Joshua Cohen - Witz

Inside’s laidout like a synagogue, a frozen shul grand and heavened with a divinity of outside light, sun and moon; its arched entranceway a soar, then the stadiumed sanctuary tapering, fluming itself intimately, into a modest front: a raised platform topped with pulpitry twinned at opposite ends, facto-rynew still in their swaddles. Between the pulpits, there’s an iron bank vault with combination lock, coming covered with a veil of its own, the ark of the Ark, the hold of the Law. A ruck of work rattles this holiness; it’s whisperish, hurried — this quick, cool chatter of labor, indistinct, as if a weather holding words inside its womb; such air keeping of secrets, freezing them, stilling Ben’s own tongue, to lick silently at His veil. Der escorts Him down the stairs past tiers of pews presently halfinstalled, their auxiliary aisles filled with scrap, cedarwood planks and troughs of coruscant nails. Upon the walls of the shul, scribes aloft in slings from scaffolds and with picks and hammers are rapping into that forgiving substance the names of the Affiliated dead — those of New York’s greater metropolitan region — to eventually, annularly, wind their way around the space, from floor to limitless sky: a miraculous racket, in that it doesn’t bring the house to fall, and they’re only on the B’s…

A hunch rises from a middle pew, a rare woman, if old and dumpy — she’s a yenta, a matchmaker, don’t hold it against her.

There’s silence, as the offer’s His or Der’s — she’s been kept waiting for over an hour.

It’s about time. Who would say this, if not her?

How long were you going to make me wait? Or this?

Hanna, for one, if she hadn’t been dead, her weight leaned up against the ovenunit, the rangy stove with its four burners crisping curiosity atop while her son, her only son in older age if ever He’d make it He’s in for the weekend, just visiting, doubling up on a family reunion with an amorphous sort of business conference He won’t talk about, He shouldn’t, just sitting at a table in a kitchen in a house that once was His, no longer, at His size sitting around the table, sitting around the house with that laugh even younger than Him by now, grayaged and wrinkled, He’s worlded down, ground meat into a miser, miserable amid the dust, a loser and filthy still, morose and fatter than ever, dissatisfied with even His more rewarding dissatisfactions, His attainment to mediocrity, employment/maritalstatus; until, this sour older barren bitch as thin as a spine He’s too ashamed of her to bring her home who’d guilted Him into a commitment while it’s He who should be committed — into the minimum compatibility of a ring that’ll tarnish her finger upon the morning and a ceremony inviting at least the two of them, a rabbi and then her only friend whom He hates who hates Him worse; entirely unhappy, lifeless though unfortunately still alive, interested in nothing save what He’s forking away at, whatever Hanna’s served Him, leftovers foiled and heated then blown upon cooling, better than anything He could ever make, than even she the new she knows how to, neither can cook, He’ll never get past the microwave, the defrost stage, flashes of 12:00, the toaster and just add milk…

It’s about time, Hanna’s friends would have said that, too, echoes up from the voids crenate between the whitened teeth, a chorus of caloriecounters, carbohydratecharters, when she’d tell them the news, whether over the phone immediately after He’d told her, let it slip, coughed into conversation, confessed or else, if Hanna could contain herself a day or two, probably not, then at their weekly brunch and bookclub, their planningcommittee or schoolboard meeting — tonight at eight, don’t forget.

How long was He going to make us wait? Congratulations. Mazel. Mazl. Mzl.

No, I’m off apples for the time being, it’s the acids and plus they’re a sugar, and no more pumpernickel for me that’s a starch, trying to stay away from them, what were you saying: Edy Koenigsburg, whose own marriage was by her own admission less than Eden.

It’s about time. How old is He now? And she? Ask miscellaneous shop assistants, the secretary to the investment mamzer, even her travelagent, frizzily flushed, in pants of spandex overstretched.

How long was He going to make me wait? Which means, now I can die in peace. Says Hanna to Israel later that night. Israel who might disagree with his son’s choice, but are you crazy not in front of the wife.

Anyway, it’s moot — an opportunity will never arise.

