by Joshua Cohen
Illumination the sweep of a lighthouse, the diffuse hoots of tankers…an island of light atop an island of dark. Imposed. Two islands, two dials of a clock, telling the same different times. Trapped within, unable to escape, Ben’s Himself frozen, ossified in youth—as if spring for Him hasn’t yet arrived, and will never, as if He’s been ordered to gestate, remanded to the safety of hibernation, winterized torpor, the otiose sloth. On the radio, they’re airing prayers. And there’s nothing on the screen anymore quite worth it. Electrostatics. Name every flake, from the comfort of the blanket and the sill. Reflect in windowglass. Make to stroke the sky. The fridge, snowwhite, has been emptied, scooped; emergency numbers are still chalked on a blackboard propped against the kitchen wall, leaning away from the phone: sisters exts. 1 through 12, His mother the # key, His father unavailable; when He dials Israel, pressing * for speed, He gets his office message; there’s always a meeting, a mediation, arbitration or deps in the offing—should you have any questions or concerns, please call me, or my paralegal…alongside a calendar, the two ordering nights of the holiday upcoming circled big and dumb in marker, black. Then, a visit to the dentist, a return to the Doctors Tweiss. Occupied. All alone, and still He’s scheduled. Peace now, peace never.
As no God Who would allow a tragedy such as this can exist without a creation to believe in Him, and this despite the ferocity of His wrath; as no mensch can exist and can love without the love of those before him and their women, their salaries and time, they wouldn’t hurt, too; as today is inconceivable without a yesterday whose sins we must suffer the worst for only surviving—for there to be a last, it follows that there must first be a first: those seated in the back, those seated in the front, those standing, those who don’t want to sit, those without any seats left to their urge…the eve of this moon, this the uncovered Rosh Chodesh, which means the Head of the Month in a language no one speaks but everyone’s studying, this year fallen on a Friday night, a Shabbos going unobserved by one Abel Steinstein, cousin to Adam and brother to history, unformed young, smiley and slow—as he’s dead; as persuasive a defense against dereliction as any we’ve known.
Abel who, though? As the news asks around on the questioning wind: whether to bundleup, or stay inside and under the covers—everyone wants to know; they tug coats, they pull ears, beg favors of their connections. They invent, against the polysemic Semitic. Give them pause. Given a chance, they’ll choose fictions over patience if just to keep hold of their sanity, the firstborn of verity and honor. Swaddled in a hat. Suckling bald. Bow your head, particularly. Asking in a whisper, who is this schmuck; importantly, who does he think he is—this usurper, this attentionhog, Abel this singular Steinstein?
O, okay, sure, Ben’ll eventually relent…give Him a cup of coffee, He’s about to break. Sugar in the teeth, jam at the dregs. He knows Abel through Adam, there’s no harm to admit it—on the advice of bunkmate counselors, a parttime mallcop, his partner by day a stayathome broker—knew him through His Steinstein, Adam, you know him…who you sent my way, whom I should hasten to say never liked to spend time with family. Abel wasn’t around much, don’t know if Steinstein ever wanted him around and, anyway, the two of them they look the same around the eyes, especially through Ben’s, poor as they are, they looked, and, let’s be honest for a moment—hope that’s not too much to ask—isn’t one Steinstein enough? Abel this evening the first of the month to end all months, the last night of food to sate them through the difficult fast, this last even on the Shabbos indulgence, seated and as always behaving himself in his assigned seat at his assigned table in the midst of the Meat Commissary (the Dairy’s for the day’s earlier meals)—a squared portion of black bench marked off and stenciled with number in warning yellow paint; Abel just a young, always smiling kid (in the obits and their nightly discussion of them, it’s always mentioned, this smiling, one of those defining details required to humanize, and at the same time, to distance, bury amid the ultimate back page), you never knew what he was thinking, if, with blond hair and twinkling blue ices for eyes and a nose scrunched to mischief, a tinkling laugh, huge ears like wings as if any praise overheard would send him flying to the sky, only after an acknowledgement given from a mouth shaped like a kiss; sitting erect and at attention throughout the initial prayers, that business with the wine and bread, the two loaves of challah, Gardenbaked never enough for the table, his silverware held aloft, how he’s ready to be served and eat, familystyle, the tradition of the Garden; the table’s “father”—rabinically rachitic, a gruff, glassesed mensch with a whitened scrofulous scruff about the taut cheeks and recessive chin—serving first the table’s “mother,” a younger, preternaturally gray mensch, slight, suited and tied, corporately consumptive, made sick through idleness, he can’t digest a thing; then serving the kinder of the table: FBs ranging in age from twentysix to six, Abel one of ten middle kinder, at thirteen the kind most middle, and so used to being passed over in favor of the shining eldest or most demanding youngest, angelic in his stupid patience, old beyond his years; ladled and scooped, fork and knife dripping with sublimated urge, as if the tine and blade are both made mouths connected as continuation of his throat; then, juicy gravy swathing the brute constancy of that smile, bubbly baubles of grease, glistening oil as if planets stilled to slime out of orbit then dribble off into void; his head servedup atop the starved plate, garnished in round whiteness, a newest specialty: a dead, embarrassing grin; “father” collapses in a faint, “mother” throws himself upon his own fork; then the Angels—those matrons wimpled formless in white sheets, with little ineffectual wings attached; flightlessly old and unmarried, lately redeemed from Upstate nunneries found default on their mortgages, ingathered then trained for this very contingency—come quickly, in through the illuminated emergency doors at the end of the unified entrance hallway before the screened part into commissary meat and commissary milk: a rush of booties and rustling habits, without the rattle of harps or distracting halo of sirens.
