Witz

by Joshua Cohen

  Nothing doing, the pawnbroker interrupts, points a filthy forefingernail up to the ceiling that would, that should, begin storming with God as his witness…understand me, I’m a generous mensch, and this is as far as I’m willing to go—you’ll take it or leave it, no hard feelings…I would’ve loved to have done business, but time is money and yet both are short patience’s even shorter, I’m sure: one thousand I’ll pay you, my daughter in marriage, and I mean my second daughter, the prettiest that one oy the head on her and the light of her face; meals for the month, a fivefloor house in Joysey once you’re married with kinder (he’s unshakable on this point, though he’s ready to shake on it now), and my first daughter for any relation that might be available, even a friend on your own recommendation, an acquaintance, maybe, even a goy you’ve heard word of who’s sober and solvent—twothirds of my estate after my death, and the blessing that I shouldn’t outlive you, Baruch ata spit spit poo.

  You have yourself a deal…He swindles over to the broker, shakes his hands almost shattering the mensch’s wrists through the bars of the cage. He gives a geshray, B loosens His grip, the mensch steps back from his counter, shakes out his hands, then gathers the spoon finally slid through the slot…think how trusting, how very exposed: this mensch with a family, with daughters, and his security so wonderfully, though perhaps foolishly, lax: a human cage with its ribbing bars, him the fragile heart inside beating enormously—how there’s no partition or otherwise divide to get skeptical about, to kibbosh, to quash any deal, no plastic or glass separating transactions: bulletproofed, everythingproofed, impervious, and what’s worse tackily scratched. Without this fussy worry about it—distancing, hard of hearing, strange to speak, glad there’s not—you could really talk to this mensch, you know, get to know him, is he hiring, too…leaving the spoon to the side of his counter, him unrolling notes excavated from a breast of his pajamas, then handing them over, which B refuses to count.

  My second daughter’s named Rachel, the mensch says patting the emptied pocket, used to be Kristi; we eat at dusk; I’ll amend my will over strudel.

  Nodding a promise to return, B leaves with that wad of money swelling under His robe: dirtyfingered, ripped then taped or glued back together again shekels bearing denominations of an image that’s been graven too known…Him gravely aware by now, also, as the deal here’s finally downed, that He’s been shylocked, slumlordedover—that this money, it’ll be worthless forthwith (inflated to paper, mere fibrous idea, leaking ink in every shade, to become as absorbent as any still and white cloud), with fresh gelt minting its way in any initiative: new notes bearing new guarantees, circulating their own brand of surety, yet another promise never to be broken inscribed within the signature of the Administration’s divinate X; their cash to feature a host of wizened and sagged, beardcraggy faces familiar only to future (what remonetized rabbi, I mean rebbe, what cantor—I’m sorry, chazzan), honoring what miracle or mazel, tendered to our spent every prayer; don’t you want your ticket? the pawnbroker whispers after Him, to the door slamming loudly shut in His haste, the coinlike tinkle of chimes.

  No matter, what could be left in his will, the mensch’s? As there’s almost nothing left in his shop, which establishment is itself in hock, though to whom he forgets: indebted in its every drawer and window display; nothing—not even the books, though they once were his, too, presently being held by the super for study—save his own tallis, half a set of tefillin, the head (his cousin has custody of the phylactery’s arm), and the spoon just hocked that the broker buries deep in his mouth, which he maybe owns, not its words.

  With this windfall though mind the scatter, B makes it to a hotel, so a motel to save money, face, economize humiliation and cut back however ennobling—Hanna’s dieting, Israel’s distinguished reserve; having had enough of this, having been toldoff and His place while they’re at it. It’s westside from Times Square and rivered further, Hell’s kitchen with its bedroom unkempt, its bathrooms shared filthy, maintained to ruinous stain far along the highway opposite Joysey. A falling to flophouse B’ll bury Himself in on this night of our mourning: splitleveled over a parkinglot, the accommodation itself accommodated triapsidal three wings off the central office roomed with a view, if only potential; an ashpit alleyed below off the trash access of the city’s lone surviving peepshow slash sexual raree agora, lately combined with a clinic for hypodermic needles, dropin; ostraca of glass islanded amid oases of frozen urine, bags tenting over the rise of discarded syringes, surrounded by the scurried smeared droppings of dogs…He could’ve gazed clear across the Hudson then far past the low Palisades, if only He’d incline His head through the window that doesn’t open, that’s not there at all and so is only the wall’s plaster wet and then, hurt, wounded, stare, by then toward the stars, invisible by the lights of blocks east then those of the Turnpike’s transept, too, the skyway sprawls of condemned cogeneration plants, remember, those dusky stretches of storage and transit that lie just over the river, toxically gray. This motel the sort of hourly rated nowhere forsaken everywhere you don’t want to be and yet usually are, anywhere outside of Joysey, that is—the true wilting Garden; its units replete with inroom, onechannel televisions that operate on dimes no one uses anymore, and with whirlpools that are actually bathtubs in the hall that can always be churned up or unclogged with a plunger provided at cost, advertised upon the 10th Avenue marquee in promises smirking gaptoothed: in r (oom) (mov) i (es) and w (h) i (r) l (poo) l…in room numbered numinous, you’re going to want to go up ten flights, no elevator tonight, then hang a right down the hall, says the mensch at the bookshelf crashed into a frontdesk: he’s pale, inkyhaired, wrapped in a forelock and perpetually shuckling, he’s davening day and night it’s mincha then ma’ariv, always keep going keep going—there, in the drawer of the nightstand, in the volume and beyond the Law, amid the pages, the words, of the Psalm: by the rivers of Babylon there we sat down to weep

