Read Online The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus - Free Book Online
Authors: Ben Marcus
Tags: Fiction / Literary
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hole, and the Gentile who has only heard rumors about the gear that governs the hole’s ritual, have missed the elemental purpose of these transmission sites:
the Jewish transaction is a necessarily private one
. I am thinking of people like Murphy who would plunge his fists into it, believing he could extract some perfect remedy for the speech fever.
The topic was a common one in the broadcasts. Burke returned to it often. What others, with no information, might make of us.
Let such errors stand, he always said. Their mistakes put good miles between us. There is no better blessing for us than to be unknown.
If a knowledge is to be made public, went the saying, it should erect a shell around our secret. Such is true of the Torah, the Talmud, the Halakha we appear to follow. When we communicate, we do so to throw them off our scent.
Claire and I had done our part. Said nothing. Never indicated for a moment that we were members of this faith.
“To be a Jew is to let them be wrong about you,” said Burke today. “If we cannot allow this, then nothing is possible.”
He always lowered his voice when he was nearly finished, an emphatic whisper he used to hammer home his final point.
“There is nothing like being profoundly misunderstood. Let others expose their secrets, advertise their identities, neutralize their mysteries with imprecise language. A Jew must project behavior distant from his aim, must cast up a puppet world for those who are watching. Puppets made of real flesh. Puppets who weep, bleed, die.”
We had, it seemed to me, succeeded perfectly at being misunderstood. Again and again our huts were surveilled, seized, burned, for fear that the Jew was drinking something too important out of these holes, drinking directly from God’s mind, eating a pure alphabet that he alone could stomach. These were the fearful rumors. Such an apparatus, if true, was too good for Jews alone. It must be breached, overturned, made to work for the others. The holes must be explored, chased to their source, fucked dry for their secrets.
And they were.
When a hut above a loaded hole is found, a hole that is hot with language, the hut is overturned. If the listener is buried elsewhere,
as it must be
, then no reception is possible. Even when the exposed cables are jammed into every kind of translating console by engineers, without a listener nothing but burnt tones are ever heard, and even these are confused for last year’s wind, swept underground now and dying.
Without the listener draped over the radio module hugging that fucker until it releases its broadcast, these are the spoils the intruder will hear, these at most, and he will soon cease to care. Not least because such washes of sound render the inexperienced vandal docile, listless, apathetic.
After all their violating labors, what is extracted from these holes by intruders is never anything coherent enough to be called a language, and the public curiosity whispers down into nothing again.
Foolish Jews worshipping in the mud, goes the claim. Let them have their holes, their ancient language of clicks and whistles and yells.
And have them we damn well do.
The radio fell silent when Burke finished. Before he signed off he promised that a brief message from Rabbi Thompson would follow. Until then there’d be a low rumble from the module, remote voices chopped into pieces too small to understand.
Claire curled up on the hut floor and I pulled a blanket from the bin.
“If you get up I can put this under us,” I said.
With a show of labor, her body in pain, Claire pulled herself up and stepped from the hut. I rolled out the blanket and brought Claire back in, lowering her down again. Without removing her shoes she shucked her leggings to her knees, then turned on her stomach.
“Okay” was all she said, not even looking up at me. She was ready.
I did not yet know if I was aroused.
Claire was quiet today, but sometimes our best intimacy occurred after the
the Jewish transaction is a necessarily private one
. I am thinking of people like Murphy who would plunge his fists into it, believing he could extract some perfect remedy for the speech fever.
The topic was a common one in the broadcasts. Burke returned to it often. What others, with no information, might make of us.
Let such errors stand, he always said. Their mistakes put good miles between us. There is no better blessing for us than to be unknown.
If a knowledge is to be made public, went the saying, it should erect a shell around our secret. Such is true of the Torah, the Talmud, the Halakha we appear to follow. When we communicate, we do so to throw them off our scent.
Claire and I had done our part. Said nothing. Never indicated for a moment that we were members of this faith.
“To be a Jew is to let them be wrong about you,” said Burke today. “If we cannot allow this, then nothing is possible.”
He always lowered his voice when he was nearly finished, an emphatic whisper he used to hammer home his final point.
“There is nothing like being profoundly misunderstood. Let others expose their secrets, advertise their identities, neutralize their mysteries with imprecise language. A Jew must project behavior distant from his aim, must cast up a puppet world for those who are watching. Puppets made of real flesh. Puppets who weep, bleed, die.”
We had, it seemed to me, succeeded perfectly at being misunderstood. Again and again our huts were surveilled, seized, burned, for fear that the Jew was drinking something too important out of these holes, drinking directly from God’s mind, eating a pure alphabet that he alone could stomach. These were the fearful rumors. Such an apparatus, if true, was too good for Jews alone. It must be breached, overturned, made to work for the others. The holes must be explored, chased to their source, fucked dry for their secrets.
And they were.
When a hut above a loaded hole is found, a hole that is hot with language, the hut is overturned. If the listener is buried elsewhere,
as it must be
, then no reception is possible. Even when the exposed cables are jammed into every kind of translating console by engineers, without a listener nothing but burnt tones are ever heard, and even these are confused for last year’s wind, swept underground now and dying.
Without the listener draped over the radio module hugging that fucker until it releases its broadcast, these are the spoils the intruder will hear, these at most, and he will soon cease to care. Not least because such washes of sound render the inexperienced vandal docile, listless, apathetic.
After all their violating labors, what is extracted from these holes by intruders is never anything coherent enough to be called a language, and the public curiosity whispers down into nothing again.
Foolish Jews worshipping in the mud, goes the claim. Let them have their holes, their ancient language of clicks and whistles and yells.
And have them we damn well do.
The radio fell silent when Burke finished. Before he signed off he promised that a brief message from Rabbi Thompson would follow. Until then there’d be a low rumble from the module, remote voices chopped into pieces too small to understand.
Claire curled up on the hut floor and I pulled a blanket from the bin.
“If you get up I can put this under us,” I said.
With a show of labor, her body in pain, Claire pulled herself up and stepped from the hut. I rolled out the blanket and brought Claire back in, lowering her down again. Without removing her shoes she shucked her leggings to her knees, then turned on her stomach.
“Okay” was all she said, not even looking up at me. She was ready.
I did not yet know if I was aroused.
Claire was quiet today, but sometimes our best intimacy occurred after the
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