Adam Levin - The Instructions

But “Sudden Holiday”: If I hadn’t already planned the Damage Proper, then why, in the email, did I tell the scholars to bring their weapons to Aptakisic? Why did I tell them to come to Aptakisic at all? Could I not have met with them in my backyard after Havdallah on Saturday, as so many of them had already been planning?

I had them bring their weapons for the reason I stated in the email. If there was to be a holiday, I didn’t know what the holiday would celebrate. I didn’t even know if “celebrate” was the right verb. Some holidays, like Yom Ha-Shoah, only commemorate . Some, like Simcha Torah, do both. Yom Kippur does neither — it’s a day of atonement . What I knew was I would deliver my scripture to the scholars. Maybe the holiday would celebrate the deliverance; maybe, if I was somehow wrong to deliver scripture, the holiday would mournfully commemorate the folly of my having done so. Maybe the deliverance would lead to something else that the holiday would celebrate or commemorate. Maybe what it led to would be military, for no calendar, let alone the Israelite calendar, is short on military holidays. And again, maybe there would be no holiday. If there were going to be a holiday, though, and if that holiday were going to be military, I wanted to do all I could to make sure it was more like Chanukah or Yom Yerushalayim than the Fasts of Tammuz or Tevet. I wanted to be sure that victory for the scholars was at least possible. So I told them to come heavy.

And as for why Aptakisic instead of my backyard: I was finished with stealth. It was time to get caught, witnessed. I wanted to incite as bold-faced a brand of defiance as I could. For a scholar to leave his home after Havdallah was not uncommon, so it was possible, even likely, that if the scholars came to my house after Havdallah, many of their parents would not find out — let alone all at the same time — where the scholars had gone. The absence of two-hundred-plus scholars from a few Israelite schools, however, could not help but get noticed. Calls would be made. Panic would ensue. Furthermore, for the scholars to compound the forbidden act of contacting me with that of ditching school — which they would have to do to get to Aptakisic on time — would attest to my being in possession of a much larger influence over them than would their merely coming over to my house.

The greater the demonstration of my influence, the more the scholars’ parents would fear me, and I wanted as many of them to fear me as possible, and I wanted them to fear me as deeply as possible. I wanted them to dread evermore what I might, if crossed, do with their sons. Since they had not thought once, let alone twice, then let them think a thousand times, I thought, of what I might be capable if again harm came to my father.

I expect that many scholars, even those with the best of intentions, will, at first, attempt to resist this commentary on commentaries. Since the Damage Proper, well-meaning factions have been culting up my personality, and although I’m flattered by the intent behind this culting, efforts to render me and my actions perennially good and cohesive lead — at least in some cases — not only to Orwellian doubletalk (“the people’s prince,” “peacemaking warrior,” etc.), but also bad scholarship, a kind that permits and even sometimes encourages lazy, unrigorous interpretations of the as-yet-quite-young Gurionic oral tradition, wherein I’m put forth as everything to everyone, and all at the same time. Which is bad enough. And it will be even worse if this lack of rigor establishes itself as a habit, for such a habit will certainly have undermined — will certainly be undermining —the study and interpretation of this, The Instructions .

Nothing, scholars, nothing in all the world is good because I say it is good. Nothing is right because I say it is right. What I say is good is good for the reasons I cite. What I say is right is right for those reasons. If you don’t understand the reasons, you will one day — if you study — but you can’t just take my word on what is right and good and expect that to suffice. If you could do that, I would never have mentioned my reasons.

And when I say something is bad or when I say that something I did was wrong or foolish, or when I say that something excellent that you want to ascribe to me is not something I am responsible for, or that something you call a miracle was the opposite of a miracle, then, as inconvenient as it may seem at first to believe it, the proper response is not “Gurion is too humble to admit that he was good all along, too humble to admit he was right all along,” or “He is too humble to admit that he made a miracle happen, too humble to call it a miracle.” I am not humble, much less am I what the well-meaning doubletalkers among you have taken to calling “a humble egotist.” There is no such thing as a humble egotist. And for that matter, I’m not a “peacemaking warrior,” either; I’m a scholar and a soldier. There is no paradox there, no euphemism, no contradiction. I’m both. And so should you be.

If you want to resist this commentary on commentaries, scholars, it’s because the notion I’m attacking — the notion that I’d had the Damage Proper elaborately planned well in advance of the opening sally — strikes you as appealing. Maybe it strikes you as appealing because it suggests that I am a gifted general, or a talented forseer, maybe because it’s the easiest explanation to imagine. I don’t know exactly why the notion appeals to you. However, I do know why it appeals to the Arrangement. It is in their best interests that you resist this commentary on commentaries; it is in their best interests to spread the claim that I planned the Damage Proper well in advance of when I actually did. The implications of the truth are bad for the Arrangement because the implications of the truth are good for us. In denying the truth, in spreading lies, the Arrangement protects the Arrangement.

The fact that I only planned the Damage Proper minutes before we executed it means that you are each a much greater threat than you know. It means that despite all the early-detection procedures and other “safeguards” that have, since the Damage Proper, been put in place by various houses of the Arrangement — and manifold they are, these “safeguards,” well designed to foil days and weeks of planning, as well — future war campaigns could be just as successful as the first one. They can be just as successful as long as they are undertaken as suddenly and spontaneously as the first one.

Damage, damage, and damage, the end.

Friday, November 17, 2006

12:13 a.m.–10:41 a.m.

And there was night, and all through the night I kept waking from the same dream.

In the valley of the two-hill field stood a tower of restraint. Slokum held Nakamook in the air like Slokum had held me during the false alarm, except Nakamook’s arms weren’t pinned to his chest. Instead, they held a second Slokum, and the second Slokum held me, and I a second Nakamook, and that second Nakamook a second me:

The tower swayed. To keep from falling, we had to continually redistribute our weight. It took a lot of concentration at first, but soon I got the hang of it and noticed there was clapping. There’d been clapping all along, but my earlids had been blocking it, pushing it into the background. I looked around to see where the sound came from and saw it was Patrick Drucker. He stood before the tower, applauding.

There were two things wrong with him. The first was his pants. It was windy in the field, but the pants lay perfect on his legs, unmoving. The second was his hair. The wind didn’t blow that either.