To give you an idea — it’s month the fourth by the civil calendar, month the tenth by God; January’s being forgotten, keeping watch for future north and south, not east and west, and so the flanks are exposed, and the revolution enters through the sidedoor, the porchdoor, the basementdoor, the maid’s…is everyone with me?
And all the heads nod, if only to wake. God, there must be millions of them, heads and necks thick and thin and hairy arms and legs, wandering to the Hall from their muster on the square, to receive the newest of gospels by gossip.
To be precise, this is the Registry, historically the Great Hall’s main room and the Island’s most preserved from its previous function: plasterwalled, roofed with barreling brick; a balcony slithers around to strangle, a knife cutting the inside’s vaulting height. At one of its extremes, the east, which is the front they’re presently facing, there’s a dais, topped with the only podium to be found on the Island, fronted with the seal of this new tenant concern: David’s star revived, encircled with white in a sea of blue, a representation of the land upon which they’re being kept for observation, survival; this podium has to be schlepped from meeting to place, from gathering to session, briefing to conference — another’s in the process of being requisitioned, its sexagrammatic seal’s even now being stamped onto all. At the rear of the hall, westerly toward its door and the massing of those arrived late, laggard, and so not given shelter, made victim to the flog of the weather, a numbed mumbly muddle of disabled or otherwise ailing survivors, the incapacitated with walkers, in wheelchairs; gurneys have been rolled; they’re swarmed by devotedly uniformed, nametagged attendants, essentially strangers, and necessary medical equipment on rental.
All of them, though, they’re naked not to be humiliated, only to be cleansed. To be briefed debriefed, their clothes, underwear and socks have been outsourced to sanitation, offIsland delousing, antiseptic douse; hosed, then machine wash again and tumble dry — how much they miss their maids, their hospice nurses, caregivers, bubbes and sisters, those inlaw, daughters and wives. Garments that require drycleaning have been marked and shipped accordingly. Everything will arrive back this afternoon by barge, it’s promised, unless the water’s frozen: the Hudson’s lower bay at whose Island wharf the last stragglers of the assembled stand, one foot to test the shoring ice. Thousands before them stand and sit and lean, as unhappy and nude as birth, as paled, only to be reborn here, to become initiated into this, the newest order — mourning. Though they could’ve staggered the orientation times, divided then subdivided them into groups, there’s no time, too much work: anyway, the totality’s what interests in this endeavor already failing, failed, the way information passes as rumor, whispers down the mob. And so morning for one’s been consecrated as morning for all — a host of histories lived simultaneously, symbiotically, Creation made coeval with Law. And this despite the cycle of any profaning, daily time — that of this continent or another the same, and, too, that of any family, work, or nightly love; all ingathered to this rationed, ruinous Island and set to an ultimatum’s test: forced union in damp, moldy quarters, early woken solidarity without brunch or even coffee yet, made subject to the life of a single people, its purpose…two clocks received into millions of hands: upon the metal mountaintop, the skyline’s Manhattan beyond — two cycles cast down to asphalt earth. Rain pounds rapt at hilly windows, its rap silenced by snow. All are encouraged to save their questions for later. Don’t waste them. Keep them safe.
High above the furthest doorway, in the back of the balcony at the back of the assemblage entire, a boy just of age and only recently fatherless raises his hand out of nowhere, then shouts. Ooo Ooo Ooo, call on me…over here — what question can he have; heaven forbid us assume. There’s a great rustling, a jocose jostle, as the kid’s accommodated, he’s handed toward the front, the crowding unclothed passing him to each other, up and over one another to the railing, his feet to dangle over the balcony’s filigreed edge. Perched there as if a musing God, a philosopher, or a miniature king just resting a little, still mulling, he scratches his head as if he’s only now lost the nerve; then, after a moment clears his throat and with his voice just breaking asks his question out into space — as if a tiny planet, to be accompanied by the murmur of moons.
The kid says, when do we eat?
