by Joshua Cohen
Here and now, though, there’s no indication. And so what is it, exactly, precisely, stonily spring forth with what because we all have that thirst: what force, that tactless trust to what or in Whom that has Ben out on that deck, atop the pyramid atop the pyramid from which He rules every and none, then has Him ledge out a leg over the rail…the hair of His head, tangling with breezes and cirrus—to knock unscrewed the burnt bulb of the moon…on the rail, His crotch becomes stuck, what a drop—don’t look down? don’t look up! and then the other leg overs, as well, and Ben’s holding onto life with only the cruciate nails of His fingers, trembling, numbed. A handful of our scholars once schmucked low enough to suggest this as an attempt at suicide and for this they’ve been thrown from the topmost window of the House of Study, which if not merely metaphor is risen higher than any pyramid and with windows that don’t open ever whether in or out—then to become scholars of only their own demise, of their own failure, its interpreting loss; and yet neither is this a martyrdom, not even a selfmartyrdom, as other of our sages once heretically proposed—what mamzers semantic, forget them: may they be excommunicated by their own consciences, exiled out to the margins, the verso darkened by recto of the page being turned. No, it’s at its most secular an escape, as some of our more moderates have allowed, an exodus if you want, but, as they insist, an exodus redivivus reversed—an exile accomplished in rewind, a history never accomplished in doublearrowing rewind: into the desert, the Law, and only then may we wander it was, but now it’s just wandering from the very 1:1 first verse, perpetually—an eternal lightingout for a territory that can only be civilized in its Promise, it’s said. To think that who or what promised the Promised and why’s not to be known, and how that promise doesn’t indicate intention either, whether it be good or evil or neither and mystically both, only fulfillment, as faithed…hymn hymn hymn, is this the particular kind of promise best left unfulfilled, like the one of the One Messiah—who knows if not Him; better to think less, fail better, fall more. Unminded, mindless, to step along the outermost lip of the deck and then, lean. Ben’s foreskin freshly shed before the show thanks to His own ministrations, it’s calming; His Batya, the Marys, are off—and so He has nothing to slow Him, to float Him on down on the wind of its flap. He lowers His tush, holding the railing to air His weight as long as He can and the deck can support. And then breathe, Ben—He just lets Himself go, with a great loosening of everything inside Him gives way, and He slides…down the western face of the pyramid, Him slipping hundreds of widening stories down the slope widening fast and faster forever, what with His weight and its force, the extensive weather that is gravity behind Him, slingshotting this now yellowy butterballed, dirtysnowballing Ben down the incline headfirst, feetfirst, everythingfirst and tumbly nothing, His tush on His roundness that’s all tush getting hot, rubbing hotter and burning, bumping Him up in small moguls on ducts, chaffing until—just as Ben’s sure His robe will spark His roll into flame, a rearside, frontside, inferno, He hits, solidly, and splays open wide, landed in the sand, not quite that of the desert proper though made in its image: an unsparing, unstintingly dusky perimeter perhaps once marked for plantings, but presently barren because frozen, fringing toward the edge of the sidewalk then around at a squared turn to the face of the pyramidal Main Entrance.
