by Joshua Cohen
Introit then the last days, the latest hours of failing light…thrallthroes we’re talking, dying moment of this Snowdom, final flakes, get yours in: days ending earlier until it’s just late again and still night; darkness upon the face of the ocean’s faces, the land’s, the lands’, makes no difference, round or flat, gray or gone. Die’s face is that face, too, there’s only one of them now: the face of exhaustion, depletion, the victim’s, that of glorified powerlessness, is what we have in mind; having wasted his money and people, resources desourced, insiders made out…beyond all faces, in truth, and all face, genug, gone deep-far into the cold barren world before a mouth said ever a word. Daydayeinu, enough. What’s been has been upended. Houses have come to ruin. Developments have been splitup, homes sundered. Governments displaced, dissent gagged, bagged then thrown curbside, trashed with the other treyf, for export whether to the Third World or best offer.
Unknown, no one wants to know him, not in this House (Hanna, putting her foot down into the baldspot of the carpet, the loose tile, the mound of the pets’ grave, the hole for the hill of the ants)—I forget, what we say: not ever again. Die keeps himself tightfisted, lasthanded, holding onto what yesmenschen left (only his lifers, righthands), no more even odd admirers, weird hangerson: while still meeting payroll, he’s arrived under the escort of Mada, Hamm, and Gelt, four tickets flying quiet, bribed underclass with the last assets of empire; they’ve managed to evade the roundups, so far, the selections, knock wood, wrinklegrained head…greased their way through the iron lines, barbed borders, handing out what little keepsakes have kept—mandate souvenirs, not much, mementos of what might’ve been. How, they’ve managed to keep small, lowprofile, motives suspected unsuspected to even themselves, operating on opportunistic provision, provoked by deathsilence, tolerated amid a pity that Authority allows whether by divine luck, long chance, or short memory; they’re kept only by the merit of sloth, of past friendship, sentiment, nostalgia, allegiance, alliance, owed out of favors—you name it, you’re dead…though such lazy silence, contrary to any flattery they might still lavish upon their mere gettingby, meagerly whether bribed or on credit, it’s not theirs—not to allow them the identification of mission despite how their delusions might entertain…rather it’s for Reb Shade, for him to accomplish his own: don’t humiliate anyone, keep shtum, headlines backpaged, the news demoted to the old left atop a den’s couch whose pillows exhale only the whispers of shadow, indirection, misdirection, the hallways rearranged, the corridors of power redecorated in sophistic earth tones. The order’s made known: not given like Law, it’s revealed as if prophecy, if only in a nod, with a cold wink, or chironomy’s snap: a goahead, give them the rope—and with it let them dig a grave for their graves, six holes deep; let them be taken care of, is what it means, by all means, but privately, negligibly, ignoble this method, this assent understood: nothing to do with us, never happened; I don’t know from what you’re talking, I’ve never even been overseas. A ritual washing of hands, then a wringing to dry, but with what appropriate blessing, which benediction to cleanse. Blessed Art Thou, King of the Unversed, Who Commands Us to Cleanup After Ourselves. Who Minds Us Our Messes. Recalls Us to Tie Up Loose Ends. Blessed Art Thou, though You have commanded us but couldn’t care less, what we’re hoping as we sharpen the knots in our shovels…after all, how is that possible: to kill a goy already dead to them, as He’s been decreed, too. Amen to the end of such questions, though we’ve already forgotten to Whom we all answer. Rest assured, this has happened before.
Die lies pale and swollen, older then ever, years, a week or so unshaven, wrinkly Roman elephant gray.
He lies under the atmospherically canopied coffin that is his bed, under the giving mattress breathing slowly and even, trying to keep hidden, alive.
His toes are numb; his medals are stuffed down his pants.
Mada’s in the wardrobe, face slammed up against its doors, glassed in dust, its wood stabbed to death with figure heavy on the malign…Hamm’s behind the curtains, thick reddened drapery resembling the vomit of widows: he stands a shadow in its fall…lamp—greenglass; hatrack, the wardrobe, a desk—unlit; Gelt’s shut himself inside his luggage, a trunk.
The Hotel Under the Sign of the Hotel’s time has come: just about to descend to table, as it’s been told…they’d heard voices up the stairwell, drafty appetites, and growls, bellhop’s bell going ding dong ding, the church of the frontdesk, its keyspanned communion; then, feet in lockstep, locked boot and heel stepping up the wide spiral, one flight, take a breather. Others say the tip had come from an obliging bird, some say a dove, flown in the window; a note left on the pillow in lieu of sweet nothing, again that nod or wink, the handshake of a bellboychick, the blush of a maid, as arranged. No loudspeaker, no softspeaker, no rustle official, an important announcement misspoken, misheard, even unmissed. Management’s bought off the regime long enough (sheltering foreign journalists, quote unquote independent observers, diplomats, ambassadors, obstreperous officials of every state making last appeals for nationals lost), but now it’s all about omega, about settling accounts: one moon of stay, roomservice every morning each night, a laundrytab, a shoeshine, and don’t forget to tip generous the turndown. Will that be cashiered, or corpsed. Downstairs a mensch in a uniform as tightly bespoke as a spiderweb, preyedover with phosphorescent stars and stripes of a madness seemingly specific only to the highestranking, sighs as if in warning to himself, takes care of their bill with a thick wad of currencies: bills ripped apart then stuck together again piecemeal with the sperm of the stallion, without any thought as to provenance or denomination, old sidelocks ironsided portraits, frazzled beards—then gets a receipt for his superiors, we all have them, even the best of us. Upstairs is still, almost timeless, with most scholars emphasizing the almost, not quite: none to make a run, to head to any embassy’s pearlygated guardhouse drive, ring the bell and stay to amnesty, bring the flowers or wine; there are none left, autonomies, and with the Garden fallen to ashes…there’s nowhere outside the ghetto, nowhere that’s not the ghetto, nowhere open, all’s walled, nowhere new, not even Palestein’s elite: and so Shalom to our brother Arab hordes converted, what nachas we’re shepping the schlep of our baggage to come over and visit, O how you’ve grown! Jerusalem the genital, generational jewel, kvell in peace…the Roses of Sharon risen again, we flock to you now as to honey or eligible sisters, what discounts might you offer, what deals might you make for your kind!
Regarding the occupants of Room Number Six, it’s been related: how they aren’t processed, aren’t to be trained to a camp, and—gedenk gedenk, there’s no time for that: we have schedules for such things, please, playful though they are, timetables based on contingency alone, there are interpretations to respect, goddamnit, adherence to the earth’s spin, you know, deadlines dwindled two-by-two, to one then none and, anyway, it’s quicker without that fuss. Mishegaseous, foolishkeit. Ludicrous. Say what you will still the menschs ascend, they come up tall and slim, fairhaired and eyed, two-by-two in an endless doubled row bowing to double back down the stairs to the lobby; holding their uzis and assaultrifles, Palesteinianmade, like they know what they’re doing, they probably do. Topquality, highcaliber, I can get you a steal. As for the starstriped, pitystripped mensch leading them, let’s introduce: he’s the Austiner Rebbe, Rav Schmearson’s his name, son-inlaw of the Maggid of Rome, a cousin to the Butcher of Bakersfield, the Seer of Waco, the Gaon of South Central Texas. He holds a revolver in a glove said to be made from the hide of his parents, whom he’d sacrificed atop an extemporaneous altar, his sister, itself oblated upon the Polandland plains (which action had earned him his rep, such as it is): it swaddles so well that the hand beneath might as well be holy, Godguided. One of his own sons-inlaw, an iluy known as Tavarish, or the Light of Bukhara, follows to his side, a step behind. This squadron has its orders they’re just following’s the line they’re now leading (less directive than inspiration, makeshifty do: a line they’re butting and cutting, no
