by Joshua Cohen
And so verily we have been given three days of fasts, only to gorge ourselves on the Sabbath, which we know as Shabbos, the night of Friday or the morning of Saturday, whether the fifth, sixth, or seventh day of the week depending on how it’s observed or it’s not—made holy even without the sanctification offered in death, which is theirs, which is ours, and though observed, though made that very holy and sanctified, still a Sabbath like others, even a Shabbos like every other day of the week, any of them with the sun and moon and the stars that are three and above; which day the nations of the world this year know as Xmas, the eve of the holiday of the tree and the baby just born, of the fiery sales at department stores and how they’re malled much different from shops, and of their kings, too, who are also one and yet three, coupons for camels, the jollity of a fat skinny who in a hat; that and the day of His bris to be, His circumcision aborted: scheduled for tomorrow with the caterers, did you confirm, remember to pick up the bagels—and so you can clock it, understand, the sense of history at work here and of wheeling, of palpable past, of immense weight, fates visited down upon heads unsuspecting, covered, uncovered; why everything’s been so confused these past few days, insane out of sorts; why it’s been just a crazy week this week, Israel’s explaining what with her laid up, Hanna, what with the past, its preparations and ours, rendering due to the meaning and worth of each day to its month to its—and the expectation of it all, with Israel so late, almost too late this once though he’s remembered this time, thank God: the bought braided bread, the challah, two loaves, again she’d been unable to bake…
And how late they were late, themselves, the guests again, us, and darkness was upon the face of our mothers, tired and too much mascara, too; the soup was without form and void, if still soup, in need of a starch, mushroom, and the light, it was in from the fridge, as no one had shut it. The candle, the candles, a handful. A diaper was new, unbuttoned and pinned, the buttondowned shirts of His father, Him powdered, and topically salved; a sweater gotten, too, on which was writ in stitch the word Ben, which was also His name, Benjamin was, or the name Ima said by which He should know the wait, was to know the wait, is still waiting. As the sweater was too small, it was draped over a knee, which was bare. As for His Ima, He called her, her other names, which are as complex as dates, at least, as complicated and strange, were Hanna one room and Wanda the next. All got cold, freezing, which was why the knee’s sweater; then the kitchen froze, icicles up from the depths of the fridge, and so His mother opened the oven in which the chicken was becoming baked chicken and then—suddenly, through the oven, two-by-two and helping each other, stepping high and ducking so as not to hit their heads, again, so it’s been said, so we’ve been told, their glasses fogged and mouths stuffed with ties and necklaces against pain, sucking in their hunger and thirst, holding their loose suits and dresses so as not to get snagged on wireracks or stained with the pooled juice of the poultry baked in its blood is what’s been related to us, that suddenly, and again, into the kitchen, through the oven and its heat of nine hells, marched in their guests: how they might themselves have remembered it to their own kinder had they lived past that Sabbath, that Shabbos, whatever the difference, if difference there be. Hello, hug and kiss. Shut the oven after. Some offered to help prepare. Others noshed on ingredients left out. Wiped steam, saliva from their lorgnettes, with the linings of the pockets of their husbands, who were pockets themselves. And their pants, door-to-door and the rest, presumptuous enough help yourself, they sat down at the table: holding their irascible silver, tines frothing stock.
It was. One day, same night. Good or not, true or told. Israel said Kiddush, the prayer over the wine, the washing and blessing Hamotzi lechem min ha aretz it went and only then may the passing begin—the feeding of the baby, too, don’t forget who He’s big enough already to be sitting at table in a regular seat, and grown enough to be supping on anything served, even every distraction or so deft enough to take an unnippled sip at the wine of His eldest sister, Rubina; at the other head of the table opposite His father wrecked at the foot He’s soon slumped, piss and kaka, veingravy dazed, drunk on His sisters’ juicewatered wine and the guzzly blood of the beasts.
