Approaching Oblivion

by Harlan Ellison

  I thought about that for a while. “Well,” I said slowly, “the Talmud does say, ‘Nine free men and a slave may be reckoned together for a quorum,’ but against that is quoted that Rabbi Eliezer went into a Synagogue and didn’t find ten there, so he freed his slave and with him completed the number, but if there had only been seven and he had freed two slaves, it wouldn’t have been kosher. But with one freed slave and the Rabbi it made ten. So, clearly, as all agree, eight freemen and two slaves would not answer the purpose. But, if you just put yourself in my place for a moment, you’re not, even remotely speaking, my slave. You’re the Slave of the Rock. And besides, it takes a long time to convert. Can you speak Hebrew? Even a little?”

  “What’s Hebrew?”

  “Forget it. How about keeping kosher?”

  “What are they? I’ll keep them if it’s part of the program. After all, when you’ve been a Rock, eating bugs all your life, keeping some kind of pet doesn’t sound too difficult.”

  It was hopeless. For a minute there I gave it a maybe, you know what I mean. But the more I thought about it, even if I could summon up the chutzpah to go back to Reb Jeshaia with a rock, not with a Kadak, it wouldn’t work. This Rock was a nice enough fellow, you know what I mean, but even as I sat there pondering, he shot out that ick tongue of his, and snared a buck-fly and whipped it in that move he thought was such a sensational thing, and splatted it all over the place, and started eating it. And clearly, very clearly, Genesis 9:4 forbade animal blood to all the seed of Noah, so how could I bring a Rock back and say, here, I freed this Slave of the Rock, and he’ll be the tenth man, and then right in the middle of Adonai, out would come that crummy tongue and eat a bug off the wall. Forget it.

  “Listen,” I said, as gentle as I could, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, “it’s a strictly great offer you’ve made, and under other circumstances I’d take you up on that, you know what I’m saying? But right now I’m really pressed for time and it would take too long for you to learn Hebrew, so let’s let it sit for a while. I’ll get back to you.”

  He wasn’t happy about that, I could tell. But he was a real mensch. He told me he understood, and he wished me good luck with the Fleshists, and he let me roll away fast. I could see his point, though, and I was very sorry about his not being a possible. I mean, how would you like it to sit all day baking in the sun, with birds making pish in your face, and the best you got to look forward to is a juicy bug.

  And if I’d known what I had coming, what tsuris, I’d have gladly only, happily yet, you can believe it, taken that Rock back with me, bug dreck and all. Believe me, there are worse things than a rock that eats bugs.

  I’ll make a long story short. I followed the trail of that putz Kadak from the pit of the Fleshists (where I lost the use of my pupik, all my coin, the sight of one eye in the back, the second arm on the left side, and my yarmulkah), to the embarkation dock at the spaceport where the sect called the Denigrators were getting on board ships for that Bromios (where I got beat up so bad I crawled away), to the lava beds where the True Believers of Suffering were doing their last rites before leaving (where I suffered first degree miserable and such a pain you wouldn’t accept over half my poor body), to the Tabernacle of the Mouth (where some big deal prophet that was all teeth bit off the tip of one antenna. God knows why, maybe out of pique at being left behind), to the Caucus Race of the Malforms (where I fit right in, as crapped up and bloody as I was), to the Lair of the Blessed Profundity of the Unspeakable Trihll (which I could not, even if I had several mouths, pronounce…but they punched and kicked me anyhow, really sensational people), to the Archdruid of Nothingness, always following that miserable creep Kadak from religion to religion—and let me tell you, no one has a good word for that schmuck, not even the worst of those heathens—and it was there, Kayn-ahora, that the Archdruid told me the last he’d seen of Kadak was ten years earlier, when he had changed him into a butterfly, and sent him out into the desert, it should be sincerely hoped he would drop dead in the heat.

  Which is why, finally, I’m standing here talking to you, dumb creep butterfly. So now I’ve told it all, and you see what a puke condition I’m in, don’t for a minute think that Avram or those others will respect me for what I did, they’ll only nuhdz me about how long it took, and that’s why you got to come back with me.

  Not a word. Not a sound through all this. Not a flap or a flitter or a how are you Evsise. Nothing.

  Look. I’m not going to tummel with you, Mr. I-Can’t-Make-Up-My-Mind-What-Kind-of-Religion-I-Want-To-Be butterfly.

  You think I stood here all this time, sinking in up to my rims in sand, just to tell you a cute story? I know you’re Kadak! And how do I know?

