by Joshua Cohen
Are we expected to justify—tell me, to whom? They’re here because B’s tongue’s finally finished licking its rounds, has only just returned to the city, to be unveiled tonight and enshrined, on permanent exhibition and in its original, restored reliquary of I promise, it’s gold, housed under a lone spotlight, in a furthest gallery yet to be opened…beyond the doors, which are huge, castiron monstrosities, like mouths, as if the breasts to a giant’s coat, Gog, Magog, Goliath, the noted developer Barry Silberfels depicted towering over his wife nèe Phyllis Stein and their twin kinder Stephen and Steven—the doors, stylized with carvings, imaged commandments, their symbolism obscure only to the blind or the braindead, don’t do this, do do this, Thou shalts and not and please, just don’t ask: in a wild wind they’re flung open to the street, the collection aired to the darkness, the stairs that lead up then into the marbling heart, to the flight of guests arriving at yet another destination never their final—ascension, verticality, that’s called mobility, babe; past the staircase’s landing, halving the flights, guarded by two templar lions chained tightly to rails, their paws splayed without claw, they’re rolling twinned globes, being ridden by agents, barebacked undercover as angels twirling swords on temporary fire…past them, fleeing from the flash and the ask, they’re still pouring in: curators and docents and amateur experts, the critics with their papers and pens in their defamation suits, slurry ties, arm-in-arm money-lenders with their lent, philanthropists two-by-two, alongside their beneficiaries even betterdressed, beaming, these schemers and scammers charitably deducting their rentals tonight; more guests billed as either surprise or special or both, personalities you might know from, remember or recognize, roast and toastmasters extraordinaire—this place, it must be making a fortune; they’ll museum the world three times over with what they’re taking in: fivethousand shekels per plate’s being charged, endowments gathering interest forever, sponsorship’s accumulative assurance ad æterna, the Paradise that is the Curator’s Circle, the Purgatory of Sustaining Membership slander, whatever you want to be, we’ll go ahead and give it a name; amazing, tomorrow they’ll be turning donors away. Menschs flood the lobby, make coatcheck, strip rubbers, lose umbrellas then locust the cashbar, ordering vodka with Jaffa OJ for their wives headed straight to the restrooms to face fresheningup: primp and preen with powder the puffs of their noses, redlabel mashke with Coke (O/U, by now even K’s good enough) for themselves. Free Palestein! with every large cup of coffee! A Mazel Tov orgy, boutonnières poking bosoms, the glint and stick of starredflag lapelpins, handshakes, onehanded, twohanded, hugs turning to kiss one for each cheek, two for them both then the lips; let me admire you twirls, looking the new wife or girlfriend onceover, up and down, check the gums, turn around now, bend at the waist; some are talking standing talking then moving to mingle, sidestep network, drop and hint, while others’ve already taken their placecarded seats at tables placed around the periphery then further in toward the stumbleworn inner stairs; their hands in their laps they’re waiting for what, some sort of honorable mention, another award, a keynote unlocking, the idea, justification, the reason, excuse: save it for later; first’s the gala, then the appeal; they riffle their programs—and only then, the unveiling…the Tongue.
