Tomorrow, He’s to be married into the family of the President of the country that loves Him, which God blesses with each bountiful lapse of His will: the woman a girl He’s never even met, soon to be converted from daughter to wife. Her name, wait, give me a moment…Lillian Israelien, it has a ring to it, nu, and hope Gelt’s got the ring, sixstitched to his pillow. Then, the chuppah that’s been made in the image of a bedsheet upon which a son will be spilled — the weather holding its sky, which is a canopy greater, a next night’s clouding of the sleepless new moon, tomorrow’s redeye to Newark. Tonight, however, Ben’s been forbidden from mothers and sisters, urged to save up His strength, avoid such risky indulgence: though there’ve been allegations, ahem, situations, hymn, little embarrassments, random indignities…a measure of Schaden done, but nothing the glad hand of Publicity won’t wipe from the face of the earth.
And though there’s no rehearsal tisch, there’s still a rehearsal, which is always the same — whether religion or revue, and no matter the variety, the show must always go on.
Onstage in the main showroom, the Tut-ankh-a-men Ampitheather its name is, the paraplegic, extapdancer who’s also the second asst. director he’s not quite kickstepping, knocking, screaming out the kinks still left in the openers. Mada sits in the emptiness middlerowed, taking quick blacksmeared notes on a legalpad and shouting, too, as the small balding wheelchairbound mensch rolls himself into the sets in a dissatisfied fit, exhorting emphysemic through the hole in his throat, its metallic electrolarynx, the performers assembled: lefthand, and he means it in his emphatic tinny wheeze, the fingers must flutter, you with me, righthand now, right, and soon enough they’re arguing…Mada disagreeing with him through his own hands cupped to bell yell, you’re getting it wrong, then him demanding of Mada — tell me, who’s the professional, he’s asking voicelessly though, without apparatus, unable to manipulate sound as with his hands he’s frantically wheeling toward the lip of the stage, who’s the goddamned professional, rearing himself up almost vertically, this spooked tilt, as Mada throws back, who’s paying the professional…he’s leaning in a smoked hoarse, throatily impotent rage to fall back and out of his chair, which spits out from under him to fly up and into the frontrow, then snaring on a seat just spinning its wheels, him thrown to squirm worm atop the floorboards stageright. Houselights dim, with the spotlight on him; the operator’s been finally woken. He struggles to sit up against a tree prop, redfaced, and tearing, on elbows across the stage foundering before making an attempt with swipes of his fist to lisp pitifully through the gasp of his puncture.
What do you want from me, he asks, what are you asking of us, he pauses for the strain of next speech — that we scrap an entire moon of work, he’s wriggling his insensitive spine against the sloppily paintcaked wooden tree wheeled, which falls over its waxwork fruit: that we should just stop trying, he tries again to sit up, and trust success to what, bribery, coercion, providence, God or His headlining angels? then slumps, to be proppedup by the twelve principal Benettes, who fan him with their wings.
Am I on yet? is Ben’s voice from above — heightened amid the wisps of the walks and there even patiently, too, just hanging around: from the ceiling, stretching the rubberized cords wrapped around waist and stropped to a strut overhead, dangling Him limply over the pit and its floodlights, and sagging, halo drooping, toes weighted nearly to stagefloor — without drama, not enough tension, not much to spectacle at when it comes to suspension.
Save your voice! the crumpled choreographer gasps, a direction taken up slowly in whispers, vouches, and oaths staged by all in unionized unison:
