Witz

by Joshua Cohen

  Got it.

  Read it back.

  Hereby. Respectfully submitted, etc.

  Sentence, his ghost says.

  And then, paragraph.

  Very Truly Yours, it says statickly, Me…and then how she’s to fill in the Me with Israel Israelien, Esq., over which he might, if he wasn’t too busy, in a meeting, on the phone or otherwise disposed with the trashcan in the corner of his corneroffice and tossing, attempted, crumpled, looseballed papers as if the flakes and drifts of their snoglobe weights above, or else in court and what with this letter, brief, or contract having to go out now—the mail’s at three—sign the same name Israel Israelien Israel Israelien Israel Israelien over and again in an illegible haste, a smudge of impatience, ink blotting blemish from the forge of his fountain (Loreta turned Leah had done this all the time, filled in for him, even once impersonated his voice, the one still speaking if only for her own ears, confidential years ago in a longdistance call to his father, who’d been crazy and estranged, according to him, though when she talked to him that once he’d seemed fine, decently sane and even, though she wouldn’t mention it, kind), smirching the remaining hold of firm stationary she’s stolen, 20lb. noncorrasable bond still preciously surviving; she’s already licked out of envelopes, has only two reams of letterhead left—she keeps them boxed in her oven, which is selfcleaning, when she’s not cleaning it herself.

  How’d you spell escheat? she asks the ghost…though we all know that ghosts only dictate, they never respond, don’t sign for anything, and—isn’t it true that, they never know to spell.

  Israel never did.

  ¶ Deposition of…she types now, held at the offices of Goldenberg, Goldenberg, & Israelien LLP, 45 East 33rd Street, New York, New York, 10016, pursuant to Notice, before Loreta O. Strozzapreti, a Registered Professional Reporter and Notary Public of the State of New York.

  9. EXAMINATION BY MR. ISRAELIEN:

  10. Q. It is our mutual understanding that portions of this record may

  11. be read into evidence. However, all objections except as to the

  12. form of the question are reserved until trial.

  13. A…typing out depositions of deponents long deposed of to the dead. Her tears tap the keys, sticking, jumblblbling…she types: hereby stipulate, types, pursuant to, then the ghost says again as she rewinds the tape to a garble: ottnaus…pursuant to our discussion, let’s talk Hanna would always ask, would demand, about the hours you’ve been keeping: her not suspecting him of infidelity, rather of the opposite, of being too faithful, too true to his work, fathering not their kinder as much as husbanding time, and whole sheets of the stuff as null as the day’s sky, turned down late into night—absent, the faceless face of the clock: how she’d kid stripped before bed when he’s coming home midnight from a meeting, I’ll get your partners to represent me, sue you for nonsupport; billing twentyfive hours a day, eight days a week, an hour for only a moment of thought in the shower, his practice fair or not: a consideration at towel’s length, contemplating the tie of a tie four in hand with dimple, or a shoe’s spit knucklepolish, then a quick kiss to his wife who she’s still sleeping and he’s out the door to his car or the train. Argument for its own sake, an appeal for the sake of appeal—him a lawyer at first for building contractors, for plumbers, autoaccident victims (his covenant, you will receive a cash settlement or I get no fee); he’d done personal injury, workers’ comp, liability, then moved himself into the corneroffice’s corporate work, mergers & acquisitions, late nights at the kitchen or even later into morning the diningroom table poring over his own scrapheap obsessions, Latinate and private, a personal edition of the most secular of Scripture. Notes on Promissory Estoppel in Collective Bargaining Agreements 1:1. In the end, Loreta has to think, how it’s all estoppel, isn’t it, detrimental reliance, we know it as delusion, the enabling lie: taking certain measures contingent on the veracity of information provided, on the faith faithed in promise, assurance, oral contracts taken out on the given word we call them. Non concedit venire contra factum proprium, give me a break, who says. How she thought she’d had a future there, was once even thinking about trying out for paralegal, going for broke on a cooperative investment expecting a raise, if wishful—for the better, though, as the co-op, with the death of its management, it’s turned out to be a coop, like for chicks. Israelien v. Greater Miami Food Services at 9, she’d handled that; it’d taken months. Damages, I’m due. Too much and probably pregnant, too. And old. Either express or implied…how I’d buy Hanna flowers whenever Wanda would call to remind. Didn’t once forget to send even his father a card. I’d sign it, Loreta—he’d never. She’s crying, lights another candle on the counter in the kitchen, a line of them between her two dryingracks, the meat kept kosher from the milk. Seethe on your own time, but separately, if you can. How is it she still feels his presence, his eyes on her, and hears that voice…her new religion, if it even is a religion and not a, forget it, asks her not to ask; and how her husband who he’s her despondent, too, he serves then clears the courtroom of their distance, later at night and in bed reminds her, nu, we don’t even believe in ghosts anymore, not supposed to, not as such: more like possessions, hymn, as in dybbuks, incarnations or usurpations, but ghosts, no, I don’t think so, Leah, but I’m no rabbi, yet—that and in the morning when her brother down in Texas calls, he reminds her better, that before she converted she always said she hated the schmuck, it might be best forgotten. The again overtime, the weekend hours how he’d never work Saturday but she’d come in on Sundays, too—you think she ever got Shabbos off, forget it. She loved her job she says to her brother-inlaw, now named Israel, too (so few names with real kavod these days, true yichus or zichus she can’t remember which, and with so many people wanting them: her brother, he’d chosen late, last pick), who he’s still wrangling cattle but as of last moon for a kosher concern…and thinking—is what he says but she’s not and not listening either—about opening up a slaughterhouse outside Houston, if he could only glatt the backers into reviving a trusted brand; she did, though, love, don’t get her wrong, she liked: it paid well, her job, then the benefits, and Israel, though she might lionize him in death, as a tamer or taskmaster, he’d been pleasant enough, better than expected if only in hindsight, though her eyes are going what with the small print and miniature night type; she says to her brother, her brat, her ach: Evan wants me to burn the tapes, I’ll burn the tapes, I promise—tomorrow, first thing before I daven (tonight, she still has to summarize a brief); but don’t think I’ll ever stop hearing that voice—which would shriek down the phone though her desk had been cubicled just beyond the door.

