Joshua Cohen - Witz

Witz

otherworks by JOSHUA COHEN

TheQuorum

Cadenzafor the Schneidermann Violin Concerto

Aleph-Bet:An Alphabet for the Perplexed

AHeaven of Others

Witz

ANOVEL BY JOSHUA COHEN

DALKEY ARCHIVE PRESS
CHAMPAIGN AND LONDON

Copyright 2010 by Joshua Cohen
All rights reserved

Libraryof 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
009046093

Partiallyfunded by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and by a grant fromthe Illinois Arts Council, a state agency

Thepublisher and the author would like to thank Rick Fishbein, Ahron Weiner, andRabbi Alan Lucas (Temple Beth Shalom) for their generous support of thisproject

www.dalkeyarchive.com

Cover:design by Danielle Dutton.

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

Oneshould 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 headin a story:

Arabbi 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 thebook of the Torah, because by covering it with this I will save it from thedust and the ashes that might fall upon it.

Regardlessof which one follows, the book you are holding now should, when stacked, alwaysbe placed in the middle.

Thisbook you are about to read contains no holy words or letters, neither words norletters in the Holy Tongue, and nowhere within it are mentioned any of the manynames of God.

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

God

DEADICATED

tomine enemies,
without whom none of this would have been possible

andThy write hand shall save me

Witz:

being,in Yiddish, a joke;

and,as the ending of certain names,

alsomeaning son of:

e.g.Abramowitz,

meaningson-of-Abram

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

Contents

I

OverThere, Then

AFirst Helping

II

III

IV

V

Preparations

Welcometo Whateverwitz

Inthe Church

TheLast Supper

TheMuseum of Museums

Punchlines

I

OverThere, Then

INTHE BEGINNING, THEY ARE LATE.

Nowit stands empty, a void.

Darknessabout to deepen the far fire outside.

Asynagogue, not yet destroyed. A survivor. Who isnt?

Now,its empty. A stomach, a shell, a last train station after the last train leftto the last border of the last country on the last night of the last world; ahull, a huska synagogue, a shul.

Minchato be prayed at sundown, Maariv at dark.

Whythis lateness?

Hesays reasons and she says excuses.

Andso let there be reasons and excuses.

Andthere were.

Alast boat out, why didnt they catch it? They didnt have their papers? theirpapers werent in order?

Hesays excuses and she says reasons.

Andso let there be excuses and reasons.

Andthere were, if belated.

MissesSinger strokes her husbands scar as if to calm him. But what she calls a scarhe knows is his mouth.

Latebecause theyre stuck in one exilic fantasy or another; late because theadventure of ingathering doesnt seem all on the up and up; late because theyreowed payments, and youre goddamned right theyre going to collectwhatsyours? 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

Singerstops, stoops to pick up a shoe, sized wide, fallen from his withered foot laststep.

Nu,its been like this ever since he was born, and those long, hard years have allbeen as yesterdays toll: the bridge crossing, the bottomless price of a boatfull with holes, an aeroplane cast down from heaven, betrayed of its wings. Andits not as if he hasnt crawled his end of the bargain: wriggling ever forwardfrom 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 asplinter, you get a tree in return, from whose flesh is made paper and fromwhose fruit is sucked ink, both of which collaborate in Gods writing of Lawswhose words and even the letters of which bless you beholden to meaning; and sowe receive knowledge, such as the following, and the preceding, and this: inseeking only to stay upright, you fall, are banished then cursed and reviled,condemned to wander a continent you dont even know where youre going, onlywhen youre expected, which is every Friday at sundown though your calendarswere never coordinated and what you always thought had been west was reallyonly a left turn taken with your back to the north, in haste and with littlesleep, then upon your forehead, the development of a worrying mark.

Ameal after Shacharit, which is the prayer of the morning, praising God Who madethe light only by saying it illuminating, also, our own saying of thanks to Himfor not making us unto themthe animals, women, or sick; for not yet giving usover to the darkness of deathshadows that have no souls for which to pray ifeven 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 hulksemerged 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, bynight. Yet another stacks books on the almemar, shoves them, balled up crumpledwet, into pew pockets, lays them out on seats swept toward the rear, nosebleedterritory from which the Shammes groans in with an enormous what hath Godwrought 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 hellspend here, free, unconcerned.

Hourslater when hours were still hours as restful and lit as all Sabbaths day, notthe binding celestials of numeral and ordinal, the narrow gauge of comettrains, stardeadline, failing, falling, the tickers of arrival and departureand arrival, diurnal againthe clock centerpieces upon our timetables that notonly remind us when to partake but are, simultaneously, the only sustenanceleftthe Affiliated muster, assemble outsidesoon, theres a congregationbeyond: nondenominational, because what does observance mean anyway,irreligious maybe even, or all of them heaped together, thrown atop the burningpile, who knows, with the languages who can tell? Their bloods are theirtickets, purchased at a steep price or a long song much in advance. Presence bythe pint. They lineup two-by-two, two of each kind, husband and wife. Theyverestedup, washedup, dressedup; theyve reported for showers and were shorn.Theres last summers rose attar, perfume stagnant in airor its smoke,strangely sweet

Menschsbow down by the curb, bow at the knees and cast fingers, fish around in last regimesgrates and late afternoons puddles for anything thats not yet blown away:loose pages, blots of blatt, daf stains, yellowed newspapers the print of whichsrun off to tomorrow with yesterdays wife, scraps of rag, parchment or is itjust 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 ofthem by another younger by just a wink or a wrinkle, theyre righted, and sonow theyre ten altogether, which makes us a minyan. Runoff is wrung out fromthese yarmulkes, mud knuckled away with spit. The menschs gather these scraps,spread them on glassy bald skulls with thumbs knife, against the gusts at thedoorway, 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 doorhands out books, programs inside, both also pressed into yarmulkes.