Book of Numbers: A Novel

by Joshua Cohen

  —An indication of the failure of our aliases is that neither Jesus nor Feel can keep them straight, checking Principal in under what mine was last, and checking me in under what’d been Principal’s (the ultimate indication is that none of this fooled Kor). Myung’s the one who picks them, the aliases, and so she’s the one to ping as to whether I’d become “Moises Binder,” meaning that Principal was “Chaim Apt.”

  Think back to the time my name was still mine, all those aughts ago: 1999. Think of my feelings, as online associated me with people with whom I shared that name, and yet nothing else. Idempotent nomials, mutual onomasticators, whose lives would otherwise never have disappointed or cheered (me), or even been counted (against mine). I’ve spent my whole entire virtual experience subordinate to Principal, reloading my name as it became his, reloading it into becoming his—but it’s only now that I can regret my collaboration: that the more I clicked on him, the more he became me and I became nobody.

  It’s no neat psych trick to explain why I’m reliving this now—the anticipations, the anxieties, all the dreamshit especially—with the traveling I’m doing, the traveling for a book, interviewing again, gathering materials.

  This was in Poland, fall/winter 1999, and I was driving, for research, not lost, asking in Krasnystaw how to get to Piaski, asking in Piaski how to get to Krasnystaw, asking this goitrous streetsweeper for directions to whichever town I’d just left only to calm her hostile claim that the destination I was originally asking for never existed: the Trawniki concentration camp, which I was sure was midway between them, Krasnystaw, Piaski. But the only thing between them was a sign for the highway to Chełm, and on my last pass through, as the road narrowed to a toppled chimney of darkness, I turned, and found myself trapped by the snuffed timber and thatch of what might’ve been a granary, and I stopped and got out to piss.

  I dropped trou in the weeds, above a septic depression rimmed by moon and the headlights of my rental Daewoo. Just as I unleashed my stream I noticed the stones, I was pissing on the stones, a cemetery of nubby slabs askew and overgrown, desecrated by the weather or Poles, and just ahead was my own, it was my gravestone, rather it was a sandstone marker belonging to Yehoshuah ben David Ha-Cohen, whose dates had been abrased yearless though the rest was still legible, Adar 14–Tevet 4. This wasn’t just my Hebrew name, but also the deathday was the same as my birthday by the Hebrew calendar. By the time I’d made the calculations I was trickling. Zipping, buttoning up. Yiddish might have a word for “both strange and expected,” or German, “expectedly strange”: the banality of names, the banality of numbers (I went to make a rubbing but it didn’t take) (and my camera’s flash was broken).

 

  Archaeology—that’s what I’m doing in the Emirates—what else is there to do in the desert? except excavate through bone and bed, toward a terminal stratum, an inaccessible anticline depth? I won’t fully love a woman unless I’ve done this, unless I’ve dug between her legs. A site. I have to wave my spade around seeking the who and where and when of her. Who was here, or there. First, last, longest, shortest. The Chaldeans? The Sumerians or Akkadians, Assyrians or Babylonians? One of the Canaanite tribes, like the Moabites? Or just a bluechip Jewish Philistine from Central Park West?

  This was my field—I’d fuck someone new, some casual bar score from Barnard, or The Factchecker for Bloomberg News, who held that title for an unprecedented 1994–98, and the moment I was finished, with her lying next to me unsatisfied or in the bathroom already flushing and clitting off, I’d be asking about her partners, asking what she liked, what she didn’t, and if she’d answer at all it’d be abashedly—but still I’d press, barter, bribe, shovel atop my own carnalities, overplaying myself until my mid-20s, downplaying intensively by 30, not because I was so experienced, just wiser. But then by that age my women were too, and they understood and manipulated my appetite. Giving me the grittiest on exactly precisely how many men they’d fucked before me, how many times and in what locations for what durations, simultaneously, or separately, ages, races, physiques, with what appendage sizes in which positions in which orifices—was it good? who was better? grand total of orgasms? their intensities? and whatever their pasts, I’d suffer through them, until I’d find the strength to live up to them.

