Witz

by Joshua Cohen

  And then, as if feathers from wings, as stars ejected from the flight of the sky—snow begins to fall.

  A hull, a husk, what a waste…what’s left’s only the exposing of foundation to the scandal of undestroying light: the Israelien basement lying open, exhumed innardly for autopsy, domestic viscera, how there’s nothing left to heal or save, to balm or else, to change—partially unfinished forever, an embarrassment of riches, and a rich embarrassment, too: the char of boxes, latter survivors of those once kept in perpetual flux, stepward retained and remained by the sacred calendar always, immovable trunks stilled at the stairhead, the leftovers of the melted refrigerator, storaged waste the wilted LPs, textbooks and cookbooks and the books underlined only in ash, a disagreeing highlight, flaming white rounds of balls for pingpong use on a roll around the tabled remains without a net. The yard, which is the furthest preserve, or once was, of His house, the only parcel left somewhat unscathed, otherly harmed, give or take, we’re talking. And how He’d never noticed that, never will either—that not only had they uprooted and moved His house for Him, and its frontlawn, too, the whole lot of plot with anything goes strewn and the fence too low to keep in appearances with a gate without a lock…but how they’d gone and taken the backyard, too, there facing the windows He’d never looked out of, will never look down from—they’re shattered, sills a crack of cinder—and so the backyard surviving and with it, its twin appletrees, grown so near the ice they’d been forgotten about, withered, and witheringly forlorn, taken as icicles when regarded, if, by whom—as shadows, mere excreta of winter, wisps of remaining smoke, two mirrors placed to face one another, reflectively infinite with frost: Rubina had climbed them once hard between her legs, Simone and Judith had one summer every day of it come here to pick and cool; though all of their apples had long soured, then fallen far moons ago, only to be pilfered by Brooklyn boychicks out for a sin motzei Shabbos—now nearly a year dead, these two trees seasonscorched, still standing.

  As for the Temple dimmed in the distance, its star a sixth risen above the smoke, it’s been foreclosed upon by the State in a reckless invocation of, pay attention, eminent domain: it’s theological, you wouldn’t understand, better let the rabbis handle that, your former friends and neighbors; then its site haphazardly converted, seemingly overnight, all extant of its one hundred and eight floors, and with its ritzy penthouse, too, the highest gallery of the holy once intended as the Manhattan residence of the High Priest, which is Him’s what they’d been thinking when He’s old enough, if ever—to laudably lowincome, Section Shmoneh (8) governmentsubsidized housing (who’d use it as a shul, as it’d been suggested early in the planning process, who would pray on grounds so presumptive, so irremediably, irredeemably tainted, was the dissenting thought), essentially tenementspace set aside under new legislation specifically for the use of young, recently hitched couples (parking included, one cart per family, plus unlimited use of a post for the hitching of horses), husbands studying days at whichever yeshiva they might’ve qualified for, and that statesponsored, also, most of the more respected institutions situated Uptown at Park’s edge toward Harlem with a host of others scattered north throughout the Heights; their womenfolk taking in what laundry and sewing they can, cooking for their husbands home argumentweary, come sundown to this, the penultimate floor, hosting apartments #s 102–108, at present home to the Marys reinvented Malkas: three Malkas, or perhaps they prefer Malcha, who knows how they pronounce it, Kotsk, recently married off to triplets named Ivan, greencarded in from Russia, blackhatted out in Brooklyn before, exhaustedly, being relocated here, and two Malkas Plotsk, too, incredibly unrelated to one another though the younger’s a distant enough relation, it’s been said (by them), to the elder Kotsk if you know him, then a Malcha Upstairchik and her neighbor Malcha Downstairchik, though the both of them with their husbands they lived on the same floor and right nextdoor, lighting the Hanukah candles tonight in their windows with views to the Park not quite to die for but appreciable enough, they’ll live; they’re in their kitchens deepfrying latkes, flipping, then flipping again as if the very flatness of their lives, one side to the other, a conversion if slightly burning in the head, and stirring how they’re always stirring away at these thick, gooseskinned burbles of soups and cholents that they have to remind themselves every now and again not to add butter to because schmaltz, gribnes, flanken it’s fleischig, don’t forget—these new words stirring their mouths to a spit from the turn of the secular year, the false turn to which they’ve already turned their backs and with a poo poo over the shoulder poo to the past how they’re stirring dreidel round and round from nothing’s Nun to Gimel takes all in (their stomachs as wide as their households’ deepest pot, a donation), even through the Eve itself never once stilling themselves from their preparations in order to reflect, even for a moment, a moment with its own pregnancy, too, in the glow of the gathered lights, altogether eightdue.

