The Flame Alphabet - Ben Marcus [53]
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