Witz

by Joshua Cohen

  He seemed if not at least tired then overly so, swung his watch, hanging his stockings o’er the ledge of the fireplace stuffed with varicose evidences of worry and work.

  O thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder, the young lioncub and the dragonviper shalt thou trample under feet!

  Is’d kissed B, Hanna’d always used words like smooch, smackeroo, how’d she expect me to learn her language like that…had to almost reach up on the tips of his toes to kiss Him and where, on the hot head, some say, upon the fevered forehead, others, lips spreading their pursy unsmiling mark to stretch love’s skin across the head of His loins…a pressure, a taut tingling in the prostate—then left to attend to his wife, their Hanna resting up from her exertions and cooking, the cookingbirth, the usual that she’d say the ush upon that Shabbat almost day, how that strange old liverish mensch, a skinned fatty garbed in warning red and pure white sashed how he’d later found Him left-overstuffed, then talked his way upstairs, upstairs-upstairs and to His room, nudged close, sat on a chair closer, B still diapered in a new white shirt fastened snugly around Him even on the second button of its adjustable cuffs, a pinpoint Oxford of His father’s, which were all of them too small for Him, too tight, bursting the buttons, rips in His torn, everything hanging out O the shame the embarrassment, Talmud says it’s worse than death: mortality, mortification is, and so why’m I raving like this, she asks herself (but she shouldn’t be too alarmed—you know how hard it is to get a Get these days, you wouldn’t believe how expensive, too), the mensch he shuckled a duchen maybe there in his chair, Israel’s up in the room how he muttered a few words more he had to shut his eyes to remember, then got himself up.

  How do I know this?

  As if to ask, what’s red and white and bearded all over…it couldn’t have been him, no, you know, she didn’t even believe in him back when she believed, when she was supposed to—and how what you don’t believe in, it doesn’t exist…back home it’d been Jesus who’d brought them the presents, that infant martyred and not this sorry schlump.

  Yes! she shrieks, forgive her, and finally sits up in bed next to her husband who’s up on his elbow suggesting remedies even more recondite between dictating nistering lists of anagrams, abbreviations, and other obscurities of formal propition, she’s telling him just yes, yes, that’s where I, no, I’m sure of it: he’d walked downstairs…

  Havaleh my mamele, are you alright, say something, sh, don’t talk, don’t strain yourself, relax—you want I should fetch you a glass water, warm you some milk? Don’t tell me, speak up…

  Blood, was it blood?

  I’m not a mindreader, you know…

  But she silences him with a thrown arm and a throwpillow, says to him God to anyone that the mensch, listen, how he crept himself his way downstairs down the stairs a little I think after midnight.

  Hear me out.

  I’d come upstairs to get a drink when the Underground went dry, which believe me that didn’t happen too often.

  Underground where, Halvamind Hava…what are you talking, what’re you talking, you’re talking, still, are you possessed, has a dybbuk swallowed down your throat and’s speaking your tongue?

  No, we met in the kitchen, that’s where we always, it was dark, always it was dark…the only light for memory this the dark of the kitchen where, and listen, that stain in the grout, guilt about my teeth, selfconscious the nick, the nook, the kitchen where Hanna she’s sitting and listen, it’s important, this is earlier, you understand, this was before, and she, how with her yogurtmouth, she’s pouring to me like another one, she said, with her dairymouth, she’d say, another one…like I don’t know whether I can go through with this with another, whether I can survive it, Wanda, him or her, whether I can you know or not handle it, manage, whether or not I can like deal.

  But he wants a son, and maybe baby this one, this’ll be the One—really, like what, if any, am I supposed to offer her in return?

  Israel, he really wants it, but I feel like…some sort of consolation, something Wanda’d thought, like maybe don’t worry, no, sh, not to fret—you’re no enabler, not a milkfactory, no churnerouter of babies…talking like she’s in this fancy schmancy mysticalized trance; the cheap pink curtains, minor defects in workmanship, a steal from the relative of a friend’s relative as always who knows not to ask, weeped around the opened window over the twocar garage and the driveway they swell out into stormclouds—and how I get myself to the cabinet first, she says she goes and opens it wide, that’s where they kept the liquor, high cabinet, you understand after Rubina she once, the highest left one of the two above the bedecked refrigerator, lists, magnets, photos, photomagnets, polarized lists all that dreck and, nevermind, just you listen…

