Shalom, he says, finally, they’re meeting at last, hello Die, or should I say Keiner or Keyn Or, the Keeper, or whatever you want to be called…takes a schmeck tabak from a pocket’s pouch: it’s an honor to do this in person, I’ll tell you, hand to God, I have nothing but the utmost respect…he sneers deep from his drool, crosses his boots, then goes on: we didn’t want you to be a statistic, a number, a figure, not you, not like the good doctors Tweiss, Abuya, the Nachmachen, not like them. But one thing bothers me (and it’s not my rheumatism, though thank you for asking), if you’d be so kind as to enlighten me, I’d love to know how you people think. Why not accept destiny, that’s what I want to know, fate — why not Affiliate?
I know you’re there, you have to be, this is how it goes down…I had this dream, last night, or the night before last, what does it matter: there were seven beds for seven brothers, a hotel was burning and in the lobby there were cows servicing crows with the faces of inlaws, I think they were mine, that and a droughty famine in Sheboygan, or Oshkosh, or…I know how it all happens, don’t ask, I just don’t get why.
We admit, we had our suspicions…but we knew you weren’t yourself a firstborn once Passover passed. That proved it, sealed your goyishness with the New Year, and, as such, the gates. You’ve been trapped. Cornered. Put to bed. Nowhere left. He scratches at his breath of a beard, tugs payos, waits, takes his hat, all ten gallons of it from his head and leaves it on the desk to bare the yarmulke beneath, which is black and leather, expensive. I’ve been asked, nevermind by Whom, to attempt to save you one last time. You’ll have no further opportunities after this — are we understood…and he rubs the cap down over his skull, the kippah keppied between the eyes as a third eye, negativedark as if omniscient of everything wrong with the room: you’re here, you’re still alive, this I know…
He shpritzes tabakinate spit through his teeth to the floor, no matter, no one has to live here much longer…his mouth, a host of gold caps, dulled with black cud, whose essence is humming, Hatikvah — softly, it’s more for himself.
Enough already, there’s a voice from under the sag as if it’s the fisted talk of a last lost sock — and after all I did for that schmuck, that ingrate, B…
We don’t speak that name anymore, says the Rebbe, He’s not one of us. He’s the only.
I’ll be the first to admit it: we once were misled, a mistake, we relent and repent the required, the slichus and vidui by the minhag most recent, most true, but listen, it’s this…we realized it was our responsibility to further the nation, ours and none others’—not only to keep them, but to keep their memory, too, I mean burning…let’s speak honestly, though, the ninth commandment, I’m told: The millennium was upon us, the whole West was at stake, God was being debased, if not forgotten whether as He, She, It, or ideal, the entire world, you might remember, was going insane…and amid all this, you just can’t let a people like ours come to nothing, and only for power, only for profit — neither of you were to be trusted…
And now you want to destroy Him, the only inheritance left…Die rolls over to face his voice out into the room, hits his head on a spring unwound into nail, improvident, dull, gives a rusty gasp that knocks the frame’s knees, unsteadies the paws upon which everything rests, uneasily: God how He angers you, gets under your skin, on your nerves and not in your veins, no matter how much you suck, graft or grasp; anyway you slice it, I’m saying, He’s in the way, He’s too much the symbol, it pricks, how it hurts — the memory vex: His very existence, it reminds you of your own…
How could He have been an heir, He couldn’t be worthy — He was false, misleading, everything about Him was wrong…Him and not us. Fat glasses with a bad beard and uncultured, unculturable, I suspect, couldn’t get by, get along. Not great with people, do I have to remind?
Illegitimacy’s what I was saying, still is…He might’ve been what we made Him, though as that only half, a mixedmarriage.
What you made Him? bad blood — Shade backed you, then you went and abused privilege, public trust all for bubkiss.
What’s that we’re always told to say? I was only following orders? I was only following orders.
And so, what am I? Chopped liverish, chump?
What do you think I’m doing here, nu?
Hymn, I’ll tell you.
What I’m doing is waiting, patience now patient forever, we’re abiding while biding, call it a multitasked calling, dayeinu, genug. We await the Messiah, the true Moshiach the one and only, any day’s what I’m saying, soon, there’s been talk, soon enough, we’ve been assured, we’ve been blessed by assurance. Many believe His coming will be hastened by your, shall we say…
And if I Affiliate? and of all times he decides now to whisper.
The Rebbe rises, paces step step step over to sit down on the bed, gently, sagging onto the sprawl of his victim.
He asks, does it hurt?
The Rebbe tugs at the frayed fringe of the damask tester above — an overgrown treetop, a mourning mane grown by the dead.
