The Instructions (120 page)

But there are a pair of potential pitfalls to this safe approach, and these are major. The first one is this: faith becomes irrelevant. If we cannot call the messiah “messiah” til doing so is no more risky than calling a lemon sour, a goat smelly, or Natalie Portman a world-class knockout, what is the point of ever looking for the messiah? When he comes, we’ll know it, so why bother looking? What is the incentive for waiting or hoping?

Why bother trying to bring him at all? He will be self-evident, and so the end of faith. And maybe you’d say, “That is the point, Emmanuel. We should not have faith
because
the messiah will come. We should have faith because faith is good, and part of faith is to believe
that
the messiah will come.” And maybe you’d be right. Maybe those scholars whose faith is bolstered by its own promise—the promise that faith’s objects, despite their current state of unfalsifiability, will one day become evident to everyone and in turn reward the scholars for their faith—maybe those scholars are lousy scholars. Selfish, self-centered would-be 1128

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

know-it-alls, driven by the desire to one day say to the faithless

“I told you so” or the fear of having ever to hear that statement addressed to them. Maybe their faith is not a noble faith in what
should be true
, but a lower kind of faith in what they
fear is
so
. And maybe that latter kind’s not faith at all. And so maybe most of us are faithless, impurely motivated, heartened only by our so-called faith’s promise of coming worldly empowerment.

And yet surely some of us aren’t…

“‘But is it
faith
, Gurion, anyway, that will bring the messiah?

It doesn’t seem like it to me.
Acts
of faith, maybe. But faith itself?

When has faith itself ever served us? And how often has faith been used against people? For just as there are acts of faith, there are non-acts of faith, no? Most tyrants don’t get assassinated, let alone trampled to death by mobs to whom they’ve been unjust.

Why not? Often because crooked or misled clerics urge faith and its non-acts on the faithful is why not. And that is what makes us different, no? That is why our religion is good. We are not taught to abide injustice through our faith; we are not taught to wait for Adonai to reach a hand down and save us. We are taught to faithfully destroy injustice; we are taught that to do so will force His hand. Taught that, at least, by you.

“‘And so in the end, what’s in a scholar’s heart should only matter to us inasmuch as how it leads him to act. In other words: what’s in a scholar’s heart doesn’t matter as long as he
acts
as if
it’s faith. That said, if you teach us faith is irrelevant, Gurion, how can we know how to act? And why should we listen to you? Maybe 1129

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

you say, “I will tell you how to act, Emmanuel, and you should listen to me because I’m the strongest and wisest of all of us.” And that works if you become the messiah, Rabbi. Of course it does.

And in that case, and only in that case, is the first potential pitfall successfully dodged.’

“And then I’d have gone on to discuss the second pitfall, which would take fewer words since, having gotten worked up, I’d probably abandon all subtlety and just form a string of rhetorical questions, like, ‘What if the thing we must do to set the messiah’s potential in motion is call him ‘messiah’? What if the words need to come first? What if it must be written before it can be done?

What if he must be said to be before he can become? Is that not how the universe became, Gurion? Is it so crazy to think that the final chapter might end as began the first? So crazy to think we’ll create truth by speaking it? Why should that seem crazy? Because it would be perfect?’

“In any case, I decided that all went without saying,” said Emmanuel, “and had you not leaned forward at so acute an angle when first I began to say it, it would have remained unsaid, but you leaned forward, and I got going, so now that it’s said, what do you say?”

I’d become so engrossed in listening to him—somewhere in the middle of his remarks on the first pitfall, I got this highly familiar rush I couldn’t place just then—that when he asked that last question, it took me a second to realize it wasn’t the hypothetical Gurion who was supposed to answer, but me.

1130

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

“Rabbi?” he said.

I think you’re the most talented scholar I know, I said.

