Witz

by Joshua Cohen

  In the early days, the initial run to fleeing sense and proportion to say nothing of dignity, respect, or the holy, the profaning previews, the underrehearsed, the yetunfinished, not quite there—they’d tried to class it up a bit with witty bits, highbrowraising oneoffs that failed (they being the first three of the spectacle’s by now twelve directors fired, or quit, or else disappeared both), such as progressive readings of the Law by prominent voiceover talent, Talmudic debates accompanied by interpretive dance performed on one leg; disputations of the type once held between popes, papabili, priests, and the rabbinate, or with the sacredly simple, devolving into mere roundtable discussions in which no position’s untenable, arguments without consequence, nothing at stake at which any will burn and so, worthless; in which every opinion’s welcomed, countenanced and considered, given an air, suffusued by the pedalheavy, flatfingered pianist Siamese plunking selections from the opera of the Second Viennese—intermezzi between the acts of this revue initially abriged, then outright freely adapted (destroyed, copyright wronged, misprinted corrupt like the program notes crumpled by the showrooms’ shined exit doors); as scenes from The Tempest became interpolated with others of The Merchant of Venice under a entire script of provisionary titles, including Don’t Be Shy, Live Long & Prospero, A Few Pounds of Wet Flesh, and Such A Big Storm As You Wouldn’t Believe; in which, we’ll be quick and synopsize the summary, Ben as the Shylock sells the King of Sicily who he’s surprisingly Aryan, well-mannered and handsome as if, a dinghy secondhand known as the S.S. Putz, which founders then sinks, stranding the King and his entourage on an Island named Coney off the coast of south Brooklyn where they can’t speak the language, are forced to dress heavily, eat oversalted foods, and pay retail; an Island lorded over by the Shylock’s business associate and, as it happens, His brother-inlaw, widely known as the Third Assistant Rabbi of Besonhurst. In the final scene, the Shylock, the Rabbi’s onemensch agency, rubs His hands, as greedily stagedirected, then offers the King, in a memorable soliloquy, safe passage off the Island He’s saying,

  SHYLOCK:

  I’ll deliver all,

  and promise you calm seas and auspicious gales,

  and sail so expeditious, that shall catch

  your royal fleet far off

  for a hundred shekels

  a head…audiences suffering this and other such Narrisch,

  Mishegas (such as vocabulary tutorials: Nonsense, Insanity…a blackboarded, graybearded explanation of the Theory of Relativity as interpreted by a professor recently sabbaticaled from Cal State, the selection of an audience member for a stint upon the stage’s analysandical pleather, a Doctor Tweiss impersonator attending; regional stock actors and actresses reading drastically edited excerpts of poetry and prose in up to and including onehundred languages: the corpora of many, from that of Modernity’s most exalted—persecuted, the truth is—names to that of Moses’ God, Who’ll be theirs by curtain; to be followed by a Mary or two as a ventriloquistic Hanna & Daughter as featured in a potboiler of a cooking segment, before the mime’s hauled out yet again to demonstrate appropriate application of tallis and tefillin upon an attractive, intelligent, altogether responsive volunteer, preselected only after being pre-screened); husbands woken up by wives woken up by kinder eyes and ears unhanded throughout for the good stuff it’s called, though a majority of them’ve left before the encore to beat traffic, make the midnight buffet.

