Joshua Cohen - Witz

How could He have been an heir, He couldn’t be worthy — He was false, misleading, everything about Him was wrong…Him and not us. Fat glasses with a bad beard and uncultured, unculturable, I suspect, couldn’t get by, get along. Not great with people, do I have to remind?

Illegitimacy’s what I was saying, still is…He might’ve been what we made Him, though as that only half, a mixedmarriage.

What you made Him? bad blood — Shade backed you, then you went and abused privilege, public trust all for bubkiss.

What’s that we’re always told to say? I was only following orders? I was only following orders.

And so, what am I? Chopped liverish, chump?

What do you think I’m doing here, nu?

Hymn, I’ll tell you.

What I’m doing is waiting, patience now patient forever, we’re abiding while biding, call it a multitasked calling, dayeinu, genug. We await the Messiah, the true Moshiach the one and only, any day’s what I’m saying, soon, there’s been talk, soon enough, we’ve been assured, we’ve been blessed by assurance. Many believe His coming will be hastened by your, shall we say…

And if I Affiliate? and of all times he decides now to whisper.

The Rebbe rises, paces step step step over to sit down on the bed, gently, sagging onto the sprawl of his victim.

He asks, does it hurt?

The Rebbe tugs at the frayed fringe of the damask tester above — an overgrown treetop, a mourning mane grown by the dead.

Can I still? to ask a question of heels.

Convert? But you won’t — and neither will you Misters Mada, Gelt, and Hamm, I’ve told you already, I had a dream, all those angels bowing to a sunglassesed calf atop a neon ladder, with its tail a profusion of greenglitter sheaves…gevalt, you should know the procedure by now, how word gets around like a war: we accept only those whose intentions are pure; it’s a doxo-logical paradox: that I had to offer this salvation already nullifies its acceptance…you with me? Given the circumstances, how could I ever regard any atonement as sincere? I’ve got a reputation to protect. Mine, the religion’s, the race’s. Though God, Hashem, might prove better receptive; for your sake, I hope so; good luck, let me know.

As far as it’s been revealed to me (through these dreams, orders, protocol, the unappealable tie of the hands with a thread of red tape securing the strips of the Law, its mummifying parchment to gag, blindfold then Babel the ears), you’ve been found guilty of propagating a heresy, and your fate in this world, as we can only pray it’ll be in the next, is nothing — or hell, if we so believe in it; I haven’t had that dream yet…we’re still unsure.

What will you do to Him…that is, if you ever find Him — and I can be of help: I have contacts, I know people from Poles, am contractually owed, I’ll prove myself essential again, I promise, I swear, oath and affirm on my life…thrashing against the mattress above.

In light of the pain that will be His, yours will be as a pleasure…and the Rebbe rises to allow the goy his last wind, goes to the window, opens it to the alley below. He lips a wad of tabak out into sky, which is wetting with night, slicking cobbles: another day’s winter, dying like snow by the millions.

He’s only one mensch, you’ll never…

Never Schmever’s the tsk, it’ll be easier than you think: the idea’s to seek out anyone different — divine intervention, surrender, I mean…His face is known, as are His habits; it’s miraculous, a matter of fate; it’s mystical, you of all people should understand — if you intend to die peacefully, you’ll have to…

He’s why we’ve returned here to this abominable Witz. He led us here, lonely for destiny…resolution; please, it’s all too obvious not to have been preordained, prophesized already done…hesitation — we have our top menschs on it; it’s not my department.

You came here to save Him for life, and I came here to save you from Him. You have no claim, you have no blood — that is, not after I spill it…and the Austiner Rebbe points a silvery yad at a young, faired mensch who sallies a little too excitable one step over the threshold then into the room he’s already shooting, hitting Hamm through the drapes, staining two to the head, as Mada smashes out of the wardrobe and shouting, a pistol in his hand screaming its rounds, he’s shot dead a step before the Rebbe, to fall at the hem of his uniformed underworn kittel, floored with a thud to writhe, then stiffen; another mensch, this one a pure whitehead with pupils the stings of waylaid wasps, he’s filling in for his friend who he’s not hit mortally only knocked over with a great wind rung at his vest, which has been proofed as if to save him from even the collision of his soul with bad faith — he opens up on the steamertrunk, holes it and Gelt inside and all over, with such a force that the trunk falls over, and with it the lid wounded open with an overflow gush; two additional menschs (who are they, who are any of them, they all look the same, what I’m saying is — who can tell, make up the difference), they do a number of recommended stretching exercises, kneebends, deepdipping, and knucklecracks — consult the manual then your doctor your father before undertaking’s disclaimed — then hand and knee it down to the floor, to drag Die out by the armpits, pinch him up squirming to hold him a shiver at window, in blown snow, an ultimate beam of ultimate sunset, thunder lama lo and with lightning, too, this grossganze Apocalypse shtick…no tragedy this going all out, last rites with all the death-trappings, an honor (for once, the accounts agree, the weather’s never been so benevolent to circumstance — which means either that the divine might approve, or It mightn’t); ices pour in, mount in drafts, swirls, and sinuous whirls; blanking a pile of hotel stationary from atop the desk, as if to sop with its whiteness the bleeding below; have you ever felt such a kaltmachen draft? rattling the Rebbe’s vacated chair. Die restrained, he’s trussed with hands, hogtied with tongues, a snarl of languages ordering him in tones heated, and as angry as fast, to calm down, be a mensch about it, keep still: unable to even reach into his tush, and so disallowed the mercy of a mortuarial stache, knuckled out to pall away nerves with its schmear. The Rebbe unsheathes a chalaf from a scabbard hung on his gartel, approaches, with the blade held out, its crescent aloft. Long on sharp and without serration, an undisturbed stretch of steel, without blemish: he holds this knife to the face of his victim, reflects; lights dusk into their eyes, the burn of disbelieved skies.

Examine it for imperfections, and if we had all of eternity still you’d find none…

But, of course, many hold that the holiness of the sacrifice has nothing to do with its how or intention, technique — that it depends entirely upon the holiness, or the purity, oy, of the sacrificed soul: an inner kashrut, makes you think…though if you follow that interpretation, there’s nothing I can do — except slaughter you according to the Law, it’s a mitzvah: giving you at least one blessing on the curse that is your life, that has been, Shalom. It’s a beginning, think of it as, all over again: call it a circumcision of your head. One slice, just a slice, and it’ll be over — quick, and unangeled…the Rebbe’s son-inlaw approaches, holds Die’s head back by a stray tuft of gray greasily sprouted at the back of his neck from between the fats of his bald, a reverse turkey gullet, this warblingly negative jarble at nape, shakily fearful, imperfect as animalistically ugly — exposing the voice of the front…the core of the goy’s humanhalf, his Adam’s apple whose pluck would leave the rest of him bleak: a fruit that’s halved, too, from the sin of its knowledge offyellowed, straining to speak through its wrinkled, thin peel.