Joshua Cohen - Witz

Here, Miami of all places, a revelation upon receded land, tribal Miami that’d emerged from the backwater at this nowhere that’s been called Okeydokey, or maybe Suckywayoungy (something or other surely unpronounceable, how do those feathervoiced natives do it?) — with the true indigenous of this city, of this country entire, vomited up from that river only later named for a saint who’d been the husband of the virgin that she gave birth in the manger; each having to cling to a frond of a palmtree to keep from drowning at the dawn of their time — here, the wine thinned out, came watered down, the beard grew back into the face, the nose was absorbed, the foreskin grew out from the shaft. Prior to the tragedy that’d occurred on the anniversary of the day that that virgin gave birth, many had thought that intermarriage, which is the marrying between different peoples, races, religions, would destroy the Affiliated, diluting the blood with another bodily fluid. But, as our scholars remind us, since the blood of the dead has always been transmitted through the mother, at least according to the Law theirs and ours, it’s in truth impossible to sex us out of our birthright, no longer chosen. Though PopPop, being a firstborn, and so a survivor, had been born Affiliated, he’d married later in life Unaffiliated, and so though their son, His father, Israel, was not born Affiliated, was not even born Israel, it’s said, he’d become converted, perhaps unnecessarily though unforced and so — it’s your move, PopPop says, yours; his paternal grandfather, he cheated often, had bishops up his sleeve, you had to watch him, keep him talking, you took your hand off the piece. His MomMom, PopPop’s wife native to a mother whose preacher’s preacher’s preacher had been exiled out to mission her hometown of Lamed, Kansas — or so hold other scholars among us — she’d never thought why to switch sides; PopPop’d never asked, never wanted to ask or wanted her to, in truth he liked her Unaffiliated, held his own Affiliation over her, that dumb, ignorant, uglyilliterate bitch, I loved her, I didn’t, why should she have converted, even if he’d asked her to, it made him feel more who he was, which felt good, even after their son, their only though he wasn’t born Affiliated and so couldn’t survive as firstborn once converted in at least half his blood, had married out, or married in, and which was it exactly — a topic, Is’ decision, not entirely out in the open with his mother, His MomMom, who’d been disappointed, though she wouldn’t complain when they talked, which was never; anyway, His grandfather didn’t like to remember her, alright, and Whose bed am I sleeping in? Did you ever sleep with her in it? and If you did, did the two of you ever pillowtalk about my father? aren’t questions you ask a mensch as old as PopPop, especially if he’s your only living relative, angry, and naked except for a pink robe, ever loosening, with a sash blue & white trimmed in a bloom of lace thorns. Better to keep quiet, sit straight at the board, chins up and take in your surroundings before you’re beaten, and delivery has to be paid for: PopPop’s unit a shvitzshop with its shades down, the heat turned all the way up against the exterior nip; who knew from winterized, that the heating ever worked here. Interiorly, the carpeting covered with samples of other carpet in clashing colors, walls yellowed with pipesmoke except white in the shape where a crucifix hung until the death of His MomMom, the pale patch seeming like the complexion of a clothed, unexposed body, basking out on the wide holy beach just outside. An uncountenanced emptiness hanging over the table on which they match their play to stalemate. Then, the bell rings, and they ignore it as it might only be their deliveryboychick, returning after his shift for the tip they’d purposefully forgotten.

PopPop takes out his teeth, spits on them, rubs them shined on a sleeve of his robe, shuffles to the kitchen then returns with an alternative, puddings, a delicacy of the Mixed Kitchen, the specialty of an alien house; a neutral foodstuff this linnerless or undunched option, the favorite dish of the Unaffiliated and those, too, with dentures of any persuasion: pareved without ethnicity as it’s become, institutionally, the chosen sustenance of the elderly, the geriatric without mind or the stomach with which to digest implications of nationality, race, or religion. PopPop favored pudding, the more jiggling the better, and concocted it well, its recipe no miraculous secret, you just have to ask, though its vital ingredient you wouldn’t expect.

