by Joshua Cohen
And then there are seventytwo, then fifty of them, and then only thirtysix of them left living: it’s that fast, death, and that remorseless…three minyans they make, six menschs just hanging around, wondering what you want with them. Hope not much, may ye expect even less. A legacy: each of the lasting survivors now has effectually unlimited resources, all to themselves…more beds than bedheads than sleeping nights, mattresses numbering into the tens of thousands per survivor, a surplus supplied with hundreds of thousands of pillows, each having been stuffed with the dreams of and fluffed to a head slumbering elsewhere, eternally if they so believe, and they don’t, generally speaking (Garden psychologists have decided not to relocate the FBs any closer to one another, have decided not to allow them to relocate themselves—their beds are their beds, to remain in their areas, disheveled and empty once departed, never remade). As always, routine, the survivors wake to wash in the Shof, in the thousands of sinks made available, under thousands of faucets steeped deep in a million rituals of leak; this perpetual gaseous drip throughout morning and night, its sound the only noising, to be clouded over by a mass of flatulent snoring come Curfew; hundreds of thousands of towels per head hang like flayed skins from their racks, each monogrammed for the Garden, an initial tattoo; then, once showered, groomed and perfumed, it’s out into day: to their meals, if they’re served, activities, if they haven’t been cancelled, to their prayers preempting, which are still foreign to most but becoming less and less fervently doubted with each passing service; thanks to the laundry, clothes are claimed ever newer; never to be caught dead in the same outfit twice, is what; designers are traded, accessories are bargained for, namebrands coveted at premium theft; once neatly arranged, folded and stacked within the cubbies of the departed, any forfeiture’s heaped around the barracks in wrinkling mounds, each article still individually labeled. It’s these labels that prove the most disturbing; names, last name first—as if in answer to the writing on the stalls, the wallscrawl, the questioning messages, disembodied echoes of the graffiti that’d accumulated on their cubbies, also, and on their bedframes, amid the rafters, where not: nicknames, endearments and obscenities dead, Sascha, nie vergessen, demain, Someone wuz here, Someone luvs another, NAC, TAC, AUS, SCH, the initials on excess undergarments, boxerbriefs not quite clean, not quite white, the wrong size; on garments freshly washed and pressed to the unmitigated approval of any mother, though never worn due to lack of proper occasion, or a looting of irregular cut: labels tugged from tags on swimwear elastic, tongued from the mouths of undershirt collars, on bright polyester pullovers, on fleece and flannel, on woolen sweaters infested with moth and lint, elbows as bald as an uncle emeritus, on threadbare cardigans the color of dog vomit, on promotional clothing courtesy of insurance concerns and pharmaceutical companies defunct, their fluorescent logos fading, faded, on pants with bare crotches, suitslacks with frayed cuffs, crusty socks, shoes without soles; these labels personalizing a universe of their private tchotchkes as well, on the little they’ve been allowed to keep, small stakes they’ve managed to secrete and preserve: on the inside covers of books reread and on radios alleared, on cups and mugs and on bowls mouthed and lipped a spoon, on sunscreen, on insect repellent and on medications prescription and non, on lamps lit and unlit and on violins who knows how to play those clarinets, on housekeys, carkeys, on wives’ brooches and breastyjeweled rings—slopped atop to bunk the beds of the departed in vast junked pyramids, falling to the floor overnight, to be scavenged by any who’ll wake to know morning.
