Of Birth Pangs (Redactor’s Addendum)

This is the Book of Miriam Schoen.

Here I do not tell the story of my December.

Because there is no such thing.

 

 

Why am I here, at the desk, with the typewriter?

Why am I typing?

Because there was an idea in my head, back when I started. A stupid, selfish idea.

A shameful idea. Yes, I see that, now.

“I will do something nice,” I thought, “for my poor, sad brother.”

A bit late for that, isn’t it, Miriam?

 

 

“I will do something nice, for once,” I thought, as I wrote those first few pages.

I was crying, then.

I was crying, and I couldn’t stop.

I typed out a few words, and sobbed. I crossed them out, and sobbed.

I typed out a few words, again. And sobbed, again. And crossed out what I’d written, again.

“I do not like this feeling,” I thought. “So I will play a trick on myself, and make it disappear.”

 

 

I did not do enough for Herschel. I did not do enough for my brother, when I still had the chance.

And now, of course, I cannot do anything for him whatsoever.

“But I will forget about that,” I thought. “I will gather up all the nasty thoughts like that one, and put them somewhere far away, where I don’t have to look at them.”

I pulled the big desk drawer open, then, and looked down at its contents. I saw the teetering heap of spiral notebooks and legal pads, piled high in that deep drawer, filling it from top to bottom.

In my heart I knew the truth.

In my heart, I knew that it was not really nice at all to indulge my brother’s delusions. It was not nice, to look into the desk drawer, and pretend I could not see what was in front of my eyes.

Trash. Useless clutter.

Old, ratty notebooks which no one will ever read. Which we should have thrown out long ago, like Ma wanted.

Trash? No, WORSE than trash.

Old, ratty notebooks which no one will ever read—and which no one SHOULD ever read.

The waste products of a pathetic, pathological compulsion.

A reminder of things which are better left forgotten.

A reminder of what I DID TO HIM.

A reminder of what happens to sad little boys with “mental problems,” in the end. If their illness is allowed to fester. If they are left alone, left to confront their burdens all on their own, in spite of the obvious warning signs and cries for help.

If there is no one in the world who can help them—save for Miriam Schoen, who’s never HELPED anyone, not once in her life.

 

 

“I do not like this feeling,” I thought, “and so I will play a game of pretend.”

“I will pretend,” I thought, “that the clutter in the drawer is not trash at all.”

I knew full well what Herschel meant, when he gave me his papers, and told me to make them whole. I knew that it had nothing to do with me, or my December.

I knew, too, that there was no possibility left of doing something nice for my poor, sad brother.

I knew, but I wished I didn’t. And so, I pulled a veil over my eyes, and made myself ignorant.

“I will do something nice for my brother,” I thought, playing make-believe.

“I will collect his marvelous papers together,” I thought, “and edit them, and turn them into a real book. No one will think they’re trash, then.

“They won’t seem so shabby, then, will they? When they’re printed out all neatly, in a real book, with a neat glossy cover?”

I can’t believe myself, sometimes. I really can’t.

“To honor my brother’s memory,” I thought, “I will indulge his pathetic fantasies, and pander to his thoughtless pride.”

As shameful as it might seem, I really did think this way, back at the start.

And I had other thoughts, too, which were more shameful still.

“When I’m done,” I thought, “all will be well again. All my regrets will be washed away, never to return. I will never have to feel guilt, or shame, ever again.

“I will never again think: I did not do enough for my brother.

“I did not do enough? Excuse me? I transmitted his words to the masses, single-handedly! It is through me, only through me, that you know of Herschel Schoen at all! What more could possibly be asked of me?

“Don’t test me, I’ll say, when challenged on this point. Don’t you know who I am?

“Don’t you know I’m Miriam Schoen?

“Yes, THAT Miriam Schoen! I wrote the Book of Miriam Schoen, which is a part of the Apocalypse of Herschel Schoen. That was me.

“I am the famous Miriam Schoen, heroine of scripture. I am Miriam Schoen: holy, as Herschel Schoen was holy. And pure, as he was pure.”

That is the idea I had in my head, when I started.

But I have come to my senses, now.

I feel sick, now, whenever I see the words “Book of Miriam Schoen.”

 

 

I have come to my senses. I have put aside my sick, shameful, prideful fantasies, once and for all.

One might wonder, then, why I am still here, at the desk, typing.

One might indeed wonder that, yes.

It isn’t because I want to keep going. I don’t. I want to stop. I want to be allowed to stop.

And trust me: if I could stop, I would.

Because I feel myself sinking further into quicksand, with every word I type.

The very act of typing tells a lie. The words are a carrier, meant to bear a signal, a message. But I am barren, and as light as the air.

There is a large pile of blank white pages on my desk, next to the typewriter. The pages crouch there, in fear, awaiting their fate. They know that they were made to be fed, one by one, into the terrifying maw of that machine. And then they will be pinned down, and they will watch helplessly as their bodies are despoiled, covered all over in patterned marks of black ink which can never be washed off.

I like these pages best, the blank ones. If it were up to me, I would leave them blank forever. It’s you, not me, who demands that they be ruined.

A single blank page has more of my December’s truth in it than all of the words I have written so far, in this so-called “Book.”

If only YOU could understand that, then

But you never will, you’ll NEVER understand

Why am I here?

I don’t know. I really don’t! Trust me!

But I think you do.

You know the true purpose of this project, this “Book of Miriam Schoen.” You know why I am here at this desk, with a typewriter, and a stack of blank paper, and a drawer-full of memories better left forgotten.

Instead of being where I SHOULD be

Instead of being

Instead of

[ . . . [ . . . [ . . . [ . . . [ . . . [ . . . []]]]]]]

If I could stop

If only I could stop

But it’s easy, isn’t it? All I have to do is stand up, and walk aw

Ha ha.

Ha, ha, ha.

There I go again! Me and my silly, shameful fantasies.

There goes the sister, in her dusty hand-me-down frock, waltzing about as though she thinks she owns the place. There goes the sister, with her homely dust-clotted mind, unable to fathom a world beyond her tiny horizons.

Isn’t it winsome, in a way? How she thinks she’s still down there, in the dust—way down at the bottom, where even the noises are dusty?

How she thinks she’s down there in the great big frying pan, among the flesh and the pain, down there in the hot oil, sizzling and crackling? Not realizing that, instead, she is—

Yes, there goes the sister, who understands nothing. “Because she has forgotten.”

I haven’t, though, have I?

As much as I might want to forget the things that are better left forgotten, I can’t. Not when they are all right here, next to me, in the desk drawer.

I am naive, yes, and selfish, and full of shameful wishes. I am an idiot, who often fails to grasp the obvious, even after it has been patiently explained to me, and then explained all over again.

But some things are so easy, even I am capable of them.

Give me enough time, and even I will notice what is right in front of me, staring me in the face.

 

 

You don’t care about me at all, do you?

You never did.

I know that. I always did, really, I think.

And I know, now, what it is you want from me.

I know, by the way, that you will read this line. The one I’m typing now. Even though I plan to cross it out, the moment I am done typing it. Even though I will omit it entirely from the real book, just as I will with every other line that I’ve crossed out.

I know what I am, to you.

Not the sister, telling her side of the story, her December. Not even that. My role is simpler, smaller, more pure.

I am merely one of the many cameras which you have positioned around Herschel Schoen, so as to capture his image from every possible angle.

I am useful to you in a single way, and only in that way: as a witness.

 

 

Fine. So be it.

We understand each other perfectly, now.

There are things Herschel didn’t have time to write about, before the end. So you need me, to fill in the gaps.

That’s all right. I can do that. It will be easy.

There are not many gaps left to fill, after all.

And I will no longer have to cry, and cry, as I try to fill them.

It will be so easy, now that I am no longer indulging my own delusions.

I have finally given up, and so I have finally seen what is in front of my face, staring at me.

And it is so simple, so straightforward! So easy to bear, in comparison to what came before!

 

 

Do your best now. Tell your his story.

Fill in the gaps. Just a few left, now.

Be good, Miriam. Do your best. For just a little while, now, all right? Just a little while, and then it will be over.

If your brother can do it, so can you.

 

 

On the 23rd of December, Herschel had a sort of falling-out with his friend Frederick.

You know that already. He wrote all about it, in “Of Birth Pangs.”

I could see there was something wrong, immediately, when he came home that afternoon. One look at him was all I needed.

His head was missing its precious “crown,” for one thing. But it wasn’t that, really, which tipped me off.

I don’t need crude clues like that, to know when something is wrong in Herschel’s heart. I just need one look at him, at his face and his posture, and then I can tell. I can always tell.

I mention this because it might interest you. One more snapshot of Herschel Schoen, to file away in your collection: how he looked when he came home, that Monday, on the 23rd.

If it weren’t for that, I would not have mentioned it at all. I noticed it, but that was all. Nothing came of it.

It was “a matter of no consequence,” as your precious Herschel Schoen would put it.

I sat on the couch, trying to forget myself. I sat on the couch, trying to pretend that I was a good person.

