by Joshua Cohen
Are you following, the Guide asks, any questions?
How [much is this]?
How [much is] this?
How [much] is this?
As you can imagine, everything’s been thought out well in advance, all problems have been solved for them, already—save that of language, which is unthinkable, which is unsolvable, irresolvable, what, I don’t know the word…
Good Morning/Good Day [afternoon]/Good Evening/Good Night—excuse me, do you observe afternoon…afternoon, can you say afternoon, can we say that—is there even any afternoon here?
No speak __________________
And no light.
A resolution, though, has emerged: it hasn’t been offered, only recognized, and in public (it’s been around since the very beginning). It’s money, many say, that money renders language meaningless, makes it peripheral if not unnecessary, for the pleasure of purists alone. Money speaks for them, for us, more exactly and more fluently than does anything else. No speak, pay me. I don’t understand, I’ve busted, gone broke. Here, the stores for the Tourists are invariably small interests, smalltimed husband and wife handlers their shopworn concerns hustling a double as restaurants and drinking establishments, extensively understocked: ten or so dusty cannedgoods, their provenance as obscure as their contents, if any contents at all, spaced at uneven but you can bet (a gambling parlor’s in back) exactly surveyed intervals along the rickety shelves; whereas stores for the Employees, invariably tenanting underground, are stocked like you couldn’t believe, with the newest merchandise imported available, the shiniest and most desirable that their new paychecks could ever afford. Browsing on their way back to their hotel (which is in a building formerly known as the Castle), the Lays are ignored by the Employees they pass, and those they’re actually scheduled to encounter as they pass, ignored except for the latter’s encountered litany of approved snide glances, appropriately angry sneers, willfully obscene textbook gestures, an entire repertoire of unspoken derision (in passing). I [want to purchase] this, phrasebooks Misses Lay holding up something or other, and the shopkeeper laughs: everything’s for sale except that’s what he means, and so she picks up another object, yet another thing selected and she waves it around; everything’s for sale except that, too; there are currencies within currencies she soon realizes, languages within languages, and misunderstanding abounds: anything you want or need is exactly that that’s not available, if only today; tomorrow might be different, come back then; feign disinterest, pretend disgust; anyway, who has the money or time. As they leave, out past the slovenly benched menschs and wenches employed to smoke and drink the day down—in a frenzy of folkdress, every national costume conflated: ledered in hosen, dirndled in tracht, alongside sarafans and kosovorotkas—they’re saluted from across the unlit space with toasts and flicks of ash that might be mocking, or vernacular love; to sidestep the owl feaked on a gauntlet left by the end of the bar, pecking at the foam of a beer or on the crumbs of a sausage or roll; to wind their way around a miniature bear, the bartender/shopkeeper’s pet, unmuzzled and up on two legs standing to beg for another shot, just one more, on a stool of only one leg, which falls from underneath it for the animal to gnaw planks from the floor—it’s a rug now…then, finally to nimble over the Drunk, passedout in the doorway, mind your step, and how he’s the Mayor, too, whom they’d forgotten they’d met just earlier in yet another capacity.
Outside, their Guide gathers them together again, then leads on: a lot nextdoor, in which neighbors are employed to argue goodnaturedly, next to a lot in which neighbors are employed to argue not so goodnaturedly: they’re each selling the other their daughters, their wives, their wifedaughters with breasts like umlauts over buttocks like vowels, they’re uxoriously unloading, renting out the loving labor of their tractorhorses, leasing that of their avuncular sons; the Lays are hurried past (they’ll be late even for their strongest reservations, is why, hold my hand), the Laychocks, the Laycocks, the Laycox, the Laydens, and Layes, and whoever L’s else as their Guide persists in umbrellaing out sites of a General Interest, often not as much providing information as merely reciting the facts to them directly from plaques: everything’s been labeled, of course, every property, every house, shack, field, outhouse, destabilized stable and nationalized fence, every square and alley and courtyard, every brewery/winecellar, smithy/whorehouse; there are donation plaques on just about all: This Tub Was Donated By Rabbi & Rebbetzin Mordechai Rockafella; This Trough, and yadda; This Fountain; This Pump; This Bird (oy, so they put a plaque on a familiar bird, flying low) Has Been Donated By The J.P. Morgen & Rabinowitz Co.; everything fixed up, reinforced, all foundations set firm, all gloss removed, then reapplied, glossedover again, two coats, thrice colorless now, façades restored, insides dusted with dust, aged to a perfect decay…
Onto the Castle, impressively converted, remade a hotel, five yellowstarred. At their arrival, the Sandersons’ suitcases are ported up to them: up the hill, its stairs spaced widely for the hooves of horses hauling around the slope; these mounts mounded high themselves, humping duffels and trunks over such prettily landscaped terraces—the other luggage is on wheels, though, and tiedoff to the tails of these rides, such a racket…stepping over the bridge over the moat then into the courtyard where baggage’s offloaded for staff, who burden it up a staircase unwound, torn open to the elements, flush with slush; up one ripped wideopen turret of twelve piercing the sky without flag (though it’s already too dark to be sure). A bellhop takes his tip, a weddingring, hers, splits it setting and stone with the concierge who’s informing on him. Rooms are pleasant, airy; taxidermied trophies antler over the kingsized; everything’s been prepared, immaculately: marble scrubbed, galleries gleaming with polish.