Here, in the blocks of barracks, an exhaustion sprawls itself over time, a silence snores oppression…anything uttered, maybe only thought, echoes for what wastes like forever, longer than they’d ever have: maunders and murmurs, invocations and prayers, bargaining begged of rage, incriminations, passing through the emptying wings, the connecting classrooms and clinics, canteen, and mail depot; even the lounges vacant except for the puttering of a mensch his name’s Abe, or so he says, thinlipped, deepdimpled, and grave, he’s in a shiny vest and pants to a powder blue suit never his, a shtikel of black necktie, his hair’s parted in the middle; he’s stacking the roomful of foldingchairs to pass the time, foldingup battered cardtables to while away the hours; never a line anymore for pingpong, never a wait for pinball that’s the line that’s passed around—the other survivors remain in their designated areas, not laughing. And these are those thirtysix that remain: a butcher, who would sell meat to a baker, who would sell two challahs weekly to a chandelier salesmensch who did door-to-door, who was neighbors nextdoor in Forest Hills if you know it with a retired professor of history, who was uncle to nothing more than a pizza deliverer, who was boyfriend though to a daughter of a mailorder magnate, who was brother-inlaw to a woman who was the cousin of a maid to a lighting fixtures wholesaler, who once for fraud had to go in front of a judge here, who had once presided over the proceedings of a plaintiff here and a defendant here, too (though in separate cases), who was a brother to a mensch who he once worked for a producer here, who had an accountant here, whose mother knew a woman who was sister to three menschs here who’re no longer holding out to become accountants, one of whom was the husband of a daughter of a hotelier here, whose other son-inlaw’s friend was an HR representative here, who once had an uncle whose rabbi had fathered three attorneys here, one of whose secretaries had been friends with a maid who’d slept with two doctors here, one of whose mothers had a friend whose son was both a doctor and a lawyer here, his own, whose son’s friend’s friend’s squashpartner here had once failed both the bar and the boards on seven occasions under five identities (not all of them) different, whose uncle’s exwife’s new husband now widowed here was a stayathome father, whose third cousin once removed was roommates in college NYU with the son of the bridgepartner of a mother of a stockbroker broke here, whose proctologist had a dermatologist here, whose lawyer had an accountant here, whose accountant’s brother’s friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s father was a disgraced pharmacist here, who had an acquaintance of his father’s sister’s exhusband’s brother here who’d gone into hock for his numismatic obsession, whose father had grown up with this mensch who once ten years ago now though he doesn’t remember it had Shabbos dinner by the Friedmans the Roslyn Friedmans if you know them with a funeralhome director here, who once buried the sister of a friend of the thirdgrade teacher of a jeweler here, whose cousin’s boss once bought a car off a car dealer who also sold a van to the wife of a mensch whose mistress was also the lover of a realestate agent here, whose brother and sister-inlaw’s travelagent once met at the Mintz wedding the pilot here, whose plane once brought the family of Steinstein here to an uncle’s Panamanian funeral two years ago I think it was on a flight for them complaining blacked out from bereavement fare…Steinstein whose mother’s Hadassah President’s cancer support group leader’s integral yoga instructor’s cousin twice removed had one considered buying either the lot below or house above that Ben here was born into, which was then uprooted and removed here, recreated and kept locked now with Him inside to protect Him from this plague—Ben relieved only by hourly visits by the butcher here, to daub a bit more blood upon the door, until he doesn’t visit one morning with Ben waiting for him inside, and the jamb runs dry, and the stain remains.
And, too, the mezuzah.
And then there are twelve, as it’s announced loudly to sound above the civic mass mourning, Wall Street north to Union Square and furthered Manhattan, the outtagrave boroughs…a proclamation accompanied by a great galvanic gnashing of teeth, Tweisswhitened (because they’ll do that, too, anything)—Mada and Hamm fresh from supervising the rending of hundreds no thousands of garments, shrinkwrapped blue & white warehoused shrouds (extra blankets from a defunct Palesteinian aeroline, it’s said), intended for those who’d died too quickly to be scheduled into the ritual of burial, no time for the fitting and so, abandoned. Robbed of a hole. As for Der, he’s mostly kept from the statistics—preventing him from tearing out what hair he has
left, which isn’t much around the ears and nose, slight brows bowed above the mouthoff, dreckdead eyes; instead, he’s focusing himself on the aftermath, what’s next; how to spend the money that’ll revert, how to exploit a survivor if any. Different commissions, Shadesponsored from out of the Library’s welfared minions, he has to do something, show some signs of interest, governance, I’m on top of it shtick are hauled in hebdomadally, arranged up on old YMHA daises, nameplated, glasses of water to soothe the throat, their microphones antennæ topped with huge foaming tumors. Independent experts anything but either of those epithets, they have their questions to ask: survivors are seated with nervous feet, numbed in hardbacked chairs, after having been interrogated earlier, individually, before this event that’s open to all media, in windowless reportedly subterranean rooms mauve halls off the taupe hall, the main passageway underneath the Great Hall, whitewashed cells soon bespattered, scuffed and bled and bare, if only on the initiative of those voluntarily sequestered there against their better counsel, physicians’ sought advice: again if chambers of torture then torture of a neurotic, indifferent kind, its survivors ignobly, though unintentionally, deprived of hot food and that icewater infused with lemon for whole quarterhours, barkeddown by overtimed detectives losing their faces, goys with no minds to spare; frowsed in cheap black suits and loosened doubleknit neckwear, they’re pacing the floors, with their coffee concussions and donut guts, ash on their pants, their sleeves rolled up to raw elbows, they’re screaming at the assembled under bare bulbs of extreme wattage. Not just them, though, it’s the public, too, that wants to know, needs to, demanding it, especially as they’ve been forbidden, regrettably, by decree both official and ostensibly divine, from the selection of personal survivors, those or One Whom they’d like to have emerge from this mess, a chosen representation, a symbol to call their very own; if not made for them then at least of them, by them for Shabbos, a known. And so as much to identify as to bide time their profiles are commissioned, interviews come on the heels of debriefings: who exactly are the twelve, being the question?
