by Joshua Cohen
Witness, too, the perhaps anapocryphal Powers that Are sitting around a table topped in glass, rung with the orbits of sloshing coffee cups, water glasses, and the dew of their pitcher, scattered with stray tobacco, ashtrays overflowing with gray; overtired, occipitally headached and parched, they’re ringing galaxies of smoke around this room underground through the night into morning: Der and the Doctors Tweiss, seated alongside the theological legation of Abuya and the Nachmachen, a rowdy gang of insourced maturation experts, too, adjustment authorities, enablement profs, armchaired academicians roused from their laureate sleep, tenured doze, summoned away from tomes or midnight weaknesses for string quartets, pipe tamps, and whiskey snifts, vaunted pundits syndicated out the mouth, payper politicos, image consultants, brand managers, then an entire jury of Goldenberg Esq.s their dictaphones infundibularized in the flowers of their lapels, a stenographer and a notary public; they’re desperate to be anything but desperate, how now anything goes: gaudily attired gypsies, lisping mediums, psychics, séancers, crystalballers, and tablerappers…Ben’s at home still, sleepless in His bed and alone again after His nightly sister’s left, left Him and herself as His sister—too shockdistracted, onedge at threshold, wasted afraid with the door halfopened, halfshut and with the nightlight glowworm on; nothing to do but keep awake, which means you’re alive, living to grieve again another day. At who knows when too early, redrimmed moon the morning, a hulkingly anachronistic darkness enters the house, a trespass intruder with its own set of starry keys—it has to be a golem, it’s silent. It’s palming a flashlight, he is, its taped shem of a nametag indicating ownership, Steinstein; its small spot of light comes sweeping over the kitchen, illuminating scurried forms, the escape of loosed household pests, roaches on the tails of mice being swallowed by rats, imported from Manhattan…the tables, the chairs, the blinding door of the fridge, the breakable junk, the broken; a viscous mountain of trashbags not yet curbed to the enclosure to the west of the house. He makes his deliberate way to the stairs, past the dim footlockers arranged at the foot: Hanna’s packingcrates, with dishes never to basement; then up the stairs, down the halls with their mirrors still draped past the sisterly rooms their doors shut and locked, sidestepping the mudtaint, soiled snow tracked in without wiping feet, desquamated foreskins and scaly foodwrappers and single sheets of toiletpaper trailing to the end to ply its door, Ben’s, which could’ve been shut and locked, too—though not to them, nothing is.
Hamm taps the flashlight on His head and says it sounds something like downstairs, softly, get dressed…at least put on some pants.
I won’t beg—you’re coming with me.
A rousing, rustling later with Hamm waiting downstairs out of respect for modesty and even that that’s naked shame, atop a couch with his legs held apart widely and the flashlight between them ranging idly over the brick of the fireplace and the formica of the kitchen’s overhanging counters—a messmassive clattering of feet atop foil, snared on wrappers with a swish and a crunch, Ben hulking down the hall to the stairhead, trippingover the wash folded and stacked into its hamper thanks to He thinks Rubina, wasn’t there this morning…Him tumbling tush over head down the stairs, which are slotted, aired and so He’s rolling almost deliberately down them, His girth sticking Him in the spaces between each step, to bulge out from the slots, bringing Him to landing slowly, as if a gear turned upon the tooth of its paunch—clockwork, any mechanism of the darkened house, or yet another nightly appliance who knows what it does, reset. Landing reached, He raises a hand and gropes at the newel for support, misses and so leans on air to fall the descending remainder. Aright, Ben stands, tucks Himself in under His shirt, cinches His robe, which was His mother’s, over the bump, to face Hamm risen to stand at the foot.
About time, he’s holding out to Him His shoes, then dropping them on the floor and kneeling to His, genug.
I’ll help you with the laces.
What we’re really getting at is this…to Ben still a stranger now doing the talking, in an interrogation room of the Great Hall to which His escort’s been firm, but anxiously kind—a weird wrinkly shrivel of a monkey, and an egghead uncle to as well, at this hour of night marshaled in the appropriate constellations of clank, all these honors and that of his acquaintance, too, this goy whose bland and bald face He would meet in framed and encouragingly unretouched reproductions hung upon, now that He’s reminded, every available wall, and whose voice He would sleep through every morning, greeting reveille in windy echo over the PA. What exactly—he’s saying, Der—was your relationship to the deceased, with him, this Abel boy, I mean? Think hard. Take your time. Answer only when you’re sure.