  Go ahead, snuffle like that again and ask me how I know!

  Come on. You’ll come either by yourself or I’ll drag you by your wings, you know for a butterfly you’re not even a nice looking butterfly? You’re an ugly, is what you are. And as for being a Jew, only that by birth, such a disgrace to the entire blue Jews on Zsouchmuhn.

  As you can see, I’m getting angry. You’ve gotten me raped, crapped on, burned, maimed, crippled, blinded, insulted, run around, exposed to heathens, robbed, sunburned, covered with bug shmootz, altogether miserable and unhappy, and I’ll tell you, very frankly, you’ll come with me, Mr. Kadak, or I’ll choke you dead right here in this farblondjet desert!

  Now what do you say?

  I thought that’s what you’d say.

  “Here he is.”

  Yankel didn’t believe it. Chaim laughed. Shmuel started to cry, his nose running green. Snodle coughed. And Reb Jeshaia hung his head. “I should have sent Avram,” he said.

  Avram looked away. Like a dead leaf it should fall off.

  “Here he is, is what I said, and here he is, is what it is,” I said. “This is your Kadak, may he rot in his cocoon.”

  Then I told them the whole story.

  At least they had the grace to be amazed.

  “This is what makes the minyan?” Moishe said. “This?”

  “Make him change back, and that’s him,” I said. “I wash my hands of it.” I went over in a corner of the shul and settled down. It was their problem now.

  For hours they went at him. They tried everything. They threatened him, they begged him, they implored him, they intimidated him, they cajoled him, they shmacheled him, they insulted him, they slugged him, they chased his tuchis all over the shul…

  Sure. Of course. Wouldn’t you know. That rotten Kadak wouldn’t change back. At last, he found a thing he wanted to be. A dumb creep butterfly.

  With a snuffle. Still with a rotten snuffle. Did you ever know how much worse a butterfly snuffles than a person?

  You could plotz from it.

  And finally, when they couldn’t get him to change back—and if you want to know the truth, I don’t think he could change back after that weirdnik buhbie Archdruid changed him—they held him down and Reb Jeshaia made the rabbinical decision that his presence was enough, in this great emergency. So Meyer Kahaha sat on him, and we started to sit shivah, finally, for Zsouchmuhn and for Snodle.

  And then Reb Jeshaia got a terrible look on his face and he said, “Oh my God!”

  “What? What what!?” I yelled. “What now, what?”

  Very softly, Reb Jeshaia asked me, “Evsise, how long ago did the Archdruid say he changed Kadak into this thing?”

  “Ten years ago,” I said, “but what—”

  And I stopped. And I sat down again. And knew we had lost, and we would still be there when the gonifs came to rip the planet out of orbit, and we would die, along with the crazies in the Apostate Cathedral and the nafkeh, and the Rock and the Archdruid and everyone else who was too nuts to get safely away the way they were supposed to.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Meyer Kahaha, the oysvorf. “What’s wrong? Why does it matter he’s been a butterfly for ten years?”

  “Only ten years,” said Shmuel.

  “Not thirteen,
schmuck, only ten,” said Yankel, sticking his pointing arm in Meyer Kahaha’s ninth eye.

  We looked at Meyer Kahaha till the light dawned, even for him. “Oh my God,” he said, and rolled over on his side. The butterfly, that miserable Kadak, fluttered up and flew around the shul. No one paid any attention to him. It had all been in vain.

  Scripture says, very clearly there should be no mistake, that all ten of the participants of a minyan have to be over thirteen years old. At thirteen, for a Jew, a boy becomes a man. “Today I am a man,” it’s an old gag. Ha ha. Very funny. It’s the reason for the Bar Mitzvah. Thirteen. Not ten.

  Kadak wasn’t old enough.

  Still dead, still lying on his face, Snodle began weeping.

  Reb Jeshaia and the other seven, the last blue Jews on Zsouchmuhn, now doomed to die without ever again gumming their lust-nest concubines, they all slumped into seats and waited for destruction.

  I felt worst than them. I hurt in more places.

  Then I looked up, and began to smile. I smiled so wide and so loud, everyone turned to look at me.

  “He’s gone crazy,” said Chaim.

  “It’s better that way,” said Shmuel. “He won’t feel the pain.”

  “Poor Evsise,” said Yitzchak.

