by Joshua Cohen
At an aeroport in New York, called La Guardia as it’s named for a goy who before he became mayor worked with languages and with speaking them and asking questions in them upon the Island they’d died on; in case you were interested, just so we’re clear—there in its provisional chapel, a goy whose identity’s being withheld because his collaboration here should ensure the acceptance of his family’s conversion, a Chaplain, of a species nondenominational, a minister to the transient, retained to soothe the aviophobic, the afraid to fly, stands alone in his modest makeshift plasterdom, his cubicle celled between toilets, M restroom to the right of him, W to the left, and reflects: his departure date’s tomorrow…stink seethes in from both sides, urinal overflow, a bath of clogged stalls, leaks in under the leaning walls, a draft of deluge, waste staining in streaks, the mush of all plys; he flagellates himself with a pleather belt, snakeskin, bought surplus, dutyfree, then tries to find a name for a God that won’t offend anyone even if used loudly, in vain; blood falls from his back to mix with the piss, not his, mixing into a drainless dreckswirl on the floor, puddling around his feet sloping down toward the pulpit, or toward where a pulpit would have been if his budget would’ve provided: there’s only an arch of a rainbow on the wall there, an ennobling decal, with no ends to the rainbow, only its arch, the highest middle section in the middle of the wall; it would end, on both sides, in toilets.
Codename Thomachefsky II, though he’s no relation to, even after all these meals still follows the instructions given on the sheet they’ve provided; though it’s stained with every manner of savory costcutting, the steps he’d memorized his first day of work are still interpretable: on the tray, which is plastic, goes one Main Pill, a capsule of cholent, the protein, plasticwrapped, one Side Pill One, the rye, the starch, plasticwrapped, one Side Pill Two, mixed vegetable, plasticwrapped, one Dessert Pill, strudel, plasticwrapped, one Spork, plastic, one Safety Knife, plastic, one Seasoning Packet, plastic, one Napkin, plastic, one Mug, plastic, Nondairy Milk Substitute, plasticwrapped, Water, plasticwrapped, then Step #12, wrap all in plastic and affix the stickered seal of kashrut, plastic, atop; none of the plastic edible in the least, and often asphyxiating those to whom it’s occasionally thrown back in No Class: this, wrapped, is the Class Ration, prepared and packaged both in a warehouse far northeast near the aeroport in Queens; its exclusive food & beverage contract held by Al-Cohol Distributors, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Abulafia & Sons, Inc. of Furthest Rockaway, maybe you know where that is…lately, I’m lost. Here, protein’s the upper, starch the downer, vegetable upper, dessert downer—they meet each other halfway; this once mixed with just one packet of powdered wine (extra, ask your attendant for further details), and your average air passenger’s rendered regulation unconscious for up to eight hours, zonked, all ready to go.
Finally, the Solution begins—yet again.
And so there was more trouble for Him, and it was not good, and no one could get any rest.
And we all say—forget it.
Welcome to Whateverwitz, loosely translating to whatever’s joke, anything you want, we’ll laugh, hahaha, O how we’ll indulge you. Those who had chosen not to Affiliate had chosen their deaths…alternately, “those who have not chosen to be chosen,” it’s officially said, how they’ve been chosen for death if not by it. Jawohl, their fate sealed so you needn’t be a sphragist to figure out how. In the beginning, to incite dissent within their ranks with the appointments of quote unquote selfgovernments, establishing a collaborating class of privileged VIPs (Very Important Polaks), all toward the aim of obliterating any sense of community, and so any organized resistance, they hope—to lay the blame upon the blameless, is how. To quote unquote remove them, the Unaffiliated we’re talking, first to enumerate them, round them up, transport them Transatlantic to Polandland proper, then give them the Grand Tour, show them the sites, take it all in, the works, allinclusive; then, terminal transfer to extermination facilities situated at the outer limits of major metropolises throughout the Pale, there to set only as many as neccessary to hard labor servicing the deaths of their family and peers, attending to their minimalized needs, the wanting basic, baring essentials though one goy’s subsistence be another goy’s dream, and this in a manner most costeffective, as inexpensively as possible’s what—and then to murder them, every one of them, dead, and so only the pure will be left; that’s the plan.
