The Instructions (83 page)

Second: Israelites or not, the Shovers are dickheads because they 768

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are Shovers. On top of being dickheads, the Israelite ones are rats because they finked to Brodsky about the Jesusfish back in September.

At the same time, the scarves, like you said, are theirs, and no one should be able to stop them from drawing whatever they want on the scarves, so I agree with you on that, but no one HAS stopped them, and no one CAN stop them, just like no one ever forced them to become Shovers. Should the Shovers have kicked them out for drawing the stars on the scarves? Maybe. I’d even say probably. I can’t say for sure because I’m not a Shover, and it’s not up to me to decide what it means to be a Shover (though it clearly means to be a dickhead). If the democratically elected president of the Shovers, shmendrick or not, says that drawing on the blankspot is an offense punishable by de-Shoverment—and especially if the vast majority of the Shovers agree with him—then it seems to me that drawing on the blankspot is an offense punishable by de-Shoverment, even if the de-Shoverment is hiddenly motivated by antisemitism (which I really don’t think it is, not unless it’s also antisemitic to say that Jews can’t be mullahs or cardinals), or insensitivity, which it might be (but even that’s complicated because the Gentile Shovers could just as easily say—and for all we know actually BELIEVE—that the Israelite Shovers had been insensitive to THEM; that instead of taking into account the Gentile Shovers’ feelings about Frungeon or the Indians or whatever other feelings they feel that led them to think a Jesusfish or blankspot needs to be on their scarves, The Israelites ignored those feelings, insulted those feelings, etc).

The thing is, it isn’t wrong to wear a Jesusfish on a scarf. It’s wrong for ISRAELITES to wear a Jesusfish on a scarf. And furthermore, it’s neither right nor wrong for Israelites to wear a scarf with 769

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a blankspot on it. And Adonai (God) couldn’t care less either way if an Israelite wearing a scarf with a blankspot covers the blankspot with an Israelite religious symbol. He just doesn’t care. So there’s nothing good or noble about those Israelite Shovers starring their scarves, nor is there anything bad or cowardly about them breaking Shover rules—Adonai doesn’t care about Shover rules either.

I’m with you when you say that the Israelite Shovers should have walked out on the rest of them the second it became clear that the rest of them wanted the Jesusfish regardless of what it meant to The Israelites. And I’m also with you on how hard it would be to stop being the friend of someone who betrayed you, and I would say that when a friend betrays you, it is normal, and understandable, and probably even good if your first impulse is to figure out a way to forgive the betrayal.

And probably some Israelite Shovers DID have friends among the Gentile ones, and those who did probably felt betrayed when their friends supported the Jesusfish, but obviously they chose to forgive those friends. And probably those same friends felt betrayed when the Israelites finked to Brodsky, but obviously those friends chose to forgive the Israelites. Except then they each betrayed each other again: the Israelites when they starred their scarves; the Gentiles when they kicked out the Israelites for starring their scarves. Whether or not they should forgive each other again isn’t for anyone to say—there’s no laws about it—but since they are all dickheads, it’s a safe bet that whether they forgive or don’t, it’ll be for dickheaded reasons.

Another safe bet: tomorrow we will see some Jesusfished scarves.

Your friend,

Gurion

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PS The PS may have been invented and used for the reasons Ruth said, but either way the content of a PS is an afterthought, so I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t—as it does—look like one. Unless it’s only pretending to be an afterthought, which would make the writer shady, except in certain situations like, for example, at the beginning of Part One, how everyone goes to Don Corleone’s office during his daughter’s wedding bearing gifts and giving blessings, but even Don Corleone knows they’re there to ask a favor, even though the favor gets asked after the gifts and blessings are delivered = If every party knows that every party knows a given pretense is a pretense, then the pretense, even if it’s unnecessary, isn’t offensive.

PPS I think the best idea is to go to the beach and smoke, since I could walk to the train after that if it’s not too cold. We should see how the weather is next Wednesday because I just quit the thing that I usually do on Wednesdays after school, so I’ll have time to kill.

