Joshua Cohen - Witz

That night, which is that of the new moon, and so that of the month known as Av — the only moon not mentioned in the Torah, it’s related, a moon too dark to mention, we might, the darkest, as if so old or forbidden as to be no moon whether new or not, its absence tonight too sad and best forgotten or never lived through, the moon of destruction, the moonlessness of the dead — above Him appears another vision, a visitation of sorts…this mensch who seems like the grandfather He’d never had, never knew, maybe great, or greatgreat: his payos rustling in the slightest of winds, he’s bearded but without the moustache. Are you oppressed, my fellow? he asks Him.

Brother, might you be hungry, or a pregnant sister — ach, you need maybe a pillow, or are you good with the grass?

Hab rachmones, He can’t just sleep out here all night without a moon, says the mensch’s true grandson with the name of a prophet, which one who remembers: nicht nicht…a bad omen, bodes ill. And so through such an unpropitious pitch, a copse of trees is mightily felled from the edge of a lane, they’re chopped to size then their logs are planed, their boards becoming fitted and nailed. At dawn, their strapping kinder raise up a barn around Him; their womenfolk having spent the eve further antedating themselves, while at the same time updating the past, what with their knitting of yarmulkes and hermetically holidaythemed scherenschnitte, doing their laundry so as to be prepared for the approach of the ninth of the month, hanging their white mourning garb out on the fences to gather the darkness, then in their kitchens preparing a meal for the eventual wake of their arrival, busy with their stews and goulashes while cuckooing gossip to one another, which translates to prayers; a syncretism this eclectic mix of writs and superstitions, traditions and rituals, incantations of spells the recipe, a meltingpot blackbottomed, full of misgivings’ blue brew: prophecy’s invoked, stars are observed in their own light, alone: how in the zodiac, it’s lately Leo, traditionally the time to snip hairs to be pressed under pillow; then, how Virgo the virgin comes next, hens to be lifted to count their eggs out from under them and then, from that number, interpret, extrapolate. Go on. Plates are shattered, their remains are stirred in the fire.

How to rouse Him?

Maybe I should kiss Him on the mouth with the tongue of a turtledove? says a girl not yet of age.

What about me? says her rumspringa sister, a year older though already a mother herself.

His presence an omen distressing, how could it be anything but what with Av’s erev upon them. Almanac tells only of frost, perpetual, ferhuddling. After their work through to dawn, they pray away the rest of the morning then at afternoon hit hard a schnitz, beginning brunch without Him still sleeping, as if unable Himself to be raised without nails: they dig into their shoofly pies sided with greens, their breads spread thumbthick with apple butter, accompanied by bottboi and chowchow, pickled eggs to nosh, bushels of beets. Hardcider flows freely, without a mind to their P.ints & Q.uarts. Then, finished with their leftovers then with afternoon prayers, the daven of mincha, their meeting begins, if in a tumult of grievance gotten unrepentantly drunk, plowed with paranoia: pews are tossed around, scuffled across the floor, broken, beards are swallowed, moustaches sucked in annoyance: what portends this passedout mensch? our charge, our barnyard starred? He’s a spy, Meek Zeke shrieks, from the government, Intelligence, here to keep tabs or chits, checkup; or, He’s come to convert us, to lead us back into the corrupted fold, a wandering proselytizer if a touch sleepy, or sheepish…gevalt — a missionary inleagued only with death!

They referendum to port Him out of their barn newly risen (to be repurposed in repentance to an almshouse, if not to be razed), to cart Him unconscious still over to Paradise…by way of Bird-in-Hand, if you follow, then Intercourse, let them decide what to do — arriving there a day or so later and in terrible weather, to tax shelter under the gables of the former Trinity Reform, now a synagogue, the hochshul’s what they say, its hex replaced with the Decalogue; they sprawl Ben out on the lawn. A freshly accredited rabbi sits on the stoop — he looks just like them, introduces himself as Rav Nissen King, asks them if they’d consider contributing to the reduction of a mortgage. Forget it, they cart Him back, then into Lancaster proper, get orders from the community to wait for a responsa from York, city of the white rose, the light of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, or l’PA: searching for what, remedy, guidance, a party to assume their burden, their charge and its charity’s care. Tzedakah this mitzvah. This whose is He. Not one of us, meaning stranger. They store Him granaried, in disused silos and troughs, and in cowsheds again erected overnight, so as not to profane the sanctity of their own haylofts and homes.

