Dark servants uniformed in old law robes blacker than a blotting sentence struck without names and proceeding somberly, the Kush in lockstep, lock and step, lockstep, flagbearers follow raising their standards, then the drums and fifes with which to taunt the gulls that whirl above in their own private, griefstruck revolutions: each, they test each step, every weighted forward, fraught, to test the ice whether it’ll hold their fall heading out by south, over the veining, the ice crackling like locusts underfoot and on fire, extinguished by the boot; they walk the body out, to freeze; then, at giving edge, the sinking vale, they go to heave, to throw this poor huddled Steinstein in an arc, like a white wished coin to plash down deep, to plop atop the sunken flesh, the last body atop this mass of limbs and hearts and minds, bobbing then bobbing then sinking forever sinking down, never to decay. A great clap, a crack and crumble, a final fall — the ice gives way, hot floes are let out loose and the Kush, they’re separated, the two flagbearers, each to their own floating island, iceislands enough for one; a wailing, then silent gesturing, as they float out beyond the ceremony’s appeal, their black robes billowing as if sails set for nowhere, if only off, far beyond the crusty barge, the marshy glut, their flags to merge with the horizon into a band of color colorless below the flag of dawning night. And then as if intended, too, He follows, as if pulled out, tuggingly towed who knows, Ben making His way seemingly somnambulant, a vessel Himself, out to the newest holding edge. As ordered, to honor tradition, He digs in the lone slit pocket of His new funeral suit for a handful of dirt, crystalline with frost, to toss to float atop the bare skin of the ocean — to scar. And then, when He turns around from His husky fling, the entire crowd’s dispersed; their backs are turned to Him, they’re making for the press conference already, for its warm buffet of unleavened bread, which is matzah, and boiled eggs and shank, bitterherbs to dip in water made bitter with their tears; the funerary sleigh’s retired to blocks of ice; the pulpit’s disassembled for future use; in an Islandround queue to the Great Hall, the invitees — as if on cue — stand mute, and bored; as they wait they use their programs to mop their icy shvitz, wring out print, headlines lined to forehead, Gothic wrinkles; they consult their watches unwound, hands clasped in pity then wrung in shame. He turns from them toward the ocean again and untucks His shirt, which is white and dressy and replete with a million, starnumbered tiny buttons too small for the bumble of His clumsy thumbs, exposes His navel, the proof of His humanity and the little stone He’s stored there. A lower, harder heart. A solitary island of floating ice; a lone white square of the ocean’s game; a souvenir yarmulke gusted from the head of a visitor then turned loose as litter upon the face of the deep; a tombstone estranged from its Steinstein, just one Stein of many lately, too many latter days. Pinching His pants at the knee, stooping over the open atop the thinning wick, then tweaking the stone from the gape of His navel, a mute name, an empty filling. Palming the pebble, the gravelet, He sets it gently atop the ice, purses lips and cherubically exhales, to blow the tiny island out, passing an offering to the horizon, eventually of the horizon, on this day passing over, this night — this Exodusk. A kiss as if in thanks for His fortune, the wetted recompense of lips. How He’s been saved, redeemed, what have you. On a merit He cannot claim, in favor of the dead who was a friend. Deal with it, why so sad. It’s that I maybe wasn’t worthy. Am not, perhaps. Condemned, to have been freed.
Tonight’s the night of the Second Seder, which is the justification for the first, a lately seconding assent — an evening’s afterlife of ritual, too much the forgotten night, and as such often slept through, ignored, its reputation that of mere repetition, the Law’s reinforcement intended only for the dense or pedantic, the masochistically foolish — to be conducted with and served to the visiting dignitaries and press inside the Registry of the Great Hall, check your coats and remember, save your stubs. Who gets served first, the question numbered after the fourth never asked by the kinder dead, and what — an incomparable dish, what else the final course, savored only as the last. After its plates are cleared and silverware stolen, what’s left’s only the Blessed art Thou. Disordered. Art Thou Blessed. The Seder desedered, desecrated. Thou art Blessed. A table leavened, lately risen so high that anything served atop it would be beyond anyone’s appetite. Stomachs eyeing swollen. That and there aren’t enough chairs. My condolences.
