Mark Doten - The Infernal

I don’t open my eyes, but lie back on my cushions and surrender myself again to the world of not-night.

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It occurs to me to fire on the Jewboy. To take hold of my rifle and eliminate him, or at least give him a scare — but for all I know, such is his plan. A single bullet, a dozen, could play into his hands in ways that I can’t anticipate. Nevertheless, I click off the safety of my rifle, always within reach on my cushions. It has been with me for years, through camps and villages and the long nights burrowed in the sand. During the same period that I’ve gone through half a dozen machines for my blood, I’ve held on to this same Kalashnikov; my first machine acquired through this very weapon — all down Main Street in that far-off town I rolled the machine while with my free hand I swung the Kalashnikov, firing into the depot, the general store, at last ventilating the doors of the saloon, which swung open and shut on a pair of gaping eyes (and a third eye, an eye of blood that drained the other two). But there is only coughing now, no gunfire, and I realize that the target practice has come to an end, it’s a dozen polite coughs overlying one another, at last I open my eyes.

The lieutenants and boys stand before me. Four lieutenants and several dozen general-purpose boys, as well as:

the elevator boy (across the room, at the elevator)

the boy who died (wrapped in a sheet, and a pin through the nose)

And in the workshop, out of sigh01SE2YT0 RTNGLO ODYL 0NOY8F20 5LI0SY 0 PY24 0TCLO MJ0RQ QEH0QX4-

Blood Youth #1

Blood Youth #2

Their blood helper boy

“Very good,” I say. “Very precise.” And again I am struck by the perfection of our small group, the loyalty of the lieutenants unquestionable, the alacrity and intelligence of the boys unsurpassed. Each day I feel closer to some new knowledPH0XARP3GEF0L0LY

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It is true, that in months and years now gone, when our numbers ran into the thousands, then as well did I feel that we were perfect, or nearly Q6+PAXFX/ LSD CZY 6 WR0BCOE

blasphemy to talk of the perfection of man. Yet I am convinced that God Himself — all praise be to Him — has brought us closer to a human ideal of perfection than the world LKQ 2CIIAIAMP SLW OHTRBG00QQ0SP 9V67X6R

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After receiving permission to speak, the first lieutenant says, “We are glad you called us here. Teacher, we have something we must tell you.”

The second lieutenant: “It’s the Jew.”

The first lieutenant: “We must kill him.”

All four lieutenants nod as one. The boys do not have such effrontery yet, and I think what a pleasure these boys are. And wonder what steps must be taken to make them more perfect than even their fathers, to shape them into the sort of men who don’t speak out of turn, as the lieutenants have now done, and not for the first time.

“It’s well that you should raise the issue,” I say. “Though I think you haven’t understood our pig as I have.”

There is a shadowed flurry among the corncrakes, a jostling for perches.

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“That is no doubt the case,” the third lieutenant says. “It is not the teacher’s learned wisdom we question.”

The fourth lieutenant steps forward. “But the singing.”

And again the second lieutenant: “We can’t stand it any longer.”

“Singing? Perhaps you refer to his coughing,” I say. “Which can’t but remind us of the seductive coughs of Jews that gather next to and behind all world leaders, creeping about in the shadow of the throne — creeping and coughing. These lewd and mighty conjurers offer us an object lesson. All Jews do. The same lesson, expressed through different Jews. Different inflections, different angles on the Jew and the problem of the Jew — but everywhere the same lesson.” I raise my hands. “Let me share my vision,” I say. “A scientific view of the Jewboy that is also scriptural, The Jewboy and the Blanket. ”

I had thought that the parable was already in place in my head, all of the pieces integrated. I find as I speak, however, that I possess no such integrated parable, that I am working extemporaneously — and I remember with a start that the parable I’d planned was to be acted out with two living puppet birds. Nevertheless, I’m soon aware that I am tapping into something superior to what I’d imagined, something eternal, a truth, and therefore something touching on, if in a greatly attenuated fashion, the great Truth of God.

One bird, however — one bird would be a help, two no longer necessary, just one would bring me closest to the great Truth, and so I hobble from my cushions to a cage, still speaking.

I hold the eagle in my hand, I thrust him experimentally before me. I speak and I thrust my eagle. “Like this ,” I say. “Like this. ”

As I sum up the lessons of the parable, my lieutenants and boys look at me askance — the eyes of lieutenants more askance than those of the boys, but the boys’ askance as well. I don’t consider — not for a second — interrupting the parable, but I do drive more quickly toward the heart of it. I even find myself chopping the air, yet their eyes never once open with comprehension, only continue to roll askance.

I release the eagle. He flies to the elevator’s floor indicator dial and perches there on the hand. And I realize that I have introduced a new thread to my parable, that I am now speaking of my own blackouts: how most often I am quite sure that they last only a second or two, no more than that, perhaps visible only in a=AWRF3TAQUYHT /BOEA4TG0Z

of the head; yet in other cases it must be hours that pass, even days.

“But to ask any of you,” I say, “you lieutenants or boys — how could I? It is no good to insist that I am beyond that now, that this is a world of not-night, and such questions no longer obtain …”

I say: “A Jew could ask, couldn’t he?”

I say: “A Jew would weasel it out, and none the wiser.”

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I say: “How many hours or days has it been since the Jewboy arrived? The pig knows. Everyone knows but me.”

Atop the dial, the eagle spreads his wings majestically and, as it were, in slow motion.

He glides from the dial to the Jewboy’s outstretched hand.

I take up my rifle.

The highest reaches of the cavern swallow the noise, then thunder it back down on us; meanwhile, the ricochet — it must have been a ricochet — strikes one of the boys in the face.