Joshua Cohen - Witz

Let my person go…Him of shvitz and of sadness, walled inside this tomb, however tastelessly appointed, not that He’ll notice, being nervous, anxious, humiliated by His image, His presentation, how He’s been packaged — O to be bound within the circumference of a ring…God, everything and the show, too, tonight’s disaster He’d rather not go into — the closet’s mirror, or that above the bed, in which to relive the worst in the face of relief — not with what He has to do to evade tomorrow, its tight new tux hanging plasticshrouded behind that closetglass (to be laidout on the bed in morning’s reflection), for the ceremony’s seven circles and…Ben almost thinks to stand in line for a refund at the boxoffice Himself, but no, think again — to do the drastic, that’s what’s called for, the coming voice, not as much gesture as deed, less prayer-whine, more more. Let my people, get up already and go! Gegangen! Napkins have been fitted into their holders. As for the rings, those two golden globes hollowed for vow, as if emptiness is its symbol (one of which’s been named the most capacious yet made, possibly ever, in the whole upper 40s, Mitteltown’s reformed Diamond District; who keeps records of such things, you might ask, but how they whisper!), they lie surgically stitched to a pillow on a bed in a room, which is Gelt’s, three quadrelating floors below, between two macaroons compliments of turndown. Ben takes steps to the window opposite the deck, dashes His eyes down upon the slope ensuing, its desert landscaped: a combedover tangle of briar, withered scrub and shrub giving way to flats; the far terrain littered not with treasures of papyrus, scarab, or hieroglyph shard, but with paper, plastic, the metal promise of lottery scratchoffs, the greasy shrouds that mummify burgers…Hathor the cow goddess slaughtered out in the wilderness and then carved for buffet, the four sons of Horus gone bust as the birds then flown home with the Sun God finally set, Amen-Ra; Osiris’ Isis secured for the night in her maximum security vault. Transportation to any netherworld’s just a short ride away, though, a straight shot from a lot of parked golfcarts that opposites the horizon.

From the glass atop the sharp rise of His accommodation, Ben’s stepping past the kingsized serviced with two macaroons of His own, served up each to a pillow, how thoughtful; their grease as if leeching His shadow across the eggshell carpet, deckward: the open and wide desert just a fall past volition, a gust flings open the door to screen midnight’s sky. The stars have been annulled in favor of the lights burning below, downed to the lampposts in deference, due respect dimmed to the blinking cold and the signs. Enumerate that lower stellular, then its sands gardened, too, and may that number be the wondrous sum of thy kinder — no way, you got the wrong me. Why should He marry her, how could He, why would He, know what a decent reception for onethousand maybe friends and no family costs you these days — it’s His money, not that it’s His to spend, but…emotionally, He means; know what kind of expectations are involved, what failures might lie in wait under every placarded table, what curses can be writ in the cards? Ben steps over the threshold, through the air, into sky. And there, at the greediest, pyramidal pitch of His occupancy: His head itself a greenish eye appraising, allseeing, seeking value unlidded, unlashed atop worth…Exile — the desert endless and endlessly unforgiving; utterly foreign, yet if only in its ideal, an inheritance, too: this desert the wilder younger brother of an easterly nowhere, the desert that formed Affiliation, years before civilization, ages before culture — an unpromised land; and, at its furthest western edge, another ocean, which promises to be purer than that that lapped us over here those generations dead long ago. Arise, then go down. Don’t let the wind hit you on the way out. Deserts have this way of turning people to prophets, sheep into shepherds, making rules into exceptions that then grow bushes of fiery beard and strike miracles from the faces of rocks.

