The Instructions (81 page)

“Gurion,” he said, “I—”

Or would’ve expected.

“But—”

No, I said, you’re right. When you’re right you’re right. I said, But just because you’re right doesn’t mean you know the truth.

“Stop for a second. Listen, okay? Even if I did believe you…

Even if I did accept your girlfriend was Jewish, I’m saying no one else in the community would. And that is a
good
thing, isn’t it?

We practice Judaism, yes? Not Gurionism. This is a good thing.”

I know, I said.

“You don’t seem to like it, though.”

I have to go home, I said, and write scripture.

“No commentary, no matter how thoughtful,” he said, “will be powerful enough to persuade the Jewish community that you have the authority to convert this girl, Gurion. Not when your motives are so clearly personal.”

And I thought: You hear “Jew” when I say Israelite, and “commentary” when I say “scripture.” You see Esther’s husband while looking at June’s.

My
personal motives? I said to the Rabbi.

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“Where are you going? Please sit back down. Stay for dinner.”

I said, I’ll write scripture and you’ll know the truth.

“You’re unhappy with me, Gurion. You’re in distress. Don’t run out of here. Stick around for dinner. There’s no need to run.

We’re talking,” he said. “We’ve got more to say. We’ve got more to study.”

You’ve been a good teacher, I said.

I went home.

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to Canrovsky’s

There was a new, semi-literate bomb in front of the WELCOME

mat on our stoop. It was supposed to say “Welcome to Carnovsky’s”

but the vandal switched around the r and n.

I knew it was supposed to be Carnovsky because Carnovsky is a fictional character made up by the fictional character Nathan Zuckerman, who is the protagonist in many books by Philip Roth.

A lot of Jews in Roth’s first few books about Zuckerman think that Carnovsky is a self-hating Jew and that because Carnovsky is 751

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a self-hating Jew, Zuckerman is a self-hating Jew.

But any smart Israelite who ever read Roth’s books knows that Carnovsky is
not
a self-hating Jew, which negates the assertion that Zuckerman (for creating Carnovsky) and Roth (for creating Zuckerman who creates Carnovsky) are self-hating Jews.

So to say that my father was a Carnovsky was to say that my father was falsely accused of being a self-hating Jew, and that was a nice thing to say—it was what I said.

But no one would vandalize the stoop of a man he wanted to be nice to.

So it was easy to conclude that the vandal misunderstood what a Carnovsky was—that the vandal, like so many of Roth’s fictional Jews, was
not
that smart, and missed Roth’s point, and thought Carnovsky
was
a self-hating Jew, and thus thought my father was a self-hating Jew.

And that’s what I concluded at first, and for a second I almost felt a little good, thinking, The enemies of my family are such stupid bancers, they not only mistake Carnovsky for a self-hating Jew, but they can’t even spell his name.

Except then I started wondering if the transposition of the r and n wasn’t an accident. I.e., wasn’t it possible that the vandal knew Carnovsky wasn’t a self-hating Jew and had switched around the letters on purpose—like Eliyahu did the o and y of
typos
in his joke about the Cage manual—in order to ironize the bomb?

Maybe the message was: “Look, the only kind of guy who’d claim that Judah Maccabee is, like Carnovsky, falsely accused of being 752

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a self-hating Jew can’t even spell
Carnovsky
.”

It was possible. And not only that, but it made the bomb a lot more effective: The enemies of my family who were stupid enough to believe Carnovsky was a self-hating Jew would forgive the misspelling out of admiration toward the vandal for his having bombed the Maccabeean stoop; the enemies of my family who didn’t know who Carnovsky was wouldn’t know the name was misspelled and would admire the vandal without need of forgiving the misspelling; the enemies of my family who were smart enough to know that Carnovsky wasn’t a self-hating Jew would not only admire the vandal for bombing the stoop, but admire the cleverness behind his misspelling; and my family itself…

we’d stand there staring at our enemy’s message, thinking about it, trying not to admire its cleverness and failing. I would, that is. No. I wouldn’t. I thought: I won’t.

I pulled the mat down to cover
to Canrovsky’s
and the stoop looked like:

Maccabees aren’t

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ADAM LEVIN

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I tried adjusting the mat so that it covered both lines of grafitti, but the mat wasn’t large enough, so I took out my Darker and got on my knees.

When I finished editing, the stoop looked like:

Maccabees aren’t

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WELCOME

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It was the best I could do. As long as the vandal kept coming around while I was at Aptakisic—and why shouldn’t he? he kept getting away with it—I wouldn’t be able to blind him. Not unless I ditched school. I wasn’t going to ditch school. School was where June was.

I thought: Is she thinking of you right now, too?

And I thought: She might be.

I thought: You need to go inside and write scripture.

I thought: Your scripture will outlast the bombs of the vandals.

I pulled my frontdoor keys from my spypocket and found rolled-up commentary wedged in the ring. The paper was pink and printed double-sided in Lucida Calligraphy
,
the favorite font 754

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of Esther Salt and soon-to-be brides everywhere:

Dear Gurion,

I beg you be sensible and sensitive like you used to. Do
you really think I would spend thirty minutes waiting
for you in the cold of the mid-to-late autumn chill on
my stoop without a coat if I didn’t want you to do a
kind thing for me by giving me your jacket so you could
prove that you are still the sweetest boy to me who will
always be my first and only true love no matter what?

