by Joshua Cohen
A crucifix on the wall, used as a hatrack: it’s empty except for a cap whose logo says, Affiliate Now!
A jeansed mensch comes to the door, knocks once then opens it, sneers his chaw to a windowside spittoon. He takes the recliner in hand and screeches it across the room to sit opposite Ben who’s itching at the gargly marks left by bedbugs.
He takes a pistol from a pocket, takes it apart then wipes everything down; when he’s done, he can’t put it back together and so he sits in silence and mopes—only to startle, throwing the gun exploded to parts to the floor, then kicking them to clatter under the bed, at three sudden knocks at the door.
He rises, knocks in response, lets her in. Amateur, like.
She’s young, younger than him, just in from the shuttered piggery in flannelplaid, spandex under a skirt, workgloves and slopwaders; she’s carrying a tray topped with two glasses, vodka in a flask and a case.
Honey, he twangs to her, meet our new investment. Take a good gander—does He look like retirement to you?
She blushes to the color of a cozy carnation; if possible her hair shocks even higher and sharper, like the electrified spikes they’d used to keep their pigs in the pen: their backfats and baconers, feeders and sucklings, barrows, cull sows.
The mensch takes the tray from her, kisses her away, opens the case and hands Ben His new specs.
He pours out the drink, takes both shots himself without intelligible blessing.
All is clear, or soon will be.
You took quite a beating back there, the mensch says. There’ve been riots. Unrest, with you sleeping. Army went in, the reserves. You’re lucky to still be alive. Let’s just say it was costly, a whole heap of payola. I mortgaged the farm, that and the money I’m making not to raise treyf anymore. But don’t worry about me, I’ll make it back double. There’re people I’m talking to, I’m learning the language. I got me a primer, and me and the wife we’re studying nights with a rav.
I’m your new host, the name’s Adam.
Believe it, I didn’t have to change it or nothing.
Utz all you want that this has been welcomed, deserved, that He’s all this time been asking for it, begging on knees and on the stiff merit of boredom, even that in the end He’s better off bound with gags—slavery’s what He’s in for, to be bargained for, bought and sold, His person possessed. Anyway, the most inclusive of our interpreters offer, slavery means different things to different people, that there are as many slaveries as there are lives, and that bondage can just mean like you know respiring, bound to life, gettingby: Monday morning, Wednesday’s hump upon which the moon was created, then broken for the healing of Friday, the weekend, a job or a spouse. Through the grind. And to be sure, our sages agree, Ben’s isn’t a subservience of the hard labor stripe, which if more slimming is still that much too productive, worthwhile, ensuring the fattened happiness and health of another: owning Him matters more than working Him, which—working—is not quite His shteyger. And so what if it’s not Egypt the real, or Moses with Abraham Lincoln goes south, should that make any difference to us, temper our sympathy for one so abused, ultimately, by Himself? A slave to sciomachy. If not slavery then how else, please, to explicate such a geography of wandering: from family to family, from house to house; nothing this looned’s ever done on your lonesome. Master to host. If not slavery, how to explain such unquestioning surrender to others, their wills, His fate, to a God He doesn’t even believe in (others, wills, fate, God—the same, if only we knew what that was), to a God now—God knows why—Who’s worshipped in every burg Ben’s sold off in, exalted in every dorf He’s auctioned off to?
Might a representative from the midst of the encampment walk a line in the sand, a map to be keyed against the wind effacing everything save the homes that He’s known: Joysey, Island’s Garden, ho and motels, the desert, the Spa, forced home hospitality, revived synagogue poorhouses soon, and then—nothing, with nothing unexplored, nothing else might exist: show them only the stopoffs in a Wander three, ten, twelve unto six thousand jahren, and the people one meets! hands begging shaking, hauling a wilted odd number of flowers to strange, rearranged, reAffiliated houses, logcabins and trailercabs and just for the night, remain vigilant at the threshold, beware the domestic snare (the carpet unfastened, the rug that might catch), the averted clasp of Ben’s welcome…Shalom! this greeting people with a gratitude feigned who wouldn’t have otherwise acknowledged you to spit on you, with their half flung open stabledoors, haylofts, ladders that go up but not down; the lice and ticks of flight through wheres and their afflicting nights that sleep every one of them the same—paltry hours of one shut eye, His shoes still on, still laced up.