Nu, Torque, Hamm asks, what’s the plan—was He on one of those transports? is He dead yet? and what about us…he’s futzing with the yarmulke he has to maintain for work purposes, survival, to avoid the Gestapo’s attention.
I don’t know, says Mada, I don’t think we’re that lucky, or not. My guess is He fled here, not expecting this, who would have. And if He did expect, hymn, then He’s dumber than any of us ever thought.
But they wouldn’t kill Him, would they, Hamm takes the pleather disc from his head (this a newly issued operationally commemorative model: it’s white inviting dirt with prussicblau piping, replete with serial number and a litany of daily blessings wrought on its underside in silvery script), spins it supple around in his hands: they wouldn’t, why would they, wouldn’t make any sense…He’s one of them.
Is He? Not anymore, Hamm, my friend, not anymore…or He is and He isn’t, it’s tough to explain, so difficult nowadays with everyone of no extraction, all these late designates of fractional Faith—the questions, is He a Mischling, who knows, and, anyway, are They, Whoever They are, Whoever They ever are (up to you), the type to make such distinctions; it’s up to Him to decide, the chosen now finally choosing. Who are you, that’s never been voluntary before. Freewill and all, freewilled. This time around, martyrdom’s wholly assured. But He’s not on any of the transports (Mada spits on Hamm’s yarmulke, palms it down into his kink), and neither is he dead…Frank Gelt says, having slid downstairs and across the waxed lobby of the Hotel Under the Sign of the Hotel’s newest Polandland franchise, the Hotel Under the Sign of the Sign of the Hotel in the house’s silkslippers, he’s waving in front of him, in their faces, a sheaf of papers that gives the impression at least of being thick, smallprinted, and tiresome if not entirely, unappealably official—still they’ve been religiously stamped and signed, approved like nobody’s business: nothing registered, he says, apparently He has no number, no designation, whispering crisp quickly to Die once they’ve sequestered themselves in their most modest of suites, with all tips paidout, shades drawn, door locked with the radio on, so as to buzz their conference from any who’d pry: He’s wanted dead, Gelt says, but only by authorities on the Most High, orders direct from the Sanhedrin, Shade himself; lowerlevels have instructions only to turn Him over, ascend Him upstairs. An orchestra chokes. And then come the sermons.
Must’ve entered on a false passport, says Die in complimentary smoking-jacket falling open, exposing his hairless, smallnippled chest; he’s lying on his fourposter, canopied in black, originally topped with the taxidermied head of a grandly shot stag whose eyes, which are glass, he’d suspected of hiding surveillance cameras, microphones, or both, and so had the head ripped from the wall, now hugged under an arm, deantlered. Or, he says, maybe He’s paying His way through, if He can afford it, if He isn’t too cheap. How hard is it to be here illegal, unaccounted for, off the books—that’s the question He should be asking Himself. More like: is anything at all illegal here, eins, zwei…and will anyone ever be called to account?
First thing’s first, though; He’ll be dealt with later, needs be. In order to Polish them off, they all have to be first trained, fistragged then spit: chugged over the landscape, locomotived with cause on back to their old homes, belated, the Kowalskys returned to Polandland as the Kowalksis, neighbors there as they’d been Over Here to the Wisnowskis late of North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, what’d been Illinois, now once again Wiś nowski, you know them, moved back into their houses, their perpetually disarrayed modest flats located in the quote old historic centers unquote, packed in a million tight along
with the families that’d usurped them; others, and don’t ask how, we have our methods, their addresses, yours, know from whence everyone came…what’d you think the Library’d been for, goes the thought, such intensive genealogical genius—sent, shipped as damage refused back to the graze of their lamed horses, their stables, their sootdarkened woodenshacks ever further east, further paled, empty for generations it’s been; fires in the hearth, eternal flames, as if history’s been waiting all this time for return, for itself. A facility sprung up outside Camden, Joysey, a magnet for the Tristate, then they’re packed off to the Continent aboard an ancient fallingdown skyshort aeroplane struggling for lift out of Newark. And from there, no one survived. Others soon sprang up everywhere, Canada, Mexico, Americas Central and South, and every flight landed Here, lands—this whole land, its lands, their hemisphere entire, made an enormous, ostensibly infinite Whereverwitz, a