  Hanukah’s octal nights the generosity of seven days that end this year on Shabbos, and only then may the week commence with corruption: though there’d been no party last night, no popping of corks with the tongue in the cheek, no shikkers out in the streets wild and naked and hooting inhuman as in years way past immemorial, none, no observance; it’s just business as usual, and in another unusual season, in this winter perpetual, perpetuating, quarter be damned, with a reported 99% probability of precipitation by midnight at the earliest and yet everyone wakes and rises the next morning to that slimmest of chances that everything’s going turn out just fine, God abides: the sun rises from out of the candlemelt of newly heirloomed menorahs, to be scraped out then sent back to their cherrywood cabinets, exiled for yet another year without polish. And would you believe, that even with that new cabinetry and great custom builtins, updated deluxe, the refridge slash freezer state of the art, the selfcleaning, Shabbosmode oven below the rangetop’s upgrade platinized stainless, the retiled kitchen with its counters and cooking surfaces retopped, too, new windows and doors and the furniture reupholstered, gevalt—they’ve still had trouble renting this unit?

  In Miami, this Sunday into a workday tomorrow, tonight, the night begins and a day begins, the night ends and with it another day begins, too—it’s work whichever way you slice it, a fat healthy slab if you’ve got the appetite or maybe slivered for those on a diet to pick at, a little less, no, really, I shouldn’t, no, go ahead, it’s fine every once in a while, who me, I won’t tell…no one notices they missed a turn, or calls them on it or kvetches cheat, you took a hand from the piece, pay attention. Here in this refurbished penthouse, atop an endtable—one of the only elements remaining, that’s original, this and the endtable on which it rests and that table in the other room, too, call it the beginning-table, if you must (once intended for workaday essing, just guessing), witness the sale’s requirements of new terms for new markets, more words for more money down…surfaces having survived the designers with all their samples, the consultants, their budgets: the old chessboard, it’s theirs, once was His. Its pieces now stand without benefit of players or game, not moving mind you, there’s no magic here; they’re just standing. On their own, as it’s said. As if waiting only for a mind with a hand. The board sits, as the pieces stand—all of it exiled, too, from atop that other table set in the diningroom, recliningly roomed on four legs slowly developing, with splinters, knees, furniture that’d been worthwhile antique even back when PopPop was living and unlike him has remained, having been remanded—the checkered chess’ surface unplaying to an empty house, topped with its ranks rowed unmoved—to this matching oak, mirrorhutched slab set firm in its foundations, you like, which are thick shag, wonderful, no, its gaming parquet lately draped with a doily (this touch, the agent’s), the entire unit moved up against the window, new glass, insulated like you wouldn’t believe, how much you’ll save a fortune on bills. Much remodeling is what, and minimal interest (though this she won’t admit, the agent blowing on her fingernails cupped around the phone), no takers and
so, no heat: icicles hang from the baseboard, a condo frozen out of time…

  History gets around. Everybody knows whose this once was.

