Witz Read online

  Witz

  other works by JOSHUA COHEN

  The Quorum

  Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto

  Aleph-Bet: An Alphabet for the Perplexed

  A Heaven of Others

  Witz

  A NOVEL BY JOSHUA COHEN

  DALKEY ARCHIVE PRESS

  CHAMPAIGN AND LONDON

  Copyright © 2010 by Joshua Cohen

  All rights reserved

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Cohen, Joshua, 1980-

  Witz: the story of the last Jew on earth / Joshua Cohen. -- 1st ed.

  p.cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-56478-617-3

  1. Jewish fiction. I. Title.

  PS3553.O42434W58 2010

  813’.54--dc22

  2009046093

  Partially funded by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency

  The publisher and the author would like to thank Rick Fishbein, Ahron Weiner, and Rabbi Alan Lucas (Temple Beth Shalom) for their generous support of this project

  www.dalkeyarchive.com

  Cover: design by Danielle Dutton.

  In one of our many pious books, we are told the following:

  One should not stack books of a lesser holiness atop books of a greater holiness.

  Tellingly, in another one of our pious books this dictum is turned on its head—in a story:

  A rabbi stacked a book of the Talmud atop a book of the Torah. Another asked him, Why are you doing that? And the rabbi answered him, In order to preserve the book of the Torah, because by covering it with this I will save it from the dust and the ashes that might fall upon it.

  Regardless of which one follows, the book you are holding now should, when stacked, always be placed in the middle.

  This book you are about to read contains no holy words or letters, neither words nor letters in the Holy Tongue, and nowhere within it are mentioned any of the many names of God.

  Therefore, this book may be ripped or torn, burnt, otherwise destroyed, and whatever remains require(s) no burial.

  “ ”

  —God

  DEADICATED

  to mine enemies,

  without whom none of this would have been possible

  and Thy write hand shall save me…

  Witz:

  being, in Yiddish, a joke;

  and, as the ending of certain names,

  also meaning son of:

  e.g. Abramowitz,

  meaning son-of-Abram

  (also found as –wic, –wich, –wics, –wicz, –witch, –wits, –wyc, –wych, –wycz, –vic, –vich, –vics, –vicz, –vitch, –vits, –vitz, –vyc, –vych, and –vycz).

  Contents

  I

  Over There, Then

  A First Helping

  II

  III

  2

  IV

  V

  Preparations

  6

  Welcome to Whateverwitz

  In the Church

  The Last Supper

  The Museum of Museums

  Punchlines

  I

  Over There, Then

  IN THE BEGINNING, THEY ARE LATE.

  Now it stands empty, a void.

  Darkness about to deepen the far fire outside.

  A synagogue, not yet destroyed. A survivor. Who isn’t?

  Now, it’s empty. A stomach, a shell, a last train station after the last train left to the last border of the last country on the last night of the last world; a hull, a husk—a synagogue, a shul.

  Mincha to be prayed at sundown, Ma’ariv at dark.

  Why this lateness?

  He says reasons and she says excuses.

  And so let there be reasons and excuses.

  And there were.

  A last boat out, why didn’t they catch it? They didn’t have their papers? their papers weren’t in order?

  He says excuses and she says reasons.

  And so let there be excuses and reasons.

  And there were, if belated.

  Misses Singer strokes her husband’s scar as if to calm him. But what she calls a scar he knows is his mouth.

  Late because they’re stuck in one exilic fantasy or another; late because the adventure of ingathering doesn’t seem all on the up and up; late because they’re owed payments, and you’re goddamned right they’re going to collect…what’s yours? I’m just waiting for this one deal of a lifetime to come through, and, when it does, God! the moment it does, you’d better believe I’m out of here…

  Singer stops, stoops to pick up a shoe, sized wide, fallen from his withered foot last step.

  Nu, it’s been like this ever since he was born, and those long, hard years have all been as yesterday’s toll: the bridge crossing, the bottomless price of a boat full with holes, an aeroplane cast down from heaven, betrayed of its wings. And it’s not as if he hasn’t crawled his end of the bargain: wriggling ever forward from garden to grave, he’s trying, just ask him; if he hadn’t married so well, he’d have to gnaw down a branch for a cane. And then what: you pray for a splinter, you get a tree in return, from whose flesh is made paper and from whose fruit is sucked ink, both of which collaborate in God’s writing of Laws whose words and even the letters of which bless you beholden to meaning; and so we receive knowledge, such as the following, and the preceding, and this: in seeking only to stay upright, you fall, are banished then cursed and reviled, condemned to wander a continent you don’t even know where you’re going, only when you’re expected, which is every Friday at sundown though your calendars were never coordinated and what you always thought had been west was really only a left turn taken with your back to the north, in haste and with little sleep, then upon your forehead, the development of a worrying mark.

