by Joshua Cohen
That’s what you’re selling, but that I won’t buy…no way I can, it’s part of the deal—you know, I’m not that foolish…and I’m not that old, still attractive (she’s arranging her poor, demidyed wig in the reflection of the face of her watch, her husband’s dead, the watch, too), at least gentle, and very seasoned, savvy: I have testimonials, I’ve only ever gotten good reviews…maybe even leaving Him alone with me, for the night, no extra fee, just one night, that’s all I ask. Charity. Tell you what, you can deduct it from what I’m owed. Name His price. Soak me on the rates—I’m wet already. Then to Him, in a gassy guttered whisper, with unwashed maxillary denture, you’re interested, aren’t you, Ben…how can you not, tzedakah?
Enough, says Der with a sneer that gives much wingspan to his errant stache, breaking down, initially, this crumble, though its sharding only the sign of a sour impulse to escape…I want you to listen: we’ve got a pending deal to clone one of Them, to make ourselves a female, 100% straight bloodline, how we want her, what we want her, when, and this you can tell the President since you two, you’re such close friends. Now that’s an expensive proposition, you’d say, and risky, and you’d be right, not to mention unsound—(an echo, Shade would agree: forbidden according to law both secular, and the newest sacred)—though it’s an option, keep that in mind in its long and tall, don’t sell us short, genug. He should remember that we’re the only ones with the resources to do it, the money and the skill. Don’t underestimate how determined we are to protect our investment, His and ours, I mean—Him, He’s in agreement. Aren’t you, Ben. Say yes. There, you have it from the mouth. We’re invested too heavily is what, He is, what with the hanging sacs, the shed—don’t think we haven’t thought. Explored. Experimented. We’ve parsed and planned and dreamed. Der thrusts out a gloved numbed hand like put it there, so long…so drop this, won’t you, no hysterics, don’t even try; as if to say, I know all the ruse and female. Do we have a deal or am I milking samples?
You’d never. No one would. They’d be unkosher, inbred.
As if they always weren’t.
Don’t give me that mishegas…giving a sigh perfumed with the odious must of routine, coughed by a wink that rouses her, pumps blood back to feet; her stepping out of the aisle as if to make room, to usher in the close—even though I’ll take it, that’s what you pay me for…and you will pay me today, now, and their money in a week, cash, I get ten percent commission. But just so you know, her family won’t take it; and neither will she, who would: if He’s to be a husband, He has to be a husband, not a Company, a Corporate what have you malfeasance snooze or fake…not the Messiah and no, not a God. No cloning, and no veils, Ben—that thing has to come off sooner or later; I’ll tell you what, we’ll put that in the contract.
Agreed, and Der heads after her up the steps as if to make to shake her down, and maybe her price along with her, how in shaking everything’s negotiable—grubs up her hands into a hug unintended, she presumes, she has to, now keeping near, coming on with shimmy…she suddenly holds him tightly, to nuzzle, as he with elbows and shoulders makes to pry her off with hands engloved shoves her away, back down into the topmost pew. Wonderful, he says straightening himself, patting himself down to find if he’s lost anything, a pocket’s medal or ribbon picked. If you kiss for business you should later count your teeth. Your bridge and crowns. That and his moustache should deter, and hers, peroxide fuzz. Now, if you please, I’ll direct you to deal with my associate, Doctor Abuya—you two have much to discuss, lives to plan…a wedding, too, she says, as she rises and turns to walk through that first pew’s row to the last remnant of the slippery aisle and up it, shuffling—lucky for you my brother’s a caterer, he’ll deal…sidestepping pallets, planks, and moundings of plastic trashed out to the archway and its escort waiting of Abuya, Gelt, Hamm, and Mada, who too gingerly geriatrically arm her out through the courtyards back to the entrance and its lionized stairs, as she harangues them with inquiries, shtepping about their own questionable statuses with regard to love, kinder, how much they make and yadda.
It’s been decided, then: His decisions are theirs, are ours, His life all our lives to do with what we will—whatever we want Him to be, He is, we’re saying: we prick Him, He’s a prick; we bleed Him and He’s bled; we want Him hitched, and abra my aleph a star appears—out of nowhere. To become betrothed, Ben’s affianced, quite possibly refinanced into the bargain, reassured, reinsured, underwritten. A beautiful bride, the matchmaker’s saying while picking through her linner later that evening, off the clocking into a dunch with Doctor Abuya whose price plus tip will be deducted from her commission, in a manner professionally famished at the hottest Midtown couscouserie whose best silver’s been hidden in anticipation of her arrival: a Queen, she’d said, you should be so lucky, and a pianist, too, concert quality or was it the clarinet, and modest, how she’s so modest she no longer thinks her modesty’s a virtue, that and have I mentioned, how she knows from epic poetry and how to select the best cuts of meat and freshest produce, that that will be ripe tomorrow, whenever you want her breads baked presliced, crusts cut and drooly, O the head on her, looks she got and grace, musing graces, a real manner, with not a flaw on her or in her, until Him, maybe, that putz…the best I’ve had to deal with, ever—and I don’t have to tell you about her family.
