Mark Doten - The Infernal

I wake from a blackout, and all at once the parable is ready to be told: The Jewboy and the Blanket. I am ready to share my understanding with the lieutenants and boys. A parable, perhaps with puppets — not the old puppets of my traveling show, which have been lost to history, but with the puppets God provides to us all. And I speak not of bare hands, the70TLWX

so-called bare-hand art, which only ever operates in a falsified and falsifying shadow play, but of birds — any two living birds fully admissible, even ideal, as puppets. Feathers and beaks not deflecting and blocking, but refracting and revealing light and shadow in all their commingled truth.

I am at the point of having them called to order, the youths and boys and lieutenants, but the red door behind me scrapes open with a terrible shriek, and the two youths wheel out a large and ornately carved wooden table surmounted with flasks and burners, copper coils, equipment of all description, and at the front, the inlaid silver needle of the intravenous line from my blood machine.

“My young engineers,” I exclaim. “I asked you to rebuild my old machine, perhaps with modifications for increased efficiency, but this — this is something quite different!”

They press their palms together and bow — first Blood Youth #1, on the left, then Blood Youth #2, on the right, then both at once. They kneel before the machine, joining hands with a flourish, and lower their gazes to the floor.

“Yes, Teacher.”

“Something new, Teacher.”

“Teacher, God preserve you, you are looking very well.”

“Very well indeed!”

“But pale—”

“Ah, yes, pale, too—”

“Anemic—”

“Just the lamplight—”

“Oh yes, most likely—”

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“By the lamplight one sees it, the anemia—”

“And you said only the other day, Teacher—”

“How when the blood was going in—”

“The teacher said he could feel it—”

“The moment Teacher had had enough of his own cleaned blood, and wanted only a helper boy’s blood, he could feel the exact moment, and then—”

“When it was enough boy’s blood, and he wanted only his own clean blood—”

“But could do nothing about these feelings—”

“Had no mechanism that would allow him to address such feelings—”

“That’s what you said, Teacher, is it not?”

“Did we remember your words correctly?”

“We hope you are not displeased, Teacher.”

“Is the teacher displeased? Oh no, he must not be!” Blood Youth #1 says. With a wail he buries his face in his hand, and the crakes flap and chatter.

“Such were my words,” I say. “And I am not displeased. But time —time is of the essence!”

“The master is weakening!”

“He grows weaker and weaker, waiting for his blood.”

“We were the wrong ones.”

“The task was too much for us.”

One of the youths prostrates himself and knocks his head on the cavern floor, and his friend stares down tearfully.

“Time was of the essence!”

“And now the teacher must relieve us of our duty!”

“Hush now,” I say. “Please, hush! I am not growing weaker, and I am not relieving you of anything. You are my young engineers, my Blood Youths, and I am more than pleased with your performance. But I have a parable fixed in my head, and time is critical.” I lean forward, take their hands, and rejoin them. “I do not have time to reassure you,” I say. “We must not waste time with reassurances. I must offer this parable to all of them — all the men and boys — quickly, and without fail.”

“The teacher is wise.”

“The teacher is kind.”

“What a wise, kind teacher!”

“ Please , my Blood Youths! Haste must be our watchword! And this machine appears at first blush unnecessarily complicated. A large table, crowded with tubes, flasks, bits of clockwork — apparatus of all description. And so many open flames! And underneath the particleboard table, an oaken cabinet, inlaid with birds in flight — dare I ask what the knocking within signifies? Perhaps a tentative human knock? Please, my young engineers — I am holding in my head a parable, the telling of which might well make the decisive difference. If it be God’s will — all glory to Him — this parable could well correct and re-form our understanding of the world and our place in it: of the not-night, the Jew writ large, the diseased rabbits that gather so lethargically in the hills, the invasive sycamores that are sprouting just outside the system, the faintly incandescent beetles that scout our cave system with increasing vigor and curiosity, such that even now they are waving their feelers at the wheeled base of your mighty contraption. All of these things have meaning, and the parable I have formulated, which is The Parable of the Jewboy and the Blanket , could unify them — could reveal every piece in its true form.”

The youths clap hands to the sides of their faces.

“It is not our intention to delay any parables.”

“We love the teacher’s parables.”

“But the teacher—”

“He needs his blood.”

“And we have toiled—”

“With utmost haste—”

“And utmost care—”

“With haste and care in equal parts—”

“On the teacher’s blood contraption.”

The youths produce scarves from the folds of their long white robes and, as they speak, set to polishing the coils and wires, the needles, tubes, and metal plates.

“What you said—”

“How it felt good to have fresh blood and clean blood—”

“Flowing into you—”

“And old blood—”

“Dirty blood—”

“Pumped out—”

“But because it was all mixed together in a single globe—”

“The blood of the boy and your own blood that was being cleansed—”

“You couldn’t control the ratios.”

“And perhaps that has caused the blackouts—”

“Which trouble you more and more—”

“We hate anything that troubles our teacher—”

“And so we went to work—”

“Different flasks, that was a possibility—”

From within the cabinet comes what seems an answering knock. This is followed by more knocks: dit, dit, dit. Dah, dah, dah. Dit, dit, dit.

One of the Blood Youths kicks the door sharply.

“The proper flask, or proper array of flasks—”

“Regent bottles and pear-shaped flasks—”

“Splash heads and separating funnels—”

“Round-bottom boiling flasks—”

“Sugar flasks, Chapman flasks—”

“But no, it was not a question of flasks—”

“ No flask question , that was soon our opinion—”

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Somewhere high up amid the clamps and blue flames, a narrow, red-veined tube angles down to the table’s left edge, and from there angles back inward, to the cabinet. In this figure the last slack is pulled taut, and the copper and glass violently chatter.

“A new globe—”

“A cunning globe—”

“The answer a globe within a globe, within which new relationships are enjoined—”

“The machine still pumps out your blood—”

“In the same fashion—”

“And cleans it—

“Same fashion—”