respect for its delivery, no respect for its time), up up and winding up the stairs, death to mass on the landing, then wait. The Austiner Rebbe gloves a knock, that most ancient knock, wait for it, knock, knock, knock, a warning as presentation, appropriate, taken as given: this the oldest ritual of late middle night, that of respect tendered to death, the honor due anyone with a door so properly marked with mezuzah, be you prophet, profiteer, or innocent wretch. Inside the room, all seems suicided, spare of heart, stripped to rib…skeletonly tossed with what must follow flesh, a sullied strewing of plots: scuffed luggage, unlaundered clothes, stacks of cash; though humanly empty, it appears, and too much so: the emptiness of them alive more void than that of them in death, is the thought, with an ear hushed to the wood and a nose that’s fit for a key—the Rebbe’s, he’s patient, and stroked. A silence broken only by the treble of their tremble—too, it’s the clocktick, the rattle of the handle, it’s locked. To fit a finger, to try with the other hand, but it’s from the inside it’s locked, and no neysim are left us. The Rebbe takes a step back, gives his nod for the door’s slamming, to be rammed down a trample of Shalom and schlub manners: a not yet sacrificial Ovis aries is led up the stairs, its noisy leash of bare chain passing from mensch to mensch; it’s then muzzled in the right direction, thwacked on the tush with the butt of a gun…to scurry, to scamper: its testicles afling, its wool spattered in dreck then the glint of its horn and the door, it’s flattened down to the floor, hinges ripped from their frame in an explosion of air—they’ve been running the heatingbills way up, as if to prewarm what World’s to Come. A clouding, a balm. Their Rebbe dismisses the ram, kisses at the mezuzah remaining enjambed. He steps into the room, his boots trooping out over the wood, marking each step stiff with a whip of his crop to the thigh; making rigid starkdark paces across the worn planks, he then turns to hold up a hand to prevent his followers from doing what it is they do best, which is following: henchmenschs wait, as if ordered to disorder on the landing; they’re shuckling, jostling one another back and forth they’re whining what they think’s silent suggestion as their Rebbe heels out a chair, hardbacked, from the cedar desk unassuming, and sits down to face the bed barren, settling his crop across his chest as if in the burial of the Pharaoh he’s trying his damnedest here to impression.
Shalom, he says, finally, they’re meeting at last, hello Die, or should I say Keiner or Keyn Or, the Keeper, or whatever you want to be called…takes a schmeck tabak from a pocket’s pouch: it’s an honor to do this in person, I’ll tell you, hand to God, I have nothing but the utmost respect…he sneers deep from his drool, crosses his boots, then goes on: we didn’t want you to be a statistic, a number, a figure, not you, not like the good doctors Tweiss, Abuya, the Nachmachen, not like them. But one thing bothers me (and it’s not my rheumatism, though thank you for asking), if you’d be so kind as to enlighten me, I’d love to know how you people think. Why not accept destiny, that’s what I want to know, fate—why not Affiliate?
I know you’re there, you have to be, this is how it goes down…I had this dream, last night, or the night before last, what does it matter: there were seven beds for seven brothers, a hotel was burning and in the lobby there were cows servicing crows with the faces of inlaws, I think they were mine, that and a droughty famine in Sheboygan, or Oshkosh, or…I know how it all happens, don’t ask, I just don’t get why.
We admit, we had our suspicions…but we knew you weren’t yourself a firstborn once Passover passed. That proved it, sealed your goyishness with the New Year, and, as such, the gates. You’ve been trapped. Cornered. Put to bed. Nowhere left. He scratches at his breath of a beard, tugs payos, waits, takes his hat, all ten gallons of it from his head and leaves it on the desk to bare the yarmulke beneath, which is black and leather, expensive. I’ve been asked, nevermind by Whom, to attempt to save you one last time. You’ll have no further opportunities after this—are we understood…and he rubs the cap down over his skull, the kippah keppied between the eyes as a third eye, negativedark as if omniscient of everything wrong with the room: you’re here, you’re still alive, this I know…
He shpritzes tabakinate spit through his teeth to the floor, no matter, no one has to live here much longer…his mouth, a host of gold caps, dulled with black cud, whose essence is humming, Hatikvah—softly, it’s more for himself.