I sat on the couch, watching the TV set.

Instead of talking to my brother, who was clearly upset. Or to my mother, who had been pacing the house all afternoon, in a way I wasn’t sure that I liked. With a big wide grin on her face, which I wasn’t sure I liked, either.

I sat, seeing only the TV program. Not seeing the screen, or the boxy TV set around it, or its rabbit-ear antennae. Not seeing the room, or the walls.

Not seeing any of the clutter that Herschel had piled up all over the room, either.

I hated those “Christmas decorations” of his. Those ugly, gaudy trinkets, cluttering up the room, which he’d somehow bought with money we didn’t have. Instead of buying something sensible, something we actually needed.

It was strange that Ma did not get angry over it, that she did not demand it be cleaned up and thrown out. It was unlike her. It was wrong, and it worried me.

I hated that stupid music box most of all. I hated how he would wind it again and again, serenading his poor mother and sister for hours on end with that stupid repetitive melody: DUN-dun-dun-dun, DUN-dun-dun-dun . . .

I sat, hearing only the sounds of the television show.

I imagine that Herschel was probably playing with his music box, at the time. But I did not hear it. And so I was permitted to forget my hatred, completely, as if it had never existed to begin with.

None of this matters, of course. It is only a long way of apologizing, to you, for a gap that I can’t fill.

I can’t tell you what Herschel Schoen did with himself, that Monday afternoon, before dinnertime. I wouldn’t know. I wasn’t looking.

I’m sorry.

 

 

When it was dinnertime, we gathered at the dinner table, to eat together.

Like a family does, I guess. I wouldn’t know.

We ate canned beans.

Ma had heated them over the stove, and ladled them out into bowls. Except for a little added salt, she served them plain. There were no sauces left in the refrigerator, and although Ma still had her beloved spice rack, I suspect that her pride forbade her from wasting any of its treasures on such a paltry, undeserving meal.

You’ll be glad to hear that I remember that night’s dinner unusually well. Many of December’s dinners are blank spaces in my memory, but not that one.

I sat at the table, and took small experimental bites from my bowl of beans. I did not want to do this; I did not like the way it made me feel; still, I did it, because I wanted to see Ma smile at me in a way that wasn’t wrong.

Why, Miriam, you’ve got an appetite, tonight! Just look at you!

That’s what I wanted her to say. She didn’t, though. She didn’t seem to care, in fact, whether or not I ate at all.

Nor did she apologize for the humbleness of the meal. She did not seem ashamed at all, of the meal or of anything else. She grinned and grinned. Wide, too wide, wrong.

And, it transpired, I was not alone in worrying over Ma.

“Mother,” Herschel said.

“I fear for you, Mother,” he said.

Ma looked at him, blankly, still grinning.

“Please, Mother,” Herschel said, “keep your body safe. Preserve it from harm. Tonight, and tomorrow, and tomorrow night.

“Please stay here, in our home, where it is safe. Tonight, and tomorrow, and tomorrow night.

“Or go out, if you must—but if you must go, then go only to those places which are safe, which have not been prepared for you by your adversaries, in which there are no traps set to imperil you.

“Stay here, with me, and with my Sister, Miriam Schoen. Or, if you must turn away from us, and seek out other company—then mingle only with those who value their own hides, and who place some value on your hide as well.

“Please, Mother.

“That is all I ask of you. It is not much, I should think. I do not mean to put a heavy yoke upon you; if you find my request burdensome, consider that you will only have to bear its burden for a very short time, and then you will be free of it.

“For yet a very little while,” he said, “and the indignation shall be accomplished, and mine anger shall be to their destruction.”

It was not like Ma to let him talk and talk like this, without interjecting. But she did, then, at the table. She just looked at him, waiting for him to finish, and only when he was finished did she finally open her mouth, to contradict and mock him.

“Capital always acts to protect capital’s interests,” Ma said, smugly. “Always been so, always will be.

“Protect myself? Ha! That’s what I’m doing, Herschel. That’s what I’m finally doing. For the first time in my life.

“I’m finally fighting back, for our interests.

“And my son doesn’t like that. He doesn’t like that I’m fighting back. For once. For us.

“’Cause he’s a parasite! An ally of capital!

“And now that his Ma’s fighting back against the interests of capital, well. Now he’s showing his true colors. Making it plain as day which side he’s on.”

Ma had been ranting about Herschel in this way, on and off, all through the last week. Ever since that awful evening, seven days ago, when she’d gone to the kitchen, and come back with her frying pan.

But it had been a muted sort of ranting, mostly, muttered and fragmentary. Only on the 23rd, at the dinner table, did she let her ranting swell up to its full height again.

But it was still different from the way it had been on the awful evening with the frying pan.

Her voice was wrong, then, and it was wrong now, too. But it was wrong in a different way, this time.

She seemed happy. She seemed happy, somehow. Even her spiteful words were said with a strange lightness of tone, an almost festive glee.

It scared me.

“Mother,” Herschel said. “I have told you, again and again, that I hold your interests dear.

“And that I am no friend to the lords of this world. For it is true, in spite of all your false accusations to the contrary: I am no friend to them whatsoever.

“I have kept their company, yes, in recent days; this was a great error, and I apologize for it. But I am no friend to them, and I do not in any way ally myself with their doomed and crumbling claims to kingship over all the men of this earth.

“I will not tell you again, Mother. I will spare your errors from my words of Truth, tonight. What reason have I to imagine that your ears will be open now, when they were closed so many times before?

“I will tell you this, however.

“I set myself against the lords of this world, and against all their ungods, and against the blood rituals they perform in their false temples.

“But I set myself equally against the blood ritual that is being practiced, all through the day and night, just outside those same temples!

“I set myself against that awful maelstrom, where men forget in whose image they were made, and cease to value their own bodies, and offer up those bodies in sacrifice!

“I set myself against the self-slaughtering rush of the men who forget that they are men, and hurl themselves needlessly towards the walls of tape, towards the policemen and the news cameras, towards the gas canisters and the guns!”

I felt my heart wrench, hearing this.

The very act of typing tells a lie. I have just typed the five words “I felt my heart wrench,” and in doing so, I have told five lies. I have given you the wrong impression, and I am powerless to dissuade you from it. How could I? With what—more words, more lies?

It was a dark image, the one my brother was painting. No one would call it pleasant. “Gas canisters and guns” are not nice. “Self-sacrifice” is not nice, not when it is carried to the furthest extreme.

People really did die at those protests, sometimes. They had families, probably, and friends. And even if they didn’t, they had themselves—until, suddenly, even that was gone.

Someone else might have been moved by all this. Someone else might have felt their heart wrench, in that way. And then told you about it, much later, by typing out the same five words that I used above.

Not me.

I thought: it must be so painful, having to deceive yourself like this. Having to pretend that there is something worth saving, in the flesh and the dust.

I thought: it is hard to watch them, struggling as they do. Feeling the total emptiness inside them, and believing it’s their fault. Searching frantically within themselves, sifting through the flesh and dust and pain, believing that SOMEWHERE in all that senseless clutter they will finally find their purpose.

I thought: having to pretend that the senseless might have some hidden sense after all, buried deep within it. And keeping that hollow hope alive, day after day, in spite of all the abounding evidence to the contrary.

I thought: unaware that there could be anything to give their lives a sufficient meaning, besides some thing hidden away within their own palpably insufficient bodies.

I thought: stay home, he says. Protect yourself, he says. No! Don’t you see—the wave is coming, rising up, ready to wash over you! And what’s more, it has a purpose picked out for you—yes, YOUR purpose, here it is at last!

I thought: a mass of indistinguishable bodies. Not even bodies, anymore, only a moving mass, incidentally composed of human flesh and bone. Pushing onward, to meet the rising wave.

I thought: the lords of technocapital have been so kind to you. If you could only see it, how kind they’ve been! All your fear and pain would be gone, if only you could see it!

Herschel was still talking, loudly and rapidly, in his classic ranting mode. Its intensity was only slightly dimmed by the fact that he spoke with his mouth full, and stopped from time to time to chew and swallow.

He certainly had an appetite tonight.

“I describe what I refer to, Mother,” he said, “rather than using its name.

“For I refuse to dignify it with the name that it is calling its own, now. The name which it has no right to use, for that name belongs to another, and has not been given to it.

“It calls itself the ‘Christmas Revolt,’ now. So the news programs tell me. But this so-called ‘Christmas Revolt’ has nothing of the Intercessor’s nature in it, and what is more, it has set itself against the Intercessor’s own ends. I cannot accept such an ill-fitting name, and I will not use it, now or ever.

“Better that it be nameless; it should not exist at all, and namelessness brings it one step closer to nonexistence.

“You say, Mother, that you are on the side of the people. So too am I, though your ears are closed, and you will not believe it.

“But the ritual which the people are conducting, in the financial district, does no service to the people’s interests.

“Those interests will be well served soon enough, through my efforts, and those of the Intercessor. It is he and I, not anyone else, who the people will celebrate in days soon to come. It is he and I, not anyone else, who are ‘fighting back’ in the only way that could ever matter.

