Claire appeared in the doorway, fully dressed, brushing the last of her hair.
“Why do you keep yelling my name?” she asked.
“I wanted you to see something,” I said. “This show I’m watching. On this guy who died.”
“Well, you could have said that. I wish you wouldn’t yell my name. I really can’t stand it.”
I apologized to her.
“It’s fine,” she said, leaving the room. “But I can’t stand it. Please don’t do that anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again, feeling less sorry.
“And I said it’s fine,” she yelled from another room. “Stop apologizing.”
Sorry, I said to myself, wondering how many times in my marriage I’d said that, how many times I’d meant it, how many times Claire had actually believed it, and, most important, how many times the utterance had any impact whatsoever on our dispute. What a lovely chart one could draw of this word Sorry.
A linguist from Banff scorned LeBov’s idea of a toxic language.
“This idea implies a physical component to language. Some material antigen,” she said. “What exactly is the substance, in chemical terms, that is causing this allergy he speaks of?” asked the linguist. “Language is the scapegoat here. If there is a problem—and I highly doubt there is, I cannot imagine such a thing—it is one for the immunologists.”
Was the Banff linguist, I wondered, simply part of LeBov’s long plan, designed to control the flow of the argument?
The linguist held forth, smugly dismissing an idea that had recently come into its own. It interested me that the linguist’s inability to imagine something constituted a sound rejection of its possibility.
I cannot imagine such a thing.
If only that kept it from coming true.
You had simply to look out the window to see the missing evidence she was calling for, watch the neighbors drive off and not return.
Actually you had only to look at Claire, if you could even bear to. I certainly tried to avoid sight of her, even dressed up, even with her hair, falling out as it was, brushed back over her small face. That sort of witness bearing did no one any favors.
LeBov was dead, so enemies could alert the world to how unimportant the old man really was, before irony would come along to smother them alive.
I thought of Murphy and wondered to what authority figure he would answer now. Was he trembling in his room at home now that his master had died?
The final segment of the news focused on LeBov’s Jewish problem. LeBov exhibited, admitted one commenter in rather shy tones, an unreasonable interest in the private activities of members of a certain religious faith.
LeBov often stoked, our expert remarked, the long-standing rumor of a segment of the Jewish population who worship privately, sharing wisdom through an underground signaling mechanism.
Of course we have found no basis for these rumors, the expert assured us.
Of course, I thought.
These rumors show a profound disrespect for people of diverse faiths.
Yes, yes. A profound disrespect.
When a scientist, particularly a scientist, the expert warned, buys into superstition, into lore, and uses them as paradigms of insight, our entire method of knowing is threatened. LeBov shows no respect by fanning the flames of a dangerous rumor, a rumor that only seeks to further isolate those among us who do practice authentic religious observance. To people of genuine faith, LeBov’s antics are a disgrace.
LeBov had apparently called for the forest Jews to come forward, to quit hoarding their fucking treasure.
From what I could tell, LeBov knew little of our practice. He bathed in the standard misinformation, took wild swings, threw out a stinking bait that, I was sure, none of us would take.
Wisdom, he argued, was meant to be shared. Particularly wisdom that offers precise guidance on our crisis. A crisis like this, he said, requires assets. We must develop assets that will assist us in our change, and we can never ignore the source of a poison, the source of it, when we look to soothe its symptoms.
The source of it. He was talking about children.
Which had what to do with our religion? I wondered.
A closing thought on LeBov from our expert. I do not recall the man’s name or title, just that he wore a collar and a dark robe, and that his thoughts seemed to come so slowly that they caused him pain.
“LeBov’s idea that science cannot help us, but faith can—this is an idea that resonates deeply for me. Deeply.”
He attempted an important pause.
“But when the faith to which he is referring does not exist, I can only be profoundly troubled. It desecrates the real, authentic Jew to imagine a false and private one, and to accord that imaginary Jew with secret powers channeled against the interests of the world at large. It’s a desecration.”
The feature on LeBov ended and Jim Adelle seemed caught by surprise, swaying in his chair behind the big news table. He put his finger to his ear, listened to his producer, winced. Perhaps, instead of a verbal message, they’d sent a knifelike frequency into his head. In the end, I bet Jim Adelle would have preferred that to words.
He looked up but his focus couldn’t quite meet the camera. He seemed to be staring at something inside his own eyes. With a mechanical face he repeated the news. LeBov was dead.
I got up to continue my apology to Claire, if I could find her. It was going to take a little bit more work.
Then they showed LeBov’s picture again.
Except on the screen where there should have been a picture of a man I’ve never seen, whose voice I’d hardly heard on the radio, they showed a picture of Murphy. It was unmistakable. The same red hair, the same immortal skin. A recent photo of Murphy.
I crouched into the blue funnel of the television to get a good look.
So. This was LeBov.
Do not let him confuse or mislead you, Murphy had said. Or was it LeBov who said this to me?
Are you reading LeBov? That will catch you up on things.
If he was still alive, and I had a terrible feeling that he was, I was pretty sure I knew where I could find him.
18
News of the quarantine issued through the car radio on my way down to the Oliver’s. It would be temporary. The neighborhood would be restricted to children, protected, necessities provided. Details were given about the gate, the fence line, the use of dogs. It was time for everyone else to go.
A diversion would be created for the children. Something involving the school. Or was it the prison?
They were giving us a day, a day and a half, to pack our things and leave.
Some suggested destinations followed. Shelters, towns, mostly fanning to the south. Wheeling, Marion, Danville, the quad county district, Albert Farm. Towns with undeveloped space, meadowland. Counties with soil still soft enough for digging, where the salt was naturally repelled by the winter air systems. The list was not long.
The way I heard this was: Do not go to Wheeling, Marion, Danville. Avoid the quad counties and Albert Farm.
I pictured Claire under blankets in the backseat of the car as I drove all night, wondering where to stop. She was not ready to travel, especially with no destination, no promise of comfort or safety when we arrived.
Wherever we ended up, we would need to be separated from our volatile fellows. The toxicity had spread beyond children. Not everywhere, not fully, but that was the trend. Everyone would make everyone sick, with children the lone immuners. We should not, according to the report, even be together, unless we could refrain from speech, take a pact of silence.