The Burden of Babylon (Redactor’s Addendum)

It was nice.

It was so nice, and so . . . familiar.

Talking to my brother, I mean. That Sunday, that evening.

It was the last time that we

It was nice, talking to my brother, that evening, after he came home from his big trip into the city.

In our bedroom, with the blinds closed and the door shut. Just him and me and nothing else.

It was nice, getting to talk to my brother, one last time.

Now, now. I don’t mean that it was the last conversation I had with Herschel. I don’t mean to imply that he and I never exchanged words, after that evening.

We did, of course.

We did exchange words with one another, later on, in December. Important words, too.

I didn’t mean to imply otherwise, when I said “one last time.”

I didn’t mean anything of the sort. Of course not.

I only meant that

You KNOW what I me

It was just, well.

It was just that Herschel and I were in the bedroom, that evening. And we talked.

And we talked the way a brother and a sister might talk to one another, I imagine.

You know, if they’d grown up together, talking. In their bedroom, day after day, year after year.

Having one very long conversation, whose roots go all the way back—to the time before college, before high school, before middle school, before school. Before learning to walk, even.

The moment that the younger of the pair starts to babble, as a baby, the contract is sealed. No escape for you now, little one! The conversation has begun; you are conducting it right now, as you laugh and moan and drool. The conversation has begun, and it won’t stop even after you’re all grown up. And every last word that comes out of your babbling little mouth is a part of that conversation, now.

Not that I’d know.

What that sort of thing is like, I mean.

It’s just that, well.

There are some things I can visualize very crisply, even though I’ve never experienced them, and never will. Things that I just can’t imagine being any other way than the way they are, in my head, when I visualize them.

There’s a certain way that things are, when you are someone’s sister. And you are alone with him in a bedroom, talking to him. Just like the two of you have always done, for so many years.

There’s a certain way that things would have to be, under those circumstances. Don’t you think so?

There’s a certain way that things would have been, I have to imagine, for Herschel and me. If we’d had more time.

If I’d gotten to hear him before he was ready to be heard.

If Herschel had babbled in his toddling years, and I’d gotten to hear the whole of it, warts and all. If Herschel had told me silly stories about stuffed toys, at a certain age, and then told me different stories the next day, having forgotten the ones from yesterday, which he didn’t really believe even at the time.

If his “shell” hadn’t come between us, shielding me from all that is supposed to be a sister’s birthright—the inane blather, the peevish tantrums—and instead saving up my brother’s breath for the day when there was no softness left inside the “shell,” but only a hard-edged and perfected gem.

Herschel and I got so little time, you know.

But we made do, as well as we could, with the little time that we did have.

I won’t say we “made up for lost time.” How could we have done so? We only had that one year, you know, and not even the whole of it.

We only had those months, I should say, since they didn’t even add up to one measly year, all together.

Still, we did have those months.

And in those months we did pretend, sometimes, to be a brother and sister, who talked as a brother and sister do.

We even managed, on occasion, to convince one another that that was just the way things were, between us. That they had always been that way, or might well have been.

Or, I managed to convince myself of that, at least.

On occasion.

That one Sunday evening, for instance.

After Herschel and I had had our strange little fight, in the morning, and he’d gone out into the city.

After Herschel had come back to the apartment, again, in a very different sort of mood.

Oddly amicable, despite our little fight in the morning. Oddly keen on talking to me, in spite of the “mists” which supposedly stood between us, rendering me incapable of ever understanding him.

And oddly interested in hearing what I had to say, too. In spite of the “mists,” and my “forgetting,” and all the other stuffed-toy characters of my brother’s silly stories, screaming as they usually did into my brother’s ear, telling him that he need not ever listen to anyone at all, since he knew everything already.

I almost want to say that Herschel seemed docile, at first, after he came back. I won’t say that, because docile is not a word that could ever possibly apply to my brother. But if it could? Then, yes, in that case I would say he seemed docile, after he came back.

He wanted to talk to me, after he came back.

Not about Ma, and not about his trip into the city. He made it very clear, without words, that he didn’t want to talk about those things. And so we didn’t, at first.

He wanted to talk to me about everything else, instead.

As though it were the most natural thing in the world. As though it were normal, between us, for the one to seek out the other as a confidante, as sounding-board, as a handy encyclopedia for all the things that aren’t written down in books, as—oh, as anything, the sky’s the limit!

As I said: our pretend play could become very realistic, sometimes.

As I said: sometimes we managed to pull the wool over our own eyes. Sometimes I managed to convince myself, in spite of myself, that Herschel and I simply were that way—or might as well have been.

