Nick Bones Underground

by Phil M. Cohen

  “Then your song is an old spiritual, ‘Dem Bones.’”

  “Right on,” he said.

  He looked into the screen to request the next song when a rush of pink light shot out, Ezekiel once more bathing in light for no more than two seconds. Again, he froze. Only this time he rose slowly from his chair and meandered over to one of the bookcases in my living room. Confidently, he reached for a certain volume and pulled it off the shelf. He handed the book to me. I looked at it. It was shrink-wrapped, unread. It was titled The Land of No-Mind: A New Schmeltzer Philosophy, written by one Shlomo Menkies, the same Menkies whose emissary I’d seen preaching the day before in the Velvet Underground.

  I was stunned.

  ***

  Understand something about me and my personal library, still stubbornly consisting almost entirely of physical books. To keep the 5,000 volumes spread throughout my apartment and spilling over into my campus office organized I used a catalogue system. The whole thing resided with Maggie, who upon request would happily provide me with far more information than necessary.

  The first rule of my system required that nothing went on a shelf without first placing a number-letter combination on its spine, and then scanning the information into Maggie. A book still wrapped and unclassified residing on my shelf beggared belief. Yet, here was such a book, the title referencing the riddle sloshing around my mind since last night, written by the man responsible for the vast change that transformed the Kobliner Hasidim into the Schmeltzerites.

  “Nick, this is impossible,” Maggie said. “A book cannot be on your shelf without it being in me. How did it get there?”

  “I don’t know, Maggie. Believe me, I do not know.”

  Early on in his biblical book, the prophet Ezekiel created one of those abiding images that resonated across the millennia, wheels within wheels, a representation of mystifying things constantly in motion made all the more complicated through secrets and puzzles comprising a strange and inscrutable chariot. The image of the chariot became intrinsic to an early form of mysticism built around chariots descending and ascending to the heavens to great, mystical palaces.

  Now contemporary, Ezekiel had just presented a puzzle—an unknown book referencing the riddle handed to me by a virtual dead rabbi at the tail end of a Lerbs trip after an excursion in the VU. I now found myself connected to a transmogrified Hasidic group led by Yitzi Menkies, a man I despised.

  “I got to go out,” the prophet said. “A valley of dry bones somewhere demands to be resurrected.”

  In the face of that claim I chose silence. Mingus wrapped his coat around himself like it was a prayer shawl and bounded out, slouching toward his prophetic mission. If there were to be found a valley of dry bones in the rubble of New York City, he would find it.

  “He is a handful, is he not?” Maggie said after Mingus pulled shut the door with such a reverberation that one of my bookcases teetered.

  Her Marlene image filled the screen, an angled shot, soft, with thin, painted eyebrows, eyes looking upward, though not quite to the heavens.

  “A handful isn’t exactly what I’d call him. A nudnik—another one in my life—that’s what I’d call him,” I said.

  Marlene’s image changed. Now on one side her shiny hair curled above her right eye, head down slightly, thinning her face. Her painted eyes were aimed just above the camera, her lips red and tight.

  “If everyone possesses a piece of the nudnik,” Maggie said, “then mishegas is universal and must therefore be part of the divine image. ‘Let us create man in our image, after our likeness,’ God says. If we are by nature nudniks, then so must be God. And if humans receive this from God, then humans must by nature transmit mishegas to their creations, humans passing on to the works of their hands what God has passed on to them. That being so, then I, too, clearly share in this godly quality. Like Mingus, I am a nudnik.”

  A new philosophical truth, reasoned syllogistically, and beyond all doubt—if one accepted the opening premises, which I did not. The occasion to debate this new truth, however, was suspended by a loud ding.

  “Oh,” said Maggie. “We appear to have a visitor. A female. Quite attractive, actually.”

  ***

  The image of Marlene vanished. The person at the entrance of my building appeared. It was Simone, my former student, dressed as a civilian. She came Upstairs as she said she would. My heart skipped a beat.

  “Let her in,” I said.

  “You know her?” Maggie asked, and I noted a tone of caution in her voice.

  “Yes. That’s Simone Hartwig. She’s the police who helped me yesterday in the Velvet Underground.”

  “Oh?” she said, suspicion in her voice.

  “I invited her should she be in the neighborhood.”

  “Oh?” Maggie asked.

  “Let her in,” I repeated, and I heard the buzz at the entryway door, though Maggie had allowed an incredibly quick buzz. Good thing that Simone had quick cop reflexes to open the door in time.

  When the elevator stopped at my floor, I opened my door and welcomed her.

  I took Simone’s coat and hung it. She was dressed in the style I recalled from her student days—green turtleneck beneath a black sweater. Around her neck hung a simple gold chain necklace.

  “Sorry the place is a bit of a mess. I’ve been preoccupied.”

  “No worries,” she said.

  A bit louder than usual, Maggie said, “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”

  “Of course, this is my old student, Simone Hartwig.”

  Simone’s face showed the dislocation my few visitors customarily expressed, her brows knitted as she looked about the room seeking the source of the voice.

  There was a split second’s pause before Maggie responded, “Oh yes, I see she studied death with you. How fascinating that must have been.”

