Joshua Cohen - Witz

They’d known if from the getgo and keep going, don’t run, that just calls attention — just walk, head down and fast, don’t look back…but the very fact that they’ve stayed on all this time, keepingup their participation through to the end, never once flagging or even thinking of flight — despite all how they’ve kept dumb on the safetyword, I forget, the very fact (less false than fiction, fictive) that they’ve in the end gone and turned in their vouchers, readying themselves for what they knew, what they have to know, was necessary and yet also knowing, they have to know, was never required (surely, probably, maybe — we each make our own Laws, carve into our eyes our own sets of commandments), that means history’s borne into the balance, hunks of dateflesh being judged in the scales of our eyes, yearmeat hung from the hand that tells the weight of our time. Means that this’d been Bereishit from the very beginning, preordained. Understand that lastminute, last moment Affiliation’s always an option — whether if you knew someone, possibly, or had a few friends somewhere or other, that’s the gossip, that such redepemtion’s on offer as unofficially as anything else: a rumor though who knows how wellpublicized. Perhaps such recourse’s kept whispersoft, it’s been suggested, never even mentioned at all, it’s been said, except, that is, in the loudest and most regular of announcements over the Polandland PA: offers to convert, openly voiced, if stridently exhorting, coming at all hours of the night, incentives offered then doubled to trip…join up now the gargle promises and you’ll receive what — your choice of home and a wife.

Still, despite any fanaticism for accuracy, for accountability, no one really knows how many of them opt to enlist; futz, the Record sure schrifts the wit out of me: numbers have been censused, then censured upon the request of the convert, expunged, slated for wipe, at least any documentation still extant’s been made inaccessible to better than us, classified best to forget it, topsecret of the bottomless drawer — offlimits to all even a rough estimate tamed gentle then leashed to an iron disclaimer as to how many of them are taking their keepers, their executioners, their saviors and trainers up on such a scandalous opportunity (with excellent benefits, good dental & health, twoweeks’ paid vacation’s the hope), such a horrendous occasion on which to become one of them, one with them. Most won’t talk about it, won’t darken their mouths. Unknown, then, not only what sum but also what kind — what why they go and shirk from death, to avail themselves of a falsified salvation; unknown who exactly birthwise, bloodwise, Judas themselves to exult in such debasement (yes, many have suggested, perhaps for their most secret souls it’s a matter of the Gnostic: sanctity as merited through sin, that old spiel), then up and leave their lines linedup to execution, two-by-two to gas and fire, there just outside the fray to untie the knot that was their rope, drop their pants, strip the rest, immediately exchange uniforms — new garb pressed and kept at the ready, personalized since before any of them ever were born — to reveal to all the makeshift of a new demeanor, to take on yet another development, on the wing, on the fly: shifts of wind, crossroadchoices, personalitychange. Then, to become as guards to their own, to their kin, colleagues of the armed menschs who now welcome the converted with gun, open arms — to become the executioners of their own families, whom they’d kill to survive, they have to, responsible for the others they’ve had to remove themselves from, to belong, the communities they’ve had to excommunicate from the lonely midst of their congregation of one, if only to become, mutatis mutandis , ultimately worthy of an incontrovertible shame: the humiliation of averting their own martyrdom, and so betraying belief for the infamy of a deeper, holier doubt. Of course, it’s been said, this is probably only a few of them, an embarrassed handful or so — or so we’re assured by a source no one’s entitled to extirpate or name. Most don’t need to be their own Jeremiah or Ezekiel, don’t need to dream the dreams of an Isaiah, or require the interpretations of a Joseph son of Israel to get the idea: how this is once-in-a-life, and yet though it means death, it’s a wonderful one, this martyrdom, and how you just can’t pass that up — how infrequently an opportunity like this would come around, goes the campsite, campfireside argument between husband and wife, how often they’re asking each other, themselves, did an opportunity like this really arise back when we had the numbers, the majoritycount? As for the kinder, they have their own say in the matter, are mandated their own, personalized, final solutions — having been assigned to an attachment of guidance counselors, a phalanx of baccalaureate advisors — irrespective of parental decision. Would all fundamentalists please report to the fundament? Thank you. Agnostics in agon, atheists placing faith in only themselves — putting egg after orphaned egg into one blackened basket, Miriam’s, reedwreathed, to be sent down that river that flows to a land called Posterity, located far in the west. In the end, it’s better to decry everything under the sun as older even than the foreskin of the unbelievable, born just the day before untenable, up all night crying colic without viability, than to harm even one single hair upon the Godhead; to pluck it as bald as the death of a chicken, and then to argue what came first — the Word become flesh, first scaly, then feathered, then molting in names — whether the yolk or the egg.

All who haven’t taken the Law upon themselves — as if a peddler’s burden, his wife’s pregnancy carrying high and to the right, indicative not of sex but of an enemy given quarter — they all die, and the Sandersons, too, who flame like fame in the stove, in the ovens, who pass like gas into air. And so now only the Affiliated are left. Finally, the realization of Rambam’s great prophecy, this the Messianic victory of the bornagain…enddays for those lately born upon the bow of Noah — conversion’s covenant arching above in living color, a rainbow a tainting of blood. All of them, that is, with just a few pitiable exceptions, leftovers, dross, we’ll deal with them shortly, the remnants, they know who they are — if you’ll just be patient, and you can be, I just know you can be, can behave, I know you pretty well by now, and I like you, you’re good people; if I had a sister, just wait and I’ll tell you…it’s over, wake up, our patience exhausted, finally, we’ve waited and wasted enough, it’s finished, over and done with, at last. There’ll be no more destruction that we don’t ourselves bring up, or create, no more Exile either — unless we get tired and decide to exurbiate out to Egypt again, redevelop the Valley of Kings, pave the dunes, stripmall the tombs; I hear the weather’s wonderful this time of year; we’ll raze Sweden, we’ll franchise Kamchatka, forget it, trademark Uganda, Africa, Asia, not a problem, I’ve got a brother on the board, the zoning committee. I ask you, when you own the whole planet, when all of it’s yours, and when there’s pretty much only you left and your family and those like you and likeminded, where the hell, exactly, are you supposed to exile from? where the gehenna are you supposed to exile to?

From the right side of the bed to the left.

Diasporate to the den, will you?

And leave me alone.

Exodus yourself to the corner market, pick me up a carton of milk. Whatever you do, though, keep your distance, stay away…don’t attract attention — but that’s antiquated thinking, because there’s no attention anymore, there’s no away and no distance, how we’re all on our own, that whole adrift in the universe thing, existentiallylike, atomic or I forget nuclear: we’re left at home all alone by the parents, the sitter, their God; we’re remanded to ourselves, with no one left to say No to us, to deny, deny and, thriceover, deny…left to our own most Edenic devices: we don’t need your Yeses no more, we don’t need no permission, to stay up real late, not shower, take in hours of mindless teevee; venturing outside only to loot the fruit from the tree on the lawn of our Garden. A scrutiny tears from laughter, oversight blinks — brothers’ keepers? What’s the schmuck still locked up for? He gets the keys to the castle; I get the keys to the car.