  let my right hand forget her cunning if I do not remember thee let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth…superfluminating pages turning pages of pages into His room’s very walls—wallpaper peeling all its words ever echoed, shrieked in pain and pleasures; shedding scribble, graffitiskin wrinkled with inscrutable signs, phonenumbers, profanity: for a good time call home, can you remember the last time you talked to your mother…the paper a shade of parchment, smokeyellowed, drinkpickled, an animal slit, split, then bared to the wall facing out, opposite the cindering brick: this room, B thinks, had once been but when possibly seven, eight, nine, ten times its present size singleoccupancy, and then the walls, their paperings, slowly glopped with spit, gooped one upon the other, atop, forming ever thicker and so the room reduced, raggedly smaller—with more neglect, with more paper upon paper upon paper upon paper, loose mouths gnashing gummily, the bed would be consumed and Him, too. B lies on the bed just a mattress bare on the floor. Overhead fan swings slow, rickety. A nightstand too high for the mattress, its lone drawer hosting amid mousemade minims a tattered, dogeared copy of what was once called the Bible. Testamentary, old, new, borrowed, blue. As far as books go, pretty good. What else, what more do you want: the only other presence in the room an understuffed recliner, infested with rinds, shells, and peels loosed from a decade or so of anonymous pockets, under its baldingly tonsured cushion a vault of oxidized pennies, as if skullcaps for the loose and lost. Stale air. And no toilets here either, or ice, or laundry, or—those are either down the hall, or down a flight of stairs, He forgets, keys to them kept by the mensch in the office, each worth a tithe. And the telephone, too, either/or. Everything stained.

  Here’s His holiday to repent of—this room the cheap reification of B’s atonement: for not mourning the day, for not observing, for not being able to observe without window, the ninth of Av’s moon; for always being out of time, always timeless, whether too early or late, born already delayed, arrived unprepared, checked in offhours and without the inheritance by which to identify, without tradition’s baggaged burden an
d so, with nothing to prove—ignorant as He is, unsure as to what they held by, as to what He still should be holding, clutching, what’s clung to, the Israelien family’s rites. He doesn’t know from their breaking the fast (as it’s been said: she who passes, is herself passed; she who serves first, is served last), Hanna’s loaves raisinrisen, she baked, in death she might finally bake, the glaze of honey, the shards of apple soon to dip, shechyanu—gesundheit the minhag, and then when her eyes are on her husband your father, how you go to wipe your nose with the linen…doesn’t know from the set table, the cloth Hanna’d save from the spills of the mundane, would launder in moon—sisters, His, as if stars to lineup syzygy against the white wall of the hall, their faces washed to beam in pure light, setting the candles to shine, Israel standing proud, seated justified, Hanna honored in their midst…O His family lost—and so, to seek a reunion tonight. Upon the New Year, may He be forgiven—though if He can’t be by Himself, who really can?

  B lifts the telephone from its hook in the hallway used to hold the drip of transient coats, cords it out from under its muting slickers and muffling jackets down the hall to the shelter of His doorway where at least the ceiling’s not snowing, not yet, dials His homenumber, Israel’s worknumbers, Wanda’s extension, PopPop’s, anything scrawled on habit by memory’s hand. No answer. For a worse time call disconnected, He thinks, disdisdisconnected. Ring ring hiccough ring. It’s a holiday, what’s He thinking, whether busy or changed—then, dialing the Koenigsburg’s ten tries later after its tenth ring, gets a goy on the line with every line in the world, who he knows from favor and favors, backscratching with the palms greased in balm, spikenard, and cooling coinage, the purifications required for a leap of faith such as this; from the heights of depression, how far the fall underground, the Resistance, it’s been called, the Unterwelt; he’s promised his fee, the goy tells Him to hang up and wait. The phone spurts a ring in a moment, and it’s one Laser Wolf, or that’s how he’s been characterized (maybe he’s real, maybe he’s ten of them, a whole minyan of real), Shalom how’s been by you and where, he asks, then agrees to handle particulars: it’ll take an hour or so, no problem, how are your fixed, or broken, take care of yourself, if you need anything else, don’t hesitate, click.

