Witz

by Joshua Cohen

  B makes the end of the pier, to a gangplank of sorts, wood flimsy and narrow, makeshift, which is the pier further, just lain. He lifts His head to the good glaciate ship. The MS Yachtsmann, it’s been called; most pronounce it guttural. It’s white, and hugely hulled; a ship heated from within: by its heaving stow of bodies, its own human cargo, the lives of those escaping, inescapable—immigrating, emigrating, depends who you ask and when…their bilged warmth to knife the ship, slicing it through the ice to an outermost flow, cleaving toward the open ocean, in which the waters once divided mingle, flow freely. Or else, such warmth’s from the engines rumbling the moods of every sinner, their appetites, too. Because He can’t seem to find anyone else, though, He stands out on deck alone. To board this boat bound for Polandland, over His family left sunk without wave—His people who were once as plentiful as the waters of the ocean, sandsleeping as dead as the stars whose light’s aged the sky, these however many thousands of years. And, to cross the ocean of our Columbus, you know him: a landsmann of His, landsleit removed, that crypto converso, Saint Marrano he was of the stilled, stilling depths; to travel his ocean in reverse, discovering all that’s to be discovered in the direction opposite, windopposed, the other wayfaring around—having had enough of this exploration, having been barbarized and conquered and settled and exploited enough, enslaved for too long, His life, and yet only now to give His testimony against it, through living against it: to be called to the stand, which is the mast, as a witness bound at the bow. And then, to shriek into the mouth of the wind…what would you say, B, if chanced with the choice; how living against Himself is to prophesize, if only unconsciously, what’s to come, what’s to be. He ships past the smoke clearing, a cloud lifting the clouds, and only because He’s going through the smoke, then through the clouds of the cloud and then—past the ruins of His house out on the Island to be spied land ho off starboard, off port, I don’t know but how could I, left from right from my, Liberty in her soiled robe with her burnt and waterlogged book, what surviving pages stuck fast, her Messianic sandals down below, doesn’t she ever get cold—and up above the scrapers and City Hall, her torch held heavenly and shuddering, a beacon of compromise, perhaps: not sun, not moon, but what; only pointing Him out, directing Him away, a semaphore’s banishing…brandishing that snuffready flame as if to hasten His shipping’s slog—the vessel’s stubborn stub atop and through the Hudson’s ice loosened to melt beneath its progress, toward the verge of frost, the drifty shuga, then a creaking crash to the waters finally unbound, crystalline. And beyond, distancing as far as can be sensed by wind: a lulling swell; as far out as can be imagined and, go further—amid the ocean, the true ocean, not frozen but merely thickened, slushed, an expanse of slowgoing swell: monstrous floes floating elementally in white, bergs hazard blue and serene.

  Icesick soon, seablued, seagreened, tempest tost a stomach up through His throat, this vomit’s tongue, I’m feeling. He’s a Lazarus, a wretch risen only to Himself, through Himself, heaving up His resurrection; pacing the deck alone, swabbing the slabs with this tossing, hurling His throw into vacancies available: bulwarks, portholes, lifeboats topside readied to evacuate all of no one. And the ship itself seems alone, as the only vessel to the only horizon, buoyant to bob a rippling shadow, the ocean’s only; any other passenger, B thinks, must be a refugee, too, how they’re staying so low, hidden, out of mind, out of time; no manifest’s survived, to be logged with our losses, such records have been wetted to smudge…and then the crew, a thirdmate, a bosun, a captain, He gets only shades of them, flickers: scuds of mist huddling around corners, puffs gathered at the capstan, the babble of voices always a deck above or below—not a crew it feels but a force ruddering, steering, what power plotting the plod of His course through the cold. The weather, then this sickness, the hollowed throat, that and the stomach an empty purse contained in indigestible coin: a miracle, He doesn’t even showup to meals, if meals are part of His package, part of anyone’s package, if they even are. For the first week until the next Shabbos, He stays berthed in His cabin, rousing only to pace the deck late, drymouthed on water, and knotted in nerves, venous strands of them: salty ties bent to ends loose and capsized, bloodied bit bights with the remains of His frenulum and anything else sublingually left, tangled intricately, mucosal, scarstitched, hanging a fraylach from the stump of His face. The wind echoes in the bell of His mouth, then resounds in the clap of His tonsils. That Friday late, He bows over the railing, over the side. A Kiddush’s sip, why can’t I, only a sip.

