At the whiny cry of the boy, those in the overheated, underventilated, monthold mayonnaisestained hall drop their soupspoons, their metals falling in a massed tinny skitter to the filth of the oilclothed floor lumped toward the walls in mounds of stale air; clattering dully, silvery rivers winding amid dusky hillocks of industrial blue, then silence. The meal’s evacuated, food’s adjourned, and all are remanded to barracks still hours until Curfew. In the morning the lasting first, rumor’s leaked; gossip’s net hairing down from heads on high, with their gloved hands serving up only the usual expected: that Abel’s only ill, but when he isn’t anywhere around the next day, which is the restless host of Shabbos, by its stars with their shiny palms held to the spiced fire, the constellating cup of inflammatory wine, and the staff of the Infirmary — baldheaded, baldfaced collaborators, is the suspicion — won’t give his next of kin Steinstein, Adam, any information, no indication, visitation rights forget about it, only office redirection of his heartrending, goggleeyed, and altogether trusting inquiry, then last name, first name, middle initial forms to fill out in triplicate, crossed complete with dotted lines upon which to sign away the permission of all meager hope — everyone suspects the truth; though many are sick, fall ill themselves, having without thinking picked up from the filthy, unswept, nevermopped floor the wrong spoons, those of their neighbors and others’, the spoons of their enemies and ever sicker friends, then verily souped and scooped with them the wandering dumplings, the balls of mealed matzah and flotsam of flanken, the jetsam of parsley, and so becoming infected with alien germs, the stock of the foreign, just as their real mothers would’ve warned them, had their womenfolk still lived.
Though initially, the first days of Nisan set in chaos, in crisis, the revelation isn’t so on — sophistication takes its time, its toll; the world might’ve been created in seven days, but who wants to live without electricity or shoes: three, four moons of the same moon into this recreated Garden, only a few fingered months however paradisiacal onIsland — made collaborative to this resurrected refuge experiment, complicit in this solution proposed anew — and not everyone’s accounted for yet: the who, where, when not yet established, made record; the problem, not everyone’s been ID’d. Passions settle themselves, by name and number into an agenda, the minutes of their meeting a wayfarer along the low road to the west. A tongue reigns from the heavens, a meteor’s gloss. By night, an inquiry’s established: a chamber not of torture but the throne of the already painfully confessed, not barebulbed but luxuriously outfitted with every amenity to be desired by even the most outlandish of imaginations; impaneled in panels, beset by committees, resounding with oversight, how perceptive. Unspun, unedited, unasked to sit down first before being broken the news recently made in headlines that would strangle a God, a scar lamed upon the neck of the leg — truth is, one of them’s died again, made familial to the future, cousin to the world to come, allow me to extend my condolences but not myself, not by much. An order’s given to mourn — officially, on condition of the anonymous record — while behind the chambers’ doors, which are never entirely opened and yet never entirely closed, only perpetually drafted, left halfwise if only to suspect the air of transparency, accountability with its paranoid pointed fingers and gnawedupon nails, the order’s to question, to ask; to flap the lips as if doors themselves, wavering from any gust that might answer. Which Abel was Abel? To establish the identity of the decedent beyond any measure of shadowing doubt. Who’s able to identify which Abel this Abel was? Having no distinguishing marks, no tracking implants, collars or bracelets that beep (early on, those measures had been nixed by these very powers inquiring as too extremely unfree — not too invasive, merely an unwarranted expense), it’s a process of reduction, winnowing, the chaff from the chaff, of taking and examining testimony, crossexamining, then striking both, instructing to ignore. To begin all over again, it keeps them afraid. On their toes if still seated. All rise. Place a hand on your — Bible, and repeat after me. Let your other hand be its commentary. Sign over your mouth. I don’t swear to God, it’s against my tradition. Speak up, please, we can’t hear you.