  If it’s liquor you want, a little l’chaim, alright so I’ll go down and kook what we have, Hava, but…

  No, but I open the cabinet, and I don’t know why I don’t become a crazy person and just go shout my kopf off but no, how I don’t, I just open it, go to open it up and my hand how it’s on the handle thingie to the thing and his hand, God, this plumpery witheredly thing, icky with shvitz, and as quick as any random indignity—hear how it just swoops in, scoops up the little flask of schnapps, the only thing in there, the only thing left…

  Schnapps, I don’t believe we have any schnapps, Hava.

  Israel was never a shikker, you understand.

  Israel? How’s your health, you’re feeling well or no, should I go get the doctor or rabbi?

  Yes.

  You want I should disturb them on a night like this?

  No.

  God, tell me what you want, Wanda-Hava Rosenkrantz, anything, anything within limits; it’s only a dream, only a dream, a dream only it’s…

  And then how I let go the handle, she says she grabs onto the tiny bottle, surplus from a cousin’s barmitzvah, and how we struggle for it me and him, we pull back and forth me and him we push, which cousin I don’t know, never did, him tugging this thing, this flask of schnapps we’re wrestling for it with four hands now and he’s strong but he’s old and I’m strong and young then not anymore I pull it hard once and it comes loose from his hands, but I don’t have a hold on it lose my grip and it falls to the floor, shatters all over the place, the kitchenfloors, the tile little shards of glass stuck in a pool inground ocean of thickened red is it schnapps, everywhere just everywhere I stand there just staring at it, though I really should have been mopping it up I just, that’s what I did, my job what happened he just…

  You just, Hava, I’m finished listening.

  And then…

  You know, some people have to work tomorrow.

  You know, for a living.

  I forget…it’s all over now, so long ago, how it’s ancient history getting older by the day that is night what with its stars three rolled hoch horch like eyes, falls into her pillow, her mother-inlaw’s, is soon sleeping so deeply she doesn’t even remember to snore, then next morning wakes up and her husband he regards her strangely but forgets by mincha home for linner and she herself, she has no memory whatsoever and yet come the coming of dusk that night she finds herself, why, preparing him a dunch the likes of which will destroy all hope for thought both rational and not.

  The mensch leaves her there lamed, passedout on the floor, unconscious, unconscionable with her head knocked on the edge of an opened knifedrawer, mamash, believe it or not it’s the emes, rushes back up to B’s room, he’d just wanted a l’chaim, was expecting warmedgoodies, Ima’s milk, too, had been disappointed, decided then to keep his own self warm with blankets and covers, shuts the door, props the other chair up against it, Hanna’s, and B He’s awake now again, already sitting up in His bed He stares dumbly.

  While downdownstairs of eternity, moons prior to moons, halves of moons, quarters, crescented slivers these falcate whatever miserly dieting wanes, Hanna pats at her swell, offers Wanda one more drink of this one doesn’t count, shot without label, nervously peeled, crumpled, and balled, she doesn’t know
from liquor, anyway, neither of them do except Wanda who she wouldn’t admit, a celebration for the sake of observance, while she herself, Hanna, shouldn’t, must abstain, upon the advice of the life bottled within her.

