“Then carry it steady, my boy — we may need every drop!”
“Jews cannot tolerate the light of our lamps past a certain intensity. We will put this to the test, we will find his threshold.”
Four boys stagger back beneath a load of copper and stoneware lamps. I am pleased with their efficiency, until I see it: there’s been a mistake. The lamps of the fourth boy burn, and he carries, as it were, an armload of fire. “Your method is mistaken, child! This well could cost you your life!”
“Look!” I shout. “Look at the lamps of the other boys — are they lit? But yours — yours are lit! What were you thinking? Surely you can understand — it isn’t safe to carry more than two or three lit lamps at a time. And yet you have in your arms, by my count — almost certainly partial — thiry-seven lit lamps! Those lamps must be growing hotter by the moment — and at the first twitch or shiver it would all be over — you’d be drenched in flame — a liquid fire eating you up! Nobody move! It is far too dangero ORF2K0 BQE5CXR T20E0 HEREY1 O7509 °C#K
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“Don’t worry, my child, I’ll save you,” I say. “Of course, I can only move very slowly, encumbered as I am with this machine. But you see, when I awake the blood helper boy — gently, gently, it doesn’t do to wake a helper boy too precipitously; we must let him stretch, wipe the sleep from his eyes — and now, with the helper boy pushing my blood machine, as I pull it — we can make our way across the room at a reasonable speed. Yes, mark our progress — here we come! — it’s not so far now — we are quite close, and I think we shall avert disaster. See? Now I’m only a single step away from our poor, addled boy, who thought carrying lit lamps would be a good idea. My child, I am here to help! But first, I think, we should take a moment to review the lessons to be gleaned from this error:
Containeth Time a twain of days,
this of blessing that of bane,
And holdeth Life a twain of halves,
this of pleasure that of pain.
“The poet spoke truly, did he not? Thus time; what says he of place?:
And here in end confronted so
By the true genius, friend or foe,
And actual visage of a place
Before but dreamed of in the glow BWP T B0C NS1W0YWC IX PTP TCQL W9QSEW
“And what of hardship, and service?:
For others these hardships and labours I bear
And theirs is the pleasure and mine is the care;
As the bleacher who blacketh his brow in the sun
To whiten the raiment which other men wear.
“Isn’t that remarkable? And isn’t it just so? Though of course, I would bid you remember when you hear of this blackened brow that it is never truly thus. The night, the not-night, those deceptions of light and dark. Do you understand? Never mind. But a beautiful message nonetheless. And, my boy, you bring to mind one final verse, which I think really captures you, in all your tremulous beauty — yes, you’re certainly trembling, standing there, straining under all that weight:
A youth slim waisted from whose locks and brow
The world in blackness and in light is set.
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No rarer sight thine eye hath ever met.”
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punctuated by an explosion; the boy with the lit lamps has been converted to a boy-sized torch and fire is leaping across the room. The other boys hop and spin wildly to evade the flaming lamps bouncing everywhere, but it is too late …
For they are struck, each in turn, and now they, too, are burning.
They spin, and they burn, and they die, turning and turning around me, in precise order.
The boys bring me my food. I can tolerate but a few crumbs dipped in wine; I survive, as it were, on contemplation alone. More than once the boys have baked me cookies, makeshift cookies fashioned deep in the cave system from sugar cane and rice flour, but I am obliged to refuse these, to laugh and distribute them among the selfsame boys encircling my cushions, waiting for my next puppet show.
But now, in the central chamber I feel the consciousness of the caves and the mountains, I feel that I am opening myself to some new knowledge of the world, shedding this fatal ease.
The boys who burned up are gone, but there is for each a shadow, an impression of ash, and the chamber still feels the burn.
“Teacher,” a boy says, “may I ask you something?”
I watch the red stripe in the tube: my blood. “Of course.”
“The Zionist. I heard the lieutenants talking. They said that he is Mossad.”
I nod noncommittally. “I have heard this one.”
“Teacher,” says a second boy.
“Yes, child.”
“Another of the boys is lost.”
“Lost?”
“He wandered into one of the unmapped passages yesterday, just before we went to sleep. We haven’t seen him since.”
The first boy: “He said the song of the Jew was pulling him. He couldn’t help himself, he said.”
“He told you that?”
“He woke me up. I didn’t understand. I am sorry, I was confused. I thought it was a dream. But this morning he was gone.”
S 6/ PPRH N D8 R1Y0XPFFRH V DZES2 CEH1
I settle back into my cushions and watch the blood. “This is important,” I say. “You’ve done well to inform me. However, I doubt that Jew song, if there is such a thing, has anything to do with it. Boys lose themselves in this cave system,” I say. “It did not start with the Jew’s arrival. True, several boys have wandered off in recent days. But many others wandered off in the past, as well.”
The first boy says, “That’s what I told the lieutenant. He said maybe the Jew has always been here. That maybe the cave system is cursed. There could be many Jews here.”
I say, “Who suggested that?”
“Or that Mr. Bush may have planted the Jew here. Or Mr. Rumsfeld. Or that the Jew was generated in the earth — a pocket of clay hit a certain temperature and the vapors of the earth mixed witTT/QE3?ARA4OWAR3S /
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that there is no Jew at all. That he is just a lost child, a defective, alone and wandering.”
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don’t know. This is my first Jew. I’m a child of the cave system, I GS,9BF CWQ4G O00MS EOPT1TEG
What is a Jew, anyway? How would I know a Jew? How would I be able to tell him
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