Adam Levin - The Instructions

I handed him his cane and sat down beside him, and Edison jumped up into his lap. “You ain’t paid enough attention to the girl,” he said. He paused the disc. He said, “Pay attention.” Then he hit play and Lauryn Hill of the Fugees rhymed, “Even after all my logic and my theory, I add a motherfucka so you ign’ant niggas hear me.”

Flowers stopped the song and thumb-flicked his swearfinger at the center of my chapter with so much force the music stand tilted and almost fell. Edison jumped over my legs and hid his face like an ostrich in the gap between two cushions. Flowers said, “Now listen to this.” Leaning forward on his cane, he read a sentence with a royal accent:

“‘When one wishes to render oneself undetectable in the doorway of a scholastic facility wherein authority figures bent to disciplinary action who long to beset one lurk vigilantly in the many vestibules and passageways, one must not only find shadows within which to bestill all of one’s own twitchings and other visible muscular activities, but these shadows must be engaged by one in only their darkest parts, for to even momentarily breach such shadows’ penumbras will surely invite one’s detection by said parties of the other.’” Flowers said, “Now why you gonna write like you Sir Alec Guinness?”

Who’s that? I said.

“Obi-Wan Kenobi, man. Why you writing Obi-Wan style? You didn’t used to write Obi-Wan style at all. Every chapter you give me’s more kenobi than the last, though. Been gradual. This one here — it’s just too much. And I’m trying to understand. You writing for the learned order of the Jedi or what?”

I said, I’m writing for rabbis.

Flowers said, “Why rabbis?”

I said, Because it’s scripture.

“Damn,” Flowers said, “you mean like capital-S scripture, don’t you? All this time I thought you speaking figuratively. That’s lofty,” he said. “Lofty and loftier. Not that lofty’s a bad thing. I admire the lofty impulse. What don’t make sense to me, though, is how come if it’s supposed to be scripture for rabbis, you ain’t writin in Hebrew?”

I said, Cause then you couldn’t read it, or Nakamook, or June.

“I don’t know who June is,” he said, “but I know you boy Nakamook ain’t but a fraction more a rabbi than Edison over there, who’s a fraidy fraidy fraidy, ain’t you kitty cat?”

Edison was walking in place, or maybe climbing in place. He was trying to get his whole body into the cushion-gap, but there was no room. He couldn’t push through.

I said, I’m in love with June.

He said, “I thought you loved that Esther what’s-her-name — you other teacher’s little girl.”

I said, I was lying to myself. I didn’t know til today. I was eating cheesepuffs.

“You’re a funny little boy,” Flowers said. “At least you’re trying to be honest. You daddy the same way. Maybe you been lying to yourself about who you want for an audience, though, too. Anyone else you want beside the forementioned?”

I said, All the Israelites and anyone who’s on the side of damage.

“What’s the side of damage?”

I don’t know yet, I said, but the people on the side of damage don’t know it either, so it’s okay I don’t know.

“Even better,” he said. “Click click click.” He took Edison by the scruff and held him over his face. Edison liked it. He kept trying to mark the wrist of Flowers, who said in a kitty-cat voice, “How a bunch of autobiography gonna be scripture?”

I said, If I interpret or demonstrate law, or if I become an important leader, like the messiah, or—

Flowers dropped Edison then, on the floor, and burst out laughing. When Flowers bursts out laughing, it is so booming that after you see it, it is hard to describe anyone else’s sudden laughter as bursting out without feeling like a liar.

Once he caught his breath, he said, “That’s amazing, man. You just out-loftied ‘I wanna write scripture.’ For fact, you just out-loftied anything anyone’s ever said to me straightfaced. The messiah!”

I said if , I said. And that’s only one of the—

“ Hell no on ‘if’ and ‘one the ways’,” Flowers said. “I say chuck the ‘if’ and pick the loftiest way. I hope you the messiah. Same time, I think you best not harp on about being the messiah too—”

I wouldn’t, I said.

“Let me finish. You don’t want to harp on about it too early in this scripture you gonna write, cause that could discredit you, being that it’s so lofty, but same time, unless you gonna hold onto you book until after you’re famous for saving the world, it’s not the kinda thing you should avoid mentioning altogether. It’s something you’re gonna have to explain at some point. You know, like, leak it in slowly while you’re hooking everyone, and then blast! That’s first of all.

“Second, you should re-examine you people’s scriptures. They all got plots. They got dramatic arcs. Thus far, you don’t. And they don’t read Obi-Wan style, neither. That’s the most important thing for you to learn right now — nothing good reads Obi-Wan style. I thought you knew that — that Story of Stories , Obi-Wan couldn’t hack that, that piece was on —but maybe you got lucky, or maybe you forgot. Anyway, that’s why I played you the rhyme from the song. So as to give you the context needed to understand what I’m asking you when I ask you what’s you motherfucker.”

My motherfucker, I repeated dumbly.

He said, “So far we got rabbis, me, June, Nakamook, and Israelites for you niggas. And then the ign’ant niggas the ones on the side of damage don’t know what it mean. You got more than enough logic and theory, we both know that, but what is you motherfucker? Like you motherfucking vernacular? You goin’ get heard, you gotta signify, right?”

Flowers was always right.

I said, Bancer.

He said, “Bancer’s good. What else?”

I said, Pennygun? Chomsky? Snat? Dumont? Hyperscoot, blinker action, bookrocket?

He said, “Good. Use those.”

I said, What about firmament?

“Why firmament?”

I said, Not firmament, but the word in Hebrew that gets translated into firmament.

“A word that means firmament?”

I said, It doesn’t mean firmament.

“What’s it mean?” Flowers said.

I said, No one knows. I said, In Torah the translation says, ‘God split the firmament into land and sea,’ but rabbis argue about what that means, so I’m thinking firmament is motherfucker for rabbis. Unless — wait — do the rabbis need a motherfucker, you’re saying, or just the people on the side of damage?

“Need it or don’t, no way a motherfucker for rabbis could hurt,” Flowers said.

I said, But if I signify Scholar and I signify I Am In Love and I signify The Side of Damage — if I signify all those things, it’ll be too confusing.

“ Could be,” Flowers said. “But you can explain a little, and then the plot should make sense of the rest. That’s what all the best plots do, man — they bring together disparate elements, linguistic and otherwise. You web-search ‘brings together disparate elements,’ you gonna land a thousand pages of gushy book reviews.”

I said, My life has no plot.

He said, “Sure you life got plot. Especially if you’re the messiah, right? Being the messiah’s you conceit. As it were.”

I said, I’m not the messiah, though.

Flowers said, “But you say you might become the messiah, right?”

I said, Yes.

He said, “So pretend you know you’ll become the messiah — If you become the messiah, then you’ll always have been the messiah, right?”

I don’t know, I said.

“What you mean you don’t know?”