Witz

by Joshua Cohen

  Little light thing goes red between the two couches, above a recliner across from the narrow hallway to the door to the laundryroom, the name of the room in which laundry’s done, though it could also be named Rachel or Leah, or Adela. Then, her door. Jambed at an odd recline. As if pasted on the wall, a stamp. As if a patch sewn onto the flag of a stranger. Imageless. Alan Koenigsburg—senior partner in Koenigsburg & McQueen, which was how he’d come to own this house, Israel’d recommended for opposing counsel, testified responsibility to the tribunal—having obtained the necessary permits, had hired the brother of a client to sledge his hammer to a wall; the room, and the washroom, too, adjoining, and through another door, to the right, Storage—all was redeemed from nothingness. Potentiality until. It would always have that, impermanence. He’d never enter the Underground through the wardrobe of his Domestic, as did the other husbands through the wardrobes of theirs, preferring instead the access of an Apple Street sewergrate, having a subterranean fear, the contracting mistakes, the problems with his foundation as Alan’d say, too close to home. To remove your hard soles, at the threshold, then to replace them with soft, with the slippers, is another way to sanctify home, a room of her own. Adela’d been here for maybe a year, and her drawers still as empty as life: no movie career or master of business degree, no husband dumbly rich with portfolio—her inexpensive imitation denim still in its suitcase, whose own home is the floor. Twinbed with bedding themed by dinosaurs, Oriental partition of ricepaper. On sale at a steal, $69.99 for a limited time only at Wiltinghills, not the Siburban location but the Upper East Side & Lex. In the bathroom adjoining, a bath slash shower and toilet, alongside a stack of magazines wetted then dried into each other into a tablet, half off the Law. Inside the room proper, atop a table, her own framed images, these limited to frontispieces of various samizdat editions smuggled autographed by their authors either in prison or exile, then those family photographs of her mother and which sister or her posing waterside, Lake Balaton, the Danube, Vltava, which is the Moldau, the Irtysh or Ob, the same; a strip of photos she’d taken with Wanda amid an airtight steel trap sunk a million miles deep, Port Authority, maybe, or below Grand Central Station; and then on that table’s only low shelf, a dictionary, which she’d memorize on the weekends when she had off if the Koenigsburgs weren’t entertaining, they had to give notice. Hall: a connecting passage, charitably the lowermost room in a house set with doors leading to other rooms, empty, forgotten, a crawlspace it’s called; from there, a door slamming shut onto Storage, a room half the space of hers in which she keeps the clothes she bought here as opposed to those she brought with (wardobed): the new underwear and stockings she never wore, three sweaters and a skirt pressed and folded, tzedakah, the skirt Alan and Edy’s and the sweaters Hanna and Israel’s presents, last Xmas; Adela’s to get another skirt this year, this one longer at Edy’s insistence, more demure than the mistake of last year, if tomorrow.

  Adela had walked to the train, to the aeroport, its plane, to yet another aeroport and plane to take the train to then walk again to the agency an entire ocean away, and all in the span of two days. A fish out of water, it’s said, she’s more perfectly a carp displaced, this season’s fish, which in her hometown village would’ve already been harvested from its pond, would’ve been hauled to the ramshackle, once drearily dissident Seasonal Market, to be netted from a tub enormously filled with the melting of snow, then weighed before all on a dishonest scale for the approval of the womenfolk, liningup as old as the earth and as patient in their revolve; women at the beginning of the line the oldest and the last no more than a little girl the granddaughter of the forgetting first just sent out with coin on an errand. Each remembered to her as her mother. How their carp would be netted, then bagged and hauled home to their bathroom, there in their own iron tub to swim itself dizzy in lazying loops, awaiting only the wrath of a mother—though progress happens, traditions evolve: now, how the fish would flipflop in the hands of the monger, then the thunk down on the cyclopean head with the brute, senseless mallet, the Angel of Death; Its knife would slice from out of the sky, then the head of the fish, with which to make stock for their soup, would tumble into the wrapping of its own newspaper, they’ve only printed one copy, headlined Today Is A New Day, black on black; the body of the carp dropped into an honest bag, which is bottomed, to be carried home dripping dead, leaving its entrails in a trail, the blood of the street crucified in holiday traffic. It’s this anonymous Advent, which had been only yesterday for her mother, if she’d be unlucky enough to still live, that her daughter remembers as she reaches through the dark to retrieve an item of frill, lucrative lingerie, a satiny blue flyaway with white trimming in lace, from the thirsty lip of the sink across from the units of washer and dryer. And, as she opens the door—as doors are for nothing but opening, unless a door is already opened, in which case all we can do is stand around at the threshold and refuse ourselves entrance: a shut door is a welcome to death—the door to the laundryroom here, the laundryroom downstairs-downstairs, which is the room of white on some days, the room of colors on others…what she lets fall from her lipstuck lips is nothing but the carping silence of that decapitated bottommost feeder.