  Simone’s eye fell on the screen on my desk, with its picture of Ms. Dietrich. She nodded slightly in recognition of the source of the voice. “You know, Nick,” Maggie continued. “I myself think a very great deal about death. Perhaps you and I can chat sometime about what it means . . . to die.”

  I ignored her.

  “A philosophical computer,” Simone giggled.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” I asked.

  “Tea would be nice. It’s cold getting around Brooklyn. Uber doesn’t seem to have a vehicle with four functioning windows. One always seems unable to close. The damn thing left its air conditioner cranked up and decided to play ‘Baby, it’s Cold Outside’ on a continual loop. I’m pretty sure the Uber thought it was funny—it kept making a noise that sounded like laughter—but I’m chilled like you wouldn’t believe.”

  Death and taxis. I pointed to the couch in the living room. She sat down stiffly, as if uncertain her coming was a good idea. She crossed her legs. The top leg bounced slightly. This was hardly the knife expert I saw in action just yesterday.

  “Maggie, could you please boil some water for tea?” I said, as I sat down on the chair across from Simone.

  “Boiling water you’ll ask for, but death you won’t talk about with me.”

  “Maggie, it’s your job to boil water, not talk metaphysics. Discussions of metaphysics is a bonus.”

  Silence, but I knew hot water would shortly be available.

  “How’s your mother?” I asked.

  “Well enough under the circumstances,” Simone said. “She’s lucky. Her health’s remarkably good. But she has little means of support. There’s not a lot of work around since the financial system collapsed, and what there is pays lousy. I help her, but I don’t have so much to give her myself.”

  I noted that my parents had passed a few years ago, and never had to deal with the ramifications of the GD.

  “Water’s ready,” Maggie said. “I wish you’d ask me about my mother every now and the
n.”

  “You don’t have a mother.”

  “But I wish I did. Your query might console.”

  “Tea?” I asked Simone.

  “Do you still drink that herbal stuff?” Simone asked.

  “Yes. Occasionally I’ll drink green or white tea. I never touch the black stuff. And peppermint’s out of bounds for a while,” I said, a slight Lerbs echo in my brain.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Let me tell her,” Maggie said.

  “I’ll do the talking, if you don’t mind,” I said.

  More silence.

  I recounted my adventures in the VU after she left me at the hospital.

  “Some ordeal,” she said. “You’re certain you’ve recovered?”

  “I think so,” I said as I flexed some muscles to be certain they functioned properly. “Without doubt it was an adventure.”

  I excused myself and walked into the kitchen. I brewed a pot of ginger peach tea and brought it to Simone seated at the table. I poured, we sipped. She rubbed her hands on the steaming mug.

  “I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast. My mother didn’t really have much to give me,” she said. “It’s a bit forward of me I know, but do you have anything to eat?”

  “If I recall, I invited you for dinner,” I said.

  “If you want, we could go out,” she said. “I like that place on Seventh, Eat Your Vegetables.”

  “I do too. I don’t want to seem too much of a fogey, but I’d rather not go out anymore today, and they don’t deliver.”

  Maggie piped up. “Did you know that the term old fogey comes from the French fougueux, meaning fierce or fiery? Isn’t it fascinating how the word came to mean its opposite?” Maggie made a noise approximating a human clearing her throat, then added, “How’s your French, Simone? Me, I’m fluent in, well, I’m fluent in just about everything, though I’ve refrained from doing any work in either Esperanto or Klingon.”

  Simone began to speak, but before she could utter a word, I said, “Enough, Maggie. No need to brag about your vast repository of human knowledge.”

  We were rewarded by a gurgling sound.

  I continued, “There’s an unusually good Chinese place not far from here that does deliver.”

  “Chinese sounds fine,” Simone said.

  “Maggie,” I said in a more commanding voice than usual, “connect with Charlie’s Wok and order dinner for me and my guest.”

  “I shall concatenate with their server, with whom I have a lovely relationship, by the way. Anything in particular?”

  “You know, soup and an appetizer, and a couple of main courses. Make one of them their Asian vegetables with fake pork. A double order of pork.”

  We sipped our tea, catching up. She told me about her failed marriage without children. I told her about my marriage, our daughter in a Lerbs hospital. We chatted about life in the new Dark Ages, how the City and the country seemed to be tumbling down without solutions. We talked about life in the VU, its emerging liberal political values, the Committee’s regard for justice and human rights, its struggle to remain independent and solvent. Our food arrived.

  I placed the cardboard containers on the table, put out some plates, and we ate. In the middle of a spoonful of Charlie’s hot and sour soup, I thought, Next time Maggie and I have a chat about her presumed humanity, I’ll have to bring this up. She can order the food and pay for it. She can analyze the nutritional value of every ingredient. But she can neither eat it nor taste it. Maggie with chopsticks?

  Simone interrupted my thoughts. “So tell me, Prof—”

  “Time you called me Nick, don’t you think?”

  “Okay, Nick,” she said, and scooped up some brown rice with her chopsticks. “Tell me what brought you underground.”

