Joshua Cohen - Witz

Preserve what for what, and why’d you want to go and do a thing like that — having finally found His mouth, kept numbed around the smoke: no way there’s much money in the last if all you do is keep it locked up, like sleep with it, why. Seems strange. Icky. Aberrant. Unclean. A thing weird uncles would do.

You’re not understanding. It’s that the lastness of last things taken altogether, it’s not a lastness, it’s more like a nonlastness, a firstness, no, an extraordinary unordinal, you with me?

A whatness for whoness of whyness now?

In our time, which is not your time, which is outside your time much as your Einstein once thought, if you know him, you might, the one with the hair and the mc 2…we have the last black & white photograph, listen up, the last phonograph record ever pressed, the Ninth Symphony of Mahler, conducted by your landsmann, sehr langsam; his name was Bernstein, like amber. We have, also, the last book ever published, though its title escapes me, its author unheard of. No one’s read it; we don’t want to break any bindings. Anyway, to explain: these three items, each the last of its kind, these three times together, they’re no longer the last — together, they fill in each other, reconstitute, recreate, repopulate the world that once made them…regeneration, reincarnation, not really, not quite; more like resurrection, that’s right: the last things of any world, at the instant they’re the last, are that world , nicht wahr, a world that, and this I don’t need to tell you, will never Turn turn turn again in the same manner ever.

And so? He wants to know.

And so, your presence is requested.

Me?

Yes, not now, though, soon enough…as if to say, I’m sorry, sir, your incredulity’s no longer good here. All the arrangements have been made. Everything’s paid already. Up front. Posterity’s been booked long in advance. A palace is waiting, like Solomon’s, Herod’s, whichever, a real Temple…that is, if you want it, a manger, a Mecca, a White House, all yours — and in it the last two Philistine women, now I have your attention, aloelipped, myrrhhaired twins both above and below how you wouldn’t believe, luckily enough for you they’ve got the last four perfect mammæ in your universe: they’ll attend to your every need, they’ll wait on you hand and hoof. We have, as well, the last of every species allowed to you, and if and when you finish them, and we’ll allow you to subsist on them, to eat and to drink them — that’s how important you are to us — you can start in on the tablets, which have been clinically proven to successfully simulate among the tastes of many other foodstuffs both that of kosher deli and takeout Chinese.

And why are you, answer me this, indulge me…Ben ashes His Schwantz into an attending green nurse’s He thinks it’s its cleavage, a pulsating bust itself interplanetary — why are you so interested, so obsessed, with this lastness?

An obvious question, Doktor Froid says, which it has all the answers…it’s that we have nothing to lose; nothing of ours ever ages, nothing becomes old and so, nothing dies. And if there’s no death, nothing at the end, indeed, no end at all, then, and follow me here, there’s no possibility of our being exceptional; in other words, of this lastness, of being the last, as you say…sof pasuk: which estate we consider either the highest honor or the lowest punishment in a world such as yours, in which everyone’s punished to one severity or another — to tell you the truth, we’re still not quite sure. Understand me, please, and it stubs out all three of its Schwanzs in the rounds of ashtraying suckers — we’re immortal: for us, there’s no being born, and then again neither is there any being unborn, any life outside or, better, beyond, our cache. We’re the first people, also the last; the two qualities negate each other, commingle in cancellation, if you will, dialectically anull any ambition, hope or faith; and so we’re obsessed with this mortality, not only with yours but more perfectly — we’re fascinated by the end of it All, with what might be called universal mortality, if that makes any sense, deadline, flatlined timeline, catastrophe with all the fixings, Chaos the first God, Apocalypse’s Greek revelation…with the idea that any world can just — end; this quality of lastness, this idea of singularity, of being unique…we’re talking survival. Genug.

Whoever you are, whoever you would’ve been only if, whatever it is you do and whatever it is you would’ve done — you are it. And I mean, It. You, Ben of my Ben. The past and the future are now. Sit straight, make eye contact, bend me an ear…

To name a thing’s to give it life, that’s your tradition, just trust me on this. It’s like Adam, prothoplastus to ultimaplastus, the Roman, the Latin, you follow…then a negative Adam, an antiAdam, the genetic repository of God’s imaged intention and its debasement by you, I mean them. Ben, you have no culture, but to those left behind you are the culture. No matter what you might want out of life, no matter what you might’ve wanted out of it once, or needed, or else what’d been expected of you or by you, you Ben — liebchen, if I may presume — are chosen, and like you, we, too, have no choice…and Doktor Froid stretches out, slowly, expectantly, crossing tentacles to reveal behind them and underneath squishy, an armchair: plush, loosely jointed, and creaky maybe a century old; emitting in its recline a patter of soft flatulent noise He mistakes for the sounds things like this make when they respire, if they respire — ask it.

Bitte, He says, I’ll bite, I’ll even chomp at the bit and He spits out a loose shred of Schwanz…I’m interested, I won’t deny it. Let’s talk particulars — how does it work? the salary, the hours? Vacations? Benefits? What’s your coverage?

To begin with, we beam you up here and ship you to Zion — I know, I know, we’re thinking about changing the name…

And then?

And then what else do you expect, you exist. But you’ll want motivation, incentive, enticement, a little of the what’s in it for me. Shema, hear and then harken: for you, we’ve broken the rules, violated directives, thrown basic principles to the wind that isn’t in space and so we’ve made it ourselves with rain and with snow and then set it blowing on course, that’s how serious. Your happiness means the world to us; what I mean is — we’re really going out of our way. Especially, we’ve acquired not a last, and neither a first, except as she represents for us a departure, and for you, everything, the universe known and, at the same time, not so well…she has her own distinction, I mean. We have for you a woman named Hanna, though we know this isn’t how she was known to you. She was Mother, Ima, Eve and Lilith, think suckle.

You do? He springs from His seat to stand the unsteady thrust of the ship, gags on His Schwanz, begins choking.

And now we need you…not now, though, later— your later .

And then? He asks, getting breath.

And then we’ll have you, that’s it, and we’ll keep you and well, that should be enough. What else do you need: you want we should probe you, perform experiments, polish off the speculum, speculate deep — anything else you secretly hope against fear we’d do because you’d be disappointed if we didn’t, wouldn’t you? Doktor Froid whacks Ben on the back with a tentacle uncrossed, He hurls His Schwantz out of His mouth to fly across the room wildly butt over cherry, as if with tractoring lock to smack this nurse attending in the tush if it’s tushes they have like orbiting moons; a fit of hurt throat, then a calming of cough, a stifle and soon, amid silence, another of the Doktor’s tentacles exploring His lap in a special direction, leaving across His knees damp trails of suction.