I was convinced, that evening.

It was nice.

 

 

“What I could never wrap my head around,” I said.

I lay on my bed. Not in the usual sleeping posture, with my head on the pillow, but cross-ways, draped over the bed’s short side.

Only my midsection was really on the bed, per se. The top and bottom of my body dangled off the edges of the bed—my shins and feet off the one side, and my neck and head off the other.

I let them dangle, relaxing all my muscles. I let my hair tumble freely from the bottom of my upside-down head; I felt its tiny weight, tugging gently at my scalp.

Herschel sat on the floor, between the two beds. He stared intently at my dangling, upside-down face.

I stared back, smiling. I saw an inverted brother, cross-legged on the floor, at the top of an inverted bedroom.

I felt slightly dizzy, but not in a bad way. It was a nice sort of dizziness, and I took care to enjoy it while it lasted.

(If you are reading this, you are not a small child who spins and spins, in circles. But if such a child could read this, I imagine he would understand what I’m talking about, here.)

(And perhaps you will understand anyway, even though you are all grown-up, now, and properly accustomed to the delusion that you can make the whole world sit still, and hold that world out at arms’ length, right-side up and fixed in place, while you inspect it from top to bottom with your grown-up eyes.)

“What I could never wrap my head around,” I said to Herschel, “is how the Original Creation can be above the earth.”

I used to spend a lot of time lying just like this, cross-ways over my bed.

I don’t do it so often, anymore. But I used to, many years ago. I used to do it all the time.

I liked the nice feeling it would bring on. That slight dizziness, with its own special piquancy which was lacking in the sorts of dizziness that could be attained by spinning, or by riding in a car along a bumpy road, or by any other means.

And I liked the way my kid brother would react, when I did it.

I liked the fascinated look that came over him, as he stared at my upside-down face.

The sudden spark in those usually-empty eyes. And the shape of those usually-expressionless lips, which I would almost want to call a smile, if I did not know better.

The appreciative humming that would warble from that usually-silent mouth, and the way that this humming would sometimes bubble over into something which—if I did not know better—I would almost want to call a giggle.

No amount of familiarity seemed capable of muting that fascination. The first time I tried out the pose, my brother was startled by the sight of my inverted features, and stared in mute astonishment at them for as long as I was willing to display them. The fiftieth time, the five-hundredth? He seemed no less startled, and no less astonished.

Like a baby boggling endlessly at peek-a-boo, I would think, back then. Unable to find a place for it in his world, no matter how many times it rudely asserts its own existence.

Herschel and I never spoke about this little game of ours. I never asked him what it had been like for him, marveling at my face in the way he had, over and over, many years ago.

I never asked, because—to be frank—I didn’t want to know the answer.

I’m sure he had an answer, ready for me, hard-edged and perfect. I’m sure he would say that he remembered our little game, remembered it perfectly. And I’m sure he would tell me that I was mistaken, thinking I only saw a little boy boggling at the funny image of his sister turned upside down, at a sight that was somehow both familiar and unfamiliar.

I’m sure he would tell me all about the divine mysteries he was puzzling over, and how they were way over my head. About how he’d been laughing at me, inside, back then. Laughing at his silly Sister, Miriam Schoen, who was simple and worldly, and did not know better.

I’m sure he would have said it, and I didn’t want to hear it.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “How the Original Creation can be above the earth, in the sky, when . . .

“It’s just,” I said, “that the earth is a globe, Herschel.”

I resisted the temptation to pepper my sentences with little half-questions.

Ordinarily I might have said, “the earth is a globe, you know?”, or “the earth is a globe, right?” But that evening, Herschel and I were playing a second kind of “little game,” at the same time we played the other one.

A game of question-for-question.

I asked a question, and he answered. In exchange, he got to ask a question, and I had to answer. And so on, back and forth, turn for turn.

If I had said “the earth is a globe, right?”, Herschel might have pounced, claiming that this was my allotted question—as silly as that might seem—and that, after answering it with a simple “yes,” he would have to be allowed to ask a question of his own.

“You’ve told me,” I said, “that if I stand in the street, here in Brooklyn, New York, and look up at the sky—then I’m looking right up at your Original Creation.

“That I’m staring it right in the face, even if I don’t know it. Even if I can’t actually see it hanging up there, it’s there, right above.

“But if that’s where it is—hanging in the sky, right above Brooklyn, New York—then someone standing in, oh, I don’t know—in Timbuktu, or where have you—they wouldn’t be looking up at the Original Creation.

“They’d be looking in some whole other direction.

“Because the earth is a globe.

