Joshua Cohen - Witz

But where was his home, you ask?

Okay, in the far ’n’ widehanging testes of this terrible Oaf who roamed the dark dense pubic forest of a nameless kingless kingdom, it might’ve been Podunk for all we know, the wrong side of the tracks. And this Mamzer Sperm, he whistled a simple tune: tweet tweet tweet t’tweet, then said to himself in a language more like grunting that he the dumb schmuck thought meant something, it’s such a goddamned wonderful day! let’s wander into that sunny patch of the forest over there and find something to destroy! and so he did — tweet tweet tweet t’tweet! — and soon beheld through the trees an open grassy field up ahead so calm and so peaceful and so wandered there, and met an Intelligent Petite Ovum, an IPO known as Mazel, not a girl’s name, so sue me in your dreams…and then what you ask? I’ll tell you the rest tomorrow, my boy.

That, or the tale of Rumpleforeskin.

For now, get your rest, make a schlaf.

At least tell me what happens next, you say?

Alright, fine…a reversion to normally nasal lisp: the long story short’s that Mamzer, he rescues Mazel from Mazel’s wellmeaning but at times okay could be overbearing father — a King of Kings, really, and takes her away to an even more terrible third kingdom who knew even existed, it’s named Exile — in which no one invites them to lavish parties without at least a slight degree of wariness…you happy?

As habit evolved over the years, three of them of repeated instruction from Hanna reiterated again and again whenever they’d go on vacation, family or just the two of them, even away just for the weekend, which opportunity had been getting rarer as Israel’d work longer and harder for more money who’d ever spend (retirement might’ve meant death at his desk), Wanda’s locked triply and doubly checked all the doors, front, back, and basement, the two doors per porch interior, ex, the four deckdoors, too, had locked all the windows then let down the blinds, pulled curtains, timed lights set like alarms — her purpose, to preserve anything Benjamin might inherit, after her, and her own, as the Underground’s planning to repossess everything in One Thousand Cedars’ bracket, to ingather its lode to the Hall of Domestics, to house it there until its sale as a single lot to a fence as yet elusive, woody or wiry, going through the interview process, getting screened, prior to any dispersal, mass exodus into greater America, evading the authorities of Immigration, Naturalization, and the retribution of a reckoning substantially diviner: measures proposed then voted upon in a matter of emergency at the meeting of the Eve. Redemption, come up from below, and despite the locks, the alarms above, which are only the world of pretense, of appearances, surface — now, these women have their saving to do, personal scrimp, their own gleaning, its own degradation. Boxes are arrayed, breakables swaddled in newspapers outdated, This End Up. Underground, Domestics are occupied hauling chairs, chandeliers, tables, tarpulined paintings and books never again to be read, everything downstairs then down and out through wardrobes then into and through the wide floodlit tunnels they’re humming, they’re whistling, giddily insulting one another on down the line of waiting looters in every language that is, their vernacular an echoic, welcoming admixture of Slavicisms and the vulgar idiom of American pop, resounding like a party in revolt under the earth, whose face is being emptied chair by table by lamp: each Domestic responsible for her own transportation of the holdings of her home to the warehouse of the Hall (endtables with casters hoarded, lawyerhusbands’ carts used to lug home files, prized), and yet the proceeds from the sale of the lot in toto are to be split evenly amongst all members, without preference equally shared among Domestics, Grounds, and Maintenance alike, an inheritance from their old worlds and its outmoded socialist governance, though Adela and despite having received no explanation in return for a promise to honor a request this unexpected if not just untimely has agreed to keep Wanda’s absence from the others and, furthering hush, even offered to glean a portion of the Israelien household on her behalf (Wanda insisting on the Scriptural tenth, the holiness of the sum she felt sanctifies greed), while preserving the rest for what she, Adela, didn’t understand, couldn’t ask — for Benjamin, if ever He’d come of age, or for His guardian down there where Wanda said, Myhammy.