  “Dummies!” I shouted, leaping up and rolling and hopping and unwinding like a tummeler. “Dummies! Dummies! Even you, Reb Jeshaia, you’re a dummy, we’re all dummies!”

  “Is that a way to talk to a Rabbi?” said Reb Jeshaia.

  “Sure it is,” I yowled, reeling and rocking, “sure it is, sure it is, sure it is, sure it is…”

  Meyer Kahaha came and sat on me.

  “Get off me, you schlemiel! I know how to save us, it’s been here all the time, we never needed that creep snuffle butterfly Kadak!”

  So he got off me, and I looked at them with great pleasure because I was about to demonstrate that I was a folks-mensh of the first water, and I said, “Under a ruling in Tractate Berakhot, nine Jews and the holy ark of the law containing the Torah may, together, hey nu, nu, do you get what I’m saying, may together be considered for congregational worship!”

  And Reb Jeshaia kissed me.

  “Evsise, Evsise, how do you remember such a thing? You’re not a Talmudic scholar, how did you remember such a wonderful thing?” Reb Jeshaia hugged and kissed and babbled in my face at me.

  “I didn’t,” I said, “Kadak did.”

  And they all looked up, as I’d looked up, and there was that not-such-an-altogether-worthless-after-all Kadak, sitting up on top of the Holy Ark, the Aronha-Kodesh, the sacred cabinet holding the sacred scrolls of the Lord. Sitting up there, a butterfly, always to remain a butterfly, sitting and beating his wings frantically, trying to let someone know what he knew, something even a Rabbi had forgotten.

  And when he came down to perch on Reb Jeshaia’s shoulder, we all sat down and rested for a minute, and then Reb Jeshaia said, “Now we will sit shivah. Nine men, the Holy Ark and one butterfly make a minyan.”

  And for the last time on Zsouchmuhn (which means look for me) we said the holy words, this last time for the home we had had, the home we would leave. And all through the prayers, there sat Kadak, flapping his dumb wings.

  And you want to know a thing? Even that was a mechaieh (which means a terrific pleasure).

  Los Angeles, California/1973

  ELLISON’S GRAMMATICAL GUIDE AND GLOSSARY FOR THE GOYIM

  There are two ways to write a story using words in a foreign tongue. The first is to explain every single word as it is used, by restating its meaning in English, or by hoping its use in context will clarify it for the reader. The second is to attempt by syntactical manipulation an approximation of the dialect and tongue, eschewing the use of any foreign words. The third is to provide a glossary and hope the reader won’t be such a dummy as to get annoyed at the author wanting to do it right.

  Additionally, the author, a cute and terrific little person who wants you should enjoy this story to the utmost, has called on the good offices of his friend, Mr. Tim Kirk, a Gentile artist, but also a three-time Hugo award winner, to do a drawing of Evsise, the Zsouchmoid. It is appended herewith, for your pleasure.

  —The Author (A Jew)

  Adonai (ah-doe-noy’) The sacred title of God.

  averah (ah-vay’-reh) Loosely, an unethical or undesirable act.

  Bar Mitzvah (bar mitz’vah) The ceremony, as in many cultures, of the beginning of puberty; held in a synagogue, it is the ceremony in which a 13-year-old Jewish boy reaches the status and assumes the duties of a “man.”

  bialy(ies) (bee-oll’-lee) A flat breakfast roll, shaped like a round wading pool, sometimes sprinkled with onion. Also comes in spansule shape.

  bissel (biss’-el) A little bit.

  brechh A sound you make when varfing.

  bris(es) (briss) The circumcision ceremony.

  buhbie (booh’-bee) Usually an affectionate term of endearment, although occasionally it is used sardonically.

  bummerkeh (bum’-er-keh) A female bum, a loose lady. A nafkeh.

  chutzpah (chhhootz’pah) Gall, brazen nerve, audacity, presumption-plus-arrogance such as no other word, and no other language, can do justice to. Roll the chhh like a Scotsman.

  dreck (drek) Shit, dung, garbage, trash, excrement, crap.

  Evsise (ev’seese) A native of Theta 996: VI, Cluster Messier 3 in Canes Venatici. (see illustration.)

  farblondjet (far-blawn’-jet) Lost (but really lost), mixed-up, wandering around with no idea where you are.

  farchachadah (far-kachh’-dah) Dizzy, confused, dopey, punchy.