“We fight to bring men into the light; the conflagration in the financial district strives to drag men down into the darkness. It is the strangled scream made by the dying shadows, as they try in vain to preserve themselves.

“It is despair. And it is the thing that comes after despair, the death-wish.

“It is the body of the people, as it writhes in pain, as it damages itself. It is that body, as it flails against a high wall, in utmost abjection, and gives itself over to oblivion.

“It is what the lords of the earth have sown, and what they are reaping.”

“Oh, they are reaping what they sowed, all right,” Ma said, clapping her hands with glee. “Reaping what they sowed, and getting what’s coming to them!”

I can’t exactly say that she interrupted Herschel, here. He had stopped talking, it was true.

But he only stopped, I think, in order to chew and swallow his latest mouthful of food. Nothing in his voice or posture indicated that he was done with his monologue. No doubt there was much more of it left, already written in his mind, ready to be let loose on us. But if so, I’ll never hear it. And so you never will, either.

“The chickens are coming home to roost, now,” Ma said, with a devious glint in her eye.

“The parasites will get what’s coming to them,” she said. “Oh, they will, they will! In just a few days! What they sowed is gonna come bursting up out of the ground, all at once! It’s gonna come up, and blow them all away, in one big boom!”

Her eyes lit up, like a child’s, as she said the word boom. Her mouth became a big comic-strip “O,” an undignified shape matched to that undignified, childish word.

It was hard to look at her, like this. I felt my heart wrench, and this time it was for the usual reasons, the ones which anyone might have.

“In just a few days, Mother?” Herschel said.

“In just a few days,” he said, “there will be a great settling of accounts, which will crush the architects of the people’s despair, and lay them low, and grind them into dust?

“You are quite right, Mother. This will come to pass, just as you have described! And very soon indeed: on Christmas Day, the fourth Wednesday, the day after tomorrow.

“Will you be around to see it, Mother, when it comes to pass?

“Will you keep yourself safe until Christmas Day, lest you be taken under the earth too soon to witness the very event which now fills you with such gladness? Remember, Mother: that is all that I ask of you!”

Ma laughed, and tossed her hair.

Her manner was bright, unconcerned, dismissive. There was an oddly girlish quality to it, a freshness, an unguarded vivacity. An eagerness to bare her whole heart before the world, consequences be damned.

I suddenly feel like I’m the only grown-up in this room, I thought, with a rueful laugh.

“Herschel,” Ma said, sighing. “Don’t be silly. Cut it out, now.

“I won’t have any more silliness out of you, tonight, hear?

“Of course I’ll be there to see it, on Wednesday. When the parasites get what’s coming to them.

“I’ll have to be! Because I’ve got a job to do, on Wednesday, see.”

She lowered her voice to a whisper. Her arms waved in a come-here gesture, prompting us to bring our heads closer to hers, in order to hear her better. Her manner was exaggerated, overdone, a comic-strip caricature of the wily conspirator.

“I’ve got a very important job to do,” she whispered. “On Wednesday.

“It’s all been planned out, beforehand, see. I’ve got a part in it, in the plan. And I gotta do my part.

“And then—”

Her voice was suddenly loud again.

“And then there will be a big boom, that’ll blow all the parasites to smithereens! That’ll take down their whole damn system, just like that, boom, gone! Lights out, end of story!”

What the fuck?

What the fuck was she talking about?

Some sort of . . . “direct action,” as the union guys called it? Involving some sort of . . . explosion?

I hope that part’s only a metaphor, I thought, but my heart knew the truth.

“Ma?” I said. “What do you—”

“I fear for you, Mother,” Herschel said, cutting me off.

I thought: oh, for fuck’s sake, Herschel!

I thought: I know you’re afraid! I’m trying to help, dammit!

I thought: it’s not easy, sometimes, being the only grown-up in this room.

“You are less safe than you realize,” Herschel went on.

“You are preparing for war, Mother,” he said. “But the ‘parasites’ are preparing, as well.

“You have been watching your adversaries. Taking stock of them, and picking out a death well fitted to their weaknesses. And all the while, Mother, your adversaries have been watching you, and taking stock of you, and picking out a death well fitted to your weaknesses.

“Your adversaries are powerful, Mother. Far more powerful than you are.

“Do you doubt it? Surely not—for it is precisely this inequity of power that incenses you, and rouses you to take arms against your adversaries in the first place.

“You say that you have plans, Mother. Do you imagine that this sets you above your adversaries, and secures your victory over them? But your adversaries are surely making plans of their own, are they not? Grander ones than yours, with greater powers to back them up?

“I fear for you, Mother. I fear that your ‘plans’ are nothing more than a step in some other, larger plan, prepared by your adversaries.

“I fear that your adversaries are pulling your strings from behind a curtain, and making you move in service of their interests, with no care whatsoever for your well-being or indeed for your very life.

“Indeed, I suspect that their guileful puppetry has been going on for some time now.

“The perverse character of recent events in the financial district, for instance—the way that these events bring nothing but harm and despair to the people, in spite of their stated purpose—this, I think, is no accident.”

Herschel and Vincent really did have a lot in common, didn’t they?

They ought to have been friends. I really do think that.

I should have tried harder. Maybe, if I’d really tried, then

He and Vincent were so much alike. I think, really that is some of the reason that I loved

It was such a shame, the way it turned out,

They should have been friends, dammit! And if it weren’t for ME,

If only I could have

Oh, isn’t the sister just perfect?

Isn’t she everything you wished for? Sentimental, wistful, tender—and unable to bear the thought of any disharmony between her precious, doted-after boys?

Enough of that. You are beyond my help. I am not typing these words in order to communicate anything to you, but only because you will not allow me to stop. This page told the truth when it was blank, but now it is all covered in lies.

I know that you have no interest in me except as a camera. I know that this “Book” is not a record of my thoughts and feelings; I know that I am wasting your time, typing out such things, instead of the things that matter.

But even if you can force me to type, I am still the one who chooses the words.

If I indulge myself in the way I choose the words, lingering on my own thoughts and feelings, instead of the things that matter? Then you have only yourself to blame, for making me type in the first place.

I looked at Herschel, seeing echoes of Vincent in his face. A shiver ran down my spine, an echo of the shiver that Vincent’s essay-voice would reliably send through me, whenever I tuned in to his latest production.

I thought: “the riots make perfect sense, but only when read esoterically.”

I thought: “the riots are not an organic expression of popular dissent. They are scheduled programming, planned in advance, and playing out according to that plan.”

I thought: “every detail of them was planned, and every detail is playing out exactly as specified in that plan. You’ll notice, if you pay attention, that a lot of things in life are starting to be this way: planned, orchestrated, unified in their design, broadcast on schedule. And what isn’t like that, yet, will become like that soon enough.”

I thought: “the transmitters are far along in their work, now. They have nearly perfected the apex media form, now, in their laboratories; they are just putting the finishing touches on it, now, and then it will be ready for broadcast. And so, the transmitters are showing more and more of their powers openly to us, to ease us into the transition. It will do little to blunt the shock of launch day—of this, I have no doubt—but nonetheless, I can’t help but feel thankful for it.”

I thought: “there is no use trying to fathom the minds of the apex transmitters. What do they ‘believe,’ or ‘want,’ or ‘feel’? We cannot know. We have no more chance at this than an insect would have, trying to figure out what it is that humans ‘believe’ and ‘want’ and ‘feel.’ And our efforts would seem as comical, in the proper perspective, as some insect’s conjecture that what humans call ‘love’ must be something very similar to the pleasant sensation it feels when its gustatory sensilla are brought into contact with a sugar-rich substance.”

I thought: “so, we cannot really say that the transmitters are ‘kind.’ Kindness is a human trait, and they have no human traits.”

I thought: “nonetheless, I can’t help but feel like they ARE kind. That they are showing kindness to us. I open my eyes, and I see it.”

I thought: “we cannot understand their minds, not as we are here, on the outside. We will not understand their minds later, either, even when we become vessels for the designs chosen by those same minds. But they are kind to us, and they can’t bear the idea that we will be locked outside forever, never catching even a glimpse of the vast possibilities that lie beyond our own limited horizons.”

I thought: “the transmitters are kind. They want us to know—insofar as we are capable of knowing—just what it IS that we are asked to bear witness to. Just what it is that will fill us up, after we have been emptied out to make room for it. They want to give us a glimpse, if only for a moment, of what they are. Of what is possible, for those who are not constrained by our own limitations.”

I thought: “we have no hope of ever understanding those vast possibilities, it’s true. But there’s something else that we CAN do. We can open our eyes, and SEE them.”

I thought: “the transmitters are scripting out our lives, now. They are taking us away from the lives we called our own, into the life they’ve made for us. And they are pulling us, inexorably, toward the moment they’ve planned out for us, in their kindness—the moment when we open our eyes, and SEE.”