A moment, please. In this whole huge horrible marble world in which love might be lost but its clay still remains—are there any exhibits, any objects, anything at all I’m talking save the Tongue…in this entire terrible world of stone, upon this lonesome rock thirdsunned, are there, where are they then, the artifacts, I mean, the pictures hung on the wall…statues to walk around and around again and around, following their flaws: a horror, monstrous it’s a profile all the way around; there’s no substance, it’s terrible, there’s no real…all those vast empty spanses expected and then, meaning: Rape of the Deserving by Apollo, of Europa, taken for granted by Dionysus, among others, Der Blaue Reiter heading east over Die Brücke, anything else for the chiaroscurious, maybe Selfportraits of Madonna & Child, one by him one by her how they’re hung as a diptych, side by pierced side…sacra conversazione set in shepherd’s green pasture against mountainside alla prima, what about The Circumcision of Christ, Three Kings veiled impasto, lives of the saints in infinitriptych, altarpieces in which each panel of three folds into three, those three then folding into threes of their own and then, tripling infinitely within a frozen forever, Last Supper Last Judgment natura morta, a likeness of St. Olympias done in the school of Rembrandt’s sfumato, a saint orphaned, too, who she died rich in exile in Nicodemia, and whose Roman feast day’s the day of the night of His birth, that of St. John of Martha, then, or of St. Florian, whoever how it doesn’t much matter, they’re all dead anyway and yet remembered, too, with that same gild hanging over their heads, framed with holiness, touch them, you’ll wither—any graven images is what I’m asking? No, only the Tongue…how everything else’s in private collections: the profanities had been confiscated earlier, way back in the chaos, were then snatched up illegally or—hanging frontside toward the wall for the crying, the indulgence of anonymous bids—for nothing at auction and are presently on show in the grandiose homes and offices of those who’d afforded them and their risk…
Only hours to Opening, the exceedingly fey he’s probably a fayg partyplanner (hired here in return for his silence regarding the ongoingly if slowly investigated arson of the Island, it’s said, that old Xmas Eve), he camps around, this way then that, the chicken they’re serving tonight with its head cut off, and, God, the caterers, they’re too late. More like gliding on the floors, which have just been polished, in slippered feet then his socks: he’s limp wrists, sighs, and eye rolls, in a symbolic blue bekishe (Zaiden, velvetpiped, a twelvebutton customjob, with superadded pink triangle satin appliqué just for fun) fixed with a white gartel—blue & white, the color scheme of the evening, their lives—flapping in the wake of his hustle; he’s lisping a shriek loudly, hurling lallations, his lambdacist orders; desperate pleas without please at his staff of lackeys, assistant and attendant, who relay all demands to their own assistants and attendants, who in turn pass along the frustrated rage, down the hierarchy then onto whom, the last repository of their nerves and their angst—the interning unacceptable, here just to get a little experience as the party responsible, he’s not even getting paid, whoever’s son he is or the friend of a friend. Tonight, it’s an Eden motif, paradise is the theme, Pardes, that’s why it’s so much, too much, all this work, you think the prelapsarian comes easy, come again, broaden your mind with the budget: the idea being to transform the lobby interior of the Museum into as much of an oasis as possible, as paradisiacal as resources allow; fourrivered, duly labeled the Tigris and the Euphrates, the Pishon and Gihon, surrounded by palms, real trees then fake ones allocated, too, when an emergency Miami shipment went delayed and then lost. A Garden…at least the appletrees have arrived no problem, down from Upstate then potted packed into the fray, the forbidden Tree the tallest and widest, under which the fayg meets with his waitstaff, foreigners gathered around its trunk for instruction and pep: to encourage guests to gather from this orchard at will, take their pick; the branches will be restocked with produce throughout the proceedings. An hour before doors he’s going totally manic, in a fit, an outright conniption: they’re ready for any creation, prepared for any fall, as expected, as has been amply budgeted and contracted for, but something’s missing, someone’s late, not quite right…boss, ¿qué pasa? what’s wrong? an attendant asks the scream echoed amid the lobby’s vast vault; a moment later he’s in tears on the phone dialing frantically, like where the hell’s our goddamned snake, where the gehenna’s the handler at, listen, is this the Bronx Zoo—I’m hanging up if I’m not hearing hiss…
Not that anyone’ll notice…why, there’s just too much going on, are too many people, person pressing pushing up against personality, straining to keep their manners good, their faces fixed pleasant: dressed impressed and to, their dresses swishing up against the pleat and flat of their pant
