The Flame Alphabet

by Ben Marcus

  LeBov had apparently called for the forest Jews to come forward, to quit hoarding their fucking treasure.

  From what I could tell, LeBov knew little of our practice. He bathed in the standard misinformation, took wild swings, threw out a stinking bait that, I was sure, none of us would take.

  Wisdom, he argued, was meant to be shared. Particularly wisdom that offers precise guidance on our crisis. A crisis like this, he said, requires assets. We must develop assets that will assist us in our change, and we can never ignore the source of a poison, the source of it, when we look to soothe its symptoms.

  The source of it. He was talking about children.

  Which had what to do with our religion? I wondered.

  A closing thought on LeBov from our expert. I do not recall the man’s name or title, just that he wore a collar and a dark robe, and that his thoughts seemed to come so slowly that they caused him pain.

  “LeBov’s idea that science cannot help us, but faith can—this is an idea that resonates deeply for me. Deeply.”

  He attempted an important pause.

  “But when the faith to which he is referring does not exist, I can only be profoundly troubled. It desecrates the real, authentic Jew to imagine a false and private one, and to accord that imaginary Jew with secret powers channeled against the interests of the world at large. It’s a desecration.”

  The feature on LeBov ended and Jim Adelle seemed caught by surprise, swaying in his chair behind the big news table. He put his finger to his ear, listened to his producer, winced. Perhaps, instead of a verbal message, they’d sent a knifelike frequency into his head. In the end, I bet Jim Adelle would have preferred that to words.

  He looked up but his focus couldn’t quite meet the camera. He seemed to be staring at something inside his own eyes. With a mechanical face he repeated the news. LeBov was dead.

  I got up to continue my apology to Claire, if I could find her. It was going to take a little bit more work.

  Then they showed LeBov’s picture again.

  Except on the screen where there should have been a picture of a man I’ve never seen, whose voice I’d hardly heard on the radio, they showed a picture of Murphy. It was unmistakable. The same red hair, the same immortal skin. A recent photo of Murphy.

  I crouched into the blue funnel of the television to get a good look.

  So. This was LeBov.

  Do not let him confuse or mislead you, Murphy had said. Or was it LeBov who said this to me?

  Are you reading LeBov? That will catch you up on things.

  If he was still alive, and I had a terrible feeling that he was, I was pretty sure I knew where I could find him.

  18

  News of the quarantine issued through the car radio on my way down to the Oliver’s. It would be temporary. The neighborhood would be restricted to children, protected, necessities provided. Details were given about the gate, the fence line, the use of dogs. It was time for everyone else to go.

  A diversion would be created for the children. Something involving the school. Or was it the prison?

  They were giving us a day, a day and a half, to pack our things and leave.

  Some suggested destinations followed. Shelters, towns, mostly fanning to the south. Wheeling, Marion, Danville, the quad county district, Albert Farm. Towns with undeveloped space, meadowland. Counties with soil still soft enough for digging, where the salt was naturally repelled by the winter air systems. The list was not long.

  The way I heard this was: Do not go to Wheeling, Marion, Danville. Avoid the quad counties and Albert Farm.

  I pictured Claire under blankets in the backseat of the car as I drove all night, wondering where to stop. She was not ready to travel, especially with no destination, no promise of comfort or safety when we arrived.

  Wherever we ended up, we would need to be separated from our volatile fellows. The toxicity had spread beyond children. Not everywhere, not fully, but that was the trend. Everyone would make everyone sick, with children the lone immuners. We should not, according to the report, even be together, unless we could refrain from speech, take a pact of silence.

  We urge you to travel alone. Consider this an allergy to people.

  I was as bad for Claire as Esther, or would be soon. Earlier today, when I found Claire after the report on LeBov and subjected her to my lengthy, defensive apology and watched her shrink into the bed while I spoke, it wasn’t only because she had grown sick of the sight of me. It was my language as well. It was that I had spoken at all.

  If we traveled together we had better hold our goddamn tongues.

  The radio report followed in robotic tones, with cautions, locations to avoid, roads that were closed. Rivers and bridges, the Sheldrake, Wickers Creek, the Menands Bridge. Something about the airspace of Elmira and a marine warning near the Mourner’s Sound. A different station was given for the full, updated list of closures, but I did not switch over. I could wait to hear the names of places I should not go.

  At a stop sign I heard a sharp noise and something hit my car. A whimper floated up, perhaps from my own mouth. The streets were dark, boiling circles of light spreading from the streetlamps. A pack of children tore across a yard, fled from sight. I locked my doors. Then a soft thing fell into the car and the car lifted, as if someone were out there, trying to push the car over.

  I stepped on the gas, revved it hard, but the car was blocked by something. It whinnied forward, the engine straining, and seemed to elevate in the back.

  One of them pressed his little face into the driver’s side window, so close. He smiled, his lips moving, as if he were singing. With his finger he tapped on the glass, made a twirling motion for me to roll down the window. His hands formed a posture of prayer under his chin and I believe he mimed the word please.

  He wanted to talk.

  I hammered down on the gas again and the car whined, lifted, then released with a squeal over whatever had been blocking it and I sped away.

