Moving Kings

by Joshua Cohen

  Once the highway dusts settled behind them, he went out, thumb out, hitchhiking. He was picked up by an assistant to a rosh yeshivah and then by a dumptruck, which dumped him in Tel Aviv from which he took a sherut—charity be damned.

  Because he was damned. In that the army, which had always purported to be so boundlessly concerned for him that he’d barely conceived ever having to outgrow it, now appeared to him spiteful, resentful, and conjugally cruel—as limiting as the dates on Shlomo “Shlo” Regev’s gravemarker: (5754–5774)/(1994–2014)—a time parenthetically tragic, whose sole legacy was an evasion, and a skillset inapplicable, even inimical, to adulthood. He’d been discharged as an expert in stealth who now to succeed had to make himself heard and seen. An expert in orienteering who now had to navigate the nettles of the occident. He was a man with a single citizenship and, discounting his Arabic, a single language, both of which were welcomed only in lands as distant from one another as the black pentagons on a white football. He was a single man who’d become singleminded about calibers and ranges, after all his juvenile interests in metal guitar and manga and capoeira and scorpions—after all the interests he’d had before his service that weren’t Batya—had been decimated by the protocols and facts.

  Like, the Al Ghoul is a 14.5mm rifle so accurate that if fired from Gaza can mow the lawn in Sderot, up to two kilometers away.

  Like, the M113 APC Zelda has insufficient armoring against IEDs and Hashim RPGs and is, in general, an inappropriate vehicle for urban conflicts.

  Don’t confirm insurgent identity by uniform, confirm by gun. The enemy might copy your vest but they’re carrying Kalashnikovs.

  Just because you’re not in a tunnel doesn’t mean you’re not above a tunnel, which might collapse. No tunnel’s cleared until it’s collapsed.

  If one of the cows of the Arabushim wanders out from its pen and falls into a pit, it’s better not to attempt a rescue, it’s better just to shoot it.

  The most dangerous spiders are the brownies and the most dangerous brownies have red or orange hourglasses on their abdomens. The yellowpatched wasp or hornet nests underground and feeds sweetly on bees. Also the human body, left alone, with no other persons, materials, or objects around—no dumbbells or doorhandles and no weapons, of course—is incapable of selfdestruction.

  Sure, the body can always wait itself out, by starving or dehydration, no doubt, but assuming a certain timeframe—between a day or three, say—no human can do enough damage to himself with his own hands, with his own lonesome somatic contortions, to die. Try and hold your breath, you’ll eventually, reflexively, gasp. Try and strangle yourself, just fingers choking your throat, and while you might pass out, you’ll come to soon enough. There’s just no way, unassisted, to commit suicide.

  But then there’s no way to be just a human, isolated, stripped or just stripped of contexts—because even a cell must have a floor, a ceiling, walls.

  And God, don’t forget God.

  That Creator of all, Who’s everywhere: He’s everywhere at all times and even nowhere, or especially there, numinous in void. Uri had known a lot of people who’d believed that. Who’d believed that and used Him, both in and out of the army. He’d known a lot of people who’d committed suicide with God.

  This was what he’d intended to bring up with the Baba Batra, the Master of the Last Gate, the Light of Porat Yosef. But once he’d finally been admitted to the rabbi’s inky cramped chambers, he’d been sapped of nerve.

  He was being called to account for his piety, his habits hygienic, dietary, doxological—“You pray the Shema?”

  “I do,” Uri said, “yes.”

  “Every day?”

  “Every day, rabbi.”

  “When you go to sleep and when you wake up?”

  “Yes, rabbi.”

  “With your strong hand covering your eyes like you’re cupping a flame?”

  “Covering, yes, absolutely.”

  “And you say it aloud so that anyone who passes your door can listen in and share in the deed, but the blessing that follows you say to yourself in a whisper?”

  “In a whisper.”

  The rabbi growled, “Then I will tell you why you have the headaches.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you lie to me. The headaches you have are all in your head. Tell me, where else should they be? In Tafilalt or Antwerp or Los Angeles, where? Should they be in this lamp? Or doing the Mimuna dance inside this computer? It’s the truth, this pain of yours. It’s the truth in pain because confined.”

  “Honestly, rabbi, I do pray.”

