Witz полностью

let my right hand forget her cunning if I do not remember thee let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth…superfluminating pages turning pages of pages into His room’s very walls — wallpaper peeling all its words ever echoed, shrieked in pain and pleasures; shedding scribble, graffitiskin wrinkled with inscrutable signs, phonenumbers, profanity: for a good time call home, can you remember the last time you talked to your mother…the paper a shade of parchment, smokeyellowed, drinkpickled, an animal slit, split, then bared to the wall facing out, opposite the cindering brick: this room, B thinks, had once been but when possibly seven, eight, nine, ten times its present size singleoccupancy, and then the walls, their paperings, slowly glopped with spit, gooped one upon the other, atop, forming ever thicker and so the room reduced, raggedly smaller — with more neglect, with more paper upon paper upon paper upon paper, loose mouths gnashing gummily, the bed would be consumed and Him, too. B lies on the bed just a mattress bare on the floor. Overhead fan swings slow, rickety. A nightstand too high for the mattress, its lone drawer hosting amid mousemade minims a tattered, dogeared copy of what was once called the Bible. Testamentary, old, new, borrowed, blue. As far as books go, pretty good. What else, what more do you want: the only other presence in the room an understuffed recliner, infested with rinds, shells, and peels loosed from a decade or so of anonymous pockets, under its baldingly tonsured cushion a vault of oxidized pennies, as if skullcaps for the loose and lost. Stale air. And no toilets here either, or ice, or laundry, or — those are either down the hall, or down a flight of stairs, He forgets, keys to them kept by the mensch in the office, each worth a tithe. And the telephone, too, either/or. Everything stained.

Here’s His holiday to repent of — this room the cheap reification of B’s atonement: for not mourning the day, for not observing, for not being able to observe without window, the ninth of Av’s moon; for always being out of time, always timeless, whether too early or late, born already delayed, arrived unprepared, checked in offhours and without the inheritance by which to identify, without tradition’s baggaged burden and so, with nothing to prove — ignorant as He is, unsure as to what they held by, as to what He still should be holding, clutching, what’s clung to, the Israelien family’s rites. He doesn’t know from their breaking the fast (as it’s been said: she who passes, is herself passed; she who serves first, is served last), Hanna’s loaves raisinrisen, she baked, in death she might finally bake, the glaze of honey, the shards of apple soon to dip, shechyanu — gesundheit the minhag, and then when her eyes are on her husband your father, how you go to wipe your nose with the linen…doesn’t know from the set table, the cloth Hanna’d save from the spills of the mundane, would launder in moon — sisters, His, as if stars to lineup syzygy against the white wall of the hall, their faces washed to beam in pure light, setting the candles to shine, Israel standing proud, seated justified, Hanna honored in their midst…O His family lost — and so, to seek a reunion tonight. Upon the New Year, may He be forgiven — though if He can’t be by Himself, who really can?

B lifts the telephone from its hook in the hallway used to hold the drip of transient coats, cords it out from under its muting slickers and muffling jackets down the hall to the shelter of His doorway where at least the ceiling’s not snowing, not yet, dials His homenumber, Israel’s worknumbers, Wanda’s extension, PopPop’s, anything scrawled on habit by memory’s hand. No answer. For a worse time call disconnected, He thinks, disdisdisconnected. Ring ring hiccough ring. It’s a holiday, what’s He thinking, whether busy or changed — then, dialing the Koenigsburg’s ten tries later after its tenth ring, gets a goy on the line with every line in the world, who he knows from favor and favors, backscratching with the palms greased in balm, spikenard, and cooling coinage, the purifications required for a leap of faith such as this; from the heights of depression, how far the fall underground, the Resistance, it’s been called, the Unterwelt; he’s promised his fee, the goy tells Him to hang up and wait. The phone spurts a ring in a moment, and it’s one Laser Wolf, or that’s how he’s been characterized (maybe he’s real, maybe he’s ten of them, a whole minyan of real), Shalom how’s been by you and where, he asks, then agrees to handle particulars: it’ll take an hour or so, no problem, how are your fixed, or broken, take care of yourself, if you need anything else, don’t hesitate, click.