You have to understand, the Nachmachen’s saying dark later from under the shadow of a modeled hood, the latest sent sample of the Temple’s onorder ecclesiastical robes, these for nominal Levites: talking to the Doctors Tweiss, asking them to get the idea, to delve with him and explore the depths, knowing they won’t but God in Heaven do they ever follow orders (it’s like those scissor-dashes on the flesh they cut by, the particular focus of the eyes, up or down, by which their pads and pens prescribe: happy, or sad, here or there, ready or not, now/then), I want you to make sure He never reproduces, that He’s unaware. And so, another a deceit, like ever, there’s nothing new under that slight of sun, the moon: changing, undressing to underwear, bare pale and sickly skinny in sockless feet and flagpole legs, the Nachmachen standing discourse in the doorway of one of their offices presently slipping into the priests’ holiday vestments to be custom chalked for the tailoring (the tailor, he’s already an hour late; his apologies, though, they’ll leave everyone in stitches), it’s just not a legacy we want to leave, he says…the priestly breatsplate thumped and clanking, urim and thumming, the oracle’s settings left unjeweled as if to keep down the overhead in humble; this interest’s not about posterity, about what we want to leave behind: all returns are in the present, the here and now, today…who knows how long this’ll last, how long we want it to last, you know. The Last One, the right real God’s honest Last One is what makes money, so we’ve heard, we’ve seen—people want what people want. If they know another One’s in the works, then is He still that special, I don’t think so (no one else will either). Doctor Abuya’s collapsed on the analysand’s couch, exhausted from his meeting, its negotiations, subsequent argumentation over an appropriate tip. Nurse de Presser enters with an accentuated bust that’s only a tray of mugs, but then never brings the tea or coffee. Plus, the Nachmachen asks himself or them or who, questions, questions, questions—what’re the ramifications of descendants? How long are we really going to be around? We’re not in this racket forever, especially not with all these recent Affiliations going on. Conversion, it’ll be the death of us. No, we make what we make, then we get out. No need to speculate on kin, they’re just more problems…and of problems they already have enough.
You want we should tie the tubes? the psychoanalyst Tweiss is dying to know.
Knot Him up before He knocks her up? adds Tweiss the mad plastician.
Wouldn’t want any mongrels or mutts running around, stray halfholies, those partichosen bastards…the Nachmachen removing the High Priest’s shading miknefet to bare his bald, gauntgraved face—the line would be muddled along with the Image, he says, the blood and the buck stop here, are we understood
? Or, if not, like will you go ahead and blur the balking points, dust away the processes particular, the impetus impotent, and just do your job, what you’re paid and more than you’re worth to get us done: anesthetize, sanitize, sharpen what needs sharpening then slice right in. Make us the Messiah we so terribly deserve: a machermensch, an exilarch—a king who can issue no prince, a God That can manifest no son.
It takes a full lunation to recover from the procedure, from the subsequent infection, then from the infection of the infection, unto health again—which is, at heart diseased and failing, only the ideal of health, its hope and so consoling until the advent of what calamity dawns next—the wound yawning the distance between Ben and His body, its perfection, its willingness to go on; His mind or a mere tremulous semblance of recouped from the croup of medications, side effectual shvitzes and aches and languorous lolls, the lifting of the masked and measured fog, the recuperation of regret after this period of an occupation less fruitful, a surgical measure of selfpity recurring more virulently than ever through a moon of stay, inhome. For recovery, He’s housed in a northeasterly turret of the Great Hall, a towering growth from which you’d rescue a princess, clambering up the cascade of her hair, the platinum ash hung down as a shade from the sills of the windows of the height’s lone room, set with four small Oriental slits allowing incomparable views when the shutters aren’t on; a stay fully insured, it’s assured, Garden’s coverage complete to put His mind at what’ll have to pass with doping drug for ease, and then—once returned to the flush of youth, and it won’t be soon enough, once the ramifications of this operation have been explained, contextualized, psychologically massaged away as vital component of His therapy, then apologized for with sympathy and toys—license is His to shtup with impunity, they’ve promised, without much reservation: something to look forward to, they’ll tell Him something like that, another mutilation, sell Him a new life, just wait, sold, you’ll love what we’ve gone and done—the slice, the peel, the cut and its cauterization, the sutures, then the swelling, the numb dissipating from His waist on down, the extremity’s tingle, His feet, His toes, needling life in resistance to such ascetic anesthetic.