  Edy leans over the sink with a jar in her hand, polish for silver, rag in the other and fumes.

  Adela heads upstairs, past those portraits whose features are no longer visible because the lights have long been slept, upstairs-upstairs to the room of their son Kyle, just made a son of the commandments last month, a barmitzvah, congrats a bounty of mazel, Hanna and Israel and their twelve daughters in attendance in matching dresses you should have—dead in his room, bent at the edge of his bed, expired in the middle of, we’ll leave him at that…then to the room adjacent, a suite even, almost a house in its amenities, and nothing, then to its bathroom tiled and toweled and Kylie, the older sister dead in the shower, her hair in the drain deep in water, a curtain undisturbed…and then, to the open Master Bedroom, and there nothing either, but beyond its fluelessly artificial fireplace that cleaves the expanse, never been lit and into the study, Alan’s head a bald egg nested amid transcripts of depositions, his neck loosely noosed with the telephonecord…

  A violation of the Sabbath the Koenigsburgs never kept, Adela dialing emergency the Development’s 0 how she manages don’t ask—she’d like to speak higher of herself and her sisters the other Domestics, as if forced to defense, references, experience, to justify Mass and then, how she’d sworn to an oath—just sitting there rocking herself held through it all: denial, anger, bargaining with grief despite having nothing to offer, through the entire suggested by board, vetted by committee process of Mourning, holding rocked on the rollick of waterbed pitching a heave like an ocean attempting to stay afloat atop another ocean, the floor, her in search of an air separate, alone, until an Officer, ID’s himself as Security Officer 316 (Bundy—Approved) arrives, verifying himself verbally through the intercom as per regulations, the requirement that is courtesy despite catastrophe’s garble; he takes off his coat to float in, to slog on upstairs on his passkey, with gun still holstered as already knowing, and tremulant pale save the chapped red hands and the nip at his nose, which isn’t blood only the bloodless cold and a few or five fingers of whiskified nog, his blazer dusted with waters that might be dribbling that or, better, his tears, or just melting snow, holds Adela until she’s finally drowning in weep, to fall over the tight heat of his uniform lap.

  Here are the houses, their houses or those that resemble them in the darkness of day that is the darkness of night, its weather, make your myth. Sprawls of land sown with ice, designer sled, shovel, a mitten, snowmensch’s eyes made of the piss of an eagle, doubtingly browed with vanilla candy, a ruddy apple mouth, halved, below a nose blue from the cold, a handful of berries—chemical cess mixed with sump, to freeze; playthings tenting up what snow’s fallen, and what’s falling. All’s rich, wealth the sound of silence, stuffed with its tastes. Garages full of metal—and engorged insides, as well
, which is where the Domestics are headed not to be late for curfew, Lights Out then Underground, after an entire payroll of smiles that’d need five ten grand put into them to be as attractive as they seem happy, giddily embarrassed, and yet secretive, too, to the Gatekeeper who, though permissive, needs this job for the love of a Herring.

  Inside are rooms opening to Fate like cavities long closed, gone gunked up with stuff: a bowel loosened to allow hallway flow, a prostate pinched to accommodate a drip out the doors; their walls hung hairily with lists and signed tests—additional interior decoration courtesy of that great iconoclast I. B. Kitsch, if you know him, alongside the kinder’s own artistic scrawlings in pencil gone over in crayon, the entire forge of family photographs, the furniture and appliances new and maintained as well as the schedule allows. It’s God, this Schedule, as it tells time and is time and it is and is good, altogether. Downstairs, a grand of a piano, an upright upstairs-upstairs, the same sheet music copied on both of them from when the kinder left lessons months ago, how their teacher got pregnant, and…with their staves marked in red: dore-mi-fa-sol, do-do, fa-sol-la-ti-do, do-do, G Major, one sharp, remember, one key always left dark. Dust had laid siege to the afternoon, dust to dust, as evil as Amalek, enemy motes, to be eradicated, wiped from the face of the grain of the wood, rings both ebony and ivory.