Promise. Save that very vague promissory notion He hasn’t fully thought through, though who has—destiny or fate, reward or punishment, step right up, step right up—Ben has no thoughts whatsoever as to just where exactly what territory He’s lighting out for is, if lit, if anywhere and not just more of that proverbial prophetic dimness or dumb…God’s talking to me in my voice; God’s talking to me, and I’m God—whether in metaphor or image. Confused, who’s not, but out, just out’s enough—He rolls from the sand, half-somersaults then gets up onto feet, stumbles toward the front. And there, to His right, signed at the turn of the sidewalk, a black letterboard bulleted with letters in white: Shalom, it says, Welcome to II: Israelien Impersonators. Then an incongruous Philistine arrow, pointing this’a’way and Ben—despite any freedom a slave still to ego, like a dog sniffling for terrorist bombs, or a God responding to an invocation of names—has to follow, dripping sand and shvitz. Through the door, He’s swung into the lobby crowded but vast, then through the Q’asino floor and its tangle of topiary of Him, celebrity cacti kept decorative up against the glaring edges of wallmounted display cases said to contain: Ben’s wardrobe from His babyclothes up to His wear from the show, then His shoes—bronzed booties that just have to be faked; accompanying other Israelienish treasures and trinkets and charms, making Him blush if not galling: His family Kiddush set, or a model thereof, their silver box for besamim perhaps a reproduction, too, alongside an intricately upbraided—in its labeled, libelous description—Havdalah candle of His mother’s she’d never used because it was too beautiful, she’d always say, how to burn it, whose birthday present it’d been from relatives, hers, flown in from Safed once of Palestein (and then stored underground, inside the vault, an ironclad canopic containment of models purposemade to accompany us to the afterlife, a midgetized Eden of the temporal above: minivaults stuffed with miniaturized gelt, dimunitive chip and coin, minigolfcarts and minislots, minibuffet tables smally laden with tiny roasts and flecks of sushi, little harlot idols with claybound breasts laid atop the minibeds, the minipillows, the miniminibars, minipayperview available in every room, maybe)—then, deep into the innermost sanctum of the pyramid, a room known as the King’s Tomb: a limitless capacity ballroom doneup in a lively approximation of rastered sepia, with bunting and crepe streamers hung in black & white, to host the suitably bannered, what’s it again…1st Annual Meeting of Israelien Impersonators, held this inaugural year, amazing—O what a Cohencidence! such cohenesthesia! smack dab in the middle here of this frozen desert, amongst the holdings of displaced Ibn Ezra and Ha Levi’s latterdays. Maybe it’s the prospect of the wedding, or just that of the group rates that would follow it in a discounted procession, veiled in clipped coupons and diaphanous deals, trained to please, but all are in attendance, Bennies from every continent converting. He hadn’t been briefed—untold many of Him working the room, networking below and they hadn’t; futz the Garden’s Pharaohlording, their locklipped secrets, their pokerfaced withhold or hit, just His luck, but maybe there’s a why this’s been hushed. He’s folding, we’ll call. There’s no better place to lose your self than among yourselves, as who would find Him, Him as Him, here, amongst all these Hims, who’d even think it to look. How could anyone tell the real deal’s the spiel, only God knows, only God cares, and maybe that’s it—to let the world stand your security, to stay safe by exposing everyone else to the danger you’re in; and then, to convince them they’re every one of them doing it for themselves, now that’s business.
An ingathering of seemingly every freak who’d ever stuffed a pillow down his pants, then gave that pantsed pillow a secret name they’d tell anyone who’d never ask after only one lchaim of schnapps too many and so perhaps those many names or that Name aren’t so secret, it’s usually Help: windchapped and undermoisturized faces listing toward eczema; dark dangles of meshmade ties lazily shadowing immense purchases of paunch, belts of leather thongs braided hidden around girth, under gut—dressed for this westerly freeze just like their easterly mothers would’ve insisted, in multiple layers and, hymn, maybe that’s all they are, all there’s to it: people draped fat in infinite layers for warmth, layer after layer nylon to woolen and yadda on down to their stained cotton briefs; at night in their own rooms to peel downily away to the unnamable kept hot and heart with within—a molten unknowable nothingness, a core boiling barren of Him—sleeping in beds tossed by the blue light of screens, to become their very own nobodies themselves. This being the very first annual meeting of any orientation Ben would ever attend, and He’ll attend it all wrong, unofficially, uninvited, no blame. His parents, or so He’s gathered from an albumed stash of official linnerdance portraitphotographs, from th
e trove of souvenir programs, kept from going starrily yellow by the careful preservation of experts lately involved with a forthcoming museum to be housed in His house at the Garden (its projected opening date, this upcoming Rosh Hashana—the first week of the newest New Year), had been much more proficient in attending such meetings and gatherings, pitchstrategy sessions and infotainment plenaries to be focused on PR message discipline and trial technique, training camps and miscellaneous congress: as laymembers, they were never caught lying down; as board members, never bored, always attentive, and in good standing: during speeches, they’d sleep on their feet; they were even officers, at least Israel had been, Hanna maybe just a Hadassah or Sisterhood corresponding secretary or else, with Edy an event cochair, her husband presiding over an immemorial annualization of bar association brunches, inns of court functions, and other purposeless conferences held toward the winter what with Joysey’s Teachers’ Convention break flown south to greater Orlando (though in relative youth, with their portfolio barren earth, how the family would install its members in a chain hotel fanned above the swamp that is neighboring Kissimmee). And so this feeling for meetings maybe isn’t so genetic. Still, how hard can it be to be Ben-as-yourself, especially if it’s just long enough to help your feigned to food and drink for what’s gratis. Not to be Himself, only one of His selves, a mere tear oozed to this ocean, the giddy, overheated shvitz of the five, sixthousand strong here who if not Him or even of Him then have at least all been doneup alike, padded to pop, aping devolved His every mannerism, making an attempt to be accurate even to Him and His mortification to the last mindless gesture holding as public reaction (Him made mindful and foremost, aware, withholding that that’s being manifested by all)—this summit of gesticulators signifying familiarly similar, simianly familial, as Ben enters the room disappointment in disastrous unison.
