And we all say, There they are…alternately, hineni; to the center of the Square, to the infinite Square without center and there circling the square within, there they are — facing now the Astronomical Clock, which is the face of the Town Hall, bureaucratically blank, unremitting; Church spires and steeple shadow them, shade between the legs, as third arms — the infinite hands of infinite clocks clocking what time they have left, the too many faces, with too many names…the entire Square rendered a clock of clocks, a confusion — all of them timing each other; many standing and sitting and lounging a lean atop and against the statuary at the base of the Clock, until a municipal livestock inspector, maybe, a hiredhand, like everyone else here who has words and his orders, comes around and yells at them to move on in a tongue forever unknown.
There they are, by the Clock cuckooing every hour on the hour — the Church’s bells on a timer, too, to ring mechanically, every fifteen minutes, the quarters, four times, not much time, not much life.
Nothing left.
The Church itself a bell rung by the clapper of its cross.
There they are. Just one crack, all it takes, one crack more, more like the merest chip in a sett or a cobble, broken — the first imperfection not party to the Land’s ruin perfected, perfecting — and it all falls apart. Goes to pieces. Exposed.
In anticipation of their impending Tour, they adjust their glasses, which have been mandated, and straighten their uniforms, tuck their shirts into khaki slacks, skirts, zip up fleecejackets, and down; walkingshoes comfortable, check, cinch the belt, camera apparatus, no film, not allowed.
What else? The rules…
They await.
They’ve been flown in from cities — from the aeroports of Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas/Forth Worth, Denver, Detroit, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., with flights to those points of international departure from the hubs of Minneapolis/St. Paul, New Orleans, Seattle, St. Louis, Honolulu, and Juneau, having driven or been driven to any of these points of origin from way out in Siburbia, from Longport, Margate, and Ventnor down the Shore, Joysey, from the City by way of those Rockaways Near and Far, these Five Towns, purely White Plains, deepest Scarsdale, easternmost Westchester, the Sleepiest Hollows along the Hudson due north…the liquidation of Central & Mountain, the purge of the West: a utility vehicle parked in a relative’s driveway in Los Siegeles so that they’ll only lose one is the thought…left there until a return that’ll never depart — a lonely unmarried nulliparous aunt driving them out to the facility in her wagon so that they don’t have to take theirs then leave it for whom, a taxi sold for scrap, a limousine junked, masstransit transfers to terminal feet…an extermination without resistance, except with regard to its price; with stopoffs where and for, urination at the Manfred “Manno” Marx Memorial Service Plaza located twenty or so miles outside the limits of Angels, horsefeed and watering at a condemned gas station in Danbury, Connecticut, caffeine, the succor of a last phonecall, a goodbye cry amid the glassed bosom of nowhere, now former, to be filed under “as, previously known,” yesterday’s, to be repossessed by the Affiliated; arrived tomorrow and whichever way at whatever aeroport then waited, soon to miss, everything, routine, ritual, the illusion of the interminable, the long for forever…they wait almost in a suspension, in a Messiah’s slow time, late and latening, in the lagging pace of quicktime, never enough — O never forget, never waste a forgetting: always a people in transit, in motion, on the move, with yesterday’s or tomorrow’s newspapers already to pass the time passing, to waste the time wasting, comics with their bubbles popped empty, glossed magazines, tabloids and rags, other miscellaneous leisure reading material of a let’s be honest fairly unimpressive intellectual level; then, they’re shuttled everywhere, shunted, to places only imagined, voicedover in advertisements, announcements, orders, the Law, dispersed beholden to all conveniences of transit to gates, at which they waited, and wait, patiently laughing at their passport photos, passing them around passing, impatient, waiting, still laughing, waiting to wait — then they left.
An Affiliated bled on fences everywhere, bleeds…a village becomes a town becomes a city, has a Square around a Church around a mensch there, an Affiliated — the others always lived downhill, though, where the sewage flowed to, flows, and everywhere is like that with huge fields between everywheres: a town bombed does not rebuild its Square — all roads there lead to all roads there, road, and not to expectation, a holy vacancy, holying, an empty nakedness, the void, denuded; the Church like an old giant roach, perched atop the head of an ancient snake…maybe the river that halves the town, swallows other snakes, the snakes swallow rats, perhaps, poison becomes poisoned, the snakes swallow plaguecolumns whole, slither themselves into the streets around houses, homes their doorposts once marked now spackled over in reddened black, scales.
It’s easier than ever to enter this city, this station, this stopover; everyone off — and they all have their maps still handydandy with Selected Retail Outlets writ large. There are separate marked gates, each reserved for each and every kind of ingress or egress, rest assured; abandon all hope, but not humor: there’s a Low Gate, for the penitent; here, the entrant or extant must stoop to enter and exit, if exit’s ever allowed…a process of humility, this purely indifferent deference, a making of modest if not an abject denigration; then, there’s a High Gate that’s the source of much controversy; two opposing interpretations obtain: the High Gate is for a pompous entrance, many hold, with hubris, intended for the use of the visiting clergy and for the accommodation of guest Heads of State; alternately, a few say, the High Gate is for the exclusive use of the awed, the obeisant and penitent, and here amid this modesty many have found an unseemly double of the Low Gate, though various mapmachers have agreed that the humility of the High Gate is a stranger, possibly holier, humility than that of the Low: this High Gate is so high; okay, everyone, How high is it…? disappearing into a cloudbank, that an entrant appears almost insignificant in comparison, is made to feel so, is made so. There’s a Wide Gate for a willful entrance, that’s for the young, and the healthy. There’s a Narrow Gate, which is for the intestate dead, who’ll never leave either: here, the entrant must squeeze past the others, with all the others at once (how it’s really no narrower than the Wide, only that more than one person may pass through at any one time), their arms held in, head to chest, must bow through the opening, soulthin, stepping down upon heads, the olden pave of each other’s sick skin.
And then there’s the Tourist Gate, which is incredibly low and high, incredibly narrow and incredibly wide all at once, whatever you want, we aim to please. Next to it, a bocher’s selling postcards imprinted with the likenesses of their parents’ parents’ parents unknown; there’s an older woman in a formless shift, skinned over tightly with one of her own products, she’s hocking tshirts, emblazoned with the slogans and logos of earlier regimes, acronyms who even remembers their alphabets, what’s that say, what’s that mean; there’s a crockery dealer, the tshirt saleswoman’s small, fat husband whose face has a hundred noses, all but one of them buboes: as for him, he’s selling the porcelain of their kin generations dead, commemorative plates, spoons from longemptied, raided, Kitschen cabinets; you better believe their stalls have all the relevant permits, notarized twice. A gaggle of Guides loiter there on the other side of the Tourist Gate, holding umbrellas though the weather’s not yet been scheduled. Sh, the storm’s not until Thursday. What’s your Friday look like. One of them waves to her Group, walks over to them, meet & greet. All the Guides are required to speak at least three languages and have at least three names, or it’s that they all share the same in three languages. Then there’s the language they talk amongst themselves, that and the language of money. Don’t make the mistake of pitying them — they’re all on enormous retainers.