  I told her about meeting Abe on the park bench, how he pleaded with me to find Shmulie, filling in the spaces that led up to my trip among the electrons.

  “Shmulie’s father gave you little choice.”

  “Not unless I was prepared to be a bastard,” I said. “The old man was family when I was a kid.”

  Simone looked up from the brown rice. She reminded me of the time in class when I used both Dostoevsky and Dylan to illustrate a point about Emanuel Levinas.

  “You remember me teaching Dylan?”

  “Sure. How many teachers would use ‘Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall’ to talk about the ethical and the Other? A girl remembers things like that.” She smiled.

  The Dostoevsky was easy, of course. Levinas quoted Dostoevsky. Dylan was my own, though I was never certain I accurately used Dylan to illustrate Levinas. I didn’t really understand either of them.

  “Do you remember what you told me when I told you I was joining the cops?”

  “No.”

  “You told me to keep reading Levinas and Buber. You were also fond of Richard Neuhaus, not just his book on death. Read them, you said, they’d make me more compassionate, and I believe you were right. Maybe too compassionate to be a cop.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All of that talk, especially in Levinas, that we have greater responsibility for the other person than we have for ourselves,” Simone said. “Try keeping that in mind when you’re facing someone with a gun.”

  I didn’t frequently hear approbation. Coming from this beautiful woman with the Afro hairstyle and almond eyes briefly validated the universe. I smiled.

  “It also helped me make my decision to move Downstairs,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  “It’s a strange place down there, no doubt. We live on a dime in a place that’s always dingy and never smells fresh. But there’s a humanity among us that’s all but gone up here. You should join us. You’d make a great contribution.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Changing the subject—“Have a look at your fortune cookie.”

  She unwrapped and broke it open. From the pile of crumbs she opened the white strip of paper.

  “Your life will shortly improve,” she read.

  I fingered my fortune cookie and said, “Life up here is harsh, Simone. But I’m not certain things are hopeless. Look at this meal we ordered, had delivered, ate, and it was pretty good. I can’t judge civilization by my ability to get takeout delivered, but sitting here discussing our condition must mean we haven’t yet sunk entirely into the abyss.”

  “Perhaps,” Simone said. “But when I lived up here I’d get up every day hoping the shit I got put through yesterday was all there was, and today it’d be better. But things never got better. They got worse. When will it get right? I asked myself.” She placed a hand on my forearm and squeezed. “Still, it’s lonely down there.”

  She excused herself.

  ***

  I hoped this encounter was going places. Time to tell Maggie to take a virtual hike. I got up from the table. I collected the dishes and put them in the sink. On my way from the kitchen back to the table I detoured over to Maggie’s monitor. Ms. Dietrich filled the screen in an image from her younger days, dressed in black and white, wearing deeply hued lipstick, suggestive shadows playing off of the right side of her face and hair, a feather hat covering her head. Definitely not a style fit for these times.

  “Mags,” I said in a low voice.

  “Ugh to that. Besides, you’ve exceeded your quota. But there’s no need to ask, Nicholas,” she whispered. “It’s apparent where things are headed.”

  “If you can see where things are headed, you are more prescient than I.”

  “Oh, they’re going there. And why not? You two kids deserve each other. At least for tonight. Beyond tonight, we shall see. But tonight, tonight won’t be just any night. I’m not the jealous type, dear. I shall go and find a playmate, though my company will not equal Nick Friedman. I’ll be back early in the morning and make you two lovebirds a nice cup of hot te
a.”

  “That’s kind of you, Maggie. Thanks for the privacy.”

  “Think nothing of it.” On the screen Marlene stared at me. “Of course, if you need me, Nick, I’m a call away. Good night, dear.”

  Marlene disappeared from the screen, just slightly faster than usual. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was the virtual equivalent of a door slam.

  ***

  Simone was perusing my library. I walked over to her and pretended an interest in my thin collection of the works of Alvin Reines, the founder of Polydoxy, a silly little Jewish movement that, mercifully, never quite made it to first base, though there remained the odd crank espousing his value-free universalism into the wind.

  “You’ve quite the collection,” she said.

  “One reason not to move to the Velvet Underground. How would I get all of these down there?”

  She continued looking at the library. “I have the feeling you’ve read most of them.”

  “Not all.”

  She pulled Robert Alter’s translation of the biblical wisdom literature from its shelf and turned to the book of Ecclesiastes.

  Paraphrasing the first chapter of the book, she said, “The world turns and turns but there’s nothing new under the sun.” She returned the book to its place. “You would say that a lot in class. No matter how much things appear to change, they never really do. Fundamentally, you’d say, the world is the same hash it was when this book was written, and it always will be.”

  “There’s a truth to that. No matter how bad—or good—things get, the moral difference between antiquity and today is merely cosmetic. People seek power over others. Wealth and poverty remain the two sides of the human condition. Man and woman will always need companionship,” I said.

  We moved closer to each other. She was almost as tall as I. She’d applied lipstick and put on a pair of modest gold hoop earrings. As was inevitable, we brushed up against each other, shoulder to shoulder. A mild electric shock passed through me. She turned her head toward my library, then turned and looked at me.