Here they’re buried graves underground, strata down, amid a network dug from bedrock, retiform tunnels once used for the store of munitions, back when this Island had been a fort for the protection of those already alive and busy living in the city; an area still kept official, Gardenmaintained secure and offlimits, for emergency use only, as evacuation, escape, bunkers for the salvation of only essential personnel, vital support staff plus One, contingency adjoining the rumor of a Treasury—this hallway hewed and lit in trim leading under the ice and out into Midtown, the rising Temple-in-the-Park. What I mean is, Der squints, what’s the nature? and he knuckles his head. How would you define it? Acquaintanceship. Casual. Bestfriend forever. Closer even. Don’t tell me. I’m not sure I want to know.
Postmortems, interrogations about interrogations, investigations of investigations regarding, follows up and through, therapists to ask their own questions about the questions Der asks and the answers He on His own recognizance provides, which have been, as it’s suspected, in turn, provided to Him, but by whom—surveillance from within, an affair of the utmost internal, heartsick, spleeny. Below the hosting clock at table, amid the chairs, the glasses and pitcher (water only, though anything else can be requested, they tell Ben, in return for answers they want to hear, those they don’t yet know they want to hear—here they are, already), the Doctors Tweiss lean in to listen; their collars unbuttoned, same with their pants, with both sets of cuffs rolled up; they wipe their hands on their neckties undone, lick their nibs, flip blank pages on sloppy legal tablets, begin again. To stick their pens into their wrists, suck in a measure of blood. Weak ink, even ichor would be. The Nachmachen crosses his legs, Abuya uncrosses his. And then, the Nachmachen crosses to the other. How to know this would be so serious. His mother would’ve said, would’ve been right. He should’ve put on a suit, at least a jacket and matching slacks she’d called them.
Abel? Ben says, I’d have to think about that. Officially hard to place, I’m getting a name but no face. Off the record, I’m not quite sure. On the record, I’m even less. Better to keep quiet, which is the best ignorance. Maintain silence, hold fast. Open your mouth only to ask for a lawyer, a loan of a Goldenberg, Esq. O to have retained His father as counsel! Showtrial and error then purge, which is to say, to lie, to perjure: “I don’t know Him from Adam,” and so they go ahead and give Him His options—Adam Arnofski or Adam Arnofsky, Adam Borowitz or Borovitz, Cohen or Cahn? Whoski, Whatsky, Wherenik, Whenwitz, Whykrantz, & Howfarb, Attorneys-At-Law?
Maybe a hint. Sounds like, perhaps.
Steinstein—alright, He says, sitting in a foldingchair uncomfortably un-cushioned, Abel’s a friend of mine. Was. More like an acquaintance. How’s that you called him, casual. Just this kid I knew from around. When you live on an Island, who has the luxury of being estranged? He was cousins with Adam, first cousins, I think, and Adam’s a friend, a good friend, but—he’d been seated a table down from Abel when he passed, or so he told me, and when Abel hit the plate, this I heard from…you know, I’m still eating at home.
Apparently, Adam got a little gravy splash on the one shirt he has for Shabbos. Veggie stains on his good pants. Wanted me to ask when they’re back from the cleaners.
Yes, says Der, we’ve already spoken with your Adam…
He stands alongside sitting Ben, almost tongui
ng His ear—whispers being the encryption of memory; the softer he’s speaking’s the thought, the better lies He’ll calm down to tell.
But you can’t think why anyone would want to hurt him, can you? Did Abel have any enemies, anyone with a pretext, even the merest inkless inkle of a text—did he leave you a note, I’m saying, or a letter with Adam? Anyone with a bitter chip, a grudge. Held against. A hatred, seething. You hear anything, you see anything? unstoppable Der’s shrieking. As if to say, it’s fine by us to fink, to inform, to rat and rodent around—after all, we’re all old friends here, aren’t we? Chaverim, habibi. Ben springs from His chair. Metal clatters to the floor, uneven concrete, negligently poured.
I don’t know anything! He’s yelling, nothing. What are you talking about? I wasn’t there, Adam was, and he’s my friend, mine and not yours, you wanted him to be, for us, I mean…mumbling, bends over His gut to retrieve the chair, unfolds the rust to sit down again, tilting the metal against the rocky wall—and as long as we’re here, I should ask you about my mother’s cooking; it’s gone downhill, and fast. If it’s not being poisoned, it’s either horrible or humbling.
Don’t avoid! and Der paces, strokes at his lip with a gunkgorged nail. What have we told you, Ben, haven’t we warned you? They haven’t. And anyway, who’s we is what He wants to say. Friends, Der says, they’re probably not the best idea. Especially now, what with the…he hesitates, this incident.