“So I guess my question is, how can your Original Creation be hanging up in the sky, above everywhere? Above Brooklyn, New York, and above Timbuktu too?

“Is it . . . is it some kind of shell, wrapped around the whole earth, or . . .”

“No,” Herschel said with a smile.

“The Original Creation is not a shell, enclosing the globe that is its shadow,” he said. “It is not a globe, either, for that matter.

“The Original Earth is a flat disc, surrounded by high mountains and high waters, and enclosed from above by the solid half-globe of the Original Firmament.

“You ask, Sister, how it can be that a disc hangs above a globe, and is above that globe everywhere, and is gazed at by every gaze that can be cast up from the surface of that globe, anywhere.”

I gave him an upside-down nod.

“You imagine,” he said, “I suppose, that when men are scattered out as they are upon the globe, and they gaze up, their scattered gazes are like so many javelins, flung up into the clouds.

“And are like javelins flung with the greatest strength that can be conceived of, so that they pierce through the clouds and fly onward, and continue to fly without end, away from the globe—in every direction that can be conceived of.

“You imagine them diverging from one another, growing further and further apart, inexorably, as they sail at undimmed speed through the black waste which men call outer space.

“This conception is accurate, Sister, within its proper limits. However, it has proper limits. It is limited. It is not complete.”

“Mm,” I murmured with interest.

(Yes, with interest. Because I was trying to be interested, for once, in Herschel’s little world, and all its silly complications.)

(I was trying, for once, to be his sister.)

(I had told him what I really thought, of his little world, that same morning. And what I really thought had not wavered, not one bit. I was merely humoring him, now, and trying to give his views a proper hearing.)

(Even the most shameless of cloud-cuckoo silliness deserves a proper hearing, doesn’t it?)

“You imagine,” Herschel said, “a scattering of javelins, or gazes, which are flung up from earth, in every direction.

“Which cannot but diverge further and further from one another, inexorably, in their boundless and inexorable flight.

“Until they reach the boundary of the bounded, and fly onward, into the boundless.

“What men call outer space has a limit of its own, an edge—as all shadows do.

“This edge is, in fact, the edge of the shadows. It is the place where all shadows end, and where shadow itself ends, and is no longer.

“Being so, it cannot be extended, as a shell or globe is extended. Its very nature forbids extension. For the separate parts of any extent may in time become dissimilar to one another—but the boundary of which I speak is infinitely simple, containing only the one thing.

“The one distinction between shadow and body, darkness and light, image and immanence.

“I have named three dyads, Sister, but you must not imagine I speak of a threefold thing. Shadow and body, darkness and light, image and immanence: these are singly divided, by one boundary only.

“That which was flung up—the javelins, or the gazes of men—must diverge and diverge, yes. But just as surely, its scattered elements must converge again, at last. At the edge, at the end.

“Whether or not they know they are headed there, they are flying toward a single place. And they will all meet again, there, at the end of their separate courses of flight.

“And then?

“If the fliers were javelins, Sister, and not mere ghostly lines of sight?

“Then—after meeting the end, and crossing it—they would hit the underside of Sheol. For Sheol is placed below the Original Earth, and its underside is the lowermost point of the Original Creation.

“They would hit it, and bounce off, and fall back into shadow. For the enclosure that bounds Sheol is made up of the hardest substance that can be conceived of, and no javelin can possibly pierce through it.”

I laughed, then. I couldn’t help it.

“Clunk!” I said, giggling.

Herschel glared at me, but only for a moment.

“Sheol . . .” I said, with interest.

“That’s the place where we go when we die, right?”

Herschel shook his head, and made a tutting sound.

“You have asked your question,” he said, primly. “Now I shall ask mine, in accordance with the rules of our game.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yes, yes, you’re right. I’m sorry.”

He made a brief, magnanimous gesture, and then stared again at me, with something new in his eyes.

Something new, which I wasn’t so sure that I liked.

“Vincent Vierge,” he began.

I groaned.

“Vincent Vierge,” Herschel repeated, “propounds a doctrine which includes, among diverse other dubious propositions, the following one.

“That the things which he calls ‘media forms’”—Herschel pronounced this phrase with distaste, almost with disgust—“advance along an inexorable and preordained course, over which course they produce inexorably greater divisions between, on the one hand, the ever-growing mass of ‘receivers’ to which these ‘media forms’ are addressed, and on the other hand, the ever-diminishing priesthood of ‘transmitters’ responsible for their production and dissemination.

“That the one grows ever more remote from the other, in every sense.

“So that the men, in their mass, are made ‘receivers’ of what was not made by massed men, but by some others—and by a very few others, who are steadily more unified in their separate nature, who are steadily tending toward a unity.

