Joshua Cohen - Witz

At the whiny cry of the boy, those in the overheated, underventilated, monthold mayonnaisestained hall drop their soupspoons, their metals falling in a massed tinny skitter to the filth of the oilclothed floor lumped toward the walls in mounds of stale air; clattering dully, silvery rivers winding amid dusky hillocks of industrial blue, then silence. The meal’s evacuated, food’s adjourned, and all are remanded to barracks still hours until Curfew. In the morning the lasting first, rumor’s leaked; gossip’s net hairing down from heads on high, with their gloved hands serving up only the usual expected: that Abel’s only ill, but when he isn’t anywhere around the next day, which is the restless host of Shabbos, by its stars with their shiny palms held to the spiced fire, the constellating cup of inflammatory wine, and the staff of the Infirmary — baldheaded, baldfaced collaborators, is the suspicion — won’t give his next of kin Steinstein, Adam, any information, no indication, visitation rights forget about it, only office redirection of his heartrending, goggleeyed, and altogether trusting inquiry, then last name, first name, middle initial forms to fill out in triplicate, crossed complete with dotted lines upon which to sign away the permission of all meager hope — everyone suspects the truth; though many are sick, fall ill themselves, having without thinking picked up from the filthy, unswept, nevermopped floor the wrong spoons, those of their neighbors and others’, the spoons of their enemies and ever sicker friends, then verily souped and scooped with them the wandering dumplings, the balls of mealed matzah and flotsam of flanken, the jetsam of parsley, and so becoming infected with alien germs, the stock of the foreign, just as their real mothers would’ve warned them, had their womenfolk still lived.

Though initially, the first days of Nisan set in chaos, in crisis, the revelation isn’t so on — sophistication takes its time, its toll; the world might’ve been created in seven days, but who wants to live without electricity or shoes: three, four moons of the same moon into this recreated Garden, only a few fingered months however paradisiacal onIsland — made collaborative to this resurrected refuge experiment, complicit in this solution proposed anew — and not everyone’s accounted for yet: the who, where, when not yet established, made record; the problem, not everyone’s been ID’d. Passions settle themselves, by name and number into an agenda, the minutes of their meeting a wayfarer along the low road to the west. A tongue reigns from the heavens, a meteor’s gloss. By night, an inquiry’s established: a chamber not of torture but the throne of the already painfully confessed, not barebulbed but luxuriously outfitted with every amenity to be desired by even the most outlandish of imaginations; impaneled in panels, beset by committees, resounding with oversight, how perceptive. Unspun, unedited, unasked to sit down first before being broken the news recently made in headlines that would strangle a God, a scar lamed upon the neck of the leg — truth is, one of them’s died again, made familial to the future, cousin to the world to come, allow me to extend my condolences but not myself, not by much. An order’s given to mourn — officially, on condition of the anonymous record — while behind the chambers’ doors, which are never entirely opened and yet never entirely closed, only perpetually drafted, left halfwise if only to suspect the air of transparency, accountability with its paranoid pointed fingers and gnawedupon nails, the order’s to question, to ask; to flap the lips as if doors themselves, wavering from any gust that might answer. Which Abel was Abel? To establish the identity of the decedent beyond any measure of shadowing doubt. Who’s able to identify which Abel this Abel was? Having no distinguishing marks, no tracking implants, collars or bracelets that beep (early on, those measures had been nixed by these very powers inquiring as too extremely unfree — not too invasive, merely an unwarranted expense), it’s a process of reduction, winnowing, the chaff from the chaff, of taking and examining testimony, crossexamining, then striking both, instructing to ignore. To begin all over again, it keeps them afraid. On their toes if still seated. All rise. Place a hand on your — Bible, and repeat after me. Let your other hand be its commentary. Sign over your mouth. I don’t swear to God, it’s against my tradition. Speak up, please, we can’t hear you.

For the Record, then: this dead Abel isn’t Abel Bernstein (alias “Feel the Burnstein,” AKA “The Burnt Teen”); no, he’s still among us, still sniffling around, waiting for his father of blessed assets to come back to life, to resurrect his reputation from the vault that’s the grave for the sole purpose of helping his son make headway into the business, as he’d always promised; that indefinite media career: publishing, music, or film — he’d had the contacts, you name it, he’ll make it, facetime, a conference call with the dead; the kid always thought opportunity like weather fell from the sky, that money grew evergreen on trees; if not that, then still waiting for his inheritance to come through, to get processed, always, tied up in litigation’s the delusion maintained — cheap chintz visor stuck on his head even when sunset permits eating and at stool, leaving the bared to premature bald for the yarmulke he’s forced to — enumerating his windfall, accounting wildly, fingering the interest and dividends, even in his satisfied sleep oblivious, dreaming through every denial; unable to admit to himself and his bunkmates who once they find him alive continue to rib him, to haze and harass, that Der had, or is, already spent or spending it all — the whole bubonic cancerous lump sum of it on his own room and board, along with its waste upon a host of other if they’re necessarily more clandestine interests, offshore investments the particulars of which, even their most vague sheltering structures, Garden, Inc.’s accounting would never divulge: imminent Messiah perks, (re)Affiliated infrastructure (privatizing the public schools, revising curricula, contracting, too, with dispersed hospitals and clinics), securing the oil reserves, the water supply — just name it, it’s true. Many think it’s Abel Eckstein, until they realize he’s not dead, just introspective, reflective, modest, quiet and sad, still mourning his mother who’d always said she loved him so much she could die, which she eventually did, leaving her son to slink around the Garden, spending idle mooning hours in the showering facility (known as the Shof, if you’re a regular, winkwinking), gutter-to-gutter, hopping its drains on one foot in an attempt to cope or cop a mope; consecrating his mornings to the sin of Onan, which is masturbation, spilling seed, lathering his nether putz when he doesn’t suspect anyone’s spying, hundreds of FBs at a time shoved in together too close to know, to want to know his hard as slippery as wetted soap. And then the rumor has it as Abel Nagstein, which is ridiculous if you asked around, an eminence of thinking wishful: the Nag’s always shtepping everyone as to his presence; taking up space, precious air, exploiting, too, his position as a disgraced lab employee slash janitor, trying to sell premium fresh urine that’d pass any test to anyone who’d offer their favor, lording his gainful over the unemployed mass of FBprofessionals: lifeinsurance salesmenschs finding no takers for their policies offered in monthly installments growing easier and more affordable by the day, letting them go for less than a kiss, a hug’s discount embrace, or only a word in kind; lawyers mourning their billables ticking by, plotting late night tort suits v. Garden, Inc. and its CEO Der if we could just remember his former, Unaffiliated name; codefendants in a class of actionable all to themselves, they’re naming everyone: the government, higherups in the Administration, President Shade, even God It or Himself, despite being an unknowable entity, if existing, surely One of a limitless liability; doctors pining away for their bonebroke skichalets, half paidoff, shedding tears to freeze in the eye of the mind into virgin slopes trickled down the nose; moguls without moguls, briefs without a leg to stand on; architects and developers dreaming what they’d do were this Island to be privatized to any of their own concerns, what they’d put up here and why; remember the malls, like irradiant jewels in settings of parkinglot tar…the Great Hall a rejuvenating lifestyle spa, with residential space up top past the sun, or a hotel pent above three stars, lavish barracks through the clouds — luxurious condominiums ranging higher than a heaven in which none of them can still believe.