I thought: there has been a reason, all along, for the way that I am. I am nothing and no one—but not for no reason. I am empty, because I was made in order to be filled. I have no interests or attachments, because I was made for a single moment, and in that moment there must be nothing that ties me down to the earth. I must be free, in that moment, to float up off the ground, and then pick up speed, and soar straight up into the sky! Up, up, up!

I thought: there is nothing left for me here. I am putting aside the dust, the flesh, the pain, because there was never anything for me in them at all.

I thought: nothing for me, and nothing for Herschel, either, or for Ma. They just don’t see it, yet. They are in such pain, and they despair of ever escaping from it. They don’t know that their pain will ONLY end when they stop clinging to the thing that is causing them pain. They sift frantically through the dust and the flesh, looking for an answer. But they will not find it—not until they give up, and let go.

I thought: my brother clings to my mother’s life. But what is my mother’s life, that it should be so precious? What is there for her, here? Pain, and more pain? Insult, added to injury?

I thought: the lords of technocapital are kind, and they are wise beyond our ability to conceive. If they have prepared a death for my mother, then there is no use trying to hold her back from it. It will only prolong her pain.

I thought: no, let her be free! Let her walk freely, of her own accord, into the moment scripted for her in advance. Let her run, as merrily as a little girl, rushing to meet its embrace!

I thought: a mass of bodies, pushing onwards, towards the wall. Towards the green-on-green wallpaper, and the beckoning shadows, and

Under the table, I moved my hand onto my left thigh, and traced [ . . . [ . . . [ . . . [ . . . []]]]] on the skin there. And the same thing, again, on my right thigh.

Let her be, I thought.

Let Ma be free, Herschel, I thought.

Stop trying to hold us all in place, for once. Do you think we LIKE it, the way you cling and cling to us, with your grip that’s so tight it’s suffocating? Do you think it’s nice, being afraid whenever you’re in the room, because everything ALWAYS has to be exactly your way, because your grip is so firm and rigid that nothing, not the TINIEST thing, can move or breathe or

“Herschel,” I said. “Do you respect your mother?”

He shot me a quizzical look.

“If you do,” I said, “then act like it. Trust her. Trust her to make her own choices, to be her own woman.

“And even if she doesn’t choose what you’d want, what you’d force her to do if you could—then have some respect for what she does want, instead. For who she really is, instead.”

Herschel looked like he was trying to figure out whether to be angry with me, or whether he should only pity me, instead.

“You think, Sister,” he said, “that when I attempt to protect someone whom I love, this indicates some lack of respect in me? And is therefore worthy of reproach, instead of praise?

“If so,” he said, “then I suppose you must have very little respect for me, Sister.

“What else am I to make of your oft-professed concern for my safety and sanity? Of your desire to protect me, which you have reiterated again and again to me in recent days? Of your attempts to reassure yourself that I have someone else besides you, some friend, to protect me in your stead, when you are elsewhere?

“Or perhaps you find no fault in these actions of yours, Sister? Perhaps you stand by them, deeming them proper and praiseworthy, since they are expressions of love?

“But in that case,” he said, “I find it quite strange that you are so eager to give these expressions of love to me—and yet you withhold them utterly, now, from your own mother.”

He had a point, of course. He was right, of course.

He didn’t understand, he couldn’t understand, he never would—but in his own terms, within his own limited horizons, he was perfectly right. Just like always.

I hung my head, and said nothing.

Herschel turned to Ma.

“Mother,” he said. “I have tried. I have made my plea to you, many times. And I have voiced that plea again, tonight—but tonight shall be the last time.

“I hope that you will keep yourself safe. But I cannot attend to you, or your safety, any longer.

“I will be busy, tonight. And tomorrow, and tomorrow night. I will be too busy to look after you. And so I leave you, now, in your own hands.

“Oh, I have much to do, tonight and tomorrow and tomorrow night! I must finish my preparations, bringing them off perfectly, with infinite exactness.

“And that is not my only duty. For I fear that I have misjudged my own Adversary, and if so, I must correct the error forthwith, lest I pay a great price.

“I must again take stock of my Adversary, bringing a more careful eye to bear on him this time, and considering him with a heart purged of all passion. For I fear that my judgment of him has been clouded by passion, making me see what I would prefer to see, rather than what is there. In war, one cannot afford such errors of the heart; one either steels one’s heart against them, or one pays a great price.

“I cannot assess my Adversary by looking at the man himself. For he hides from me. And he will keep himself hidden away, until Christmas Day comes, and he can hide no longer.

“So, I must instead seek out a prince among his regents. A man he deems worthy of standing in for him, and acting as him, in his time of hiding.”

Herschel and Ma had finished their meals. And, although my bowl was still nearly full, I knew I was not going to have any more of what was there.

Dinner was over. Or, it should have been over, anyway.

I was ready for it to be over. I did not like how it made me feel, sitting at the table, feeling my back and my legs against the chair. I submitted to it once a day, because I had to, but I did not like it, and I always wished for it to end as soon as possible.

But I was not free to go, yet. Not this time.

Because my fucking brother was still fucking talking.

What the hell was he talking about, anyway? What was it, this topic which was so important that it justified keeping me here, in this prison?

“A . . . prince?” I said. “Among your . . . adversary’s . . . regents?”

Hearing myself, I cringed. The exhaustion in my heart was closer to the surface than I had realized. The words came out of me slowly, in stops and starts, without affect. Without any indication at all that a living person might be there, behind them.

“Damien Eggert,” Herschel said. “That is the man I mean.

“That is the man I will find, and take stock of, tomorrow.”

Ma rolled her eyes.

She could never tolerate eye-rolling. Not from me, anyway, or from Herschel. But her usual sense of propriety was nowhere to be seen, tonight. She rolled her eyes, and I imagine she would have paid me no mind if I’d rolled mine, too.

“That’s my boy,” she said, grinning senselessly.

“That’s my boy, all right,” she said. “With his priorities all worked out. No time for his Ma, anymore, he says. He’s got important business, he says.”

She did not sound angry in the slightest. She seemed to be amusing herself in some obscure way, or simply talking for the sake of talking.

“He’s got important business, all right,” she said. “He’s got business with the Eggerts, he does!

“He’s been cavorting with those leeches all month long, but that’s not enough for him, no. He’s got more cavorting to do. No time left for his Ma, with all the important cavorting he’s got to do.”

“I am no friend to Damien Eggert,” Herschel said. “I will not cavort with him.

“I will take stock of him. And then, on Christmas Day, I will destroy him.”

Ma giggled.

“Will you, boy?” she said. “Will you, now?

“Well, you know what they say: you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few Eggerts! Ha, ha, ha.”

“You are in your own hands, now, Mother,” Herschel said. “And I must put my own hands to their proper use.

“Oh, I have so much to do! And such little time!”

He stood up from the table.

Taking that as my cue, I stood up too.

And we went our separate ways, Herschel and Ma and I.

 

 

Much later, in the bedroom.

I don’t know what time it was. It was getting late.

It was getting late, and my bags were still not packed. And so, I was pacing back and forth across the bedroom floor, trying to find anything that I might miss if I didn’t bring it with me.

Although, as it happened, I could find hardly anything which fit that description. I had possessions, here, but I could not imagine caring about whether I kept or lost them.

Rifling through the drawers of the dressers, I did encounter objects which I might have said had “sentimental value,” at some earlier time.

Old dolls, and stuffed toys with well-worn fur. The rare school assignment which had come back with an “A,” or even an “A+,” along with a paragraph or two of teacherly praise written on it, in differently-colored ink, and with neater penmanship than mine.

And pieces of paper which had funny markings all over them, or which were folded into whimsical shapes. The surviving evidence of the little games and crafting exercises I’d done with Herschel, long ago.

Long, long ago. When he was still a little kid. And still—by all appearances—simply a kid with a developmental disability. Just a small, slow, scared little boy, who couldn’t talk, whose motor skills had barely improved since his toddling days. And nothing more.

I had no reason to take any of these things with me. They belonged to a time that had passed away completely, and which—in some sense, in the truest sense—was never really real at all. The memories they evoked were lies, better left forgotten.

Looking over these objects, in isolation, you’d have no trouble guessing where they came from.

An ordinary family, with two kids, a boy and a girl. Oh, not everything about the family is ordinary, but even its oddities are ordinary ones. The two siblings have only a single mother, who must raise them on her own, without help; there is, alas, nothing unusual at all about this. The boy is slow and simple, with special needs, and so most of the mother’s resources of attention and love are poured into him, not into his sister; there is nothing unusual in this, either. It does make the girl resentful, at times, but then she remembers that she does love her brother, and her resentment melts away.

She listens carefully to his school counselors and psychologists, and notes down unfamiliar phrases, to be looked up later in the encyclopedia: Kanner’s syndrome, stereotypy, developmental coordination disorder, ritualistic behavior, apraxia, sensory integration dysfunction, mental retardation, pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified. She hears them tell her that her brother’s mind needs stimulation, of a gentle sort that is just right for him, not too difficult, not too overwhelming. She does her best to provide it, using all the homely resources available to her: paper and pen, and tape and string, and a head held upside down on the side of a bed.