At the whiny cry of the boy, those in the overheated, underventilated, monthold mayonnaisestained hall drop their soupspoons, their metals falling in a massed tinny skitter to the filth of the oilclothed floor lumped toward the walls in mounds of stale air; clattering dully, silvery rivers winding amid dusky hillocks of industrial blue, then silence. The meal’s evacuated, food’s adjourned, and all are remanded to barracks still hours until Curfew. In the morning the lasting first, rumor’s leaked; gossip’s net hairing down from heads on high, with their gloved hands serving up only the usual expected: that Abel’s only ill, but when he isn’t anywhere around the next day, which is the restless host of Shabbos, by its stars with their shiny palms held to the spiced fire, the constellating cup of inflammatory wine, and the staff of the Infirmary—baldheaded, baldfaced collaborators, is the suspicion—won’t give his next of kin Steinstein, Adam, any information, no indication, visitation rights forget about it, only office redirection of his heartrending, goggleeyed, and altogether trusting inquiry, then last name, first name, middle initial forms to fill out in triplicate, crossed complete with dotted lines upon which to sign away the permission of all meager hope—everyone suspects the truth; though many are sick, fall ill themselves, having without thinking picked up from the filthy, unswept, nevermopped floor the wrong spoons, those of their neighbors and others’, the spoons of their enemies and ever sicker friends, then verily souped and scooped with them the wandering dumplings, the balls of mealed matzah and flotsam of flanken, the jetsam of parsley, and so becoming infected with alien germs, the stock of the foreign, just as their real mothers would’ve warned them, had their womenfolk still lived.
Though initially, the first days of Nisan set in chaos, in crisis, the revelation isn’t so on—sophistication takes its time, its toll; the world might’ve been created in seven days, but who wants to live without electricity or shoes: three, four moons of the same moon into this recreated Garden, only a few fingered months however paradisiacal onIsland—made collaborative
to this resurrected refuge experiment, complicit in this solution proposed anew—and not everyone’s accounted for yet: the who, where, when not yet established, made record; the problem, not everyone’s been ID’d. Passions settle themselves, by name and number into an agenda, the minutes of their meeting a wayfarer along the low road to the west. A tongue reigns from the heavens, a meteor’s gloss. By night, an inquiry’s established: a chamber not of torture but the throne of the already painfully confessed, not barebulbed but luxuriously outfitted with every amenity to be desired by even the most outlandish of imaginations; impaneled in panels, beset by committees, resounding with oversight, how perceptive. Unspun, unedited, unasked to sit down first before being broken the news recently made in headlines that would strangle a God, a scar lamed upon the neck of the leg—truth is, one of them’s died again, made familial to the future, cousin to the world to come, allow me to extend my condolences but not myself, not by much. An order’s given to mourn—officially, on condition of the anonymous record—while behind the chambers’ doors, which are never entirely opened and yet never entirely closed, only perpetually drafted, left halfwise if only to suspect the air of transparency, accountability with its paranoid pointed fingers and gnawedupon nails, the order’s to question, to ask; to flap the lips as if doors themselves, wavering from any gust that might answer. Which Abel was Abel? To establish the identity of the decedent beyond any measure of shadowing doubt. Who’s able to identify which Abel this Abel was? Having no distinguishing marks, no tracking implants, collars or bracelets that beep (early on, those measures had been nixed by these very powers inquiring as too extremely unfree—not too invasive, merely an unwarranted expense), it’s a process of reduction, winnowing, the chaff from the chaff, of taking and examining testimony, crossexamining, then striking both, instructing to ignore. To begin all over again, it keeps them afraid. On their toes if still seated. All rise. Place a hand on your—Bible, and repeat after me. Let your other hand be its commentary. Sign over your mouth. I don’t swear to God, it’s against my tradition. Speak up, please, we can’t hear you.