  O the Kinneret, which is the lake to be found under the Sea of Galilee…the Mediterranean Nile, the Mississippian Jordan, the Sambatyon, the Dead Sea, the Red Sea of Reeds—there is no greater justification of the Fall than our naming of water. All our rivers, streams, lakes, and even the seven oceans, too, are but a oneness of an ocean and God. There is no better evidence of our corruption than our calling of water by name, no better argument for the sundering of the covenant, the flooding of creation again. And then there’s the weather, the question of what to call that, also, of how to give name to a flux, not to instability but to its opposite, stability, the greatest—which is a station founded upon motion, fundament on wandering, on being everywhere at once and so nowhere, forever. How to call a cloud, a nesting of cloud, clouds, a sky, a giant rumbling then a flash bound as one. Though we have the name Storm, we are still destroyed, foundered upon the world we call rock. No invocation will save us. A sky, get inside; stay there and stay honest. Rage all you want with wind, with light and with wetness, there’s no saint to invoke, there’ll be no salvation. We call it a crow’s nest, though it’s crowless; that bird is off mating with the doves in a land not so cursed. Its perch eclipses the moon—and the world finally, opens. An immense downpour at middlenight, suffusions of lightning like daylight, and the ships shakes, rocks, is thunderously rolled to a sink, hits near a glacier then gets turned around, hits another then is turned round again, swirled as if at bottom’s a drain or a flush—prodded then whirled in a hurling, thrown up then dashed back down to the white of an ever new wave, again. A Shabbos midnight of rainsnow, of snowhail, howling around the hull’s nidified mute…and then settling with it—gradually locking the ship, stilling it in ice made. Immovable. Through the night as the temperature drops, even into the next day—to be captive to the calling above, its lash at the foremast, its whip to the mizzen. Then, toward evening of the end of Shabbos, which reigns upon sea as it reigns upon land, which reigns in the air, too, and then everywhere else there be God, there’s a last bolt of lightning: it pierces the sky, strikes down to smash the ice up ahead, splits the ocean entire…sundering the horizons one darker, one lighter, while the middle melts away into grays—into soon, a steady, steadying pure, the moving water moving, again. And one tribe, and only one tribe, may pass.

  Shalom is the name that follows next, meaning Hello, and Goodbye—and so going both everywhere and nowhere at once, but in Peace. B’s ship, He’ll think of it as His ship until another makes topside, floats Shalom in the middle of the peacefully immovable and middleless water, moving at middle: Hello and Goodbye, they’re mingling, the waters wetting each other as if always made undivided, never been sundered, never foundered between those above and those below upon God’s second day. A flow of stasis, under the bandage of the newly calm cloudless sky. It’s here He loses the winds of the world we call New, trading in those for a species of wind that doesn’t blow or push as much as it pulls, tugs Him toward, the meridian east: the brightkindling bow of the ship set amid the middle of the water without middle, it now parts each sucking, hollowfaced gust—pierces; to where the globe turns its cheek, to the face of its father the sun, is then struck with a kiss, lightsmote to blush itself humbled, a sunrise, as you’re flung down to the other edge of the round, where the flatness begins, the vale of the lessdimensioned, divested of west, the endless dark world we call Old. At the landed crown of the rounding before it’s rubbled away to flat, a last standing shadow, lengthening
with the thrift of the day; it’s a female form, if not emblematically feminine. A ship’s figurehead stranded, could be, straining from her perch at beached prow. A maydel not too young anymore, she’s Eli the doctor’s daughter appeared sullen at the pointing, way out on the accusative tip of Manhattan having followed Him, if tentatively or shy: she hadn’t been sure, has to make her lastlit goodbye, maybe even she thought to convince Him, to remain and be hers, impossible, perhaps, this she knows, too late; she’s waving a headkerchief she’s abstractly embroidered as if with the fingers helpmating of widows and kinder unborn: with its wave not exactly bidding Him anything besides her heartache, commending it unto Him if that’s the mood she merits, as if—aval aval, it’s not a headkerchief, it’s a cover for challah, a coverlet for the swaddling of the two tabled loaves from last night, she’d baked; waving, more like she’s shaking out the crumbs her father and mother’ve left her, miserly few and what there are, greasy: she follows the lone ship, her cloth a sail forsaken by wind, sagging Him far, then gone. Out of her life, this gust: a sigh older than God. Had a few prospects over last Shabbos, again: nothing she’s interested in, no one redeeming, forget it, it’s worthless. With Him, He was different. Same old. How her father had said he’d die the night he’d marry her off. Finally. That or retire, or both. And in front of company, too, two corporate attorneys who’d also been patients, calling on her one with a new duster for a present, the other without flowers either. Dad had been calling the both of them Son. One touched feet with a wooden paw of a leg of the table under which the other’d held the hand of her mother. She was going to spit the cream in their coffee, but her mouth was too kind and the maincourse was meat. The last vision this puffy, darkeyed Eli has of His departure, it’s a reflection—the last to be imaged upon the waters of her face with its fallen nose, and those warm, rounded lips—it isn’t the ship, but a huge solitary head rising from the east, as if His return, but lifeless: the new Shabbos’ sun, sliced from the neck of horizon.