A sigh, a roll of the eye, a forefinger shrugged. As this meeting’s inaugural, first annual, indulge them, this reactionary rudeness is the only organization obtaining: a total insanity prevails over disorder, two to a room if not to a bed. A shtus of klutz, a pure riddling mess, through which al-Cohol, Q’asino proprietor and seventh son of the newly elected though others hold Shadeappointed Palesteinian president, makes his buying rounds, pressing impersonated flesh, and comping next Shabbos packages, gladhanding anyone rolling high and hard down the pyramid’s loss, leaving the house with their gain; this as tomorrow’s wedding guests—friends and family of the Shades, associates and the internationally owed—enjoy the spectacle, joking amongst themselves they hope the rabbi gets the right groom, hahaha.
Ben makes His way to the rows of the buffet, the tables bent over backward with everything He’s ever liked, with anything He might like, too, if He’d ever had it: varenikis stuffed with pierogies themselves stuffed with you never know what as a foretaste of Messianic eternity; platters of everything you could ever possibly do to a fish before eating it: smoked over fires of rainforest woods rare and endangered, cauldrons of thick stews of lamb and beef whose names noodle out to eighteen letters long, in consonants as chewy as fat. Pre-warmed plate in hand, He lines behind innumerable Bens as two old women, they’re old to Him at least, they’d take offense, tsking drag Him as yet unidentified out toward Registration—to the table unsteadily folded out alongside the frontdesk—and stand Him there His fingers twitchy on the mammillate clangor of bell. To be singled out here, Jesus. Two women, both of them convinced of a singular estrangement from His strangeness: minimumwaged to be consecrated to the act of its identification, intent on an official acknowledgement of their how perceptive they are to be followed by a rectification of His own unrecognizable estate. Maybe it’s His sense of humor that isn’t in the Schedule, maybe it’s because He’s all the while smashing the table with the empty plate that is His head, shrieking along the lines of you’re not understanding this, lady, I’m Him, I’m really Him, the emes mamash, I mean for real. As they leave to He hopes get the Manager who, hoping further, might fittingly as if a creation made manifest of this very convention be imaged as God: a Ben as everything more than such Bens, taller and wider and with infinitely more eyes and ears and noses and mouths, and beards and chutzpah, desked in perpetuity and promoted imperiously, allpowerful, and yet always seeming to be off for the night—a crowd of lesser Bens crowd around Ben, minatorily minor Benjaminites shaking heads, stomping tribal trouble, whispering amongst themselves, giggling: is my squeal, He’s thinking, all that highish, no, can’t be, I don’t believe…and no, I don’t have an impediment! but the retort’s enunciated clearly: not yet you don’t, you’re too Young Ben—I’m supposed to be doing an impression of Him when He’s old.
The real Ben doesn’t point, one Benny’s insisting, a Teofils flown in from Warsaw it was, especially for the event. What He does is He squeezes His hands into fists, like so, then shakes them out loose, while stomping His feet.
And another, he’s New Orleans I think it was called, now Bet Mississippi…that’s rage, you with me? Entitlement, follow? I know a faker when I see one.
