Joshua Cohen - Witz

I’ve always loved Them, she says with that tendency to spit.

She glances at Ben, so bashful.

After what happened, I got depressed, I got lonely, couldn’t sleep, that and the business with Bob (that’s the husband), after he died, I moved into a more manageable place…I began studying up on Them, bought a few books, took a class. It all seemed so exotic, They seemed so — happy, you know…and so — she makes with her hands a silent ta-da — this present occupation, the dedication of her retiring years to perpetuating that happiness in an assumed incarnation, a usurped personality; she to her friends a whole new person, always tending to the Other Half, door-to-door making matches, by appointment only matching makers, with machers — and all of it money always aside maybe to compensate, as if to overatone, but for what, spite your curiosity, bite tongue.

And I’d love to be able to help you, she says then settles back in her pew, you especially.

Young and in love, is there anything more…nu, maybe not love just yet, but these days, you can understand. It takes time and wooing effort.

She quiets, lifts the glasses around her neck to her face, glasses without glass, so just those insectual frames she squints through — into the sanctuary, in its incompleteness less sacralizing than unsettling, a making awkward; her less awed by the filigree gilded overhead, by the imposing bulkhead of the, how do they call it…bima, that’s it with its pulpits plaqued and the ark’s vault installed deep between, behind the door of which the scrolls of the Law are said to be stored, rolled around their tablets, then crowned with a mappa, the wing of a wimple, than it’s her unwillingness to begin with their bargaining, to initialize an offer, though she knows she’s expected to, and yet further that she’s also expected to stall, to postpone and grossly mislead; that’s why, she has to suspect, they’re meeting here, privacy aside: how can you profane the House of God with such a risky business?

Aren’t we paying you by the hour? Der asks, and she sighs and with fingers plumped with smoker’s bruise though veined in delicate bone lays the virginal photo on the seat of her pew, facing down, pretends to refresh herself with the information obtainable on the reverse, then flips and keeping her thumb over the face turns with two breasts so imposing they’re cleaved into one to the lip of the pew behind her to hand the photo over.

Who’s she? Der asks.

The One, says the matchmaker.

Why her?

For you, only the finest…she retracts her thumb slowly, leaving a print swirled in shvitz over the blondish blue of the prospect.

Her name?

Now she goes by Frumie, wiping her hands of it on her skirts.

But listen: she’s bright, and beautiful, like you wouldn’t believe — altogether a fabulous young woman, an excellent match…you couldn’t do better even if I’d had a daughter — even if He’d be marrying me.

Which is an option — I look better in my photos than what you see in person.

I was asking her name, and Der tattoos the pew with a hand gloved in pigskin.

Did I mention beautiful and bright…a great catch, if you’ll excuse me — she happens to be the daughter of your monger, Fischelson the Fish King; I don’t need to tell you he’s offering generous.

A pity we’re not offering him.

Though I’d like to hear from the future groom, at least see Him…and she turns to face Ben seated alongside Der; it’s praiseworthy, how committed she is to even the inconvenience of her pose; her straining across a shoulder, she’s rubbernecking to ask, what are you looking for, Mister Israelien, who and why? what qualities are important? tell me about your mother…

Down the center aisle, a team of workers barrow in the Menorah, set it up on the pulpit right, are fored over a little to the left, that’s right and leave it lie with one of them remaining, who takes from a pocket of his parka a rag and tin and begins in with the polish. Casks of oil are being rolled step-by-step, for its illumination. The woman snorts all the waged patience in the world, begs a sigh out of herself it sounds bad like a cancer of convenience, frowns, then flips again through the stack arthritic or only stiffly. Fine, she’s saying, not Fein, no, flips, forward, back, and nextward, and this while bending and otherwise creasing her shots in a system so private as to be inscrutable maybe even to herself, then cuts, shuffles, finally deals; peeling the first from the top of the stack, then slapping it down over her shoulder, not bothering to turn around. Hymn, so how about Hanna? she asks, your mother’s name…a match already made, if not in heaven then at least in Joysey, she’s upstate, firstrate, no kidding — Hanna now Geffen-Weinstein née Heather Vinelli.

Father’s a senator, as you know, recently aligned himself with the faith — for the votes I’m sure you’d say and you might be right, but still, who wouldn’t.

Her grandfather’s the wine magnate, owns and operates Seedlessence, Inc., exclusive importer of table grapes from Palestein.

The wife’s father’s the big baker, I only pinch his loaves — the lightest around, but crusty enough on the outside…they’re just perfect together, you know?

Der waits until she’s finished to finish himself with this shaking his head, begins again the tap with his fingers.

She reaches exasperated into folds of her garments, onion layers disclosing babushka couture, the flap of her burlap camisole unearthing all manner of lapse and widowed slob: halfzware tobacco, dust of paprika, peppermint, a flask of mashke and the lintily mothballed else, exertions exposing, too, the handle of her dead husband’s revolver, its trigger webbed in reassuring spiderwork; it’s usually kept under the pillow, only brought along on risky consultation — her cleaving a cleft deep into her mammary now, to rise the boozy yeast of those two breasts from one, to produce in fits of fingers and rings of sparkling fauxgold this rolled, tattered photograph she attempts to smooth flat with palm and wrist on the reverse of the facing pew.

Pass it along, Der’s almost had it. Ben sits trying to peek under His veil, over the pew and her at the shot she has, bowed by her nails manicured in rainbows. Let’s see it, Der demands again and she says, her, let’s see Her…and she hands the photo over facedown to him greedy, grousing, who holds her image bent near his eyes, then squints to crease his forehead.

Is this who I think it is?

If not, then her mother’s got some explaining.

How recently did they embrace it All? Don’t tell me they’ve gone ger! I was down to meet with him last week and…long enough ago, it’s her turn to interrupt, for it not to cast aspersions — it’s only been a day or two but kosher, real legit. He had his own people officiating. I spoke with him just this morning, he’s keeping it quiet for now, asks that you respect his wishes, knows you will…she dangles her empty frames from a ringfinger, touches her tongue to a wart on her nose understood to be her nose until her sniffly tonguing of it explains the flesh behind it, massed in its support.

Der’s expression as if to say, you were holding out.

What can I say? she asks and says, complain me no complaint, bitch me no bitch, I just wanted to make you shvitz…. what’s that they say, kvetch, whine your misered heart out.

Plus, a boy like yours needs options. Do we have a deal or no? She grabs up the photograph from his hands, flips it over to the reverse’s scrawl, smudged dark in stricken zeroes.

I’m the one laying down the dowry here, is that it? Der nods disappointment. This the price, then? resignation, and he forces a whistle that ends in a kiss, his moustache smeary, pinching.