PPPS Sorry if there’re a lot of grammar or spelling errors in this email. My mom’s been yelling for me to come downstairs to eat dinner for the past five minutes, which is distracting.

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Having eaten a little too much too fast, my mom and I leaned in opposite directions, against either arm of the three-cushion sofa, one leg apiece stretched over the ottoman, on which plates crusting with hummous and baba specks abutted a nap-771

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kined basket of pita crumbs. Somebody’d slashed my father’s tires. He’d caught a ride home from his office with a clerk. He entered the family room holding a pastry box ribboned with twine, and my mom and I waved. He set the box down atop the TV.
Seinfeld
was playing, disc 2, season 4. Kramer made noises, Elaine’s mouth twisted, George’s voice tightened, and Jerry rolled his eyes. My mother and father caught up on their day in voices whose volumes matched the TV’s. Everything was fine, or seemed to be fine, the laughtrack mixing with my parents’

conversation, and I started spacing out, started falling asleep, maybe even fell fully for a second or a minute—and then I snapped to with a hiccup.

“…on the stoop?” my Dad was saying.

“No,” said my mother. “I came through the back.”

I hated the hiccups. They made me feel hopeless. I hardly ever got them; when I did they’d last hours.

“‘Maccabees not unwelcome,’ it says. This guy doesn’t understand the effect of double-negatives—either that or he likes me,”

my dad told my mom. “I don’t know what’s more spooky.”

I could heal the hiccups instantly
,
but not when they were mine. When a friend had the hiccups, I’d take out my wallet, then take all the money out of my wallet, then count the money slowly, out loud.

“Both ways are spooky,” my mother said. “I’ll call the police.”

I’d have eleven dollars, or maybe just three—it didn’t matter, but call it eleven.

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“I called them already—after the tires. They’re sending a car.

It’ll be here at nine. They’ll send it every night til the trial blows over.”

I’d slap the money, or I’d slap a table
with
the money, and I’d tell my friend: This right here is eleven dollars cash. If you can hiccup one more time, I will give you all of it.

The cure never failed. No one ever hiccuped after I’d say that.

Even the people who I’d done it to already. None of them would ever perform the cure on me, though. I think they thought that since I’d invented it, it wouldn’t work, and then they’d have to give me the money.

“
Not unwelcome
,” my father said. “Why not skip the
not
and the
un
? Why not just write—

“Boo!” my dad shouted.

I startled. I hiccupped.

He laughed with my mom and the fake studio audience.

Then I explained to him about the
un
, and only the fake studio audience laughed.

“You’re telling me,” he said, “that someone comes along, vandalizes our property, and your solution to this is to
further
vandalize our property? How is that something my son thinks to do?

How is that bright?”

I hiccuped.

“I’m asking you, Gurion.”

I was planning to blind him, I said, from my window, but he only comes around while I’m at Aptakisic.

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“Why not call the police?” said my father.

I said, Because—

And he cut me off—he hadn’t been asking. “Even if being stricken with blindness,” he said, “were an appropriate punishment for committing an act of vandalism—and it isn’t, by the way, it’s
tyrannical
—why let your life be controlled by your ill-wishers? Why lose the sleep that they want you to lose? I don’t understand you.”

The police eventually leave, I said, and the vandals—

I hiccupped, this time cutting myself off.

“What?” said my father. “The vandals
what
?”

They always come back.

“It is true,” my mother said.

“Don’t encourage him, Tamar. He’s not joking, and neither should we joke. If you blind someone, Gurion, you think no one will ever bother us again? Because that would be a fantasy. They will always bother us. You will always be bothered by others.

And if you act violently toward those who bother you today, then tomorrow, they will return the favor.”

I’m—
hiccup
—stronger than them, I said.