  A meal after Shacharit, which is the prayer of the morning, praising God Who made the light only by saying it illuminating, also, our own saying of thanks to Him for not making us unto them—the animals, women, or sick; for not yet giving us over to the darkness of death—shadows that have no souls for which to pray if even they could, as they lack both voices and hearts, shuffle their bloated, crapulous ways into shul: Unaffiliated, jingjangling keys—there couldn’t be! that many doors…goyim nameless faceless nearly formless, quiet massing hulks emerged out of dim wet here to make a living that’s more a dying. It’s strange, no one understands: they’re here to help, not destroy. Be calm. One sweeps up; another sweeps the seats for articles and personal effects left behind, by night. Yet another stacks books on the almemar, shoves them, balled up crumpled wet, into pew pockets, lays them out on seats swept toward the rear, nosebleed territory from which the Shammes groans in with an enormous what hath God wrought iron key, looped on a rope around his waist, hanging low under his gut, swinging with his stride—which is as long and wide as the last night he’ll spend here, free, unconcerned.

  Hours later when hours were still hours as restful and lit as all Sabbath’s day, not the binding celestials of numeral and ordinal, the narrow gauge of comet trains, stardeadline, failing, falling, the tickers of arrival and departure and arrival, diurnal again—the clock centerpieces upon our timetables that not only remind us when to partake but are, simultaneously, the only sustenance left—the Affiliated muster, assemble outside…soon, there’s a congregation beyond: nondenominational, because what does observance mean anyway, irreligious maybe even, or all of them heaped together, thrown atop the burning pile, who knows, with the languages who can tell? Their bloods are their tickets, purchased at a steep price or a long song much in advance. Presence by the pint. They lineup two-by-two, two of each kind, husband and wife. They’ve restedup, washedup, dressedup; they’ve reported for showers and were shorn. Th
ere’s last summer’s rose attar, perfume stagnant in air—or it’s smoke, strangely sweet…

  Menschs bow down by the curb, bow at the knees and cast fingers, fish around in last regime’s grates and late afternoon’s puddles for anything that’s not yet blown away: loose pages, blots of blatt, daf stains, yellowed newspapers the print of which’s run off to tomorrow with yesterday’s wife, scraps of rag, parchment or is it just skin, God, it’s skin. As a handful of the oldest menschs bow, they fall, are then helped back to their feet by menschs only slightly younger, each of them by another younger by just a wink or a wrinkle, they’re righted, and so now they’re ten altogether, which makes us a minyan. Runoff is wrung out from these yarmulkes, mud knuckled away with spit. The menschs gather these scraps, spread them on glassy bald skulls with thumb’s knife, against the gusts at the doorway, as if they didn’t have these frags and parches, corking it All down, their heads would spill out to the sky. And its vault. Never forget the vault. Windily, they kiss at the jamb, which is marked. An Unaffiliated at the door hands out books, programs inside, both also pressed into yarmulkes.

  Yellow over red to brown over black if I’m squinting it right, I don’t have my glasses on me just now, comes to west through the windows. Then, Let there be light, and there is light and if not good, then so-so—eh, though you might prefer feh. It’s not theirs, though: insight is forbidden to the assembled, at least here, and what they seek in their own homes, hosting ruin just past the horizon, and on their own time, which is almost up, is absolutely none of our business. Two lights becoming one becoming two: the Shammes has lit candles, flame, but the fire’s outside. The stainedglass remains dark. The floor’s a mess: remnants of flowing tracery, shards of leaded panes from the windows lancet and rose, long replaced or walled up due to heating costs; pews’ rubble heaped to the side, seating’s splinters, scrapped immature limbs—for use in stoking the furnace.

  They’re still late—it’s a long walk and in these shoes…

  Those who aren’t late yet they go some to the left some to the right and up the stairs, to the balcony there: the cheap seats, the women, forgive; some have forgotten though they’re forgiven, reminded again. Entering, the audience is shaking hands; they hug, kiss, and make inquiries with the hands they’re not shaking. Shoes echo off stone. Sweeping suits up in their hands, gathering skirts and slacks they sit, Phfoy. Elders should sit first, but the kinder these days threw respect to the dogs, a distant barking the night through. Cushions, where there are cushions, in the first few rows, wheeze out a measure of dust. Coughs and sneezes ensue, allergies. Some sit on benches, others on seats along the wall, at shtenders, a nod to the old traditionalists: a grip on the hat’s brim, a little bow, the upright stooping to become the fallen in greeting, left wordless while the dialect’s still being decided. Everyone’s pooped, the day’s pooped…I yi yi and all that kitsch, it once was. A few sit in pews, they appear ashamed, remote; there are foldingchairs way in the back. The room’s filling up; there aren’t enough seats, never are, no room, no space, no air: some stand rocking for warmth as if they’re their own mothers; others sit on headstones hauled desecrated from the cemetery beyond; there’re a few pieces of remaindered furniture outside, too, holy borax that’s rental on special, on remnants of sample carpeting they sit anywhere they can, on frayed cushions over loose currencies, sagging under weight, on a sofa with corneal slipcover making piecework flatulence when you go to give up your seat to someone with more hope, or is it less luck, I don’t know—to make way for others, people standing on people pouring in through the smashed in shattered out windows slicing their guts open on jagged edges of glass then falling their ways in, intestinal ladders and no, no angels registered, not tonight…though if not now, if you’re such a Hillel, then when—then never: widows and orphans emerging from drafts of pure nothingness and of the absence of pure nothingness, which is just the proof of pure nothingness, yadda; they lean against the walls, crouch in neighboring alleys—with the door left open a crack.

