Joshua Cohen - Witz

And so verily we have been given three days of fasts, only to gorge ourselves on the Sabbath, which we know as Shabbos, the night of Friday or the morning of Saturday, whether the fifth, sixth, or seventh day of the week depending on how it’s observed or it’s not — made holy even without the sanctification offered in death, which is theirs, which is ours, and though observed, though made that very holy and sanctified, still a Sabbath like others, even a Shabbos like every other day of the week, any of them with the sun and moon and the stars that are three and above; which day the nations of the world this year know as Xmas, the eve of the holiday of the tree and the baby just born, of the fiery sales at department stores and how they’re malled much different from shops, and of their kings, too, who are also one and yet three, coupons for camels, the jollity of a fat skinny who in a hat; that and the day of His bris to be, His circumcision aborted: scheduled for tomorrow with the caterers, did you confirm, remember to pick up the bagels — and so you can clock it, understand, the sense of history at work here and of wheeling, of palpable past, of immense weight, fates visited down upon heads unsuspecting, covered, uncovered; why everything’s been so confused these past few days, insane out of sorts; why it’s been just a crazy week this week, Israel’s explaining what with her laid up, Hanna, what with the past, its preparations and ours, rendering due to the meaning and worth of each day to its month to its — and the expectation of it all, with Israel so late, almost too late this once though he’s remembered this time, thank God: the bought braided bread, the challah, two loaves, again she’d been unable to bake…

And how late they were late, themselves, the guests again, us, and darkness was upon the face of our mothers, tired and too much mascara, too; the soup was without form and void, if still soup, in need of a starch, mushroom, and the light, it was in from the fridge, as no one had shut it. The candle, the candles, a handful. A diaper was new, unbuttoned and pinned, the buttondowned shirts of His father, Him powdered, and topically salved; a sweater gotten, too, on which was writ in stitch the word Ben , which was also His name, Benjamin was, or the name Ima said by which He should know the wait, was to know the wait, is still waiting. As the sweater was too small, it was draped over a knee, which was bare. As for His Ima, He called her, her other names, which are as complex as dates, at least, as complicated and strange, were Hanna one room and Wanda the next. All got cold, freezing, which was why the knee’s sweater; then the kitchen froze, icicles up from the depths of the fridge, and so His mother opened the oven in which the chicken was becoming baked chicken and then — suddenly, through the oven, two-by-two and helping each other, stepping high and ducking so as not to hit their heads, again, so it’s been said, so we’ve been told, their glasses fogged and mouths stuffed with ties and necklaces against pain, sucking in their hunger and thirst, holding their loose suits and dresses so as not to get snagged on wireracks or stained with the pooled juice of the poultry baked in its blood is what’s been related to us, that suddenly, and again, into the kitchen, through the oven and its heat of nine hells, marched in their guests: how they might themselves have remembered it to their own kinder had they lived past that Sabbath, that Shabbos, whatever the difference, if difference there be. Hello, hug and kiss. Shut the oven after. Some offered to help prepare. Others noshed on ingredients left out. Wiped steam, saliva from their lorgnettes, with the linings of the pockets of their husbands, who were pockets themselves. And their pants, door-to-door and the rest, presumptuous enough help yourself, they sat down at the table: holding their irascible silver, tines frothing stock.

It was. One day, same night. Good or not, true or told. Israel said Kiddush, the prayer over the wine, the washing and blessing Hamotzi lechem min ha aretz it went and only then may the passing begin — the feeding of the baby, too, don’t forget who He’s big enough already to be sitting at table in a regular seat, and grown enough to be supping on anything served, even every distraction or so deft enough to take an unnippled sip at the wine of His eldest sister, Rubina; at the other head of the table opposite His father wrecked at the foot He’s soon slumped, piss and kaka, veingravy dazed, drunk on His sisters’ juicewatered wine and the guzzly blood of the beasts.