“A unity to which the men, in their mass, bear a steadily more distant resemblance. To which, in time, they will bear no resemblance whatsoever.

“A unified priesthood to whom the men cannot speak, although they are continually spoken to by these others, even in the so-called ‘privacy’ of their own homes.

“For it is precisely in those private homes that the ‘transmission’ meets its ‘receivers’.

“It is through the men’s own furniture, without which their private rooms would be barren and lacking in gladness, that the others make their otherworldly voices heard.

“Vincent Vierge,” Herschel said with disgust, “holds all this to be true.

“And yet Vincent Vierge, himself, produces and disseminates ‘media’ of his own, from his own living room, using his own hand-built devices! Not approved for dissemination by any priesthood, and not in need of any such approval!

“It would seem difficult, Sister, to account for the ‘media’ produced and disseminated by Vincent Vierge in the terms of the very theories which his ‘media’ exist to promulgate.

“For his productions, such as they are—his ‘video essays’—do not merely lack the approval of the priesthood whose existence, and importance, his theories presuppose. They also lack the guiding purposes which he locates in that priesthood, and whose unity his theories also presuppose.

“One does not have to see very much of his ‘work’ to recognize that it is wholly dissimilar from anything made by the ‘concentrated loci of capital-intensive media production’ about which he is so eager to theorize, and whose concentrated nature is a crucial premise, without which one might imagine his whole edifice of theory crumbling to the ground!

“How do you propose, Sister, to defuse this apparent paradox, and prevent it from detonating and destroying Vincent Vierge’s doctrine—from the inside out, from the bottom up? Leaving nothing standing afterwards?

“That is my question,” he said, and was finally silent again.

I sighed.

People were always trying to do this. I was so fucking tired of it.

Trying to debunk Vincent. Trying to poke holes in him, with their little twiglike spears of schoolroom logic.

And clapping with glee as they imagined him unraveling, all at once. As they imagined him clattering to the floor in a heap, finally debunked, and no longer worthy of anyone’s attention, and no longer worthy of living, either.

He was only trying to speak his truth—to speak the truth. He only wanted to say what ought to be said, and what no one else was saying.

He only wanted that, and to live, also. Was this really too much for a man to ask?

Those video essays, which everyone was always so eager to puncture and destroy, were Vincent’s only livelihood.

Did they know that? The people who were always trying to puncture and destroy those essays, who clapped with glee while they did so? Did they understand that it wasn’t just a series of videos they were aiming to destroy, but a man’s life?

It was not much, the rent on that house in Portland, Oregon, but it was not nothing. And it was only through the financial support of his viewers—of a generous few among his viewers, who were few to begin with!—that Vincent could afford to pay for that house, or for his groceries, or for anything at all.

Once, near the start of my relationship with Vincent, I actually asked Ma about the idea of us pitching in ourselves. The idea of us, the Schoen family, setting aside some money every month to send off to Vincent, in the way that a small handful of his viewers already did.

I actually asked Ma! I thought up the idea, and actually said it out loud, not realizing the absurdity of it until the whole of it had already tumbled out of my mouth.

If you ever get yourself thinking that I’m smart—because I spent some time at Barnard College, or because my brother aced some special test, or whatever the reason might be—well, if you ever do, remind yourself that I actually asked Ma Schoen whether we could set aside some money and pitch in.

If you ever start getting suspicions that I might have a brain, remind yourself of that, and then come to your senses.

(When I talked to Vincent about the topic, afterward, he was aghast that I’d even considered “pitching in.” He understood how tight things were, for us.)

(Vincent was always like that. Always so understanding. About us, about me, about everything.)

“Herschel . . .” I tried to begin.

“Herschel,” I said, measuring out my voice carefully, letting none of my affronted feelings leak out into it.

“I do often think, Herschel, that you . . . that you underestimate Vincent.

“I know, I know. I know I would say that, of course. But, well . . . I’m saying it.”

It really was easier to talk to Herschel, I thought, with my head upside-down.

The resentments that had piled up in the dark corners of the room were not as obvious to the eye, when those corners were not in their usual places.

And the qualities which my brother had acquired around the time he began to speak—the inviolable confidence, the unearned sense of dignity, the heartless and all-consuming pride—these were easier to tolerate when he appeared to be sitting on the ceiling, suspended upside-down like a chandelier.

It was not a dignified sight. And so it punctured his dignity, just a little. Just enough to give me room to breathe.

I suppose that some sort of thought might have crossed my mind, at this point, about how our conversation might turn out to be the beginning of something, and not just the end of something else.