s, folds to tails, striped, starred, ringed, then bound with necklaces chained of bracelets. Necks low, hems high. Anything but ashamed of their naked. Here, they’re poised to point, their lips pursed to whisper within the tomblike calm of the Museum’s dark cool, amid the wellventilated, recirculated air, this spring garden, a milder jungle—to live landscaped amid such drastic swoops almost demanding of awe, the ornamentation sinuous atop the hard lines, the austere, lean geometry, the public weight scaled of fruitbasket and bird…everyone focused, on point, kept on topic: on the preservation, on memory, anticipatory of what, a holy vessel to be expertly processed, labeled for ease of digestibility (though no one’ll eat it—how could they even begin to pronounce its manyclaused bracha?); but the manners, they can’t last forever, pleasantries live only halflives, remember, these are the Affiliated we’re talking about, you know the type and so soon, talk in its most or maybe least stupefying varieties breaks out, comes echoing loudly from whisper to shout; there’s fartalk, neartalk, eyetalk, nosetalk, sidetalk in all of its multiloquent geographic manifestations: Upper Eastsidetalk, Upper Westsidetalk, Westchestertalk, Joyseytalk, the murmurings bebabbled of Greenwich on down to Red Bank…smalltalk, largetalk, tabletalk, thattalk, thistalk, overtalk, under-talk, nthtalk, xtalk—a gossip apocalypse, a pack of lips…a salivary fleck-flock, a herding of mouths—this mass kibitzing, this metakvetch, orbits of noise gathering around the assemblage, to ring, planetary gas, puffing the drapery, wilting the appletrees despite the fayg’s fervid shpritzing; guests (they’ll never forget they once had been guests) discussing weighty matters, doing deals of Creationary proportions, spying steals of Biblical scope: Numbers, Numbers 2, Numbers 3, names dropped then picked up, dusted off, returned to Sender again whether Mr. or Mrs., this is our second & final attempt…linnerplans preempted by only a sneeze, a mere cough, matches handshaked on and off and then on again as offhandedly as possible as empires plot themselves then disintegrate to dust all around them; seismographs altared upon the floor register the insistent stomping of feet, the whole mess standing, shuffling, rising, sitting, squeezing hearts’ tight on loveseats, the spinechill wombcold of low tallowtoned marble benches, blue & white slipcovered sofas rented out for a mint down, hauled in for the occasion only to wear and then, stain, they’re pressed against walls, pushed up against doors…standing high up on chairs and on tables, how they’re speechifying, offering jeremiads, ezekielisms, and isaiahtirades, exhorting from chairs stacked one on the other or set atop tables or stacked and set thereupon both, how they’re leaning up against the balcony’s railing draped blue & white, too, in the standard of the U.S. of Affiliation, show your respect.
And above it all, the klezmiros, the music: there’s a piano quintet installed on the marble loggia presently givingout a specially orchestrated version of the Kol Nidre, Opus number does it really matter, from the Yom Kipper liturgy, this string quartet loaned out from the concertmastered ranks of the New York Philharmonic following their shockhaired pianist conducting con moto with thrusts directed seatward and brutal, the rise and fall of his tush: a lilt carried upon the cellist’s vibrato, the lefthand tremolos of the piano…the music comes tenuous, energetic but nervous, shaky, as if a touch off, a mite stressed, stuffily muffled, gagged to a sour still in the throat; then, in lowing fortes and high sforzando wails, how they’re shaking, they’re rattling the bartender’s bottles at the temporary bar, just for the night, draped in the same scheme of things…waitresses drop troughs left, right through the feverish shvitz, the competing blur of talk, ganze gossip, kopdreyenish, a lashon hara from mouths round in hora; lightly moustachioed waiters, their yarmulkes must be tapeddown, glued on, ladling out cupfuls runnething over, flutes and splits of champagne, and mensching, too, the vorspeizen trays, making sure, as ordained by Shade, to give everyone the option of saying the appropriate blessing before their indulgence (placards are made available printed with the prayers in the small scribblings of two different tongues): they nibble away at their benedictions, then partake of the healthily blessed…nu, the Tongue? a fat lady shrieks, what about the Tongue, the preview, the relic, that’s what we paid for; Tongue Schmongue, says her gin-rummy partner (or that’s just what she’s been drinking), you look like sooo gorgeous, will you just look at yourself, I just can’t believe it, hiccough…a woman whose dress she’s stepping on asking then if she’s heard the one about the, is drowned out when she’s elbowed into the fountain, the one to which the it’s labeled Tigris again flows, shouldered in headfirst and so the joke that’ll distance it All, just lost, stompedupon dress ripped off in her fall, shreds of exposed flesh, scandalous