The Flame Alphabet

“You want me to believe that you were Thompson, too?” “No, not particularly. It’s more interesting when you don’t believe deeply obvious facts. That’s far more fascinating to me. I like to surround myself with mistaken people. I draw strength from it. It increases my own chances for success.” “Agreement is a poison, right?” “That’s part of it.” “So

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

I would like to question you on your symptoms, the path you navigated to language, the choices you’ve faced. But we will never speak, as I will be dead by the time you read this. We do not get to survey the people of the future, who laugh at how little we knew, how poorly we felt things, how softly we knocked at the door that protected all the best

People are driven to be wrong in the most spectacular ways. There’s fame in it. We are in a high season of error.

The flame alphabet was the word of God, written in fire, obliterating to behold. The so-called Torah. This was public domain Jewish information, easy for Murphy to obtain. We could not say God’s true name, nor could we, if we were devoted, speak of God at all. This was basic stuff. But it was the midrashic spin on the flame alphabet that was more e

I had to believe that LeBov’s ambition extended beyond my imagination, into territories yet more awful. I had to believe this, because it kept coming true. I had to start working harder to imagine the worst.

There was something blackening to the act of writing words, like carving into flesh. My hand felt foreign. It would not cooperate. And if I did write anything, it looked like a drawing dismantled into too many pieces. I could make the parts but I could not put the parts together.

“You’ve heard of the flame alphabet, of course,” said Murphy. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you.”

On our bookshelves we had yet to install the speakers that would pump fine washes of hiss into the room, an acoustical barrier that would mostly fail to cloak Esther’s language.