  And so the pretense is dropped like a name: Israelien, I got blessed by Him once live and I got a stub here to prove it; the extravaganza more like the injoke—the extrava-ganze, the allinclusive, oneprice, oneticket, oneshow one-nighttime only now with more musaf…upcurtains reworked after the opening acts, and then the overture anthem, upon an expensive display of lasering lights along with the introduction of that comely couple known as Smoke & Mirrors, overlaid with Der’s recorded exhortative in a voiceover the quality of which’s hoarsed worse by the night, scratchier, worn to a hiss, welcoming everybody, introducing and thanking, mentioning merchandise, setting the tone. Segue to a set featuring the pit orchestra again with a sleight’s fast, slut-tier than flirty cut to the dancinggirls, the Benettes—chubby virgins, but intelligent, as it’s claimed in the playbill, whose looseleafed content makeshifts the program, crying that they’re kind at least, sensitively single, amazingly over-achieving; quoting praise lifted from the sag of their mothers: she’s a good girl, you’d do well to applaud—for a number that’s presented in two tableaux one of secular succubi the other of lilin; then, another set from the pit, this with an exciting lead shofar feature that culminates on an expert High C, the girls out again in change of costume, now with a little stretching (too tight, they’ve put on weight, it’s the roomservice): Benettes as peacocks doing a routine of sequined sequences, the whole rathskeller gig, the burlesk and the topless, bottomless, ever refillable cancan, them up in gildgirded birdcages, feathered nests and upskirty swings, behind a quartet drawn from their ranks referred to in not one review as the Four Whores of the Apocalypse tonight doing a few USOstyle girlgroup numbers if only for the Fourth’s hell of it, the last sake less of patriotism than of their nostalgia—anything, then, in the public domain: this a starry spangly requiem, without bigbeat, without backbeat, the tin not panned anymore but made silvery threnody, the beguine once begun now elegiacally ended, the trot become outfoxed to a dirge: don’t sit under the appletree / (with anyone else but me), anyone else but me, anyone else but me, no, no, no, then the orchestra again in a medley of your favorite zmirot you love to hate, harmonized alongside many of your least favorite nigunim you hate to love but have to own anyway and now made conveniently available to the public in one (1) boxed set between the banter, accompanying a candled ceremonial, roasttoasting memoryfest, a participatorily projected montage of “This Is Your Life…” a drum solo under the death of the Affiliated edited together out of stock Army footage and scraps schnorred off the remains of the networks; then, a hazy fading out on the anthem again, exitmusic for intermission, a pause for refreshments—an opportunity made the most of to hock them schlock in the lobby.

  On the flipside, there’s Johannine or his stunted double out in full ringlingbros regalia, bespoke besuited, tophatted and twirling a cane, to intone a script intolerably wordy with the pseudomystic, this hagiographic, heteroglossolalic Babel he comes on with a delivery polished as impeccably as his necklaced and braceleted and tiepinned and cufflinkedup gems: and now, the star of the show stuff, highshowbiz an antedated American dialect perfected orally only in the century past…the moment, don’t you know, you’ve been waiting for, haven’t you; each to translate this to their own disbelief. Huge womanly hourglasses are suspended from the rigging above; glitterspattered topiary’s rolled in wobbly from the wings, under which a raggedy, shopworn wreck of a lioness outcast from her species’ central casting reposes, alongside a lamb shorn due to health regulations. From a trapdoor, the platform ascends topped with that throne—the aspy hiss of hydraulics—as a screen’s lowered between it and the audience, ten cubits premium silk cut shatnes with nylon to separate the marks from the marked, to keep sanctuaried the paying public from the headlining holy: whosoever would gaze upon Ben’s countenance shall die, they’ll remember, they’ve been warned this prior to curtain in an announcement too serious to be taken for truth (and please: no recording devices, or flash photography), with the screen itself only a makeshift of lastminute, as Him suspended with bungees just hasn’t worked this last week, not what with the late weight or what all the new firms and their highpantsed, lowforeheaded adjusters want to rob Garden, Inc. of for the privilege of their insuring (this worrying, then that trouble with the unions, too, the forecastedly unfavorable reformation of Siegeles’ gaming control board), one of a God’s names’ worth of concerns and then that of marriage you won’t forget, all sagging Ben forlornly no matter what strength of cord they’d use: that of the umbilicus, rattling chains, binding ties. Up out of nowhere, it’s hoped, His shadow appears, an outline: scr
eened, He staggers…the lights falling Him, the trussed stars. He’s deafened, with no sightlines His own. Another drumroll, this triple forte taken down to piano, a muffled muddle to ring in His head with the debut show’s organ’s last rill. Sparks fall from the roof of the sky. As He hikes up His pants and examines His zipper, the audience’s gasp rings out, enormously (a claqued human laughtrack whose mob of mobile organizers extort their commission), with the slots sounding loudly just outside the doors to the showroom—then silence, the toothy glint of a titter: He’s been rehearsed to milk it here honeyed, directed to exploit the silence to when murmur would set in, loosemouthed whispers, and vexations expectant; only now, with a deep dolent smelling breath into the microphone clipped inside the paper carnation of His lapel, to begin.