  Nitpick from sundown, late enough. Seven, eight days since, and Hanna as sudden and unexpected as a miracle recovering; through the twelve, her labor getting progressively easier, until this, He just, not quite—you should never have such, without drug. To bring a baby into this world is to live for tomorrow. There’s a sound at the door. On the roof. Prophecy just another of our many names for hope, which are infinite in number and as vague as all love. Sneezy, coughy, and croup. Farts, groan, and a snooore. To bear a son into this world is to believe in the Messiah, at least in a God Who believes…Messiah just another familiarity for the most talented, the most intelligent and attractive among us, the most only, promising, sleeping upstairs. His mother herself. Separate rooms. A whimper, in her sleep she’s crying. Or only a bedspring, unconsoled. To die with the pain of birth is unbearable, though Hanna’s memory of the pain’s been by now tempered, by the nachas shepped for its cause. Clicks on the glass. Brass, given a wrist. Hurt and hurt for Him, too—Israel cutting the cord to let his son fall, umbilicus tested by the frozen fire of steel, the knife they’d sanctified to the challah. Sanitized in wine. Then, tying it off, it had to be done, someone had to do it, and Israel happened to be in the diningroom, an adult, and the one of the couple not just then giving birth…by now, Wanda knew this by heart.

  She lies on the floor in a puddle who knows what it is but it’s hers.

  As if schnapps.

  A room just beyond the birthroom: this, the kitchen. How she’d usually enter—the sidedoor—was in a whisper of names, with a jiggle, her keys to jingle a festive responsorial of sorts from the ring of her hand, keyring that of Israel’s lawfirm, swagschlock, hung with the housekey hung with her other, poorer keys, those to another house far across the water that she’s always known deep gut inside she’ll never walk through again, to sit with her sisters and Matka and what for the holiday, to gift each other poor presents, to toast Papa they’ve waited on dead all these years with quick shots of brandy’s fruit chased down with decis of grog…whispering names as prefaced with the perhaps sanctimonious titles she insisted on honoring, still, the Mister & Misses that made the Israeliens sick with guilt, without echo through the fall of the hall to pilled darkness, reflecting deaf off the mirrors, glossed from surfaces last polished, in her voice with its accent threatening to shatter the glasses for wine, those and the glass that glasses them in.

  Now, she only moans, and no names, it’s nothing.

  Usually, she’d take off her heels to make for them less click clack, not to waken.

  Then, she’d sign in—the Register in the hall a mat from the frontdoor, to let her Masters know she’s been in by Curfew, lit later tonight, due to the Eve.

  Stridor, a creakling as if a fire nearer. Her mouth’s open, dry, and senseless as if stuffed with a beard.

  Help, her ringed toes wriggle.

  A drawer gapes open.

  She shrieks.

  Hanna, like where art thou already?

  Knocking on the frontdoor, the sound, the doors there they seem then three more, quickening…she sees: behind it, a fist, Adela’s, and she’s yelling, a whisper: Wanda’s own name now Wanda, Wanda, the language she knows, that of emergency home, that of babytalk crisis, Adela tapping her acrylic tips on the door—to tear out the eyes of the glass, which is faceless.

  In her other hand, Adela’s holding a flashlight.

  Wanda sits up, gets up, goes to the door.

  A diffuse star skies the house.

  To pass slowly throughout, through the room with the screen, the room with the piano, through the room with the books on their shelves then unread, now reading themselves, looparound through the diningroom, around and around its table unset, then into the livingroom, the vestibule beyond then up the stairs slot by trip.

  Blueprints moldering in the basement say this is the Master Bedroom.

  And so it was, and it’s good.

  Here Wanda stands, Adela behind.

  She knocks lightly, frightened, to no answer and, slowly.

  Huddled masses yearning to breathe—only to be…

  To lift Adela’s lamp beside the golden door—and its dead. Seven limbs braided like bread, gray bread broken, fingers of one hand intertwined into a candle lacking a burn—Israel, sitting, had been untying his tie, finally, singlehandedly trying, Hanna lying, abed, her exhaustion exhausted, already asleep.

  No more dream.

  Employers, they’d been surrogate parents of sorts; strange, how a eulogy recipes itself right away…Wanda goes to them to knead their flesh into life.

  No longer to rise.

  After one night spent under observation, made ill with the urban up at Kennedy Memorial, then the others at home, all of them recuperative, though without sleep and dreamless, then after another dinner, Shabbos again and its last, less guests this night save the newborn, whose appetite—which is that of twelve regular guests or more, always more who knew who invited whom—only approaches in grandeur His size, always huge the both of them, and demanding, and hungry still and thirsty for the teat since gone cold, a milky mold left atop a platter wobbly.