For the Record, then: this dead Abel isn’t Abel Bernstein (alias “Feel the Burnstein,” AKA “The Burnt Teen”); no, he’s still among us, still sniffling around, waiting for his father of blessed assets to come back to life, to resurrect his reputation from the vault that’s the grave for the sole purpose of helping his son make headway into the business, as he’d always promised; that indefinite media career: publishing, music, or film—he’d had the contacts, you name it, he’ll make it, facetime, a conference call with the dead; the kid always thought opportunity like weather fell from the sky, that money grew evergreen on trees; if not that, then still waiting for his inheritance to come through, to get processed, always, tied up in litigation’s the delusion maintained—cheap chintz visor stuck on his head even when sunset permits eating and at stool, leaving the bared to premature bald for the yarmulke he’s forced to—enumerating his windfall, accounting wildly, fingering the interest and dividends, even in his satisfied sleep oblivious, dreaming through every denial; unable to admit to himself and his bunkmates who once they find him alive continue to rib him, to haze and harass, that Der had, or is, already spent or spending it all—the whole bubonic cancerous lump sum of it on his own room and board, along with its waste upon a host of other if they’re necessarily more clandestine interests, offshore investments the particulars of which, even their most vague sheltering structures, Garden, Inc.’s accounting would never divulge: imminent Messiah perks, (re)Affiliated infrastructure (privatizing the public schools, revising curricula, contracting, too, with dispersed hospitals and clinics), securing the oil reserves, the water supply—just name it, it’s true. Many think it’s Abel Eckstein, until they realize he’s not dead, just introspective, reflective, modest, quiet and sad, still mourning his mother who’d always said she loved him so much she could die, which she eventually did, leaving her son to slink around the Garden, spending idle mooning hours in the showering facility (known as the Shof, if you’re a regular, winkwinking), gutter-to-gutter, hopping its drains on one foot in an attempt to cope or cop a mope; consecrating his mornings to the sin of Onan, which is masturbation, spilling seed, lathering his nether putz when he doesn’t suspect anyone’s spying, hundreds of FBs at a time shoved in together too close to know, to want to know his hard as slippery as wetted soap. And then the rumor has it as Abel Nagstein, which is ridiculous if you asked around, an eminence of thinking wishful: the Nag’s always shtepping everyone as to his presence; taking up space, precious air, exploiting, too, his position as a disgraced lab employee slash janitor, trying to sell premium fresh urine that’d pass any test to anyone who’d offer their favor, lording his gainful over the unemployed mass of FBprofessionals: lifeinsurance salesmenschs finding no takers for their policies offered in monthly installments growing easier and more affordable by the day, letting them go for less than a kiss, a hug’s discount embrace, or only a word in kind; lawyers mourning their billables ticking by, plotting late night tort suits v. Garden, Inc. and its CEO Der if we could just remember his former, Unaffiliated name; codefendants in a class of actionable all to themselves, they’re naming everyone: the government, higherups in the Administration, President Shade, even God It or Himself, despite being an unknowable entity, if existing, surely One of a limitless liability; doctors pining away for their bonebroke skichalets, half paidoff, shedding tears to freeze in the eye of the mind into virgin slopes trickled down the nose; moguls without moguls, briefs without a leg to stand on; architects and developers dreaming what they’d do were this Island to be privatized to any of their own concerns, what they’d put up here and why; remember the malls, like irradiant jewels in settings of parkinglot tar…the Great Hall a rejuvenating lifestyle spa, with residential space up top past the sun, or a hotel pent above three stars, lavish barracks through the clouds—luxurious condominiums ranging higher than a heaven in which none of them can still believe.