“You know what?” he said. “Let’s accept your baseless premise, for the sake of argument, and see where it takes us. So fine, you’re the strongest person in the world, no one can harm you, you can kick everyone’s ass, you’re safe… I’m not, though. Not me. Not safe. I can’t kick everyone’s ass. And your mom can’t either, believe it or not; not everyone’s. So imagine one day the father of someone 774

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you blinded, vengeance-hungry, gathers his friends together and, knowing you’re an immortal asskicker, he rationally—notice I’m not even bothering to quibble over whether someone acting on vengeful impulses can properly be called
rational
—this vengeful father, he rationally decides to come after me, or your mother—both of us, say, for an eye for an eye is not good enough for this fellow and his buddies, he wants a two-for-one—and you’re at school, busy fighting janitors and vegetables with padlocks when they come—

what then? We’re both blind is what then, your mother and I.

And that’s only if the man and his friends settle on the two-for-one exchange, and I don’t see why they should; if two-for-one is acceptable, if an-eye-for-an-eye goes out the window, why not an eye for a life, two lives even? Especially when the woman keeps getting up, cursing in Arabic, breaking noses—any vengeful shmo with half a brain would certainly worry how your mother might avenge
her
self later, no? And even if they didn’t have half a brain, the damage she brings to these attackers before they get to her eyes—this is damage for which they would seek even more vengeance. And so what?

What happens? We’re dead is so what. You’ve effectively killed your parents is what happens. How’s that for a fantasy? You blind a vandal and get to be an orphan. Gurion ben-No One,” he said.

“Is that what you want? No one around to stop you from burning down houses with your delinquent friends and going to jail? To sink like a fucking ball of lead, no one to obstruct you?”

I wouldn’t, I said and hiccupped. I said, I wouldn’t let anyone kill you.

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My mother said, “We know. No one will kill us, Gurion. You won’t be an orphan. Your father has had a hard day.”

“Please keep feeding the fire!” said my father. “Please undo everything I say to him!”

“You are yelling, Judah.”

“And you, Tamar, are not paying attention! You spoke to Avel Salt earlier, did you not? Your son is delusional. This is
our
fault.”

“Our son is imaginitive. You, on the other hand, are as
touchy
as you always become whenever you have just made closing arguments, and this is making
you
delusional.”

My father chewed a lip, turned away from my mother. My mother changed her posture. Good, I thought. Pinch him. Pinch him on the neck. Pinch him or reach out and thumb-stab his thigh. Instead she lit a cigarette and studied the cherry.

My parents were fighting.

“So tell me,” said my father. “You converted someone today?”

Yes, I said.

“And how is that possible?”

I explained. Or I tried to. The more I talked, the worse the hiccups got. The worse the hiccups got, the more H I got. And I had to look at
Seinfeld
, which looked like disrespect—I could look at
Seinfeld
or I could look at my father, who my hiccups were annoying, who I didn’t want to look at, whose lips got twistier, whose nostrils got wider, whose eyes got squintier with each word I spoke.

“Wow,” he said, once I’d finished explaining. “Wow!” he said.

“I had no idea! Sabbatai Zevi and Shimon bar-Kokhba, Yeshua 776

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of Nazareth himself—how violently their bones must be quak-ing with jealousy. Your power to deceive yourself, Gurion—it’s unmatched. And that’s to say nothing of your ability to articulate your self-deceptions. Truly amazing. You keep it up, sonnyboy, you might actually be the end of us. And by ‘us’ I mean the Jews, of whom your girlfriend is one. Of course she is. Of course she’s Jewish. Your girlfriend is Jewish because she has a couple birthmarks and you’ve got a gift for casuistry.”

And you’ll have the cops watch over your house because
you’ve
got a gift for
bravery
, I said.

He pulled me from the couch and held me in the air, under the arms so we were eye-to-eye. He was giving me The Look of The End.

“This is the gaze of someone you would do better to hide from,” he said, in a whisper so calm Bam Slokum would envy it.

“Someone looks at you like this, no matter who it is, it always means the same thing. It is how I’ve been looking at you for the past ten minutes. Memorize this gaze, and the next time you encounter it, you’ll know to run in the opposite direction
before
you lose the use of your legs.”