. 9-1-1, emergency.” “Emmanuel Liebman thinks he’s a kabbalist.” “Sounds more like he’s saying that Brown Eyes is the kabbalist.” “Don’t call that mastermind ‘Brown Eyes’—it’s irreverent.” “Little Sammy Diamond’s got a short fu—Ow!” “Samuel.” “Let go.” “Say my name.” “Samuel.” “Say it again.” “Samuel. I said it! Let go!” “You let Emmanuel reason out loud. Off the cuff he’ll say things you couldn’t think in a decade.” “Okay.” “You don’t distract him.” “I told you I told you I said it: okay!” Do Amalekites dial 9-1-1 in emergencies? “I see what you mean. Who’d know?” Rabbi Salt?
“Maybe you forgot about him, your Connecticut uncle.” “That’s not a kind thing to say to someone, Yoni, especially someone who just lent you his phone.” “Indian-gave his phone, and it wasn’t unkind. I was saying that maybe, since you only seemed to think of your uncle in Connecticut just now…maybe you’re not that close with him. Maybe you’re not as close as I am with my people in Brooklyn is all I’m saying, so it was right to let me call mine before you called yours.” “Or maybe I did think of my uncle, but knew I could take it, the wait for others with relatives to use my phone first, I mean. Maybe I just knew I was strong enough to take it.” “Maybe so, maybe so, but that doesn’t really contradict my hypothesis, does it? I mean maybe you were strong enough cause you’re not that close.” “Or maybe I didn’t realize how close til the implications of this tragedy we’re suffering began to come clear. They’re coming clearer and clearer, wouldn’t you say?” “We are definitely getting clearer and clearer.” “We are. It’s true.” “It’s true.” “I agree.”
“Exactly like Skywalker, but Lancelot fell for it every time. It happens, like, nine times with a bunch of different goblins, and he never learns to expect it.” “Cause he’s so pure and good, he trusts everyone and gives them the benefit of the doubt.” “Exactly.” “We are like Lancelot.” “I didn’t have Mrs. Diamond, but Lancelot sounds pretty doofy to me.” “That’s what we said to Mrs. Diamond! But then she explained about his pureness and we believed her. She’s smart.” “We should probably stop being like Lancelot so much, though.” “Lancelot, Shmancelot. We’re now, at this point, more like Guinevere.” “I think you’re right.” “Yeah, it’s safe to say the goblin’s got us.” “But Lancelot’s on the way.” “We’ve got a lot of Lancelots.” “That’s the benefit, in the end, of being like Lancelot; you make a lot of friends along the way.” “Or if you’re pretty like Guinevere.” “Pretty like Guinevere?” “Pretty like Guinevere, because the goblin’s got us, which means we’re like Guinevere, not Lancelot. We’re like Guinevere with Lancelots on the way, like you said.” “I was speaking figuratively. I was saying we’re like Guinevere cause the goblin’s got us and we’ve got Lancelots on the way, but we’re actually Lancelot in the end, ourselves.” “Um.”
“I don’t know what they dial, Gurion.” Do you know what they dial in Israel? “I never had an emergency in Israel. Don’t you think more important questions are afoot, boychic?” Not ones you could answer, no offense. “I don’t see the relevance—” “Because why on 9-1-1? It hardly seems arbitrary.” “On that I agree, Emmanuel, but—” “Who’s the message for, is the question we’re getting at.” If 9-1-1 means nothing to Amalekites, this mastermind’s talking to— “I see, I see.”
“Can I get my phone back, Shayna?” “My family’s line’s busy.” “All the more reason to give it back.” “Three more times.” “One more time.” “Three more times, so I know I’ll have tried ten. That’s how desperate I am to contact them.” “Seven’s enough, Shayna.” “Three’s enough, but I’m so desperate to get in contact I have to try seven more, I’m compelled to do so, even at the cost of alienating those who’d help me is how desperate, so just bear with me.” “I have already.” “Just wait your turn.” “It’s my phone.” “It’s my family.” “It’s my family, too. My uncle.” “My cousins.” “Connecticut.” “Manhattan.” “Brooklyn.”
