In the dark undefined space, which is The Ferret’s subterranean hovel, the landline rings:
Eh, hello… heh-heh… hello… HELLO!!!
Nu, for you did not ever look at the paper or maybe it was some sort of stiff ticket I stuck in your pocket as you stood there in the downpouring darkness painfully longing for the return of your little lawn decoration bench kit, the kind that might at best be used by colorful lawn gnomes or, the only other exception being… THE FERRET, when everything suddenly changed, as it is wont to do. Just because I don’t see you, you think I am blind?
Recognizing the voice, and comprehending the reference, The Ferret does not answer, but immediately pulls his neckless head deeper into his shoulder cavity; in the darkness of his hovel, his small green-glowing eyes shot-up with red dart here, there, and nowhere. Uncharacteristically, he is unable to gather his racing notions quickly enough into plausible denials and shilly-shallying prevarications to conceal the truth from his unwelcome interlocuter’s prying insinuations, which just happen to be…
But wait! What’s the problem?! He’s not afraid of The Great Big Jew, he thinks; or, or… that stupid little paper, or whatever it is, which he, in fact, didn’t look at, but – ‘So what?!’, The Ferret finally thinks in anger… ‘… heh… heh… heh… Why should I look at it? I saw it already! It was that dry-cleaning ticket, a sales receipt, heh – I wasn’t going to pay that thing! That was Smith’s debt, not mine!… heh… heh… Or… heh… or maybe it’s that note I wrote for Za – Say! What is this, anyway?! Heh. I don’t care WHAT it is! Heh… heh… I’m not gonna look at it, ‘cause I got NOTHIN’ TO DO WITH IT!!! Heeehh… heeeeehh… HEEEEEEEHH…!!!’
And now the response to The Jew arrives in his mouth – but too late! for through The Ferret’s hesitation and silence, The Heavy Heeb instantly perceives all… The Jew says:
Then you have failed and sinned a great sin! Would it have killed you to look? Was to look too much to ask?
With a claw point, The Ferret flicks groundwater dripping on him off a flustered chartreuse cheek. The phone receiver is a cavernous void and his voice rushes into it without syllable or sound, as the sands of his thoughts rapidly sift and seep from his granule-sized amphibian mind.
Nu – and is this not most frightening? For meritorious things are executed through meritorious people, while things of ill fortune are executed through guilty people – Sifri, Rashi…
I… I don’t know anything about it!
The Ferret’s outburst breaks the choking feeling that’d welled up in his throat. The Great Big Jew hears it; The Great Big Jew waits.
Heh, who are those guys, anyway?! The law’s worthless if it’s not practiced or recognized – so it doesn’t apply to me! Heh – heh-heh…
A dark slimy creature composed of multiple segments crawls over The Ferret’s cloven feet.
From the sin you committed you derive freedom, calmly says The Jew.
The Ferret perceives the change in tone but does not know what to make of it and again searches through the sudden and unusual silence in his dull-ringing canister head for a clue. ‘What – what’s he doing, heh? Is he trying to fool me? It’s not gonna work, heh, he’s not –’
To borrow from Perkins and his superb English Romantic Writers tome, The Great Big Jew continues, you are a figure of weird communings, shadowy guilt, with the allure of a fallen Lucifer, and are therefore incredibly… Byronic!
By-what?! Ironic? That’s neither here nor there. I’m losing my patience… it makes no sense – heh…heh… heh…
Byronic – after the great Romantic Poet George Gordon, Lord Byron. Indeed, The Ferret, the very Age hankers after someone like you!
Heh… aaahh… yeah? Aaahh… you really think so? This, ah, this… Byron – he was a Lord? I – aahhh… I was a Chess Master… and a Latinist! I could have been a doctor and a professional hockey player, but… Heh – I remember I took an English course in college once and I had to read this book called ‘The Monk’, and I didn’t want to, but when I did, that book just took off, and it kept going higher and higher, and it just soared; heh, it went, like, you know – Fsheeeee! Up, and up, and up, heh! Yeah, and then I –
But The Jew continues:
Of himself Byron said he wasn’t sorry for the sins he’d committed, but for all the ones he didn’t commit – are you perhaps, then, like Lord Byron, not great…? Nu…?!
Eeehh… heh-heh-heh…
Even so, you should not risk the wrath of… OF…
But mid-sentence The Ferret hangs up, too excited about what he’d just heard; or maybe the line clicks dead on its own, as it does sometimes when trying to connect through to his hovel – ‘Heh, why should I take the blame?
‘Byron – heh… I think I’ll write an email to Steve Kowalski to see if he can confirm it… heh-heh-heh… I’m a really good downhill skier…’
Filed by Saint Stephan. Undated