  As for the office, it hasn’t much changed; not the layout, only the furnishings. Inevitably, a sheaf of magazines have folded, or have been desubscribed to, stolen or moved around, flipped through then restacked again out of issued order; the glass has been replaced out front with another slab of blank clarity because they couldn’t add etch to or scrape the names from the old convincingly, or cheaply. Though Goldenberg, Goldenberg, that walled sign over reception still reads, then & Thronrauber in a different font, pretentiously with serif, Attorneys-At-Law—at your service. Call it continuity, despite. Nobody by any of those names has lately hung a hat here. I’m Mordy, but when you’re calling ask for Guy. Too early in the morning and with no brunch in Him, recently sleepless what with the fear inspired by the little He’s asked in return for His bed and board, miserly, too, and provisionally He thinks in spite, He’s leftover the holiday attempted to an exhaustion matched only by that of His purpose, both as mated to those of this family’s most demanding personalities (mother, wife) and, as well, in light of a present piety that’s damning of all senses and ambivalent toward dream…B’s arrived here with the proctologist and his wife, and her dressedup something like a weddingcake already, a healthy portion: with an icingly pink pillboxhat over pinker wig, frostpowdered face, the bride and groom of her bosom sweetly perfumed, and their daughter whom they’ve bee
n calling Eli—you might’ve missed her, don’t beat your breast about it: anyway, how she’s been too shy to tell Him her full name, whether her new name or old, anything about herself, really, also she’s not quite allowed to be alone with Him for any appreciable time—that is, not until, we’re hoping. Holdingout. Eli who’s crying because being here’s mortifying, and how He wants to know why, suspicious, but every time He leans around her mother to mouth entreaties at her eye her mother keeps leaning forward, her lips sloppily filled with complimentary jelly and curd, asking B if He’s feeling well, hungry or thirsty and Him not understanding, only how much He doesn’t want to…what’s He here for is what meddles, only that the proctologist had forced Him into a doubled doublebreasted suit he’d managed to impromptu along with a cardboard belt and tie ensemble, then a cart down to Mitteltown to take care of some things, he’d said, a bit of paperwork pertaining to your status, get you legal, keep you safe, secure, and how He thinks—no problem, the mensch’s been good people so far, so good, soso, and how the daughter’s not tootoo…until now, Him ending up in this office, which hasn’t even merited a plaque: keep waiting, it’s on order.

  Though not just any office…B doesn’t even know He’s in it, how deeply what this was, His father’s, what could’ve been, all His with tasteful lighting. The lobby’s plush if haphazard: the looting of a year ago’s still in evidence, desuetude, loopholes and gaps; the furniture had been purchased all in a lot to replace the antiques Israel had selected over the years, Empire in its Americanly acquisitive origins and devolutions both decadent and proper, staying seated if occasionally refined, preEmpire, nearEmpire, once risen conference curios by the time of their disappearance, fallen, wingchairs become clipped, corrupt, today made a host of the foldable, cardtables collapsing to the filed thinness of pending suits: seats unpadded, but the tabletops, they’ve sprung out extra makeshift legs to warranty such vinyl. Stacked reference materials, stools of crate and barrel. A bell rings from down the hall and this mensch emerges from behind nothingness, just a foldingchair unfolded from the grooves where the receptiondesk had been, asks B and the proctologist to follow him, right this way and huffily selfimportant: taking their leave of such a worried, Hadassah/Sisterhooded wife with a tongue like a subscription renewal insert (busying Solitaire with her membership cards, just now too concerned with her cascade), her reddened, promised daughter, then down a hall whose walls are still white if, could it be, snowed a little brighter, and this despite no new wash or coating, if only in relation to the stain retained of photographs removed; a coatrack wilts in a corner; the watercooler’s empty, webbed with the industry of spiders. A grove of plaintiffly withered plants scattered about here and there along with sorry files, paperaeroplaned whiles, with no bargain pled of access or negotiating passage, they have to compromise high toe heel along their ways. To avoid a slip and fall, them suing, a settlement for loss. Bad shape, and that’s my closing statement. The prosecution rests, to honor shiver.

