Joshua Cohen - Witz

Tonight’s the night of the Second Seder, which is the justification for the first, a lately seconding assent — an evening’s afterlife of ritual, too much the forgotten night, and as such often slept through, ignored, its reputation that of mere repetition, the Law’s reinforcement intended only for the dense or pedantic, the masochistically foolish — to be conducted with and served to the visiting dignitaries and press inside the Registry of the Great Hall, check your coats and remember, save your stubs. Who gets served first, the question numbered after the fourth never asked by the kinder dead, and what — an incomparable dish, what else the final course, savored only as the last. After its plates are cleared and silverware stolen, what’s left’s only the Blessed art Thou. Disordered. Art Thou Blessed. The Seder desedered, desecrated. Thou art Blessed. A table leavened, lately risen so high that anything served atop it would be beyond anyone’s appetite. Stomachs eyeing swollen. That and there aren’t enough chairs. My condolences.

Ben turns, staggers palms to foot the ice, falling to His knees, He rights Himself onIsland, to His house and weeping freely. Teary as the way’s uphill: snow drifted to the edges, the fringe toward Joysey a precipitate pack. Not alone, He’s escorted home by His newest lookalikes — flanked by Mada, and a novice whitebread operative known de novo as Frank Gelt — past the lingering smoke, lightning flashes, the bulby horns of moonmade beasts; constellating fame lost in darkness encroaching, just a plague or two too late; the lens of sky shattering at the sight, the spectacle, believe it. To the shore of Joysey and, across the Island, to that of Manhattan and further, the uninviteds, the hangerson, fans, and the citified curious disperse homeward on skis and snowshoes, across ice salted, ice sanded; those who’d hoped for a miracle, say, a resurrection, are frustrated — it would’ve only disappointed, or so they promise themselves, assure, their newest rabbis agree, they always do, we’re sure; them sloughing off slowly, laggardly, diasporating, together, apart, into a diasporation further, unnamed, without number, into futures individual as purposemade, exiles none of them could ever hope to understand.

Which, nu, doesn’t rule out Submission.

Steinstein, says an approved mourner here with the appropriate pass inside the Great Hall, a weeper who’s on every list — now, he was golden. A blank check. This Israelien, He’s difficult, a tough sell. Doesn’t know how to do a soundbyte. Unquotable! Unphotogenic! Or if not Him, His decoys — how much they make an hour? Anyway, there’s not much to like about Him, you know? Hard to relate to. Too strange. Never know what that schmuck is thinking.

Doesn’t matter what He looks like, says his plus one pewmate, what He smells or sounds like, what He feels or even tastes like — I wish the kid had ten hundred, ten thousand fingers to sell off. As relics, you follow? They’re going to make a killing!

Hymn, if nothing kills Him first.

In His house, Ben lies atop the table He was born on, in the diningroom, flopped on a shard of dark tablecloth slipping from its top; then upstairs He’s embedded, upstairs-upstairs, on the decks’ deterioration, a mattress perched aslant a pitch of snowsuccumbing roof — what the media characterizes as “a period of recovery” calming soon, a sobless nap, a little healing schlaf.

For seven nights through Shiva, Ben’s dead to the world. And, too, to dreams, which despite our ignorance of any revelation they might offer to interpretation couldn’t be more terrible than what passes for His life, what’s passedoff to Him as life passedover, the unlivable liveddown, the divine decree of un-lovable fame as proclaimed by prevailing silence. The sun dawns day through the windows, Manhattan nights without phosphor or fuss — everything having been declared dimmed for the mourning, His and theirs. His sisters gather around the table, calling to stall, while unfolding fresh accommodations of cloth and pad, edible inveiglements, sexplay suasions — but no one can reach Him, nothing can talk Him down. The moon remains through the mornings, the evenings find that ancient ancestral plate, cut by its silver, as empty as ever, while the window between it and the polished tabletop on which He rests becomes as a shroud veiled over the most dire vision imaginable — unthinkable, tomorrow; to frustrate even the most adept prophet, whose rest’s given over to the workings of His unimaged God.

Morning after Shiva’s sat out Ben’s woken — rolled from the table of His room off the tables of the upper floors, forced back downstairs, to its waking life, the business of His state. He’s ushered atop a scale that eighth afternoon, unearthed from a cabinet in Feigenbaum’s bathroom for His weighing, a procedure to be done daily on orders, to regulate His gain, moderate appearance; this to focus Him on the public, His image, a girth even greater — to be worth His weight in gold; polished with publicity, the shine imparted with appropriate alchemy and management. No mourning, says Doctor Tweiss, that’s for Shiva’s sequel…starting tonight — people enjoyed it so much it’s been heldover, popular demand. Stand still, says the other doctor: don’t lean on the tables, you’re no leaner on the walls; stand straight. Stop that sobbing, each tear weighs a ton. And then we’ll do it naked. He weeps enough salt to deaden a sea. All who art thirsty, let them sip from His eyes. Their brows being plucked, their lashes slickly licked to flirt. Arrow the finger pointed, sucked to wipe from His face a smeared tear, a point of schmutz — it wobbles, steadies, wavers, shakes, the dial spins His sighs. Jesus, you’d think we were fattening you for the slaughter. That’s a joke. That, too. Please and thank you nice to meet you, good Sabbath a guten Shabbos. Shake. A fitting for the new more casual clothes to supplement the suit. And, thrown in as if a towel, a fresher, drier, veil. His number gotten, sized, He’s sent to His room again — to fling through the scripts received, proposals, projects, telegrams and letters. No one survives, they only inherit a different life. To be a star means this, to disinherit the darkness of the sky.

And then there is One. Me. Who else, who better. Ben, the son of sons. Uniqueness, a quality universally prized…rather, our universal constant itself: one hard breath amid the ether, through laughter or tears, I know, I know. One sun that wakes Him. An alarm, which functions in the time of the Messiah. Ringing. Tell the resurrected it’s time to tick to work. Stillborns off to school. Then, one moon that sleeps Him without dream. Between, one brunchplate, hosting a single bagel of a widening hole. In the afternoon, the larger of the last two knishes He knoshes, knowing his interlocutor’s respectful enough to have selected the smaller one anyway, in anticipation. Are you feeling well, are you feeling. One mountain in the distance, a singular pyramid of stone sheetrocked, it’s said. An oneway track ripped up under the progress of the train relentless, farflung out from behind the rear broughtup, the caboose He’ll hobo on, when soon. Give Him space and time and parents. After all, His people gave such ideas existence. That and the Temple, citybound — hosting one marble pedestal and its frayed vein itself hosting the infinite universe, its vaster gods. They couldn’t be here but they send their regards. And vengeance. One like the nation, under His invisible God indivisible, with liberty and justice for whom. As it’s said and never known. One as in chosen over the other, singled out but by whom and for what. Is the question begged. Because He’s unattached, a singlemon, an eligible match, maybe — meet my son, the Messiah, He’s free most Friday nights. Or, one like the Substance of Spinoza, the nugatorily negating immutable, the ineffably annulling…