It would stand to reason, for me to have thought something along these lines.

Ha, ha.

It is funny, isn’t it, the way that

“Vincent has thought of all that,” I said, suppressing the words “of course.”

“All that stuff that you said. He’s aware of it.

“He understands.

“He’s very thoughtful. I know you don’t believe me, but he is.

“I know you won’t take this the way I mean it, but I . . . I think you and Vincent actually have a lot in—”

I stopped myself, before it was too late.

I waved my arms to and fro, playfully. I made myself look leisurely, whimsical, safe.

“Anyway,” I said. “To answer your question . . .

“Vincent doesn’t think that the sort of thing he’s doing will last. He thinks it will be swept away, by the new media forms that are going to come, soon.

“No one’s going to want to make video essays, anymore. Not after media reaches its next phase.

“The sort of thing he’s doing is a ‘transitory aberration in the logic of history’—those are his exact words for it.

“And the people he’s reaching, with his essays . . . people like me . . . we’re the same way. We are ‘the ones that the rushing tide passed by,’ to use his words again.

“And Herschel, see—that’s exactly why he does things the way he does.

“He sends his truth out from his own home, using his own hand-made tools, because he still can.

“Because he can tell people, now, about what’s coming, before it comes, and sweeps us all away.

“And the people who tune in? ‘The ones that the rushing tide passed by?’

“He speaks to us, because we need him most. We are lost, more than anyone, and he is helping us find our way back.

“And we are being left behind, more than anyone. We are left, watching, as something we don’t understand sweeps out in front of us, pulling everyone else along with it, pulling everyone and everything apart from us . . .

“‘Friends, viewers, followers,’ Vincent says. ‘You, more than anyone, are in a position to appreciate what is coming next.’

“‘Because you know what it is to be left behind. To watch from a distance. To watch a rushing wave, from a distance, and know there is nothing else for you to do, except watch that wave.’

“That is how it will be for everyone, Herschel.

“When media reaches its next phase, I mean. Everyone will feel like we do, already—me, and the rest of Vincent’s viewership.

“Everyone will feel it, but we’ll be prepared. It won’t be our first time, in the viewer’s seat.

“It won’t come as a shock, for us, when the wave comes, and wants to fill us up, and so we have to become its vessels.

“For us, it will only be a confirmation of how things already are, when it comes.

“For us, it won’t hurt at all, when it comes.”

I saw Herschel’s upside-down head nodding. I saw him receding into himself, to mull over my words.

He seemed to be taking me seriously. He seemed to be honestly interested in what I had to say.

Lightness, gaiety! An upside-down party in our upside-down bedroom, just my brother and me!

We were having so much fun, weren’t we.

Weren’t we.

“I see,” Herschel said.

“Thank you,” he said.

He sounded almost disappointed. He had really expected to puncture me and Vincent, see us deflate, clap in glee. And now here I was, making sense, spoiling his fun.

“Your turn,” he said.

As it happened, I had gotten so wrapped up in our last exchange that I hadn’t spared any thought for what my next question would be.

I wanted to ask something about Vincent, and why it was that my brother was so set against him, so set on seeing him debunked and humiliated, when the poor man was only trying to—

I stopped myself, before it was too late.

I wracked my brain for safe things, unrelated to my feelings. I told myself: you are showing an interest. You are showing an interest, now, in your brother’s way of seeing things.

“There was this word you used, earlier,” I said.

“One of your words that I could never wrap my head around,” I said. “Immanence.

“I thought that . . . immanence meant something like, I don’t know, like . . . like a thing that only exists in your mind.

“A thing that’s only mental, that’s imaginary. That can’t do anything by itself, because it’s only in your mind.

“But that doesn’t . . . I don’t understand. If that’s what the word means, then I don’t get it. How you’re using it.

“That’s my question, I guess. What do you mean, when you say immanence?”

Herschel smiled.

“I cannot truly explain, Sister,” he said, “for you have forgotten, and cannot understand.”

I swallowed a sigh.

Oh, Herschel. Still up to your old games, are you? Even now, up there on the ceiling?

“It is true,” he said, “that an immanence is a body within mind, and—one might even say—within mind only.

“But mind and body, Sister, are not two, but one.

“This is why men did not speak much of minds, in earlier days, when men still remembered past their infancy. Or, when they did speak of minds, spoke only in ways that men now find strange, and cannot understand.

“When I speak of immanence, Sister, I am speaking of mind and body, and of their unity.

“I am speaking, also, of the breath that went over the waters; I am speaking, also, of that which need not be imaged, and which is not in need of any substitute. For the original of it is present, and is present originally.”