“That’s good to hear. I think maybe when you spoke of this Eliyahu of Brooklyn, I became a little jealous, and I thought that was shallow of me, and wanted to prove—I don’t know. Let’s not get tender, shall we? What I
was
going to say, originally I mean, was that I’m troubled by this instruction to ‘lay low’ because I assume that ‘laying low’ means, at least for the most part, not telling our parents we were here.”

Yeah, I said, that’s what it means.

“But if telling them we’ve been here is not the right thing to do, then how can we be honoring them? That is: if we have, through our disobedience of them, honored them, then why should we be dishonest about it?”

Would it be dishonest if they didn’t ask where you were, and you didn’t tell them?

“No.”

Would it be dishonest, if they did ask, to tell them you’ve been with Samuel discussing Judaism?

“In a certain light: no. That
is
one of the things I’ve been doing, discussing Judaism with Samuel. However, that account would not exactly be forthcoming.”

Who says you always have to be forthcoming? I said.

Emmanuel squinted = “This sounds demagogic.”

I said, ‘Always’ as in ‘at all times.’ You weren’t originally gonna tell me you were jealous about Eliyahu, right?

1131

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

“That’s true, but then I did tell you.”

Because the time was right, I said.

“Okay,” he said. “But when will the time be right to tell my parents we’re friends again?”

Not before I deliver my scripture, I said.

“So you’ll still deliver it.”

Yes.

“When?”

After I write it, I said.

“I thought you already wrote it.”

So did I, I said. But listen—are you still troubled?

“Not about laying low,” he said.

I said, Good enough. I said, Go home.

A genius of bundling, a worried mother’s wildest dream, Emmanuel covered his face to the eyes with his scarf like a ninja.

Then he jumped from the top of our five-step back stoop, exploding a half-frozen puddle.

‪

‫

‬

‪

‫

‬

‬

Up in my room, I read ten of the scholars’ emails, each equally and sufficiently representative of the rest (I’ve since examined all 365). Some of the emails mentioned Emmanuel’s email—the one where he told them that he and the other three would contact me in order to find out for everyone if contacting me was transgressive. The authors of these emails explained that despite their ini-1132

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

tial willingness to do nothing til after Emmanuel reported on my ruling, they’d since reasoned that
contact
, at least as it seemed to be defined by my “New Scripture”
email, was a two-way street, and that therefore to write to me was not, in itself, a form of
contact
—not unless I chose to read what they’d written—and that if contacting me
did
turn out to be transgressive, they reasoned, then I
wouldn’t
read what they’d written, for I was the last teacher in the world who’d ever lead them to transgression, and so there was no danger in writing to me.
Other emails didn’t mention Emmanuel’s. Apart from that, any variance among them was little more than grammatical. They were all signed “your student,”

they all wished a speedy recovery for my father, they all contained blessings on “this red-haired girl you love,” and every single one requested further instructions.

I was in the middle of the tenth when my parents came home. I didn’t click any more envelope icons, but I didn’t rush to the door either. I didn’t want the conversation I’d have with my father to be compromised by his good manners—Flowers was still reading in our living room, waiting to give them the babysitting report.

I shut off my light and looked out the window, and a couple minutes later the Volvo tweeted. Flowers got in and I headed for the stairway.

Distracted by Emmanuel’s close reading of my teachings, then tempted by my overloading inbox, I hadn’t, as I’d planned to, bolstered myself with focused recollections of the courthouse-steps 1133

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

imagery, but it turned out that would’ve been unnecessary anyway.

Halfway down the stairs, I could hear them in the kitchen; my father saying I was probably asleep, my mother that she’d promised to wake me if I was. The scrape of metal against flint.

I stealthed to where the wall became banister, leaned long and downward and watched them through the bars.

My father’s damaged leg lay across two chairs, swollen and braced in elastic. My mother reached over the table, stole the cigarette from his lips.

He reached for the pack in his jacket.

“Do not have conniptions,” she told him. “I only wanted one puff.”

“No, have it,” he said. He shook out a fresh one.