  This mensch pets with mitten His forehead thrice, then mutters again with shut eyes, holds a heart the left one as he shuckles a bissele more as he murmurs, strokes his beard, absentmindedly gripes from it all the dark hairs, curls his toes in his boots (schmuck he never took them off, left them to dry in the fireplace, he’s dirtying the house terribly inconsiderate who ever heard, how was he raised and by whom, let’s go to their house and burn the barn down, its stable for the reindeer and sleighs) then asks B, what, something, if He wants to see some pictures of his grandkinder maybe and B, iffy, was this His father, is this the mensch who’s been here seven now and one night previous, and if not, then what, if any, was the difference, and his right to sit in the Presence of, anyway nods an assent, how not to and the pictures they’re shownoff in the light of the mensch, his white, the beardhalo, balltopped cap’s gloriole, aureole, icebowed hairy halo illuminating the names of those depicted filledin-the-blanks, in red feltpen looped feminine along their snowywhite backs, where everyone was and, too, what they were doing or up to, who was married to whom and who was the whom and who else had who with whomever, what they all did to do well for themselves for a living and how they made or make out at it and the like, and how they’re all evilly elfin, small rodentlike things who don’t appear to have been made in the image of their Patriarch, if that’s what he is, but more in the opposite image, He’s thinking his under-developed, their undeveloped, the true deepest negative…until ‘Twas this knock at the door and the rednosed redeyed mensch he doesn’t rise, mouse a stir at all or even rattily twitch, merely gathers in his sack, cinches its strings tight. Hanna’s chair up against the door bolted, he’d leaned it there when he entered, came back up, it’d been purchased just last week with its twin at a discount and sugarplum soft in their vinyl upholstery, for both parents to witness their miracle they’ve never been sat in, remain unmoved, the room entire, decorated in baby’s blue for luck or hope, Mazel and filled full with stuffedanimals, pillows God everything else stuffed stomachs and heads and dinosaurs in their aeroplanes that’d seem ridiculous in a room belonging to a grown mensch, and He was grown, already, is, of B’s size by now, how the whole room is stilled: then, a softer knock pause knock knock knock at a door down the hall, the Master Bedroom maybe and the mensch stiffens, slowly rises from Israel’s chair, hesitant to go up to the door and feel a jambjammed and bleeding mitten at its fiery handle; as he rises—his chair tilts to collapse, legs knuckle, kneel, bow, Israel’s not replaced though it’s still under warranty but instead to become reassembled, weldnailed or glued perfectly together again by the Garden, in the Garden, in His own house again this one here once atop the Island atop the bay whose waters suicide themselves upon the coast of this world, as it’s known…only, then, to be burnt, to become ashed into perfection again only in the World to Come, if you’re familiar, if undead and hopeful—the covers go up again, go up over His nose, up over His eyes, blanket His forehead and hair.

  Hanna resigned, sighing her soul out.

  B under His blanket His covers, shivering how He shvitzes, wet He looses Himself, a slow slowing trickle shed all down His thighs, limbs writhing in warmth soon to leave Him, and then—and then nu it’s nothing, until Wanda: she who’s the mother now of a boy, the son her husband always wanted to name him Jacob Rosenkrantz his father’s Isaac Rosenkrantz, father of another Israel himself to father, time enough, how you know him…Isaac, I mean, yet another who, the one with the, and who, again, with the son who’ll be redeemed soonish enough from a Cohen it’s called, a Priest, the class who but, forget it, for a sum not to be sneezed at, gesundheit Wanda she remembers now, now rocking Benjamin, no Isaac, no Jacob, Israel in her arms he’s Yisroel, remembers only around midday and with the wash still to do and the, that night how she woke Him up up there in His room, in which He was alone and how she fought, how she struggled to get Him, all of Him to get it all proppedup and how, He didn’t recognize, how could He’ve been expected to know her, how’d she then waded through His parent’s room, dead, a storm outside His siblings’, His sisters’ dead all twelve of them together in their room alone in their rooms and how at last she’d come to His, and, hymn, and the rest…

  And now her here, alone, too, if alive and with her son about midday with the drying and the washing of the dishes still to do and the cooking she has, too, with Hanna’s landrover one of three of their cars the other two you wouldn’t believe what they cost, always it’s leaking oil in the driveway below there’s a stain and as she looks out the window it looks like what else, who else’s face stained—and a hungry an always hung thirsty Rosenkrantz with a honeyed tongue gilding away raw at a nipple.

  And yet somewhere outside this Ghetto, tonight, we live, somehow we’ve survived.

  Our kinder have been born into a reduxed Golden Age, haven’t they, a new, quietleafed looparound added onto the Development’s annex: into a veritable Pax Americanus, in which Affiliation let’s say’s not only acceptable, OK (a world leftover from the War, the World one I mean, the Second), but also maybe admirable, in fashion, trendy…minorities overcoming obstacles, and good media coverage on that from inmost city to outmost Nowhere, this State truly Godforefutzed; pride in Them, in Us, succeeding, majority at large aiding its minority in rediscovering roots, and in reviving old practices…alienation as entrance, and so why not taking pride in that in an enriching, pluralistic, aren’t-we-so-damned-Demoncratic sense, with us and I mean Us attempting to barrierbreak, to cross borders until the only barriers we’ll ever break again, the only borders we’ll ever hope to cross, will just be those of our own creative erection—and who to apologize to after that? But what’s the alternative? Storms trooping death? That’s not what we want, is it? But that’s how we shine, how we thrive, how we’ve stayed alive all these sufferings—and perhaps even asking for it all the while, Who forbid, inviting It into our houses, our homes: ask and thou shalt receive, ask for the worse and thou shalt receive the worst, and the line for complaints, it forms to the Links.