“We’re like Lancelot if Lancelot was like Guinevere.” “I don’t think that makes sense.” “Think harder.” “Don’t get confrontational in times like these.” “Who ever thought we’d live in times like these?” “No kidding. And that’s not the craziest part, because we’ve always lived in times like these, it turns out.” “That’s what being Lancelot gets you, blindness to the times you live in like these.” “Goblins inside every shadow, laughing at you.” “But you hold your own. You don’t change for goblins.” “When you change for goblins, that’s when you’re defeated.” “If they’ve been there all along, the goblins, then we know we can survive them intact as Lancelots.” “But still you have to wonder, if we’ve always lived in times like these and didn’t know they were times like these, then how were these times like these affecting us?” “Probably they were really doing some job on us.” “Probably these times have been doing bad stuff to us we thought was just from bad luck or ourselves.” “It’s true. How much of our woes owe to times like these because we didn’t know about them!” “That makes it sound like it’s our fault for not knowing.” “Maybe it is our fault for not knowing, after all.” “How can you ignore your times, especially in times like these with hiding goblins?” “It’s our fault for being so good despite the goblins.” “That’s all I’m saying. We’re good and pure. We’ve been taken advantage of for being good and pure.”
And then the fall of the North Tower, and Flight 93. Air Force One missing, celebrations in
Pritikin’s Complaint
At eleven, Pritikin asked for a re-match. I told him no re-match, the territory was ours. He told me he’d been distracted; that he’d seen Sheldon Markowitz get back in his mom’s car and known something bad had happened. I told him that I’d seen Sheldon, too, that all of us had. He asked if I’d known something bad had happened, though. I told him of course I hadn’t known, but neither had he, he’d only convinced himself after the fact. He told me it wasn’t right to exploit 9/11. I couldn’t tell if he was casuistic or simply confused. Maybe both. Maybe the latter had engendered the former. I did know he was wrong, though.
He walked away from me angry.
By noon he’d gotten Gooses to tell the same story. They marched around lobbying, and a lot of kids backed them—not everyone, but roughly 30 percent. Even though just a few were still simple adherents, Pritikin’s complaint harmonized easy with their underdog sense of entitlement.
For the sake of the definitude consensus would foment, I chewed my tongue raw and agreed to a re-match.
Fuck Yourself
You will get no conclusion beyond that, Mr. Beagle. The truth is I don’t understand why you would ask me or anyone else at Aptakisic to write about how 9/11 changed what it means to be American. The textbook enlightens nothing. It says the fall of the towers confirmed the same things here that it refuted there, that what 9/11 means or meant varies according to who you ask. You teach from the textbook, so you’re no help either. And me, I was five years old when it happened. Five years later, I know the world much better, but it’s still almost always impossible for me to distinguish change from revelation. I’d imagine it’s the same for any scholar. I’d hope so.
This is what I know for sure: Neither on 9/11, 9/12, or anytime thereafter did anyone who was in the multipurpose room at Schechter think, “This is how it is now.” We thought, “This is how it is.” Whether we were correct or incorrect, it’s impossible to tell, but the distinction between what a person becomes and what he finds out he’s been—let alone what a people becomes and what it finds out it’s been—is too important to ignore, so I won’t. Not for some chomsky Social Studies essay.
Go ahead and flunk me for begging the question, then go ahead and fuck yourself for asking it.
Coda
On September 12, Schechter was closed. On September 13, I re-matched with Pritikin and Shmooly Gooses. Emmanuel and I had come up with new terms of the contest the night before, and I explained the new terms to the crowd around the bigtoy.
I said, Since I didn’t see the way 9/11 gave me an unfair advantage last time—and since I still don’t see it—I’d be foolish to trust my vision this time. So what I’ll do is simple with Pritikin and Shmooly until either one of them beats me, or both are satisfied I beat them fair.
We began.
Gurion 21, Pritikin 3.
Pritikin said unfair—he’d had a series of itches.
Gurion 21, Pritikin 3.
Pritikin said unfair—someone kept sneezing.
Gurion 21, Pritikin 2.
Pritikin said unfair—I’d yawned in front of him and he had to keep fighting the yawns my yawn had suggested.
Gurion 21, Pritikin 0.
Some kids told Pritikin to give it up already. Pritikin said the way they were scowling had screwed him up. Kids walked away.
Gurion 21, Pritikin 0.
Pritikin said the kids who were walking away had done so too noisily for him to concentrate. It was almost as if they were deliberately kicking the pebbles around.
Gurion 21, Pritikin 0.
Pritikin started saying something, and I told him not to worry, fair was fair, and unfair un-so, he didn’t have to explain. The crowd around the bigtoy had dwindled to half its peak size.
Gurion 21, Pritikin 0.
Unfair.
Gurion 21, Pritikin 0.
Unfair.
Gurion 21, Pritikin 0.
The crowd shouted that I’d beat him fair. I told them only Pritikin could say for sure what was fair. I asked Pritikin if I had beat him fair.