How He manages upstairs, who knows, how they manage to able Him up, tuck Him taut into sheets soiled, got me. He’s storied, prayed tight, then left for that further diaspora known as neither sleeping nor waking, that time of rolling around and of rocking, wriggling, snuggling, of flatus and lull, having laid under His pillow, with pillow under His knees, on His stomach with the edge of the pillow itched along His staff in the midst of a shed and the scratchy sacs that cower below, lying with His head on the pillow set around His ears as a mouthful, to swallow His dreams. Israel had left only an hour ago, turning lips to His, whispering into them name…Benjamin, and with unsettled gut sensing a matter unfinished, the amorphous undone and leftover, He frees Himself from His sheets and stands; sneaky feets quietly and nude save that diaper yet another of Israel’s old outfashion shirts sleeved around waist, He one foots then another then toes and then tips. He stands at the door as fat as an idol halffinished, marbled at the threshold of hall. An idol, with an animate appetite. It’s a need for the leftovers, physical, those of the Sabbath especially, and though there’s the suspicion that sneaky He will have to account for them dawn the morning, it’s overpowering, just the thought of it, that leftover fowl going to waste, is oppressive, it must be so tasty, so filling, there in the fridge and freezing in there with the dial on 9, it needs His warmth, it wants Him and His only, dead in its own juices for hours after hours and hours soaking up all the multitudinous goodnesses, yum in the tum, the only one who loves Him, this poultry, the only one who can, who’ll make Him happy, and if not, there’s always experience to invoke, mistakes to be made and to be made again and again but each making made better—chicken drizzled with sauce, dipped twice then twice more; meals take on whole new dimensions—of taste, scent, textural—when eaten twice, especially if the second’s eaten hours after the first, when there’s a separation, a break, a puttingbetween, so that everything’s had time to gel, to congeal, to breathe in its own steaming waft, to age, not even to go totally cold but just right, and who is He to say no, after all, He’s just an infant, how does He know from denial. He can barely talk, if He knew from saying no He might’ve never been born; Will Power, dunno, Will Power, never met him, was he related to Ima or…
He—Benjamin—doesn’t yet possess the weakness that is restraint in accordance with the growth of His flesh and intelligent soul, and as if to prove such to Himself (satisfying ego, in the service of other appetites), He has the thought to step slow, and precise, to avoid problem floorboards, stares at every door drafting the hallway to stairs, stares them shut, wills them asleep until morning. Then, stops, waits at the slightest settle of foundation. Empty, the stomach of floor. Rumbling plank. No snorting snore, no din of dream. Bereft of mucosal stertor, the gunk of Israel’s caffeinated cigar. He stops at the stairs, at their head, the progenitor of descent, if patrilineal then of His God.
Here, stopped at the top of infinite generations of steps, a straightened labyrinth, a ladder filledin, the bottom, if any, seems unattainable: every step as tall as He is, He’ll fall, the fear, paranoia except when He’s justified; with every step He takes another step’ll be added onto the bottom, He’ll descend forever; and then there’s the order of the stepping stairs, which might up and rearrange out of nowhere, reorder themselves in the dead of night: last step to switch itself with the first, twelfth with the second, they aren’t the same after all; to step forever if the order He descends isn’t the same He’d ascended hours ago with finger in palm, Israel dragged higher and higher up to the seat of the Godhead, the footstool and throne of the study adjoining the room of His parents, Aba’s office, keep shish; what if one of the stairing steps gives a noise underfoot it’d never given before, or doesn’t, what if, and all the care’s gone for nothing, needless heedless caution, can’t bear the waste.
Benjamin enumerates them, necessary in this dark, one two three steps soft, an interpretation of stealth, always how many four five six then a landing, and then however many more and again, stairs, stops, at the landing, midstairs, to inquire of the photographs hung thereupon—ancestors of those photographed on the wall on the stairs down and up to the basement, which He’s never attempted, hasn’t yet dared. He asks them though in silence, and as if they’re sure to know as they’re native to such steps, and this landing—how many stairs, how many more or much longer—but His forefathers, unknown to Him except through these photographs and in them, as them, not looking too well, complexioned greenish gray, light-bruised, they’ve aged badly, they don’t answer, or can’t, as they’re images only, and so remain impassive, if fading, glassed detached, shoddily framed. Then, that last questioning step to the test of the foot, that’s the stair that’ll snare, the stumblingblock, the trip, has to be. He asks with the rungs of His lips the angels always invisibly ascending and descending for aid, though this isn’t a dream, He doesn’t think, He hopes it’ll turn out to be—trips and falls now, tumbling just short of silent, hauls Himself up with a palm on the newel, standing His knees scraped, winces as He turns to behold the kitchen in the light of the lights on timers outside.
