Witz

by Joshua Cohen

  Upon the New Year, which this year, this last year as a year, falls upon the Shabbos, today, everything will become changed. We will atone, and our vows will be nullified in the eyes that are not eyes per se, only anthropomorphic evocations of a sense that remains far, far scarier, we fear, and yet still unknown. All over, throughout the city’s darkness, waiting in the shadow of the newest moon: Die has undercover, plainclothes (gabardine to yarmulke) menschs staked outside every synagogue, every shul, and their associated shtibls, then inside, too, they’re pewed and shtendered standing at the ready at every conceivable place of congregation, waiting for Him to make His entrance, any prayer now, surely He would, we’ve brought Him up so well, everyone has and should, mostly does, Amen. B’s always the exception, though, has to be. And so, a noshow. Maybe next year—in Jerusalem, say. Do me a favor and save me a seat. Hold my place, what page. From the beginning as from the end, turned white and blank and over—the New Year’s weather thick, a clumping cover, the sky’s lump settled heavily where the air once flipped and skimmed: pure pile up against every berm and curb, firn, and sidewalk slabs of hoar, livestock scuttling escape wildly across the lanes, slipping then righting themselves. The city’s float a glacier and its Park, a bergschrund, as if a scar slit at its stomach. Stores are shut through Yom Kipper’s fast (crumbs have been picked from sidewalk cracks, breads crusted forbidden: manna’s theological mold—O pity the mensch whose mouth opens onto a flood of even mixed precipitate while going amongst his brethren this day!), ten days of abnegation wasting from the New Year, days withering of privation, of abjuration and abstinence, with only denial fulfilled: a holy week then a Shabbos more of businesses closed, with nothing transacted until after the annulment of vows then the closing of the book, the ledger, the final pages the heavens of the sky—most concerns to be opened only holiday hours following, to allow their owners and employees ample time in which to contract their sukkahs: strung maize, decorative squash like goiters, burnt carbuncles, blinking colored lights…then, there’s that holiday celebrating a new cycle of Torah, nachas shepped around, all that dancing and singing in observation of the beginning of a new cycle of Law and life, and an ordering of the final preparations for what should be total conversion, what will be: old plates and silverware cleaned out to the pareve trash if not miserly kashered, decreed contraband after a period of grace, the very selfsame, selfreflective ten days, possession of which objects after the Day of Atonement is to be made punishable by stoning, they’re still debating that, at least a modest fine.

