by Joshua Cohen
Enough silence, Ben thinks, enough thinking, turn on the radio, turn it up, the one station tonight not playing, not replaying Him: this noname, no-lettered signal up on numbers exiled way off the dial then around it again, sixsixsix point six probably broadcast out of the basement of a longsuffering mother; jackalcrackle, croupy static, and—Shalom Shalom—we’re givingout a sermon by the new Rabbi of Albuquerque, the Albuquerquer Rebbe is what they’re calling him nowadays, alternating his remarks, which what with late and its liquor tend to stray incoherently (the tone that of Father Coughlin with a bad cough, only the hatred’s reversed), then station identification, you’re listening to the time and the weather, life fiddling away in a frail style, coming to you live from the Circle-K Ranch.
Frank Gelt’s tuned to this station himself—the immaterial waves that, like the horizons, bind through spacetime, but in invisible, insensible gusts—Summertime, it sings and it’s airy, and the living’s queasy, from the album Dolly “Tziporah Ruth” Parton Sings The Liturgy Of The Sabbath & Other Holiday & Western Favorites For Your Listening Pleasure, RCA 47-9928; Gelt driving an oldfashionably crisis convertible, leading Heber in the limo with Der ensconced in the back, belted, boloed, countried in a hat, ten gallons obstructing rearview. Hamm, Mada, and Johannine sit opposite him in a hush. A station identification, again, then, for the Fourth, sort of a responsibility to do something here, anything: wipers squeaking in time to a medley of patriotic parodies, sung by a woman by the name of Mahalia “No Relation To” Jackson; it warbles in the cabs of a thousand trucks abandoned along with their trailers’ pork product, in the wombs of a million cars shouldered as peddlers’ sacks upon Fridays’ dusks for a walk amid the grain, a night’s greeting of the fruited plains, beggared, burdened with only the wares of the soul. But just look outside, will you, what you’re passing, what’re you talking…oy vey, can you see, nothing at all. Snow, radioweather with the signal gone down. Heber kvetching, I can’t see a goddamned thing…out of range. They’re a motorcade in search of a valuable lost, as if of Egypt’s cup, Ben to the brim: famined, their meal ticket, their retirement package—pantsed, then draped with a tallis. Not to wait for a Messiah, a Moshiach salvific, understand, but to go out and proactively search. You want we should head out to Angels, or down south Mexico way? With President Shade and his daughter due in sooner than later as Hanna’d say, does Der have any answers? A fatherly surrogate, an Israeldirection…north south east or lost he says, I don’t know what to tell you, Sam, um, er, Mister President. Maybe you should sit down for this, get comfortable, be prepared. To hop on one foot that’s the tongue. Lillian sobbing her eyes into bloodshot, cracked knuckles, or that’s just the inarticulate planenoise, imagined—an image of the First Lady prostrate in the aisle, headrest’s pillow bunched for a priedieu, upon which she prays pets to her daughter’s indulgence—there, there; there, there…
Understand, lastminute preparations, removed to a secure location, an alarm, bad intelligence, we identified a credible threat; undisclosed, nu, even to you, it’s no use…we’ve lost Him, sir, hymn—but Der keeps his promises like grudges, fistheld: don’t worry, we’ll have Him back in one piece…thinking, even if it’s a bodybag, a loonysuit or tux—bright and early for the ceremony, tomorrow…or, we might have to postpone, take the Temple public without Him—I’ll have to get back to you on that, I’ll check in on the fives. Der with sleeve wipes the receiver, wipes his sleeve on his chaps on his chinos, turns the phone over to Johannine just getting over a hangover, to talk crazy with Shade’s special advisor on conversion: identify eventualities, address the particulars…a call made from a payphone lonely though it’s also a toilet, urinefloored, dreckwalled, boothed in scratch and acidulous pit (scorpions nesting in the neutered slot for coinreturn, and thin, silvertongued snakes winding around the cord of the receiver, subsisting on metal and glass), way out here on the flatland, the unofficially even if Chamber of