Almost, but no. There’d only been a few turns this last time during which he was distracted, and although the points he’d lost on those turns wouldn’t have made the difference in themselves, having lost them distracted him from gaining other points.
Gurion 21, Pritikin 0.
Almoster, but still no.
Gurion 21, Pritikin 0.
The crowd told Pritikin that simple was boring. They told him it didn’t matter if he won because they’d never simple with him again anyway. Pritikin said there was no point in continuing then. I told him the point was fairness. I told him he was obligated, by honor, to make sure he’d been beaten fair. After all, if he couldn’t be sure, how could he expect the rest of us to be? And where would we be—where would slapslap be—without absolute definitude?
Gurion 21, Pritikin 0.
It seemed fair.
Seemed wasn’t enough. You need to be certain.
Gurion 21, Pritikin 0.
Now he was sure.
But was he sure he was sure?
He was sure he was sure. I’d beaten him fair.
Shmooly’s turn. Shmooly said he didn’t need a turn, just as long as he was still allowed to simple under the bigtoy with people. I told him he wasn’t. He asked what if he scored on me? What if he scored as much as he scored the last time? Could he simple with people under the bigtoy, then?
Sure, I told him.
He couldn’t remember the score from last time, though. What did he have to score?
I told him last time shmast time. If he scored 3 on me, he could simple under the bigtoy. This lit him up. He said that was fair.
Gurion 21, Shmooly 2.
Unfair—some itches.
Gurion 21, Shmooly 2.
Unfair—cold hands.
Gurion 21, Shmooly 2.
Unfair—wind in his eyes. Plus 3 seemed high, didn’t 3 seem high?
I told him score 2 and he could simple under the bigtoy.
He agreed that was fair and wiped the tears from his eyes.
Gurion 21, Shmooly 1.
Maybe 1 was more fair, he suggested.
Sure thing.
Gurion 21, Shmooly 0.
Maybe he was just too tired. His mom had a cold. He’d only had a hard-boiled egg for breakfast.
Emmanuel gave him a granola bar and he ate it.
Gurion 21, Shmooly 0.
It was unfair, explained Shmooly, it was just unfair. I was Gurion and he was Shmooly. It was unfair that Gurion was faster than Shmooly. How could that be fair? He was born Shmooly and I was born Gurion and that was unfair, it was always unfair and would always be unfair. He didn’t have a chance. He never had a chance. I asked if he wanted me to let him score. He said that he did. I told him to go fuck himself, I wouldn’t let him score; I would simple with him til he was satisfied, but I wouldn’t let him score. He told me to go fuck myself. I told him he couldn’t score on me even if I was fucking myself while he tried to score on me. I told him anyone at Schechter could shut him out while they fucked themselves because he was Shmooly and they weren’t. He told me again to go fuck myself, and that I was a crybaby. He knew everything I was telling him already, he said. He didn’t care anymore what was fair. Fair could go fuck itself, he said. It wasn’t fair that what was fair got to be fair and what wasn’t fair didn’t. Fair was unfair. Everything could go fuck itself. Everything should fuck itself. Everything should fuck itself but not everything fucked itself plus fair was unfair was why I should let him score. That’s why other people let him score, and that’s why I used to let him score, so I should go fuck myself now because it wasn’t fair to change like that and I knew it, he knew I knew it because of how I was crying like a fucking kindergarten fucking crybaby, he told me. I wasn’t the one who was Shmooly, he told me. I wasn’t the one who suffered for fair’s unfairness, he said. He was the one wh
By then I couldn’t distinguish the one choice from the other.
I held my hands out to Shmooly, palms down. Shmooly held his under mine, palms up. And then he scored. Probably I let him.
There was finger-writing across the fog of the bus-door’s windows. It looked like this:
I wiped it out with my sleeve and went to the wheel-well seat, where Vincie had put my coat and backpack.
“Why’d you wipe what I wrote?” he said.
It signified wrong, I told him.
“It fucken whated wrong?” he said.
I said, You wrote it in the shape of a torture instrument.
“I was saying we’re like crucified,” said Vincie. “The like crucification of the Side of Damage,” he said.
We’re not crucified, I said.
“I didn’t say we were fucking crucified. I said like crucified. Like we’re crucifiedish. By the Arrangement. Like you said. Why do I have to play the dumb one all the time?” He stabbed the cushion of his seat with a Bic.
You’re not dumb, I said. You’re smart.
“I’m not smart, Gurion, but I’m not dumb either, and I didn’t say that I was. I asked why do I have to play the dumb one if I’m not dumb, which I’m not?”