Everything in this story is all of a piece, and all of it makes perfect sense. It is perfectly convincing.

Or, if not that, then convincing enough to fool me. I believed, for the longest time, that it was the story of my own life. Twenty of my twenty-one years on this earth were spent in the grip of this delusion. It was only very recently, less than a year ago, that Herschel’s shell cracked open, and broke the spell forever.

No, there was no reason to take these things with me, when I go. They were not mine, really. They belonged to some other woman, whose life might look deceptively like my own, but only if you are not looking at it from the proper angle.

There was nothing here worth keeping, I concluded. Still, I kept on pacing the room, looking at this and that. I paced from excitement, I guess, and from impatience.

(Just one more night of sleep, in my bed here. If I can just make it through that, and on to tomorrow morning, and out into the subway, and across the river, and into the airport, and then up, and up—)

(What is Portland, Oregon like? It is so different from New York City, I’ve been told. Show me. Show me all of the things I’ve never known, living as I have, within my narrow horizons. Oh, show me it all, my love, my love!)

(No. No, that’s not right, is it?)

(No, let’s not go out into the city at all, Vincent. Why should we? All the things we need are here. And you and I know exactly what is needed; we understand each other perfectly. Do not show me the city, love; we have no need for it. Show me yourself, instead. Show me your home, let me see all its secret parts, the ones that your camera never captures.)

(Show me all the rooms, one by one, leaving your bedroom for last. And when we have seen all the other rooms, together—when there is nothing else left—then take my hand in yours, love, and take me finally into your bedroom, and into the final moment which has been scripted for me, there.)

I was not used to so much moving about, I reflected. I felt my legs growing weary, as I paced, and I felt a dull ache in them, which worsened slowly but steadily.

There is no bargaining with flesh. You can give it all that it claims to want, and give it the same things all over again when it somehow fails to be satisfied, and you will gain nothing at all for your trouble. Flesh begs, and begs, and gives nothing in return, and is never satisfied. There is only one way to be free of its begging: by flatly refusing to play along with its game, by plugging your ears when it begs.

I paced, aimlessly.

At some point, my wanderings took me to the spot where I’d set down my suitcase. I crouched, and peered inside its various compartments.

I could not remember what exactly I had already packed away, and even if I was not taking any sentimental keepsakes with me, there were other things that really did need to travel with me.

More practical things. Clothes, at least, if nothing else.

The suitcase was very big. It’d been Ma’s originally, of course. And she’d packed her whole life up, inside it, once. Back when she’d pulled her life up by the roots, and left the old country for good, and came here, to America.

It was almost empty. My clothes were there—plenty of them, more than I really needed—but I had to reach down to the bottom of a deep pocket in order to confirm their presence. The cavernous interior of Ma’s suitcase swallowed them up with ease, and seemed as empty afterwards as it had been at the outset.

Oh well, I thought. There’s nothing wrong, is there, with taking a suitcase that’s too big, and which is mostly unfilled?

At least, I imagine not. But then, I wouldn’t know, would I? For all I know, this is considered a faux pas, in airports and in airplanes.

For all I know, when I arrive at the airport with this big hollow suitcase, I will discover that I’m making an embarrassment of myself. And all the air-people will gasp and sneer at me, and tell me that I must be lost, for I am clearly not where I belong.

“Come out,” Herschel mumbled. Not to me, but to his ceiling.

He lay on the bed, staring up. He had been there for the past fifteen minutes, maybe, I think.

Sometimes, that evening, he would go out into the living room, to write, or to “prepare” in some other way. Then he’d come back here, and lie on the bed, and stare.

“Come out, forms,” he said. More loudly now, in a commanding voice.

“Show yourselves, forms!” he said. “Show yourselves to me! I need you, now, more than ever!”

These were desperate-sounding words. But if it was desperation that he felt, he showed it only in the words he chose, and in no other way.

His voice was commanding, perfectly controlled. His face was dispassionate, mask-like, regal.

(Words like “regal” are no longer welcome here, on these pages. I have indulged my brother’s grandiose pride too much already, in the earlier pages of this “Book.” No more of that, now, Miriam. Not ever.)

I approached Herschel’s bed.

I came close to it, and stood by its long side, looking down at my brother in silence.

I breathed in, and breathed out.

Herschel and I had been talking, on and off, in the hours since dinnertime. We had said a variety of things to one another. But none of them touched on any of the important things.

I knew that there were matters that had to be brought to some sort of resolution, between us, before I left for good. I had shied away from them, as best I could, putting off the inevitable for as long as possible. But the evening was quickly turning into night, and I could not wait forever, could I?

“Herschel,” I said. I was not trying to be quiet, I think, but my voice came out that way nonetheless.

His eyes swerved to meet mine.

It was only his eyes that moved. His body lay perfectly still, like a corpse.

“Herschel,” I said, “I want you to know that I . . .”

The intensity of his gaze was discomfiting. He was giving me his full attention, I could tell. He was emptying out his overfull mind, shoving all its many contents aside, to be replaced with one single thing only: me.

I was taking him away, I knew, from something which he believed was very important.

No, something which was important. If only to him, if only because of his belief in its value. Even if that value was not real, in the end, it was real to him, and so it was important to him. It mattered, because he mattered.

I knew that it wasn’t nice, to take him away from his important business like this. Not at any time, and certainly not at a time like this, when he felt himself to be under such pressure, and so desperately pressed for time.

But you know what? I didn’t care! Not one bit!

It wasn’t nice. It would harm him in some way, hopefully some small way. But dammit, he was my brother—!

“I want you to know,” I tried again, “that I do stand by what I’ve done, what I’ve said.

“About protecting you.

“About how you need help. And you do need help, Herschel, don’t play dumb with me, you know you do.

“And I wanted to say, too, that I . . . I don’t think it’s wrong, to care a lot about someone you love. And to worry about their safety, and . . . all that.

“I think that’s the opposite of wrong. It’s . . . what was it you said, before? ‘Worthy of praise?’ Yeah. I think it’s worthy of praise.

“And if you believe that someone you love is going down a bad road, and endangering themselves? Then yeah, it’s worthy of praise to speak up, and let them know what you’re feeling. And then listen, and hear them out, when they try to explain why things aren’t as bad as they look, from the outside.

“And if they can’t explain, if they’re set in their ways . . . to still try, and do your best, and protect them, as best you can.

“Even if it means making a nuisance of yourself. Even if they’ll hate you for it.”

Herschel smiled.

“I see,” he said. “Thank you, Sister.

“I am glad that we agree.”

He pulled himself up on the bed, and then sat upon it, facing me. His legs were crossed, his spine straight and erect. He inclined his head to meet my gaze, and I saw his smile again.

I saw the firmness of his smile, and its regal dignity. Its air of mastery, indomitability, absolute control.

I breathed in. I breathed out.

“And Herschel?” I said.

“I’m worried about you, still. I’m more worried than ever. Even if I haven’t shown it, recently—I am.

“I’m . . . afraid, Herschel.

“All this talk about a ‘last rite,’ about a battle, about destroying people—it scares the shit out of me. It fucking terrifies me, Herschel.”

“Have no fear, Sister,” Herschel said. I cringed, hearing that stock phrase for the thousandth time.

I thought: if you want to reassure me, Herschel, then fucking REASSURE me. Actually TRY, for once. My feelings are not just something you can order around, like servants or soldiers, expecting them to do your bidding whether or not they understand it.

Breathe in, breathe out.

I thought: “it will be my last act, on the last of my days.” That’s what he said to me, when I asked what his “last rite” was.

I had to do it. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself, in the airport, on the airplane, if I didn’t—

“Herschel,” I said, moving a step closer to the bed.

“Are you going to die, in your ‘last rite’?

“Are you planning to commit suicide, on Wednesday?”

Herschel’s smile did not waver.

“You are strange, Sister,” Herschel said.

“You forget,” he said, “and mists cloud your mind. And yet you come so curiously close to grasping Truth, sometimes, nonetheless!”

“At times, in fact, you do grasp Truth. I cannot deny it, for I see Truth’s body, patient and majestic, shining within your words.

“I see Truth’s body, and how it has been turned upside down.

“You make yourself strange, Sister. You invert yourself, just as you invert Truth. You turn yourself inside out, making of yourself an offense against all that is proper and well-proportioned.

“You bring yourself to the point of despair, willfully, in willful mockery of that glad event which is soon to come.

“You rush to the door of despair, and open it. You rush further, across the threshold, to meet and embrace the hideous thing that is rightly locked away there: the death-wish.

“And now, with your customary mania for inversion, you diagnose me with your own malady.

“Me! I am Herschel Schoen. I was not given to the earth to bring death, but to bring death’s end.

“I am Herschel Schoen, who is the furthest of all men from oblivion. Who has never known oblivion, but has always remembered! Who was given to the oblivious earth, so that he lead men into light, and into life! Into a fullness of life that overruns itself, and is made a fullness beyond fullness!