He adjusts an epaulet hanging askew; his medals clink like chains, binding him to his tone, his speech, this public life; he squints, always squinting, as if this incomprehension’s the fault of the without, not the failure of his within, anyone but him; then, making sure his chin’s still around to think with, to think from the mouth above, he exhaustedly sighs, begins in on Ben again.
Contradiction, babble, tripletalk.
Keep your distance, hold your tongue. Rub your stomach then pat your head.
It’ll make it easier for everyone, dismissed.
A referendum has been held, the table has been readied. Places have been laid. The guests have yet to be chosen. Our diningroom, the room with the longest and widest table, is still. Our island sinks deeper into borrowed creation, other time. As the fixed becomes unfixed, is given over to the fixed again, as one life in death is usurped by another, its mourning, the comfort found in concentration recedes—what once was community now is cramped, brotherhood gives way to resentment. Mistrust. Furtive eyes, with hands in pockets often not their own they stand apart. Picking them and noses. Against this insanity of existence, the exigencies of a situation out of all pockets and out of all hands, the clock still ticks—the sun’s face, blank and cold, setting behind the Great Hall, between immovable porticoes. Against the mystic absolute, the mundane must be strengthened. Despite death, it’s life we’re after. Its necessities. Becoming amenities. The schedule reigns. There’s work to be done. There is no chair at the head of the table, and so there is no head. To be left alone, one must first become oriented.
To the north, dim puffy women, former prostitutes and the metropolitan destitute dressed in tarnished overalls of pigskin emerge slowly from their lowslung, falling down cabins of corrugated tin, heaps, impediments to wind held up by the luck of a miracle; with hands gloved they wield their axes handled in bone, their blades sharpened on the sky. They’ve fallen the last trees of Staten Island, its Greenbelt, Moses Mountain high above the dump, having already deforested much of Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan’s Park in advance of the Temple, for its timber hard and dead, too frozen to degrade. Then, with measuringsticks held between their teeth, one holds the nails the other hammers, banging slabs into coffins, sixpointed, sixsided, skidding them out onto the ice offIsland, where they’re stacked for future use: stored empty, topless; filling up with the burial of snow.
To the south, workers are bound, constrained; the Garden’s tailors turning out piecework, new uniforms to be grown into, to death; needle and thread-folk sewn themselves into excessive bolts of cloth as protection from the elements: straightjacketed against the wind and fall, they’re swathed totally, windingsheets wound of sheet and human—they’re completely enshrouded, restrained, except for their hands, which have been left bare, exposed, to tailor free from any distraction, to work without the diversion of the other senses. They work in a tented gallery of burlap patched to canvas, stretched tightly just over the larval stoop of their forms, pegged with rope to spikes frozen to the ground. Beyond the flaps laps a fire (without a chimney, there are no other slits in the cloth, which is impenetrable; the smoke gathers, bellows, chokes), over which hunch their odd, shadowy forms, at their whirring machines, with panting foot ridiculously pedaling out their stitching, trimming and hemming, their taking in and letting out—shrouded themselves, they’re making shrouds, each monogrammed at the nape of the neck. They pile their finished products, as light and white as a whisper, in hulking bins of weathered hailresounding metal quartered at the edge of their encampment, once emptied of coal for inside heating—without the hindrance of meals or peers, bundled together against the cold in the warm they’ll eventually die in.