Adela wakes late from the floor of the empty Master Bedroom, long un-troubled loosening neck and shoulders sleep after having taken the entire day previous to offload the Koenigsburg hold, hands chapped, fingers chaffed, rung in tens of rings engagement, wedding, formal and junk, mutlifacetedly huge, all Edy’s — she’d given herself the night off, had delayed looting the Israelien’s until morning — though her limbs still a trifle stiff from lifting heavy under the sun that lifts itself, and only the prospect of the same today, more work than Edy and Alan’d ever paid her to do; she sloughs through the tunnel toward the neighbor’s across the way; she shouldn’t be found outside, they’d agreed at the meeting, it took them hours to, none of them should: already the sirens dulled above the earth, whirling aid to the helplessly dead; at intersections, mirrored for safety, dodging her fellow Domestics flailing, hauling their own chests of drawers hanging gawkingly open, an extra helping of horror for Hanna had she been alive, their contents falling, rolling pearls over which to trip and fall, bluntedged baseballcards, compasses without west, leaky thermometers, golfpencils eraserless, gnawed, lipsticks, perfume; dragging to scratch the eyes of the tunneled floor smashed mirrors and glass wardrobes unhinged on screws stripped then spilled, vacation, college and summercamp luggage lugged overfull, footlockers, trunks, suitcases teething zippers, seams ripped, ripping, linnerdance jewelry, earrings for the fundraiser dunch, pesadicht silverware tarnished in disuse, souvenireal porcelain heirlooms, glassily plastic tabletop trinkets, weepy chandeliers fisted then dragged behind to tinkle loud and hollow through their grunts, the imprecations and arguments of Domestics stooping to scoop up what’s been dropped, fighting over whatever remains — Markéta noosed in nine of Mister Rosen’s ties inspired by Chagall , Mojca whipping her on with Misses Diamant’s diamond necklaces clasped to bracelets. Adela dashing through the last stretch of tunnel givingout into Wanda’s wardrobe and, on reaching its portal and instead of meeting with the holy protection of a saint once invoked, there’s darkness, nothing: Wanda’s room sealed with rocks the size of a head, and past them and their mound, weathered cedar 2 x 4s, condemning passage, nailed into a cracked cross — distressing these boards, having been redeemed from Maintenance without benefit of appropriate requisition form. Adela heaves a rock to the side, another, again, tiring, passage impossibly blocked, she stands, making out sound from above — the din of heavy moving, of snaps, pops, hernias lashing out to crack like taskmastering whips, knotted spines — turns as if struck to speed through the tunnel again, through tunnels, tripping over tchotchkes again, furnishings out of any season’s prospectus, shattering the glassware of Moser, touristy Bohemian crystal, plasticpebbled punchbowls and molds of fish for the baking of breads, fukatokugawa vases if that’s how it’s said worth more than they’d ever suspect, coinlike clatter of silver and stemware, shards of plate catalogcarded, and the thick prick of tines underfoot, trampling the greed of her fellow Domestics scrounging, scavenging scraps of lingerie and tracksuit torn, radios, stereos, teevees and unwieldy, doorless microwaves, the contented, contenting like until she emerges through her own portal, toppling her saint, the substitute Anastasia’s accusative, sharply jutting head tearing loose the hem of Edy’s housedress and into her room if it could be said to’ve ever been hers, in the Koenigsburg house where Jana and Veronika are fighting sexually liberated and fiercely over an antique now antiquated silver menorah Adela’s left behind out of the sentimental, a vaguely religious fear that kindles respect, keeps burning the candle of superstition forever — responsibly tarnished, a candelabra smuggled Over Here one branch at a time up nine tushes that once had seats reserved for them in all the synagogues of k.u.k. Austro-Hungary. Adela leaves them tumbling entwined, halfnaked, their nails (sharp, they’d manicured each the other’s) flying to scrape at mouths, at their own images in one another’s eyes, Veronika and Jana who if not twins then should be, scuffling throes on the floor to become bound in the rug rolled over the carpet as if the unifying mummy of a Pharaoh, hardheartened. Adela scrambles up the staircase from the basement amid leaned screens and the photographs of births, bar & bat mitzvahs, weddings in their order, portraits of Koenigsburgs posed as dead as them all, through the hallways and rooms kitchen, family, den, dining, living and dying, through the last hallway that’s also the first, to its door that’s the frontdoor though it faces away to the west, unlocks it from the inside, its key held tight between the winded throb of her breasts, then down the stoop into the frontyard, directly into the floe, the slushy fire — the slowed, thick, freezesearing path of the sprinklers secreted low amid the icicle grass, and on timers.