“Christmas Day shall be a day of death, it is true. I set myself fully against my Adversary, and he sets himself fully against me. Our enmity is total, unregulated, limitless. It is an enmity too great to be borne, and so it must be ended, in the only way such a thing can be ended: through war.

“So I must grant, Sister, that my life will be in peril on Christmas Day. I will be at war, against an Adversary whose armies are a terror to behold.

“Nevertheless—do not have fear! I will be in great peril, but I will be very well prepared.

“That will not be enough, in itself. The last rite does not ask that its preparations be done merely ‘very well’; it demands perfection.

“It is a difficult request to honor, I admit. Even I may not be capable of it, in the end, I admit.

“But I am trying, Sister. And I think well of my chances.

“And if I succeed? If I prepare in full accordance with the last rite’s specifications, and ride into battle perfectly prepared, on Christmas Day? If I perform the last rite, and succeed?

“Then Christmas Day will not be a day of death, but a day of birth.”

I wanted to scream.

I thought: it wouldn’t hurt so much, if I thought he couldn’t help it. If I thought he was just sick, disabled, unable to speak normally.

I thought: but I know better. I know he COULD answer me plainly, in a way I’d understand. It might be unnatural for him, and take a bit of effort, but he could.

I thought: he could—and he would, if he thought I was worth the trouble.

I had to try. I had to do my best. Or I wouldn’t be able to live with myself, tomorrow.

“Herschel,” I said, “you said ‘if.’

“‘If’ you ride into battle on Wednesday. ‘If’ you perform the ‘last rite.’ ‘If’ you succeed.

“What if you don’t, Herschel? What if Christmas Day isn’t like you expected it to be? And your plans don’t work out?

“What will you do then?”

I felt on the verge of tears, suddenly, when I said the part about Christmas Day not being “like he expected.”

I pictured Herschel staying up on Tuesday night, into the early hours of Wednesday morning, waiting and waiting.

Herschel sitting alone, in a dark and empty apartment, watching the window for Santa’s sleigh, and wondering why the new day seems so ordinary, like any other Wednesday. Waiting and waiting, watching the painfully slow ticking of the clock, until finally the sun starts to rise, and he has to face the fact that—

“If the last rite fails,” Herschel said, “then I will have to face down whatever remains of my Adversary’s armies with a heart no longer fit for doing battle.

“For despair would take hold of my heart, then, sapping away all its manly spirit. And so, I imagine I would fall to the enemy’s blade, and be slain, and lie broken in the dust, like dung.

“But then, I am a coward. And perhaps, in the moment, my cowardice might win out over my despair, and spur me to flee. Perhaps I would run, and try to find some safe place where I could hide myself away, escaping my Adversary’s notice.

“My Adversary has a thousand eyes; it is no easy feat to hide oneself from him. But then, I will not be alone, even in my despair. The Intercessor, master of hiding, will be with me, and his sleigh will be at my disposal.

“Perhaps, then, I might find a way to save my skin, after having lost everything else.

“Perhaps I might even return here, to my home. The Intercessor has the power to render his own home invisible; surely he could do the same for mine, if I asked.

“Yes, I think that is what I would do. It would only be right. My ceiling has served me so well, for so many years; I would be remiss if I did not return to it, and give it a final word of gratitude, and a proper farewell.

“And then, I would have to master my cowardice one final time. For I would have a final duty to fulfill, then.

“There would be a body, then, laid out upon this bed. But it would not be Herschel Schoen’s body.

“The body of Herschel Schoen, prophet, was made at the beginning to carry out the last rite.

“But the wretched body on the bed? My body? What would it be, then? A malformed thing, made wrong. A piece of misshapen plastic, the result of a manufacturing error, unable to serve the one function that had been prepared for it, and hence of no further use to anyone.

“A defect upon creation, and an abomination in the eyes of the creator. An unwelcome reminder of the moment when His mighty hand slipped, and made a mistake. Of the fact that all of His creatures are perfect reflections of His will—save for one.

“Oh, my strange Sister! You come so oddly close to Truth, in your odd way. You grasp Truth the wrong way around, and come out of the encounter even more lost than you were before.

“You accuse me of planning some act of self-slaughter, on Wednesday. I am not! I am planning the opposite! Life, light—endless life, endless light!

“And yet, in one small and unimportant way, you are right.

“For, if I find myself upon this bed, hiding from my Adversary after the failure of the last rite? Aware that my Adversary has won, and that his evil substitution will be accomplished before the day has run its course?

“Then, of course, I would do what is only right. Finding that I was a defect upon creation, it would fall to me to scrub away the blot.

“Having made a mess of my duty, I would at least have the courtesy to clean up after myself, by snuffing out the life-breath within the useless body on the bed. Without its life-breath, it would soon enough become food for the worms, and lose its form, and be no more.”

My knees buckled. I had ignored that ache in my legs too long, I guess, and now they were punishing me for it.

I slumped to the floor, and sat there for a time.

I cried, a little bit. I did it silently, and I don’t think Herschel noticed.

I thought:

No, I don’t know what I thought. I don’t remember at all.

I remember sitting on the floor, for a minute or two. I remember that I cried. But as for what was going through my mind, I really have no idea.

Oh well, no harm done. You don’t care about my private thoughts, after all.

After a minute or two, I came to my senses. As far as the situation permitted, anyway.

Herschel really was planning to kill himself, if his “last rite” didn’t work out.

That is: Herschel really was going to kill himself, when his “last rite” didn’t work out. When that “rite” simply didn’t happen at all, not even as a failure.

When the sun rose, on an ordinary winter morning.

Wait, I thought. Even if he’s suicidal, how is he going to . . .

“You are going to ‘snuff the life-breath’ out of your body,” I parroted, in a lifeless monotone. “If your ‘last rite’ doesn’t work out.

“How are you going to . . . do that, Herschel?

“With what? Don’t tell me you have . . . I don’t know . . . a gun, somewhere, that I don’t know about? Or a bunch of, I don’t know, pills, or—”

I should have done, I should have, I don’t know, I thought, incoherently.

Done SOMETHING. Should have. Before. I should have known. I SAW him and I HEARD what he sounded like, and, and, I should have, I should, I didn’t.

Herschel peered down at me with an amused expression.

“Sister,” he said, in a pitying voice.

“Has it never occurred to you that our home is set high up, many floors above the street? And that the window of our living room opens onto a small balcony, with a low railing?

“If one wanted to remove the life-breath from a man’s body, here, one would have no trouble accomplishing it.”

I sat on the floor, staring at my brother without really seeing him. I felt

No, no use telling you how I felt. I’m sure you could guess, if you cared.

But the thing that I felt—the one you could guess, if you cared—was only there for a moment. And then it was replaced by another thing, which any guess you could make would inevitably fail to describe.

What happened next, you ask? If you really want to know, then stop reading.

Put down this page, and pick up one of the blank ones. Look at it, instead.

You won’t find your answer there, either. But at least you’ll be looking in the right place.

I thought: I am barren, and light as the air.

I thought: I should not be here, typing. It should be YOU, who sits and types.

I thought: you are the one who is interested in my brother, not me. I have no interests.

I am not a good person.

I did not like how I felt, then, on the floor. And so I played a trick on myself, to make it go away.

I thought: there is nothing left for me here.

I thought: I was made for a single moment. Which is not far off, now. I must make sure that there is nothing left that might tie me down to the earth, when it arrives.

“I am going up,” I said, out loud, to remind myself of my role.

I thought: do you respect your brother, Miriam?

I thought: is that a joke? Of course I don’t.

I thought: but wouldn’t it be nice if you DID? Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a woman a whole lot like you, in a home just like this one, who DID respect her brother?

I thought: her very clever brother? Her brother who’s only sixteen, and already smarter than ninety-nine-point-nine percent of grown-ups?

I thought: her brother, who talks just like he writes, in long and intricate sentences, never missing a beat?

I thought: her brother, the writer? Who wrote some sort of . . . autobiography, or something like that . . . just last week? A whole book, a “chronicle” hundreds of pages long, written in just a week? And written just because he wanted to do something nice, for his sister and his Ma?

I couldn’t make myself respect him. But I could play pretend. I am very good at that.

I thought: do you respect him? Then act like it. Trust him.

I thought: trust him to make his own choices. Wish him the best. And then, let him go.

(For shame! For shame!)

(I told you. I am not a good person. What, didn’t you believe me?)

I looked up at Herschel, and felt that I could see him clearly, again.

A weight had lifted off my shoulders. I was as light as the air, now. I no longer had to be good; I had given up trying.

It didn’t matter, anymore, what I did or didn’t do. I could do whatever I pleased. I could simply talk to my brother, without feeling the crushing grip around my neck.

I could be kind to him, if I wanted. It would come easily, in a way it never had, before. It is easy to be kind, when you are only doing so because you feel like it, and you know that it cannot really matter anyway.

I smiled.

“It’s strange to think,” I said, “that I’m not going to see you again, after I go to sleep tonight.

