Joshua Cohen - Witz

Will the defendant please rise, and I can’t pretend I’m deaf, too, so I rise to the voice, its occasion: case or docket number, does it really matter, the People v. Israelien — let it be known that this court has upheld the rulings of the lower temporal courts, nu, remember those: we are, Mister Israelien, not under anyone’s jurisdiction…the Judge of Judges, is how the whole spiel goes on, with the Judge’s face if angels or dreams or else experiential hallucinations, hymn, who knows whether from bad blood or its loss ever have faces with eyes to see one truth and ears to hear another truth and then a witnessing mouth through which to speak up for them both becoming puffy and flushed, with bulging nose and wings slowly but viciously ripping their sharp ways through his robes to spread themselves over the dais, shadowing the entire proceedings — the Judge of Judges, this is what the voice’s calling himself, demands as protocol, perhaps, to be called to what account: a self-promotion, flown upstairs…having long known of the evil opinions and acts of Benjamin Ben Israel Israelien; that’s you, son — hereby tells you to get lost; consider yourself unconsidered…what I’m saying is, as good as dead; as of today, you have been excommunicated, anathematized, made an example of…as a warning to others, what not to be or ever to become, what not to make of your life, or ever allow to have made of it, I’m saying: as such, no one is to talk to you, with you, or of you; no one’s to even acknowledge your existence, loan you a shekel, help your corpse to cross the street; more: castigated are you as you are cursed, and cursed are you as you are damned — you following; cursed are you by day, and cursed are you by night — stay with me here; cursed are you when you lie down, and cursed are you when you rise up; cursed are you when you go, and cursed are you when you come — and when neither, and, also, wherever…cursed are you with all the curses of the Law — as of tonight, I’m talking. As long as we’re at it, even your curses they should be cursed, the Judge of Judges says, tell me why not, that the Lord of Hosts Blessed Be He shall blot out thy name from under Heaven, so there…and he pauses for a moment, hacks a storm into the flightsliced tatters of his robes then nods to the bailiff whose son or brother’s just left carting the last of the corpses and asks him, would you please remand whoever that is, I’m not sure, to Himself? And so the bailiff approaches Him, who for a mensch just fated worse than dead’s rather angry, struggling out of His seat to stand a hollow holed into His face, then takes His arms at wrists and applies to them shackles, which aren’t shackles as who has them so large — what restraints, tell me, come in my size — but are wheels off wagons once towed, never claimed from the lot of municipal impound.

Don’t worry, son, says the bailiff, kindly because old and known this before, escorting B out of the courtroom…it’s not like it’s that hard being a nobody, I’ve been one for years, you’ll get used to it quick. But you’d want the brightside, the halfsized full…it’s not like we’re going to tattoo your forehead or anything. Your mark’s even less subtle, or more: it’s your very existence — escorted out the door, then down the hall down the halls in reverse, dead mensch walking down the ways of the just and the seeking, the urgent emergent and the developing kvetch, past doors behind which lord the courts appellate, lower and lowest, those courting the newest interpretation of the Law, favoring those lately favored by God, over what; linoleum, kitschratty carpeting, cracked tile then again into the processing area with its windows and wait, wending through tangles and fringes of people worried faceless, encampments and strongholds not kept or held themselves together enough to be called lines they’re more like hopes, like pleas or appeals to: the mercy, maybe, of that approved namechange, a conversion meriting an inheritance, perhaps, a reparation or restitution, each to murmur to any teller or most abject glassimprisoned authority their own personal prayer, their own private malediction, united only in their though forbidden, unofficially encouraged, uplifting through sin hatred of Him, as they now spit at His feet, in His face, throw rocks of slipping salt and stones at Him, too, to smash a skull, rip a stomach minding — official implements of ridicule obtainable from a host of utilitarian white urns positioned in only the most wellmarked, heavily lit areas of the Courthouse lobby He’s escorted through, toward the door leading out to the landing below the portico underneath the Decalogue chiseled above as ten clouds upon the sky and there their lightningstruck, thundervoiced commandment to weather, though the wet’s stopped for now, if not just slowed. He’s led out toward the landing, to the top stair of these roundeddown, smoothed marble minyans of them descending in rubble to offer grounding to flood, this bedding of short, narrow streets better alleys turned fluming rivers scummed with junk loosed from neighboring shops and stands rainbowgray, with oil and grease — or, as if an ocean of stair shoring itself endlessly north toward Mitteltown if not further into inscrutable mist (the Upper West Side, Harlem, the Heights), then again and eternally lapping its wake returned to the top of the wide marble stairwell from which He faces the trashdappled dusk; the engorging throat of the crosswalk, the budcutting jut of a traffic meridian opposite; moored carts and boats in from the islands surrounding with their dimdark people stomping their rubbers high through the muck on their ways to prayer and what’s done between prayers, which worship is anyone’s guess. He stands quieted, which for Him now is still, as the bailiff removes the wagonwheels, unlocks the chains that bind Him to Himself and, why not, to any He’s outlived, survived — holding them together tightly and fumbling, swearing throughout in a tongue soon to be legislated forgotten, the key to it all kept between his teeth between locks. A tiddle liddle jiggle, a tug then He’s out, freewheeled, finally. Kneels tush to heels, rubs His wrists back to blood.