  In my rearview mirror a few of them crouched over something, not even looking my way. They formed a circle, went to their knees, and that was all I saw.

  It was just kids, out in the street after suppertime. That’s all it was. Kids playing in the road.

  In the Oliver’s parking lot I sat in the car to listen to the rest of the broadcast.

  The emergency report was delivered in clipped tones, the voice of a woman who seemed unable to hear herself, as if she were reading a foreign language phonetically.

  An escalation in the toxicity had been observed in places like Harrisburg, Fremont, with more reports coming in. Something had happened in Wisconsin. Wisconsin had experienced an incident. There was, according to reports, a complete absence of speech originating from Wisconsin. This was no longer a poison from children. In Wisconsin all language, no matter the source, was toxic. The children alone were immune.

  The Wisconsin area has unfortunately been a reliable precursor. We believe that what happens there will soon, we do not know when, happen here.

  Health officials counsel seclusion, even from loved ones.

  We unfortunately have to expect this escalation to spread. Even if you now find that exposure to speech sources other than children—including this broadcast—does not cause a disturbance, we cannot advise you that this will be the case for very much longer.

  This station, as of tonight, will be suspending reports. We are working on a method to stay in touch. We will find a way to reach you. Please do stand by.

  In good conscience we cannot continue. We wish you safety in your homes tonight.

  The station faded to static. I spun through the pre-sets and found nothing else, just sharper or lower-toned hissing, from one end of the dial to the next.

  The parking lot of the Oliver’s was crowded with vans. From one of them came a fat tunnel of hosing. Little wisps of smoke spilled from its papery surface as the hosing curled away from the van, dropping down a fenced-in manhole.

  The smoke smelled clean, fr
uity. Whatever work was going on was soundless.

  A man wearing a clear vest stood by the manhole with a clipboard. After vigorously massaging my face to prepare it for speech, I asked him what was going on.

  He smiled, shook his head, pointed to his ear.

  This meant, what, he was deaf?

  I pointed at the manhole, shrugged, and mouthed: “What is it?”

  The man shook his head in the negative again.

  A worker climbed from the hole as I walked away. He picked clumps of a wet cheese from his face. Tethered to his waist was an orange cable as thick as a man’s leg, and he dragged it from the hole where they pinned it in place on a specimen table. I’d seen that cabling before. The man with the clipboard grabbed his radio and, instead of speaking into it, held it out at the cable, as if whoever was on the other end of the radio needed to hear this.

  But then I heard it, too, and it was unmistakable. From that orange cable, with no listener attached, came the voice of Rabbi Burke, singing one of his songs. A song I’d heard before.

  In the lobby of the Oliver’s I looked for Murphy.

  People hurried around breaking things down, packing boxes. A stack of crates sat at the door, waiting to be loaded into the vans. The crates had breathing holes drilled into them, arrows painted on their sides, pointing up. The sweet, gamey smell of a zoo was in the air.

  A young man in coveralls sat at a table up front, seeming official. When I asked him if Murphy was here, he could only repeat the name back to me, as if I’d issued a math problem he was not expected to solve.

  I explained that Murphy had invited me down here. Spitting image of LeBov, I didn’t say. Rest his soul.

  It was hard to understand him through his respirator, a steamed-over mask covering his mouth.

  “Invitations aren’t required,” I think he said, pointing at the open door.

  An elderly couple swept into the lobby. They clung to each other, looking at us as if we were wild animals. The woman cried out, fell. From nowhere rushed two guards with blankets. They covered up the couple and dragged them away.

  “We’re open to everyone,” said the young man.

  He pushed his respirator to the side, wiped his mouth, then carefully fit it back on. With a handheld mirror he checked the straps that cut across his cheeks.

  “I know,” I said, even though I didn’t. “But Murphy thought my research might benefit, or that, what I mean is, people here might benefit from the work I’m doing.”

  The man returned the sort of smile professionals are trained to give no matter what you’ve said. I could have threatened his life, my own. I could have asked for the bathroom. I’d get the same lunatic smile.

  He leaned in close, placed his finger over my mouth.

  He wanted me silent. I supposed I understood, so I didn’t reply, only nodded, looked away.

  From a box he retrieved a white choke collar, mimed for me to put it on. It was smeared in what smelled like Murphy’s grease, cold on my neck. My face relaxed when I fastened it on.

  He said Murphy’s name aloud, as if that might jar his memory. Finally he said, “I’m sorry. I’m not very good with names.”

  I wanted to say: Red hair, large face. Excels at ambush. Perhaps immune to the problem we’re all here to solve. Not who he seems to be? That Murphy?

  I couldn’t say LeBov. It’s LeBov I’m looking for, because I have reason to believe that he’s still alive, operating under a different name. Murphy. But you probably know all of that, don’t you?

  “Is there someone else I could talk to?” I asked.

  And say what? And do what?

  “I’m afraid the time for that is over.”

  Literal language was useless for what I’d come to do. This man was refusing to read between the lines, acknowledge any subtext, and thus we were locked in a prison of exact meaning, impossible to shed.

  It would turn out that LeBov’s language protocols, as practiced by his staff, prohibited nuance, inference. They were nearly moot now anyway.

