The Flame Alphabet - Ben Marcus [22]
We had, it seemed to me, succeeded perfectly at being misunderstood. Again and again our huts were surveilled, seized, burned, for fear that the Jew was drinking something too important out of these holes, drinking directly from God’s mind, eating a pure alphabet that he alone could stomach. These were the fearful rumors. Such an apparatus, if true, was too good for Jews alone. It must be breached, overturned, made to work for the others. The holes must be explored, chased to their source, fucked dry for their secrets.
And they were.
When a hut above a loaded hole is found, a hole that is hot with language, the hut is overturned. If the listener is buried elsewhere, as it must be, then no reception is possible. Even when the exposed cables are jammed into every kind of translating console by engineers, without a listener nothing but burnt tones are ever heard, and even these are confused for last year’s wind, swept underground now and dying.
Without the listener draped over the radio module hugging that fucker until it releases its broadcast, these are the spoils the intruder will hear, these at most, and he will soon cease to care. Not least because such washes of sound render the inexperienced vandal docile, listless, apathetic.
After all their violating labors, what is extracted from these holes by intruders is never anything coherent enough to be called a language, and the public curiosity whispers down into nothing again.
Foolish Jews worshipping in the mud, goes the claim. Let them have their holes, their ancient language of clicks and whistles and yells.
And have them we damn well do.
The radio fell silent when Burke finished. Before he signed off he promised that a brief message from Rabbi Thompson would follow. Until then there’d be a low rumble from the module, remote voices chopped into pieces too small to understand.
Claire curled up on the hut floor and I pulled a blanket from the bin.
“If you get up I can put this under us,” I said.
With a show of labor, her body in pain, Claire pulled herself up and stepped from the hut. I rolled out the blanket and brought Claire back in, lowering her down again. Without removing her shoes she shucked her leggings to her knees, then turned on her stomach.
“Okay” was all she said, not even looking up at me. She was ready.
I did not yet know if I was aroused.
Claire was quiet today, but sometimes our best intimacy occurred after the most difficult sermons. We could not speak of them and I don’t think either of us was even tempted. Our minds worked away in private at what we heard, but our bodies sometimes wanted the busywork of a cold joining of parts.
Burke’s sermons reminded me of what I did not know, could hardly ever honestly feel. “You come here because of what is missing,” he always said. To listen to Burke was to believe I could be curious about something. In theory I felt a great awe for what could not be explained, but in practice I felt too alone. Always I worried that I lacked the great appetite for uncertainty that Burke demanded. What if uncertainty held no appeal for me?
A distant hissing reported from the radio, the searching work of the listener, divining the wire for a signal. Before I dropped down over Claire for our intimacy, I put my coat over the radio. Sometimes vestigial sound poured out, accidents in the broadcast, and we preferred these stifled so we could concentrate.
Claire stretched long and I covered her. Beneath me, even clothed, she felt bony. I worried my weight was too much for her, so I held myself up with my arms, letting my face settle in her hair.
We worked the messy connection by shifting clothing, Claire’s leggings in a ruffle around her knees. The moment of insertion was abrasive, but soon a moist warmth engulfed us, and we settled into a dutiful pursuit of pleasure, sharing the labor as equally as we could. Fairness always, even in these grisly animal matters. When Claire took the lead from underneath, I held my