Can I still? to ask a question of heels.
Convert? But you won’t — and neither will you Misters Mada, Gelt, and Hamm, I’ve told you already, I had a dream, all those angels bowing to a sunglassesed calf atop a neon ladder, with its tail a profusion of greenglitter sheaves…gevalt, you should know the procedure by now, how word gets around like a war: we accept only those whose intentions are pure; it’s a doxo-logical paradox: that I had to offer this salvation already nullifies its acceptance…you with me? Given the circumstances, how could I ever regard any atonement as sincere? I’ve got a reputation to protect. Mine, the religion’s, the race’s. Though God, Hashem, might prove better receptive; for your sake, I hope so; good luck, let me know.
As far as it’s been revealed to me (through these dreams, orders, protocol, the unappealable tie of the hands with a thread of red tape securing the strips of the Law, its mummifying parchment to gag, blindfold then Babel the ears), you’ve been found guilty of propagating a heresy, and your fate in this world, as we can only pray it’ll be in the next, is nothing — or hell, if we so believe in it; I haven’t had that dream yet…we’re still unsure.
What will you do to Him…that is, if you ever find Him — and I can be of help: I have contacts, I know people from Poles, am contractually owed, I’ll prove myself essential again, I promise, I swear, oath and affirm on my life…thrashing against the mattress above.
In light of the pain that will be His, yours will be as a pleasure…and the Rebbe rises to allow the goy his last wind, goes to the window, opens it to the alley below. He lips a wad of tabak out into sky, which is wetting with night, slicking cobbles: another day’s winter, dying like snow by the millions.
He’s only one mensch, you’ll never…
Never Schmever’s the tsk, it’ll be easier than you think: the idea’s to seek out anyone different — divine intervention, surrender, I mean…His face is known, as are His habits; it’s miraculous, a matter of fate; it’s mystical, you of all people should understand — if you intend to die peacefully, you’ll have to…
He’s why we’ve returned here to this abominable Witz. He led us here, lonely for destiny…resolution; please, it’s all too obvious not to have been preordained, prophesized already done…hesitation — we have our top menschs on it; it’s not my department.
You came here to save Him for life, and I came here to save you from Him. You have no claim, you have no blood — that is, not after I spill it…and the Austiner Rebbe points a silvery yad at a young, faired mensch who sallies a little too excitable one step over the threshold then into the room he’s already shooting, hitting Hamm through the drapes, staining two to the head, as Mada smashes out of the wardrobe and shouting, a pistol in his hand screaming its rounds, he’s shot dead a step before the Rebbe, to fall at the hem of his uniformed underworn kittel, floored with a thud to writhe, then stiffen; another mensch, this one a pure whitehead with pupils the stings of waylaid wasps, he’s filling in for his friend who he’s not hit mortally only knocked over with a great wind rung at his vest, which has been proofed as if to save him from even the collision of his soul with bad faith — he opens up on the steamertrunk, holes it and Gelt inside and all over, with such a force that the trunk falls over, and with it the lid wounded open with an overflow gush; two additional menschs (who are they, who are any of them, they all look the same, what I’m saying is — who can tell, make up the difference), they do a number of recommended stretching exercises, kneebends, deepdipping, and knucklecracks — consult the manual then your doctor your father before undertaking’s disclaimed — then hand and knee it down to the floor, to drag Die out by the armpits, pinch him up squirming to hold him a shiver at window, in blown snow, an ultimate beam of ultimate sunset, thunder lama lo and with lightning, too, this grossganze Apocalypse shtick…no tragedy this going all out, last rites with all the death-trappings, an honor (for once, the accounts agree, the weather’s never been so benevolent to circumstance — which means either that the divine might approve, or It mightn’t); ices pour in, mount in drafts, swirls, and sinuous whirls; blanking a pile of hotel stationary from atop the desk, as if to sop with its whiteness the bleeding below; have you ever felt such a kaltmachen draft? rattling the Rebbe’s vacated chair. Die restrained, he’s trussed with hands, hogtied with tongues, a snarl of languages ordering him in tones heated, and as angry as fast, to calm down, be a mensch about it, keep stilclass="underline" unable to even reach into his tush, and so disallowed the mercy of a mortuarial stache, knuckled out to pall away nerves with its schmear. The Rebbe unsheathes a chalaf from a scabbard hung on his gartel, approaches, with the blade held out, its crescent aloft. Long on sharp and without serration, an undisturbed stretch of steel, without blemish: he holds this knife to the face of his victim, reflects; lights dusk into their eyes, the burn of disbelieved skies.