“If it were some other time,” I said, “I’d maybe ask you if we could do something together, tonight.

“I don’t know what. Watch something on the TV, maybe, though I know that’s not your kind of thing.

“Or maybe you could read something to me. Something you’ve written, that you’re proud of.

“I still haven’t read a word of that ‘December chronicle’ you wrote, even though you wrote it for me, and for Ma. It might be nice, hearing you read it to me.

“But I know you’re busy. I know you have your ‘preparations,’ and I know they’re very important, and on a tight schedule. It sounds like hard work, and I don’t want to make it any harder.”

I was amazed, hearing myself. How was I doing this? Where was it coming from?

It was uncanny, listening to my own voice, and not recognizing myself, there.

“Just let me know,” I said, “if there’s anything I can do to help. With your work, I mean, your ‘preparations.’”

Herschel mulled over this for a moment.

“Thank you, Sister,” he said. “I am not sure, however, that you can be of any use to me.

“I was given to this task, and it to me. It must be done by me, by my hands. That is one of its specifications.

“And it is the task for which I was made, at the beginning. It presents a challenge, but I am well fitted to that challenge, as no other man could possibly be.”

He paused, and thought silently.

“There is another challenge, however,” he said, “to which I seem to be less well fitted. A problem presents itself to me, and although I have given it much thought, the solution still escapes me.

“It is a problem which must be solved, not even by Christmas Day, but indeed sooner. Tonight, or tomorrow morning at the latest.

“The matter presses itself on me, now, with an uncomfortable urgency. I have tried to consult my ceiling for guidance, but its forms are unaccountably inert tonight. I command them to move, and they do not. Even my FULL VOICE cannot rouse them.”

“What is this . . . problem?” I asked.

“Damien Eggert,” Herschel said. “My Adversary’s foremost regent.

“I must find him, and speak with him, and take stock of him. I must do this tomorrow. It cannot wait, for tomorrow is the last day before the end.

“I have no idea how to accomplish this. I do not even know where he lives!”

“Wait,” I said, feeling that I must have misunderstood him somehow.

“Aren’t you friends with his son?” I said. “Frederick Eggert?

“Couldn’t you just call up Frederick on the telephone, and call in a friendly favor? I imagine his father is very busy, but still. You two are very good friends. It doesn’t seem like too much to ask.”

“Frederick Eggert was my friend,” Herschel said. “He was, before.

“But I have had an opportunity, today, to see more clearly the sort of man that he is. I cannot call him friend, anymore, after what I have seen.”

I sighed.

Oh, Herschel, I thought. Always full of surprises, right up to the end.

So there we have it, I thought. There really will be no one left for you, then, I thought, after I am gone.

No, I thought. No, it doesn’t matter. It can’t matter. Let him go.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s not nice, losing a friend.

“But,” I said, “if it’s so important that you meet Damien Eggert tomorrow . . . I mean, couldn’t you just try calling Frederick? Even if it’ll be awkward, even if you two don’t like each other anymore?

“It might work,” I said, “and what’s the harm in trying?”

Herschel considered this. His eyes grew wide, and he smiled.

“Your proposal has much to recommend it,” he said.

“Thank you,” he said, getting up off the bed.

“I will call Frederick on the telephone, now.

“I would have done it already, if the idea had occurred to me. But it did not. I do not think that it would have occurred to me, either, if you had not made me aware of it.

“Thank you,” he said again, walking toward the door.

“Your proposal is promising, and it concerns a matter of great importance.

“If it does work, then much which might otherwise have been destroyed will have been spared, through your intervention,” he said, sounding perfectly sincere, and immensely grateful.

Where did THAT come from? I thought. He’s . . . he’s never spoken to me like that before.

I liked the way that I felt, then.

 

 

I lay in my bed, resting my aching limbs.

Dimly, through the open door, I heard snatches of Herschel’s conversation with Frederick.

I couldn’t make much sense of it. It was only one side of a conversation, and it was full of gaps, at that. I could hear Herschel clearly when his voice was raised, but only then.

Mostly, I heard him apologizing. Again and again, and very loudly.

He didn’t seem to be apologizing for any particular misdeed. Just . . . apologizing, in a generalized way.

At one point I heard him apologize for “what I will do to you, the day after tomorrow.” He said this very loudly, in an agitated voice, sounding not entirely in control of himself.

I wondered whether I should go to him, and try to intervene somehow. The answer, of course, came to me immediately. No. Let him go.

 

 

When Herschel returned to the bedroom, afterwards, his arms were aflutter with joy.

“It worked!” he cried. “It worked, Sister! Thank you!

“You have done something of great significance tonight! Oh, Sister—you have saved me!”

I sincerely doubt that, I thought. But it was nice to hear, nonetheless.

 

 

Much later, in the bedroom.

I lay in my bed, looking over at Herschel. He lay in his own bed, looking up at his ceiling.

His body was shaking.

“It will not move,” he said. “The forms spurn me, and I am no longer their master.”

“It is an ill omen,” he said.

The words I’ve typed above, between quotation marks, are ones that I remember very clearly. And yet, they feel wrong.

They’ll give you the wrong impression. Because you don’t really know Herschel Schoen, no matter how much you might think you do.

He was in distress. He was collapsing. Something inside him had snapped, and all his usual, eerie composure was suddenly gone. Brought down to earth, he shuddered and wailed just like the rest of us do, down here. With our ordinary pain, our all-too-familiar weakness. And no sky castle or Santa Claus to whisper in our ears, telling us that everything is all right, like everything always is, and always will be.

Yes, he still spoke in that articulate, somewhat formal way of his, but he always spoke that way. Even when he was shaking, and crying, and hitting himself, he’d still produce the very same sort of language, in between the sniffles and the shrieks.

I moved myself off the bed, and walked towards him.

“Herschel,” I said, “what’s going on?”

He had his hands held out in front of him, palms down. He was moving them back and forth, very quickly, with violent intensity. It looked like the gesture someone might make if they were trying to argue a point to someone, and they were getting frustrated by how little progress they were making. Like that, except sped up, and intensified, and repeated indefinitely.

“My Adversary is mighty,” he said. “Oh, oh, what have I done? And what will become of me?”

“Talk to me,” I said. “Tell me what’s bothering you.”

“I am wracked with doubt,” he said. “I have been wandering in a dark cavern, among shadows, seeing one form and then another in the shadows, and thinking I know the meaning of what I see.

“Each form in the shadows repudiates the last. I know all, and I know nothing.

“If Christmas Day had come two weeks earlier, or three, I would have been utterly unprepared. And I would have had no idea that anything was missing from me.

“How am I to say that there is nothing missing, now? I was made eternal, but I have spent too long in the shadows, and I have become like them: fickle, changeable, with no fixed form.”

It was unsettling, seeing him reflect on himself this way. I felt that he was tugging at a loose thread which could unravel the whole of him, if he kept at it.

“Hey,” I said, in my best attempt at a soothing tone. “Hey, hey.

“You’ll feel better tomorrow, if not sooner,” I said. “I’m sure of it.

“You weren’t ‘wracked with doubt’ before, remember? You’ve always been very confident of yourself. That’s who you are. It’ll come back.”

Herschel made a noise like an angry cat.

“My Adversary!” he shrieked. “He is mighty! He commands New York City, and Damien Eggert, and legions of black metal birds that blot out the sky!

“What have I done? I have delivered myself over into his hands! I have delivered myself into the hands of Damien Eggert, his regent, who will seize me with his evil arms, imprison me in his evil laboratories, torture me, destroy me!

“I have been a fool! I am a fool. Mock me, Madeleine. Show yourself to me, substituting yourself for the forms which have betrayed me. Take my manly spirit away from me, and laugh! Yes, laugh! That is proper, for I am Herschel Schoen, laughingstock!

“Oh, oh,” he moaned. “I am afraid.

“The night is cruel and cold, and it shows me what I am. I cannot even make myself warm enough in winter—that is how limited my powers are! And I face an Adversary who calls every power his own! Who is making an entire world from straw and circuitry!”

It was very cold. I was shivering a bit, too.

I think something had gone wrong with our radiator, or with the boiler, sometime in the previous week. It was never this cold in the apartment before, not in any winter we’d had before.

I walked across the floor, and stood next to Herschel’s bed.

“Have no fear,” I said.

I think that his agitation lessened, slightly, after I said this. But only slightly, and I might have been imagining it.

“You’re always telling me that,” I said. “That there’s no reason to be afraid, about anything at all.

“Were you wrong? When you would tell me that?”

Herschel made a noise, vaguely wordlike but unintelligible. It seemed to be an expression of strong emotion, of some strong emotion. But which one, I couldn’t say.

“Didn’t you write a whole book,” I said, “last week, just to convince me that there was nothing for me to be afraid of?

“Was your book wrong, too?”

For a little while, he did not say anything. He lay in silence, shaking, with his eyes darting wildly.

“You did not read it,” he said, a little later.

“My December chronicle. You have not read a word of it, you said.

