Adam Levin - The Instructions

A lot of people think that about me, I thought. A lot of people believe I’m just talking. These people aren’t my friends, I thought, but Benji Nakamook had been. At least he was supposed to have been.

Benji’d quit our friendship and watched me get humiliated, I thought; he had quit because I didn’t believe a Gentile should marry an Israelite. Or because of what he thought that implied. And what did it imply? I didn’t necessarily know what it implied, but that didn’t matter. That was beside the point, or at least beside my point, so I didn’t have to think about it, at least not right then. At least I thought I didn’t have to think about it right then.

He quit being my friend because of what I believed. That was the point.

And I believed what I believed because I was an Israelite. That was the point.

Benji quit being my friend because I was an Israelite was the point. He wasn’t scared of Slokum at all. He was an anti — all along, a crypto -anti — but except no because he loved Jelly — so a closet fucken crypto-anti… Whatever he was it didn’t matter anymore. He wasn’t my friend, had quit our friendship for no good reason, so I wasn’t his. I wasn’t his friend.

We were no longer friends.

And for you scholars who protest, who say, “Wait now, wait a minute. This was your conclusion? Closet-crypto-anti dot-dot-dot? No longer friends ? This seems a little crazy, Rabbi, no? It seems kind of easy, kind of — how should we say it? Not Gurionic. What about what June told you, in the two-hill field? She’d said Benji was crying. Why would Nakamook have cried in the two-hill field after you’d been humiliated if he wasn’t your friend? Shouldn’t that, to say the least, complicate matters? Why would you not take his tears into account?”

And I tell you, good scholars, I did. I took Benji Nakamook’s tears into account. I took his tears into account and rapidly dismissed them. I’d spent the six months since I’d been booted from Schechter taking all sorts of things into account that it turned out I shouldn’t have. I’d spent six months positing empathetic rationales for people who’d disappointed me, six months telling myself not to be disappointed, not to feel hurt, but to be understanding. That the scholars of Schechter and Northside who’d abandoned me had done so to be good sons and daughters — I’d convinced myself of that. That their parents had to fear me to be good parents — I’d made myself understand that as well. I’d told myself I wasn’t in any real trouble, nothing end-of-the-world, that the stakes were lower than they seemed to me to be, and that if ever I did face any real trouble, if push came to shove, if I was backed into a corner, caught in a pinch, if worse came to worse (worse came to worst ?), all those who’d disappointed me would step up and… help me. Fight for me, even. They’d remember, all at once, that we were on the same side. They’d see I’d never cursed them, blamed them, mistreated them; they’d see I never thought of them the way they’d thought of me, and we would all reunite as if never divided. Except then I’d needed help. And none of them had helped me. None of them were helping me. Even the two who I’d believed were most separate from their like. First Rabbi Salt, then Emmanuel Liebmann. In rapid succession. In less than a day. And all at once it seemed I’d been offered a lesson from Adonai himself: quit counting blessings, start tallying offenses; quit providing excuses, start recognizing enmity; quit your forgiving, start bringing your vengeance. Nakamook had cried in the two-hill field? I was supposed to accept that as evidence of something good inside him? His tears were supposed to mitigate something? No. Not so. I’d been accepting too much, letting too much mitigate. I’d been acting like a Jew instead of an Israelite. When the twelve spies were sent out to scope the land of Israel, Caleb and Joshua said it was a go, and the other ten protested, saying to everyone, “Giants! Giants! There’s giants down there, Amalakites and Canaanites and Jebusites and giants! We’ll never be able to conquer them! They’ll smite us! We’re grasshoppers next to them! Grasshoppers, brothers!” and so God never let them, or anyone who believed them, into the land of Israel, and why? Because fuck those ten spies. Those spies were faithless. Those spies were crazy, as were all those who believed them. God took them from slavery and still they were faithless. Is that not crazy? To see God here, and not see Him there? They were crazy and they didn’t deserve to live in Israel. And even crazier than that? What’s even crazier, scholars, is on hearing God’s curse, a curse from a God in whom they lacked faith — on hearing the curse from a God they doubted, I tell you good scholars: all those spies cried, as did all of those who’d believed them. Crazy, all of them. And so was Nakamook. Nakamook, after all, was crazy. A psycho. A bully. After all, just a crazy psycho bully. And all crazies cried, all bullies and psychos. Who knew what they cried for? Really, who knew? Not me. I wasn’t one of them. I wasn’t like one of them. And not you, scholars — you’re not crazy either. So no. Just no. It just didn’t matter why Nakamook cried, and so it didn’t matter that Nakamook cried. All that really mattered was that Nakamook abandoned me. You don’t abandon friends. We were no longer friends. And just as I had earlier, just a couple hours earlier, on returning from the first of Thursday’s two two-hill-field abandonments, I felt relief. Things felt a lot simpler. Things felt like this: Fuck him, fuck them, fuck it all, it’s done.

And I pressed all my fingers against all my fingers and none of my fingers would break.

Benji was still grandstanding next to his chair. “No one else?” he said to all the Cage. “All this whispering about the side of this and the side of that and none of the rest of you wants to step up against the Monitor in solidarity? Not one of the rest of you has anything to say?”

The Side of Damage was more loyal to me than even I was — they’d been through with Benji since the moment they realized he wasn’t helping me on the high hill. And now they were all looking to me. It was just like the end of Group on Tuesday, except there were more of them. They were waiting for me to teach them something. They were waiting for me to show them what to do.

I revolved my chair and faced forward in my carrel.

All of us did.

Not a minute later, I heard a chair scoot, followed by Jelly yelling, “Don’t!”

Everyone turned again.

“Now give me a pass to the nurse lest this piddling wound grow fatal with infection,” said Benji to Botha. A black bic pen pinned his t-shirt to the flesh beneath his bottom right rib. The shirt was a light blue. When Jelly pulled the pen out, the stain the blood made was lavender. She fainted for a second, falling forward onto Benji, who caught her with a wince, and for a second, yes, I did wish I could hang out with them, but only for a second. Or maybe ten seconds.

Botha wrote passes and sent them to the nurse.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

6th Period — End of Schoolday

Just before the end of sixth, Eliyahu returned to the Cage with a note. Small cuts were swelling below both his eyes, and some cotton plugged a nostril, but he’d quit the lean of the determined professor and acquired a menacing slouch. Head tipped to the left, he gave the note to Botha, then started toward my carrel, arms straight at his sides like holstered police batons, barely shifting and stiff.

“Sit down, Aye-lie,” Botha said, as he read the note.