“You say this like you are being generous, but in fact—”

“Not now, baby,” he said.

“‘Not. Now. Baby,’” she said. “Should I feel offended or charmed? It is hard to say, no?” She dragged and the cigarette crackled, but she kept it there in her mouthcorner. “On the first hand, it is a kind of brush-off: he does not want to hear the affectionate small jab I was about to make regarding his mood.

On the second hand, he calls me ‘baby’ which is sweet, but on the third hand, it is precisely because ‘baby’ is sweet and he is using it to brush me off that saying to me ‘baby’ is a little condescending. Do I decide that he is sweet for painting with honey the brushoff, or cruel for pretending to me that a brushoff is honey?”

1134

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

Here, a chunk of ash fell off the end of her cigarette, exploding on impact with the placemat. She might have paused because she noticed or she might have noticed because she paused. It was impossible to tell, but now she addressed herself to the ashes, and my father didn’t notice—he just kept looking at his lap.

“Let us assume that I truly love him, this Judah Maccabee, and that I call it honey on a brush-off. Say that I can even empathize with his need to exercise a brush-off, that I understand he has had a trying day and needs to enjoy an uninterrupted cigarette in its entirety before he can feel human again. The question then becomes: How do I get across to him that despite all of that, he is not the only one who has had a trying day, that I have also had a trying day, and that if I empathize it is at least partly because I need someone to do the same for me? How do I get it across?”

She blew the ashes into the cup of her hand.

“Do I drop the lit cigarette down the back of his shirt and then become alarmed? Do I just thank him for the cigarette and continue to smoke it while I fetch him an icepack from the freezer?”

She was at the freezer now, the icepack in her hand; noticing its softness, she gave it dirty looks. “Do I attempt to return the lit cigarette to his lips? Maybe continue to soliloquize until he reacts, until he tells me how sexy my accent still is to him, or until he tells me in a prideful, almost fatherly way how little my accent inflects my speech anymore? Maybe he will pay me the compliment I want to hear but he will mean the opposite and I 1135

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

will know it. Maybe it is only a sentimental kind of love we have now, a warm thing, but not fiery. Maybe he knows I want him to tell me how sexy my accent still is and he tells me, or maybe he knows and so he tells me the opposite, to tease me, for teasing is more youthful, less porch-swinging, a more convincing denial.

Teasing is fierier.” She set the icepack on his knee, said, “Is this a word? Fierier? It should be. That is not the point. What is the point? Maybe it is all a put-on, is the point. This teasing. Maybe this teasing is all a put-on, a clever double-feign arranged, however lovingly, to confirm that he—”

“This icepack isn’t very cold,” said my father. I couldn’t see his face.

“He broods!” she said, “and she continues to speak. What does this make her? What else but a twit? Is not a twit one who twitters? And what is it called in the American language when a foreign wife ceaselessly banters into the ear of a husband who is brooding cross-armed with a burning cigarette in his fingers?

What is it called, Judah? What, if not twittering?”

“Baby, come—”

She kissed him on the cheek and he dropped his cigarette and grabbed her wrist and she giggled a syllable.

They started making out.

All the other times I’d come across them making out in the kitchen, I’d snuck away quietly. This time I smacked the wall, because who were they trying to kid?

My mom, still kissing, opened her eyes.

1136

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

“A spy,” she said.

Again I smacked the wall. A couple of the scabs from the remote control opened on impact and the blood left dots.

“Boychic—” my dad said.

Why didn’t you set those people on fire?

“Not even a hug first?” he said.

I came down the stairs. I could see his crutches leaning on the fridge.

Why didn’t you? I said.

“Even if I could still—”

Did you try? I said.

“Gurion!” my mother snapped.

My dad set his hand on her arm. He said to me, “I hurt my knee a little, Gurion. I bumped my head. Men should die for that? I fell and they left me alone.”

Before they left you alone, they were coming for you and you didn’t—