Ben’s sold, then resold, sold again, from Adam to eve through to manumit morning. His arms and legs, people own shares. He’s quartered, pulled this way, pushed that. Not that He doesn’t attempt an escape: halfhearted, onefingered dials to reach the Doctors Tweiss fail, please leave a message not returned. Why them? He should collect on His own bounty? Why because He needs some advice is why, is seeking some counsel: needs an image of Himself that’s true, that’s not as-advertised, featured on dayold breadbins, discounted tuna tins, packets of salmon, on stickers stuck on the peels of desiccated citrus, Missing on the back of cartons of milk, Wanted on jars of honey, Him or alive—and wants, too, a measure of respect if not for His self (loathsome, fatter, uglier), then for an unknowable deity that’s His and His only, altogether some something justificatory of further existence: a company of selfregard, which brands might hock for 19.99 shekels shipping not included, a quality of worth religion lets go for the price of a soul. Ring ring rings but no answer: recovering from the Hymie visit up north, boondocked in the Berkshires, phoning into their answering service, the Doctors think it’s a hoax, a prank hallucination, they’re sure of it, and who can blame them what with all the collaboration conveniently going around; inform on your neighbors, report on the mirror—how Johannine’s flipped, shushingly, only a day after the Vice President went. And know, too, that when He breaks down on a host’s phone and calls into the Garden, it’s just a matter of importance, a mandate of filters, of nonresponse, of who did you say you were, right, uhuh, very funny, you and sixmillion metro area others screenedout, lost in the switchboard…go chop down the phonetree, with which to burn up the fuse, the last line. But I really am, He says and gevalt, get over yourself, sell it and a bridge to a party who’s buying. Apparently, outreach’s gone the way of ways, ingathering initiatives for those misguided, lost, single, divorced or even, gasp, intermarried still as dead and gone as His parents—Hanna’s emergency Development meetings to address yesterday’s slights, Israel’s lawyerly panels of pressing issue; and the sleazy, hogging attention His parents had understood as early as the first trimester (how Hanna’d begun showing immediately after conception, that night even, the flailing prick of fading pleasure, her body without calm) now fails to impress anyone as more than a ritual, another enslavement He has to rage against, freedom from which will require either serious will or further professional help, paid for by the hour meaning fortyfive minutes and no, no personal checks accepted.
And then, for dessert to finish off His final dunch, this family’s farewell—indignity poured atop two scoops of consolatory chocomocha (His tush, amply kicked), He’s freed, physically turned loose from a basementcloset slash guestroom He’s been locked in, below the spring jackets and wardrobe for summer, amid the trashbags of shorts, tshirts, and swimsuits, the unseasonal hold. Ben’s let go, again and again having proved Himself worthless: as friend, enemy, as love, anything but the flesh on His bones. Not even fit for bondage, how low can you stoop before bowed. It’s been enough, I got a better offer. Times are tough. Who asked you. Enslaved to another, chained to the bold, He’s remastered, He’s hosted again.
To serve no one but yourself is to live too freely, among so much Developmental openness, amid so much possible, potential, God how to live up to it, how to live down or at all, how to remem
ber when you’re free to invent? History goes garbled. More libraries’ books burnt in irrelevant fire. Tapes get erased. Herein, His degeneration: Adam the former pigfarmer and futzer of that other Manhattan, a landlocked, hillflinty little apple located in the northeastern negation of Kansas, will sell Ben able to Cain, who would altar Him to Topeka Seth; Methusaleh the goy said his name was of Lawrence to hold onto Him forever. He’s a stooped mensch, caneclawed, from another age: he carries a briefcase wrinkled deeper than his face; to negotiate he sets his hat on the table crown down, as not to destroy the meticulous brim. He’s tired in the eyes though the mouth says froth, medicated excited but worried, too, around the rodential twitch of the nose; he’s splurged his whole pension to acquire our schmuck. He takes Him home, feeds Him until the food runs out, the taps go dry, the breathing becomes labored in vain. In the morning in his waincart he carts himself he hauls Ben out through the flatlands toward the Missouri line, leaves Him there with a sigh and a sandwich not on rye but of it, a nod toward the promise of St. Louis, just now in the process of being renamed (a referendum’s been called, streetside prophets casting their tongues).