  Forget the forgetting, though, the Garden directives say, there’s only one way to settle the mind. It’s Him, and if they don’t find Him, don’t produce Him right quick, gevalt—they don’t want to think…Doctor Abuya proposing B’s sacrifice, if ever He’s found, maintaining that His blood must be spilled, to quell the masses, and the restlessness, also, of an Administration increasingly hostile. At the Temple, which up and having passed inspection is, without Him, functional for nothing: an eidolon’s idol with no one to worship it or at it, within it, the same—with His name devalued to inexistence, His image forbidden soon forgotten among even those who’d like to remember, their own craziness, betrayal: as fallen as the gates of the Temple stand tall, stilled in ice as weather itself—and so the New Year opening’s postponed, is rescheduled tentatively for the Anniversary upcoming in what’d once been December, the yahrezeit next, what would’ve been Xmas Eve, which we’d do better to forget, as well, burn that tinseltime wreathe. And so for those ten days between the New Year, which is called Rosh Hashana, which means, literally, as the billboards explain up and down the pitstopped coasts, The Head of the Year, the Garden, if quietly, puts the word out for His own lesser head, names the price: with the Temple ready for patrons and pilgrims, visitors and press, sheep, goats, and cattle are out of the question, they’re not big enough draws; what’s required for us to stay relevant is Him, fattened for the slaughter already, you with me? We shouldn’t be doing this, I know…Die’s saying to Mada over the phone, longdistance from the warmth of Palestein as an honored guest of its ruling family, the venerable Abulafias. Superstition, keep up. But it’s not like we have a choice. You think I haven’t thought this through? It has to be done, though. I love the schmuck, me more than anyone. Believe me. But this is the way it’s supposed to happen, even if it’s wrong (they’ve got the replenished ranks of Saperstein & Saperstein going over the particulars; as for the priests necessary to this procedure, with its intricacy of knife and neck and slitting prayer—they’re still in training Uptown, urge patience). All I’m hearing is they don’t want it, but I’m saying they don’t know that they do—they’re afraid of themselves, of their power: we’re talking old instincts, dormant, slow to revive; they regress, I’m sure, on their own time…we’ve taken a loss, no doubt about it, our numbers are down, people’ve lost confidence, interest, they’ve been told to lose interest, grown bored beards and dulled. As the lions pace the grounds of the Park, nervous and idle, paws sliding klutz across the Reservoir frozen, Mada and Gelt are occupied rehearsing a processional plan, its vast decoded scroll unfurling their steps down the stairs of the Temple’s ascent through the Park then out and into the streets—that’s if they can meet deadline still alive: a procession replete, they plan, with salaried hecklers and pelters, trash, too, and unsavory stuffed vegetables (the vendor menus include holishkes, or golubtsy—cabbageleaves seeded with triple paprika to spite with their spice); a slow ascent up the steps, one ritual or another now, this they’re still working out, then the slicing itself in fullview: the Mayor himself to serve his city as the day’s ceremonial High Priest with a rubbery gag knife to B’s throat, painless, humane, that’s the idea. They’ll never accept immortality, whether it be corporeal or that of His reputation, and with the favor they’re in, they can’t afford to, either. But to find Him first, that’s no question of spectacle or public, of Parkside ingathering, a herding in of the flock you’ve been fleecing: no, that’s kept low, underground and there inquired of in only a whisper, a flutter of the moneytongue, refused…this hushed informality of information exchange, humbly but casually asked—it’s personal, a question of honor…Mada, Die says over the phone, I want you to deal with this. We have just over a month, if we’re lucky, until the Administration gets involved—I’m sure of it, Shade that gonif, ungrateful, he’d just love to shut us, whether up or down…I’ll let you know which, I’ll call back in the morning.

  An hour reneging on the wager of light at the down of sun, Die accompanied by Hamm exits the lobby of the Q’asino here in Hebron, Palestein—the Vault it’s called, a complex erected around a famous cave at middle, the grave of the Patriarchs and the burial of their promise, in that its entrance’s now atriumed in an arch of bombproof, bulletproof glass—and is valeted in a stretch of limo through the desert toward a distant glint, this rising, shining orbicular track: the Drom Dome, tenthousand seats stadiumed under a retractable roof under the immaculate sky, if the weather holds; he makes Abulafia I’s private box in time for the first card. A beastly silence shot fatally by gunfire—a ring, they’re dashing to track in bobs up down up and down again; two of them, breaking fast a length or two now three ahead right from out of the gate; this team of dromedaries racing ridiculously with knees held high like risen mountains. Twotoed hard, and lately shaved of their shag to decrease resistance to the wind they’re faster than, they turn turns around and around, with their necks outstretched, their mouths agape, spitting forward, a gleet fleet with tongues like flags, loose and flapping lips and nostrils flaring. The leaning might of these racers, these small dark smokes, cameljockeys they’re called, enslaved short and skinny kinder, rationed by their sheikhs to keep down their times—they’re slumped low atop the naked fat of the hump, stripped to the waist, pithhelmeted. To ride against that wind, its speed and force, their records: history, too, is racing tonight, and the principals, they’re just trying to hold on…and, to broadcast this race: an ancient vulture trained by i
ts forefeatheredfathers to fly with an antenna in its talons, transmitting Image.

