Joshua Cohen: A Heaven of Others

However my new shoes did prove useful — and, at the same time, met their end — as I approached what appeared to be a stream of last light. A dying ray I walked toward, as there did not seem any way or route around it or over. Indeed it was a stream and a stream that had to be crossed, waded through. Dipping my hands in to drink I understood it was honey, which was refreshing to both hunger and thirst, but extremely difficult to pass over or through. And so I stepped in because there was no other way. No bridge whether of wood, iron or human laid out across the flow foot to head. And so I stepped down because there was no other way to step but down and my stepping foot, my left in its new left shoe, became stuck in the honey. Unable to lift my foot there was nothing I could do but step my other right new foot down into the honey as well. Which I did and now both feet in their shoes were stuck fast. Mire and I. But the honey wasn’t flowing but hardening. Amberizing. And quickly. I nearly lost myself and fell but as I spread my hands wide as if to protest my innocence with wings two eagles descended and each took a forefinger into its beak, pulling all of me out but my shoes. A sacrifice but in the air the eagles began to dogfight with one another or maybe not fight but I would say Will: rather one wanted to fly me one way and the other wanted to fly me another and they made this quite evident as they pulled me apart (as if asking me to decide for them and so for me but if I would how would I communicate that decision? I son of Saul, no son of Solomon) — one away to one edge of the golden plate and the other away to the other edge of the golden plate that is edgeless, but not wanting in the least to displease, to disappoint either and so get myself ripped into two living halves who would probably, that far apart, never meet again and join together in famished Farmisht fraternity for the meal once known as Time For Dinner I kept myself as still as inhumanly possible and allowed them to tug me zigzaggingly Zephyrusly though never quite gently east to westward all over the sky and its vault until I had had enough of what I say was indescribable pain and so wrenched them hard both down to the ground, pointing my forefingers as if the accusations of the two witnesses that are required by the Talmud Aba always invoked to two far and high dunes and there willing strength to my arms to hurl them both down even unto the two dunes, one eagle to each with me nested in the valley between where I landed unharmed though they were killed by the impact.

Brushing sand from himself he gathered the eagles to walk on a wick of smoke to its source, which he sensed originating “within walking distance.” It was a fire in a pit bound by tires and at it there was a boy reclining relaxed.

He offered the boy his eagles to eat as a meal and the boy wrapped the eagles in his headdress that would not burn and buried it under the sand under the fire that required no logs or sticks or twigs nor the tinder of HEADLINES.

Our meal will be ready soon the boy said.

I asked the boy Who are you?

I’m hungry.

Let me introduce you to starving.

And then the boy said he was a boy who had died.

I asked the boy how he had died and the boy asked me the same Who are you?

And so I said to the boy I am a stranger here, a stranger to you in a heaven not mine and the boy asked me How did you come to be here? and so I said to the boy I had been exploded and the boy asked me Who exploded you and why? and so I said to the boy that a boy exploded me, a boy about my same age and yours too, who had hugged me then exploded me outside of a shoestore located on Tchernichovsky Street in Jerusalem the Third City of at least one Empire and the boy said to me he had once — embraced and — exploded someone or other himself, indeed that that’s how he had merited here, by martyring himself he’d earned for his death this life after life and a death that was glorious and so I asked the boy Who? and the boy said to me I don’t know and so I asked him again Who was it? and the boy said all he knew was that it was a boy about his own age and mine too, outside of a shoestore on a street named for a Russian of sorts, he remembered, maybe a Finn the boy said in Jerusalem I’m not sure, though he called it Al Quds (Abul Ala al-Maari Way, he said, maybe it was, a writer, I’m feeling a poet), which is home to Quabbat As-Sakhrah and Al Aqsa meaning the Furthest have I ever been there That far, I asked the boy why as in Why did you do it? and the boy said to me He was not you, do not worry — And he was not you either was what I said to the boy who said to me that our meal was ready and that We should wash before we eat but there was no water to be found, only smoke and a tire.

They ate (in heaven, no food is forbidden), though neither would fill.

As I turned to take leave of the boy the boy said to me Wait a sec.

I asked the boy Why? and the boy said to me You must wait here until I’ll return momentarily and so again I asked the boy Why?

And the boy said to me You have provided the meal of the two quailing eagles and so I must provide in return. Understand. Please and thank you. That you have given me a gift and so in return a gift from me is required. You get it. My man. Understand was what the boy said to me and so I said to the boy it’s not necessary and what’s more it’s not even wanted I said Don’t get angry with me because a wait and a return and its gift however required or merited will only delay me and I must not delay instead I must seek the Two Mountains and I must find the Two Mountains and the Valley between in which I must seek the man named Mohammed and in which I must find the man named Mohammed so as to set everything but everything right, please understand and yes thank you no you. Slap me one. All I have. But by the time I’d finished saying my meaning to him the boy had risen like smoke and was gone and many multitudinously beastly creatures, jackals, had surrounded the fire and prevented my leaving— they were jackals , but were odd, emaciated, crescentshaped and up on the hindmost legs of their twelve: they opened their great alabaster jaws to slash me to my stand, circling they were closing in on me constantly nearer and tighter, furling always as if a scroll of living, sinewy parchment on which was written I would say inscrutable laws (an alphabet of rips, slashmarks, selfinflicted bites, cuts and ingrammatical tears), coming closer ever closer just to smother me into sustenance, theirs, until I could stand just in the fire itself and atop its very flame, which I did knowing I could survive the fire longer if not by that much than I could survive, have survived the fifty it seemed jackals they seemed that they were constantly circling me and closing in on me and so I stood in the fire that instead of burning me or further charring the exploded and so already burnt, died underneath me to a pillar then an ashy wisp in the air and all was again dark and only the sound, the smacking screech of the jackals, which were manifestations of their hunger as insatiable as Time, said to me the jackals still were, where they were still and that I was not theirs, I mean yet.

I stood in the pit ringed with a tire and there awaited the return of the boy.

But just as boys lack so does heaven.

Heaven has no continuity. After before. Heaven has no consequence. No cause of causality. Without let’s say Æffect. A covenant broken. An upheaval, overturned twice. For one: After living a life of morality an eternity is necessary in which to become accustomed to amorality. This is why many of the righteous become many of the wicked in heaven and why they are punished there. Here is why hell, which is as amoral as heaven, hosts more of the righteous than he will encounter anywhere ever.

Morning if you will, the golden plate returned but empty as always.