It’s charming, Mister Sanderson says out on his balcony, facing the city cankered below. He’s slowly understanding how to be guided: Charming, his wife’s pronouncement upon arrival, she’s right—he can’t fault her, just follow. Polandland, despite itself, its history, the appleweight, the wasting welter of years, seems untouched, lit from an initial lapse, the first Gardened Fall: everything in a gorgeous state of disrepair, slow decomposition, almost organically, as if it’s living with him, breathing within him, to soon breathe no more, soon to die…it goddamned better be—charming, Mister Sanderson says in his throat, know what I paid: the most expensive accommodation in town, nothing less for his honeymoon, theirs, his wife inside, his relatives already asleep next door then across the hall (the grandparents will have to cope with courtyard views, sorry). Mister Sanderson flicks snow from his parka, returns to his room to lay himself out on the bed like he would tomorrow’s outfit, next to his wife, who’s under the covers snuggled with a leaflet found in a drawer of the nightstand.
What’s so interesting? he asks her, on our honeymoon, too, darkened above and in appearance less honeyed than milked of its meaning, more like a coin with which to call home, her family who’d converted, parents, they’re always (worried) awake…but her, she’s already asleep, and he’s exhausted just thinking of waking her: they’ve done so much today, so much more to do, too, not enough, and tomorrow, if that. He kisses her on each eyelid’s veil, lifts the leaflet from her hands, it’s a menu: roomservice, it offers, and him thinking why not, a surprise; he picks up the receiver, dials 0, it’s picked up, put on hold with Mendelssohnian muzak, he’s picked up again then quietly orders a Wedding Night Package, For One, advertised as You’ve Never Known So Romantic A Special—and please, he asks, do me a favor, knock soft. He rises to throw water on his face, on his return to the bedroom goes to make sure his passport’s still with him, in his pants pocket like always, expected, he’s nervous, it isn’t, remembers: how they’d confiscated it earlier, that and their marriage certificate. He sits down in a chair that’s older than wood, Louis the Worst King its style, worries himself removing his shoes amid a sagging of joints. Then, an attendant knocks, opens the door himself, wheels in a live carp in a flute of freshwater set alongside a flask of VSO
P, mashke, it’s what they call whiskey, their brand; he raises a finger to his lips as the aged attendant wheels the fish directly to the clubfooted tub, knobs the water on cold then emerges to hand him a knife, handlefirst. Mister Sanderson rises to tip him his ring this time, and their last; the attendant shuts the door slowly as Mister Sanderson turns, trips over the luggagerack, falls over himself toward the wardrobe, opened, his grasping hands falling hangers a heap to floor. Star, how she sleeps through anything. Bless her, he’s crying. He sits in the chair again, straightbacked to attend to the flask, nips this abstainer (fresh habits, fresh fates), shuts his eyes to think of her not lying here but standing alongside him again, though not gowned, unfortunately veiled with his slicker, the ceremony at the aeroport’s chapel and there its bargain chaplain who didn’t know Jesus from the schmuck who’d betrayed: thinking, too, there’ll be other nights, not many of them, they should pray, not if it means waking her, though, and so he goes to turn on the television to maybe divert himself with the image, its mute, haven’t lazed with one of these in a while, and suddenly how there’s this vast mechanized voice, arrived in their room as if an angel unmodulatedly manifest, hearken the shrill revelation of its graceless announcement: Polandland Is Proud To Offer Its Guests Two Wake Up Options Polandland Is Proud To Offer Its Guests Two Wake Up Options Polandland Is Proud To Offer Its Guests Two Wake Up Options Polandland Is; he turns the thing off, picks up the receiver again at 0 and waits through the Purgatory of organswelled Hold to order a rooster for 0700, wondering if it’s early enough; there’s so much to do, so little time, and let us say—Amen…amen.