As outside there’s the freeze of the snow to make necessary the shelter of house, in which it’s warm, with heat central, up from the ventings at baseboard; and as there’s a house to make necessary the refrigerator inside, which sustains that that might sustain our own lives, and is the house within the house upon which our world is presently founded (this is how Benjamin thinks when He’s hungry)—how far we have come from the garden! Better to banish the house, go out and greet exposure, scattering the perishables to keep out on the lawn. This refrigerator, the kitchen’s, a rectangular white monolith, set into the wall, doorsurfaced, is kept fresh of new food, right from the supermarket, taken right from the bag and unwrapped only then, to be cooked and consumed—this isn’t the refrigerator He needs. The refrigerator He needs is the downstairs refrigerator, the downstairs-downstairs, in the basement, partially unfinished, meaning wholly; it keeps the leftovers sealed for eternity in their containments of plastic, foiltopped bowls and the trademark of tupperware, the foods best forbidden for better than a moon after their initial cooking and partial consumption, the headless fowl, the frozen appetizers, minipatties and tiny weiners wrapped in pastry, the gallons of a pareve substance marketed as premium tofu dessert, suspected poison. And so choices and decisions; choices, decisions. He can either turn, grope toward the second stairwell, the ignorant steps leading downstairs-downstairs, and maybe further, maybe ever, tenebrously descending; to stalk a walk quietly, meticulously miraculous progress, down to where even Hanna had feared to tread, from the table through the kitchen then walking down the stairs and a right to the fridge of the hemieaten, partidigested foods sealed for storage—as if an offering to the underworld, its famished goddess Wanda, a famous other mother.
And then how she’d return, sacrifice made, with empty hands.
Or, to settle—for the new that is the fresh over the old though untold.
Here, this refrigerator, with its condiments and crisper, twoliter of seltzer lemonlime. Mustard, and syrup. Ingredients and not form.
Snacks sugared in the pantry to the left of the fridge, enough salt to make a decentsized pillar.
To reach for the fridge right here in front of Him, easy—to fingerprint its hum, stroke at its moist gurgle, in the dark to feel for its handle, to open, reveal, tugging with one hand while the other for leverage feels at the rubberized seam. And then there’d be light.
Morning’s night. To let the heated air in. Host of a bulb burning compulsion. Freshkept. And His glasses, too, their fog.
Benjamin stands, feet at the foot of the stairs, gazing from the refrigerator beyond to the steps below, intending thought though drowsy. To risk or not. To decide, it tires. Fate’s for the lazy, dessert as a meal for the toobored to choose. Then, to head the wrong way from everything, into the livingroom, the familyroom, who knows where He lies, atop the sofa of three pillows, as opposed to the two other sofas of four pillows each, then five, He spreads Himself out with the knife of a hand like a condiment, as if buttery marge, to rest His head in the spoon that is His other palm.
A mousy quiescence—and yet, He senses a stirring.
A preparation: thoughts of food digested to fear, an expectancy, and, finally, room for a real hunger—a pregnant yen.
O, to be as ravenous as a dove—craving even an olive of sunlight, a far branch of peace…
The goy up there knows from chimneys, does he ever, knows them like he knows his own throat, windpipes whether of brick or metal, he knows their flues and their fires, too, and the smoke in the eyes and lungs, had squeezed through them, all these years, too many now, immemorial, generations turned to smoke, their mouths smirching sky; how he’d shimmied through them and whatever had stuck them up: a fallen pigeon, a downed owl, summer neglect. His sleigh, a green cabriolet cutter hung with lit lanterns, he’s parked against the slope of the roof at its lowest scarp; racingstriped runners tearing up the shingling, his team of flying reindeer idling patiently, letting rest the awesome ripple of their legs: lashed trunks, ragged fundaments; giants of meat and raw, with eyes that are nothing if not oily mad, anything but jolly, more like violent in their majesty, lidded hoary and hardened; they’re scraping their hooves as if to herd forward, butt heads, to charge the chimney down which he dove; they give soft snorts from their nostrils, then quiet, to graze upon stars. On each of their antlers hangs a crown: tarnished gold for one, the others are rotted, wormtwisted wood. None have a red nose—they have snouts.
Him, he sucks it in, in his motheaten suit down he goes the dark throats of houses and into the warm of their guts.
One night only, year after year—the fullness of good little wellbehaved boys & goyls…
Most are expecting a stockinglike sack, though that’s so last season, roll the eyes, snigger: the sack molders up north, in the attic of his bungalow, yearround doneup in Millennial Terrific, though itself without chimney, only a Pole, kept topped with an ostentatious antenna, festooned with the flags of the world.