Oh Dear Gurion,

Don’t you understand that I was angry for all these
many and varying weeks we have spent away from
each other in our respective lonely and cold solitudes
since that sad and fateful Shabbos on which you delivered me your heartbreaking poem? How could you
not see that when I broke up with you it was not to
break up with you but to let you know that I wanted
you to come see me more and at least try to kiss me
at least once because we were together for so long and
you never even tried to hug me or even ever hold
my hand and I was scared that you only said you
loved me because you are my father’s student and
you wanted to be a good student because that is the
only thing that is important to you?

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Oh Dear, My Gurion,

That last question was the question I was asking myself
from the time we broke up until one week ago today,
when you came over and learned the doubling cube,
and I thought: Some people, even very smart people,
play sheishbesh without the cube, and they don’t even
know they’re playing without the cube because they
don’t even know there is a cube…they don’t know
what the cube means, these people, and if you were
to offer them the cube in the middle of a game you
were playing with them, they wouldn’t even know
that an offer had been made—they would think you
were just pushing dice at them, and maybe not even
that because maybe they’d only think you were doing
something nervous with your hand to the dice. And I
thought: Gurion is one of these people.

And Oh My Dear, My Gurion,

I thought how if you didn’t even know what the doubling cube was, then it was likely that you didn’t know
that when I was breaking up with you it wasn’t because
I wanted to break up with you but because I wanted
you to kiss me, the exact opposite of breaking up. And
I have been getting less and less angry at you because
it is not your fault that you don’t know how to double, and I’ve just kept remembering that all week long.

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But then today I waited in the cold on the stoop, and
you weren’t acting happy to have the opportunity to
give me your jacket, and you definitely weren’t offering it to me nicely. You were acting like I was being
dumb and you didn’t even think about it. You didn’t
even think: Esther isn’t dumb, Esther must be telling
me something. You just didn’t think! And it made me
angry and lonely all over again, so I didn’t offer you a
grape. But now I’m here at my desk in my room and I
am thinking: Gurion isn’t dumb. Gurion is the smartest (and the handsomest) boy there ever was, and so he
knew what he was doing on the stoop today! He was
doubling you! He wanted you to apologize for doubling
him on that fateful Shabbos when he didn’t know he
was being doubled, and he would have gladly given
you his jacket, held it open for you to put your arms
in it, and even maybe hugged you once you got your
arms in, and when you hugged him back maybe even
kissed you if only you’d thought to apologize. And so I
am sorry, Gurion Maccabee. I am sorry and filled with
regret for misunderstanding and treating you badly
and I want you to know that I’ll accept your double if
you offer it to me again.

I love you,

Esther Salt

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Esther’s letter was too flowery to think about, and not just because of the
Oh
s and
Dear
s. I took it upstairs and rewrote it til it made sense:

Gurion, please be nice to me even though I have tortured you with shadiness for eight weeks.

I know I told you that I broke up with you because you caused me pain, but the real reason I broke up with you was to manipulate you in such a way as to get you to stop respecting the traditions of my family. Even though you wrote me poems and were always kind to me, I didn’t believe you when you said you loved me. I thought you were only saying it and writing those poems because you were a highly dedicated sycophant of my father’s and you knew that showing love for me would please him. When I broke up with you, I believed that you knew I was doing it to manipulate you. I thought that you were only pretending to think I was being forthright so you could get out of our relationship without having to break up with me yourself.

But then, when you came over to play backgammon last week, I realized you were a dumb shmendrick who never even suspected anyone might try to manipulate him, and that made me happy. It made me happy because it meant that you’d been straightforward all along, which meant that you actually had loved me and still did love me, even though I kept being so shady to you.

And now I’m thinking that if you were a dumb shmendrick then, you might still be a dumb shmendrick. In fact, I’m all but certain that you remain a dumb shmendrick, and this letter is evi-758

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dence. After all, if I weren’t counting on your continuing to be a dumb shmendrick, how could I—unless, I, myself, am a dumb shmendrick—think that a letter such as this would bring you back to me? For who, besides a dumb shmendrick, would ever return to a girl who tortured him with deliberate shadiness for eight weeks and then sneakily called him a dumb shmendrick with flowery words rendered in my favorite font, Lucida Calligraphy? I am sorry for not realizing you were a dumb shmendrick sooner.

Please continue to be a dumb shmendrick.

Esther Salt

I reread the rewrite and thought: Gurion ben-Judah let himself be tricked by love’s smelly version into saying he was in love with Esther Salt, which was a lie. Esther knew it was a lie even though Gurion believed it, and because she knew it was a lie, and because she wanted it to be true, she told lies to Gurion that he thought were true. And only now that Gurion knows his love was a lie does Esther think his love was true. And only now that Esther thinks his love was true does she stop lying, and reveal that she thinks Gurion is a shmendrick, a shmendrick who she believes she loves. But Gurion is not a shmendrick, so Esther can’t possibly love him. Esther cannot be in love with a shmendrick who is Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee because there is no such person. So she has also let herself be tricked by the smelly version of love.