  Feh! (feh!) An exclamatory expression of disgust.

  folks-mensh (fokes’-mentch) This has many meanings. In the story it is intended to convey the meaning of a person who is interested in Jewish life, values, experience, and wants to carry on the tradition.

  galus (goll’-us) An exile.

  Gentile (jenn’-tile) The goyim. Non-Jews.

  gevalt! (ghe-vollt’!) A cry of fear, astonishment, amazement.

  glitch (glitch) A shady, not kosher, or reputable affair.

  goldeneh medinah (gold’-en-eh meh-dee’-nah) Literally, “golden country” originally, it meant America to Jews fleeing the European pogroms; a land of freedom, justice and rare opportunity. Well, two out of three ain’t bad.

  gonif(s) (gon-’iff) A thief, a crook; sometimes said with affection to mean a clever person; a dishonest businessman.

  goniffed (gon’-iffed) The act of stealing, as in swiping Zsouchmuhn out of its orbit.

  guderim (guh-dare’-im) My mother used to say, “That kid is eating out my guderim from aggravation.” Which leads me to believe the word means, literally, heart, guts, liver-and-lights, stomach, everything in the middle of your body.

  Kaddish (kahd’-ish) A prayer glorifying God’s name. The most solemn and one of the most ancient of all Jewish prayers; the mourner’s prayer.

  Kayn-ahora (kenna haw’-reh) The phrase uttered to show that one’s praises are genuine and not contaminated by envy.

  kike (kike) A word you won’t find in this story.

  kosher (ko’-sher) As a Hebrew-Yiddish word it means only one thing; fit to eat, because ritually clean according to the dietary laws. As American slang it means authentic, the real McCoy, trustworthy, reliable, up-and-up, legal.

  krenk (krenk) An illness. Also used to mean “nothing” in a sentence like, “He asked me for a loan of fifty bucks; a krenk I’ll give him!”

  mechaieh (meh-chhigh’-eh) Pleasure, great enjoyment, a real joy. Roll the chhh like a Scotsman.

  meshiginah (meh-shih’-ghin-ah); meshugge (meh-shu’-geh); mishegoss (meesh’-eh-goss) Crazy, nuts, wildly extravagant, absurd. There are spellings for male and female, but I’ve written it the way it sounded when my mother called me it. Meshugge is to be a meshiginah and mishegoss is the crazy stuff a meshiginah is doing.

  mensch (mench) Someone of consequence, someone to emulate and admire; a terrific human bei
ng; I always pictured a mensch as someone who knew exactly how much to tip.

  minyan (min’-yun) Quorum. The ten male Jews required for a religious service. Solitary prayer is laudable, but a minyan possesses special merit, for God’s Presence is said to dwell among them.

  momzer (mom’-zer) A bastard, an untrustworthy person; a stubborn, difficult person; a detestable person; an impudent person.

  naches (nahchhh’-es) Proud pleasure, special joy, pride-plus-pleasure.

  nafkeh (nahff’-keh) Also nafka. A prostitute.

  nu(?) (!) (nu) A remarkably versatile interjection, interrogation, expletive; like, “So?”

  nuhdz (noooood’-jeh); nuhdzhing (nuhd’-jing) To bore, to pester, to nag; to be bugged to eat your asparagus; to wake up and take her home, etc.

  oysvorf (oyss’-voorf) A scoundrel, a bum, an outcast, an ingrate.

  pisher (pish’er) A young, inexperienced person, a “young squirt,” an inconsequential person, a “nobody,” an amateur.

  plotz (plotts) To split, to burst, to explode, to be outraged: to be aggravated beyond bearing.

  pupik (puh’-pik) Navel. Belly-button.

  punim (puh’-nim) Face.

  putz (putts) Literally, vulgar slang for “penis,” but in usage a term of contempt for an ass, a jerk, a fool, a simpleton or yokel. It is much stronger than schmuck and shouldn’t be used unless you know some crippling Oriental martial art-form.

  Reb (reb) Rabbi.

  schlemiel (shleh’-meal) A foolish person, a simpleton; a consistently unlucky or unfortunate person; a clumsy, gauche, butterfingered person; a social misfit; this term is more pitying than schlimazel and more affectionate by far than schmuck.

  schlimazel (shli’-moz-sl) Same as above, but different in tone. A schlimazel believes in luck, but never has any. The terms are often used interchangeably by people who don’t perceive the subtle differences.

  schmachel (shmah’-chhhl) To flatter, to fawn, to butter up, usually to outfox someone to get them to do what you want. Roll the chhh like a Scotsman.