On the eve of the first Shabbos of Av, Ben wakes to a sliver of moonlight, shining in through the grain of the slats. He gets up amid the small space, finds a rusting, whirlwindreaping scythe propped lazily in a recess, against the woodenwall sunk in straw, makes to hack His way through the lock, slices it down to splinters, rips a gash of door in the door in a single sharp sweep: there’s darkness without, still’s quiet, a night. Free and about to quit the cow-shed, make an escape, He hears a lowing the sound of a shadow within, a low and susurrant moo, full of loneliness, sympathetic grief. What else but the cow, the Joysey, the heifer red and as huge as its sound: red the shade of its odium, it’s never been yoked. Insistent on following Him from town to nowhere as these reformed Amish of greater York, they make their rounds to plead help; curiously, it wouldn’t milk unless it’d been allowed to follow, and no one intended to grieve it, foolish to even tempt at its vex: God forbid it should die or be rendered otherwise impure before it goes for undreamt gelt at Philadelphia market or auction, hope, to that mensch from the Temple up north made an offer, in the big city, who trusts them, who’d afford not to these days…that deal means future, survival — a refurbished kindergarten, just think of it, the new mikveh, the lease of a new cemetery, too, and a bier bought to own; and so they’d tied the cow off to the cart, led it on, never letting it tow, not even thinking, such defilement, shtum.

Ben stands — His legs flung doors apart, facing the open. As the heifer stampedes its charge straight ahead, at Him, determined and quick, its horned head down underneath Him, carrying Him over then onto its mass hairily red and pulsing in muscle, and then out and into the night. As if told to Him, but it’s no talking cow, not all of them are — revelation transmitted up from its beating, breathing hide dirtily wet to His tush and then into His mind, Ben understands He’s not to lead but to follow, to be led, only to ride. He surrenders Himself to the heifer, winding its ambly ramble down the pike east into the liberty of Philly, toward its columns and cobbles, its kites, keys, and cracked bells, through its ritzy, Rittenhouse streets, heading for the riverfront alleys, Penn’s Landing past the statues tugged fallen, monumental malfeasance, skyscrapers lacking for glass; the heifer hoofing them through the following dark, a slide across the Delaware’s ice, enacting Washington’s crossing but now in reverse; through the hushed middle night of wharf and warehouse collapsed, of boats frozen to shelter slips and gullish middens — Ben tightening His thighs around the heifer’s flanks, holding fast with the fist of His loins.

How much longer until we’re there yet, again…but even after having reached the other shore, this heifer’s not too big into conversation — remind Him, not all of them are; no offense meant, if silently taken. Ben without blessing dismounts from its back, clumsily, insulted as much — which the heifer interprets as a sign now to switch. Upon its two hindlegs it hurls itself up on His own back, scarpimply, hairy itself, a huffy hump stooped. Ben gives a groan under its weight, it soon settles, tips, weaves lanes forsaken, grazed of their traffic, the heifer steadying itself with its hindquarters to hooves wrapped around waist, held by the bulge of His motherly hips. He walks on, trudges, a slipsy route down the untrafficked interstate shoulder — its pines and within them, the myriad, secret sandy paths linking graves: the trails and paths dug between Turnpike and Parkway, between Expressway and local — them highstepping over and around the thrown tires and trash, then, back to the blacktop, slowing up on the turns, yellowarrowed reflectors they dazzle the eye, the forehead’s headlight, holes of uprooted mile markers set for the occasional stumble, the sharp clovens of His burden digging a urinary sting into His kidneys, its hindquarters pried loose from their hold under the lungs at the ramps on and lost off He uses as turn signals, alerting with hair and hoof their presence to no one around. Though Ben’s carrying, the heifer still directs, navigates its own load, leads as always in its snouting of lefts, its horning out rights, though it seems not quite sure where they’re headed, exactly — suspicious, this transference of bestial blame, as if a sin offering to the subliminal…what He needs, what wants, where the feet feel to walk: how this is beginning to be familiar, intersections these interstices familial, then known. Route 70what. The Mall. Ellisburg, what’s it called, Ellisberg, King’s Highway. Names, and numbers, too, these codes born of area, the zip that doth zone; the network, its treelike ringings and reticulations of tar, the grid wide and open, the grin of the turns and the looparound smiles, even the smirk of oneways — all the sudden and happy logic of connectivity, of togetherness…a gathering, more communicative than most, not taken but granted. Now how it’s all that old comfort made cold, still loving if saddened, a family there for each other if lately forced empty, forlorn; feels as if there’s been a death in the immediate parenting, a hearthloss, a graving of home. You can take the boychick out of Joysey, but you can’t, forget it. Take Joysey out of, you know. Wishniak Hill it’s called, a city of no hills, only plain, the inexorable flat — and then, above that eponym of a hill that doesn’t exist, that fat, juicy Wishniak itself, a cherry beckoning, gleaming high and yet outwardly impotent, a stormy and fiery sun.