  Line!—Call me Ben…’s prompted, delivered up to applause—God they hope, how they’ve already paid, how a handful of them have already been paid, grown menschs, womenfolk, and their kinder altogether wetting themselves, O Lord please and thank you, you’ve been a wonderful audience; to ensure a happy house for the prenuptial night, the entire frontrow has been comped. To take a bow to any smashed idol, a hundredthousandmouthed, open to sleeping, napping or nodding, and drool, then there on your knees to beg for approval, acceptance; lose the tie, loosen the collar—Ben, a little respect. It’s that you have to feel a right to be here, among the fleers, exiting still—the chutzpah, once was known as confidence, to be asking of them their money, earned time: not of them but its, though, is how you have to think—the undifferentiated, unindividuated public out there still in the dark; even as its yawningly sparse shadows emerge, at intermission, at close curtain, as individuals, as differently their own as the lights are dimmed up to air their embarrassment, shudders and stretches, watchconsulations then coat and bag checks, seatsearches of shame—a house is what it’s called, He’s thinking, as in a halfhouse, an empty house…as long as it lasts, it’s never a home.

  Glitzy and glamaramorous come on come on, unrepentant sleaze, flimflam, hokum, hucksterism, and the slipping of audience finns, the whole razzle dazzle spiel whatever claptrap’s your brand—this scene has it all; and so, they’re always telling Him, it’s hard to believe the reviews, they’re more miss than hit: Ben Bombs, Israel Fails, He Puts The “Mess” In Messiah…fedorad newspapermenschs flock to designate pay telephones, fist the slot for coins returned for putting through their calls, telegraph machines stitched deep into their pockets’ linings, O so that’s what they’re always doing down there: line, dash, line, stop…Spectacle? Check Your Wallet & Watch! Shtunk @ The Shore!! The Whore Babbles On (find out what’s eden our critics, cont. Aleph 2)!!! Though despite the headlines, the sour ledes, the bitterest grafs, the tour’s still been blockbusting (reports have it, unconfirmed except in their unreliable capacity); apparently, there’ve been near riots at the boxoffice, and hahaha not demanding refunds: apparently, there’s just nothing else to do at night, these holying days, and anyway many have been freebied, and in not a few locales actually forced to attend, filed from their homes by police with yarmulked vigilantes assisting in lockstep to the gate, why not, thinking, might as well show up, get their blessing, as promised, which He bestows upon all at the end of every performance. And if you’re following the press on the press, the media always selfmortifying, selfcensorious, its coverage that beats breasts, fills space and kills time, there’s an easy explanation, a one size fits simple interpretation of an interpretation if you will for why the critics especially with their minds and columns and books, too—who needs them, not Him, a mensch of the people—have seemed so hostile lately, still are: it’s not Him they’re disappointed in, as we’re assured in Sabbath eve editorials referencing the weekday review—it’s just in the way He’s presented, profane.

  And though He’s been hamming it up as kosher as possible, everything’s just east of being on tonight, say Utah latterly known as Mormondom that’s how far off, make you happy…as if the audience will notice—and how are our notices? Has the backlash backlashed into slavishness, yet? What’s wrong with me, what’s my problem: matrimonial jitters…having these eighteenth thoughts, that prenup this Goldenberg had Him sign this morning too early, how maybe it favored her too much, though she has her own money; after all, she’s the President’s kid, The First Daughter, foisted da Foist, they said da Pope sent a gift, Pius Zeppelini…how to get a disengagement, what are the divorce laws in the state of Kinfusion, how to go about getting a Get, or else—how to avoid such thoughts, and the aufruf; how to put an end to any Genesis before it can gestate into what?

  Questions: do you Ben Israelien take you this stranger whomoever to be your fill in the blank, to have, hold, better and worsen, for richer, poorer, in sickness and health, to love and to cherish, from this day forward until death do you—who even knows how His own tradition does this, or did…they’re perusing the video arcana, the archival photographic, the imaging and audio lore; albums are pillaged, the reels are raided as tombs. And soon, begging off the bachelor afterparty, which the stagehands had been planning to host in the Forum, a vomitoriumlike via of Rome annexed incongruously to this unit of Egypt, Ben’s returned to His suite, penthoused atop the pyramid of the Hotel & Q’asino. No apologies to their disappointment. Frozen vodka and warm mashke just sit. The strippers had anyway canceled due to conversion. Hiding high above this iniquitous Whoredom, He’s beyond the reach of radiance, the sizzling of light a dull throb. Registered under any odd surname malaproposed then appended Pharaohnic with number—Jacobson I—Ben’s the lone guest of the alight capstone of this monument memorializing only its own wasted expense, roomed in the glowing glassed pyramid set atop the larger stucco pyramid sloping below. He sits exhausted on a luggagerack under a sconce, an oillamp illuminating the suite, then the desert, the sprawl hazily endless, as if emanating from the very rubble landscaped at the feet of the faces of this gently widening gold, at the very least gilded, edifice, which is set here as it is there or was, Egypt, b’shana haba, alongside the lie of a great riddling Sphinx, in this lockdowned keeping appearing almost domesticated, with its nose again attached in a laudable feat of archaeological rhinoplasty, its paws splayed out in front astride a stretch of statuary, enthroned Ramseses arrayed in factory ruin, wired for light and sound. Ben’s left the bow untied around His neck as if His head’s an opened gift, snifter in hand and a smoke, slippers and a robe—miracle of miracles, He’s left all alone.