  “Not the Shema?”

  “No.”

  “That’s not enough for you?”

  “The Shema? All it says is that God is One—it doesn’t even ask for anything.”

  “So what then?”

  “Please God don’t let me die. Or do let me die. Please God for Batya Neder. I pray that I always have enough water or enough of the tablets that purify water. That I have no more freezedried goulash or freezedried schnitzel or loof. Hashem, I pray, no more dreams.”

  “Amen.”

  “But, rabbi, what do they mean?”

  “The dreams? What don’t they mean? Like every election has its scandal, every dream has its nonsense. This is why no dream is ever completely fulfilled.”

  “So trying to explain them is futile?”

  “Like dreaming that your dream is being interpreted. My beard is the interpretation.”

  Uri fidgeted, the rabbi picked at his beard. “Consider the difference,” he said, “between trials and tests—what’s your name again?”

  “Uri.”

  “The warrior, kindled by God—it’s up to you, Uri, to distinguish between them.”

  “Between what?”

  “There are trials of faith, given directly by God. Like how God told Abraham to leave his land and kill his own son and how because Abraham set out to do what he was told, we became the chosen and an angel was sent at the last moment to grab the blade away.”

  “And what’s the other kind?”

  “Tests that are temptations, tricks, deceptions. Which are the work of women, serpents, and brothers.”

  “All of them together?”

  “Who offered Adam the fruit? A woman, Eve. And who offered the fruit to Eve? The serpent, Satan. Cain murders Abel and then, given the chance to admit his guilt, decides to lie, like you’ve lied. And this is just one family.”

  “You’re saying it’s like my family?”

  “I’m saying that in life, it’s most important to understand what is being judged. And what is the intention.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Your loyalty is being judged.”

  “How? Because I’m so”—and hesitated, and then said it—“fucked up?”

  “No,” the rabbi said, “nothing to do with fucked up.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because the army might not be over. Because the army might never be over. You’re being challenged, as to whether you believe that. Or else it’s all just a ploy and you’re being tricked into believing you were discharged.”

  “It is? I wasn’t?”

  “No, Uri—because you can’t stop being a soldier, just like you can’t stop being a Jew. They’re both permanent conditions, for life. This is the position of the State of Israel. You were born a soldier, because you were born a Jew, and if you weren’t given an Uzi at your bris it was only because the government won’t issue them to anyone not old enough to handle the commitment. To handle the burden. To join the army is to accept who you are. To formally accept it. And the age requirements and set period of service are just traditions—bureaucracy.”

  “So I’m still serving—that’s what you mean? And you don’t mean like in the reserves?”

  “At age 13, you were called to the Torah to become a bar mitzvah—a son of the commandments?”

  “Of course.”

  “Of course—you know this, you remember. But did
you know that at age 18, you were called to become another thing, a bar pekudah—a son of the commands?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Tell me, bar pekudah, after you became a bar mitzvah and read from the Torah—maybe had a little party, maybe had a little cake—did you stop being a Jew?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Of course not. So then why, after the army asks you to leave, do you stop being a soldier?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “It’s only after the army asks you to leave that you start—because it’s only after that you’re prepared, with a feeling for the graveness of the duty.”

  The Baba Batra’s phone illumined and vibrated across his desk to a trancehop ringtone and he leaned to mute it, put a palm to Uri’s forehead, blessed him.

  Whiteclad flunkies ushered Uri out and down the halls past the expectant infertile and abiding cancered and all the crutches and casts of the waylaid maimed, who reached out to touch the hem of his garment.

  Yoav was moving. Between Harlem and the Village, Staten Island and the Bronx.

  He was trucking across the Verrazano, the Throggs Neck, the George Washington, or coming through the Lincoln Tunnel (because 4, 5, and 6 axle trucks were prohibited from using the Holland), heading to Jersey—to load a whole apartment into the hold of a 12 footer, to unload all the foamcushioned contents of a brownstone packed inside a 21 footer. In a tractortrailer towing an entire office, an entire office building. In a pickup droppingoff potted rubbertrees and sacks of mulch. In a cargo van containing chandeliers for a Midtown penthouse and Hamptons summer bicycles.

  The traffic flowed like the rivers: sometimes south, sometimes north, and sometimes in both directions simultaneously.