He looked up at me (or should I say, down at me!). He was smiling, still.

I made myself smile back at him, as if I’d gotten some kind of pleasure or illumination out of his latest parcel of pretend profundities.

“Your turn,” I said, having wasted my own.

He smiled wider.

I felt uneasy, seeing him smile like that. Even on the ceiling.

He was smiling so wide that I could see his teeth. I thought about the word docile, and how it was not something one could ever apply to my brother.

“You sit in front of the television,” he said.

“You do not do much else, these days, besides that,” he said.

“You used to watch certain shows, and not others. You used to watch the shows that you liked, and not watch the others, which you did not like.

“But now, you watch them all.

“And it is because of Vincent Vierge, that you sit like this, all day long. Watching them all, the one and then the next.

“It is because Vincent Vierge holds as a point of his doctrine that we will all become like this, when his prophesied ‘media forms’ arrive. We will all be as you are, limp and motionless, entranced by our own furniture.

“If this is to be, then so be it. One takes what one is given, always.

“And one sets about finding some proper and pleasing use for that which one was given, always.

“Vincent Vierge proclaims that we will all fall into a trance like yours, later on.

“You are merely coming to it a little earlier than most. But it will come, as you have said, and after it has come, no other condition besides this trance will be possible.

“Since this trance is to be our life, it naturally becomes a matter of great importance what sort of a life it is, for the one entranced.

“Whether there is a proper and pleasing use to which we can put this trance, and thereby go on living, though bounded by its confines.

“I have posed my question already, I think, but I will now pose it more properly, as a question.

“Do you enjoy what you do, Sister?

“When you sit, all day, in front of the television, watching indiscriminately, the one show and then the next?

“Without speaking, without moving?

“Do you see a life in this? One which you would be pleased to live, once it comes to pass that you are forced to live that life, and no other?”

Herschel, Herschel, stop.

No, no, stop, stop.

The thing is—

The thing about being in a bedroom, with your little brother, is that—

Even though he’s your little brother, even though you’re older, and anyway he’s slow, everybody knows that—even then, sometimes, he—

I breathed in, and breathed out.

I emptied myself, and opened myself up.

It will hurt a little, now, I told myself. Just a little. Just a little prick in your arm, a shot of the vaccine.

And then it won’t hurt at all, later, when the wave comes.

I brought my right hand over my left wrist, and traced out [ . . . [ . . . []]] on that wrist, following the lines of the marks I had made there, in pen, earlier in the day.

I do not know what the message is, I thought, but I carry it.

I do not know what the question is, I thought, but my answer is . . .

“No,” I admitted.

“No, I don’t,” I said.

“I don’t enjoy it.

“I’m supposed to, but I don’t. Vincent does, but I don’t.”

(I shouldn’t have said this, of course.)

“I see,” my brother said, in the same seething tone that he would use whenever he said Vincent’s name.

“I need to get better,” I said.

“It would be difficult to disagree,” Herschel said, invincibly smug.

I breathed in, I traced [ . . . []], I breathed out.

“Vincent needs me to be . . .” I said.

I did not finish the thought.

“Your turn, again,” Herschel said.

I wanted to turn on him, and pounce on him, the way he was pouncing on me, with all his questions.

Except, no. No, I realized. I didn’t want to pounce on him, baring my sharp teeth.

No: I wanted lightness, levity. I wanted to float all the way up to the ceiling, and meet my dumb little brother way up there, and play peek-a-boo with him, and tell him all about what our stuffed toys had been up to, while we weren’t paying attention.

“Your day!” I said quickly, thoughtlessly.

“Your trip up to the city today, how was it? What’d you do, what’d you see?

“There are so many different things to see in the city, you know. And everything’s so . . . grand, up there.”

My facade was straining. I was becoming a caricature. I beamed at Herschel, cheerfully, unconvincingly.

(I could tell, from the moment he came back home that Sunday, that he didn’t want to talk about this topic. And now here I was, asking. Good old me, still up to my old games.)

“I saw various things, Sister,” he said, “but all of them were beyond your understanding, since you have forgotten.

“I spoke with various men, as well,” he said, “all of whom are likewise beyond your understanding.

“I failed,” he said, strangely.

He didn’t say anything, for a little while after this.

The strangeness hung in the air.

“I came to a closer appreciation of the last battle, and the last rite,” he said at last, in a quiet voice. He seemed not quite sure of himself, for once.

“Of the great exactness that will be required of me,” he said, “in the carrying-out of the last rite.

