Ben Marcus - The Flame Alphabet

Everywhere people must have been exploring the alternatives; otherwise they’d be sentenced to solitude. But that night Claire and I showed a mutual failure of the imagination. Without speech we were unskilled mimes locked into alien vernaculars, missing every connection, growing slowly angry that the other person could not decode our thoughts.

I would like to say that without language Claire and I exchanged something. But in fact we did not. We simply looked at each other, at most with forced curiosity. The channel that was meant to dilate between us to allow our feelings and thoughts to flow back and forth, well, it didn’t. One witnessed no such channel.

Throughout our endeavors on my bed we remained dutifully mute. We wrestled in much the same way we had when we were erecting the play tent for Esther when she was four, sliding collapsible stilts through a long canvas sleeve, except this time there was no play tent between us, just deflated geometries of air, and we were two old acquaintances grimly determined to extract pleasure from each other. But when our pleasure centers met, they were cold and shielded by brittle walls of hair.

Claire arranged herself on her knees at my side while I settled back and permitted the ministrations that would ready me for our sexual encounter, since that transaction would be the only way to rescue us from our awkward wrestling. Such she did, in rote style, pressing my penis between thumb and forefinger so the top part ballooned angrily and flipped from side to side as she moved her hand.

Her activity was smart, rigorous textbook arousal technique, and she labored with her hand with such determination that her face grew misted in perspiration.

But her manipulations turned my item not toward readiness but to putty. A cold putty that did not stand, but seemed that it would melt into clammy liquid against my leg instead.

When it was clear that her work, tendered so sorrowfully, was not effective and that I would not be able to fulfill my part in the exchange of intimacy, Claire stopped touching me and stared away at the wall.

I was never very good at knowing Claire’s feelings, even, unfortunately, after she’d shared them with me. Somehow I still didn’t understand. Now, in silence, insights into my wife were out of reach entirely.

For the rest of our time together, we lay on the bed listening to each other breathe. I would like to think that this was nice. A peaceful way to reconnect and feel our bond restoring itself. I would like to think that, but I’m afraid I cannot.

When the technicians knocked I was relieved.

At the door Claire and I exchanged a dry, glanceless kiss. The technicians hovered, faces hidden behind gauze.

Before she left I reached into my workbag, pulled out the Hebrew letter, a cold pelt of hairiness, and pressed it into Claire’s hand. My actions I hid from the technicians. I felt like I was handing off a shrunken father. Someone to look after her. The Hebrew letter was the only possession I cared about, and it fit into her hand perfectly. She could hide it there. It would not be discovered.

Perhaps it would read itself to her through her hand as she walked back to her quarters. If my work at the hole went well, we’d be back together soon. Oh, I had no idea how I would activate a wall of listeners I could not understand, especially when, according to LeBov, I had never even properly used my own. Already I was wondering how I could fool the man who seemed to be aware of my thoughts before I even had them.

He’d be ready for any trickery I could devise. He’d have planned for it. He was probably hoping I’d try to deceive him.

I watched Claire’s face when she took the Hebrew letter from me.

Thank you for the gift , she didn’t say. I will look at it later .

And it was only because Claire couldn’t speak that she didn’t say I love you . That was the only reason.

For a moment in the doorway the simple things between us went without saying. You could feel it.

She squeezed the Hebrew letter in her hand and I could almost hear it working. Almost.

What kind of shoes does Rothschild have?

Golden shoes!

Yes, but what does he do when it rains?

He does what we all do, I couldn’t say. Doesn’t he?

Then Claire was gone.

One more thing happened that night, but before it did, I fucked Marta again.

After Claire left my room, the Hebrew letter hot in her hand, speaking only to her the more she clutched it, I went back out and found Marta at the cart, spun her around to be sure it was her this time. I ignored the protocol of tapping and brought her back to my room, my bed still destroyed from the visit with Claire.

Marta could not know that. What happened with Claire happened in a different world. And what was fine about Marta was that she concealed her apparatus for caring. She had an expertise at hiding what mattered most.

In my room I experienced a surge of virility. My area was rigid, but it was also numb. Marta worked calmly at it, ferreting the difficulty, stared past my head and labored to ease the issue.

The room fell quiet and for a moment a trickle of wind intruded our space, as if a whip had been cracked and a sharp rope of air snapped past. It was cold and I thought I could taste it. The flavor of berries trickled down the back of my throat. My vision browned and when the completion came down below, the sudden sweetening, a feeling I could very nearly claim as my own, it flashed through my limbs. Flashed, spoiled, faded.

It was finally clear that I did not need a woman for this, or even a person. I needed a knife.

After she surrendered her hold on me, Marta quietly arranged herself on her side, curled into a ball, because from there she could most easily gain satisfaction, provided I supplied the labor. We could face the same direction, prone in my sweaty bed, as if we were traveling to the countryside, waiting for the piece of perfect scenery to explode before our eyes.

This felt fair, and for a while I spent energy on the project, I put time in. I owed something to Marta. Perhaps this was a way I could repay her.

Marta was silent, and I responded with silence of my own, but still I burrowed away behind her, working through repeated waves of exhaustion to deliver my favor. I kept my hands well free of her neck.

Finally Marta clenched, a wave of coldness overcoming her skin. Or perhaps she coughed and swallowed. In any case she scooted forward and made it known that our activity had ended.

When we finally stood to dress, Marta got herself buttoned up, but before she opened the door she turned to me. This was not part of our routine. She never stopped for an encounter like this, and so I looked down.

It was time for me to be shy. Eye contact with Marta felt like more of a betrayal to Claire than anything. I did not want to be seen seeing her.

This is when Marta struck me in the face.

Had I not been looking down, perhaps I could have protected myself from the blow. Or perhaps, had I seen Marta’s fist coming at me, I would have allowed it to travel, just as it did, on its course with my head. Even had I seen it coming, I may have let it through.

I wanted to smile at Marta, and I believe I did, through salty warm blood, but I had fallen to the floor, and she left my room too quickly to notice.

I felt like watching TV before bedtime. My face throbbed. When I touched it, it felt like another man’s face entirely. Perhaps in the TV room I’d fill a bowl with broth, maybe find one of the salted cookies for after. I could stretch out in a chair and watch the children follow orders. Maybe they’d try to walk on water, then drop quietly into the sea and the camera would stay fixed to the water until the last bubbles rose and dissolved into the air and the water fell calm again.