And then there are seventytwo, then fifty of them, and then only thirtysix of them left living: it’s that fast, death, and that remorseless…three minyans they make, six menschs just hanging around, wondering what you want with them. Hope not much, may ye expect even less. A legacy: each of the lasting survivors now has effectually unlimited resources, all to themselves…more beds than bedheads than sleeping nights, mattresses numbering into the tens of thousands per survivor, a surplus supplied with hundreds of thousands of pillows, each having been stuffed with the dreams of and fluffed to a head slumbering elsewhere, eternally if they so believe, and they don’t, generally speaking (Garden psychologists have decided not to relocate the FBs any closer to one another, have decided not to allow them to relocate themselves — their beds are their beds, to remain in their areas, disheveled and empty once departed, never remade). As always, routine, the survivors wake to wash in the Shof, in the thousands of sinks made available, under thousands of faucets steeped deep in a million rituals of leak; this perpetual gaseous drip throughout morning and night, its sound the only noising, to be clouded over by a mass of flatulent snoring come Curfew; hundreds of thousands of towels per head hang like flayed skins from their racks, each monogrammed for the Garden, an initial tattoo; then, once showered, groomed and perfumed, it’s out into day: to their meals, if they’re served, activities, if they haven’t been cancelled, to their prayers preempting, which are still foreign to most but becoming less and less fervently doubted with each passing service; thanks to the laundry, clothes are claimed ever newer; never to be caught dead in the same outfit twice, is what; designers are traded, accessories are bargained for, namebrands coveted at premium theft; once neatly arranged, folded and stacked within the cubbies of the departed, any forfeiture’s heaped around the barracks in wrinkling mounds, each article still individually labeled. It’s these labels that prove the most disturbing; names, last name first — as if in answer to the writing on the stalls, the wallscrawl, the questioning messages, disembodied echoes of the graffiti that’d accumulated on their cubbies, also, and on their bedframes, amid the rafters, where not: nicknames, endearments and obscenities dead, Sascha, nie vergessen, demain, Someone wuz here, Someone luvs another, NAC, TAC, AUS, SCH, the initials on excess undergarments, boxerbriefs not quite clean, not quite white, the wrong size; on garments freshly washed and pressed to the unmitigated approval of any mother, though never worn due to lack of proper occasion, or a looting of irregular cut: labels tugged from tags on swimwear elastic, tongued from the mouths of undershirt collars, on bright polyester pullovers, on fleece and flannel, on woolen sweaters infested with moth and lint, elbows as bald as an uncle emeritus, on threadbare cardigans the color of dog vomit, on promotional clothing courtesy of insurance concerns and pharmaceutical companies defunct, their fluorescent logos fading, faded, on pants with bare crotches, suitslacks with frayed cuffs, crusty socks, shoes without soles; these labels personalizing a universe of their private tchotchkes as well, on the little they’ve been allowed to keep, small stakes they’ve managed to secrete and preserve: on the inside covers of books reread and on radios alleared, on cups and mugs and on bowls mouthed and lipped a spoon, on sunscreen, on insect repellent and on medications prescription and non, on lamps lit and unlit and on violins who knows how to play those clarinets, on housekeys, carkeys, on wives’ brooches and breastyjeweled rings — slopped atop to bunk the beds of the departed in vast junked pyramids, falling to the floor overnight, to be scavenged by any who’ll wake to know morning.