Though as for that heedlessly promissory promiscuity, that happiness is still weeks off, a moon away. An entire lunation spent in rolling moaning wake and dream and sleep, selenitically wasteful in flattened fit atop this luxurious bed commandeered from Long Island’s Hospital Under the Sign of Everything, last belief ’s Health Care Facility of the Year, lyingin state of the art this unit wired for comfort, programmed for calm, a multiadjustable slab, a posteurpedic grave. Demonically idle with the hands not allowed to stray below the navel’s hairy scar…Ben thinking just thinking like, what’s it all worth: with the branch bowed, its line ending with Him, familytree hacked to trunk; when He’ll rise weak in the knees and needs His testes hanging between His stumps like seedless fruit—He opens the shutters west and gazes out the window at the appletrees barren, chopped and stacked, the hollow knot, the cicatrix, barkveined cores, their wither a wrinkle past a sill…Stammbaum reduced to Stammsprout, hacked, hatcheted, axed, downsized to kneehigh and nothing after, uprooted, never to grow again; no, despite the dreaming, despite the time to dream, the opportunity to forget the day as night sleeps through the day only to reveal, if inspired by luck, an inner light, an intuit, a glimmer—He isn’t able to work up any image of a kid; any apparition of any offspring’s of Him, as His own immutable self, pure ego, an infantility incarnated as walking and talking already, fully formed as He was, is Him this taking after Him, showing Him the sand ropes, demonsrative, immersive; initiating Him the Other Him in the most deeply shushed rituals of Sloth, the most lazily hermetic initiatives of Waste, imparting the secret formulæ, the incantations and hidden practice: that Schlemielundshlimazelkeit (Ben’s Ben as an updated Faust, younger, impressionable, irreparably Semitic, handling poorly, making a fool’s trade: Himself for another, an even schlumpier heir of Schelumiel son of Simeon, Numbers II, loser of wars, mensch of schlimm Mazel), that whole brand of pathos, that copywrit inheritance of guilt—managerial, patriarchal, Godlike; after all, what else’s a father for…how would I know?
O Israel, where art thou, hast thou forsaken me and why, what was your price, verily might we splitteth the difference? Was I to become you, if only to becalm you—your soul? Israel, he told me stories at night then sang to me, he would have danced at my wedding, offered a toast, napkined my bride, lipstick from her cheeks, the cake topped with the marzipan coupled, how I loved him, so very much…just answer the question—I loved him. Then why do I still have such guilt? A statement’s given—only to be itself deposed, disposed of; everything we have forsaken has been preliminarily notarized, its memory duly filed. It’s not Israel here, though, not now, not anymore: nu, it’s another lawyer, a mockey just begging to be disbarred for the work he’s doing, about to do and the way he’s billing them for it, a clock’s hand futzed up the tush; it’s a Goldenberg who’s survived, a most senior partner of Israel’s, maybe, who must’ve just been passing for him to still be breathing, walking, talking dictation, briefing and billing, charging to the fullest extent of whichever law might govern both personal comfort and his mortgage. Most of our sages agree…hymn, thanks so much, he’s just thoughtful enough to drop in on Ben, pay a visit paid; I was just in the neigh or no, it’s that there’re still a few matters to deal with, he says with face blurred bright from out of his opened mouth, a goldtoothed aureole, issues outstanding, you understand, little things for Him to sign, a handful…O nothing too important, certainly bubkissoff, nothing much to get worked up about or over, remain calm I’ll collect, it’s just standard stuff, these disclaimers of disclaimer, waiver forms in duplicate, powers of don’t want to hassle you with the details, the small mint unread he’s making uninitialed…Article 136, for example, the riders, the fine party of the first print, the penultimate clause, sanity, with fire and water he sticks it to me, acts of Gee-O-Dee, better not to think, best about it or anything at all, shouldn’t really in your condition, doctors’ orders, no double buts or jeopardize your second chances; like put your faith in ad hock, and just sign here here and here, an X and it’s terminal, the black blip, a flatline dotted: a sheaf of soggy papers rained out of a puffy scuffed pleather valise otherwise empty, save for an apple, halfeaten allrotten. Goldenberg’s borrowed a pen from a guard, he’ll forget to give it back.