Are they selfappointed evangelists, selfevangelized appointees, selfanointed anointers, anointed selfanointers, apostate apostles, apostle apostates, pathologically agnostic, atheists or just lazy? Are they eating, we all want to know, and/or are they feeling well, please, eating and/or feeling enough is it, just; were they overmothered and underfathered, or maybe it’s the other way around; how do they like their odds; have any regrets; who are your heroes; favorite book, color, or food…do they like their crusts sliced just right and how, are they given or refused milk, do they want it or no; answer me, goddamn it; what occurred prior to their permanent records; you’re gonna answer me; if you survive, what are your plans, your platform; one of us is gonna leave here with a mild headache, and it ain’t gonna be me, friend; what marks them save nothing special; what makes you think you have what it takes; you suffering from a bad case of silence, son, tardiloquence and yadda; what do you think of the President, what do you think of your fame…every outlet officially conceivable, from national radio to periodicals of record and note and of none or both, wiring in their requests, tap tap tactlessly tapping wanting to know who, needling we’re on deadline here; priests possible, to-be’s in-training; datelining the GARDEN (Rooters), you wanna talk deadline…
Auslander, Dattelstrauch, Hymen-Slutsky, Israelien, Jakov-Jablovsky, Lipschitz, Osterthal, de Quadros, Rothweißblau, Steinstein, Witznitz, ben Zona; Levitansky, McJohnson, Normal, Oppenstrauss, Putzl (though those answering aren’t the twelve answerable, not most of the time, anyway; rather, they’re impostors employed to provide a semblance of reassurance to the public, hand-holding while the real waste away, counting days on the calendars of their fingers, sequestered in Tweisstwinning psychological interviews ideationally intended to mitigate the trauma of Shade’s inquiry, subsequent interrogations, really interrogations about interrogations, dumped to the Garden’s files; their representatives, presented to the public as wistful, nostalgic, resigned, having been ordered to a certain number of responses created to ensure satisfactory variance among them: yes, no, black, white, anything but gray; I was a father of three, a restaurateur, a farmer, a famous television personality myself, if you don’t remember); of them, then, how many can most accurately be described as far-shtink-en-er, merely fer-shlug-gin-er; are you terrified or just settling; ready or not; please keep your answers as brief as possible, as briefed; are they up to the job, talk to me here—we want qualifications, a program, resume and references, too; all questions though in truth One, which would be the twin father of any survivor: are they prepared, any of them, to assume the mantle, to bear the crown—constitutionally; able to direct the maternally heavy flows of power, to overlord the hierarchies of delegating angels, arrayed beneath the thronewomb, birthwrought of living fame: supplication arriving on the Friday late, put off until next Monday, late afternoon at that, winged lazily around the meeting room that is Heaven, which is stocked with a hundred different salvations, alphabetized how in portfolios iconoclastically embossed with amulets, accessible only to those who know how to invoke the proper memoranda prayer; and we all say, let there be strategy, and there is, and it’s damn—passable. Leave it be.
And then there are ten…who—in the spirit of the season, it’s said—are to be destroyed by the Angel of Death, that killed the butchers that slew the ox, that drank the water that quenched the fire, that burned the stick that beat the dog, that bit the cat that ate the kid our Father the Holy One Blessed Be He had bought for two zuzim, the first zuz and the last zuz as it’s been said, then drunkly sung since for lifetimes…a quorum in wild ferment, a destroyed slain drunk wet and burnt beaten bitten eaten then bought minyan, survivors barking and clawing their prayer now unto the Holy One Whosoever He is, or was, praying for their lives in nasalized whinnies and whines, without words, as they’re unknown to them, have been forgotten, but it’s the thought that has to matter in this mess, isn’t it, is the matter, the alephbet stammer, the heartword beginning with yod hey vav hey…only the most superlative of intentions—to make peace with ignorance; settling down on coffin pews to daven their mincha, silently, a ma’ariv for the night of their souls oseh shalom to you, too. Ten menschs, full grown almost to death, tripping over the straps of their phylacteries, tangling in the filigreed knots of their fringes, tying more out of superstition, worry, holding their siddurim upside down then holding them right side up but opening from the wrong end to mispronounce their words if only in their mindful hope left to right to left, with blind fingers and mute palms destroying the spines of the books, and their own, too, in their abject, groveling shuckle; mourning to themselves that there’s not even a rabbi among them, none to slam shtender, keep order, no more; as if they would have listened to one had he been still, even she. Auslander, Dattelstrauch, Israelien, Jakov-Jablovsky, Lipschitz, de Quadros, Rothweißblau, Steinstein, Witznitz, ben Zona; Babel, Masterson, Nitzwitz, Yarmolinsky…