  Which was sometimes not at all.

  A group of guys go out hard, swarming the houses of strangers, taking the furniture apart, taking the furniture away, breaking shit by accident, and not by accident, committing petty theft by accident, and not by accident or always petty, fucking up the linoleums, leaving everything empty, leaving everything a mess—who would’ve guessed that the army had been training him for moving?

  Which meant that moving was what—a duty? A calling? A job? Another occupation?

  Whatever it was, it had to feel compulsory.

  Meals were rationed (he rationed them), launderings were regulated (he regulated them). Days were scheduled into hours, each hour had its task, each task had its coordinate. This was how he protected himself. This, to him, was normal.

  The last of the month and the first of the month were the busiest, and the busiest season, summer’s encroachment on fall. Each move was like a mission: each morning he’d start somewhere new, each evening he’d end up somewhere else, and between the two indefinites just sweat—just sweat and repetition.

  Ruth (for the first two weeks) or Paul Gall (thereafter) would call with orders to report to an address off Times Square, but then the day would close with Wall Street.

  It was a Wednesday, his second Wednesday, that marked the date: he’d been moving now for as long as his war had lasted—for longer. His weapons were the harness and dolly, his uniform a blue zipup onesie, and either this was David’s error, or Ruth’s, or the manufacturer’s, but above the King’s Moving diadem, the embroidery read: YO AV.

  He finally got paid after about a month—a period of time known to Israelis and only the closest of foreign allies as half a visa—half a US B-2 visitors visa, whose reverse was printed with the following message: PERSON IDENTIFIED BY THIS CARD IS NOT AUTHORIZED TO WORK IN THE UNITED STATES.

  Neither was he authorized to operate a vehicle, let alone one of the class 4, 5, or 6 commercial vehicles King’s Moving was using, so sometimes this guy called Jon was at the wheel, and at other times this guy called Leland.

  Yoav was getting paid to get to know the city. At least well enough to know that, even with his expenses taken care of, his rate was criminal. $10/hour. Cash.

  The guys—the personnel he worked with, all guys—changed, nearly as often as the customers. So many names came at him, so many handshakes callused and chapped. It was difficult to determine the ranks, especially because he was family: the movers were below the drivers were below the office staff, whose chain of command went Paul Gall, Ruth, David…or Ruth, Paul Gall, David…or Paul Gall, David, Ruth—depending on weekday, weekend, time of day, type of task, and mood. Above everyone, though, was the customer, the King of King’s who was also the adversary. Ruth’s life was dealing with their sniping, and with the men: the men who trashed the kitchenette, the men who trashed the women’s bathroom, her bathroom, the men from Xerox and Time Warner. She handled the insurance claims, made change for the vendingmachines, and was always taking Yoav’s temperature: “If you’re feeling up to it this weekend, I’m trying to get David to take us applepicking by the Delaware.”

  Paul Gall, that pursy bobbleheaded ex-Yugo from Belgrade, shambled around in a nappy sheening gemdealer’s kaftan only because it had the greatest number of pockets for his Crown Royal flasks and Kools. He specialized in scheduling: “Your cousin, he’s been like my brother, but cross me and I’ll cut your shifts, cross me again and I’ll cut you down to storage.” Inside the office, because smoking was banned, he sucked on a tire gauge and was always cracking his molars. His son, Tom Gall, did client liaison, new business recruitment, and marketing/PR, and had arrogated to himself over a dozen VP titles he’d embossed onto businesscards at his own expense, so there wasn’t any need to inform his father, or David, or Ruth: he only handed the cards out to women he wanted to impress, women who’d recently immigrated. He’d been in the armed forces too, but the US armed forces, the USCG, stationed off Cape May, the Jersey Shore theater: “But I was also in the Gulf, securing the shippingroutes and ports, rebuoying the Tigris and Euphrates, making sure we got the crude and you small countries had the big guns behind you.” Gyorgi had worked as a mover until he’d touched a female minor who’d clerked at a gypsum sheather in Paterson, served most of a lenient sentence, and was now confined behind a storage cage to be more findable by his parole officer. Tinks had a mohawk, a nose ring, a tattoo on one hand, Itch, another on the other, Scratch. He was in noise bands, did puppetry with scrap aluminum, and made promises, though as of yet hadn’t delivered on any, to modernize the computer systems at King’s Moving, and develop its presence online. Ronaldo Rodriguez, AKA Ronriguez, AKA Godriguez, AKA Burrito Ron, earned the last of his nicknames pioneering the technique of taking a customer’s odd loose possessions and rolling them up in a rug for efficiency of transport. He was a squat wideassed low center of gravity surmounted by a slick pubic moustache. Malcolm C, alias Talcum X, powdered his pits to stay dry and his hands to improve his grip. He was bullet bald and jacked, with two additional adductor muscles found in only .006% of the population.

