Adam Levin - The Instructions

My mom, still kissing, opened her eyes.

“A spy,” she said.

Again I smacked the wall. A couple of the scabs from the remote control opened on impact and the blood left dots.

“Boychic—” my dad said.

Why didn’t you set those people on fire?

“Not even a hug first?” he said.

I came down the stairs. I could see his crutches leaning on the fridge.

Why didn’t you? I said.

“Even if I could still—”

Did you try? I said.

“Gurion!” my mother snapped.

My dad set his hand on her arm. He said to me, “I hurt my knee a little, Gurion. I bumped my head. Men should die for that? I fell and they left me alone.”

Before they left you alone, they were coming for you and you didn’t—

“They were coming for Patrick Drucker.”

You were in their way, and you didn’t know what they would do. You could not have known.

“And?”

And what ? You should have stopped them.

“I should have killed them, you’re saying.”

They might have done the same to you.

“I fell and they left me alone.”

You didn’t know they would , though.

“And I didn’t know they wouldn’t. To pre-emptively—”

They didn’t leave your client alone, I said.

“My client ?” he said. “You would expect me to— What can you possibly think of me, Gurion? Do you think we’re that different?”

Who?

“You and I.”

I don’t understand you.

“Nor I you. Patrick Drucker is a Nazi in a cheap suit. You would expect me to kill Jews— murder Jews — to protect a Nazi?”

I sat where I’d stood. I sat on the floor, not knowing how to answer. Because that was, actually, what I’d have expected of him. It hadn’t been what I’d have expected — not for the last ten years it hadn’t; not until the previous few hours. Not until the expectation was useful. When I saw him get hurt I was angry at him for getting hurt, at least as angry at him as I was at those who’d hurt him, and at Adonai. I was angry because it is right to be angry at people who are guilty. People who are guilty should have — which means that they could have — done something different from what they did. To be guilty, you have to have had some control over the thing you did, and if he had had some control, my father… if he had deserved the enmity of those Israelites… if he had brought it on himself… if he had gotten himself attacked , then it only followed that in the future he could avoid getting himself attacked. In the future, he could keep himself safe. And I wanted to believe he could keep himself safe. That was why I had decided he was just as his attackers claimed he was; it would have been easier to love him despite his being an enemy of the Israelites than to have to worry about him getting killed for being righteous; less world-shattering to lose my trust in him than my faith in Adonai; more tolerable to be angry at him than to fear for him. And if these reflections seem too complicated for me to have had in the middle of an argument with my parents, while my mother, who was rising by then, puffing up warriorstyle to deliver me a rhetorical slap that would not, as it would turn out, bring me pain, but relief — if this all seems too complicated a stream of thoughts for me to think in the moment my entire understanding of the previous six months of my life was getting re-arranged, that’s because it was. Too complicated. I didn’t think these things then, not all of them, not nearly, and certainly not in this order. All I thought was: You are good, Aba, and they trampled you anyway. And struck as I was by the implications, I only managed to speak a bastardized version of the predicate.

I said, They trampled you anyway ≠ “But those Israelites you wouldn’t kill to save a Nazi trampled you and so you should have killed them.” I wasn’t arguing at all, only lamenting, but judging by my mother’s response, it must have sounded like arguing.

She said, “Yes they did, Gurion. And Jews every one of them. They ran right over him. They did not give a fuck about your father, or you, or your mother.” Who was leaning at me now, my mother, yelling these words.

“Baby,” said my dad.

“No.” my mother said. “He is in the wrong, Judah, and it is not cute. It is not smart. Now is not the time to speak softly. You are terribly wrong to say such things to your father, Gurion. You are being heartless and reckless and abominably stupid. I do not know who you ate dinner with tonight. I do not know with whom you ate dinner while your aba and I were at the hospital because Flowers did not seem to catch their names, but all of their heads, he said, were covered, and so I assume these were boys you went to Schechter with. Yes? Boys you call your friends? Are they still your friends, Gurion?”

They’re my friends, I said, but—

“But nothing . Who do you think it was at the courthouse? Whose blood, Gurion? Whose cousins and uncles? Whose older brothers? Whose Jewish fucking parents?”

I know, I said.

“You know, yet you are friends with them? After what their parents did to your father — and never mind what has been done to you — after what their parents did to your father, you call them your friends?”

They can’t be held—

“They cannot be held to account for the crimes of their parents?” she said. “Is that what the fuck you were going to say?”

Yes, I said.

“Are you sure you want to say that? Are you sure it is true? Are you sure they cannot be held to account? Because if they cannot be held to account, Gurion, I do not understand why you would have them suffer. I do not understand, if they cannot be held to account, why you would have your father turn your friends into orphans.”

I wouldn’t, I said.

“No?”

No, I said.

“No but what?” she said.

No but nothing, I said. I said, I was wrong. You’re right. I was saying stupid things, Ema. I was doing everything you said I was doing.

“Are you lying to me?”

No.

“Are you still angry?”

Not at Aba, I said.

“Are you still angry at me?”

No, I said.

“So enough yelling,” she said.

I’d never watched myself cry, so I didn’t know, but I thought I must be one of those people who smiles before he cries, because my mom sat next to me on the floor and did stuff to my hair while my dad kept reassuring me that everything would be alright, and I wasn’t crying at all. I was smiling so hard my face hurt.

An entire night and then some would pass before I’d learn about the Gurionic War, weeks on top of that before I’d start writing The Instructions . By the time I left the kitchen, though, I already knew the first of the blessings of both of them, and it was the first thing I wrote when I got to my room.

There is damage. There was always damage and there will be more damage, but not always. Were there always to be more damage, damage would be an aspect of perfection. We would all be angels, one-legged and faceless, seething with endless, hopeless praise.

Bless Adonai for making us better than angels. Blessed is Adonai for making us human.

I saved the file, hit PRINT, and was about to get a fresh address from which to send email to the scholars when I noticed how late it was, and that June hadn’t called. I worried she wouldn’t, so I called her.

“Are you still in love with me?” she said.

More than ever, I said.

“Because of what I told you?”

No.

“In spite of it?”

Regardless of it.

“You always say the right thing,” she said. “You should write me a book.”