Tourists are only required to attest to the Land, to acknowledge its place in memory proper, once lost since regained through that loss: destruction destined from the beginning of creation, which itself came from an ever greater destruction…no, what’s only required’s their presence, that and their money, nu, always welcome, admission with interest compounded every hour on the hour after sunset for those who might choose to sample the night-life that only gets going after Curfew (it’s rumored—with appropriate permit, which is unobtainable, that and a notarized letter of transit offering safe conduct to the bureau at which such permit might be denied, if they’re open, if ever), admission advertised to guilt as a reparation, or restitution—this debt owed, snowed collected, their lives, sunk static in sleep, which is white without dream: surveillance’s offering a vision of blue skies over blond. And then—as if on the timer of the divine, here it is, your personal rooster. Cawing crow. A blood dawn—the sun’s desecration of its host, the horizon. As if to remind him, Mister Sanderson checking, consulting the itinerary printed as the front and only page of Polandland’s daily and only newspaper, punctually slipped through the draft of their door: it seems a Libel’s scheduled for 0900, hymn…which well’s long been mapped—they have two hours to kill, if you’ll pardon…though slicha’s what they say, meaning zeyt moychl.
On the Sabbath, no one’s allowed in, and on no day is anyone allowed out.
Take it easy, enough.
On Weekdays and Sunday, everything’s open dawn to dusk, beyond that into smoke into air (on request), that’s long been explained: how the Groups revolve, depart for their selected schedule by times TBA, how it’s all always repeated again…but of course, the Guide goes on, during the day, regular opening hours, there are still a handful of places, just a few, really, designated offlimits; this is for your own safety, please understand; we’d hate for inquisitiveness to interfere with your experience here: certain cafés and libraries, that theater and concerthall, this park, this garden, this phonebooth, that bench, the westbound monorail, then the monorail eastbound, too—whatever you’re unsure of be sure to ask, of yourself. Those aren’t noted on the map, of course, avoidance is up to them, rather it’s a basic measure of selfcontrol, curiosity’s suppression, a modicum of delimitation’s denial; it’s up to their paranoia, we’re saying—and as long as we’re at it, their Guide repeats herself quickly, there’s one last rule you should know (contingency comes when it comes—how we all have to keep inventing maniacally to keep up with the real); this the most important, keep it in mind: you are not allowed not to have fun, she brightens for this, but artificially, you’re not allowed to not enjoy yourselves, or at least learn from this, an education, explore us, discover yourselves. In the script. Remember, we’re here for you. Ask us anything. Except that. It’s experience’s absolution, it’s wild. Total immersion. Meaning, a mess. Also, strangely, but this they’d been told at the facilities before being mustered to the aeroports, then off: all species are welcome in Polandland, your pets are ours; except dogs, they’ve been explicitly forbidden, though certain streets have been littered with their droppings, dreck wedged smeared between cobbles, at many doorways, too, atop specified stoops, and barking’s to be heard at all hours of the day into night: apparently, Management has their turds imported from overseas, and employs specialized droppers to secrete these foul piles throughout Polandland during the darkest hour of sleep; reel-to-reel barking’s piped in as well—and in wells, down and distorting, up from a gutter of speakers also occluding the mouths of every statue, reverberant under every sewergrate, a low rumble. And finally, so that nothing should distract: smoking’s actually encouraged, and snuff, too, pinches of tabak handed freely around, as is imbibing from open containers of overfermented kvass, vodka, slivovitz, an assortment of schnapps widely available, vice included in the price, that on their immoderate heads—in public, whenever, whatever you want: l’chaim, l’chaim, you’ll probably need it.
Once deloused and uniformed for the day, the Sandersons walk a botched hip downstairs together to the Castle’s courtyard then toward the Banquet Hall, to break their nightly fast in the continental style, with free refills on hope, coffee or tea with your choice of juice. An hour later, they make their way to the lobby, to join a handful of others just waiting around: some are with kinder, some are with parents, others are parents and kinder themselves; they’re flipping through pamphlets “evilly communicated” (badly translated) on purpose, stapled reams listing optional offerings, a candlelit tour of the catacombs, a river booze cruise late afternoon; some are talking, others asking yet even others to take images, initiatory in the mysteries of what to press where, the button click when and then, wind: not that they’d ever have the opportunity to develop these photographs, movies or memories, to share them with loved ones, in slides, projected upon eyes and their livingroom screens—to mount them in albums, framed on the wall or for the mantel shelf in the hall, pass them down generations and further, but again maybe it’s only an initial record that matters, only the semblance they’re after, the image of image.