  In the eye of the Shalom, in the very mouth of peace, B stands still through the storming, the weather unnamed and unnamable, having held fast to the wheel with one hand, with the other at the ribbing of His stomach, the ropes of flesh taut with hurt that wrest Him in, still sickened. To survive, and to rejoice in your own survival: to open your mouth to the last lingering patter, to open your eyes once shore’s distanced behind you, to catch dew upon your lashes, manna’s fallen balm. And then into the slowed heart of this quiescence, this lulling, ship’s loll, to be hit with one last and ferociously whiplashing force of night’s wind, a remnant, a reminder of the darkness left behind and yet in front of you, too—and, flying across that sky a fish lands on the deck, at the forecastle, the fallen castle, amidships, who knows, not me, I don’t care. Which fish don’t ask me either, whether kosher or not, only that it flips, gives a flop, a silver sliv of ichthys out of water off land, over and into a ship that goes forward while on a ship there’s nowhere to go, that’s what I’ve got—it goes onto the planks of the deck netted in kelp to hide its nakedness from the blush of the clouds.

  B stoops over, scoops it up in His hands, it squeezes out, pops a plop, flubs on the deck, paddles planks. He stoops over again, scoops and again it wriggles free to what has to be its death, scaling the skin from His hands. And finally, with hands hardened with strength enough to fist it dead Himself were it a weaker fish and not a fisher of sorts itself, He bends and bows and holds it tightly, then rights Himself in pain against the slice of its fins. A slitting, the gut of His palm. Then, steadying against the ship’s pitch, its scuppering swish, holds the fish lip to mouth, staring depth into its one good mush of eye.

  Nu, the fish says, after a moment graved gray within the jellied slough of its socket, vos machst du…what’s your problem, I’m busy; hymn, I’ve got a two o’clock with a hot current—no seriously, what can I do you for? and when there’s only silence amid the winds, with the stump of His tongue salted to tack, a stiff and soundless flag, it gives out with an anything but fishy, fluenty, Oy! it’s a goyische kopf I’m dealing with here, all the luck—alright already, so I’m a prince, what’s it to you…then spouts at Him, up, under His glasses and into His eyes, and it stings like watery fire.

  Three wishes you putz, mamash, the emes, but be quick about it.

  He’d like to take His glasses from His face and wipe them and His eyes but how when you’re cradling such chub.

  Genug, hurry up, I don’t have all day—what do you want, that I should swallow you…hahaha, and it coughs a gurgly bubble—joking aside, who has the time…your wish, it’s my command; you name it, it’s yours, simple as that, sof pasuk, pashut.

  Work with me here! You’re new at this. I can tell, but I won’t. Ken zeyn, here’s the deal. I grant your wishes and, in return, you throw me over the side. Or else, keyne hora, and it winks that one appreciable eye, you’re out of luck, and I die of exposure. Maybe you’ll be one of the righteous, a tzadik—just place me in the water from a porthole, lower me down from the what do you call it, the gunwale, efsher…the last goy almost ripped my gills with his toss.

  You with me? Farshteyn?

  The fish flicks its tail. Wish I could help you, but it’s not mine to wish…

  To tongue for a tongue, how I’m futzed.

  Listen, I’m no prophet, no rebbe soothsayer…nit heint, nit morgen, what’s that they say, noch nicht—I’m only a prince who went wrong…

  B nods in sad understanding and then, a dearth of them say three steps running rail to railing to put a pretense of momentum behind His throw, gives a sissying heave, mocking a hurl in return of the fish overboard, its sterling arc disappearing under the surface, a watery veil; then, with tailspray wholly disproportionate to its size, and perhaps, too, a little too late, soaking Him anew, as if to further mortify, if anyone would ever happen on deck, and if not, then in the eye of His God. The sun, a beacon of light cresting His head on its way to set yet again. A gloriole. To wait out the remainder of His passage, hanging Himself out on the rigging to dry, knot after the moon’s, His body an uncertain sail. To ship forward, though, without any idea of remainder, of passage, of future, and so denying any navigation, doubtful of any aground upon which to run, minding only the water until, having almost forgotten the very ideal of land, its ancient blind and deaf captain that is time, He arrives at doubt, which is itself without shore: denying the presence of a waterless world, a world that’s hard to the touch, that’s rough, too, and that when knocked knocks back ever harder.

