Joshua Cohen - Witz

Inside, darker down these stairs spiraling into the vertiginous, spiderspinning of passages, webbed steps steeped to the pitch of night’s fall, precipitous, scary, and not recommended for those with the conditions of having a heart or a brain — the hammering’s loud, reverberant with the stone, and so he shouts over it, while apologizing all the while as he’s screaming, too, that he has to, their Guide he’s restless…now waving the Group toward him with a hand, then away with an umbrella, as if a warning of sorts, despite underground; they follow behind him, close and yet far enough away to estrange, always toward and then into what seems like a small, dankmoldy antechamber at the furthest eastern edge of the Island: an Introitus of sorts, a space just beyond dark, walled against light, keeping it from them, behind which heavy uniform slab this tunneling once went on, once led — as it’s said, as it’s guided over and over — into Manhattan: a passage proximately ruined into this wall, a progress thwarted, an answer, there’s your answer right there. Less than a mile off, what they’re sold. It’s told to have given out onto the bathrooms of City Hall, which stall…we’re not sure, that surety not included. I’ll take your questions only at the end of the tour. Inaccessible, too. Please, save them for the end, and yourselves. They feel at the walls on their ways so as not to be lost, though the tunnel tunnels on only straight, keeping their eye fixed on the halo of their Guide, which is the glint of voice from his person and that that’s flashed from the hat — not the voice of his person, but that of his function, his task, the glow of the plasticized crown…and so feeling their way, they go gripping a grope at walls knocked through with others, with these walls, and halfwalls, with quarters, ruin fortified, then reconstructed again to appear just rubbled enough to be safe, ostensibly, it’s passed around, ideally these fallen rocks falling as stones, some of them glassy, others dropped dull, this haphazard deconstruction of destruction even more haphazardly rehabilitated to now. And then — wall. Masonry. Ashlar. And now again, stop. This wall’s been arched, their Guide says, this arch’s walled in. Here, with newer stones. There, and with rocks found variously around the Island, its shores. In the style, though. Of the period. From the tympanum (which is the space between the top of an entry, or exit, then the arch arching above it, he explains while realizing, too, he’s forgotten to previously — wisdom lost on those arrived early) on down, all the way, it’s filled in now, full up. Me-zu-zah — there’s that, too. A crowning chink, beyond which it’s impassable, inaccessible, not today, try tomorrow. Kiss it, no matter — respect. The stragglers, those behind the curious, their spouses and kinder, their compensating others, have come to a stop, to a stand. Finally. They come and they come, they come then keep coming. Forever, six days a week nine to Shabbos. And then — they’re here, and then there’s no more, no further to go, turn around. About face. Stragglers first, with the Guide to guide now from the rear.

Take the keystone out, the Guide says, and this wall’ll fall.

And how the Island might, too.

Stick together, stay near.

Workers break for their brunch, which is tough rolls, gristly salami no harder than vodka…they’re silent behind the velveteen ropes hung from scaffoldings’ stanchions, makeshift brasspoles — how they’re almost exhibits themselves…

Please, no video, or flash photography. Tarnished, tarnisht.

This way, just this way — after you.

After the Group’s done with all of the Great Hall above, then the tunnelings of the Great Hall below, they’re led out to the rim of the Island, the Groups, toward the fall of the ice, daily marked at its thinning: there to pay their respects, it’s suggested, to the dead sunk beneath, to their dead beyond death, beyond theirs; which respects, however, and their prayercards and candles, aren’t included in the price of admission: according to their Guides, it’s another ten shekels to visit the Island’s wonderfully dilapidated synagogue, shul (which had never been a synagogue: there’d never been a shul on the Island, or one that ever was used — how they’d davened wherever they stood: in bunks, in clods of snow, amidst whirlwinds); which structure had been merely a trash facility recently redone to meet expectations, anticipatory of its legitimizing appeal…to there mourn reflection, it’s offered, upon the death of their — Ancestors, I’m sorry, slicha: many of them saying a Kaddish they’ve recently memorized, or tried to, whether in the original or translated, whether in transliteration Yisgadal or Yitkadash no matter, as many won’t register the difference, in meaning, in tonguing — to pronounce His Name Magnified and Sanctified, to magnify then sanctify high the Name of He Who Makes Peace a rote Shalom’s Amen. And let us say, you’ve been a wonderful Group. Applause. The best Group I’ve had. Thanks. Yet today, ever. Give yourself a hand. Clap fists all around. Across the Island, a tourist from the next Group — there’s always a next Group or else, there’s always another group of the Group — whichever neophyte ben Avraham with small needly eyes, colder lips marred with eschars, and beginning a beard, he not seeking the merit of any mitzvah, not even thinking that old do unto others: just do — he kicks out a shoe, nudges a pebble from the path up ahead, which is ice…the slate submerged, leading up toward the foundations of B’s house, exposed; so that the kinder coming up from behind won’t trip on their ways to the basement’s exhibit, then fall.

ABOVE IS ABOVE, AND BELOW IS BELOW.

The Rambam says in the name of Rabbi Eliezer: The things in the heavens have been created of the heavens, the things on the earth of the earth…hence reinforcing the doctrine of two Substances, and anticipating an argument v. Spinoza’s interpretation of Aristotle — too long a story, for now.

They’re in the middle, though, the mittel, we’re saying.

Purgatory, if you want, a strange land without land, and without firmament either, domain of a third Substance, don’t ask.

Above is the sky.

Below, it’s the ocean.

The middle of the ocean, the mittel: halfway here, halfway there, maybe this, maybe that, and maybe…maybe yes, maybe no, and perhaps — all up in the air.

Above the ocean, stillnesses, the sun’s twin among waters amid water, fishes, the Leviathan and the whale, kelp and salt — enough salt to keep any Lot in wives for a long lot of hereafter, it’s said.

Below the sky’s waters — the flying thing, a refitted, updated chariot of sorts.

Above the ocean below they’re thousands upon thousands of an archaic measurement above, flying in an aeroplane now but in the wrong direction. Opposite. In return.

As for the aeroplane — it’s old, ancient, it’s losing things, rickety rack. Aisles of desolate plane.

Flappity, flap, flap — it’s shedding wings, the engines might stall at any moment; inquire as to the status of the landing gear, it’s not like it’ll do any good.

To any Omnipresence worth the Name, wandering would seem just like staying put — and, for a moment, a day, a week, a moon…they’re fixed there, they’re frozen, stayed in the sky like the sun of Joshua’s day: and the earth rests its spinning, and the stillwater’s stilled, from floor to surface of the deep nothing’s flowing anywhere, as stilled and as stilling as it’d been the day before the second day, precreationary still, a Sabbath from turbulence, in flight their Shabbos from flight, they’re just, staying, put…and all this Mittel’s dead to them, invisible, clouded and blue and white and wisped, though they peek through their misted windows anyway; they’re fingering rosaries, mumbling their prayers in American, and in infelicitous Latin, too, Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison, Hail Mary Mother of Our Fathers Who Art, but many are Unbelievers, if you can believe, still; some abstain, others drink…all try to understand.