to love it, that and her humiliation, too, and they do; nudged to a laugh by a middleaged urologist-to-the-stars, or that’s just his type, you’d be lucky to get an appointment while still active…lost his wife to the turmoil, she’s here somewhere, he’s sure, though if not, there’s always another, he’s just tired of looking for Her (the vest of his threepiece being buttoned up by the fast fat fingers of a wife never his and hymn, there’ve been three of them now); the woman founders, her highheels fall from her to float, her fingers to linger at fountain’s bottom for shekels loosed, which she fists to the carpet that leads beyond, and then higher…fastened down by brass over the marble to make for footfalls so unconscionably soft, in their wary and panicky stalking of hard culture and symbol—all the way up the stairs to the loggia and its overture, now beginning again without warning: who’s that cellist, anyone know? a woman making breasty headway through the muck, jostling, stepping feet with stilettos without apologizing as if she’d ever, to this waiter she knocks who’s holding a tray of drinks up over his head, how he drops it, missing her must be blessed but splintering everywhere, glistening slivers of glass, chandeliershards catching the last of the light through the windows arched overhead, sloshing slivovitz whether plum, pear, or peach schnapps, frothing remains, bubbly champagne over the carpet, out into the wide grouts between the blocks matched for vein, the marble tombslabs, the gray gravevaults, the still living scattering themselves out of the way of the jeroboams unto nebuchadnezzers’worth, this foaming lacteal puddle forming around him a frown, a reprimand that’s maternal yet firm, the waiter just standing there silent, immobilized, awaiting his punishment, the retribution we’ve paid so dearly to exact: they surround him tighter and tighter, hurl imprecations, taunts and threats, but just as quickly as that begins, everyone’s distracted again, diverted, turns, is turned all around—toward this ruach, doorward, this strangling wind, divine breath on the fresh haircut backs of their necks…and now on their faces turned, too, madeup and puffy with blemish, tannedblack or clearing though surgically cut: with the silence of speed, a swift glide, without creak, crack, or groan, we’re talking greased, maintainence oiled; the doors sweep the halves of a clockface across the mingledulled floor; the cogs to an eternal timepiece, shadows, twohanded, now one, shadow the hour, across the newly finished mosaic that rings the lobby in widening suns (though a mosaic that no one knows, in full, what it is—no one can tell, they’re standing on it, they’re of it—perhaps it’s a rendering of our incomplete Creation). This is the shutting of the doors, the Closing of the Books, the locking of the gates in the offseason, the offhoured latenight to this winter of judgment: the hinges relent, a last shaft of light gives out from the unified draft, a spotlit escape of air and dust, the wind of the weather outside staining across them…swept narrow, thinned to a kiss; and then darkness, total and only: the doors settle, the strait gate presently shuts—and yet, with them left inside.
Where they become the exhibits…and how no one knows, no one understands: they just proceed with their mingling, they talk themselves on, jaw and thrust tongues, as bottles pour out into glasses that clink; ladies in the powder room, which is a lavishly appointed facility, staffed with dour, whispery immigrant attendants hired away from area hotels especially for this evening and now everafter, they offer hot and moist towelettes, perfumes and mints…they the women all pause their ministrations a
moment at the sudden silence—then resume, din, mingling mingle, while their husbands they wait outside, glance at their watches, wait, talk talk, get dragged away, by associates, by acquaintances, business partners, brothers-inlaw, and by strangers, there’s a mensch I’d like you to meet…into discussions, discursions, digressions importuned upon deviant involutions of tangents. Eden’s gates have shut, have locked, keeping them here, fallen within, frozen in time, frozen as time. To live here, to become exhibits themselves, as they’re already exhibits of themselves, and then for themselves, too, exhibited exhibitionists, say: mulling the mulledover forever, ruminating until the food and drink run dry, they’re examining, framing, and posing, appraising the pagelike walls with thumb and with tongue…scratching with questionmarked fingers their heads, then at others’ detailoriented they’re scrutinizing to ever, patronizing patrons, both viewers, the viewed, the subject and its object all talked, compared, contrasted, parsed a rolled tongue into one, and then swallowed: eventually finding their ways out into the far halls, Tonguesearching at first, Tongueforgetting too soon, deep into the shadowy spaces, the attic’s dim ducts and then the underground stairwells of emergency access…the furthest recesses of memory’s muse; the evening running forever late, the world, too, damned, without exit.