Commerced Mittel of Nowhere, a Utopia not proverbial but actual, really No Place At All, to be found if ever halfway along the stretch of highway mating Siegeles and Angels in either direction, any of them but south into Mexico, whose border they’ll eventually head to in pursuit: Naco, Nogales, or Sasabe to which they assume He’d flee, one unrepentant of hundreds of thousands seeking asylum from their government and its unelect God at the great Garita, Tijuana to Mexico City to make a plane down to Panama, deeper into the freak, ever further the jungle, anywhere a million nosings and scrapings and outstretched arm reaches away from any horroring signs of the wondrously civil, making lately like barbaric decay—truly nowhere, that’s the only where for Him if He’s to survive: open and free and air and spanse, a land resigned to its nowhereness, accustomed to any element, accommodating any threat of the sky. Nimbi fried deep in whorl, then frozen. The glow of a prevoyant moon. And then, not a rising but another descent: a stodgy spaceship, sausageshaped, an unidentified unsteadily flying object, falling, that’s only later identified as a Descending Object, Plopping Every Second (a Dopes, in the Mamaloshen of your mutter-inlaw), plodding, dropping air over the hump of each dune; then, on a flat flush with giving, sifting, sinking though impenetrable sand how it hovers, wobbly, as if too exhausted to give a flying futz about being blippedout on radar. Underneath, around, everything’s still: the dunes stay in their ergs, the cacti unbent, dreamt unbowed. Slowly, precariously, the ship begins its settle, lands to dig itself vertically into a small sucking valley indented upon the face of the desert by gravity attendant on girth; from this womby depression it towers up rudely, then opens itself, blooms like a flower foreign to sandscape, multivalent petals dusky, verdigrised, and then blossoms, too, wider at base into a beardy mess of exposed, burntout wiring and patchy, pocked atmospheric shielding it seems, a gratuitous shedding of panels grayedover with exhaust—a wreck, not only has it fallen, it’s falling apart; and finally, with a mechanized groan it converts itself into its consummate form, which is an indecent triangulation of rusted strut: two bulging pods surrounding one large shaft that pierces the air with antenna, as if to conduct the spurt of its weather.
Farblondzhet’s the technical term, which is lost, and yet Ben drives this route unmarked in the dark at a speed excessive, totally reckless. And sure as the desert, sure as the Law, He’s stopped, and He’s ticketed. A state trooper, mirrored aviator sunglasses studded in pyrite, prefab arrowhead pierced to hang on a horsehide thong around his thick, sunburnt, windchapped neck—brother-inlaw up for State Dayen, he’s telling everyone lately, who could contest? He puts the ticket under a wiper for luck, from which it flaps as if the overworked tongue of the hood, drives on the pickup truck panting, only to be stopped maybe fivehundred feet or so later to be ticketed again, now by the trooper’s partner, his brother-inlaw-inlaw, who he’s so far gone on moonshine and mycohallucinogens he thinks he’s a dybbuk’s dybbuk (worryingly, with the sidearm to prove). Ben starts the ailing truck up again and—nu, alright already, so you tell it: how He actually hits this trooper, cuts him off passing to nowhere or is hit by, or else just clips Him changing lanes to keep it interesting, Himself awake; anyway, all this stopping and starting, it can’t be good for the engine—before He releases the clutch, He’s ticketed yet again, a preventive measure, this by the trooper’s partner’s partner, yadda. To swerve on slick enforcement, skid into fine. Who has a lawyer. Who could afford. Goldenberg, I’ll pay you with money you made for my father.
I know you, they say, I’ve seen you before. No, you must have me confused. Has anyone ever told you you look just like. I get that all the time. Flattery’s what I mean. For insurance information, ask His Maker, His license and registration, too. Ben goes—slowly now—for them in the glovebox, where they’d probably be; finds in there a lone rubberglove, and expired documents for one Doctor Karl Young, whomever that might’ve handled.
