Now in the darkness, hours before we would leave town for good, I was completely helpless just steps from the hut. I wish to remark on the darkness of this place without resorting to hyperbole, but I do not think that is possible.
I reached out my arms, leaned, then fell into the dirt.
It was easier from there to move on hands and knees, but I needed to keep one arm up to guard my head. I crawled through frozen mud, butted into a tree stump, then corrected my attack and crept forward. Finally I struck the wall of the hut, and from there I guided myself until I collided with the staircase.
When I opened the door, a flashlight switched on. LeBov had wedged himself into the floor, his legs dangling down the hole.
“There you are,” he said.
Across the hut floor he slid the grease tin, and I scooped some of it into my mouth.
He gestured to his neck, so I spread some there as well, pasting the white collar tighter on my skin.
It took hold in my face, softening my mouth, and my vision sharpened. When the tightness in my throat released, I found I could speak more easily, even if the ability brought nausea along with it.
“This is private property,” I said quietly.
“Oh? I’d love to see your deed.”
I stepped inside, leaned against the doorway.
“Maybe first you could let me know to whom I am speaking,” I said.
“You’re not the only one who can use a fake name.”
“Apparently not.”
His legs seemed trapped in the hole.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
I wanted him to be aware that I could take two steps up to him and deliver a sweet kick to his face. He would not be able to get away from me in time.
“No, thanks,” he said, oblivious that I was sparing him. “I have everything I need.”
He reached across the floor and grabbed a duffel bag, which clanged as he dragged it.
“I was saddened to hear of your death,” I said. “It’s a great loss. For all of us.”
“Thank you. You sound sad.”
“Yes, actually. I am sad. I’m sad that you’re here where you do not belong. It’s private, and there’s nothing here for you.”
“Nothing,” he said. “I wouldn’t call this nothing.”
He held up my listener. It was ripped down the middle, coated on its underside with something shiny. The bottom pouch was leaking and the gel had spread over LeBov’s hands.
“Okay, good for you. You must be so pleased.”
“I am fairly pleased,” he said. “I thought that I might need your help, but I don’t. Now I need to get myself down this hole.”
He screwed himself farther in, squeezing his hips past the floorboards.
I’d never gotten in that far, but I’d never had to.
“That’s not how it works,” I said. “There’s nothing down there. You’re missing the point.”
LeBov was submerged to the shoulders now, holding his bag above his head as if he were about to wade across a stream. He was trying to vanish down the little hole in the floor that normally housed our transmission cables.
“Believe me,” he said. “I am not missing the point. I think that you’re the one who has missed the point.”
Something was wrong. LeBov was straining, turning red. He couldn’t force himself through, so he squirmed out of the hole and retrieved a saw from his bag. From a position on his stomach he reached into the hole and started sawing, stopping to examine his work with the flashlight. When he finished sawing, he sat up and raised a finger as if we were meant to listen for something.
We heard the clatter of wood falling away from us, but we did not hear it land.
Probably the rubber balls at the bottom of the hole absorbed the impact.
“Maybe now,” he said.
I told LeBov that I felt obliged to ask him some questions.
“That sounds like a burden. Unburden yourself. By all means. You have about forty-five seconds. If that’s how you’d like to use your remaining time, feel free.”
“Okay. Why did you do it?”
LeBov didn’t even take a minute to think. It was as though I’d asked him a question he’d rehearsed all his life. From LeBov I merited the canned response, deflection delivered with a hint of superiority. I hated people who could answer questions like these. Any kind of questions, maybe.
“There are certain boundaries that I’d prefer not to observe when it comes to my own identity,” LeBov said. “There’s a lot of behavior that I want to accomplish, but I don’t need all of it, or really any of it, attributed to me. Attribution is a burden. In that sense I’m less like a person, a person as you might think of one, and more like an organization. There’s also behavior that I need to undo, to take away, and this is often best accomplished by others, people who can erase action, alter ideas. I have a staff who work for me, of course. It’s always startled me that people are so cautious when it comes to who exactly they are. It’s almost the only thing we actually get to control. What a missed opportunity, really. For instance, you don’t even know that I’m the real LeBov. But it’s hard to grieve the choices made, or not made, by uninspired people. The sympathy allotment doesn’t extend that far.”
“So you change your name, fake your death.”
“Look, that’s nothing. That’s cosmetic. Not even cosmetic. I moved around some grains of sand. Or not even that. I can’t invent a small enough metaphor for what I’ve done. It’s that insignificant. It adds some maneuverability, that’s all. Some spaces open up. Everyone’s presumed dead now anyway, as of tonight, after the radio darkness. Today was the last chance to die and have it reported. I hit the last news cycle. My death was the last story before the blackout. The world’s last obituary. You should be congratulating me.”
I looked at this redhead squeezing through the floor of my synagogue.
“Congratulations. And if in the process of this important work you hurt someone?”
“Then, uh, they feel pain? Is that a trick question? Is that really what’s at issue right now, your hurt feelings? Could your perspective be any smaller?”
“You spoke to my wife.”
“Someone had to. At least she actually listened. So much for your unified front.”
LeBov reached into his coat and removed a long darning needle.
“Here,” he said, rolling it over. “If you don’t jam it in too hard, you won’t do any permanent damage.”
“To myself?”
“To anyone. Jesus, you are so self-centered. Thousands of years of Judaism, topped off by exclusive, secret access at your hole, for ultra-rare religious guidance, and this is all your people have come to?”
He gestured at our surroundings as if I, too, was meant to examine them.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but this place is sad. I examined your, what do you call it, your Moses Mouth? Your enabler? You all have different silly words for it.”
He was referring to the slashed-up listener in his bag.
“Listener,” I whispered to him. I don’t think I’d ever said it out loud.
“You examined it?” I asked.
“And you didn’t even bleed the withers, or whatever that fucking extra skin is called. It’s completely engorged. You only used it to tap into Burke. That’s insane. I’ve never seen such a rudimentary listener, and I have a good collection of them now. Anyone can listen to Burke, because there is no Burke. You don’t even need a fucking listener. I can drop a copper wire into any conductive soil and pick up that signal. Probably with my landline telephone I could dial it up. It’s completely unsecured. Public domain. Probably ham radio. I bet people get it in their houses. I bet you could pick it up off a filling in your molar. You spent all this time out here with this amazing device and you never wondered if you were hearing the right broadcast? The deepest feed? Instead you fucked on the floor like animals. Honestly, sometimes I had to look away. You didn’t care and you fucked in a pile of musty sweaters. I’m kind of astounded. The Burke sermons were recorded years ago and play on a loop.”