To the sanctifying east, which is the cardinality most consecrated, the olden orientation of the holy—down the singlelane, twoway access road rearing the Great Hall with its turreted vistas offering glary views over the ice to Governor’s, clear past the freeze as if one eye goes slipping as the other eye goes sliding across the slick to Red Hook, then north to Fort Greene, which like this Island is no longer a fort but only a plot of earth left indefensible as named; and between, the taut sinews of the Brooklyn Bridge, the delicate intestinal suspended to waver over the water, white and high and alone—there’s a tremendous cavern, secreted in a mound of ice, carved out roughly, its entrance blocked by a boulder that has to be rolled away every morning, an ordeal requiring the work of three of them, or that of any number with the strength altogether of three. It’s ritual by now; each to their own task: one mops pools stagnant to ice inside that first have to be pulverized with the handle of the broom used to sweep the floor littered with slop, old newspapers and plain brownpaper wrap, while another hoses down then wipes with rag the lavers clean, as yet another is tasked with the sacred office of examining then sharpening the knives kept stowed overhead, sharpdown amid a rash of bulbous and cankered tenderizing stones hung in their slings from racks and hooks, rusted, resembling to many of their visitors—the kashrut inspectors, assorted efficiency experts, the Commissary chefs—nothing less than the timeworn utensils of unenlightened torture. Then, to begin with the work of the day, which is slaughtering, the killing of meat, the knifing of it into product, into cuts as numerously diverse as appetites, and as grossly disarticulated, irreconcilable: these eyes of round allseeing, beeves in crosscuts, sirloins and tender-loins, rear rounds, roasts of flank and shank, brisket and chuck, butterflychops flitting through the dim, evading the chop of blades swung high to scalp, held as long and disjointedly sharp as the teeth of a starveling God; they’d cater also with chicken, with turkey, and innocent lamb: leg and rack, buffetworthy centerloin, neck slices alongside wings hacked flightless, breasts, thighs, legs and wholes, seething raw, porged, trabored, then soaked with salt—the carcasses even seeming to breathe and pant with the exhaustion of being sectioned and sold here, in the whirlwindy din of their slaughterhouse out at the edge of the Garden with a view from the top of its mound to the Battery and Brooklyn Herself; its partially underground vault a sepulcher of shrieks, snorts, and staggering animals with their throats slit lolling a roll of heads to death, its echoic expanse tolling thickly with the pitiless procedure of fast, mass execution; cleavers dull on meat, shattering to bone, to spew into the heavy moist air ringlings of sinew and vein as if the made flesh last gasp of an unfortunate fatling, death throes these scraps of gristle to garnish silence—the noise, though, stored within this facility as hermetically as if within one of the oversized masonjars stacked on the shelves that line the space, stocked with organs and glands.<
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These faithful surviving, they’re the staff butchers, the Garden’s onsite ritual slaughterers, their profession in their olden lives as well as that in these their new, not for long—though Shochets is the term they prefer, just as their fathers had preferred it and their fathers before them, on forever. Strictly glatt, lately they’ve been slaughtering as never before, in a blind and crazy, heedless, needless rage, as if their work, which is never finished—there will always be carcasses to carve—would serve, but how, to postpone the imminence of their own death; as if by providing sustenance to their kind, they themselves would be sustained, would outlive those they’ve lived to feed. As if by exacting the punishment that is the animal, they would be spared its fate. As if by killing, they would not be killed. Here in their matching aprons, retrieved on arrival from an unlaundered drape on hanger steaks, their paunches swaddled underneath them, hanging from the ribs like swollen tears, they work in a frenzied lust. Despite the fast—meat their life, the making of meat from death their only purpose: trimming fat stored upon the soul for lean years until last Xmas, its ingathering to the Island and this, their privileged employment, their slitting of throats to painless end. Butchers as their fathers before them were butchers, they might be brothers, too—fraternal in their flaw, which is only the quorum of their flaws, a bloody congregation. And though it’s impossible to ascertain just how many of them there are: they’re always coming and going, schlepping and slicing and slitting and bestially blooding—our sages hold that it takes all of them, however many of them there are, or were, to constitute what we would regard as one whole, intact person: as each is deformed, if grossly, lamentably, is mutilated, if only slightly, in his or its own way, uniquely and that, it’s interpreted, it might be this very mutilation that makes them family, that renders relationship to loss, conferring kinship upon such senseless blemish. Unsightly, but they can’t hear you. One’s missing a thumb, another a forefinger, another a middle, another a ring, yet another a pinkie; a knife dropped from up on high severs a thumb toe, a cleaver fallen middle toes, a band or circular saw deprives the foot of pinkies; one’s missing a right hand entire, another still a left, both hackedoff at the wrists, scarred purple and without hair. Occupational hazards. Condolence them not, though, they’re suitably insured. One’s missing an arm to the elbow, the stump of a stub, another to the nubby shoulder, a missing arm entire; one’s without a nose, in the way of risen sever, another lacks an upper lip to lick in concentration on the following blow, his other then, poorer a lower; two have eyes poked out in the disposition of one and one, workplace sacrifices, spurts over the low counters and cases hewn from ice. Know, also, our scholars say, that they cooperate, make do. That the one who’s missing his righthand works alongside the other that’s missing his left; that that other without an ear works alongside another lacking the ear opposite—more than each compensating for the other, for yet another, collaborative in their sin. It’s that they work, ultimately, as one organ, as a unified entity, a mass of single mind and purpose: a huge monstrous slaughterer, murdering away for the sake of the multitude; working despite the horror and hurt as routinely, as placidly, as the carcasses hang from their pitiless hooks, as if pendulums to clocks, swinging their bloods out of the bursting walkthrough—outside: an overflow freezer laid to leak its hold onto the Hudson’s ice, red currents flowing out to slake the bay.