Here and now, though, there’s no indication. And so what is it, exactly, precisely, stonily spring forth with what because we all have that thirst: what force, that tactless trust to what or in Whom that has Ben out on that deck, atop the pyramid atop the pyramid from which He rules every and none, then has Him ledge out a leg over the rail…the hair of His head, tangling with breezes and cirrus — to knock unscrewed the burnt bulb of the moon…on the rail, His crotch becomes stuck, what a drop — don’t look down? don’t look up! and then the other leg overs, as well, and Ben’s holding onto life with only the cruciate nails of His fingers, trembling, numbed. A handful of our scholars once schmucked low enough to suggest this as an attempt at suicide and for this they’ve been thrown from the topmost window of the House of Study, which if not merely metaphor is risen higher than any pyramid and with windows that don’t open ever whether in or out — then to become scholars of only their own demise, of their own failure, its interpreting loss; and yet neither is this a martyrdom, not even a selfmartyrdom, as other of our sages once heretically proposed — what mamzers semantic, forget them: may they be excommunicated by their own consciences, exiled out to the margins, the verso darkened by recto of the page being turned. No, it’s at its most secular an escape, as some of our more moderates have allowed, an exodus if you want, but, as they insist, an exodus redivivus reversed — an exile accomplished in rewind, a history never accomplished in doublearrowing rewind: into the desert, the Law, and only then may we wander it was, but now it’s just wandering from the very 1:1 first verse, perpetually — an eternal lightingout for a territory that can only be civilized in its Promise, it’s said. To think that who or what promised the Promised and why’s not to be known, and how that promise doesn’t indicate intention either, whether it be good or evil or neither and mystically both, only fulfillment, as faithed…hymn hymn hymn, is this the particular kind of promise best left unfulfilled, like the one of the One Messiah — who knows if not Him; better to think less, fail better, fall more. Unminded, mindless, to step along the outermost lip of the deck and then, lean. Ben’s foreskin freshly shed before the show thanks to His own ministrations, it’s calming; His Batya, the Marys, are off — and so He has nothing to slow Him, to float Him on down on the wind of its flap. He lowers His tush, holding the railing to air His weight as long as He can and the deck can support. And then breathe, Ben — He just lets Himself go, with a great loosening of everything inside Him gives way, and He slides…down the western face of the pyramid, Him slipping hundreds of widening stories down the slope widening fast and faster forever, what with His weight and its force, the extensive weather that is gravity behind Him, slingshotting this now yellowy butterballed, dirtysnowballing Ben down the incline headfirst, feetfirst, everythingfirst and tumbly nothing, His tush on His roundness that’s all tush getting hot, rubbing hotter and burning, bumping Him up in small moguls on ducts, chaffing until — just as Ben’s sure His robe will spark His roll into flame, a rearside, frontside, inferno, He hits, solidly, and splays open wide, landed in the sand, not quite that of the desert proper though made in its image: an unsparing, unstintingly dusky perimeter perhaps once marked for plantings, but presently barren because frozen, fringing toward the edge of the sidewalk then around at a squared turn to the face of the pyramidal Main Entrance.

Promise. Save that very vague promissory notion He hasn’t fully thought through, though who has — destiny or fate, reward or punishment, step right up, step right up — Ben has no thoughts whatsoever as to just where exactly what territory He’s lighting out for is, if lit, if anywhere and not just more of that proverbial prophetic dimness or dumb…God’s talking to me in my voice; God’s talking to me, and I’m God — whether in metaphor or image. Confused, who’s not, but out, just out’s enough — He rolls from the sand, half-somersaults then gets up onto feet, stumbles toward the front. And there, to His right, signed at the turn of the sidewalk, a black letterboard bulleted with letters in white: Shalom , it says, Welcome to II: Israelien Impersonators . Then an incongruous Philistine arrow, pointing this’a’way and Ben — despite any freedom a slave still to ego, like a dog sniffling for terrorist bombs, or a God responding to an invocation of names — has to follow, dripping sand and shvitz. Through the door, He’s swung into the lobby crowded but vast, then through the Q’asino floor and its tangle of topiary of Him, celebrity cacti kept decorative up against the glaring edges of wallmounted display cases said to contain: Ben’s wardrobe from His babyclothes up to His wear from the show, then His shoes — bronzed booties that just have to be faked; accompanying other Israelienish treasures and trinkets and charms, making Him blush if not galling: His family Kiddush set, or a model thereof, their silver box for besamim perhaps a reproduction, too, alongside an intricately upbraided — in its labeled, libelous description — Havdalah candle of His mother’s she’d never used because it was too beautiful, she’d always say, how to burn it, whose birthday present it’d been from relatives, hers, flown in from Safed once of Palestein (and then stored underground, inside the vault, an ironclad canopic containment of models purposemade to accompany us to the afterlife, a midgetized Eden of the temporal above: minivaults stuffed with miniaturized gelt, dimunitive chip and coin, minigolfcarts and minislots, minibuffet tables smally laden with tiny roasts and flecks of sushi, little harlot idols with claybound breasts laid atop the minibeds, the minipillows, the miniminibars, minipayperview available in every room, maybe) — then, deep into the innermost sanctum of the pyramid, a room known as the King’s Tomb: a limitless capacity ballroom doneup in a lively approximation of rastered sepia, with bunting and crepe streamers hung in black & white, to host the suitably bannered, what’s it again… 1st Annual Meeting of Israelien Impersonators , held this inaugural year, amazing — O what a Cohencidence! such cohenesthesia! smack dab in the middle here of this frozen desert, amongst the holdings of displaced Ibn Ezra and Ha Levi’s latterdays. Maybe it’s the prospect of the wedding, or just that of the group rates that would follow it in a discounted procession, veiled in clipped coupons and diaphanous deals, trained to please, but all are in attendance, Bennies from every continent converting. He hadn’t been briefed — untold many of Him working the room, networking below and they hadn’t; futz the Garden’s Pharaohlording, their locklipped secrets, their pokerfaced withhold or hit, just His luck, but maybe there’s a why this’s been hushed. He’s folding, we’ll call. There’s no better place to lose your self than among yourselves, as who would find Him, Him as Him, here, amongst all these Hims, who’d even think it to look. How could anyone tell the real deal’s the spiel, only God knows, only God cares, and maybe that’s it — to let the world stand your security, to stay safe by exposing everyone else to the danger you’re in; and then, to convince them they’re every one of them doing it for themselves, now that’s business.