Die lies pale and swollen, older then ever, years, a week or so unshaven, wrinkly Roman elephant gray.
He lies under the atmospherically canopied coffin that is his bed, under the giving mattress breathing slowly and even, trying to keep hidden, alive.
His toes are numb; his medals are stuffed down his pants.
Mada’s in the wardrobe, face slammed up against its doors, glassed in dust, its wood stabbed to death with figure heavy on the malign…Hamm’s behind the curtains, thick reddened drapery resembling the vomit of widows: he stands a shadow in its fall…lamp — greenglass; hatrack, the wardrobe, a desk — unlit; Gelt’s shut himself inside his luggage, a trunk.
The Hotel Under the Sign of the Hotel’s time has come: just about to descend to table, as it’s been told…they’d heard voices up the stairwell, drafty appetites, and growls, bellhop’s bell going ding dong ding, the church of the frontdesk, its keyspanned communion; then, feet in lockstep, locked boot and heel stepping up the wide spiral, one flight, take a breather. Others say the tip had come from an obliging bird, some say a dove, flown in the window; a note left on the pillow in lieu of sweet nothing, again that nod or wink, the handshake of a bellboychick, the blush of a maid, as arranged. No loudspeaker, no softspeaker, no rustle official, an important announcement misspoken, misheard, even unmissed. Management’s bought off the regime long enough (sheltering foreign journalists, quote unquote independent observers, diplomats, ambassadors, obstreperous officials of every state making last appeals for nationals lost), but now it’s all about omega, about settling accounts: one moon of stay, roomservice every morning each night, a laundrytab, a shoeshine, and don’t forget to tip generous the turndown. Will that be cashiered, or corpsed. Downstairs a mensch in a uniform as tightly bespoke as a spiderweb, preyedover with phosphorescent stars and stripes of a madness seemingly specific only to the highestranking, sighs as if in warning to himself, takes care of their bill with a thick wad of currencies: bills ripped apart then stuck together again piecemeal with the sperm of the stallion, without any thought as to provenance or denomination, old sidelocks ironsided portraits, frazzled beards — then gets a receipt for his superiors, we all have them, even the best of us. Upstairs is still, almost timeless, with most scholars emphasizing the almost, not quite: none to make a run, to head to any embassy’s pearlygated guardhouse drive, ring the bell and stay to amnesty, bring the flowers or wine; there are none left, autonomies, and with the Garden fallen to ashes…there’s nowhere outside the ghetto, nowhere that’s not the ghetto, nowhere open, all’s walled, nowhere new, not even Palestein’s elite: and so Shalom to our brother Arab hordes converted, what nachas we’re shepping the schlep of our baggage to come over and visit, O how you’ve grown! Jerusalem the genital, generational jewel, kvell in peace…the Roses of Sharon risen again, we flock to you now as to honey or eligible sisters, what discounts might you offer, what deals might you make for your kind!
Regarding the occupants of Room Number Six, it’s been related: how they aren’t processed, aren’t to be trained to a camp, and — gedenk gedenk, there’s no time for that: we have schedules for such things, please, playful though they are, timetables based on contingency alone, there are interpretations to respect, goddamnit, adherence to the earth’s spin, you know, deadlines dwindled two-by-two, to one then none and, anyway, it’s quicker without that fuss. Mishegaseous, foolishkeit. Ludicrous. Say what you will still the menschs ascend, they come up tall and slim, fairhaired and eyed, two-by-two in an endless doubled row bowing to double back down the stairs to the lobby; holding their uzis and assaultrifles, Palesteinianmade, like they know what they’re doing, they probably do. Topquality, highcaliber, I can get you a steal. As for the starstriped, pitystripped mensch leading them, let’s introduce: he’s the Austiner Rebbe, Rav Schmearson’s his name, son-inlaw of the Maggid of Rome, a cousin to the Butcher of Bakersfield, the Seer of Waco, the Gaon of South Central Texas. He holds a revolver in a glove said to be made from the hide of his parents, whom he’d sacrificed atop an extemporaneous altar, his sister, itself oblated upon the Polandland plains (which action had earned him his rep, such as it is): it swaddles so well that the hand beneath might as well be holy, Godguided. One of his own sons-inlaw, an iluy known as Tavarish, or the Light of Bukhara, follows to his side, a step behind. This squadron has its orders they’re just following’s the line they’re now leading (less directive than inspiration, makeshifty do: a line they’re butting and cutting, no respect for its delivery, no respect for its time), up up and winding up the stairs, death to mass on the landing, then wait. The Austiner Rebbe gloves a knock, that most ancient knock, wait for it, knock, knock, knock, a warning as presentation, appropriate, taken as given: this the oldest ritual of late middle night, that of respect tendered to death, the honor due anyone with a door so properly marked with mezuzah, be you prophet, profiteer, or innocent wretch. Inside the room, all seems suicided, spare of heart, stripped to rib…skeletonly tossed with what must follow flesh, a sullied strewing of plots: scuffed luggage, unlaundered clothes, stacks of cash; though humanly empty, it appears, and too much so: the emptiness of them alive more void than that of them in death, is the thought, with an ear hushed to the wood and a nose that’s fit for a key — the Rebbe’s, he’s patient, and stroked. A silence broken only by the treble of their tremble — too, it’s the clocktick, the rattle of the handle, it’s locked. To fit a finger, to try with the other hand, but it’s from the inside it’s locked, and no neysim are left us. The Rebbe takes a step back, gives his nod for the door’s slamming, to be rammed down a trample of Shalom and schlub manners: a not yet sacrificial Ovis aries is led up the stairs, its noisy leash of bare chain passing from mensch to mensch; it’s then muzzled in the right direction, thwacked on the tush with the butt of a gun…to scurry, to scamper: its testicles afling, its wool spattered in dreck then the glint of its horn and the door, it’s flattened down to the floor, hinges ripped from their frame in an explosion of air — they’ve been running the heatingbills way up, as if to prewarm what World’s to Come. A clouding, a balm. Their Rebbe dismisses the ram, kisses at the mezuzah remaining enjambed. He steps into the room, his boots trooping out over the wood, marking each step stiff with a whip of his crop to the thigh; making rigid starkdark paces across the worn planks, he then turns to hold up a hand to prevent his followers from doing what it is they do best, which is following: henchmenschs wait, as if ordered to disorder on the landing; they’re shuckling, jostling one another back and forth they’re whining what they think’s silent suggestion as their Rebbe heels out a chair, hardbacked, from the cedar desk unassuming, and sits down to face the bed barren, settling his crop across his chest as if in the burial of the Pharaoh he’s trying his damnedest here to impression.