“Of the way that it must be performed precisely as specified, or else it will not occur at all. Or else I will fail.

“And not even the paradoxical wit of the red-coated Intercessor,” he muttered, “would be able to emend and reverse my failure, then.”

I waited for him to go on, but it seemed he was done.

“Your turn,” I prompted him, gently.

He looked up (down?) at me. He had that wide toothy smile on his face, again, suddenly.

I do wish that he hadn’t smiled at me like that. Then, or ever.

“Why,” he said, “does my Mother, Ruth Schoen, permit you to sit idly in front of the television all day, instead of going out to find work, and then to work?

“My Mother, Ruth Schoen,” he said, “works very hard, and yet all her labors are scarcely enough to ensure that the three of us are housed and fed. And we are not fed as much as we once were, you will note.

“Why, then, are you permitted to lie idle? It puzzles me, Sister.”

Breathe in, breathe out.

Breathe, breathe, breathe.

Breathe! Dammit, Miriam. Don’t be so useless, now.

Breathe.

I do wish, sometimes, that he’d never learned to talk at all.

(I am not a good person. As you may have noticed.)

I am “lying idle,” I thought, because Ma cares more about her own pride than she does about seeing us fed.

Because, I thought, Ma would rather go hungry, herself, than see her daughter get a job. Her daughter already has a job, and that job is to swell her Ma’s pride.

“I think,” I said carefully, “that it hit Ma pretty hard, when I had to drop out of college.

“She liked it so much, you know, when I was in college.

“She was so proud.

“It was already so hard for her, you know, that I had to drop out, because of money. The idea of me getting a job, after that, on top of that . . .”

“I understand,” Herschel said, with more warmth than I would have preferred.

“My turn,” I said.

Herschel, Herschel. What are you? Up there, on the ceiling?

You ace tests meant for smart grown-ups, and you’re getting pulled out of class for bad behavior. You believe in something called an immanence. You believe in Santa Claus, too.

You’re getting pulled out of class, which I guess makes two of us, now, doesn’t it?

You are failing, and that makes two of us. You’re defenseless, and you make me defenseless, too.

You’re making me worried, little brother. You’re talking in a very alarming way, do you know that? Cut it out, cut it out this minute.

Your sister has enough to worry about. Come on. Behave.

Please.

“These last few days,” I said, “you’ve started talking . . .

“You’ve started talking about something called a last rite.

“I don’t remember hearing that before. Before this week.

“Now, Herschel, I don’t know what a last rite is.

“But I do know that there’s something called last rites. It’s what Christians do, to people, right before they die.

“So, Herschel, I . . . I just want to know more about what you mean, by your last rite.

“Whether it’s something like last rites, or whether it’s something different.

“Because, you know, if it’s something like last rites, well. Then I’d want to know, wouldn’t you think?

“That’d be something that your sister would want to know, if it was like that.”

I heard myself talking, and cringed.

I sounded like I was speaking to a five-year-old.

(But what should I have sounded like, instead, if not that?)

“It is not exactly like the last rites of the cult of Yeshua,” Herschel said.

I cringed.

I don’t know what I had expected. I was hoping to be reassured, I guess.

Ha, ha.

“It will be my last act,” Herschel said, “on the last of my days, and the last of days. Which shall be the twenty-fifth of December, the fourth Wednesday.”

I was feeling less reassured than ever.

Herschel, you’re saying alarming things, you’re worrying your sister to death. Cut it out, stop it, behave.

“But I mean,” I babbled, “you’re not saying that you’re going to actually die? In what, in a week and a half—”

“You do not get another question, now,” Herschel said, impishly. “My turn.”

I asked for a little brother, in the bedroom with me, and I got one, I guess.

I was fucking terrified, let’s get that straight. I was fucking terrified for him.

Don’t think I wasn’t.

But it was his turn.

It was only fair that he be allowed to ask a question, before answering any more of mine. And little brothers, I am told, are very sensitive to matters of fairness versus unfairness. Isn’t that right?

“What is one to make,” Herschel said with rhetorical loftiness, sweeping his arm over the floor as though addressing some invisible, like-minded audience.

“What is one to make of a visionary and a would-be prophet, who does not give himself over entirely to his calling, but takes a woman for his own, and lies with her, and performs other acts with her, which she refuses even to name—

“—and who goes further than this, propounding a doctrine which demands a multitude of daily perversities from the woman he keeps—”

He was really getting into it, now. It was quite a thing to behold.

His arm swept, perfectly self-assured, showing all his followers the way that things were, and daring every man among them to contradict him.