  Every year on the month on the day on the hour, the kinder—ours—begin the slow massing rebellion, the perpetual revolution of every generation since…we all remember, are O so diligent about doing so, never forget our remembering—here in our Development, here in our planned settlement, our subdivided encampment, at the edge, the furthest division most sub, and at night, they meet one another (weather permitting), amid the huddled park woods, in caves of their own dream, of their own industry, each others’ invention: tented bedsheets, clothespiled closets not yet redone for spring, and there discuss, question themselves deep into the programmed, inwired anarchy of their Religion, if religion it is, their ratty Race an anarchy that is its only true lifeforce, its only true meaning, and forceful—as natured nature from naturing nature as it’s said, they refuse to inherit ideas, they deny them, the traditions and the idealistically sacred the yadda and blah, how much they’re hesitant to revive them, to graft them on…what; to impose them upon even a quiet time, on lives that ring evermore empty, founding Paradise in the air.

  But no, most won’t. Wishful thinking. Anything but.

  Most will just be born into professions and marriages already vetted by their Parents, your Parent’s Friends, our Stockbrokers, and God, becoming Fathers & Mothers they’ll never kill because that would mean above all their own destruction, ours, yours, mine—and then, we’ll be mourned in the midst of the Congregation, donations to be offered in our memory: denominations of $18, 36, 54, 72 to be accepted to whichever fund best describes the limitations of your grief—like how much is your loss worth?

  And our sons and our daughters will say Kaddish. But who’s to judge?

  And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph; doth my father yet live? And his brethren could not answer him; for they were troub
led at his presence.

  Parshat Vayigash, “And then he went up…” (Genesis 45:3)

  from the Torah portion read on the Shabbat of the birth of Benjamin Israelien

  Punchlines

  IS HERE JOSEPH.