  Everything’s underheated if not unheated totally, with an icewind down the halls…then the hall down to the last offices and there the largest, too, cornered at the edge of the building, topfloored thirtysix high above Mitteltown’s marked drudge: papers gust through, and more files, merging and acquiring then winding apart, everywhere draftily whirled around with the Garden’s ash duct in, what sustaining smoke, as if an interior night (that’s if it’s not just the electricity’s been cut here: nonpayment, moons overdue), now starred with a raided suppliesroom’s worth of miscellaneous office staples, paperclips and stamps, their edges and those of the sharpest papers, too, and then the folders for files cutting them as they pass, slicing them raw, as if unfolding their flesh to the cold. The mensch leading, how can you trust him wearing such a bulky trench indoors. An opened office at hallway’s end reveals a glaring glass, a window the length of the wall, and to Him fishbowlish, though the wet’s still kept outside, upsidedowned and floating in the sky. It’s fronted by two menschs, sitting in two chairs set uncomfortably too close to each other behind their single, small desk, which is little more than the old office door fallen to rest atop sawhorses dirty, scarred, obviously filched from the reconditioned street. At work, in progress this regression. Don’t bother to get up, on my account, no good here. Better you should shvitz.

  The heat in the room and only this room is up incredibly against the prevelant outside, what weather let in through the halls: how hot is it that the two how you have to convince yourself they’re lawyers, and keep reminding, are decked out in suits, with jacket, vest, and pants, but how under these there’s nothing else, apparently nothing underneath whether worn or mended, borrowed, white or blue, only these two suits of three pieces each as slouched right off the remaindered’s hangers, tailored too loose from the skeletal rack; no shirts are evident under their vests and jackets, no underwear in evidence under the pants under the single shared desk (the bulges are too conspicuous from both sides of the metal’s median support), no socks around either, shoeless. What else, this unbecoming, it’s just a hunch, a feeling: how they’re the kind of lawyers who can never take calls, who let’s say regularly shut the lights then hide behind the cabinets for linner, which is houred to encompass the entire afternoon—a splurge on delivery, let the secretary tip, or else to send her freezing for their takeout, then forget to remunerate receipts. Waiting as if patient for any client paying even only one of them as they’re only billing each the other, selling short and fat the one, the other tall and overcharging, one wipes his brow with a cuff of his suit while the other examines his stubble in the reflection of a nailfile, which could be used to split wood, or to cut the clouds, make rain. The proctologist gives B a wink that says, they know me here, or maybe there’s schmutz in his eye; then, he tugs on an ear, as if that’s a sign, too, for what and not just nerves. Trust me, I know how to talk to these people. That’s what the other eye wants to say, many times unwinked. Whoever they are, whatever they make…Goldenbergs, Thron, & Rauber, He suspects they’ll be anyone you want—if you can pay, in cash and preferably today.

  And what can we do for you, the fat asks, Mister…

  Jacobson, says the proctologist.

  Please, Mister Jacobson, says the skinny, let the boy speak for Himself…I’m not Jacobson, says the proctologist.

  And so you’re here for a change of name…

  No, says the proctologist, He’s…accusing with an ungloved finger he still uses for you shouldn’t know what and enjoyably, here to be, what’s the term—Confirmed, so that He can finally go and marry my daughter, get her out of the house if only for a night…during which, let’s hope, to make a zeyde out of me.

  And so?

  I’ve been told by my rabbi, he goes on, undaunted, that despite His assurances His, nu, covenant needs to be checked…independentlike, thirdparty and all, but you’re the professionals, aren’t you, I’m paying you to be—to demonstrate proof of His circumcision is what, and cough, in the presence of at least two witnesses, preferably lawyers is what he said, or a notable notary public. A mensch down at my mikveh, Shearith Israel’s, gave me your names, Little Jimmy Mizrahi who handles for me my malpractice, said you’d give me a good deal if I mentioned him.