Joshua Cohen - Witz

After the Zwicks, and the Zychs, there’s a vestibule of bathrooms, all currently Occupied, reserved only for the needs of those flying Class — as for the rest, they’ll go where they’re going.

After Class, then, is the section called No Class: there are no seats here and its people, they’re stacked to the top, writhing limbs and sinuous spines — the airing of grievance, the noise: that of a crack or break, a short dry snap; heads peek through holes the span of one life, heads poke through the holes of their mouths voicing death, screams fill the section, and shouts for help, food and water, then a hatch opens a draft and silence and a steward or stewardess who can tell or breathe even throws a mess of water and food out into the mess, then the struggle all over again: these shoes stepping throats to the floor, these hands strangling other hands, teeth gnashing at teeth, women and infants and their fathers, their husbands, turned a cargo of raw, suppurating, unidentifiable flesh; then, it quiets again with the hatch opened a creak, cracked light from the front, and another steward or stewardess throws in more, leftovers from Class, more food and water probably not potable now, then the struggle begins yet again.

Though soon, they’ll reach the Meeting Point…we’re talking the huge illuminated I , the zentrum, the centrum or center, give or take, they’re not sure what to do, what’s expected — where wakefulness is sleep, where sleep is dream, where dream is, forget it, all Under the Sign of the Eigenlicht, the hypnagogic giving way to the hypnopompic, don’t you understand (in Class, they’re popping those suspect pills, spread out scattered on their trays alongside tumblers of water, these medications on prescriptions from physician friends become newly Affiliated, feeling just terrible about this whole situation, I’m sure — tell me, what should I do about it, this isn’t exactly healing a body, it’s more like healing a world) — this is where everything falls into the Other, its other Other…a past, previous incarnations: the fall of the physical into the nonphysical, the idea into the act, the way the spheres merge, sun, then split, moon, then merge again, sun to moon then sun again…in Class cleared, a heap of maps now spread out on their trays, too, though no maps are really necessary, though they’re not forbidden, just not advised, excess, an overpack: after all, it’s not as if they’ll ever be left on their own, to fend for themselves and their lives, without oversight, without guidance. Anyway, they’ve all long memorized the Quarters — they’ve had hours, all day, days; they know what to expect. They’re only touring to confirm their suspicions, only traveling in order to compare their own Real with that of their others, whomever. They trace the land’s imperfections with eyes crucified on their forefingers; pointing some to the left, others to the right, they behold the sky out their windows though the sky is everywhere, too, and everywhere indivisible. Air. Languages over the loudspeaker interrupt one another, repeating, reiterating, arguing then…how an aeroplane traces the arch of the sky, is traced from land to Land in an arch, across the Ocean, then further: they’re lower now, at an elevation incomprehensible now. Pilot speaks garble now. Speed. Height now. Velocity. Over. Local Time now. Temperature. What.

Ocean meets Land, meets an ocean and the land, it’s parceled out, piecemeal from this high above, and everything at last — seems understandable: how they glide over whole green yellow smoky mirrored silver dead surfaces as if no one down there’s ever mattered, will ever matter, in passing, as passed, as if those people, if they exist and we have our doubts, exist only for the idea that the world, it’s greater than themselves — only an idea, though ours, too. Vert, luteous, the sprawling of awe. It’d been raining sideways earlier, or so, pit pat at a slant, but they’re lower now, and the sun shines, and they glide over morning again, through morning’s again, over the giving way of the measured to the unmeasured, the separation of the kept from the keepless, then back to the measured, again, the pieced together, the parceled and the green and the light, the — no way else to say it — awesome sprawl surfaced, as graveless. They’ll die here. Not yet.

They land on the Land, arriving now at the first of many gates, too many, too gated — then, begin to variously struggle their ways off, though there’s only one way…though the processes are infinite, near enough, the result is always the same; they’re taking stock of the underseats, then the overheads…overheard: the tips, the timesavers, the suggestions so helpful…they gaze around nervously, itch, scratch at themselves in wonder how they’re shelled, husked, they’ve deplaned, made it through; they stand with their suitcases, with their garmentbags, and their carryons, too, held between their legs; tired, they’re hungry and thirsty; and they’re complaining, they’re complaining already, always complaining; they’d paid so much for this, too much, were made to pay, to be here, to be here again, to arrive again here, which is where…after all this wandering, welcome, Shalom — and hour after hour, day after day, the planes keep coming and coming, circle then circle the circling, land.

Mister Smart on the plastic of the toilet he’s sitting, he’s still, his loud made inaudible above the din, let’s give thanks…he shifts on the seat, nibbles at the dried fruit, the apples and prunes, dates and figs, which he’d illegally smuggled onboard, then sips at the sink, which is kept on, or out of order: a goy used to spending so much of his time so disposed, disposing, he’s trained himself to turn the pages of his newspaper with the toes of a foot, thumbs out the hole of a sock, unkempt nail grazing the headline— Shade State of the Union: Transports Proceeding On Schedule …

At an aeroport in New York, called La Guardia as it’s named for a goy who before he became mayor worked with languages and with speaking them and asking questions in them upon the Island they’d died on; in case you were interested, just so we’re clear — there in its provisional chapel, a goy whose identity’s being withheld because his collaboration here should ensure the acceptance of his family’s conversion, a Chaplain, of a species nondenominational, a minister to the transient, retained to soothe the aviophobic, the afraid to fly, stands alone in his modest makeshift plasterdom, his cubicle celled between toilets, M restroom to the right of him, W to the left, and reflects: his departure date’s tomorrow …stink seethes in from both sides, urinal overflow, a bath of clogged stalls, leaks in under the leaning walls, a draft of deluge, waste staining in streaks, the mush of all plys; he flagellates himself with a pleather belt, snakeskin, bought surplus, dutyfree, then tries to find a name for a God that won’t offend anyone even if used loudly, in vain; blood falls from his back to mix with the piss, not his, mixing into a drainless dreckswirl on the floor, puddling around his feet sloping down toward the pulpit, or toward where a pulpit would have been if his budget would’ve provided: there’s only an arch of a rainbow on the wall there, an ennobling decal, with no ends to the rainbow, only its arch, the highest middle section in the middle of the wall; it would end, on both sides, in toilets.

Codename Thomachefsky II, though he’s no relation to, even after all these meals still follows the instructions given on the sheet they’ve provided; though it’s stained with every manner of savory costcutting, the steps he’d memorized his first day of work are still interpretable: on the tray, which is plastic, goes one Main Pill, a capsule of cholent, the protein, plasticwrapped, one Side Pill One, the rye, the starch, plasticwrapped, one Side Pill Two, mixed vegetable, plasticwrapped, one Dessert Pill, strudel, plasticwrapped, one Spork, plastic, one Safety Knife, plastic, one Seasoning Packet, plastic, one Napkin, plastic, one Mug, plastic, Nondairy Milk Substitute, plasticwrapped, Water, plasticwrapped, then Step #12, wrap all in plastic and affix the stickered seal of kashrut, plastic, atop; none of the plastic edible in the least, and often asphyxiating those to whom it’s occasionally thrown back in No Class: this, wrapped, is the Class Ration, prepared and packaged both in a warehouse far northeast near the aeroport in Queens; its exclusive food & beverage contract held by Al-Cohol Distributors, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Abulafia & Sons, Inc. of Furthest Rockaway, maybe you know where that is…lately, I’m lost. Here, protein’s the upper, starch the downer, vegetable upper, dessert downer — they meet each other halfway; this once mixed with just one packet of powdered wine (extra, ask your attendant for further details), and your average air passenger’s rendered regulation unconscious for up to eight hours, zonked, all ready to go.