by Joshua Cohen
A First Helping
Serveths twelve (12).
Not twelve fullgrown, nor twelve halfgrown; not twelve male, nor twelve female; neither twelve kinder; not twelve fat, nor twelve skinny; not twelve of the holy, nor twelve of the unholy; but twelve all who art hungry, whose thirst knows no bounds.
And as this recipe doth serveth twelve, she must doubleth—as twentyfour (24) are to dine here tonight.
Verily, these are the Ingredients—as they were received from Someone or Another’s hands at the very beginning of the timer’s wide circle:
2 chickens she has slaughtered, or purchasedeth preslaughtered,
2 onions, which she has peeledeth and quartered and,
4 carrots, peeledeth and slicedeth and,
They’re good for the eyes, Misses Feigenbaum says that’s what my mother Olev HaShalom always told me—I don’t know if it’s been proven or not, just know that’s what my mother
Olev HaShalom always told me…
2 leeks, slicedeth and,
2 turnips, peeledeth and quarteredeth and,
4 celerystalks and their leaves, choppedeth and,
4 sprigs of parsley, which are optional, though as Hanna said in the name of Down The Block Sarah, They are recommended…
Salt and pepper to taste
My husband doesn’t do well by salt, says Misses Feigenbaum.
He really shouldn’t.
And verily these are the Instructions that the Lord thy God hath given unto her this day, through the merit of the Sisterhood Cookbook:
Placeth the chicken in a pot of a capacity of many cubits, with the water, four (4) liters runnething over: Four, and not three, nor two, nor one, neither any other number not obtaining thereto, and bringeth slowly to a boil, removing scum as it forms, as it is written, Thou shalt removeth the scum, wheresoever thou shalt find it in the Land.
Addeth the vegetables, and the parsley, too, if thou shalt so opt, reserving a little for garnish. Seasoneth with salt and with pepper. Then cover, simmereth on low heat for two and one half hours, no less and no more, adding water as necessary to maintaineth original level.
Removeth the chicken after one hour, and take from it its meat so as to not overdo it. Moistenth it in its own broth to be served later, then returneth the chicken’s carcass to the pot for the remainder of the time allotted, again addingeth water as needed.
Straineth the broth.
Thou shalt not skimmeth the fat floating atop.
Before serving, addeth two (2) handfuls of fine farfel (See FARFEL) or lokschen (See LOKSCHEN) or mandlen (See MANDLEN) or plätzchen (See PLÄTZCHEN) or spätzlen (See SPÄTZLEN), or yadda: verily not two large handfuls nor two small handfuls of whichever, but the two handfuls of your firstborn son shalt thou let simmereth until soft.
Ladleth into fine porcelain.
Serveth hot, garnishing with any parsley reserved.
Soup—just the thing for winter.
Being begotten by the begetted begetist whose begattable begettance begatted Big Beggeters and their Big Beggeterers begotally, whose begettability was begotted by other begotterers begatally, and yet other begatterers besides, whose begottance, begettance, or begattance begetally begot he who begat he who beget the begotting of the begotist so burdened with the begatting of the begatist beburdened again with the begetting of this Benjamin, the Ur or First Benjamin, a son of his father’s old age, the oldest known ancestor of the namedafter latterday Benjamin whose first wife’s, the first wife of Benjamin the First otherwise known as Benjamin I, name was Barba, who was out back in the shade of the far mountains gathering fruit from the familytree when this Benjamin he entered his dwelling after a day long and hard herding the flock and there on the floor, which was dirt and, as they commenced with the congress of knowing each other, mud, knew Batya, who was the handmaiden and daughter of this Barba and Benjamin, too, knowing her now for only the first time and in doing so actually making her his second wife: him entering her, him wounding her, then sickening her, having her now vomit out of her mouth the flowing lacey finery of a wedding gown, also her shroud; and verily Batya before she died, or as she died, bore Benjamin Adam, her brother, as well, who he was harnessed to the land as was his father, Benjamin, who had handed over to this Adam his firstborn son as Barba was barren the flock and his land and the sun and moon, the stars and the sands and the mountains, too, and this Adam begat Seth, and this Seth beget Enosh, and this Enosh begot Kenan who lived seventy years before bearing Mahalalel, who lived for eighthundred and ninetyfive years and bore Jared, who beared Enoch who walked with God for only threehundred years, as it’s said, before he was no more, leaving behind Methusaleh whose span was to be threefold that of his father’s, and Lamech and landed Noah, who, once arrived, only to depart again in a wander through ten more deluded, deluging generations, through Shem fathered Arpachshad, Shelah, Eber, Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor, Terah, then Avram, who as Avraham fathered a people whose first recorded ancestor, generations later, to be born out onto the landmass known to them as Europa was named Matthew, who was harnessed to the soil as was his father, Yeshu, who had handed over to this Matthew his firstborn son the management of the land of one Count Chmielnicki, say, and verily Matthew begot Mark, and Mark beget Luke, and Luke begat through a Hava who was then the most beautiful woman in the world that was