  Which was the thing with Rach—with her I dug harder than ever, and turned up all of what? Comedy club stubs from dates she’d had with retirement age tax lawyers and radiologists, a taxi receipt in return from a tryst with her graymaned counterpart at a competing agency, the baggy condom of a dentist and family friend.

  They treated her like an equal, that’s what she swore—that’s the truth of it. Just like everything she writes for her campaigns is true—it has to be. The best electronics won’t obsolesce with their production. The top refrigerator/freezers won’t expire before the eggs inside them. The acclaimed bouncy bath toy will never suffocate a child. Rach, of the monochrome suits, the locavore dairies and cauline greens, the classes in bhangra, hatha yoga, and the Audi whose space rented for twice my office—her talent was for enthusiasm, with a specialty in revisionism, in her men as in her ads, and if she didn’t find the explanations she was after, up at a client’s HQ, or down in its labs, in the market testings, or at the brandjob rounds of her fellow creatives, she didn’t hesitate to invent.

 

  History has always privileged the civilization—shunning nomadism, tribalism, all the existential bachelorhoods.

  A people’s legitimacy is derived from its artifacts. Even a relationship isn’t a relationship unless it’s left behind its trash.

  Knives, forks of diverse tines, spoons, a ladle. Shards, sherds—from the same or different pots? did this dish catch the spray of human sacrifice or was it used to prepare a corny gruel (I had similar quandaries at the fancier spots in London and Paris)?

  Impossible to grasp the development of the handle: that improvement that made handheld blades of basalt, which before had cut only the closest things, now cut violently at a distance, as axes, spears, and arrows—the handle, the innovation that made vessels move. Impossible to come to grips with how its perfectability endures: the wheel becoming the halfwheel of the handle? metaphorized into the handle that posts and chats, gropes virtually?

  In that sense, women, vessile women, posed a threat.

  The wife I was supposed to fuck, but had no desire to fuck, had no handles (ancient, modern), whereas the nonwife I wasn’t supposed to fuck, but had this uncontrollable desire to fuck immediately in one of the Met’s least frequented galleries—#547 for the bergère, the #400s of Mesopotamia, rattling the ewers in American Wing parlor interiors—had an abundance of handles: she had a waist and clefts, posterior juts, a jug’s taper beneath the jugs, and it was death to decide which to hold, and how (very ancient, very modern).

  Once Lana wrote an essay for an exhibition catalog, which means I helped, inhibited. The show concerned an archaeological controversy, and presented a pair of prehistoric remains from Chile’s Atacama found intact, but evincing no sign, or no “evident sign,” as we phrased it, “of having been purposefully mummified or otherwise preserved.”

  The remains were of a man and wife, a couple, presumably, and, if so, their serene condition was doubly inexplicable. Some scholars pointed to the geochemical composition of the quebrada cavern they’d been found in/buried in, something to do with salts. Others pointed to the holes bored into their skulls, as being too alike to have been the cause of their deaths, and to the fragments of hair found in the brain cavity of the male, which defied all tests until one finally identified them as a llama’s. Our walltext, at least, had no agenda—it just stated the case, the state of the research, the arguments for and against intentionality, cagey.

 

  My own Pharaonic entombment, a Caliph Suite at the Burj:

  —clothing, the basics concierged in Paris from American Apparel, from London an outrageous suit in barcode gingham, an albion basketweave shirt, and a tie frauding me in the r
egimental colors of the First Royal Dragoons, Savile Row.

  —a cache of Europorn, bilingual and lesbically bisexual, purchased in London and Paris (Great Windmill & Brewer, Soho, Rue des Archives, Fourth Arrond.), after Aar had emailed a reminder that the Emirates curtailed access to certain niche haunts online, which didn’t stop me from tempting that access: trying workarounds, proxy IPs, any way to evade (any way not to consult Principal).

  —purchased from the dutyfree, four cartons of cigs (Camel Lights), and a bottle each of scotch, whiskey, and vodka (I’ll identify the vodka, which was Gorbachev, which was horrid), after Cal had emailed that the Arabs who’d invented it—al-Cohol—now sell it only to foreigners, not in bottles but by the bankrupting glass.