Me, too.
And yet another, from Angels, you know it. I know Him and, let me tell you, friend, you’re no Him.
And you are?
I don’t know you, Ben says, who are you to me, who in God’s name? I just wanted freedom for free, an offnight out, what I needed, one measly miserly gulp of unsupervised air—and now this. I’ve never seen you before in my life. I don’t know you to hate you as much as I do, just leave me alone, I’m sick of this hearing…then waves His arms above His head as if the unangeled wings of His ears, brings them to clap Himself down on His forehead like Oy—as if applauding His own perplexity, I’m not sure.
Can I get a gevalt? Better make it to go.
And, nu, ease up on the gimp, will you, says another Bennie or Benny, whatever they’re calling themselves nowadays, for use in propagating any calling into which they’re being coopted: the name’s impersonation, another jibes, not assassination…remember, you’re trying to be Him, not kill Him.
You, you’re so funny, you do standup, too, how much you make, maybe I can break into it, seems like a good racket, you know anyone I can call—gimme a number, a letter behalfed, the coin of a name…
Hymn, yet another Benny says, that’s not how you do it…He stomps His left foot, right, then His right lags a little behind, adds maybe another Bennie, and really, come off it, says why not yet another of them—you think He’d ever be caught dead in a shmatte like that, a house robe, think again, keep yourself dreaming.
The women return, hotflashing, moodswung, and with faces severely refreshed, flushed with sample kit makeup, looking like overflowed bathrooms begging for maids: they turn Him around, the only one of them unnamed, the One—hauling Ben called to the carpet brand new, one with a slip of tag, the other wielding a pen.
Why’d you drag me away from the buffet? He wants to know. The carving-station just got a new roast.
You left your nametag in your room, maybe, one woman says (her name’s Elaine), no need to run up and fetch it, says the other (Explain), we just wanted to get you another…you know, Elaine says as Explain picks up as if dust from her unfashionable, also unironed, lapel, before you forgot who you were, Elaine laughs, then Explain, and then the both of them together and how—one would laugh just a giggle longer than the other and so all the timing would be off and the effect would be ruined; it’s terrible: they’d get separate motelrooms to stay in and wouldn’t talk to each other for days.
No problem, He says. Me, I want to forget.
It’s an act, if still in development—until they can afford to quit this job, then their Mondays and Wednesdays dayshifting a diner opened to service the eating days of a local yeshiva: Elaine would say, I feel bloated, and Explain would say, this is how it must look to feel bloated. Explain would say, I have cramps, I feel terrible, and then, get this—Elaine would say, you look great, never been better…
Nu? says Elaine, meaning name, and guess who explains. Ben
says what it is, Ben, and how everyone laughs altogether, doubles now doubledover, folded for the packing or stack like napkins or sheets, amused He thinks at mine this amateur impersonation, my rank this hobbyhack, sad. They’re slapping knees, drizzling tears like shpritzes of lemonlime squeezed, a pinch sprinkling salt over the shoulder. Bin Eden, known to most though as Fats, Head of Q’asino Food & Beverage, he approaches to ask if everything’s alright, Mister…in a capacity competently official, solicitous in its sincere swiftness, with his silent bows and craft of cunning obeisance in lipspittle, nosedrool, and swallow, and how the Bens gathered together shriek His Israelien name, then laugh even harder, heaving their tongues against teeth, a howl massed from their mouths almost vomiting up on the floor and its latterly vacuumed carpet a morningafter cholent, of sorts, slowly warmed in the gut, bussed from buffets, earlybirded especially greasy, but just as He begins to serve voice and register protest, bin Eden’s already moved on to his next guest: got to pass on the love—hand to crossed fingers, them old meet ’n’ greets—at least a false sense of feely importance, clapping impersonators on the back, hugging them and cheekily kissing and saying incredulously I almost didn’t recognize you, hahaha his sharpie brows and his slitty eyes and the scrawny, bent humble hunch of his frame on his way zigzagging down the welcome-line only of Hims, how’ve you been doing, baruch hashem, the wife and the kinder, enjoying yourself, have a great stay.