Joshua Cohen - Witz

As it is written, at least here: He knows but does not really know, hears but does not listen, He sees but does not really see…His eyes are open but to them, the world has been shut.

Moon gives way to sun through the window, its sill stooped from having to shoulder the feedbag heft of the light: illumination scattering across the planks of the floor then the filthy wallow of throwrug and then His form, His face; withdrawing from sleep, there’s a waft, the slight smell of brunch cooking, then burning, and then the sensation, it’s pain, a sizzling sprung from His forehead, fire focused through the lens left atop His sleep, beaming to concentrate morn upon a worrisome furrow — Ben beats His head out of wrinkles, snuffs His hair, then fingers the smoldering mark.

Goddamnit, to be awake to such hurt!

Ben holds the lens up to whichever eye’s imperfections it wasn’t made to perfect — blindly guess which He holds it up in the air to His eyes, which squint to see through it…emptiness. A wall, a loin of log. He groans, takes the glass off and away. Without it, there’s the hock of a chimney and furnace, coldbellied, gray. An eye as if rendered to lard. And then, the blur of its veins, which are cracks; the roof ’s leaking, too, that’s the wet on His head. There’s a scar in the pitch, plipdrip the sound. A balm, so cooling.

He forages for the glass again, rinds it into His lids. Through the scratches and dirt, the snoutings of knuckles and thumbprints gathered throughout the untold glut of His sleep…a foursquare logcabin, His shadow like blood clot along its slats barked toward the ceiling. Furniture and fence hacked into kindling, piled in stacks in the corner against the foot of the bed where He lies.

Ben tries to sit up, falls back. With the glass off, all’s fuzzy again, unfocused, bright — how the comforter of the bed’s white tucking toward pink, and the pillow under Him, too, but the sheets staining the mattress darker, they’re mudflecked, covered with streaks of pests exploded, crushed between antic fingers. With the glass off, the chair’s upholstery has come unholstered, a cheap recliner its seat and back slashed, degeneratively red — the curtains of the window, though, they seem to be only His lashes. With the glass on again, He can espy the webbed patterns of doilies draped, lace, a shatter without glass. Then, He holds to the other eye, to take sight of the shelves across the room, empty, undusted, sagging: what’re only spare troughs and farrowingcrates shelved for the mending; their books must’ve already been burned. Must be smoke. A sty. He raises His other hand to remove the lens but can’t, finds His wrist bolted, chained ostentatiously to the knob of the door. Sitting up, He has bruises upon His arms and legs, a prodigious spoil nipples each breast.

A crucifix on the wall, used as a hatrack: it’s empty except for a cap whose logo says, Affiliate Now!

A jeansed mensch comes to the door, knocks once then opens it, sneers his chaw to a windowside spittoon. He takes the recliner in hand and screeches it across the room to sit opposite Ben who’s itching at the gargly marks left by bedbugs.

He takes a pistol from a pocket, takes it apart then wipes everything down; when he’s done, he can’t put it back together and so he sits in silence and mopes — only to startle, throwing the gun exploded to parts to the floor, then kicking them to clatter under the bed, at three sudden knocks at the door.

He rises, knocks in response, lets her in. Amateur, like.

She’s young, younger than him, just in from the shuttered piggery in flannelplaid, spandex under a skirt, workgloves and slopwaders; she’s carrying a tray topped with two glasses, vodka in a flask and a case.

Honey, he twangs to her, meet our new investment. Take a good gander — does He look like retirement to you?

She blushes to the color of a cozy carnation; if possible her hair shocks even higher and sharper, like the electrified spikes they’d used to keep their pigs in the pen: their backfats and baconers, feeders and sucklings, barrows, cull sows.

The mensch takes the tray from her, kisses her away, opens the case and hands Ben His new specs.

He pours out the drink, takes both shots himself without intelligible blessing.

All is clear, or soon will be.

You took quite a beating back there, the mensch says. There’ve been riots. Unrest, with you sleeping. Army went in, the reserves. You’re lucky to still be alive. Let’s just say it was costly, a whole heap of payola. I mortgaged the farm, that and the money I’m making not to raise treyf anymore. But don’t worry about me, I’ll make it back double. There’re people I’m talking to, I’m learning the language. I got me a primer, and me and the wife we’re studying nights with a rav.

I’m your new host, the name’s Adam.

Believe it, I didn’t have to change it or nothing.