  A guest of a sun forces its way in, uninvited as always, muttering inlaw—the barging of its single breast. As shadows in its light that PopPop had once owned, at least had rented out to the hosting of others—and perhaps it’s only seeking a return on all the money once made in its name, as if risen expressly to collect, or if just to beam in aggrandizing apology, maybe, for the cancer it once visited upon the chest of his wife, or his own mother—then through the shades…here, the chesspieces are cast every which way across their squares; they’re scattered, moving, moved, in flagrant violation of every rule, moving at the same time both sides white and black, and in different directions front and back, in moves those pieces can’t make, mundanely don’t or shouldn’t. It’d been a game halted midplay, as PopPop had to wash, dress, then wash again, brush, down a quick capful of mouthwash, snip his nails into darned dark socks fuzzied memorially in his dead wife’s whitesoled slippers, to meet this goy Arschstrong he asked B earlier to call Uncle or Arnie down a flight for what He’s never thought, He’d never asked, there’s no one to ask now, anyway, He can’t. An attack without a defense, a defense without an attack, and all of it: intention, direction, stilled…except shadow, which at noon is none. The chesspieces stand only as pieces of chess. And then, with the passage of sun, hourly disappointed, afternoonly resigned, its light arced to holy with shine this two bedroom with eatin kitchen that the harried, scoldeyed realestate maid she comes and cleans at twice a week, needing this sale, even a rental, how she needs anything except this very needing to please: they’re small the pieces, slowly flung the other way across the board again. Hours of shadow play against each other the same game every day—a game of illogic, as a move of logic, or else those both of nature’s game…as a strategy the same day in, day out, and perfectly known, if only in its impossibility to master. Yesterday, yet another happily newlywed couple’d taken a look at the place, open and shut cabinets, tested the blinds, its and hers and theirs; elbowed one another as they smirked at the beds: husband an oliveoil salesmensch who knew a pitch when he heard one (but didn’t talk much himself—he’d just caught a cold), sneezing and coughing in the freeze while fanning his hand through his own product slicking back his hair; his wife a wife without ambition to more, a myope but bright and grinny, she had moles across her face as if a mappemonde to the temple of her smile—and yet how she’d complained how hard this building was to find (still, she’d be the type to always get her way)…they don’t know how to play chess, is what; I haven’t the faintest, she’d said. If they move in, if the husband ends up talking the still busty, redcheeked agent down to take the place at well below what she calls market (flirting with his frowning lips, how he’d get an earful on the long ride home)—will they keep the board, where it is, set up and played out halfway as it is…as a curio, or conversation piece, Loreta had said, today the agent, tomorrow the maid: as a piece of highminded, low upkeep decoration to set alongside the teiglach tray (every time she’d have a showing, she’d make sure to bake her best)? But before any contract can be claused for closing, the State gets involved, takes it, too, then stiffs her on any commission, her rightful fee, brokering herself nothing but personal ruin: the Administration has it proclaimed a landmark, then announces an initiative to refurbish it yet again, to restore it to its original state, and this after management had spent what it’d spent, gone all out to remove any sign of its former incarnation, its glitzy, silveryears style nearly three decades old, with the kitschy carpet clashing with the wallpaper, blue ugly below the slick vymura, wipeclean another and even uglier shade of winkly superannuated blue (and don’t get her started on the drapes)…any trace whatsoever of its former occupants Loreta’d pretend she’d never heard of them, didn’t know what they were talking. The idea’s to open it up as a Museum, another, of the horror, terror, of the deceit; they’ll keep everything where it is if that’s where it’d been, rehabilitating all the rest to an intimation of its former vainest glory, labeling losses, enshrining the mundane: requisitioned from the warehouse, one (1) banal couch puce and plump whose cushions once, if only for a week, not even, held the idle form of evil.

