Joshua Cohen - Witz

Ben shuffles endearingly slowly, kloymershtily klutzy manner up to the microphone of the podium atop the dais and shadowing there as if the one hand left of a clock, unbound, shading the face entire of this Timeless Square, this mess of Mitteltown recently redeemed from business, freed from the oppressive glare and din of commerce, lately rededicated to the holy — to the faith of these newest menschs and their womenfolk and kinder of thousands, these million they seem welling tears to flood the avenues east and west then ten street blocks north and further to spill out like blood spurted from the vein of the lane to stain the ice of the Park, to taint the pure and coldly bright earth surrounding the Temple, its reflection of the sanctuary’s dome, skymutual. With His veil lifted, Ben about to lift His voice — an echo comes from the crowd, a yelp that pierces air, its spittle a bullet, stray of flesh, He falls…a frenzied screech, its tongue the clapper of an urgent bell — then Tongues, speaking in or of them…

We need a witness! a witness over here! is what’s said, such nasally stop-tongued fortition made in response to a miracle wholly engineered, perhaps, or, nu, possibly even imagined, in the midst of the assembled…whaddya want: women faint, menschs overwhelmed themselves; they bawl like the babies they’re having; an accent failing: Hamm’s wing strikes quickly to hand out forms, passing them into the crowd from hand to fist, no longer questionnaires or surveys, but disclaimers, nondisclosure agreements. Is anybody hurt, I repeat, is anybody hoooooyt? Broadway’s sewers shrieking rhotic, lid their throats, go futz em. Officers get reared up into the air, go thrown from spooked mounts, geyn galloping under — slipping on prankish lots, lost marbles, trampled in the fracas ensuing. Shots rain up to snow stars. Nightsticks rap skull. Out with the hoses. Tonight, the glass will burn, the fire will shatter. No commandments will be broken, but who’ll vouch for their stones? Ben’s snatched; the rostra, evacuated. A helicopter rises, hoisting an overload, an underslung calf crying out…Ich bin the goddamned German Ambassador! The other guests of honor have disappeared, your honor. Ben’s dispersed into His doubles, lettered through the exhaustion of any alphabet, then numbered, alien Israeliens, the Garden’s gang of gängers…who is who, they want to know, how should I, they look the same to me; kicking, punching their ways through the home teem — enough of whom are happy to ape His likeness for no pay at all, not even for the admiration of neighbors, family friends. I’m me, Ben whimpers from His knees, cowered, who else — over here, you, nu, I’m talking to you, He’s saying at Union Square where they’re (unionized, but “for entertainment purposes only”) picketing each other, when that afternoon Bowery downed to the idol that is ye olde Battery amid a mob founded atop the altared ruins of its fort, they’re grossly salival kissing His feet and hugging His legs; pecking and petting a lovein, how they’re begging, beseeching, anyone but Him, His others…but it’s me you want, He says, me. Not who else, who better. Unconscionable, futzed — how they grovel like that, humble themselves at the feet of impostors. Ben grabs at His head, then His gut, the ego’s fat, turns it around in His hand. Me, this is me. Roots out His hair. Makes me sick. How they’ll prostrate themselves before any beard. Throng a finger risen in scorn. Asphalt gives poor reflection, tar no mirror at all — can’t tell how ridiculous we’ve become, so blackened, so changed. Hamm has Him facedown in the street in the freeze. Mada crackles the radio, over. A siren late through the Square airs His name. Another hand grubbing, not His own — it fists hairy paunch, digs nails, drags Him into the rear of a limo. Get in, Heber’s grunting over the seat, and stay in; be a good boychick for once, shut your door for yourself. They head west without light and against a oneway, turning onto Tenth Avenue parting the waters that are not water but oy lachrymose people, wave after wave of them unapplauding, widemouthed and raging and now coming to crack across the fender and hood, leaving behind them a staggering wake tipped sharply with spittle, a tide thick with gobhocked curses and blood. A squeal, then a left onto the West Side Highway, Downtown then a swerve off its edge — from a pier, there’s a crash to the flume, ice giving them way upon the riverine remains of the bay.

At a bivouac set up in the Park just south of the Temple, a tentcity of pilgrims with no further plans, having thought through nothing beyond this coming to town: arrival, mere showing, setting up camp then awaiting the blessing — Johannine among them, being inquisitioned by both presscorps and the public dismayed. Even given this utzy ruckus, there are still questions to ask, half as serious as sky, the other lightweight, to be dismissed in a manner professional, hand to mouth disarming and quick, a small laugh given out of the recline of the lips, a yuk humoring chuckle; the reporters love him and their cameras, they’re jealous…asking him what: boxers or briefs; nu, what’s His opinion of the Temple, or the new Sabbath legislation; really ready for marriage, are we finally saved? That was Him, the pilgrims gathering around, they’re asking, indubitable dupes; He was here, wasn’t He, what every arrived acolyte wants to know, I didn’t miss Him, did I, hope not, God bless, we came all this way just for this. Always late. It’s your fault, says husband to wife, though it’s his, always is.

How it’s been said — openflap whispers, in sleepingbag beddowns, this strawstuffed, stickstuck, muddying campfirelore — that Ben, though others hold it’d only been one of His Hims, you never know which, had healed a cripple, attempted to heal…Him attempting, then failing; this reportedly outside the Laz-R-Us department store, its location franchised, however, a borough away, Brooklyn’s King Plaza, or the Queens Boulevard Center — according to reports if not reliable then official — at precisely the moment He’s being evacuated from Times Square amid the progress of a riot still not contained and fast coming east. Martial law declared from the mouth of a gun. Don’t tread on me tanks through the tunnels. A pyramid of canteens without water. A command post nested with gulls.

It’s told: how Ben or another Ben finds Him or himself confronted, according to only the most salaried of our witnesses, that is, coincidentally the most memorious, too, He’s cornered, no choice or the alternative; how the goy rolls himself up to Him or him, demands an audience, airing grievance, entitlement, the lonely disgruntled, and how Ben or another just grabs him, lifts the babbling form from his wheelchair, dangles him in the air from his pits, then lets go; the goy geshrays a menschlike Oy, falls down to the sidewalk fronting the mall, a writhing heap of howl, still crippled, now worse.

It’s been asked: who tried to cure you? that’s what a lateshift nurse wants to know, later that Shavuout at the hospital (it’s related, too, named after Mount Sinai) to which the cripple’s been transferred for examination by a specialist who’s courting his daughter…God, she says, what a schmuck, but still the following day this nurse — who the night previous leaks to the press this particular story (and’s also a mother to twins), having been invited by agents of the Garden and with the flatter of media exposure for her and her easy-eyed, promising kinder, the promise of reward if not financial then that of the spirit, of hope — how she takes her older than previously reported daughters the two of them dressed alike out of their kindergarten early, schleps them but privately sleighed from island Staten to island Long and its Five Towns, which are not so much less than or equal to five than they are, factitiously, the same — in one of which Ben’s said to be dedicating a new synagogue, Beth Israelien its name, a shul, it’s preferred, and how she stands with them there, huggingly bundled babes they’re smiling gapped and waving at the wrist, their mother making her revisionary rounds through three hours, four, five of hard interview snow in the line that’s been designated for kisses.