  Die sits on the rug, on the floor of the platform glassed above the action; smiling a fresh moustache with a pretense to enjoying the sport, he’s really just preparing his shtick, working up the room and the relevant nerve, what he’s willing to give. Here in Palestein to merit the favor of substitute gods, he’s willing to offer, what do you want, what can he do for you on the outs as he is: if Die needs B to keep himself not only purchasing but politically necessary, which is free, and, also, if Shade’s going Affiliated on the deal, then Die needs other allies, alternate angels. And so the Abulafias, until now the most important faction of any Resistance, their ambition unchecked by moral imperative, the idea of statecraft, or good will, any responsibility to the world and its sufferers that doesn’t in any way, even if calculatingly meek, profit their own effort into the bargain: Abulafias II through Allah knows how many taking turns amid the warm dusk phoning out wagers to their bookies below (un-guessed scarabs they seem from up here, running numbers around tracks of their own making), Muhammed the Infinite Oddsmaker O don’t You forsake me now…making straights and shows, pick threes, sixes, perfectas, trifectas, and supers, anything with the promise of fixed returns; card after cards they’re betting big, until the races end—droms each to their own stables, jockeys returned to their cells, the losers to be whipped with the severed tails of retired rides. At the suggestion of al-Cohol, who’s just returned from a state visit to Moscow, they’re drinking yorsh, that mortalizing mix of vodka bombed with beer, ladled up into crystal from a trophy’s bowl—the stadium’s lights dim, they’re soon sloshed, and eventually, ten, twelve lchaims in, wagering on everything, digitdrunk sums who thinks to take seriously or honor: He’ll turn up where as who or what, alive or dead by the time we get done with Him, His weight to size of waist upon apprehension, hatless or hapless they’re slurrings, phoning further bets overseas to Gelt who takes them down diligently into a little black machzor he keeps in a suitpocket, and this despite unimpeachable evidence of their wagerers’ intoxication, the incomprehension of figures named then raised amid promises made, faces kissed, hands shook then wrung in for a hug, embraced into a kiss for the duplicitous face, too, oneupmenschship all.

  Too early the next morning hungover from dawn, shikkerthirsty Abulafias II and III in matching tatarplaid golf outfits ring at the door of Die’s penthouse, luxury you should be so lucky (second only to the Presidential Suite at the Q’asino Q’apitolina, it’s hushingly said, presently occupied by the Shush of Iran, here in Palestein to make a bid on a Transjordanian masstransit contract), excusing the absence of their father, Abulafia I, Prophet and lately King of Palestein, in their most wretchedly obsequious idiom. A thousand apologies they say with their hands, a million of these tendering the most sincere of regrets, the other ups the ante, they’re not invited in. Die stands at the threshold sick. Keep your kopf together, he’s thinking, there’s a war on. Could I get a glass of water and an aspirin? Abulafia III asks, then spits like the Bactrian he’s importing for tandem competition; it’s waiting for him grazing on the tarmac at the aeroport in Ramallah. We’re not mercenaries he means, or not totally, II interrupts his brother’s dribbly reverie to say, scratching him to attention under his three days’ worth of stubble. Is it Shade? Die asks as if he didn’t know, him you’re afraid of, there are ways of dealing with him. It’s everybody, III says, alerted, who are we against them? Nobody, his brother answers for him, and so what should we do? Make as much profit as we can, III stares at Hamm passedout a soil on the carpet, reminds himself to have a talk with which numbered sister of his down in housekeeping, while we can, he means, his brother saves again, and then be gone, III finishes the thought to think no more, it hurts too much, cradles his chin as if to lull to sleep the vomit. What’s happening, what’s going on? Die’s asking on the return flight that afternoon, routed through Washington for a report back to Shade not just polite but required; he surges down the aisle, storms turbulence at the stewardess who’s headached Hamm in drag, half at least with the mini hat but without the miniskirt now that who can afford to keep a staff anymore. If I’m not for myself, who’ll be for me? But if I’m only for myself—futz me, I forget…forget it. Have the Hymies taken over? What’s wrong with a world that rejects its own Messiah—especially when He’s been positioned so well? Frontrow, seated on the aisle—asking, what kind of End Times are we living in, anyway?