  —one pill left in the bottle of Ativan, a half going to gauze in the bottle of Xanax (the tradenames for lorazepam and alprazolam, which remind me of genie or djinni incantations, abracadabra, alakazam).

  —a candybar, put on a creditcard, a receipt for a $6 candybar (Toblerone the size of an alpenhorn).

  —two pairs of shoes, dressy and less, an unmatched aquasock crept in, Dad’s watch.

  —a wallet I haven’t much used, keys to an apartment I’ll never use: W. 92nd 2 br/ba, prewar/newly renovated, move-in condition, spare room prefurnished with a crib and daubed in a pink that insists on not just a baby but a girl, even as Broadway dawn and Hudson dusk ensanguines.

  —travelbag with matching toiletrykit, which were wedding presents? from whom?

  —Tetbook, have to mention the Tetbook.

  —two books besides the Koran.

  I’d noticed when heading beachward—copies are given away in the lobby for gratis. I want to hoard heaps of these, cairns and dolmens of these—I want to die in this facility wrapped in a rabbinic beard as quilly soft as this duvet so that when Security (dial 0) slams down the door I’ll be buried under this monument: 1,001 Korans.

  ://

  9/9, HOTEL PALACE KHALEEJ, ABU DHABI

  total time of Principal recordings: 168:53:51 (the amount of time a Jewish male is alive before he’s circumcised)

  total number of Principal.Tetrec files: 72 (the number of names of the Jewish God)

  their size: 3.5 GB (the Jews fled Dubai for Abu Dhabi in the year 3.5 GB)

  their content: This Agreement imposes the same obligations upon Joshua Cohen 2 with respect to Information or any information derived therefrom that (a) was available to Joshua Cohen 2 prior to the time of its receipt from Joshua Cohen 1, (b) is or becomes publicly available through no express fault of Joshua Cohen 2, (c) is received by Joshua Cohen 2 from a third person/party with/out a duty of confidentiality, (d) is disclosed by Joshua Cohen 1 to a third person/party with/out a duty of confidentiality, (e) is disclosed by Joshua Cohen 2 to any agents and publishers and their employees with Joshua Cohen 1’s approval as covered under the agent and publisher NDA [“NDA 2”] and Section 2 of the Contract.

  Failure to comply with the above will result

  The time and/or distance required for luxuries to become staples, for wants to become needs, for consumption to consume us. London’s just around the corner, a floor up or down, Paris can be ordered, ensuite, round the clock. Our access is bewildering, not just beyond imagination, but becoming imagination, and so bewildering twice over. We can only search the found, find the searched, and charge it to our room.

  The time and/or distance required for luxuries to become staples, for wants to become needs, consumption to consume. London’s just around the corner, Paris can be ordered, ensuite, round the clock. Our access is bewildering, not just beyond imagination, but becoming imagination, bewildering twice over. We can only search the found, find the searched, and charge it to our room.

  The time/distance required for luxuries to become staples, wants to become needs. London’s just around the corner, Paris can be ordered, ensuite. Our access is bewildering, not just beyond imagination, but becoming imagination. We can only search the found, find the searched, and charge it to our room.

  The time/distance required for luxuries to become staples, wants to become needs. London’s just around the corner, Paris can be ordered. Our access is bewildering. We can only search the found, find the searched, and charge it to our room.

  Principal thrives on consistency.

  Every accommodation, each site of a sessh, has quartered his Buddhas, and patchouli wafters, the tantra appurtenances: vajra and ghanta, mandala.

  Vajra: a small bolt capped with pins like an antique mainframe’s vacuum tube. Ghanta: a small bell that dinged histrionically. Both objects of contemplation. Brass.

  Mandala: a large papyruslike scroll psychedelically emblazoned with a square pierced by four gateways shaped like Ts that grant access to a circle of four subsidiary squares whose plenitude of applications and meanings—including directing meditation and symbolizing the universe—I can only slight by explanation.

  Anyway, responsibility for this domestic Dharma fell to Myung.

  She was our prepper, and her mysterious tesseractical talent was for already being at every destination before us, despite leaving after us—having all of Principal’s surroundings broken down in one country, only after he’d departed, and set up in another country, before he’d even arrived—as if she’d transcended aircraft for teleportation.