No, as Adam Steinstein reminds everyone—in his rage ennobled, matured, barmitzvah or no a mensch already, canny and strong, he’s toughened—it’s me who’s suffering, it’s me who’s down and out, left all alone, me and not you…that the Abel who died had been his cousin, his and not yours, yours and not theirs: Abel obituaried and eulogized, who’d enjoyed the sport of princes, which is pingpong, and the sport of kings, too, which is pinball, an A student who’d hoped one day earlier to find the cure for the cancer that’d killed his grandparents before his parents would’ve died of it themselves, only to die from what at the peak of their health, at the height of that late and perpetually latening winter—to find that cure perhaps under the fluff of his pillow, vialed alongside the fallen blood of a pearly tooth; Abel who’d left no parent behind to be proud of his prodigious intelligence—you’ll excuse, please, a schmeck of exaggeration postmortem, won’t you, hab rachmones, pity, pity, shalt thou pursue. Abel who’s dead, which is sure, that much can be said, through the wind and snow and the dark and ice that freezes in the air the echoes of familial howl; the calls in and warm, the calls home, officially motherly exhortations, ostensibly fatherly threats; inscrutable Cain the distanced shadow of the deceased, beckoned through the wilderness of the city to the Island to meet his brother, to become there his murderer and his heir. Abel’s face smote down in his meat his plated anger, a sacrifice atop an altar of brisketcuts, the table’s least desirable, the most fatty of them their tips welldone, overcooked dry, brisket blacked to char in its own blood that no one here will ever eat again, you can’t hold it against them—blutbeef sopped with a gravy the organic aspirations of which are, let’s be honest, fooling no one; served up with the plump of dumplings, alongside just defrosted, coldcored mixed vegetables, which are harder than teeth though just as filling. Eat up. Fast down.
With no news of infirmity let alone of recovery, of survival, with no news at all, an impromptu vigil’s candlelit into mass mourning, barefoot on concrete around Steinstein’s—Adam�
�s—stripped mattress hundreds of beds bunked south of his cousin’s, empty now forever; a Shiva extended, FBs flocking to the appropriate barracks to pay their respects, their tribute though who knows him—to pay memorial donations of sweater lint and good will to a fund established in anyone’s name; there to trip through the formulas of condolence, offer sentiment, apologize; Nilesized baskets arrive at all hours from without, cosigned cards and wreathes and cooperative gifts: Mail Call’s siren signaling the arrival of carepackages sent by interests wholly charitable and only partially specialinterested, concerned not with wellbeing or appetite but with the states of their forsaken souls; the FBs showing with weeds thawed and tied with grass into bouquets, a bulrush on cattails to wrap, papyrus; foods stolen from the commissaries, pocketed for a present to the bereaved: forget this fasting; you’ve already been punished, might as well go forth and sin. A gathering staying up late, refusing to disperse at Curfew, don’t mind me stands in the dark. Steinstein sleeps under the sag of his bunk, on the floor, which is barren, cement clumped with dust, a position mandated by tradition for those in mourning, those who find themselves exhausted while down on their knees, praying their search for a lost pair of shoes. A rabbinate in attendance, a few thousand of them resident from Rabbi to Rebbe on down to fallen Rav—everydenominational like the mint they would’ve been charging had this tragedy been graven upon the past, a prior season; ordained up to their ears, their solicitous eyes, their lips pursed in an Amen before their mourner blesses grief—here to assist Steinstein with whatever his spirit’s unable to bear. Since his upper bunkmate native to Moscow, or Odessa maybe he’s saying, doesn’t speak his language yet, this tongue native to and predominant in the Garden (rather, the earhaired, nattily suited mensch knows his Russian, a mouthful of scatological Yiddish), he’s rotated out, switched the second night of Shiva, which means To sit with a rabbi who’d known—by his own admission, perhaps a bintel briefed too forthcoming especially when in front of the microphones and cameras—a friend of Steinstein’s, Adam’s, father’s roommate through two years of medicalschool from which the rabbi then not yet had been expelled for worrying experimentation, try offprescription abuse, trying out a host of psychopharmacologic solutions upon the person of his future wife, the rebbetzin. Rabbi and Steinstein sleep near one another on the floor, freshface buried in beard—late night struggling, early morning tensed, limbs aching, with toes exposed freezing, they’re shivering but nervously, too; hot, wandering palms stroking shush…