their small village or town of only ten houses around a dirt and mud courtyard and its barren tree (this the fruit of a marriage for which, incredibly, neither were put to death) a John who he verily fell like an apple from favor in the eyes of the Count, though the current Count was almost blind, though the Countess then current, with whom his father Luke had also slept, oversaw all business matters, and though John held a note of credit, nothing helped, he was soon illiterate, without harvest one cold season and bankrupt, in debt to all and so sold himself over to the Other Side, here where he met a woman named Judith whose father had owned and operated the SRO establishment in which John lodged, Judith née Eisenstein who, Judy, bore him Peter who he went on to establish, own and operate an enormously successful lace factory, which would go under as lace began to be made by machine in the early years of the next century dawning, then married Ruth née Stern her name was who would love less him than his money, who bore him before leaving him after yet another bankruptcy Paul, who was raised by his father and who survived him and was himself deep in debt and so went and married another unattractive, wholly repellent though ostensibly moneyed Affiliated woman whose name has been withheld to save her the embarrassment and, too, to assure for at least this Chronicler a shaded place in the World to Come (suffice to say, she was a Lerner, of one of the foremost litigious families known to greater New York), who bore him a doctoring son he insisted on naming Jeb, who grew up then went and wed a Deborah née Jacobson and begat with her Hanna, who she was raised by this Deborah her mother and, after Jeb was hit by a bus in the Park on his way to visit his mistress so way up on the Upper East Side as to be Spanish Harlem, a mensch named Gary Hyman, some hold, though others hold Hymen, whom she, Hanna, anyway called Dad, Aba, a Hymen of the Upper West Side Hymans and not of the Downtown Hymans or Hymens, the ones, the Upper West Side ones, with all of those laser surgery franchises and that son of theirs, Gary’s brother Seymour Hymen or Hyman, a graduate of whatever school, with whatever degree MBA, anyway, very impressive, do you know them, and if you do will you say Shalom for me—though she, Hanna, was, in the matter of her paternity, until at least the night before her batmitzvah, none the wiser, not to be confused with Weiser, which was a surname of second cousins (her mother’s), Hanna whose last name she returned to being Senior after her true father, Jeb, assumed only after the breaking of the news, her subsequently tearful batmitzvah, then the exiling of Gary who’d explained it all to her out to Venice, the one they have now in California, and a new stepfather soon obtained, name of Arnold, Arnie a seller of electronic and personal computing components on commission to friends whom she and her mother loved dearly; Hanna who knew no one, H
anna didn’t know anything, until she knew one Israel Israelien, who’d become converted as much through his love of her as through his love of her people and the incredible tax breaks that came with it all, Israel who was three years her senior as she was three years his junior Senior as they’d tell their Fridaytime guests and then laugh, and so it came to pass that Hanna bore Israel over the period of eighteen years daughters, twelve of them, too many of them if not to love then to at least know by face or by name, and to any degree of difference, or intimacy: and verily they were Rubina and Simone and Liv and Judith and Dina and Natalia and Gillian and Asa and Isabella and Zeba and Josephine and Batya again known as Bat, following whose birth Hanna finally bore Israel their thirteenth, a son, this lastborn of theirs and their only male to be named Benjamin Israelien, known to us as Ben and less often as B, born to them upon the Sabbath at fullsize, at full intelligence, too, whatever there is, who’s born mature already, with glasses and hairy, another beard in the immediate family.
Blond and curly, His head full, frosty it seems sometimes, at other times golden—an inheritance, many have speculated, from a lover of a grandmother six times maybe great, willed to Him by some archduke or other minor noble who’d kept her, others hold, who this landed notable was sleeping also with the woman’s sister, Benjamin’s greataunt five times over. How else are we to explain, the scholars have asked, how else to explicate, to reconcile, call to account: how Benjamin received His own two eyes, as blue as a recessive flame, from a Cossack, even a Nazified Aryan, who’d perhaps raped a grandmother of His, though it’s said she’d liked it. How else to represent His full, Elvis kingfishy labial traits than as an inheritance from an Iberian peddler of fraudulent Scripture; His belly unmistakably that of a bearish Russian, hulking over the scrawny poultry limbs of a Pole; His nose that of a lusty Gypsy priest ordained in the Orthodox church, if only for the salary and shelter, or maybe that of the fake Father’s cow: a sinful snout, gigantically puffed; His heart, that of the most kindly Venetian whore, while others say her pimp, and as for His mind, O His mind—that of a rumpled, sleepless Viennese, who’d breathed feuilletons between aphorisms, his sperm a spurt of ink. As for the horns, though, that later horn in, those He gets from His mother…don’t look at me.