  »Apparatbedienung schloroformdämme rungsendfieberge spensterherr schaftsirrtumsjenseits krisenlähmung mißverständnisni chtungsoperationspanik quadraturenredestaubtä uschungsüber fallverrenkungswüs tenxmalypsilontenzeit« is just one possible diagnosis, though the other Doctor Tweiß (as they’re spelling it scharfed), as always, is inclined to disagree, pronounces it an »Anfangsbeiläufigkeit schemikaliendurs texistenzfurchtger innungshöllenirrs innsjämmerlich keitskrampfleidenmie nennormalität sopferpuppenqüt schungrandschicks alstraumübers teigerungsverbotswahn xbeliebigkeitsypsilotiezeit« boosts a book from the shelf not to consult, rather to set it under his sit. The former Head Psychoanalyst and Plastician to the nation, they’ve been stripped of their positions, laid naked under the dotted eyes of headlines (Mayor Meyer only acting on orders of, a favor asked by Shade who doesn’t do begging); they’re kissed off in miser fashion—with severance of either a few grand each, or a limb, it’s up to them—and soon find themselves without business, referralless as the Garden falls further from favor; smacked with suits, too, they’re being sued by anyone with a lawyer for an inlaw—that is, when they’re not formulating these absurd diagnoses for Die who, named in these suits civil and criminal both as an accessory, often as codefendant, three weeks before the anniversary of Xmas, two days late on the rent how he sells their offices out from under them, effectively banishing them to the burbs, without their receptionist, equipment, or files. They laze their days at home, then, faddishly nude atop their exercisemats on mornings when they do their calisthenics (magically Persian flyingcarpets when they’re high nights), over brunch following forging themselves prescriptions for drugs not yet invented: an insurance pill, an employment pill, a pill for debt reduction, utility assistance, you name, we’ll script it, whatever mishmashed medicament; talking over the paper every morning delivering reports just getting worse: all Unaffliated doctors are required to register at once with a new licensing committee (retesting), are forbidden from treating the Affiliated as of yesterday, have to stop in at an office and get themselves a routine shot, don’t ask, it’s all for your own good…how we promise, swear on our ethics and oaths—and then, buried in the backpages next to the classifieds they’ve been circling like buzzards (cash for gold; baggage handlers wanted, will train, shomer Shabbos req.), the casualties on all counts: “Sergei Shloshimvasheshky, 36, of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, was found dead yesterday in the East River. The cause of death is undetermined. Though relatives report that Reb Shloshimvasheshky had been despondent of late, police have not yet ruled out murder. ‘Having received no reports of anyone falling from any of our city’s bridges, which are under constant surveillance, I would hesitate to call this a suicide,’ said District Attorney E. Falsch Goldenberg at the City Hall press conference.” (Mayor Meyer standing behind him, on the dais, the altar of the rotunda, his hands on his shoulders, squeezing) do you hear this, are you listening, “At the time of his death, Reb Shloshimvasheshky was on leave without pay from Garden, Inc., having acted in the capacity of bodydouble for May His Name Remain Withheld for All Eternity, present whereabouts unknown. Reb Shloshimvasheshky is survived by his wife, Feyge-Kelly, and a daughter, TovaKristina, currently of Angels, Calif.” I told you, I so told you. “A member of Metropolitan Gestapo speaking on condition of anonymity has confirmed that this is the twelfth body to have been found in the East River and in Resistance subway tunnels during routine sweeps in the last moon alone, the victims all said to have been employed at various times by Garden, Inc., as doubles to the Unmentionable. Due to mutil
ation, however, the other eleven victims remain unidentified. The DA’s office awaits the results of a dental analysis…” and yadda and blah, the continual teethchatter—performed by anyone but the poor Doctors Tweiss, not quite forensic odontologists more like fake DDS’ though they need the work, God, by now they’ll take anything they can get: sinking gumlined and deeper into their dust habits, two grand per day’s what it kills them to get the stuff flown in from a supplier in Sephard, its corridor chaining through Palestein where—will you listen to this? “according to Reb Goldenberg, Esq., ‘unfortunately, it’s still too early to tell whether or not May His Name Fall from Your Mouth Like Teeth is among the dead…’” and, anyone with any information regarding anything is hereby urged to ponder the hassle involved with it all—now, we’ll open the floor up to questions…please, mind you don’t fall in.