Joshua Cohen - Witz

This is their tree, let us trim it.

It isn’t night just yet, it’s only the eve, that of Xmas — soon to be the first of January, which is false and forgotten, a year unrenewed. Tonight, it’s the yahrezeit, the Anniversary of the Death (A.D., as it’s respectfully, avoidingly, mentioned), which is anyway only slightly remembered, commemorated by few and that strictly officially, a matter of governmental not of popular mind: all are seemingly too occupied with their new identities, their own Affiliation, to be bothered much with the whiskered past; besides, it’s just too painful to remember, to be reminded not as much of a celebratory loss as of their own illegitimacy, again, a future loss of their own: what with kinder being born, and time. To remember now would mean to lose the present’s meaning, and, too, its hope for tomorrow: send a giftbasket out to whoever scripted that one, that and a poinsettia for the wife. All is nigh within the Great Hall, the Garden: settled deceptively firm in its foundations, the money, the power, the trash and the bodies shored around; doors exhale drafts into overheated, underventilated, basrelieved hallways, their rooms are silent in disuse and dark; outside clouds assemble, churn themselves up churlishly, into aggravated masses: everything below’s in suspension, seems only to attend upon a Fall…the very first of the night, a single perfect and softly falling flake with which to tender the evening, none of this unpredictable, unpredicate weather, just a sweet, sharp, and gasping drift of flak that might remind how hospitable nature could be, not too much to ask…which would be forbidden as aeromancy, anyway, now made subject to rabbinic wrath (if you weren’t aware, you’re no prophet). Quarters here still being used by the remaining employees, those who haven’t been let go thanks to quarterly financials, or who haven’t yet left to save themselves, are decorated with trees of their own, miniaturized mistled models in plastic of the real tree evergreened amid the Registry: wooden nutcracker and egg ornaments, with tissuepaper flowers and tinsel, lacy angels atop with model trains on tracks spiked across bibs tied around trunks. A ball as if a blob of misplaced ink bounces down heavily on the lightest of lyrics: Wish, Merry , and the heads fellowshipped follow along; they nod, some in rhythm despite, others totally drunk, shikkered all over the place staggering about fireplaces grating away toasty, sparklingly as if laughing, a crackling cackle swept choking up the flue; fluffy, coalblack stockings stuffed with pinkslips sway lulling, perilously near.

Sensing this to be the last of this holiday he’ll know but not yet why, Die’s ordered up an observance he’ll never forget, no one will, its expense and luxurious fury, the implacable tide of this Yule waked between the coasts of Joysey and that of the icicle of Manhattan: after all, someone has to keep up the old ways, their traditions — if not now, when; if not me, then tell me who better? He faces away from this in truth disappointing, depressing, gathering of these his last few adherents, employees along with any weathering friends, hangerson, anyone desperate enough to remain in contact, in business with him or his: fifty guests tonight, and how they’d expected a few hundred, which means — leftovers; abandoned by Shade and so by the Administration entire, the government, the Abulafias, too, who not, there aren’t that many left. And it’s hard not to notice that most of the fifty gathered are just remaining staff required to attend, paid to be here, ten of whom’ve been especially hired to attend to the tree, the Baum as it’s been called by the Teutonic site supervisor, overseer of a staff hired to prune, snip, trim, and wreathe, to decorate and deck. Ornaments have been hauled up in last century’s steamer trunks from their subterranean storage unit, each trunk labeled as to style of its contents (ball, lace, gingerbread kinder, marzipan snowflake, glitterencrusted pine-cone — stop me when it’s been enough), with each ornament itself labeled as to its appearance and provenance: ball, red, gift of the Russian Ambassador; each guest’s required to hang at least one, as if proof of loyalty, the oppression of that ole tradition again. This staff of fayg decorators flown in from Europa leaps over sofas and endtables to midwife the proceedings; they’ve planned this year’s Baum to a limpid perfection, after having labored for a moon over diagrams of ornament distribution, lacepatterning, tinsel saturation schematics…the scaffold’s erected, hydrauliclift driven inside through the doubledoors of the Hall’s portico, upsets a vase (to say nothing of its florist); Kush daughters grim, hired to replace the Marys disappeared to God knows where, and with the Garden not willing to spend the gelt to find them, they tidy up efficiently, are shooed away with the limp flicks of wrists.

By an hour before the party’s scheduled beginning, the Registry’s been feathered, nested, transformed into an extravagant indoor aviary: birds are flying around the heights, swooping from wings of rafter to loops wrought of iron, shrinkydink droppings sacs attached by strap around their bodies, pinching, hanging weighted from cloaca: peacocks strut across the floor, garbed in festive sweaters and similar sacs to hold their turd from the rugs; they parade regally, stately as if the only guests and as such, the most honored, through the interminable passages connecting the wings of the Hall, their plumage held open with cruel metal struts, resembling elaborate, undoubtedly sadistic orthodontia. Toward decumbent dusk, a staff of nine equipped with monogrammed books of matches flit from room to sill, to light the oil votives in all the windows shining, despite having been naturally frosted, and then to light them, too, in the interior windows, which have been frosted over with soap; all doors inside and out have been ordered wreathed in a host of evergreen voids that resemble zeros, or immature bagels, crusted in holly, adorned with leis of popped maize, strung cranberries dredged from the deepest bogs of Joysey. In the square fronting the Great Hall, aside the landing reserved for arrivals never again to depart, atop its manicure of ice over the fake green and real manure, a magi troupe of underemployed, off-off-Broadway actors are rehearsing a Nativity pageant, their requisite shvartze, a reformed Ethiopian, reciting his lines to the applause of the wind; he’ll make a passable Balthazar, though he might lack a visa…the other two kings petting then illicitly feeding handfuls of moldy lump sugar stolen from the condemned Commissary to the herd of animals linedup for the casting of tomorrow’s Manger Scene: Moo for me, thanks, we’ll be in touch, and the poor mensch leads his starving cow back across the ice to Nutley; their progress lanternlit, to search by night for a better talent agent. Abulafia II never came through with the camels. A staff hired away secrectly if only temporarily from Mitteltown’s most famous department store, Wiltinghill’s, sets to work wrapping presents, which are little more than bribes, on the salvaged tables of the Commissary set end to end down the network of tunnels, underground: off the artery leading to the Treasury, wellstocked shelters linked by citybound passages recently excavated to allow for emergency disappearance, in case of contingency, better not to think of it, best not to ask or even know of their existence; giftwrap (Seasonal Red #3, Fluseason Green), tissue, ribbons, and swatches of scotch, sticklosing tape hang like impurely rendered hides tanned from the overhead heating ducts; three secretaries previously attached to Mada’s office demoted to noel assistants, present facilitators, papercutup and harried, they mock gambol up and down these hallways of tunnels with their scissors freshly sharpened they dash through the passages, go blindly around corners shoutingout their orders, kickingup skirts past piles of torn tags, hangers, and shrinkwrap, almost trippedup on lengths of string, on the twines flapping in front of the gratings to which they’ve been tied for momentary snipping, the women’s steps syncopating with the whirr of the exhaustfans allied to the heating system above, servicing nothing down below, it’s disastrous they’re coughing, sicknesses sounding along with new Hanukah songs harmonized by the wrappers surrounding, undertaken to keep their ribboning apace, their ideally threepart SA-T arrangement occasionally interrupted with the scream of an unfortunate accident, the thumb against razor or slicer, a pinkiefinger knotted down to the quick, to purple then pulse.