Whywald, Nohausen. How, it’s too hard. How, the corrupt, corrupting, commentary, I’m sure. The best and the brightest newly Affiliated lawyers in the world, hard-tushed hardballers all, are initially consulted for free, then retained at cost, to make sure everything’s kosher, that all the ink’s pure and that each binding letter bears its proper ornamentation. Menschs of the conscienced Cloth are rolled back into bolts, stored to mold until the paperwork comes through; their mouths shut with red tape, fingers and hands, too, needle and thread, warehoused for another yet another delay, which has first been scheduled, then rewarehoused, only to be rescheduled again: They the newly Affiliated go and rekindle the whole of the old Garment District to shvitz out the uniforms, largely piecemeal patternwork except for those of the Elite, you know who you are, Singers spooling overtime into night, the darkening lapels of sky collaring closed, silver pips, litzen and ribbons, badges and trim the red of their blood. After they come for the merely clothed, those who are housed, too, they can’t be too far behind: when the hotels go overbooked, Affiliated architects, contractors unto subcontractors, lowly subsubs owing favors to it seems every zoning board president brother-inlaw to ever deface with concrete and cement the turned cheek of the planet, they’re drafted to salary, set to work on the barracks; with layout wall-to-wall, mounted multiunit entertainment systems, hometheaters sounding in surround, minibars, minifridges, the ganze amenities, for the money that is, everything they’d ever expect and at the bare minimum, at least for those traveling Class, every solace basely afforded; lonely housewives/parttime interiordecorators do up even the No Class barracks in differently attractive combinations of mocha, peachish, and a very bright teal; newly landscaped oaks line every perimeter…
Thanks, but how’s the question, how are they killed, that’s what we want to know. For the record, I mean, for the books, History 101—not that we get off on that stuff…but there’s no need to whitewash, delouse, purify, there’s been no call to talk down, we’re all adults here—all the Unaffiliated, those who didn’t voluntarily, of their own accord, up and Affiliate, too?
Oy, you didn’t hear it from me.
There are drownings of aeroplanes downed is how, no way out north or south, east or lost, Ost. There’s only up in the air, then down in the ground.
How they’re immersed in their own blood’s how—that of the youngest saved up, stored in gigantic underground tankards for use in Passovers to come.
How, the ten plagues litany how; they’d cut open bodies still living, then stuff a live frog (alternatively: locusts, or a bevy of firstborn mammalian male beasts), down into the innards, stitch up the poor schmucks again, cauterize, burn, the frog to hop around under the skin, it’d rot then, and soon the patient would rot, too, patience, right in the arms of the greatest Affiliated doctors the world has to offer, ordered, then paid, to withhold treatment. Research. Observe. Or else—experiment your hearts out, or theirs; sphacelate, necrose; do what you will, you’re the professional…
How, too, the methods of an older age have been proven, still are: gas and ovens and air and less air then lack of air, fire. Smoke billows from the chimneys of the Unleavened Bakery—and then, the ash snows, the winter of winter. And the transports, they keep coming and coming, only coming—all day everyday, except the Sabbath, which they’re all ordered to understand as Saturday, is Saturday, are conditioned to the calm of its Shabbos, upon which even the mass death would rest for a light’s worth of life, to be spent sanctified at what has to pass for their leisure: Friday nights roasting Hebrew Nationals® (sponsoring) over the open fire, wieners stuck on a stick wrapped in pareve marshmallows, too, they’re holding shiralongs, swapping ghosts, reminiscing themselves unto morning, free from muster. As the sun would set the next day they’d make lineup, to make their weekly payments: room & board, the last installments on their life insurance, extending their policies through next Shabbos with money their Guards would shylock them at an interest that’s damn near fascistic.
Don’t worry, though…it’s all to be found in the informative placard you’ll find in the seatpocket in front of you.
In the unlikely event of an emergency, says Doctor Tweiss to his seatmate, his twin, apparently, I’m responsible for this exit.
And you have a problem with that? asks the other Tweiss slapping his twin away from their armrest conceptually shared.
How am I qualified? he slaps him back, I didn’t ask to be seated here.
How are we qualified for anything?
I didn’t ask to be here.
What’s that supposed to mean—you didn’t ask to be seated?
I never asked to be born.