To wander the river’s edge, icebound, and bound, too, to a calling: the Mississippi, it is, under the sinlessly white rime of which there’s only a trickling sheen, slitherine…Ben’s roaming the bordering bank north to south, toward a loose assemblage of insipid figures draped fittingly formless in a pale that no one should have to behold in the light of the sun this early in the winter of morning; it’s blinding, a blur. Too bright, and the bright it’s too clean. Heavy, though, even their smiles are heavy, lumberously overweight. He’s interrupted some ritual or other ongoing, walked into a ceremony in which He doesn’t belong, whether as honored, honoring, or hardware. Call it a mass debaptism. A disconfirmation, an unconsecration—it’s a Kashering, a making holy, made whole. Holes’ve been smashed into the ice, to the water frothing below, cleanly bleached from frost by the sun above the sunken silt, the muddy crust at bottom—and around clear to the other bank, are tiny tchotchkes getting dunked. People in yarmulkes, in their too short, too tight white kittels where do they get them (their bedclothes repurposed, sheets and slips), are sinking their plates and pans and pots and utensils down into the water freed to soak, led by a mensch, longhaired, neatgoateed, quiverlipped and tall, standing far out on the water itself, it seems, miraculously, not quite, mundanely descending a shiver into a hole he’s destroyed for himself at a shallow; submerged now to the knees, with a sharp rim of ice at his waist he’s mispronouncing vaguely Affiliated words from the sides of his mouth, givingout snippets of prayer, liturgical snatch delivered in a terrible voice mired in schlocky melisma. And not just household goods, provisions of the sleepy domestic—everything’s getting anointed today, must go damped down to holy: pets herded toward the lap of the frozen, womenfolk tugging roped their families’ goats to slip hooves out over the icing, old television sets and stereos and refrigerators, obsolesced computers and calculators and radios and telephone units, impractical electrical appliances still plugged by extension cord into sockets hosted on the only interior walls of neighboring mobilehome units, elders’ doublewides, parking the riverbank (an electrocutionary risk illadvised, but God will save us, always does), newspapers runny, clothes and socks and shoes, officesupplies, paperclips and rubberbands, pottedferns and filingcabinets removed from the offices and backrooms of storefront and stripmall churches defunct, their Sunday School desks, tables, chairs, and pews, sand, shore, and the river itself, getting wet, rendered allowable for household use if not that of the sacred; cars, vans, and trucks fishtailing out onto the scaling, towed by horses and mules and then their own owners, them, harnessed with ropes tied to chassis and bumper, vehicles hauledout to fall into their own weight, to jut up their rearwheels as if icicles expurgated from other holes stomped into the river’s midst, spouting stilled, jagged metal springs: a technological potlatch, a mass giving up, such divestment of the profane.
Ben shoves the survived of His mother’s robe down into pajamapants, which are suborned with stripes, inherited from a recent enslaver, rolls bunches of fabric into fisted cuffs, then holding them high wades out and over. Assembled, they stand and stare, their mouths hang mailbox open, flags up the flabbered nose; but while some chance to pick at or cover their gapes, others hold tighter still in fellowship and psalm: it’s Him…the gospel’s that He’s recognized, silence; not a chirrup or a shatter of ice, not a plash nor a bird’s flying song And then, without signal, as if tranced, made vehicle themselves, takenover as prophet, what do they do—they congree and give Him the bumrush, they grab Him, lay hands upon hands…the adolescent mensch in the markered goatee, it is, holding Him by both arms crossed as if a sarcophagied Pharaoh: to sink Him down with them together, some seated on His chest buoyed with breath, others up and stomping on His shoulders, neck, and head dunked through the give of the frozen, violently deep into the slow, ropy water below…the water displaced, now rising up, now gurgling over, through His hole then the other unfished holes, too, as if they were throats flopping over the rims of their mouths this freezing vomit—the flooding of every hold that might hide His heart icebunched, bonehardened…
