Joshua Cohen - Witz

Thanks, but how’s the question, how are they killed, that’s what we want to know. For the record, I mean, for the books, History 101—not that we get off on that stuff…but there’s no need to whitewash, delouse, purify, there’s been no call to talk down, we’re all adults here — all the Unaffiliated, those who didn’t voluntarily, of their own accord, up and Affiliate, too?

Oy, you didn’t hear it from me.

There are drownings of aeroplanes downed is how, no way out north or south, east or lost, Ost. There’s only up in the air, then down in the ground.

How they’re immersed in their own blood’s how — that of the youngest saved up, stored in gigantic underground tankards for use in Passovers to come.

How, the ten plagues litany how; they’d cut open bodies still living, then stuff a live frog (alternatively: locusts, or a bevy of firstborn mammalian male beasts), down into the innards, stitch up the poor schmucks again, cauterize, burn, the frog to hop around under the skin, it’d rot then, and soon the patient would rot, too, patience, right in the arms of the greatest Affiliated doctors the world has to offer, ordered, then paid, to withhold treatment. Research. Observe. Or else — experiment your hearts out, or theirs; sphacelate, necrose; do what you will, you’re the professional…

How, too, the methods of an older age have been proven, still are: gas and ovens and air and less air then lack of air, fire. Smoke billows from the chimneys of the Unleavened Bakery — and then, the ash snows, the winter of winter. And the transports, they keep coming and coming, only coming — all day everyday, except the Sabbath, which they’re all ordered to understand as Saturday, is Saturday, are conditioned to the calm of its Shabbos, upon which even the mass death would rest for a light’s worth of life, to be spent sanctified at what has to pass for their leisure: Friday nights roasting Hebrew Nationals ®(sponsoring) over the open fire, wieners stuck on a stick wrapped in pareve marshmallows, too, they’re holding shiralongs, swapping ghosts, reminiscing themselves unto morning, free from muster. As the sun would set the next day they’d make lineup, to make their weekly payments: room & board, the last installments on their life insurance, extending their policies through next Shabbos with money their Guards would shylock them at an interest that’s damn near fascistic.

Don’t worry, though…it’s all to be found in the informative placard you’ll find in the seatpocket in front of you.

In the unlikely event of an emergency, says Doctor Tweiss to his seatmate, his twin, apparently, I’m responsible for this exit.

And you have a problem with that? asks the other Tweiss slapping his twin away from their armrest conceptually shared.

How am I qualified? he slaps him back, I didn’t ask to be seated here.

How are we qualified for anything?

I didn’t ask to be here.

What’s that supposed to mean — you didn’t ask to be seated?

I never asked to be born.

And we’re all out of time…says the other, nu, we’ll pick this up next week — if there’s to be a next week, for them, a tomorrow for any of us…

Inevitably, by dint of their atheism, their agnosticism, what should they call it, this their refusal to convert, stubbornness, pride, inability or unwillingness let’s say to get with the paradise paradigm, they’re on an aeroplane themselves: nearsightedness on their part not only an ocular condition, though each is partially blinded in half of an eyemask they’re sharing, their shoes sheathed in barfbags, whitegripping knuckled their armrests, those separate, and often both of them at once at the armrest in the middle so that they’re unconsciously holding hands; they’re, they won’t admit it, but they’re scared out of their goddamned minds…only hoping, hymn, waiting vaingloriously, for the powers of the Garden to spring them, thinking it’s impossible that this should happen to us, do you know who I am, who we were; thinking, too, if privately though, under the pride, each to his own, and his own personally unlistening God how they’re saying silently over and over again, God, we should’ve listened to Minnie, I told you so, Doctor Tweiss says to the twin of his mind, we should’ve listened to Minnie, I so told you, says the other Doctor Tweiss to himself, too…Minnie who’s living quite safe and happy and all’s good just now, thank you very much, no complaints: a belated Mazel Tov to you and yours is called for Minne who, I’m sorry of course I meant Miri whose God He’s quite foremost in her life as of late, hovering just a hair above her reddened wig or hat the one with the redribbon and feather, a pool-eyed, unnaturally gingy Miri the rabbi’s wife, this rebbetzin recently married into the Dushinsky, formerly Seele, dynasty of what’d previously been Central Ohio, wholly occupied visiting the sick, attending mostly to the souprelated, shoemending needs of what’d been Cincinnati’s direst poor. And so they’re not All here, but most are: those who’ve refused to Affiliate for provide your own stubborn, stiffnecked, pigheaded, sowhearted why — ingathered, but only after being given ample opportunity to afford their release for the price of a soul, what we’re asking: an angel’s sale at a devilish discount; exiled, though only after being given those famously public three chances in which to convert, wishful thinking (a personal stipulation of Shade’s that’s lately earned him the loyalty of the Abulafias; themselves safe for now — but ultimately not to be spared), then taken for a tour of othering’s origins, and the origin, too, of their own deaths, of death itself, the Continent’s chosen export…in order that they should know what opportunity they’ve forsaken, what history they’ve foolhardily refused, shirked, shunned, in favor of fidelity to what — explain it to me.

This is their arrival. Again. They’ve thrown handfuls inside their suitcases — stuffed them…they’ve chalked their suitcases, allowances of one per person unless you’re prepared to, and can, pay for your excess — this limit though not inclusive of any garmentbags, carryons, and toiletrycases, one per person as well; they’ve stuffed themselves, also, with itineraries and with reservations numbers: too many numbers this trip to remember, none of which, though, is to be their date of return. Then, groggy from the flight, lagged and on empty, they’re linedup two-by-two, with some of them to the left, others to the right, to be stripped of their names upon their identification with those of the passenger manifests, the arrivals platform yelled through with a language of mispronunciations, corrections to, corrections to corrections, again — then, to be given a stripping number, yet another, who can remember, who can’t, and they wait.

Funny, you don’t look Unaffiliated…or so these darkuniformed, imperious Officials joke at their foldingtables, just past the baggageclaim, the signage for. A Mister & Misses Pigger pass through, manage a parting wave behind them at what’s their names, from Sunnyvale, Sunnydale, Sonny I forget, husband #4675-89, wife #4675-90, whom the Piggers had talked to the entire flight across two seats and an aisle. At a check in desk halfway around the world, the globe this destination shares, too, at a desk resembling in all of its details the receptiondesk here, both of them made of the same materials, in the same nowhere and on the same day (they’re from the Garden, bought before the fire as a government favor, repurposed to the present), the attendants had been supplied with bags of coal, amply: each passenger of a given sample Group, and each plane a Group, had had a lump stuffed up into him, into her; shifting on their seats, in transit, they’ll squeeze these lumps into service, ensuring mostly unoccupied bathrooms this flight, and centuries of constipation; that is, if only they’ll survive, which is unlikely, and then…diamonds — which are yours to keep, an attendant reminds them over a loudspeaker, until.