Joshua Cohen - Witz: The Story of The Last Jew on the Planet (American Literature (Dalkey Archive))

The Quorum

Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto

Aleph-Bet: An Alphabet for the Perplexed

A Heaven of Others

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.

God

DEADICATED

to mine enemies,
without whom none of this would have been possible

and Thy write hand shall save me

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 isnt?

Now, its 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 huska synagogue, a shul.

Mincha to be prayed at sundown, Maariv 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 didnt they catch it? They didnt have their papers? their papers werent 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 husbands scar as if to calm him. But what she calls a scar he knows is his mouth.

Late because theyre stuck in one exilic fantasy or another; late because the adventure of ingathering doesnt seem all on the up and up; late because theyre owed payments, and youre goddamned right theyre going to collectwhats yours? Im just waiting for this one deal of a lifetime to come through, and, when it does, God! the moment it does, youd better believe Im out of here

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

Nu, its been like this ever since he was born, and those long, hard years have all been as yesterdays toll: the bridge crossing, the bottomless price of a boat full with holes, an aeroplane cast down from heaven, betrayed of its wings. And its not as if he hasnt crawled his end of the bargain: wriggling ever forward from garden to grave, hes trying, just ask him; if he hadnt married so well, hed 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 Gods 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 dont even know where youre going, only when youre 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 themthe animals, women, or sick; for not yet giving us over to the darkness of deathshadows 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 keysthere couldnt be! that many doorsgoyim nameless faceless nearly formless, quiet massing hulks emerged out of dim wet here to make a living thats more a dying. Its strange, no one understands: theyre 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 stridewhich is as long and wide as the last night hell spend here, free, unconcerned.

Hours later when hours were still hours as restful and lit as all Sabbaths 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 againthe clock centerpieces upon our timetables that not only remind us when to partake but are, simultaneously, the only sustenance leftthe Affiliated muster, assemble outsidesoon, theres 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. Theyve restedup, washedup, dressedup; theyve reported for showers and were shorn. Theres last summers rose attar, perfume stagnant in airor its smoke, strangely sweet

Menschs bow down by the curb, bow at the knees and cast fingers, fish around in last regimes grates and late afternoons puddles for anything thats not yet blown away: loose pages, blots of blatt, daf stains, yellowed newspapers the print of whichs run off to tomorrow with yesterdays wife, scraps of rag, parchment or is it just skin, God, its 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, theyre righted, and so now theyre 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 thumbs knife, against the gusts at the doorway, as if they didnt 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.