About time, and marriages are all about time, and about flowers and gifts of jewelry, second mortgages for third homes, according to the neverwid-owed, nevermarried Misses Teitelbaum who’s said to know a thing or two about — among other things — enteitelment (who says? she does)…about time to shep, time to wish a Mazel Tov to His betrothed whomever she may be and to Ben, the ungroomed groom, the unkempt to be kept for perpetuity. Idea is to arrange Him a virgin, a pure Sarah, Rebecca, or Rachel, a Leah but without that veiled business under the canopy, not for her, and anyway it’s called a chuppah. To procure for Him a woman negligibly eligible, a girl ingathered as of late, a convert as recent as any converted; to arrange for Him a mate, for His soul or not, an intended, better be Beshert: a moll for the paparazzi, a face mouthing a name for the press, an escort for the just selected, custompatterned carpet soon to unfurl its purchase eighteen million inheritances per square foot and far beyond the bulbs and smoke, to fundraisers, to rededicated synagogues, here to the Temple Itself three floors up and growing higher by the prayer, the Donor’s Kaddish: the wiring’s to be installed tomorrow; the sconces (ner tamid) on order to illuminate eternal; the pulpits are having their plaques screwed on, one says Rabbi , the other, Cantor …an Eve in the kitchen and a Lilith everywhere else, is what, and whenever it’s needed, demanded, pleased or begged, no matter what Ben might want, who cares. Those becoming converted frown on His sort of dalliance, His perceived inability to obliterate options, desire, lust, send Eros all to hell and just settle — settle down, Ben; earthbound, without choice. His own handlers fan the flames. To be single is to be a scandal. A shame named Shanda after Wanda. Though the Marys will stay, they’ll assure Him, that a mensch needs His occasional leisure, a permanency at least outwardly proper’s required. Then to get her, the press never wants for speculation, the PR’ll be sure to imply, to get whichever her as long as it’s Her as pregnant as Him, soon expecting kinder, those halfbastard quarterbreeds, mutts, intermingled whatevers, some something to propagate the line. Furtherance, the ideal. And a line is a line is a line, though it be weak, adulterated — anything as far as the public’s concerned.

What’s my line? Not to be.

As for this matchmaker, on second look she’s even older but well made up enough, rouged, blushbeaten, mascaramassacred, and lipsmacked haphazardly so that her smile ends just below the hang of her ears, their earrings. A woman of lived years some with love others with less, lately though things not too bad, you know, holding up, nothing bothering save the same old varicosity, not much to complain about, ultimately, not with this recent fame of hers, if maybe she overdoes it a little you can’t hold it against her what with her health and life — her secondcareer celebrity; her premature renown on the renewed West Side of Manhattan, that narrow stretch of upperpark Broadway bordered by liverspotted delis set to reopen, savorystores just under new management, only waiting for their certifications to come through, soon invigorated synagogues about to embark themselves on energetic membership drives and dynamic accounts of outreach initiative; neighborhood, also, of monumental apartments to be rented again above Riverside Drive, columned Classic Sixes furnished with a piano in every fireplace set in walls of more books than could be bound by any tongue; hers a reputation as a shadchaness, a shidducher such as you wouldn’t believe, with references glowing like a superficial venereal disease, a great yenta preceding her, though the impression’s to be honest a bissel mitigated as she goes to pick at any nostril, fivefingered without embarrassment, flicks her snot to the floor while with her other hand extracts six photographs from a shoe under her sock, damp, and slightly mal-odorous, then holds them out of sight atop her swollen knee, a bruised if not chipped patella she don’t whine, thumbs the faces away, as if hoping to rub off the undesirable, you never know, whatever kills a deal: a lazy eye, a limp, a limp hand, she shakes while she limps, a pimpled forehead or cheek lipped with such kiss of death, a chin doubling triple, even flaws invisible, the unexamined, too: money troubles, pending audits, alcoholic uncles, the suspicion of incest, ongoing arson investigations, mild schizophrenia though thought recessive on the mother’s side, these days who can tell, who wants to. Her, prior to her present occupation she’d done the life of the wife herself, having been married for golden years and a night deep enough into the fiftyfirst that she’d rather forget to a developer magnate, an obese slumlord in later years an amateur Luna Park memorabilist and professional stripmaller, who’d owned seven of them statewide long and tall across the suckedin gut of the umpteenth borough, Joysey, who’d died abed with his mistress who she was also his secretary half his age, half her size — if this space hadn’t been so sanctuaried, the Holy of Holiest ground if untenanted as yet, pardon our appearances this inpreparation, she’d hock on its floor, a guttural of phlegm for the undedicated pews. Forgive her the maybe exaggerated gesticulations, forget the tics and bats of eyes a whole teeming winking blinking nation of them she’s just getting used to, trying them out — accessories much like the necklace, stranded fingerthick with pearls like black caviar, the earrings, heavy as her tush and amber as if preservative of an ancient seed, and the glasses, mosquitolidded shockwhiteframing plastic, to match her newfangled Affiliation.