  It’s depressing, enough, to lose this, too, she’d needed it; she hadn’t been to closing in who wants to think, too long, to tell the truth she’s never. Loreta the realestate agent, she used to be a secretary, Israel’s, if you hadn’t heard already: questioned in the winter of last year after he’d died then released, for cooperating (turning over files and tapes they’d been interested in only she’d known where they were, in which system they’d been filed, for saving certain timesheets, also, from the looters, plaintiff attorneys who’d come to claim the spoils of adversaries settled into death), the Garden had offered her protection, a unit in Miami, just downstairs—Arschstrong’s, she hadn’t wanted to ask whose. Knew to keep her mouth shut, what with a free roof above her head. Loreta, who down here couldn’t find work with any surviving attorney; who’d give her the references, the resume’s blank bottom: anyone who’d worked with her up north was either graved or Gardened, and so she went and took a nightclass, got certified and began trying to sell off units in this building and others owned by its benevolent management company, units 2br/1.5 bath w/ k.k. almost totally abandoned if not wholly from death then from its collateral flee, all around greater Miami, her territory down to Key Wherever due south, not that she’s ever been down there, she didn’t have the keys; she’s not much of a success or a traveler (which is what she’d wanted out of retirement, if ever), her life hasn’t been what it could’ve, not ever since, it stings. Loreta, the woman who’d spent the most time with Israel, the most facetime, talktime, minutes for the two together if they’d’ve been kept would’ve totaled to intimacy, she would’ve been billed the most total sum of his face-hours, his talkhours (for which she’d pay him in overtime daily), Israel’s wife and daughters and certainly his son who’s barely born, forgive him, inclusive. Loreta, she’s presently among the most observant, or at least convinced, of Affiliated converts, having with Israel’s death and the death of the firm, its partners and many if not most of its clients, too, was not only unemployed but also severely depressed, clinically a wonderful state for coming nearer my God, as her people would’ve put it (an idol of the Virgin not her once standing veiled in the corner of her mother’s room back home in Vineland), moping around that Joysey house—which she hasn’t kept: how it’s the only house she’s ever sold—in gray sweats from her stateschool alma mater, her disconsolate and sobbing while gorging on medications, pills for pills requiring pills, gallon after gallon of icecream melting under the Xmas firm giftbasket liqueur she’s hoarded, a cherry cordial she’d pour atop the vanilla scoops to get drunk on then fall asleep from as if melted herself on the fudging of the couch: hers the rockiest road, the chunky should be chippiest and yet the doughiest, too, without direction, no shoulder to cry on waited out, for her next calling called, the phonetuck, the onhold lean, scraping dry skin from her elbows, flossing nightly with her hair loss, showering less and gaining weight. To get up from the couch, only to run up the longdistance bills and in ratty weekend sneakers. How the phone would ring, then she’d trip over her sweats baggy to the carpet to pick them up and answer it, hello—you’ve reached the law offices of Goldenberg, Goldenberg, &…always the wrong number—Loreta? Nobody by that name here, sorry, now’s not a good time, I’ve been changed, my number’s up, it’s disconnected, please hang up and dial. Married last moon to the building’s super she’s lately Leah Weiss, and who doesn’t want to lay a Weiss—Israel, are you listening, are you out there; though he never laid a hand on her, not one, not even once a finger, not even on those longhot, palm-printed on her windowed memory afternoons summering late amid southernmost excruciation, when she’d lean all the way, way egregiously over to file who knows what away without doubt unnecessarily, extraneously so as to
liven up the hours with just a wiggle of those two scooped loaves of hers up at him, their wisp of yesterday’s panty, her knocker knees in those wriggly heels of hers or the Friday boots up to her crotch, the ran slightly ripped dark hose worn three sizes too small as if to cut off circulation, not his, no, it’s that…he’d never even given her a mean word let alone a slap, a shtup, a good hard zogging; no matter, he wouldn’t live to regret. Loreta sits late at her overflowing desk, her husband’s, to be precise Evan Weiss (he’d mocked up a replica for her, for love, a handymensch, from memory, hers)…who’s downstairs just now, he’s checking on the boiler. In Arschstrong’s den made her showroom/office, she pores over dictation, with her fingertips like tears, listening over the headphones to the old dictaphone tapes she still picks and pecks, types the night away at this old manual, an antique Remington 18 Evan had purchased for her with scrip from their one of many Recently Affiliated Unions (RAUS) just getting organized, splitleveling up from out of the freeze all over winterized Miami. Easy on the manicure, diddle the platen, she scribes, taking the same dictation from the same dictated tape she’s taken already a hundred, a thousand times previous, and still, she’s never remembered…how she does this every night late, she needs to (who to complain of the clacking, as her husband here’s the boss and obviously no one lives above, or below), needs to hear him and his formulas again, again his formulations forever, dear so & so, in re: INRI: she’s thinking, and what a martyr, too, in that she most loves now those duties of hers that she most hated then, the fetching of an Elijah’s cup of coffee, makes it hard on herself and black when the cup’s not sipped how she tells herself it’s terrible…take a letter, says his ghost, a little of the martyr in him himself: then shred all and send its scraps on the wind, she knows these moods too well…with a CC: to the east, a little Latin, while lower down there’s to be a section sign—§, which symbol Israel would always remind her had been derived from the ancient letter gimel, the third of the Affiliated alphabet, from gemul, a slight antagonym, he’d explain, selfmeaning and, too, contradicting itself, a contronym translating alternately as Reward, and also as its Punishment.