Joshua Cohen - Witz

Hanukah’s octal nights the generosity of seven days that end this year on Shabbos, and only then may the week commence with corruption: though there’d been no party last night, no popping of corks with the tongue in the cheek, no shikkers out in the streets wild and naked and hooting inhuman as in years way past immemorial, none, no observance; it’s just business as usual, and in another unusual season, in this winter perpetual, perpetuating, quarter be damned, with a reported 99 % probability of precipitation by midnight at the earliest and yet everyone wakes and rises the next morning to that slimmest of chances that everything’s going turn out just fine, God abides: the sun rises from out of the candlemelt of newly heirloomed menorahs, to be scraped out then sent back to their cherrywood cabinets, exiled for yet another year without polish. And would you believe, that even with that new cabinetry and great custom builtins, updated deluxe, the refridge slash freezer state of the art, the selfcleaning, Shabbosmode oven below the rangetop’s upgrade platinized stainless, the retiled kitchen with its counters and cooking surfaces retopped, too, new windows and doors and the furniture reupholstered, gevalt — they’ve still had trouble renting this unit?

In Miami, this Sunday into a workday tomorrow, tonight, the night begins and a day begins, the night ends and with it another day begins, too — it’s work whichever way you slice it, a fat healthy slab if you’ve got the appetite or maybe slivered for those on a diet to pick at, a little less, no, really, I shouldn’t, no, go ahead, it’s fine every once in a while, who me, I won’t tell…no one notices they missed a turn, or calls them on it or kvetches cheat, you took a hand from the piece, pay attention. Here in this refurbished penthouse, atop an endtable — one of the only elements remaining, that’s original, this and the endtable on which it rests and that table in the other room, too, call it the beginning-table, if you must (once intended for workaday essing, just guessing), witness the sale’s requirements of new terms for new markets, more words for more money down…surfaces having survived the designers with all their samples, the consultants, their budgets: the old chessboard, it’s theirs, once was His. Its pieces now stand without benefit of players or game, not moving mind you, there’s no magic here; they’re just standing. On their own, as it’s said. As if waiting only for a mind with a hand. The board sits, as the pieces stand — all of it exiled, too, from atop that other table set in the diningroom, recliningly roomed on four legs slowly developing, with splinters, knees, furniture that’d been worthwhile antique even back when PopPop was living and unlike him has remained, having been remanded — the checkered chess’ surface unplaying to an empty house, topped with its ranks rowed unmoved — to this matching oak, mirrorhutched slab set firm in its foundations, you like, which are thick shag, wonderful, no, its gaming parquet lately draped with a doily (this touch, the agent’s), the entire unit moved up against the window, new glass, insulated like you wouldn’t believe, how much you’ll save a fortune on bills. Much remodeling is what, and minimal interest (though this she won’t admit, the agent blowing on her fingernails cupped around the phone), no takers and so, no heat: icicles hang from the baseboard, a condo frozen out of time…

History gets around. Everybody knows whose this once was.

A guest of a sun forces its way in, uninvited as always, muttering inlaw — the barging of its single breast. As shadows in its light that PopPop had once owned, at least had rented out to the hosting of others — and perhaps it’s only seeking a return on all the money once made in its name, as if risen expressly to collect, or if just to beam in aggrandizing apology, maybe, for the cancer it once visited upon the chest of his wife, or his own mother — then through the shades…here, the chesspieces are cast every which way across their squares; they’re scattered, moving, moved, in flagrant violation of every rule, moving at the same time both sides white and black, and in different directions front and back, in moves those pieces can’t make, mundanely don’t or shouldn’t. It’d been a game halted midplay, as PopPop had to wash, dress, then wash again, brush, down a quick capful of mouthwash, snip his nails into darned dark socks fuzzied memorially in his dead wife’s whitesoled slippers, to meet this goy Arschstrong he asked B earlier to call Uncle or Arnie down a flight for what He’s never thought, He’d never asked, there’s no one to ask now, anyway, He can’t. An attack without a defense, a defense without an attack, and all of it: intention, direction, stilled…except shadow, which at noon is none. The chesspieces stand only as pieces of chess. And then, with the passage of sun, hourly disappointed, afternoonly resigned, its light arced to holy with shine this two bedroom with eatin kitchen that the harried, scoldeyed realestate maid she comes and cleans at twice a week, needing this sale, even a rental, how she needs anything except this very needing to please: they’re small the pieces, slowly flung the other way across the board again. Hours of shadow play against each other the same game every day — a game of illogic, as a move of logic, or else those both of nature’s game…as a strategy the same day in, day out, and perfectly known, if only in its impossibility to master. Yesterday, yet another happily newlywed couple’d taken a look at the place, open and shut cabinets, tested the blinds, its and hers and theirs; elbowed one another as they smirked at the beds: husband an oliveoil salesmensch who knew a pitch when he heard one (but didn’t talk much himself — he’d just caught a cold), sneezing and coughing in the freeze while fanning his hand through his own product slicking back his hair; his wife a wife without ambition to more, a myope but bright and grinny, she had moles across her face as if a mappemonde to the temple of her smile — and yet how she’d complained how hard this building was to find (still, she’d be the type to always get her way)…they don’t know how to play chess, is what; I haven’t the faintest, she’d said. If they move in, if the husband ends up talking the still busty, redcheeked agent down to take the place at well below what she calls market (flirting with his frowning lips, how he’d get an earful on the long ride home) — will they keep the board, where it is, set up and played out halfway as it is…as a curio, or conversation piece, Loreta had said, today the agent, tomorrow the maid: as a piece of highminded, low upkeep decoration to set alongside the teiglach tray (every time she’d have a showing, she’d make sure to bake her best)? But before any contract can be claused for closing, the State gets involved, takes it, too, then stiffs her on any commission, her rightful fee, brokering herself nothing but personal ruin: the Administration has it proclaimed a landmark, then announces an initiative to refurbish it yet again, to restore it to its original state, and this after management had spent what it’d spent, gone all out to remove any sign of its former incarnation, its glitzy, silveryears style nearly three decades old, with the kitschy carpet clashing with the wallpaper, blue ugly below the slick vymura, wipeclean another and even uglier shade of winkly superannuated blue (and don’t get her started on the drapes)…any trace whatsoever of its former occupants Loreta’d pretend she’d never heard of them, didn’t know what they were talking. The idea’s to open it up as a Museum, another, of the horror, terror, of the deceit; they’ll keep everything where it is if that’s where it’d been, rehabilitating all the rest to an intimation of its former vainest glory, labeling losses, enshrining the mundane: requisitioned from the warehouse, one (1) banal couch puce and plump whose cushions once, if only for a week, not even, held the idle form of evil.