Tonight, it’s a can he carries, a metal battered can as if of paint; it’s a bucket, for the record—filled with the blood of the lamb, cut with that of goats when the Arctic slaughterhouse went short on a stray flock.
A chute through the chimney, no fire, lucky for him this fireplace is for appearances only, an arched validation of a mantel above upon which to display photographs, more of them, those of the immediate family, at home, on vacation, which was Florida, Mexico, anywhere always July, flushed at weddings, at graduations proudly awkward—and then, at the furthest gilded edge, the newest immortality, made in a gaudily mirrored frame: it’s Him—at the hospital, in the arms of His mother if no longer living then sleeping, still, upstairs-upstairs, have patience, have pity, have dreams. Benjamin’s head propped atop the pillows atop the sofa, Claus ducks in then prods aside the screen, steps soft gingerbread tread over the brickwork ledge then onto the carpet, proceeds into the kitchen and beyond, to the frontdoor trailing blobs of blood, to dearm the alarm, unlock the door from the inside; he dips his chin, a beard’s brush, a patch of stain flecked with soot and then, with tense shakes of a hackneyed head begins to mark the jamb, not even acknowledging Benjamin to spit a gift on Him.
A poor guest, we’ve known worse.
The problem with this tradition has always been once he’s gone down the chimney, how does he manage to get back up to the roof? If the devil Satan must fall, one might argue, then a saint like Santa must rise; once finished with his swathe and slather, he might lick clean the plate of warmed goodies, gargle the icy milk of mothers left behind—more time to think his way up and out, though this house would never provide. Maybe they have a fowl in the fridge, he thinks, and a little shot of schnapps, helps to hope.
And then, there’s
always a ladder in garages like these.
This year, though, another task, each house its own—he doesn’t ascend, doesn’t rise to the roof, to fly off into the air, full reindeerpower ahead. Maybe later. Work to do. Not for nothing he’s the patron saint of our kinder.
To dry his hairs on the Rag, which drawer he knows.
And where the laundryroom, too.
He and with a silence that seems to twinkle returns to the den, if den it is, takes Benjamin by the hand. He’s a body come to life from the photographs on the stairwell. He’s the father of His father, whose father he might otherwise be. To take him slow, and as gently as you’d expect, naked fist in mitten fringed in tinsely poms, to lead Him to the stairs then up them, three at a time, and down the hall of shutdead doors to His room above the garage and its angelic ladder expected—forget it, you might as well stay a while, won’t you, make yourself comfortable, my house is yours, there’ll soon be beds empty enough; the two of them, Santa and son almost of equal size, stepping high, huge, and damn sleep loud into His room—and then Santa, holding a forefinger through the loose skein of yarn worn to his lips, slams the door bang behind them, though there’s no one left alive to awake.
At the corner of Deaf & Mute, known to most as the intersection of Eastern Parkway & Kingston Avenue, Brooklyn, in sunglasses at night, Mel Chisedic—not blind, but that’s how he makes rent out of season; habits are often stoned into Laws—loiters in front of a display window shattered open to winter, screening the madness as presented on networks owned by the dead. Eleven months out of the year his profession’s the panhandle, begging, predicated on this blindness, which wasn’t as much blindness as it’s more exactly the use of sunglasses, though occasionally there appeared an opening in Retard, an abandoned corner or curb, which estate, retardation, though more difficult to fake was for that very fact all the more lucrative, but this season as for the past decade or two of Xmases, ever since being released from the far from paradisiacal prison island known as Rikers and so reintroduced into the general population of the inexcusably unemployed, he was one of the legions of the Great White, a Santa, though less Santa or even a scrambly Satan as he often laughed than a lush, fat middleaged, more desperate than jolly, more wanty and needy than giving; his lap aching from the sits of adorable, panracial kinder with their marketable talents and astronomical intelligence quotients; his left ear—its ruby shard of earring out inseason—aching from their whispered wishes: for ponies ribboned, wrapped so shinily well they’d asphyxiate, for Mommy and Daddy to not get divorced, to love each other and me all over again, to buy like this new mansion for us to live in together high upon the fluff of an exurbiated cloud, hovering above the beach, Miami, maybe, then for me the sweetest ride, pimped to the maximum military surplus, with marzipan turret and gelatin treads; for this Xmas, all I want is for this scary acute lymphocytic leukemia to go away—is that too much to ask, Santy? Jesus.