Attend, the speed limit before here’s legally posted, but where at what, though once you enter the reservation’s the reservation, Injun territory with the Navajo police lying in wait if
not sleeping on horseback, sidesaddled on the backs of billboards layered six times over in the service of seven interests imported, mockedup boulders on loan from Holywood appropriately cragged for ambush and overgrown with crabby flora, the limit, here definitely unmarked, drops in half and they’ll ticket you for anything even a thought over remote, bet your tuchus, believe it: this drop in speed going into force in maybe a matter of a foot, that fast, an honest living—with the penalty for infraction almost the only justification for such reservations still to exist, revenue taxing the road between Siegeles and Angels their only profit of late, enough to keep the remaining tribal elders in last skins and scalps while their people wander off to Affiliate. By the time Ben’s edged His fender into the reservation, even only dawned it dimly within the arc of His headlights, He, as Jacobson, Esq. now doing a decent Doctor Young, has incurred in fines almost one thousand worth of shekels He doesn’t have even though His own face is on them, all over: tickets and citations and contemptuous slaps on the wrist for well nigh among others reckless driving, out headlight, taillamp, moving and even staying still violations, a parkingticket for when He’d pulled over onto the wrong side of the tracks, guardrail down, to receive a ticket for speeding—owing such serious altarage both to the people of the State of New Mexico, Nevada, or is this Arizona, and don’t forget the Navajo Nation. Is there no Hopi? Tell you what, I’m going to go ahead and give you a point for your loss.
Ahead, there’s a stretch of no police, Injun or otherwise, a no mensch’s land, or alien. And it’s only here Ben notices the lights; either His own lights light them or it’s just a mirage with a solid sense of humorless timing: He’s just run out of gas. All that stopping and starting again for the law, idling the truck while they spit out His tickets, a scribble of spittle, the blot of their chaw; or, it’s that the truck only now gives out, breaksdown, what do you know, nothing much; transmission dropped from lack of stickshift prowess, an expert I’m not, bumper hanging off to one side, He can’t tell; mechanical, technical, the get your hands dirty knowhow, the metal and oil familiar, how could He even presume; if it goes, it goes, if not, I’ll pay. He rolls tardigrade, to a stop on a shoulder, stooped in sand, in its pretense as it doesn’t exist and there’s only desert; an arid splutter, He kills the engine entirely dead then opens the door and goes out to hail down a dream.
The lights revolve and revolve slower and revolve to dimmer upon every revolution—and with them, that sound: this siren roaring the lights dark until the desert’s returned to still, and a pouting lip of hum the only sign left as if the airing of the feminine valley’s imminent swallow, or yawn, just over the unbushed dune and then, the wet ocean itself of sound and of no sound…a mumming filling the deserts above of faith and below of privation and sand without water to parch stuffed the stomach and soul, in a building buzz, a stir in the making: this whirlwind of noise expanding out, enlarging throughout the desert unzoned without echo—unto the houses of 90210, the newly moved into homes amid the Hills that once were called Beverly as if that name were an appropriate descriptor, whether adjective or adverb, an alien form of rich, or freely; Holywood we’re talking, and shaking its own higher Hills, too, trembling them, humbling, filling the western emptiness and the further decks, porches and patios, the stiltpads, Casacrumbles, decrepit mansions missioned with Moorish peaks, Spanish tiles, rattling the glass kept over the idols worshipped as Oscar and Emmy and Grammy and even token Golden Globes how they’re preserved unembarrassed, gildingly imaged godlets not yet hocked out of shame, then shattering them, their faces melting, molten as if a slip of golden sand…a hum that encompasses every July Fourth explosion, almost knocks Him over on His way out across the sand, across sands, a sound He’s seething against, forearm shielding His face from the sky’s frozen pelts and the winded skinnings of dune, the real and sharp hurling of sand in the eyes, in the ears, to mouth away to mud lump, to swallow a golem’s reward—to follow, obey…and then, just as suddenly as it all landed began, it fades, with a sound of poweringdown, as a spring of tongue, almost an aeroplane’s inflatable emergency ramp effusing a refreshing moisture, rolls out the front of the ship, wags itself into wakeless waves, stairs—are they; wroughtiron handrail, which can accurately be dated to an age in which craftsmanship still counted, extends from the sides then fastens into position: two flights up with a landing between is what Ben ascends, how can’t He, pausing on the landing only for breath, then continuing, the stairs givingout sop underneath as if sponges or Hanna’s always in use rag squeezed underfoot by His fisting weight borne down from above, to stand at a wide door that has to be oak to look that good and that sturdy, scratching Himself, spent, stubbly, to ring at the only labeled buzzer—Herr Doktor Professor Froid, DUJ, it says—overtimes and rapidly more than is considered polite by convention.
Haben Sie einen Termin? a voice answers, and it’s maybe a woman’s.