And so if the record above withstands judgment, the Tests, ten or no, and all its facts, names, and dates are for sure, verified, God’s honest, signed, sealed deliverance received with a profusion of thanks due to ineffably named offices as obliging as they might be obscure, then despite all the goyim involved, despite all the Prussians, the Russians, the pull and push of the Poles, His Affiliation is here proven, thus exiling any rumor, defamation, and libel outside the midst of our encampment: that though His father was not born Affiliated (how he’d allowed himself to become converted, out of love and, maybe, to get a job as an outwardly respectable lawyer with a decent firm of impeccable reputation), His mother was, was born Affiliated and, as the Law states more than once and simply, the bloodline lives and dies by the mother: this the opinion of one Rabbi Yosi the Galilean, who’s not to be confused with yet another Rabbi Yosi, whose Talmudic ruling permitting circumcision on the Sabbath would be invoked by both Hanna and Israel throughout the eight days following the Shabbos birth of their son, regaling their family, friends, and acquaintances and even those they’d meet on the street or at the store with the wisdom received—that circumcision, as a covenant that predates that of Sinai, in fact supersedes and defers the Sabbath Herself, and can indeed be thought of as more sacred, holier; how their rabbi had told them that, the same family rabbi who would’ve circumcised Him on that very Shabbos, had he been a firstborn himself, and survived. And what then, we might ask before we’re carried any further away from His origins, into the realm of history being written and rewritten today, what then of Ruth if you know her, Ruth a relative from way back then, toward the Root? Ruth that Moabite, that hardluck, hardliving gleaner, her bundling sheaves enough to last her the bitter cold of the winter that was also her womb, the widow of Mahlon, daughter-inlaw of Naomi and wife of Boaz, that almona aguna whose calling’s the confirmation of everything: her book ending with a genealogy of its own no less confused than that that’s been given above, which leaves her, through the seed of Obed and the water of Jesse, as the bubbe to end all bubbes—the grandmother of King David, and so, as tradition always tells us, the Matriarch of the Messiah: the King of Kings, if you will, May His Name be Perpetuated, Increased, to be from the upwardly mobile egg of a fallen, shellshattered mother; the Moshiach, the son of a convert, who would believe…Israel, are you there—what, if anything, does that explain?
Allow us, then, this walk down the blocks, these blocks or those that resemble them, as it doesn’t much matter, as it’s all the same nowhere, it’s home; the grid of the suburbs. Siburbia, as Israel often called it, if nowhere can be called, if nowhere can be known, the tundra, the wasteland, quarter century later how Hanna’d still laugh when he’d say it, even if he’s late home from the office and hasn’t called her ahead, heard her voice to humor it silent. It’s kept tranquil here, wherever. Our myth is affluent, it ensures quiet, permanency, solitude lit and with multiple zones of heat—whichever way you might turn in this northless, southless world, there’s this sense of perpetual arrival, at stasis, though traditions of ascent are still observed daily: up is always an option, and down is the grave.
Here are the streets, though they lead only to other streets—and all are sidewalks, if not in purpose then practice. Only the road leads out, and only the adults, the grownups, know the one street of the incomprehensibly infinite streets that are all of them sidewalks that leads to the one road leading out, to somewhere or other. Shalom in peace. O the sidewalks, the sectioned pathways here that lead nowhere, only to other pathways leading to nowhere, then intersecting in crosswalks, crossing streets and lanes and avenues, ways and even boulevards and courts in white lines—and that one road still, where is it, where does it go?
Here it’s safe, but Ima says to look both ways just to make sure.
The one road out is the one road in, into the sanctum, the penetralia—a lot where once the Development had planned to build a pool, but the depths were drowned in committee, rezoned.
Instead, His house had been raised thereupon.
And then out—the one road leading into the one wider world, it’s said, into the Unkempt, the Unmanaged, God knows.
Ima says to be careful, don’t talk to strangers.
And yet here, no one’s a stranger—as you might know where they live, with whom, what they do and even how much money they make at it, though you’ve never met them, they’re yours…
Everything inside is the domain of the Gatekeeper.
In this world there are always brotherhoods, clubs, orders, or organizations, nearly illimitable loyalties each with their own mottos, intricate insignia of the fingers secreted in handshakes, all to prove affirmation for meeting nights, dissolving between resolutions into allegiances of individual necessity—and so verily there are fraternities within fraternities, lodges within lodges, loyalties within loyalties, divided then subdivided again and again to a degree of confusion at which you just can’t, don’t, won’t keep up with them anymore and so go and give it up for mishegas, nonsense, cleaving instead to an overly simplistic interpretation of the world, your loss. Our Gatekeeper here is a member in good standing of the Gatekeeping Lodge, they all are, those of every Development—them sharing intelligence, methods, techniques, these guardians of the protocols of entrance, upholders of the rituals pertaining thereto, their loyalties perpetually divided between the efficient maintenance of the flow of traffic and persons in and out of their respective Developments, and a professional satisfaction to be found in proper inconvenience, the pride they must take in postponement, delay. An expert, this Gatekeeper knows every reason to counter excuse, and will countenance no exceptions, nor explanation. His domain is a heated, insulated lodge nearly the size of a house such as those his position�
�s foresworn to protect, situated parallel with the road at the landscaped mouth of this luxuriously prefab Joysey Development—this Gatekeeper’s last, most deluxe assignment, almost a retirement, he’s still getting paid. One Thousand Cedars its name, but who’s counting?