  Womenfolk above, the menschs below—the women can’t complain: it’s all ritual, no one’s fault, merely a gesture to what, who remembers; the women disappearing behind the mechitza, then peeking out, disappearing again. Curtains, bodying presences—is that the one I’m in love with? her sister? maybe her mother?

  How can the room hold so many, their light—so fresh, so clean, such blushing about the face? Virginal, their apples intact, if desperately ripe. For the purposes of swallowing them the shul seems to expand, a snake’s mouth, releasing an inky venom decreeing the digestion of a millennium, slower. The Fire Marshal Who art in Heaven has bestowedeth upon them His blessings of numinous capacities and maximal occupancies, illimitably, which means nevermore up for renewal…a great oven, heating.

  Authorities up on High have dictated All.

  A group huddling past the river of three names and of no name, done feeding the waters, done watering them, and so just in time to make the first seating’s lights: they’re rushing in, they’re dripping, taking the steps down to humble, supplication doesn’t matter if meant as it’s imposed from above—this ducking through the portal so that their prayers might rise up from the depths; and, too, so that they don’t smack their heads that’s how low.

  Psalm 130, if you know it. An arch.

  They’re entering their Father’s House—but is their Father home? Anyone, anyone?

  You were expecting what besides miserly decoration, impoverished, no humanity, just faceless lions and onewinged birds, frozen midroar and half tweeting. Above the ark, where the scrolls are kept, where no scrolls will be kept anymore—a tympanum, a woodwork canopy peeling paint and blue mold; deepplanted vaunt, hardened bounty amidst carved drapery, earthen vines strangling eternity, then above, only ribbing. Menschs on the lowest level, their wives and daughters higher, upon the balcony then on balconies decorated in rock flowers and jewels, who knows how many of them on up to the stone seat of the moon, as if one half of the Decalogue, the cleaved five commandments, and who can sneak a look? or else they’re kept to the side, or toward the rear, the women, nearest the western wall, the separating grillwork a veil of metal, an armor of plaits…the menschs keep turning, keep coming up with prayerless occasions to turn their eyes upward, behind. We’re inattentive, weekly; resentful, daily; at all times our souls unprepared—beginning there at the ceiling, its crown, an ornamental rib intended to forsake the vault of a cross. An extra, whether left from Creation or a predating build. An almemar parts the room, though later in the show the staging will remove itself to the eastern wall, the pulpit: another migration, yet another orientation, and so which way to face, though the movements are known, felt instinctually—are up and down and back and forth, in and out and this and that and what where, only now.

  Everything known better days. The worn steps up to the proscenium’s ark, arching at the height of the street once again: their cups covered over in dissolute pillows, stuffed with who wants to think. Just inside the vestibule, a lavabo for the washing of hands before prayer’s suffered drought. Those without prayerbooks are to read the prayers that have been written on the walls in a hand unwashed. A hand impure, in that it’s withheld.

  At that proscenium, arkways, the House Manager, resident schlockmeister extraordinaire, an obese mensch shvitzing nerves in this freeze, smokes a frond rolled in loose page, fitted into a holder hollowed out from his humerus; he taps ash to the floor, lines of ash indicating staging. All has been blocked since eternity. The pit’s just below; the baldspot on the Conductor’s head blinding the balcony: he’s bent over his score, baton in one nostril out the other, scribbling his cues in fanatical charcoal, circling rests and only the rests. Tacit. His tuxedo’s motheaten, his cummerbund an enormous expropriated armband. A clarinet running scales up from the chalumeau, embouchure cracked, his reed a sliver of skull; a fiddler, a tallskinny mensch to the clarinet’s shortfat, fiddling with the tuner on his tailpiece: if he’s sharp he’s sharp, if he’s flat he’s fla
t, it’s the thought that counts, condemns; an organist, pulling out all the stops, warming up the webbed pipes; the Copyist rushes in, vaults over the rail, trips over stands, slipslides in spitvalve discharge, hands out parts barely dry, just finished as all work—not just that of Creation but of copying, too—must be barred from the sunset: dusk’s red ink smeared, ink that actually ran out yesterday and is now only blood worried with spit; the Prompter wiping his forehead with the House Manager’s noserag, then numbering cue cards with a quill so sharp his cousin could perform morally impossible ocular surgery with it—a procedure ensuring prophetic hindsight, would help. The House Manager, lapels at his ears, flicking the switch to the Applause sign, ON and OFF then ON again, as onstage, the Emcee the rabbi pops Polyn’s P’s into the microphone smuggled in tonight only.

  Testing…

  Testing…

  One—Two—Three…

  Is this thing on?

  …

  Good evening, ladies & gentlemen…and feedback attends