  His Hanna, stilled—nothing more to cook or clean, nothing more to do.

  Wanda trips to the next rooms, Rubina’s and that of Simone and the same, then the next rooms, that of Liv and Judith and then that of Isa and Zeba, and the same…then the next rooms and the next, then the next hallways, now through a left perpetually spiraling still left maliciously dark and forever, to the two shared rooms of the rest of them whose names Israel’d always forget and of whom Hanna would always remind, and the same: those aged ten and twofifths, those aged nine and onesixth, as they’d remind you, as if; dressed as they’d been told to dress not for night or for bed but for the morning that’d never be next, trying on their new dresses and skirts and blouses and sweaters purchased and tailored lastminute, fitted especially for the occasion impending, the bris tomorrow, to be, their only brother’s one and only circumcision, or so they’d hoped, or so they’d not even thought of it, to hope and the same. They hadn’t even undressed for bed, modest unto the end: brushed teeth, flossed, tucked in, Shema Israel and goodnight, Laila Tov and again, in yet another left, this off the hallway that lies furthest to the left, almost lost in the recesses of orientation, of night, its turn opening out into the one lone room just above the backdoor, the last exit, the final escape, to be used In case of fire, meetingpoint outside, let’s regroup the backyard’s the plan, between the rust of the swingset and the moldy spiderweb hammock; this the room of the newborn, shushwhispered about, tiptoed around, and also the most spacious, the one with the most light, a room to grow into, itself a posthumous birth, still
ed in its fall from the house’s main bulge, a promontory pregnant, cloudcarried high above the cars and the doors for the cars, the garage and the flooring of oil and dirt. Jealous Him not such rarefied privacy: Isa and Zeba’d been moved out, though their submission’s been bribed with lobelove, the promise of piercings for ears. A thimble trash for diapers soiled, alongside a table for changing up against one wall, with a chest of drawers at the other, next to the desk, cedar, too; atop that, a bureaucratic clutch, foldered His birthcertificate, hospital paperwork, a sheaf of greeting cards and deflated balloons pressed up against dying flowers, silvered photographs saving just the last week, instant mementos, posterity developed then doubled; atop that, a passport application for Him they’re intending to fill out any day now, you know, if they’d have to get away, or only wanted to.

  Wanda slivers open the door, admitting the light Adela’s shied on in violation, the hallway streaming its perfectly acceptable known into the darkness of a room at midnight past, framed in drapery that resembles anything sweet and girly pink: the taste of sunrisen marzipan, of icecream melting, cotton candy or saltwater taffy, and then set high enough on the wall that He couldn’t crawl out of it, and He could crawl, and also walk, especially when hungry like always, the window’s open and outside lights from the street mingle with the hallway light in through the doorway, in their diffusions dusting sleep across the still face of the eightdayold.

  Wanda rushes up to Him, futz the tip of the toes exposed, uncovers His stomach, without navel, it’s said: in later accounts, as if the cord had been attached to His tongue instead, its own limb. Wanda soothes at His beard, smoothes down a stray hair of His moustache. And then, says His name, what His name would’ve been had He lived to be named tomorrow in the midst of His family, friends, and professional others, sanctified amongst the trays of fish, basketed loaves, and cases of liquor; held high above the assembled by hands their winish fingers and mouths reeking of herrings; what His name is still: as it’s said, Hanna and Israel had settled on Benjamin Ben Israel Israelien, or so—it’s been passed down—Hanna had told only Wanda surviving upon her return from the hospital, in the course of conversation idled in the kitchen, over a soup said they’d intended to name Him Benjamin, to be foreshortened to Ben after a paternal relative irretrievably distant, other relatives’ names apparently having been gendertwisted or otherwise incarnated by twelve daughters preceding; Benjamin the namesake one of the only relatives not represented among the portraits hung on the wall of the stairwell down to the basement, however finished it might have been claimed. Security Officer Bundy appears behind Wanda, holding Adela in the doorway, too close for the light. Wanda turns, bears Adela and the officer out on her breasts, then turns to pronounce Him again. Benjamin, attempting to lift Him up in her arms, Benjamin…as weak as raked leaves, stormshook, the floor trembling a pile a burn in that breast—it’s impossible; the strain, the weight, that and He’s soiled Himself, slippery gripped in a flow from His sex.