They’re Nest Eggs; white ellipticals washing up on the shoreline since last-last-Xmas — at least, that’s when they first were noticed, or initially reported, three years ago now — amazingly white rounds, almost geological, waved in to rest upon gently sloping, surely endangered dunes: seeming, too, like supersized disembodied teeth, artificially whitened, set in sunken gums of sand, for a while the phenomenon was suspected a savvy advertising scheme on the part of a statewide dentistry franchise, which suspicion has since been allayed as the owners of said franchise died, this Xmas Eve, and the ovoids kept washing up, apparently innocent of ploy; a handful of local Injuns had been spreading rumors of them as ominous if hackneyed omens, cryptoSeminoles casting them mailorder to the interior for an old doublesawbuck, shipping also overseas at a profit not insignificant; select restaurants and participating retail outlets throughout panhandle and Gulfside Florida had begun accepting them in lieu of cash, credit, paper, or plastic; and many began to worship these odd ova, which emanated a strangely cinematic, lowbudgeted luminescence under sufficient strength of overhead fluorescence: enough to tan, not enough to make accompanying toast; they became ensconced on dashboards, as hood ornaments; largebreasted, thicknecked women wore them in silver settings around their necks; the athletically inclined jogged with one in each hand to enhance the effects of their morning workouts; meanwhile, environmentalists were out scooping them up, gathering them in deep, widemeshed nets; every once in a while a volunteer occupied untangling seaweed from a net would break one underfoot, to a flow viscous, noisome — they seemed to be a species of allyolk egg, which subsequent laboratory tests inconclusively confirmed, identifying them as Nest Eggs, after some janitor in a hot labcoat came up with the name; and one, which as the circumferentially biggest yet found had been taken to University of Miami Medical for experimentation, after a period of tepid incubation hatched a previously unknown species of snowbird, which was immediately determined nonkosher, slaughtered then barbecued to refresh a faculty banquet. Three Nest Eggs, stacked in a glass, cracked on its rim, then poured out into another glass, the preferred nightcaps of PopPop Israelien: he drank them before bed, ate them in omelets in the morning — with diverse species of mushrooms, onions, peppers, as equal opportunity cheeses as his lower tract could allow — fried them for a snack, hardboiled them, sliced, diced, then mixed them into an undressed salad in the afternoon, poached them for a snack, scrambled, or sunnysided them up in the evening, used Nest Eggs in eggnog, too, this being the season, and of course in the omnicourse dessert he serves himself, the pudding. Monday through Saturday, this was his sustenance, but every Sunday since he and his wife had retired here, the days of her death and Benjamin’s arrival included, PopPop brunched in a buffet, alone, the Restaurant Under the Sign of the Imperfectly Toned Pectorals its name, liningup always at nine sharp and waving a vellum swath resplendent with Habsburgian seals, shrieking indignant theft at the expectant waitstaff.

His weekly dispute, you understand, was over the sun, parching premeditated arson over the openair diningarea. PopPop Israelien owned the sun, if you’re following, he tells Benjamin between pudding mouthfuls, having purchased it from its former owner — a local greyhound breeder with whom he’d often shared a card of onehanded B — I — N — G — O — with goddamn near his entire savings, having signed the papers a day after his retirement (MomMom had almost died upon receiving the news: from that day, her cancer, Israel’d thought, the slow sunning to Malignantville, FL, Cemetery County, the dead’s exurbanized plot), the sun the only property in his portfolio, his sole investment, and due to the ever over and over again difficulties as explained to the manager — who was apparently not deaf, despite the impudent buzzing of his cochlear implant — the impractical exigencies of keeping track of just who exactly uses the sun, for what purpose, with what intensity, beginning when and for how long during what season because rates always change, PopPop explaining to Him now, he’d decided to extort payment from here and here only, having been successful only this past week, and what a stunner, though what with the late weather who knows how long it’ll last.