B stands between the central columns of the landing’s colonnade, two large and thick, closely spaced hunks of assimilated marble, their twists involved and dizzying around and around the fineness of their flutes, each identical, topped with pediments heavy on the fruit. He puts one hand to each, sets teeth. And strains, again with the neck how He’s exerting Himself, hoping to bring this house, theirs or the Law’s, to ruin, to collapse all around. But no, they won’t be brought down, even moved as the bailiff is here (sniffling into his uniform’s sleeve), won’t be budged despite efforts, won’t give or even lean the merest of falls. His strength fails, is denied Him, and so He gives up, relents if demonstratively, falls His columnar arms to shanks at which they hit limply then hang, useless meat, the soul’s beefy excretions. Exhausted, enough. Hang Him out to die. He turns to nod at the bailiff, then turns again to the open world oceanic, steps out to wander upon it from under the portico, upon which step the sky opens its womb, redoubles its birthing as the bailiff yells after Him though softly and weepily rasping to have a good New Year, a happy and healthy!

Todah Rabah, I think, to you, too.

As for me, I’ll do what I can — the rest is out of my hands.

A strongly outstretched arm of blocks Uptown, the menschs in the looted, holocausted Library they’re still sitting still scribbling, untouched and alone: glosses and marginalia, obscured references to menschs who might never have lived, rejoinders and reprimands to the mensch sitting just next to them and scribbling still, points and ripostes that would’ve been more easily spoken — but here these menschs have no voices, and no sight either, nor smell neither hearing, no touch, not haptic. Nowadays, they merely disagree, the only sense left to them is disagreement and, nu, very funny surely they won’t agree on that either, have your laugh…hymn. These are the Garden’s menschs from goys, the Administration’s, Shade’s, humorless, incorrupt, and altogether brilliant, who’ve been fully invested with the power to Selekt; menschs lately forgotten, too — will the last one to leave please kill the lights, make it hurt. And so only one dark decision in all this year, almost, has it been that long, only one decision has emerged from their void to be voided itself in due time, process, neglect…drool hangs loose and hot from their lips, the uppers fattened ripe, the lowers furried mold: and no, their decision’s not death, that’s too simple, too evident (though they haven’t yet ruled that out — or have they?), not exactly excommunication either, at least not in the way we understand it: not a putting outside of the midst, not a giving of Him over to the wilderness of bridge & tunneled Joysey, it’s more like a total forgetting, a denial, an assertion that B simply, evidently, just isn’t, that He never even was; it’s just a recommendation.