  She was in Dubai before us, she was in Paris and London before they were founded—it was like she had multiple Buddhas, it was like she was multiple Myungs. Each with her own white bodystocking, ballet flats, the lobes dangling unattached, which is rare for an Asian, the epicanthic folds enclosed in aviators with barely a nose to hang them on, @ stud in a nare, arachnidan henna across the hands, hair granted extensions hanging coaxial to the waist, clipped at the sides with barrettes of memorysticks.

  An advancewoman, front female, avant of the entourage, a vanguard of one, furnishing Principal’s life just a leg ahead of its living, ensuring that anything he would have to adjust to, instead adjusted to him.

  Never once since I’ve been with Principal has he commented on his immediate surroundings—nothing about transit facilities, or life beyond windows, climates and biota of disparate timezones. But then it was Myung’s job to ensure he wouldn’t have to. She enabled his detachments. Whether they were from religious principle, or developmental disability, or just the preference of his richness. She was the caretaker of his temples, his travel agent along the autism spectrums, specifying to the relevant guestologists his linen requirements (Mitetite® sheets, 1200 sateen, 2.6 micron pore size, no pillows, no comforters), conforming lighting fixtures to house style (Ecoxenon® bulbs, which would outlast the combined lifespans of all subsequent occupants). Consult attached specs on installing alkalizing purifiers on the taps, bath/shower inclusive, Alqua®, on installing the airfilter of choice, Hepass®. Arrange Gaston’s salt block, spiralizer, dehydrator, soak/sprout set. Arrange Lavra’s resistance bands, plyo harness, quigong bolster, tabata stool. Even unpacking, herself, Doc Huxtable’s protein machine, the vial valise of cytokine boosters. Move all media outroom (no draping). Remove telephones/computers (remove jacks, no draping). Just so that with Principal’s appearance he’d be able to function as if he had no preferences, no demands, whatsoever.

  A bustling recreatrix—who’d left in each one of my rooms a fresh pack of appropriate adapters/converters.

  The UK plugs are bulky, rigid, threepronged with two up top, that absurdly big grounding knob at bottom—indicative of a bulky, rigidly grounded country? or a country ridiculously overcompensating, seeking to overpenetrate, for lost power? The French plugs are expectedly more attractive, softer, rounder, twopronged but with a hole at bottom because the grounder, in France, is not incorporated into the plug itself but into the socket—indicative of a more attractive, softer, rounder country? or a country that surrenders its hole and enjoys it?

  The Emirates are equipped for both.

  The time was a beseechment between Isha, the prayer to be said after the sun’s red recording ligh
t has faded from the sky, and Fajr, the prayer to be said at the pulsing return of its luminance.

  I kept getting roused out of sleep by a dream or a line memory, which had me backtracking all the way to Palo Alto—through tracks I never imagined having to Play, I can’t imagine transcribing, rewriting, being read. Rewinding and Playing again: “[…] the time/distance required for luxuries to become staples, wants to become needs. London is just around the corner, Paris can be ordered,” “[…] wants to become needs. London is just around the corner, Paris can be ordered. Bewildering. We can only search the found, find the searched, and charge it to our room.”

  A knock at the door interrupted, and Jesus let himself in like in an extraordinary rendition, which it was. Except there wasn’t any chloroform towel, the pillowcases stayed on the pillow, under my head and smothering it “in quotes.”

  He wouldn’t let me pack myself, but it wasn’t a security measure, it was a haste thing. He rolled my bag for me.

  Feel was in the lobby with a single suitcase.

  Principal had either ditched, or forgotten, his toupee. In his hand was a begging bowl from the buffets.

 

  I’m not sure I understood what, but something got screwed up with our transport: something about how we were supposed to leave from an auxiliary garage, but how as an extra precaution Jesus and Feel had waited until now to inform the Burj concierge, who was apologizing that our transfer had already been routed out front and the auxiliaries all reserved for the impending visit of the ruler of whichever nation had a white flag with a crown and a serrated edge, waving.