“—who claims that this woman’s heart is precious to him, and then asks that she mutilate that heart, giving herself over to a trance in which her heart ceases to be, in which the chattering furniture of her living room is offered up in mocking substitution for that heart, as though his woman’s heart were as valueless as some box of wood and wires—

“—who lies with that woman, and claims to prize that woman’s flesh—and then asks that she stop washing herself, or feeding herself, or even sleeping—

“—what, I ask you, is one to make of such a man?”

Stop washing myself?

But then, I suppose I probably had not showered in quite some time, come to think of it.

If I had showered recently, I reasoned, then the marks I drew on myself might have gotten washed away. And then I would have had to write them on myself all over again.

And what an inconvenience that would have been!

It was nice, not having to worry about things like that.

“You didn’t sleep at all, on Thursday night,” I said, petulantly, pointlessly.

He made no sign of having heard me. His expression was unreadable, drawn into itself.

He wasn’t even looking at me, anymore. He sat, drawn into himself, contemplating his own things, which could never be explained to the likes of me.

I pulled myself up, out of my funny cross-ways pose.

I sat on the bed, and faced him.

In the usual way. Right-side up.

“Herschel,” I said.

He ignored me.

“Herschel,” I said again.

“I don’t want to be your enemy, Herschel.

“I want to be your . . .”

I was about to say the word transmitter, but I caught myself in time.

“I know,” I began anew, “that you and Vincent . . .

“That there’s something between you and Vincent, and it’s coming between you and me, too.

“I just . . .

“I can see that you’re having some trouble, Herschel,” I said, as I might to a five-year-old.

“I can see,” I said in the same cloying tone, “that you need taking care of.

“And I don’t think, you know . . . that I can take care of you, the way you need. But someone has to.

“I’m worried about you. You need someone to look out for you. And I just, I can’t—”

“I do not have needs,” Herschel said, flatly. “I am wholly sovereign.”

“It’s my turn, isn’t it?” I said.

He made the slightest of nods.

Or, I thought he did. But then, I was still getting used to everything being right-side up again.

It might have only been a trick of the light, I guess.

“Herschel,” I said. “Your friend Frederick. Frederick Eggert.”

His friend, I marveled—his friend, Frederick Eggert!

I should have expected, I thought, that when he finally made a friend, it would not be any ORDINARY sort of friend.

“Your friend Frederick,” I said. “Do you trust him? Do you think he has your back?

“He’s a little older, isn’t he? And he’s not like you, I mean he’s . . .”

I caught myself, and trailed off.

“Do you think,” I began again, “that he could look out for you? Take care of you?

“Because, you know, I just . . . I’m not . . .”

Herschel looked at me, then. His eyes were bright. An unthreatening smile graced his lips.

“Frederick is a good friend,” he said.

“I have never had another, to compare him to,” he noted. “But in my estimation, he is a very good friend indeed.”

The smile went away. His eyes dimmed. He retracted, again, into his private place.

To hold court, again, before his private host of immanences and cloud-cuckoo-landers.

He had not really answered my question, but I knew better than to press.

I felt odd, limp, drained. My facade was breaking. I was becoming no one and nothing, again.

“Herschel?” I said.

I had a funny sense, almost a premonition, that I was coming to the end of something.

“I just wish things could be the way they used to be,” I said, too weak to contain myself anymore.

“A long time ago,” I said. “When you were small. Remember?

“When you were small, and we used to . . .

“We used to play the game, where I’d lie upside-down, for you.

“We used to do things like that.

“I liked that.

“It was nice.

“Don’t you remember, Herschel? When you were small, and couldn’t talk yet?

“How different it was? How nice it was?”

Herschel turned to me, looking confused, and mildly irritated.

“Of course I remember,” he said, very slowly, as one might to a five-year-old.

That was all that he said.

It was all that he needed to say.

Of course, I thought.

Of course he “remembered”! Of course it was different, and nice!

Nice, because it was full of tasty berries, in six thousand and six hundred different flavors, growing on a flat disc beyond the edge of outer space.

Nice, the way only an “immanence” can be nice.

Because it doesn’t have to be REAL, and so it has plenty of room left, in which to be NICE.

I could not have chosen my words more poorly than I did, then.

I do realize these things, but only after the fact.

There I go again! Good old me, setting my brother up for the punchline. All those situation comedies taught me a thing or two, seems like.

Herschel stood up, and made for the door.

“I must write, now,” he said.

Must he?

“So I am bringing our game of question-for-question to a close,” he said.

“Thank you, Sister. It was a pleasant thing, playing this game with you, tonight.”

Was it?

(But it was.)

(It was nice.)