Joshua Cohen - Witz

It’s tenable, many think, it holds — though so very difficult, involved to argue, but since when has that stopped any of us — that all of history’s happened to effect Him in the negative, much as it did Adam, time’s wearying wear on the first mensch, with everything his fault, faulting him, nothing to blame, with no brother whose mark would keep him; that when another first of a kind, Napoleon, suppose, he rode through the desert upon the horses of the great Alexander, thinking to conquer the bondage that was Egypt if only to bind it to him, to the West, then, and so to a few argue an even greater oppression — and you won’t find this in your al-Jabarti, try as you might — that one of the goys in his army went and stole a date from a stall huddled up against the edge of Cairo under the citadel of Saladin, stole a date that was poisonous, a date that it’s said killed the goy when he went to it for sustenance, this goy formerly a Venetian sbirro who’d been courting an Affiliated back home in the Republic once serene, them groping each other on the outskirts of the Ghetto Nuovo no longer gated what with the emancipation and this thanks to the campaign of that very conqueror being served in the east — the two of them Venetian and Affiliated still sheltered, though, hidden from all, declaring their love for one another under the protective ring of the Terza, a bell echoing far from the San Marco campanile; him stealing kisses and hugs and loving words from this ghetto maydel who after having waited for his return from the fight and having had none for a while went and married another Unaffiliated, who he was the dead goy’s brother who’d urged her to give up on his own brother for dead then took her soon pregnant west to an America that promised an ocean between them and the continent warring, which union of theirs and its consummating birth upon Manhattan Island led directly, some say, believe it or not, through splinteringly infinite causes of causality, gevalt, and through subsequent effects too numerously and, too, numinously insane to even allude to here, ask them, they seem to have all the answers, the charts and the trees, the graphs and riverflows — all leading to Hanna and Israel, a Developed cedar far from its Lebanon, palmed nearer to New Egypt, Joysey, and its tiny pines, branching out to bloom Him with the winter…a culmination, if culminating in disappointment, and for at least this Garden’s root, this trunk, final, that’s that.

And not just the past, others have argued, not just our history, no, that in truth everything’s been created for B — B as culmination, as the created creating, natura naturans who He hasn’t yet exorcised that particular endowment, impotently, a potentiality shed; B as an apotheosized beneficiary of all mundanity from Bereishit’s beginning to now, an old heresy: that even Genesis had been begun for His sake alone; that water, too, had been created then divided upon the division of the second day expressly for His tears at this, His departure; the moon made only for His night, the sun made only for His day, then the air smoking around Him, it feels to Him, American Him, decadent as excessively holy and holying Him — and then shoes, hymn, them as well, having been created for the sake of His feet alone, though cobbled too tightly, nu, though loosened without laces, the proctologist’s spare pair He’s walking in on His way south through what once was the Village; and then the snap-brim cap on His head, how that’d been taken from the proctologist, that also and maladjustedly tight, had been created only so that it would fly from His head on the wind as He makes His way down toward the Battery — His head uplifted, Him passing questioning unquestioned through the gate new at Wall Street, which had once been a wall erected to keep out the natives of Manhattan raised again with its name remained to limit the traffic of the Unaffiliated from the marketstalls trading Downtown; domain of woolybearded carders and dyers, tanners and tinsmiths, the young, fritcheeked blowers of glass and they, too, who drive no trade at all save that crazy and begging — that indeed, many believe, and though only lately, which is too late for most, that life entire had been created for the sake of His life alone; His existence in the world the world’s justification, its one and only its hosting of Him’s the heretical thought: interpretively, He didn’t die for our sins, and He won’t — it’s even worse, He’s lived for them; and the evil in this is that before He can question, He believes, becomes His own answer, and so swears by His own singularity, this deathly uniqueness, Hanna’s baby boy reflected in the mirror of sewerward ice, Israel’s special son in the shopfront windows that store for a moment His passage — this one life of His that’d once been advertised to all as a model, exemplary as itself emulatory, marketed to ever as symbol; an idol to be held high, Godlike exalted, and there worshipped as ideal, and yet still one life again, immortal, He’s thinking — the alwaysliving, don’t tempt, it’s mine.

To the port then, its pier. There to slip away, stow His flee, wharf a wander — to vag off baggageburdened, though there’s only a single small lawyer’s attaché in His hand, brokenclasped. Thanks to a deal brokered by the proctologist’s jilted daughter and a mensch who’s gone by the name, it’s been said, Laser Wolf (alias Hugh Bris, alias Nicki Noir, alias Anti O’Chus IV, alias Malachy Malachym, AKA Gory ben Davidson), it’s stuffed with the forge of nine nationalities, passports taking Him passage and without reservation under whichever names had been available lastminute — the shorter the better, how long it takes to memorize the newest pronunciations — their photos imaging the face of the most minor god known: a no one with nosehair, an anyone with earhair in the blurry, brutishly lit shots snapped in a booth west off Port Authority; an attaché lined with six diplomas’ worth is what it takes to read them of papers hermetically furled in fists and ribboned don’t forget me fingers: mutiple signatory honors and testaments, letters of attestation, of introduction, recommendation, resumes and titles, citations referenced to curricula vitæ—all dishonorably promoted to the nth degree, beyond credulity to hope. Never such a thing as too prepared’s the ticket, how B’s taking showy, matinee precautions: this false beard slash moustache ensemble, over the top then elasticized around His real, also from Eli, whom He’d contacted by messenger, a singing telegram He’d intended to cheer but had instead settled by cost for a mere note to be brought her by his brother, a quicksilver midget mensch in a red cap whose nose even redder below resembled an infected bell, that and the hands wrung overwrought, to say to her no hard feelings, to go soft and explain Himself, who He was and is, and then how generously she responded, with an uncle’s grandfathered briefcase she’d found in the closet, genuine calfskin as delivered, babied around in a new wardrobe Big & Talled it’s all sewn up, with her stitching into an inseam her best wishes in black thread; she’s helping out with the finances, too, scrimping everything her parents allow her, scrounging prospective dowry downpayments never more than bribes, bridal layaways her suitors hoping; that and any spare she manages to take in from knitting for the neighbors twinned with newborns just downstairs: just enough to tide Him over plus a few days, maybe a week at most from Sabbath to Shabbos then little more — nothing much leftover after paying passage, the grease of gratuities involved, the price of thanks to think, maybe a meal, I hope, a night in a room…

Manhattan’s tip, the prick of its tongue — it wants to say more but can’t because of the ocean, too bitter to speak. B makes it to the edge of the island from which He can’t find His own, disappeared. It’s a cloudy day, caught in overcast nets of smoke. The port, an immense planing of planks terminating in the ice’s horizon — ending as it, clouds tangled in rigging encrusted with barnacles, greenwhite stars, wispy cirri winds. A hawser choking the rust from its bollard — which the raincloud and which the snowcloud who can tell. And then, spearing the clouds, through the smoke, the masts: uprooted trees, made to wander upon the face of the deep. Through a lippy and bristly bustle of fishmongering, fishhandling, fishhaggling, fishy dealmaking, the hazards of floppy, soppy hands, fiddled fingerings, promises, swears and oaths, an immense dingen, all this thinging around, something stinks around here, something rancidly rotten; through a liveliness of livestock herded two by onboard bound for where, chaotic, this loading and unloading of slavish dray, from carts lade with variegate crates, a profusion of boxes stamped in languages as numerous as splinters in the planks, which way up and what’s labeled fragile on both sides of the frenzied line of ice chunked from the surface of the water then hauled handed in from one to another, to keep fresh the catch; bleeding puddles…