Utz all you want that this has been welcomed, deserved, that He’s all this time been asking for it, begging on knees and on the stiff merit of boredom, even that in the end He’s better off bound with gags — slavery’s what He’s in for, to be bargained for, bought and sold, His person possessed. Anyway, the most inclusive of our interpreters offer, slavery means different things to different people, that there are as many slaveries as there are lives, and that bondage can just mean like you know respiring, bound to life, gettingby: Monday morning, Wednesday’s hump upon which the moon was created, then broken for the healing of Friday, the weekend, a job or a spouse. Through the grind. And to be sure, our sages agree, Ben’s isn’t a subservience of the hard labor stripe, which if more slimming is still that much too productive, worthwhile, ensuring the fattened happiness and health of another: owning Him matters more than working Him, which — working — is not quite His shteyger. And so what if it’s not Egypt the real, or Moses with Abraham Lincoln goes south, should that make any difference to us, temper our sympathy for one so abused, ultimately, by Himself? A slave to sciomachy. If not slavery then how else, please, to explicate such a geography of wandering: from family to family, from house to house; nothing this looned’s ever done on your lonesome. Master to host. If not slavery, how to explain such unquestioning surrender to others, their wills, His fate, to a God He doesn’t even believe in (others, wills, fate, God — the same, if only we knew what that was), to a God now — God knows why — Who’s worshipped in every burg Ben’s sold off in, exalted in every dorf He’s auctioned off to?

Might a representative from the midst of the encampment walk a line in the sand, a map to be keyed against the wind effacing everything save the homes that He’s known: Joysey, Island’s Garden, ho and motels, the desert, the Spa, forced home hospitality, revived synagogue poorhouses soon, and then — nothing, with nothing unexplored, nothing else might exist: show them only the stopoffs in a Wander three, ten, twelve unto six thousand jahren, and the people one meets! hands begging shaking, hauling a wilted odd number of flowers to strange, rearranged, reAffiliated houses, logcabins and trailercabs and just for the night, remain vigilant at the threshold, beware the domestic snare (the carpet unfastened, the rug that might catch), the averted clasp of Ben’s welcome…Shalom! this greeting people with a gratitude feigned who wouldn’t have otherwise acknowledged you to spit on you, with their half flung open stabledoors, haylofts, ladders that go up but not down; the lice and ticks of flight through wheres and their afflicting nights that sleep every one of them the same — paltry hours of one shut eye, His shoes still on, still laced up.

Ben’s sold, then resold, sold again, from Adam to eve through to manumit morning. His arms and legs, people own shares. He’s quartered, pulled this way, pushed that. Not that He doesn’t attempt an escape: halfhearted, onefingered dials to reach the Doctors Tweiss fail, please leave a message not returned. Why them? He should collect on His own bounty? Why because He needs some advice is why, is seeking some counsel: needs an image of Himself that’s true, that’s not as-advertised, featured on dayold breadbins, discounted tuna tins, packets of salmon, on stickers stuck on the peels of desiccated citrus, Missing on the back of cartons of milk, Wanted on jars of honey, Him or alive — and wants, too, a measure of respect if not for His self (loathsome, fatter, uglier), then for an unknowable deity that’s His and His only, altogether some something justificatory of further existence: a company of selfregard, which brands might hock for 19.99 shekels shipping not included, a quality of worth religion lets go for the price of a soul. Ring ring rings but no answer: recovering from the Hymie visit up north, boondocked in the Berkshires, phoning into their answering service, the Doctors think it’s a hoax, a prank hallucination, they’re sure of it, and who can blame them what with all the collaboration conveniently going around; inform on your neighbors, report on the mirror — how Johannine’s flipped, shushingly, only a day after the Vice President went. And know, too, that when He breaks down on a host’s phone and calls into the Garden, it’s just a matter of importance, a mandate of filters, of nonresponse, of who did you say you were, right, uhuh, very funny, you and sixmillion metro area others screenedout, lost in the switchboard…go chop down the phonetree, with which to burn up the fuse, the last line. But I really am, He says and gevalt, get over yourself, sell it and a bridge to a party who’s buying. Apparently, outreach’s gone the way of ways, ingathering initiatives for those misguided, lost, single, divorced or even, gasp, intermarried still as dead and gone as His parents — Hanna’s emergency Development meetings to address yesterday’s slights, Israel’s lawyerly panels of pressing issue; and the sleazy, hogging attention His parents had understood as early as the first trimester (how Hanna’d begun showing immediately after conception, that night even, the flailing prick of fading pleasure, her body without calm) now fails to impress anyone as more than a ritual, another enslavement He has to rage against, freedom from which will require either serious will or further professional help, paid for by the hour meaning fortyfive minutes and no, no personal checks accepted.