There’s no need to be calling me names.
Moment mal! the same voice nasals, then, in a moment, femininely adds, bitte…the door buzzes shrilly, and Ben shoulders it open in slow trepidation not into a ship as expected, its bridge as imagined in the mind of the culture replete with flagrant blinking, gross boinks, and that whole sound effect, trick lighting life, no—but into the confines of the temporally, terrenely familiar: an office, not quite, more like a lobby or waitingroom for an office, half of one it seems, unfinished, unmade. He stands around still scratching, taking it in. Disappointed, amazed. To explain: this lobby has its totems, its artifacts, the refuse of Sumer, the rubble of Ur, shards, partijugs, hemiamphoræ, amorphous fragments of marble and papyri and whittled rockstone and clay that’s been baked in the sun most ancient and same—an image is becoming complete in His mind, though, assembling unconsciously, the who knew from Other made real, now made whole: these relics, these shards, are—or at least how they appear to be to a mind so entirely worried with itself, its own losses—the missing pieces, the missing halves, quarters and who says so blah blah, of the artifacts whose damage is displayed in the offices of the two Doctors Tweiss; the Tweiss twins have the jug without handle, and this waitingroom—it just has to be a waitingroom—has the handle without the jug; the Tweiss’ office has the leftarm of a fertility goddess in lime, and…nu, you’re so smart, this office has the rest of her, how she’s looking well, too. And so the only question left, or not the only question but the pressingest to Ben whose time it is being wasted, is whose waitingroom is this; rather, He’s waiting here in this room for what and, as His followup, why? To one side, two little green what do you call thems, interstellar merchants of a substance that would preciously translate to diamonds, it seems they’re arguing a sale; to the other, two little greens painting portraits of each other in oils and both on quick glimpse are the same; they’re accompanied by a string quartet played by another alone with eight maybe hectocotylian hands; the music light and quick by a Mendelssohn still unknown as suspected lost or unborn.
Hier entlang, bitte, what has to be a nurse says, a voice identical to that that came through the intercom at door. It leads Ben down a hall whose ceiling’s lined with projections of galactic phenomena, framed images in still then in motion, too, as if screened stuff, skydark and starrily twinkling; their entire effect, though, rather cheap, chintzy, until He realizes they’re portals outside, and this is the launch: a sustained rattling, a shaking then a total uprooting, a snowing of sand, and then a tentative hover. As the nurse it must be, like them all: shellfishy, treyf, sucks and spits forward in odd jets and spurts it’s hard to keep up with, scuttling cuttle how it siphons itself propelled down the hall, she leaves behind her if any sex’s hers this black clammy discharge that slowly, though imperceptibly (He’s staring as the ship evens out in its spin), becomes absorbed, or assimilated, into an ether that soon, without gravity, in all weightlessness, will become hung with little droplets of this ink heavy at bottom but floating, as if an interior of negative night—to avoid them, to duck and dodge as the thrusts do what they do. W
ith a massive exertion the ship rises again, this time warpsped to smash through the atmosphere and into the void, and He’s tumbled by the force of the rumble, its lift down the hall to smack against another solid wood door, which opens to fall Him in welcome.
Ich bin Doktor Froid, also sprachs the apparition meeting Ben over the threshold holding open the door by a muscular and hairy hydrostatic tentacle suckling knob; and either this is the language aliens speak, or the good Doktor’s just flown down from atop Mount Sinaius, affecting the sentimental out one nostril, the nostalgic out the other—two tablets to assuage the adenoidal, with an additional heil from tonsils deep in the glottal to this indescribably guttural Europan language, spoken today in no Europa known; a tongue ethnically tentacular itself as it’s reaching, always louder and damning, both velar and palatal but always emphatic, whatever it is, and from where besides the mouth opened wide in His very own head. Und your acquaintance, it says, or he, ist very gut to finally macht…waddles up from the armchair on four of his or its seasidereal, iridescent appendages, to greet Ben with two suctorial kisses, one for each cheek, which Ben’s then compelled to return unfairly, with four kisses, one for each of the cheeks of the Doktor, or for what He perceives as cheeks, which are really four faces, each slickly bearded and with two cheeks each of their own, sopping with respiration’s expectoration or shvitz.