  Prayer later and lamentation, with the frontdesk mensch hosting a shiur of migrant kitchen workers and idle maids in the motel’s laundry downstairs, there’s a knock at His door and it’s them—His sisters, the Marys…mishpocha, what a mechaye! B holds the door wide for them dripping with the weather’s melt and that of their thick, hasty makeup, adjusting their skirts and swishy wigs, then slams the door on their noses and breasts, which have been bound if not padded, and their knees and their hands held out to embrace, only to throw it open again to ingather them all, one by one over the threshold: He drops each hard to raise dust from the floor. Marysomeones, anyones, Marywhomevers in relation to the illegitimate why, as long as it’s now and quick, over and done with like soon—a giggly gaggle of them, a nosegay in a handful of familiar scents, colors, blooms; Rubina and Simone and Liv and Hanna, too, He’d forgotten: she’s none of them, and is all, was who or what that mensch his name spit poo was Jesus meant whenever he spoke of his mother Mary as the Woman, as everything, total, as all—in that goy’s life too many Marys around, abounding, Mary his mother, also Mary his elder sister, then the whore who’d mothered him to the end…the Mary who’d laundered His diapers with a pinch of His mother’s perfume, the one who indulged the suckling fetish, and that of the wetting; the one who always had to be threatened to set the table, to quit wasting time—have you finished your homework?—then eat up but slowly, chew your fill, wash your hair, scrub your teeth; Judith, Isabella, Zeba, the same now, all one, entirely Hanna—call her a balabusta, a berrieh ballbuster, just call her this once in a while: one mother, twentyeight-limbed touchy and feely and wiping this Hanna visiting the sick, doing charity work, benevolent business, cooking, cleaning, volunteering her time; how she’d sacrificed so much she’d remind you, how she gives still of her self what she thinks it so selflessly, kind. The Marys, they’d stolen the van they’d followed Him in coast to coast (since the aborted Tour, it’d remained garaged, kept on ice offIsland), a mudspattered heap spewing rust they’d christened with a bottle of Manischewitz the Mizvah Mobile, then drunk themselves full as if to fuel their revenge. A midnight’s raid of the Garden, how they’d managed to slip into costume before slipping out. Wardrobe, they’d gotten dressed, skirted, madeup mascarad and rouged, but in their hushed rush have become mixedup, half workedover: one wears Rubina’s skirt tableclothwide, down below and pleated to match with Dina’s blouse too tight up top, shriveled as if a balloon; Natalia’s skirt blue or maybe it’s black in this light, too short with Asa’s flounced white blouse way too tight, too, Gillian’s skirt hemmed short in purple beyond any modesty, barely showing below Josephine’s blouse crying buttons in its snug to pop eyes; as for Rubina, she’s blossoming to be generous: feeling a little bloated, damply fat, in Batya’s tiny floral panties; that, with their earrings mismatched (the older ones pierced, the youngest pinched by their clipons), with one lip sticked pink, the other stuck with the red. They pick themselves up from the floor, wander throughout the room to an alluring array: on the nightstand, openlegged atop the luggagerack, retracting their foreskinlike stockings to rub at and warm their legs it’s so freezing in here, held substantial and wide atop the radiator that doesn’t work and then opposite, on the filth of the flabby recliner; one digs candles from her pockets by their wicks, she’s on her knees in grotesque attempts with matches wet to light the room dimly—flames guttering, then licking high, the wax melting to the floor in a ring around the mattress as if to holy what’s about to transpire.