How He manages upstairs, who knows, how they manage to able Him up, tuck Him taut into sheets soiled, got me. He’s storied, prayed tight, then left for that further diaspora known as neither sleeping nor waking, that time of rolling around and of rocking, wriggling, snuggling, of flatus and lull, having laid under His pillow, with pillow under His knees, on His stomach with the edge of the pillow itched along His staff in the midst of a shed and the scratchy sacs that cower below, lying with His head on the pillow set around His ears as a mouthful, to swallow His dreams. Israel had left only an hour ago, turning lips to His, whispering into them name…Benjamin, and with unsettled gut sensing a matter unfinished, the amorphous undone and leftover, He frees Himself from His sheets and stands; sneaky feets quietly and nude save that diaper yet another of Israel’s old outfashion shirts sleeved around waist, He one foots then another then toes and then tips. He stands at the door as fat as an idol halffinished, marbled at the threshold of hall. An idol, with an animate appetite. It’s a need for the leftovers, physical, those of the Sabbath especially, and though there’s the suspicion that sneaky He will have to account for them dawn the morning, it’s overpowering, just the thought of it, that leftover fowl going to waste, is oppressive, it must be so tasty, so filling, there in the fridge and freezing in there with the dial on 9, it needs His warmth, it wants Him and His only, dead in its own juices for hours after hours and hours soaking up all the multitudinous goodnesses, yum in the tum, the only one who loves Him, this poultry, the only one who can, who’ll make Him happy, and if not, there’s always experience to invoke, mistakes to be made and to be made again and again but each making made better — chicken drizzled with sauce, dipped twice then twice more; meals take on whole new dimensions — of taste, scent, textural — when eaten twice, especially if the second’s eaten hours after the first, when there’s a separation, a break, a puttingbetween, so that everything’s had time to gel, to congeal, to breathe in its own steaming waft, to age, not even to go totally cold but just right, and who is He to say no, after all, He’s just an infant, how does He know from denial. He can barely talk, if He knew from saying no He might’ve never been born; Will Power, dunno, Will Power, never met him, was he related to Ima or…

He — Benjamin — doesn’t yet possess the weakness that is restraint in accordance with the growth of His flesh and intelligent soul, and as if to prove such to Himself (satisfying ego, in the service of other appetites), He has the thought to step slow, and precise, to avoid problem floorboards, stares at every door drafting the hallway to stairs, stares them shut, wills them asleep until morning. Then, stops, waits at the slightest settle of foundation. Empty, the stomach of floor. Rumbling plank. No snorting snore, no din of dream. Bereft of mucosal stertor, the gunk of Israel’s caffeinated cigar. He stops at the stairs, at their head, the progenitor of descent, if patrilineal then of His God.

Here, stopped at the top of infinite generations of steps, a straightened labyrinth, a ladder filledin, the bottom, if any, seems unattainable: every step as tall as He is, He’ll fall, the fear, paranoia except when He’s justified; with every step He takes another step’ll be added onto the bottom, He’ll descend forever; and then there’s the order of the stepping stairs, which might up and rearrange out of nowhere, reorder themselves in the dead of night: last step to switch itself with the first, twelfth with the second, they aren’t the same after all; to step forever if the order He descends isn’t the same He’d ascended hours ago with finger in palm, Israel dragged higher and higher up to the seat of the Godhead, the footstool and throne of the study adjoining the room of His parents, Aba’s office, keep shish; what if one of the stairing steps gives a noise underfoot it’d never given before, or doesn’t, what if, and all the care’s gone for nothing, needless heedless caution, can’t bear the waste. Benjamin enumerates them, necessary in this dark, one two three steps soft, an interpretation of stealth, always how many four five six then a landing, and then however many more and again, stairs, stops, at the landing, midstairs, to inquire of the photographs hung thereupon — ancestors of those photographed on the wall on the stairs down and up to the basement, which He’s never attempted, hasn’t yet dared. He asks them though in silence, and as if they’re sure to know as they’re native to such steps, and this landing — how many stairs, how many more or much longer — but His forefathers, unknown to Him except through these photographs and in them, as them, not looking too well, complexioned greenish gray, light-bruised, they’ve aged badly, they don’t answer, or can’t, as they’re images only, and so remain impassive, if fading, glassed detached, shoddily framed. Then, that last questioning step to the test of the foot, that’s the stair that’ll snare, the stumblingblock, the trip, has to be. He asks with the rungs of His lips the angels always invisibly ascending and descending for aid, though this isn’t a dream, He doesn’t think, He hopes it’ll turn out to be — trips and falls now, tumbling just short of silent, hauls Himself up with a palm on the newel, standing His knees scraped, winces as He turns to behold the kitchen in the light of the lights on timers outside.