  Let my person go…Him of shvitz and of sadness, walled inside this tomb, however tastelessly appointed, not that He’ll notice, being nervous, anxious, humiliated by His image, His presentation, how He’s been packaged—O to be bound within the circumference of a ring…God, everything and the show, too, tonight’s disaster He’d rather not go into—the closet’s mirror, or that above the bed, in which to relive the worst in the face of relief—not with what He has to do to evade tomorrow, its tight new tux hanging plasticshrouded behind that closetglass (to be laidout on the bed in morning’s reflection), for the ceremony’s seven circles and…Ben almost thinks to stand in line for a refund at the boxoffice Himself, but no, think again—to do the drastic, that’s what’s called for, the coming voice, not as much gesture as deed, less prayer-whine, more more. Let my people, get up already and go! Gegangen! Napkins have been fitted into their holders. As for the rings, those two golden globes hollowed for vow, as if emptiness is its symbol (one of which’s been named the most capacious yet made, possibly ever, in the whole upper 40s, Mitteltown’s reformed Diamond District; who keeps records of such things, you might ask, but how they whisper!), they lie surgically stitched to a pillow on a bed in a room, which is Gelt’s, three quadrelating floors below, between two macaroons compliments of turndown. Ben takes steps to the window opposite the deck, dashes His eyes down upon the slope ensuing, its desert landscaped: a combedover tangle of briar, withered scrub and shrub giving way to flats; the far terrain littered not with treasures of papyrus, scarab, or hieroglyph shard, but with paper, plastic, the me
tal promise of lottery scratchoffs, the greasy shrouds that mummify burgers…Hathor the cow goddess slaughtered out in the wilderness and then carved for buffet, the four sons of Horus gone bust as the birds then flown home with the Sun God finally set, Amen-Ra; Osiris’ Isis secured for the night in her maximum security vault. Transportation to any netherworld’s just a short ride away, though, a straight shot from a lot of parked golfcarts that opposites the horizon.

  From the glass atop the sharp rise of His accommodation, Ben’s stepping past the kingsized serviced with two macaroons of His own, served up each to a pillow, how thoughtful; their grease as if leeching His shadow across the eggshell carpet, deckward: the open and wide desert just a fall past volition, a gust flings open the door to screen midnight’s sky. The stars have been annulled in favor of the lights burning below, downed to the lampposts in deference, due respect dimmed to the blinking cold and the signs. Enumerate that lower stellular, then its sands gardened, too, and may that number be the wondrous sum of thy kinder—no way, you got the wrong me. Why should He marry her, how could He, why would He, know what a decent reception for onethousand maybe friends and no family costs you these days—it’s His money, not that it’s His to spend, but…emotionally, He means; know what kind of expectations are involved, what failures might lie in wait under every placarded table, what curses can be writ in the cards? Ben steps over the threshold, through the air, into sky. And there, at the greediest, pyramidal pitch of His occupancy: His head itself a greenish eye appraising, allseeing, seeking value unlidded, unlashed atop worth…Exile—the desert endless and endlessly unforgiving; utterly foreign, yet if only in its ideal, an inheritance, too: this desert the wilder younger brother of an easterly nowhere, the desert that formed Affiliation, years before civilization, ages before culture—an unpromised land; and, at its furthest western edge, another ocean, which promises to be purer than that that lapped us over here those generations dead long ago. Arise, then go down. Don’t let the wind hit you on the way out. Deserts have this way of turning people to prophets, sheep into shepherds, making rules into exceptions that then grow bushes of fiery beard and strike miracles from the faces of rocks.