  He stood up, gathered some papers, among them what I took to be a copy of The Proofs.

  I pointed at it. “Where’d you get that?” I asked.

  He pointed at a pile of them sitting on another table.

  Right. He would victimize me with facts, fail to elaborate, force me to excavate an ultra-specific set of questions to which he would then show his dumb, blank face. Quiet uncertainty is perhaps the most medicinal mode. I was not going to like this new form of speech.

  He pushed a pamphlet at me. “You might want to look at these protocols. Some things to keep in mind when you speak, if you really must speak. You’ve mentioned yourself a few times, and it’s probably worth avoiding. It’s not personal. Or I guess actually that it is. It’s really personal. It’s just that the studies are pretty conclusive about this stuff.”

  “The studies?” I asked. “Is that what you’ve been doing here?”

  A low growl issued from one of the crates, triggering a chorus of animal cries throughout the lobby.

  “Or talk all you want,” he said, bored. “But do it somewhere else.”

  His smile had a little bit of clear shit in it. I could smell it.

  I took the pamphlet, stared at it without focus. The text was slightly darker than the white paper it was printed on. My hands were unsteady and the text wobbled, as if it hadn’t been fastened to the paper. I felt sick, a tightness in my chest.

  “It only seems harder to read,” he smirked. “It’s much, much easier on the … you know,” and he tapped his head. “We’re probably going to see a lot more of that soon.”

  I pictured seeing more of something you could hardly see to begin with. That great unused resource, the invisible air. We’d fill it with text, the nearly translucent kind. That would solve everything.

  “Sorry to run but you’ll have to excuse me,” he said. “We’re closing up. This Forsythe is probably not going to meet again. Maybe that guy you’re looking for, Murray? Maybe he’s in Rochester?”

  Murray of Rochester. In my mind I hacked at him with a long knife.

  It was dark outside and the Oliver’s staff had finished loading their vans. They drifted out of the lobby into the parking lot. I guess they would go home and pack now, maybe get an early start and hit the road later tonight, before the sun came up. Beat the traffic.

  It’s hard to describe people who are silent as a matter of life and death, who move through the world in fear of speech. You can hear the swishing of their limbs, the music of their breath. None of them spoke. They left the building with small waves of the hand to each other, faces down, and walked out into the night.

  As the man in coveralls walked off I asked him if he’d had any news, if he knew anything. I tried to raise my voice but the white collar on my neck seemed to limit my volume.

  “Go home, stay inside,” he said, over his shoulder. “Do not talk to anyone.”

  “Right,” I said. “But do you know what’s actually happening?”

  “We’re telling people, just to be safe, to say their good-byes.”

  I watched him leave. He embraced an older, well-dressed woman on the way out. She was crying. He kissed her cheek, then disappeared into the throng of vans.

  19

  There was one place left to try. It would involve parking the car at Blister Field, ducking under the fence, and trekking through the woods until I reached the stream. The stream would be dry now, maybe iced over, and I’d have to traverse the bank in darkness, groping on hands and knees until I found the half-rotted footbridge that would bring me across.

  Then the far bank would need to be climbed and tonight it would certainly be slippery. Slippery and sharp, with stones pushed up from the frost heaves, the bitter ends of tree roots bulging out to collect heat from the air.

  I never went to the hut at night. But tonight would seem to be an exception to the rule. These last months were an exception, if one wanted to be strict about it. It was hard not to feel that the
codes of access at our hut were written for unexceptional times. All the guidance I knew was written for unexceptional times.

  I climbed the last of the riverbank and bushwhacked through low, dry branches until finally I reached the little footpath that would lead me along the southern approach to the hut.

  Before I even arrived I saw the wild glare of a flashlight. An oily glow zoomed through the woods and I ducked down to watch. The hut had no window, just a framed hole long relieved of its glass.

  On warm days Claire sometimes sat in the empty window frame while I readied the transmission.

  Now inside our hut a man crouched and shook, peered out at the forest. Parts of him were all I could see. I stayed hidden in the trees, watching that smooth, preserved face, the orange hair boiling on the head.

  LeBov was alive and he was Murphy.

  He looked from the window hole with the light under his face, showing himself to the dark woods.

  I circled quietly, keeping my distance. From behind a tree I watched as he went in and out of the hut, sweeping his flashlight in small arcs of discovery.

  Occasionally the flashlight settled on something and he dilated the lens. He’d stoop over, pick something up, examine it in the light, then, invariably, he’d toss it to the ground and resume his search.

  LeBov circled behind the hut, dragged over a crate, and climbed up on the roof. From there he crouched, seemed to pick at the shingles, and then slid down and disappeared, the glare from his flashlight strobing in the high branches.

  I dug in against the embankment. LeBov’s flashlight retreated into the far woods behind the hut, and then I heard nothing, saw no more light.

  I sat back to rest. I’d give it a little bit more time.

  I should have gone home. At home there was still so much to do. We had to pack, ready the house. Claire would need help. Perhaps I could lift her into the bath, let her soak. More than that, she might need persuading. I had to think about how I would explain our next move, how to remove all choice from my presentation.