Enough already, there’s a voice from under the sag as if it’s the fisted talk of a last lost sock—and after all I did for that schmuck, that ingrate, B…
We don’t speak that name anymore, says the Rebbe, He’s not one of us. He’s the only.
I’ll be the first to admit it: we once were misled, a mistake, we relent and repent the required, the slichus and vidui by the minhag most recent, most true, but listen, it’s this…we realized it was our responsibility to further the nation, ours and none others’—not only to keep them, but to keep their memory, too, I mean burning…let’s speak honestly, though, the ninth commandment, I’m told: The millennium was upon us, the whole West was at stake, God was being debased, if not forgotten whether as He, She, It, or ideal, the entire world, you might remember, was going insane…and amid all this, you just can’t let a people like ours come to nothing, and only for power, only for profit—neither of you were to be trusted…
And now you want to destroy Him, the only inheritance left…Die rolls over to face his voice out into the room, hits his head on a spring unwound into nail, improvident, dull, gives a rusty gasp that knocks the frame’s knees, unsteadies the paws upon which everything rests, uneasily: God how He angers you, gets under your skin, on your nerves and not in your veins, no matter how much you suck, graft or grasp; anyway you slice it, I’m saying, He’s in the way, He’s too much the symbol, it pricks, how it hurts—the memory vex: His very existence, it reminds you of your own…
How could He have been an heir, He couldn’t be worthy—He was false, misleading, everything about Him was wrong…Him and not us. Fat glasses with a bad beard and uncultured, unculturable, I suspect, couldn’t get by, get along. Not great with people, do I have to remind?
Illegitimacy’s what I was saying, still is…He might’ve been what we made Him, though as that only half, a mixedmarriage.
What you made Him? bad blood—Shade backed you, then you went and abused privilege, public trust all for bubkiss.
What’s that we’re always told to say? I was only following orders? I was only following orders.
And so, what am I? Chopped liverish, chump?
What do you think I’m doing here, nu?
Hymn, I’ll tell you.
What I’m doing is waiting, patience now patient forever, we’re abiding while biding, call it a multitasked calling, dayeinu, genug. We await the Messiah, the true Moshiach the one and only, any day’s what I’m saying, soon, there’s been talk, soon enough, we’ve been assured, we’ve been blessed by assurance. Many believe His coming will be hastened by your, shall we say…
And if I Affiliate? and of all times he decides now to whisper.
The Rebbe rises, paces step step step over to sit down on the bed, gently, sagging onto the sprawl of his victim.
He asks, does it hurt?
The Rebbe tugs at the frayed fringe of the damask tester above—an overgrown treetop, a mourning mane grown by the dead.
Can I still? to ask a question of heels.
Convert? But you won’t—and neither will you Misters Mada, Gelt, and Hamm, I’ve told you already, I had a dream, all those angels bowing to a sunglassesed calf atop a neon ladder, with its tail a profusion of greenglitter sheaves…gevalt, you should know the procedure by now, how word gets around like a war: we accept only those whose intentions are pure; it’s a doxo-logical paradox: that I had to offer this salvation already nullifies its acceptance…you with me? Given the circumstances, how could I ever regard any atonement as sincere? I’ve got a reputation to protect. Mine, the religion’s, the race’s. Though God, Hashem, might prove better receptive; for your sake, I hope so; good luck, let
me know.
As far as it’s been revealed to me (through these dreams, orders, protocol, the unappealable tie of the hands with a thread of red tape securing the strips of the Law, its mummifying parchment to gag, blindfold then Babel the ears), you’ve been found guilty of propagating a heresy, and your fate in this world, as we can only pray it’ll be in the next, is nothing—or hell, if we so believe in it; I haven’t had that dream yet…we’re still unsure.