  Before jobs, or on breaks during jobs, or between jobs, some guy would go out for tacos and some guy would go out for subs and then another guy would break away for a cigpack or sixpack he’d never share, and that was acceptable, no one was whining. It was acceptable for a worker to only take care of himself. Yoav would do a full day with a guy who’d tell him every detail about fucking his wife, how he fucked her, how she came, how he came wicked buckets, and then he’d just—evaporate: Yoav would never work with him again, no one would ever mention him, no one would even remember. “Kwanye K.” Kwame, “Daddy” Mackenson, Nelson, that Guy Without A Lip, this guy from maybe but maybe not Paraguay, they called him Paragay—it was Yoav’s flaw to regard their transience, and the transience of institutional memory, as rude, because the truth was, it was life.

  In this inexperience of his, in his sensitivities, Yoav resembled his customers—white kids even if they weren’t white kids—much more than he resembled his coworkers. Initial jobs had him in and out of the city, moving the arrivals in for school, because school was back in session, moving the departures out, new grads returning to parental houses, or to outerborough apartments the size of cubicles, ro
oms with the squarefootage of diplomas, rooms as costly as diplomas. Yoav wasn’t sure how to take them, the customers who shared his age, whether as adults or as children. If in America they were both then he was neither.

  They lived without elevators, on top floors, down narrow halls, under low ceilings. Studios listed as one bedrooms, though the kitchens and bedrooms were contiguous, one bedrooms rented as twos, illegally rented, because bedroom number two had no window.

  Their bongs would be left out in the open. Their weed was in the drawer with the checkbook and diverse colors and shapes of pills.

  They’d use their own boxes, flyblown, loosebottomed, soggy from the dumpsters. They’d rumple their soiled linens into flimsy tieless garbagebags that at the moment of lifting would tear and crusty underthings would drift down to the sidewalk like rusty leaves.

  Some kids would try to carry their own weight and do their own binning, acting like they were workers themselves—like they were used to this type of labor, or like it was fitness to them, or fun, to slum and rip a hand bloody on a crate, drop a footlocker on a foot. The kid, a college blond, must’ve been ashamed of being wealthy, or of not being as wealthy as his parents, who were paying for the move, just like they’d paid for all of his apartments. He was writhing on the floor, cradling his foot and unable to rise. Tom Gall called an ambulance and Talc and Ronriguez loaded the kid onto a handtruck and stretchered him down. The kid himself called his father who now had to taxi over from his investment firm in Manhattan to supervise the movers—to supervise them at both move locations—the father sitting on the windowsill typing on his laptop in Greenpoint and then, across the toxic creek in Long Island City, restless atop the radiator and receiving an update from the kid’s mother, who’d met their son at the NYU ER, where he was being treated for fractured pride and three broken toes.

  Other kids at least admitted their ineptitude, particularly in situations in which new furniture was due to be delivered to their new apartments—they’d beg for help with its assembly, and when there wasn’t an immediate next job, sometimes, for extra cash, Yoav would stay, sometimes along with a Brazilian named Grio, and the two would attempt to follow the incoherent instructions in a language that neither spoke, that no one spoke: “Affit joint A to peg B use 4 rings twice. Repeat the peg again with gluer unincluded.” Male customers would have to pay more for this. The ladies paid less, though they often opted to solicit the help of the furniture deliverers themselves and, anyway, if the ladies were in any manner construable as cute, or sexually acquiescent in the dimples, Grio, sleazily gallant, would refuse his fee, which meant that Yoav had to refuse his too, and be called a Jew for doing so begrudgingly, as he’d leave the customer to the Brazilian’s devices, to his pliers and dowels and charms.