  And this is where it all ends America with me Joseph ben you don’t know him numbered much like God I don’t need a last name with everyone now ignoring enough of these no more of these recreations no more redactions reinterpretations reinventions revisions these stories resorted then shuffled restored and then footnoted endnoted gorged upon gore how I’m tired London so tired I’m Amsterdamned Avenue dead soon enough tired it’s funny like ha ha funny is here enough genug of these no more lives how I’m Big in Yisgadal Ben vyiskadah and the shemay of the gables rabah the East River canals like Venice the Ghettolocked Venezia I imagined shy but cold in an irongray windyday Italian overcoat my father had lent me for death a size too small I’d starve into it by the time we’d left the station finally Köln–Deutz 1941 I remember it as if it were they came for us with the trains the Gaugauge waiting late at the station at you say Cologne where I was born 1918 into Poland lost in the Ostlast time I kissed my eyes at the girls from Merl and the family Frank and the families Frankel and my own Mutter and father in his serge suit as dark as this Harlempark this stark Washington the Heights of yo mommamuthermutta they’re dealing what on the corner crack crank what’s the diff the girls ask the chola bodega glow O the malts and the sewer-waft smokestink gunfire knifefire the Dolchstoss the Dolchfuss the Dolfmess all this tummler noise and the roil of the Carnival Trade Fair Grounds in our muster to the A train with its circular blue and the triangular yellow Q the gelbgelded star above you can’t what with the flood of this neon up from Fort Washington the whitewash of that other winter November 19and the civilization of Broadway Brotvey breadway lined two hundred oy so streets Uptown and on into night so untested untried I’m tired of dusk the sunsetting sunsquat I’m sure the Indians once had a word for it better I should mean the feathery kind Habla se hablamos on the Hudson the river the Heights and the low sirenlights of the police the SASSSSSS at the Deutz trainstation at the George Washingtonian busterminal headed across the GWB to Colonia New Jersey from it’s called Quisqueya en el home of the footlong the two for three for a dollar wampum bead bleeding my head Madhattoe a world away from Downtown with its Bialystokers and bagels rung high a moon above the Midtown eau de Cologne from which Poland Amsterdam London I arrived how I’ve arrived George Washington Heights New York City New York State You S A can you see or hear what I’m New World America 1003that’s me you’re dialing my number (212) I forget what I’m trying to answer the phone the television born into reruns in Köln it’d been primetime Cologne eau to you 1918 Amsterdam 1946 London it was the October after November eat your dates hungry your whole grainy black & white bread to leaven the mouth thirsty those pills I can barely live to breathe to speak of the mauscheln the emes mamash flowing through my thermometer arm mercury traintrack veins no more fever this blood no more claim no stories more tattooed on my lips kissing away at the girls from the Lyzeum Esther immer besser the emes the mamash gevalt it’s the Wahrheit I’m after the Wende turned truth as they say it was ultimately Auschwitz if you know it so heaven’s assured if there’s hell I’ve been through it that morning already with the whole family mother and father and me my sister and brother assembled cold in the station the Abfahrtsbanhof Deutz keinen Deut besser als my father proud my mother proud of my father and me in my cabaret coat with my whistles and kisses the signatures we’d never Xd on all those papers the typewriters’ 5’s runic SS key after the percent sign and before the sixth open parenthesis (those Beschlagnahmeverfugung breadlined souplined lists we formed ranks filled columns long and wide how I should take out an advertisement in every major metropolitan daily half page below the fold and in full color the New York Times on your dime but the corner store the tabak sells only the Post or the Daily News El Diario so I can answer my critics café friends students and women advertise Checks Cashed for Gold publicize my asking my tsking tasking in headline Fraktur font the Gothic why datelined rapelined flatlined killed it was murder and history both it was my life what did I know of the religion the race I was just born into it was there that’s that what can I do about it but die I’m dying I’m getting ahead of myself dying I tried all these stories oy those fivestoriedwalkups and drashes makemups shtum poems about gassings and ovens an oeuvre of mass grave lieder and the silence of the weantrained Spanish goats their electrically whistling Mützen ab aria the literature that could be heard even then as far away as Canada Harmenz the FKL and its fictions novels and stories both short long and blackmilk poems by sexless and skirted the issue with the tissues on the desk shredded in the pocket the apple cored black dyedhair glassedin women teaching the inhumanities to shvartzes and Spanish at City College the Hunter crowd the testimonygatherers the witnesscollectors and the Blubo bank with its lawyer-accountantaxes postdue undone never known more pain than a Jesus Christ papercut from all these books upon books one page the Theory & Practice the same as the others six million of them paging pure snow around Auschwitz the Deutz Volksnonsense deustchteutsch the Leute Meute Heute Beute my fedora “Romazova” that matched my schlechtes French the mon ami amour cries of six months before a kiss a hug XOXXOOO for my father’s partners immigrating émigrés as the Russians say their revolution just nextdoor to the Palisades Fort Inwood the Cloistered unicorns with their shofarhorns their tekiah mourn the fluted frolic the trampledtrommel girl’s face of God the woman in the flushed rush to settle in the train the car the box beaten undercrushed footwomen with her Gaugouged girlribs jutting from skin as if fingers with no skin with no nails no more of this graven this craven imagine these by the book violations of the Second Commandment the synagogue’s Decalogue after the first but before the portico third I can’t get any sleep don’t want any sleep don’t have anything left to do or else live renegotiate preferential rents the lead poisoning warnings the beep bleep bleat of the battery for the smokedetector cremating the monoxidebox gassed too with the electricity dead the locks disposed here in my room in a Cross the central length my mattress the arms two nighttables endtables endofnightables whatever no names since my last super quit on my arms no superintendent strength in my legs left table moldy with medication Elderpryl Lacrescriptions extending to eighteen years nine days to the day I never refilled never moved thrownout on my righthand table rightable in its deep winter static the fanatisch fuzz of November December heating not working a light dusting of ice the bunny clumps the clods with a will a newspaper’s page all of dust all the fuss I’m revising it hourly in my head hands don’t work frontpage the headline says Dies at age of blank with the Beobachterback side of a leaflet advertising a sale on patio furniture my Last Will & Testament I leave that’s as far as I’ve gotten I leave