Kinder assembled on the bank they’re snapping photos of the dunk, staging the scene for posterity’s too obvious—within the frame of their ready youth, their rummaged souls, there’s a memory in the making and a history, also, they’ll admit: the fleeting innocence of such revelation…a sign gets tacked onto a tree at the back, lightninged to fall to the Miss, a bridge to tomorrow and its hopeful conviction; the poster there indicating in attractive lettering, Wanted Dead, Westernly sherrifed with serif…that here’s an Officially Recommended opportunity for a photograph, what’re you waiting for? and soon, flashes pop off everywhere, lenses loom, apertures widen to the horizon, the glaregolden set of the sun; despite the darkening, the f. stops keep going, keep flowing, the gaping mouth of the delta all down to the Gulf ’s flooding with collodion, gun cotton dissolved in ether, that is…the exposure’s nearly half a minute, a minute, more, longer, always longer: one meaningless motionless moment frozen as solid and as flat as the river just a lame handful of strokes north upstream; and in that time, not even an eye may twitch nor a lid shy shut (a traveling photographer, who maintains offices on the leftbank of last century, hustles into his darktent, to unpack his grip and arrange the trays of his developing outfit, his bellows, cranks, and reels): the plates have to be developed immediately, there’s no time to lose, never is, must be kept wet under syrups, thickened tears, honey dissolved in water, must be sensitized in a bath of silver nitrate spread on a plate of glass, or in cellulose nitrate, this substance more flammable than the paper it’s to be smeared on, the product printed, the image forbidden to even itself—and that’s why it can be developed, its reversal, that’s why it’s facing out…this is all process, understand, with the assembled—us—invited to select their medium, ours; how any souvenir can be developed any way you like, in almost too many ways: in an emulsion of gelatin silver, or with the technique it replaced, albumen, which is eggishly eyewhite, given generational hatch—whatever their nostalgia requires, we’re here to serve, whatever you want or your memory needs, we provide. A life macerated in magnesium, or developed in a dish of heated mercury, amid the vaporous essence of iodine, the balm of bromide from stenchy, unquenchable bromine, sodium thiosulfate, a host of other names none can ever know to pronounce, to concoct chemically in the lab of the mouth…this and more’s explained to these lost revivalist, whiteshrouded kinder lining as if in timeline the banks of the river—the pose, the technological prosaics of wonder; the photomechanical processes that make the widespread dissemination of images possible’s what: Do You Know This Mensch? all over the Sabbath pre-prints, in bulletins and circulars, at the postoffice, and waiting on line; an image strained through a fine screen, dispersed into dots, newspaper raster, each schmeck of Him every dark and darkening pore holding the secret entire, exploded hugely ac
ross the fold, a spread, a schmear campaigned to claim uneasy truce with flaw; etched then inked to the page, gravured…intagliod in halftone, in duotone: yes or no, it asks, the binary cleave, life or death, who wants to know; or maybe you’d prefer to know Him in solarization, that inversion of tones resulting from an image being exposed again, reexposed, to light during development—whichever, your wish is ours and, anyway, I’ll shoot straight with you, it doesn’t matter: as whatever the presentation, production, or reproduction by which we destroy, there’s always wear, inevitably tear, everything in the end goes to molder in sepia, or gray, which is the murder of black by white—memory’s tone, the past fading In.
O who wants to spring for an exposure of nearly six thousand years…this winter, is it, no, couldn’t be, has it been that long, doesn’t seem—an exposure infinitely exposing…stay still, say still, and hold it. Our lives frozen forever into one shot, indivisible, and eternal: as such is our venture outlasting generations, nations, languages, loves, not destroying, no, but preserving, even as any proscribed, prophesized against Image weathers the fires to outlast our forgetting, outlasting even itself, in its sin, that it’s forbidden and yet still exists. It doesn’t even matter if it’s never developed, never seen except in the negative, by the eye of the mind. Snap. This is your new house, Mister & Misses Israelien, yet to be built, of course. Click. This is the girl I was seeing before your mother. Smile. This is the boy I was seeing before I first laid eyes on your father. Here, this is what I looked like when I was your age. Shudder the wind. At His father’s work, atop his desk: twelve photographs divulged in an arc; tap open their glasses, then work the images through the vesseling shards. An album’s discarded, never replaced, another’s struck from the shelves for its ravage: Hanna’s had been leather, leafed in dundusted gold, must into the pages of which she’d meticulously pasted, plasticized, these keepers these how many years; flip the page, they lie empty.