The Instructions (163 page)

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

this scripture isn’t really scripture at all but the single longest suicide note in history or because although it’s scripture it’s also that note or because I no longer believe she’s an Israelite because Adonai wouldn’t let her into the valley, or we will be married despite what He thinks or because of what He thinks or despite and because or regardless of what He thinks.

Choose your own adventure. Keep on blogging. Just leave June alone and stay away from my brothers. Those are my instructions for all you wicked sons. What you write matters little, your scholarship is nothing, it will die as soon as you.

For those sons among you who don’t know how to ask: I don’t know what would have happened had I entered the valley, no one knows what would have happened had I entered the valley, and the details of what happened between the time that it closed and the news of my presence in Israel went public just aren’t germane to the scripture at hand. Even if they were, there were friends who helped me, enemies who didn’t, and to fink out the enemies would compromise the friends. I arrived here between November 18 and November 25, 2006, was guilty of everything with which I was charged, pled guilty to everything with which I was charged, was found guilty of everything with which I was charged, and the rest, insasmuch as it concerns you—the rest is minutiae, Moshe’s shoe size.

Same with name you give to the holiday. Last Day of School Day, Day of Damage, Yom Nezek—I prefer the Hebrew, but call it what you want.

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ADAM LEVIN

And whether or not I think I’m the messiah, or the potential messiah, or ever thought I was one or thought I was both and now think I’m neither—that’s minutiae, too.

Whether I daven, and where I daven, if I don’t just stand here—at six-foot-three and one-buck-ninety or six-foot-six and two-bucks-thirty or five-foot-nine and thirteen stones—in my digitally tricked-out nine-by-nine cell. What I’ll do when they release me in 2017. Whether or not I’ll join the IDF. Whether or not I’ll go into hiding. Whether or not I’ll attend yeshiva.

Whether or not I’ll open a yeshiva. Whether or not I’ll lead my own army or enter Shin Bet or run for office for Shas or Labor or start my own party. None of it matters. You don’t need to know it. It is all minutiae. Quit with the minutiae. Become the wise son. Isn’t that what you want? That should be what you want.

Become the wise son and instruct your simple brothers: “The Temple is not descending from the sky. The Side of Damage was good and the underdog is good. Fear Adonai and look after June.”

And instruct those brothers who don’t know how to ask yet:

“The Temple never would have descended from the sky. The Side of Damage was complicated, Adonai is fearsome, and anyone can tell his own underdog story. Be wary of underdogs.

Look after June.”

Recognize your wicked brothers are beyond all instruction, that that’s why they’re wicked, but keep your eyes sleepy and instruct them nonetheless: “Stay away from our brothers and leave June alone.”

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ADAM LEVIN

He thought we should fucken waterboard
each other. How can you protect somebody like that?

You’ll know when the Gurionic War is over. Every day is Yom Nezek except for Shabbat. Observe Yom Nezek. Celebrate and celebrate. Adonai is damaged. Look after June. I led the Side of Damage before I led you. Doubt your underdog story no less than any other. I’m an Israeli, Chicago born. There will be more damage, I’m the end of the Jews, and the Temple will never descend from the sky.

Damage, damage, and damage, the end.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you, Lanny and Atara Levin, for pretty much everything, especially the sisters.

Thank you, Rachel and Paula Levin, for always showing up, all funny and kind, and for allowing me to be your older brother all these years.

Thank you, Leslie Lockett, for always being Leslie Lockett, for every last thing your being her entails.

Thank you, Susan Golomb, for your acts of agency.

Thank you, Summer Literary Seminars, for the white nights and boat rides.

Thank you, Sid Feldman, for introducing me, way back when, to the work of Philip Roth and Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers, and for then, not so way-back-when at all, inviting me over for home-cooked meals—scores of home-cooked meals—to which I couldn’t bring wine or dessert or even a sixpack, and for never making me feel like a shnorer. You too, Renee Feldman.

Thank you, Adam Novy, Arthur Flowers, Christopher Kennedy, Daniel Torday, Eric Rosenblum, Rachael Rosenblum, Jeff Parker, Kathryn TeBordo, Mary Gaitskill, Mary Karr, Mikhail Iossel, Phil LaMarche, Sophie Caird, and Thomas Yagoda, for your counsel and encouragement and hospitality.

Thank you, Christian TeBordo, for reading this book before anyone else, before it was even a tenth of this book, and then when it was more than ten tenths of this book, for keeping me sane for the past nine years, and for never turning down a single invitation to go outside in the cold and smoke.

Thank you, Salvador Plascencia, for your early reads and provisions of sanity, and for coming out to smoke even though you never smoked, except for once or twice, for three or four drags, or maybe five or six, on a snowy porch, late in the night, which was thrilling and weird and made me feel strangely guilty, and Christian too, I bet.

Thank you, George Saunders, for teaching the unteachable, and for letting me into the Syracuse University Creative Writing Program, where I met half the people named on this page.

And thank you, Eli Horowitz, for keeping the faith, for doing this right, for being the kind of reader and editor the doomsayers tell us no longer exists.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam Levin’s stories have appeared in
Tin House
,

McSweeney’s
, and
Esquire
. Winner of the 2003

Summer Literary Seminars Fiction Contest, the

2004 Joyce Carol Oates Fiction Prize, and, for

The Instructions
, both the 2011 New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and the inau-gural Indie Booksellers Choice Award. Levin

holds an MA in Clinical Social Work from the

University of Chicago and an MFA in Creative

Writing from Syracuse University. His collection

of short stories,
Hot Pink
, will be published by McSweeney’s Books in 2011. He lives in Chicago,

where he teaches Creative Writing at the School of the Art Institute.
The Instructions
is his first novel.