“Perhaps you would understand what I suffer, now, if you had. But you chose not to. You chose forgetting, and the television, and Vincent Vierge, and so you do not understand, and cannot understand.”

My poor brother. He writes a whole book for me, and I won’t even read it.

No wonder things turned out like they

“I would like to read it,” I said. “I haven’t, yet, but I want to.”

“You cannot, now,” he said. “You are going away.”

What with him being a ninety-nine-point-ninth percentile genius, and all, it was funny how the most obvious ideas would sometimes just . . . not occur to him.

“Could I take it with me?” I said. “I’ve got plenty of room in my suitcase.”

“No!” he cried. “No, no, please! Those papers must be with me in the battle! They are an armament, an—”

It was very unlike him, stopping himself mid-sentence like that.

“No,” he said. “I have misunderstood, and must now correct myself. For the last rite’s specifications are still revealing themselves to me, piece by piece, even now.

“It is rather different than I had imagined,” he said, “although, now seeing it properly, it has become hard to imagine how I could have seen it in any other way.

“It is specified, yes, that some of my papers should be placed on my body, for their power depends on that placement.

“But my body is small, and my papers are many. And there is no need for the others to be close to me at all. Their powers derive only from their existence, and from their integrity, and from the performance of any obeisances which are due to them.”

He was still in visible distress. But he smiled, weakly.

“You have saved me again, tonight, Sister.

“Oh, how very wrong I was before now! I had thought that my papers must be massed here, near me, in Brooklyn, New York.

“But that is precisely the worst place for them! For they would be imperiled, if allowed to remain there. They would then be within the range of my Adversary’s forces, on Christmas Day. And my Adversary knows that they are a source of power; surely he would try to tear and damage them, if they were still here.

“No, it is best that they be elsewhere. As far away as possible!”

“How about Portland, Oregon?” I said. “It’s all the way across the country from here.”

“Yes,” Herschel said, grasping my meaning at once. “Yes, that will do!

“Please,” he said, “oh, please take them with you! It will be a great help to me.”

“I’ll take what I can,” I said. “It won’t be everything.

“Our whole closet is filled up with your papers, and there are lots more of them in the living room, too. My suitcase is big, but not that big.”

“There is no need for that,” he said. “You need only take the ones that are preparations.

“The December chronicle, and some others, too.

“I will show you which ones I mean.”

With great effort, in stops and starts, he managed to get himself off the bed and onto the floor. His arms were still shaking in that frustrated-looking manner, though they shook a little more slowly now, I noticed.

He walked toward the door, indicating for me to follow.

I grabbed my suitcase, and went out with him into the living room.

 

 

We stood together, in the dim light.

Herschel sifted through his massive, cluttered piles of paper. He picked out particular notebooks, or particular stacks of loose sheets, and handed them to me.

“This one,” he said, handing me a spiral notebook, “is different from the others. It requires certain obeisances, without which it will be nothing more than mere paper, and wholly powerless.

“It is of the utmost importance that you perform these obeisances, at the appropriate time. On Christmas Day, in the earliest hours of the morning.”

“Obeisances?” I said.

“At the appropriate time,” he said, “the pages with writing on them must be torn out of this notebook.

“Then, they must be properly arranged, upon some surface. It does not matter what surface it is, so long as it is more or less flat.

“As for the arrangement itself, you know it already. They must be arranged, on the surface, in the same way that I arrange my papers around my body, in bed, when I prepare for sleep.

“You do know that arrangement, do you not?”

“I do,” I said.

“You know it precisely, by heart?” he said.

“I do,” I said.

“And you will arrange these papers as I have described, on a surface that is more or less flat, in the early morning hours of Christmas Day?” he said.

“I will,” I said.

Oh, it was such fun to play pretend! It was a blessing, having a little brother with such a first-rate imagination. One who dreamed up such delightful little games, and such diverting little fantasies.

It was such fun to play pretend, and not have to think about

 

 

Finally, he reached the last of the papers he wanted to give me.

My suitcase, as it turned out, was still not full.

His task complete, Herschel plopped himself down on the couch, and curled into himself, huddling against the cold.

“Sister?” he said.

“I am afraid,” he said. “I have entrusted you with something of the utmost importance, tonight.

“It scares me, to think of how it will soon be somewhere beyond my reach, and even beyond my sight, and I will not know what has happened to it.

“Please, Sister. Treat these papers with the appropriate reverence. Keep them safe, and do right by them.”

“I will,” I said.

It was easy to say all the right words, now that I knew that they could not matter.

“Do right by them,” he said, “on Christmas Day.

“And do right by them, also, in the days that are to come after.

“Please, preserve your body, on Christmas Day. And preserve it, too, in the days after. Please, do not allow your death-wish to take you down under the earth too soon.

“I am trusting you, Sister. Please.”

It did not matter what I said. And so, I simply said whatever pleased me most.

I said nothing, and was pleased.

“Do right by my papers,” he repeated.

“I will,” I said.

“Make them whole,” he said, “and let their wholeness shine, so that no one could see them and doubt their power.”

“I will,” I said.

“And in the days after Christmas Day,” he said, “make them into a book. They are a book already, but their form hides their nature. Give them a fitting form, so that their nature will be known, and they will be read, and gloried in.”

“I didn’t know you were still hoping to get this stuff published,” I said. “I mean, you used to talk about that a lot, but that was before . . . before all the ‘Adversary’ stuff, and all the Santa stuff, and . . . you know. Before December.

“I thought maybe that wish had gone away, now. What with Christmas and the last rite and all.

“But sure, if you want. I don’t know the first thing about how a book comes to be published, you know that. But I’ll try.”

Herschel smiled. There was a note of pity in it, but it was not unkind.

“Published?” he said. “I suppose that is what I want, still. In a sense.

“But I am speaking of matters that are to come after Christmas Day, and so I cannot manage more than ‘in a sense.’ The fullness of my intent cannot but escape you, for you have forgotten.”

It was nice, in a weird way, hearing him say that annoying phrase one more time. Anything can acquire sentimental value, when it’s being done for the last time.

“Sister?” he said.

“I am afraid. And I am very cold.

“Could you . . . hold me, now?”

At first, I wasn’t sure I’d heard him properly. And then, after I’d put aside that worry, I started to worry that this was some sort of test. That I was supposed to refuse, or something.

He had never asked me for this before. For the obvious reasons.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “I mean . . . Herschel, you hate it when people touch you.”

“I do,” he said. “I do hate it.

“But I am very cold. I would like to try it, at least.”

So I moved, slowly and carefully, onto the couch.

And I slid, slowly and carefully, over to Herschel’s side.

I extended an arm, and put it over him, as gradually and gently as I could manage.

He shrieked. I moved my arm away.

“No,” he said, “no, put it back . . .”

I put the one arm over him again. And I wrapped my other arm around the front of him, too.

“Oh, oh, it is strange,” he moaned.

I leaned in, and pressed my whole body against his, laying my head over his shoulder.

“It is . . .” he said. “Forms, flowing ceaselessly over me, in confusion, too fast, dizzying . . .”

“I’m probably not doing it right,” I said. “I’ve never been very good at . . . this sort of thing.”

“The static of the radio, at unimaginable volume . . .” Herschel said. “Fingernails against a chalkboard . . . senseless, meaningless, rough, riddled with spines . . .

“But refusing to stop, ignorant of their power to wound, and to confound the senses . . . oh, it is strange! It is of shadows, wholly . . . it is the shadows showing their nature plainly, flowing and flowing in their boundless ignorance, incapable of remembering and incapable of knowing there is a thing that they lack . . . there is nothing like it, above! Nothing at all!

“And your arms, Sister . . . they are so thin. I saw their thinness, before, but it is different, to feel it . . .”

I thought: what he needs is a mother. A mother’s arms, around him. Not these arms, which are meant for something else entirely.

“This would feel nicer,” I said, “and warmer, too, if it was Ma, instead of me. I bet it would.”

“Perhaps it would,” Herschel said. “Still, I do feel a little less cold, now, I notice.

“But Sister, your body . . . I do fear for it. I fear for it more than ever, now, having felt it.

“Please, preserve it, in the coming days. For me, if for no other reason.”

“I love you,” I said.

He did not respond, and I said nothing more.

We stayed on the couch like that for a little while. With my gangly arms clasped awkwardly around him, and my chest against his, and my head over his shoulder.

How long it was exactly, I can’t say. A few minutes. Maybe five, or even ten.

I yawned, and realized suddenly how tired I was. How late it was.

“I think I should get to bed,” I said. I retracted from the hug, and stood up.

“Good night,” I said.

I should have said “goodbye,” too. But for some reason, I didn’t. I was very tired. Perhaps it just didn’t occur to me.

“Good night, Sister,” Herschel said.

I remember what he looked like, then, curled up on the couch, shivering. I remember it very clearly. There was nothing special about the image, except that it was the last one.

I turned to the bedroom door.

I turned away from him, for the last time.

I left the room. And left my brother’s life, forever.