  One by one B rends their garments, they scrounge them up from the floor, fold them flat, lie them in piles neatly along the arms of the recliner, curtained over its back: such a slob, such awkwardness, it’s embarrassing enough—this inadvertent mothering in the arms of your sisters, their fingernail scratches of love…. take yours off, too, one says, which, teethes the gloss from her lip, it’s only fair, and so He loses the remnant pajamarags worn underneath the robe’s last lining, until only the socks in their shoes remain. He’s still in His swelling, though, the skin held taut, taunting, a wineskin overfilled—only the shame never sheds, pulsing its snake about to seed poison…but to deny Himself, must withhold Himself tonight as if in penance, appeal, and so without a hug or kiss or even a stroke, grope, or tug, He falls to kneel at the mattress’ floored foot—as if to worship His own defilation, this defiliation. With Hanna altared thereupon and wreathed ritually in flames, her arms and legs splayed as if to open herself to the slaughter, to accept whatever sharp and steadiness of knife, and with her wig spread, too, loose and errant above her head itself surrounded by the halfshining, halfshadowed faces of her daughters attending to His mother, theirs. And then, to lower Himself to her, a lowering, then, of her, too: His girth wildly stretchmarked, reddened like a heifer, scarsplotched, His hanging breast and gut a low and ugly barrel, a hump fallen to become kissed and so, changed—transmuted, made new—at the lip of this mattress, the graze of its rim; His knees numb, too, fatling legs rubbing raw on the rasp of the floor, the wheeze of the planks under the patchwork carpeting, the scuzz exposed beneath.

  To bow is to become a fetus, deference without mind or defense…to kneel with ache in the knees, and with ache in the spine, with stiff in the neck and the shoulders. Before Him is a pouch. A pocket. To keepsafe, to vouch, any secret. In His kneel, B with hands on her waist maneuvers her His mother near to Him, at Him, then with shoulders high and stiffneck set straight and temples tight He shuts His eyes and lows a grasp of tongue, as if extending in greeting the hand of His mouth. To trace the ridge of dark dense down there, to loll the lick of His tip along the topmost mating of unkissing lips, sucking at them to bring her even nearer, to mate mouths in a dialogue of silence, interrupted by only the occasional slurp or smack, though
He feigns moans to which His mother responds in kind from her own other mouth above, which can kiss, which does kiss, with noise of her own He prays is genuine, or if maybe not to pray then to never know for sure, say, that her sound’s not in response to His sound rather to His labor, I’m working here, praying, repenting, which He undertakes solemnly, with diligence, without pleasure. To raise the slope of His nose against her, falling in to sense her innerly, His tongue the rivering rush to her dripping sea, the parting of a hidden ocean. He furthers, at the shores of her sand and the dunes of her sandy wighair, then deepens Himself onward, as if onto a distant land, toward the mountaining of the ridge inside, the valley of her womb; that sunlike slow head of His straining up from below…with Hanna’s own lower held languid, loose, dangling from the mattress’ fall of flow from her sex around hips, down to thighs, then her legs, feetward, the drips of her toes tracing in their stretching clench and twirl the ashed remains of smoke shod into a floorboard.

  A question—why’d He go to such extremes to pleasure her?

  D. or Dee Lila, whichever’s the name under which a motel maid who she wasn’t there at all assumes to recount the situation to authorities, answers…Benjy—because that’s how I knew Him—He’s just that kind of mensch, you know, more interested in your pleasure than His…His pleasure mortifies Him. With His hands on her hips, on her waist, on breast then on breasts beaten up to the shoulders, she’s shook, a sway made this merry waver, a shuckle in private—B praying His mouth to her, the echo of her dark and the Amen meant by her drenching…though beyond this, there’s only a stillness, a silence: the overhead fan pursues itself, the only air in the room save two breaths, the fluttering of paper from walls and His farting. A labor, we’re told—the only way to joy. Or else, He’ll soon think—an excavation, dig in. He arches Himself, His elbows heave and they founder to wrists and hot palms then their melt into fingers…pursuing her with the gnashing of teeth—an application of the appearance of mourning, accomplished to titillate and hurt. With His tongue in one thought, His mind in another, He’s sensing suffusion, an oozing of light from within. Nude transudation. Glaciate and slow, hard as the earth His head immersed, misted, in the midst of what seems a soft sky dewy and glowing, He squints against that rising shine, He has to, dazzly motes, tears and their saline sting, dizzying and foreign, the dusting of sand, real sand, actual sand—then, as if prepared, He opens His eyes wide inside: and there, inside her, is—Jerusalem…valleyed entire in the genital of her womb: Jerusalem of molten golden slopes fleshed and downed, the whole of His head immersed within and yet hovering above its image reflected, spit as a star to brighten her all, to make clear. He sniffs at the gates of her gate, at the walls of her, too, licks at the domes and the fountains, the ways and the alleys, ripples the cracks of the stones and then those cleaved between them, those rocky, mossily shrouded crags—an immaculate urn with its parchment preserved, her glans stored rolled round within, holding a map of the world living around Him.