Joshua Cohen - Witz

Tonight being that, the Eve, another Turn turn turn…it’s also Friday, the dusk of the Sabbath. As light earlier, they’d observed the entire rite, for Benjamin’s benefit PopPop blessing for the first time in too long, not long enough, what’s come over him, it goes lehadlik ner shel Shabbos, the lit (lehadlik) candles (ner), which were yahrezeits, waxen jars two of them set with serpentine wicks that supermarkets had stocked a yomtov ago, aisle numbered numinous now marked down for no one; Kiddush was said borei pri hagefen over the fruit of the vine, which’d been a rabidly sparkling, grapey champagne PopPop had had in the fridge since last Xmas; they washed, al netilat yadayim’s that prayer, Amen then waited on the buzz from the lobby so they could break bread, hamotzi, or whatever they’d ordered. Blessed Art Thou Lord Our Gaud…Who Hath Given Us Takeout, & Delivery — and then, what’s the bracha for dessert, for pudding as always, the warmth of its flesh, the spoon of its skin? Shehakol.

Benjamin’s put to bed early, PopPop lockingin SonSon, to sleepsleep in the roomroom of His MomMom; are you cozy, comfortable, suck it up, I’ve known worse. I lived twice what even your parents lived — I’ve lived double lives.

Only to return an old, barnacled, loosebottomed wreck at the end of his days — to youth; a late evening stroll along with the waterfront at the changing of the guardian tide, which wets his way along a lip of expectant froth, an undulating tongue of wake, sinking in then swallowing down to dampen his shoes and socks, almost tripping, to tumble onto the sharp weed of his whistle, fallendentured, suckedgummed and burdened, too, a bag schlepped over a shoulder’s stoop, filled with those nightly fresh, skyshelled orbs known as Nest Eggs, late evening and its speckled space being the best conditions for collection. After a’gathering from along the shoreline, amid the ribboning of bows from the crash of waves, his own Xmas presents, belated tokens for the near and dear, eggs uncovered from sand, redeemed from tangles of kelp, hypodermiclike shards of shells, found amid glassy drift, pyres of driftwood, fallen clouds of sand, packed like snow, grained with ice, PopPop — tattered in overcoat, scarf knotted like a second necktie — meets outside the sandside, seaswept eastern entrance to his tower a goy who must merit the rating of at least an acquaintance, waving I’m so excited more hands than all the poor of the world would know to clasp in the brotherhood of schnorr and so Pop-Pop stops, feels at his heart, sets down his burlap bag, fishes the hook of a stogie out of a pocket of his overcoat, which is furry and full of holes as if gnawed right from the skin of a deepsea Levantine monster, and lights it and sucks and lungs out smoke and steam, waits as this acquaintance in a felt hat and dewy mink approaches him in a wade and worm around and through a hulking, violently slippery pod of squidy, octopusal mutants. Dim menaces, terrorized with three legs, actually slimy entities of two legs each ferociously lamed by a distended, additive antenna — they’re merely the night shuffleboard enthusiasts, congregated under the sunny blast of facility kliegs, the goy highstepping over the flight of their discs, thrust cues and on into boxes, ten points, twenty (the laws of mourning don’t prevent them from enjoying, even if they’d had any respect), to greet PopPop. But who is he? PopPop removes his glasses, licks the wonder onto the face of his lenses, breathes and wipes, a glare, a blur’s bubbling smudge, the heat from the tower’s lobby fogging again even at this distance whenever a fellow tenant comes and goes, the revolving, revolvingly vertiginous door — my sight isn’t what it used to be, but he’s said that for as ever long as he’s had sight; though, then again, neither is that that needs to be seen.

Enough, we’ll let the thing talk.

An openingline, long rehearsed, memorized by mirrors of lobby and bath.

I’m making a fortune in furs, I’ll tell you, seems with this weather last few days…it’s peculiar, isn’t it — sales are up what, like two hundred percent.

As he tells you what he wants, he tells you who he is.

It would be Freddie, wouldn’t it, who else the none other, who knows how it’s spelled on his bell: Freddy, maybe, the Fur King, newly mounted, crowned in a taxidermical head, anointed with formaldehyde, a sheep in the clothing of the wolf, which is bundled tight under tens of gekkering foxes whose tails have gone red with shame.

Listen, he pleads PopPop, hat in hand, scratching at the bumps on his bald that seem prospective antlers, it’s not profiteering, I’m as sorry as the next about what’s gone on, what’s a goy to do, tell me, he attempts a handshrug, trying it on for size, forgive him it asks, he’s new around here…just trying to make a living, nothing wrong with that, no, got my daughter with the abdominals and always with the yoga meditation talking my ears blue about responsibility and such, but I’m telling you, he’s telling PopPop, Faivish olev ha whatever it is, he would’ve wanted it this way, no doubt, he was always after the sale, all about business, life is death he’d always say but business is business, which is both and it’s good, listen I’m telling you now it’s almost too good — now this would’ve killed him! that he doesn’t know what to do with his gestures, as if to ask without asking, any typology tips? and since his hands of tens heads dumb don’t know what to do with themselves either he hides them, in the pockets of his mink, furry little rodentholes, lintlined burrows, and — despite the cold as he’s not sure if PopPop’s listening, or had answered him, or of anything — he removes his earmuffs, which are bunnypuffs, the tails of rabbits that thump no more and, breathlessly, shoves them into his other pocket.

What about you and this grandson I’m hearing so much about?

It’s true what they’re saying?

You know some people are asking questions?

You got maybe something warm for Him for winter? We’ve got to keep Him in good shape, alive.

You don’t worry about us, says PopPop, please God, everything’s fine. He’s wearing an old rag of mine, I’m wearing a newer one; when we don’t trade, we share, send the spare shmatte out to be cleaned.

It’s been pleasant, Friedrich, but I really must and yadda with lessening tact, he heaves bag onto back, offers the fur a snotted sleeve limply shook, then slumps through the doors, which are automatic to the left and right for the handicapped when they aren’t in the middle revolving, through its mortuary lobby, funereal arrangements of flower atop low benches like coffins filled with stone to the elevator, express, overclimatized against the outside inclement, spurting muzak, an icicle clarinet, a snowflake cymbal, dingding he digresses his tweed tighter, the gnaw of the gut, hound’stooth, raises his collar and resumes a whistle at meeting this other orphan, a filthy wild though appealing update of a newsie or shoeshine type, who lately lived in the elevator, left to fend for himself while on vacation by a grandfather who’d lived in the tower until he, as Affiliated, died, without his firstborn grandson, who over the last week was given a uniform and salary financed by the facility’s more generously gullible tenants in return for doing what he loved best, pushing his home’s buttons at the violently random. He grins small fangs, scratches skin, pimpled one cheek the other pubered with stubble, then flicks a middlefinger out to depress all the floors in a swipe, last among them the eye glowing PENTHO SE.

Even with all this happening, PopPop says in interruption of his own humming, I should wish you a happy and healthy, pursing among his hides for a late holiday tip — may this year be better than what’s passed, and not wanting to waste an egg on the boy, with stiff nervous fingers finds a dime to drop to his pocket.