  At this, the ship—as if questioning its very substance—hits, slams, and He falls over the railing, tumbling into the air as the hoopy heap bumps, bucks then, rollickingly, steadies itself against a slip of wood drifting…on which He lands, from which He rises—a castaway from a ship wrecked on the shore itself for purposes of convenience and yet still, despairing, scared. Without romance, no liberate welcome. Only a pier, another port, another older here—it’s been a while, B, you’re next. To further image this disembarkation, corrigendum corrupting, we might offer this: that water cannot be stamped, but that land can be, and faces, and paper, too, a passport of His marked in the reddest available ink, predated beyond all comprehension. As for the land itself—it’s stamped with Him, arrived if only to fade…

  O gather all ye geography mavens, ye country collectors, and experts on topos, habitus hoarders, connoisseurs of blending, masters of the hide…hearken ye sons of inconspicuousness, ye gods of lyinglow—languages are yours, borders our birthrights, to cross into evermore outcast estates…I welcome you to Polandland, Shalom, dwell as you may. Name, please, Date of Birth, then Country of Origin. At the slips and stations around Him, there’s a mess of muster, of unmarked cargo being roustabouted into endless trains routed to the furthering gate. Thieves with oily hands and twitchy eyelids, made gypsies of necessity wanting only for night’s stealth. An examiner of imported “produce.” Disbursing half into his pockets for the wife. Hutched, hunched, an interrogator who already knows
, but wants to hear you think (anything you answer will sound like a question—clasp hands, pray for deportation at best)…gabbly groups too afraid to address their fear to an official nowhere to be found uniformed the same. Upon penalty of what again, the windy confiscation of cries.

  A heelshaped barrel they’re unloading from His ship drops and breaks, the staves pop off like an explosion, but it’s empty, there’s nothing inside and the pallets, they’re lonely for schlepping.

  A woman leads a group (young): splinters of strangers gathered out on the dock. She says to them, This was the kind of ship they used. To immigrate. To emigrate. Anyone remember which? We just had it brought in. We shipped in a ship. Just this morning. This is how they got away—back before aeroplanes, remember?

  B’s ship’s being boarded, condemned.

  With a hand hot in His pocket to keep guard over what wad there and with His suitcase held in the other, He goes. Where a chalkcircle praying oneliners for the weather to stop, how it’s followed Him here even worse. Where a chamfered streetcorner and told just to wait. A night, a day. Where a whore’s room He’s renting from her and for her, and which He quits after only one night, leaving His deposit behind but taking the room with Him, hung around His neck on a rope of her braids, hiding the shame of His sex…Polandland, historically where. While many of our scholars have offered up the image, famous enough to have become truism, Edenic enough to have fallen from favor, of the snake, which consumes itself and yet like the bush inherited from its gardened tree is never consumed, its tail to mouth poisoning, others have settled on a like form, more felicitous because nourishing, because sustaining, enabling, this image of our bread, daily broken. A bagel He’s in, or so they suggest in this leavening of history, Him baked deep within that circling circle forever void…a great onion and garlic and sesame and poppyseed salted snake tailing itself, and then swallowing—the eternally returning Everything varietal, the glutinous fruit of Viennese merchants first made for and presented to Polandland’s King in thanks for his help in fighting the Turks out of Austria—its name from an old German word for stirrup, Bügel, in honor of Jan III Sobieski’s great horsemenschip, in recognition of the shape of the thing: stick your foot in its mouth, then ride off into the sunset…Him atop less a kingly steed than a sagged, stickribbed lowly roan (He’s renting off a gypsy thief, a pierside hustler in cheap dark denim), His bügel more like tourist-traps, to hold Him high while the wind empties His pockets, gusting through the holes. As arranged at the port, this horse with goldteeth—with its gypsy leading with the horse’s teeth dugout, stuffed into his own kisser—it’s leading Him inland, ever deeper, and marketed ever darker, too, what with the sun’s set toward the west…where, headed unto the mythical Souvenir Stand, just over the mountain yonder, there to shop for a store of local specialties, a wide selection of indigenous folk art, Handwerk’s kitschy dreck, tshirts hung with medals unearned, dolls inside dolls, matrioshky they’re called giving way after their disappointing smallest to an emptiness maternal it’s impossible not to feel in these parts, the numbly dead, the unmade. And then further…with His gypsy leaving Him at a wall, at a gate, an incredible inroading—disappearing after the money’s gone, with the horse gone, too, and with His suitcase in its mouth, that and the bundles and bags of His purchases, keepsakes kept safe from Him: left alone, without tikvah, that’s hope. To wander east down a narrowing of streets, a muddle of ways, cuts short and long, all huddling to this one wide street, a vast opening eastward toward the void at middle, always the hole at center’s core—the Square wherever this is, I’m never sure, just shocked…without language. Consonants stuck in the craw, a mouth shaped like a vowel, and speechless.