And we’re all out of time…says the other, nu, we’ll pick this up next week—if there’s to be a next week, for them, a tomorrow for any of us…
Inevitably, by dint of their atheism, their agnosticism, what should they call it, this their refusal to convert, stubbornness, pride, inability or unwillingness let’s say to get with the paradise paradigm, they’re on an aeroplane themselves: nearsightedness on their part not only an ocular condition, though each is partially blinded in half of an eyemask they’re sharing, their shoes sheathed in barfbags, whitegripping knuckled their armrests, those separate, and often both of them at once at the armrest in the middle so that they’re unconsciously holding hands; they’re, they won’t admit it, but they’re scared out of their goddamned minds…only hoping, hymn, waiting vaingloriously, for the powers of the Garden to spring them, thinking it’s impossible that this should happen to us, do you know who I am, who we were; thinking, too, if privately though, under the pride, each to his own, and his own personally unlistening God how they’re saying silently over and over again, God, we should’ve listened to Minnie, I told you so, Doctor Tweiss says to the twin of his mind, we should’ve listened to Minnie, I so told you, says the other Doctor Tweiss to himself, too…Minnie who’s living quite safe and happy and all’s good just now, thank you very much, no complaints: a belated Mazel Tov to you and yours is called for Minne who, I’m sorry of course I meant Miri whose God He’s quite foremost in her life as of late, hovering just a hair above her reddened wig or hat the one with the redribbon and feather, a pool-eyed, unnaturally gingy Miri the rabbi’s wife, this rebbetzin recently married into the Dushinsky, formerly Seele, dynasty of what’d previously been Central Ohio, wholly occupied visiting the sick, attending mostly to the souprelated, shoemending needs of what’d been Cincinnati’s direst poor. And so they’re not All here, but most are: those who’ve refused to Affiliate for provide your own stubborn, stiffnecked, pigheaded, sowhearted why—ingathered, but only after being given ample opportunity to afford their release for the price of a soul, what we’re asking: an angel’s sale at a devilish discount; exiled, though only after being given those famously public three chances in which to convert, wishful thinking (a personal stipulation of Shade’s that’s lately earned him the loyalty of the Abulafias; themselves safe for now—but ultimately not to be spared), then taken for a tour of othering’s origins, and the origin, too, of their own deaths, of death itself, the Continent’s chosen export…in orde
r that they should know what opportunity they’ve forsaken, what history they’ve foolhardily refused, shirked, shunned, in favor of fidelity to what—explain it to me.
This is their arrival. Again. They’ve thrown handfuls inside their suitcases—stuffed them…they’ve chalked their suitcases, allowances of one per person unless you’re prepared to, and can, pay for your excess—this limit though not inclusive of any garmentbags, carryons, and toiletrycases, one per person as well; they’ve stuffed themselves, also, with itineraries and with reservations numbers: too many numbers this trip to remember, none of which, though, is to be their date of return. Then, groggy from the flight, lagged and on empty, they’re linedup two-by-two, with some of them to the left, others to the right, to be stripped of their names upon their identification with those of the passenger manifests, the arrivals platform yelled through with a language of mispronunciations, corrections to, corrections to corrections, again—then, to be given a stripping number, yet another, who can remember, who can’t, and they wait.
Funny, you don’t look Unaffiliated…or so these darkuniformed, imperious Officials joke at their foldingtables, just past the baggageclaim, the signage for. A Mister & Misses Pigger pass through, manage a parting wave behind them at what’s their names, from Sunnyvale, Sunnydale, Sonny I forget, husband #4675-89, wife #4675-90, whom the Piggers had talked to the entire flight across two seats and an aisle. At a check in desk halfway around the world, the globe this destination shares, too, at a desk resembling in all of its details the receptiondesk here, both of them made of the same materials, in the same nowhere and on the same day (they’re from the Garden, bought before the fire as a government favor, repurposed to the present), the attendants had been supplied with bags of coal, amply: each passenger of a given sample Group, and each plane a Group, had had a lump stuffed up into him, into her; shifting on their seats, in transit, they’ll squeeze these lumps into service, ensuring mostly unoccupied bathrooms this flight, and centuries of constipation; that is, if only they’ll survive, which is unlikely, and then…diamonds—which are yours to keep, an attendant reminds them over a loudspeaker, until.