Once he’s guided his client’s hand over those lines flatly dotted and straight, crooked and contiguous and both, made limp passes at blanks and bubbles and fields, this Goldenberg takes a seat, makes himself comfortable as if to prove his concern: a heavy groaning settle of unpressed pants and rumpled sportsjacket, in for the long haul on crows’ feet winged with balding elbowpads, his wet fedora hunched down low over his eyes, a black borsalino its brim just a nervous tic too bent, its bow of headband torn to flap in the smudge of gust through the windows; all as if to say however long it takes, I’m here for you, Ben, hineni, chaver, another allnighter, a week, a month; how you’re not just the client, Mister—you’re the boss in charge; he falls asleep, is soon snoring fungus off the walls, the mold and mottled hoar, is woken up only upon termination of visiting hours, never official save that beyond their interruption he begins to make time and a half.
Goldenberg snorts, goes to straighten his tie, then remembers he isn’t wearing one, that his collar’s soiled with the blood of yesterday’s shave. A sleep and its assuring visit interrupted by the disturbance of Ben’s nurse, the livein Mary arrived, costumed in crisp clean whites like a sanitary skin, her stockings in candy stripes an alarming red, with a stethoscope nestled snakelike between the fruit of her breasts juiced forbiddingly within a thin peel of laundry’s starch—though He never catches on, won’t, refuses to, why should He, even when she brings Him a smoky bowl of soup ostensibly medicinal (pale chicken, with halved matzahballs not sinking but bobbing), which tastes to His tongue numbed with narc exactly like Hanna’s, though He’d only h
ad that once, too hot. She’d realized the recipe, thanks, about time, how…His mother His nurse, then—after Goldenberg’s slap to her bended knee, prayered to diaper Him at bedside—to leave with him, His lawyer, arm-in-arm the two of them kissing up to each other, abandoning Him to His soup without bread, not even a slice, without even the crust called an endearment left behind to mark; the sun sets, the clock clocks.
Finally, it’s the morning of the first day of the month known as Iyar, which in Babylonian says blossom and means bloom, don’t ask—used to be May, once named for the Greek goddess Maia, the eldest daughter of the seven Pleiades, protectoress of few remember now and no one cares, believes: a season and its star without worship, made subordinate to a maiden moon. Enough to know that today, feeling strong enough, Ben rises, and stands skyward, throws from His face His veil, throws open the shutters to the windows, too, four of them, one to each direction of the earth. He’s shaky, aching; He feels like Adam, mud-wrought and missing rib. To overlook His newest inheritance, God’s contract become flesh and geographic wild, notarized by Goldenberg or by dream…the cold bay with its skaters, lutzbundled into layers of fur and down, with their flippant taps and twirls, slicing into the ice passages of the Law amid intricate glosses, tripleaxles of responsa ending with a flourish in wondrously interpretive figureseight; cutahole fishers perched atop soapboxes, their wives baiting their hooks, kinder baiting their mothers with fishy words and leers and augers; the remains of swans halffrozen, stilled in a momentary flee; a motorcade of sleighs their runners greased with the fat of premium lambs; frozen hard scows and skiffs upended into igloos, beached upon the driftless ice amid barges stuck to hump the freeze as mountains, abandoned tows peaking high and white over tugs as hills overgrown in frost; a glimpse from the other window of industrial Joysey in rigs and joints and scaffold struts, its warehouses propbridged, their elevators imprisoned by the skeletal char of fireescapes, unhinged; fallen powerlines strangling cranes collapsed atop the light rail spurs, across the transit tracks, the Northeast Corridor and the Gladstone Branch, their signs unlooted symbolic of only rust, and the hissing wind, prophetically monaural: this is a local train, this is not the Long Branch train, forget Hackettstown damn it we’re bound for Trenton…past lots of lost freight, graveyards of boxcar giving way to a forest’s wisps, the far scrub pine; and then, another window, the madness that Manhattans the skyline: the assjawbone’s teethview, the keyedge view, the serrated knifehorizon, hugely brute and crude, and then—occulted within its midst, jutting up from between the rises of scrapers left abandoned, to reap a whirlwind tenanted only by the sky, with their lights off, their sleek sides wounded with panes shattered or just missing…there’s a glint of dome as if a head risen from the depths, unbowed, unbroken, vaulting as gold as a sun is said to be gold, as silver as the moon can be said to be silver, and iced in fulgent light—the highest hunch of the Temple topped with its rude spire, finished with a star left unfinished with three points only to shine themselves above the Park and the island that spills from its winter.