Joshua Cohen - Book of Numbers

Yasir wasn’t at the Trafik. Only one of us was early or late, for an appointment only one of us had made. The other clerk was working. The clerk from earlier. Describe him later. Describe how all day he was on the headset phone talking bluetoothed Arabic that no foreigner would ever be able to tell whether he was delighted or enraged.

Was he Yasir’s nephew? And so Iz’s cousin? Yasir’s son? How old? Still plenty young to busy with the future. He was too consumed with not becoming his father or uncle or cousin to be troubled by me — he wouldn’t still be moonlighting at our age.

I stroked the glossies, rubbed the ink from the print. The Trafik carried only a few German/Austrian titles: Kronen Zeitung, Kurier, Die Presse, Die Standard, Wiener Zeitung, Der Spiegel, Vogue, Glamour, a few copies each.

The rest of the papers were folded into racks as if in the alphabetical order of my incomprehension, from tabloids in Turkish to broadsheets of abjad, and in that emoticonese I think is Sinhalese, and in that zodiac handicap signage I think is Amharic. Papers in languages left to right and right to left. And verticalized until continued, next page. They must’ve published out of London or Paris or Berlin, because boxed above their prices in both euros and pounds were weathermaps of London and Paris and Berlin and it was raining.

And that was the good news, which readers never trusted or skipped. The bad news was that elections were rigged, bribery scandals were sanctioned, and schools and social services had been suspended in cities that readers would never return to. Something happened to 16 somewhere somewhen, something happened to 30,000. Also, Israel.

I was pleased to find the classifieds healthy, and the backgammon column still thrives.

I wasn’t going to leave this Trafik until the work I’d done with Principal was public — until I recognized the headline of every frontpage as my own writing, and my outdated groomed promo bookphoto made the cover of every periodical in stock.

And then he’d recognize me, and nod, and I’d nod back — not him, Yasir.

The clerk was talking, but some to me, some to his headset: “Heast, Oida — du Penner — wos wüst?”

I said, “Ich spreche kein Arabisch. Nicht Arabisch?”

He chewed at his cheek and gestured my putting down the mag he’d doubted I could afford and now was sure I couldn’t read — another issue with a centerfold on Principal’s birthday.

I reracked it and showed him my empty pack of Camel Lights. Put money in the dish. Change came back in the dish, along with a fresh pack of, I’ll live, Camel Regulars. I reached into the cooler for a beer, an Ottakringer. Put money in the dish. Change came back in the dish. He popped the cap with a countermounted popper like a rusty torture chamber contraption. Worst thing about Europe is that you have to pay for matches.

Around the block again, a two cig walk. I would’ve liked to dump that sour warm beer over the cold, be done with it.

I went and stood outside Yasir’s building in another window’s light as all the desires I’d been feeling constellated into the desire just to stand there, within them, under that haloing light, to prove that I could, that I could be faithful — to anything, to myself.

According to the Muslim press it was 1432. And by the Jews it’d just turned 5772.

It’s as if, simultaneous with the invention of printing, the last uninhabited planet in the Tau Ceti system was being colonized by cyborgs.

I tried to explain Yasir’s absence, but I didn’t have his schedule. Anyway — the next night, he was there.

He seemed fit, at ease. Disinterested in me. I stood by the Alawwam Obst + Gemüse produce market, holding this notebook like a shoppinglist, and watched, and wrote, and watched. The streaks of blood to the right and left of this sentence, this paragraph, are from the grapes I snuck, and crushed.

Because you were there, Iz. Without warning, you were across the street from me and swaying toward the Trafik. Though I wasn’t certain it was you initially. And my rationale for it not being you was that I saw your face. If it was recognizably your face, then it wasn’t yours, or it wasn’t only yours anymore. Unmasked. Healed. Keen. Breathing. You seemed happy.

Your skirt just touched the knee. It was a black skirt riding up at the rear and crimped twisted at the waist, and you leaned by a bugswarmed lamppost to adjust it. Black wool pointelle sweater, I’d bought that too. Zara, The Gap.

The heels, haute heels for an evening errand, were opentoed. Your raintoes, Iz. Your head covered in a red wetcolored scarf. Because a freezing rain will make anyone pious.

You weren’t wearing a coat, though. You never did like that coat.

You carried a tray of brass, clung around with foil. You set it down in front of your brother on the snackclogged counter you barely reached.

You exchanged a word. And then he leaned over and tied your headscarf. Cinching it tighter, pinching your cheek. Then you brought yourself to the corner and crossed away from me.

Iz, I didn’t chase you — rather I’d already chased you, but now that I was seeing you wet to the skin I realized it wasn’t you that I’d been after. It was a dream. It was another life. It was forgiveness — it was to be forgiven.

I approached your brother, and crowded him under his canopy. He was hunched over a calculator, fluttering receipts.

“I’m Joshua,” I said.

Before this, only his stain had addressed me, but now I had the man. Bewildered.

“So let me have a paper,” I said. “A newspaper.”

Yasir pointed, his mouth exhuming a relict tongue. “But all are German.”

“Not all of them. But that’s not what I mean. Just give me one. It’s not for me.”

“What one?” Yasir said. “Who?”

I went with a Wiener Zeitung, thick as a blanket. Put two coins in the dish, or atop the dish you’d brought still wrapped and steaming, Iz, and let any change due back to me be his.

My blessings.

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Dear Cal,

I might not be the best person to caution you against dreaming. Or to give any writing advice. Or even to be reading you. Particularly now. And anyway I’d rather get paid to do this up as a critical essay, review the living shit out of you for — what’s that paper the homeless sell, Street News ? Or does Beaver Hunt still publish? Cal. It’s not like either of us have finished every single book we’ve ever reviewed. All dreams in books are typeset in italics, that handwriting that during the Renaissance (15th to 17th centuries, also M&W 10:35–11:50 612 Philosophy Hall, Dr. Gerds) developed into the earliest fonts for the earliest books from the Latin and Greek, and so Antiquity was a dream, that’s all I’ve got to offer. Truth is, I’ve never actually cared about dreams, and anytime I get to them in a book I feel cheated, even worse than I feel cheated by flashbacks, because at least in flashback the present revisits the past to further nuance itself into future (like we’d slum out to the Bowery today not to meet new friends but to toast the friends we wouldn’t meet who are out in Westchester and sad), while dreams just float or unfloat as timeless spaceless inconsequentials, meaning everything, meaning nothing, not beholden, never beholden, the fuckers (everyone dreams in Westchester). But hey, this oneiric somnic verbigerage can’t be of interest to anyone I’m not sleeping with. And I’m not sleeping.