His tongue to become a relic, to be exhibited first for a week at His home in the Garden, then taken national, eventually worldwide: to be paraded around from town to town, wherever pays, whether money or homage — as an oracle, oracular; some swear ask it a question, it’ll answer without mind; miraclegranting others promise, perhaps prophesizing, presumably on mute if only for the exploitation of those who’d interpret: a week later and the night before its Garden unveiling, Doctor Abuya and the Nachmachen in blue & white matching scrubs stand a press conference over the stump, the withered flaccid flabellum as redeemed from Evidence of Metropolitan Gestapo with an outstretched arm clutching tongues of quiet cash, having been scooped from its jar of formaldehyde, then — as per Die’s specifications — set amidst a host of semi, hemi, and demi precious metals and gems, inlaid into a reliquary shaped like, of all things, a mouth: its dorsum veined in what’s passing for silver and gold, rocks of faux diamond studded in rows of teeth, viciously polished: hardcuts for canines, cabochons, wisdom pears, then assorted raw stones for far molars, good imitations at least, rubies faked with spinel for tonsils, unpolished hunks of malachite limning the wound to be found at oropharynx, at the velveteen depth of its setting, the red cushioning the bite — a baubled bibelot and prize for the mantel, the trophy of a world as fragile as glass; only after that stint at His house’s museum, when it’s sent out on exhibit, on a tour even less successful than that of its body had been, back when it’d been daily brushed then nightly mouthed and had talked the talk wellscripted: a show removed to a sideshow, remanded to freakshow, noshow…for now, they say, but just wait till we hit Berlin, they’ll lineup for anything over there: photographers asking for the reliquary angled so that the light hits it just so, that’s perfect, hold it, now smile and say — reporters asking the tongue enshrined questions who knows what it would respond, were a mind still sticking it out in thought.
Downtown the half snow half rain are done arguing themselves to all wet: it’s agreed, a day as holy as today requires such compromise; tonight’s introspection makes this kind of weather relevant, admissible, wholly appropriate, and so God opens wide His pockets, which are deep and silverlined, drops it down, a storm. Having wandered at His own painful pace, and through a personal fog, as if privately pursued by a cloud even daytime dark and its imminent burst hovering always just over His head, a breath — the pressure, the heavy gray and threat, He’s crossexamining for dry over and around a schaft of loiterers, assembled at the base of the stairs in dripping casualwear caftans up the steps forever high, as if leading up above the sky itself, B breathless: to stand a loiter under the portico colonnaded heaven above Centre Street, hiding behind a column as wide and as tall as any of Solomon’s, waiting for judgment to cease and desist. A practice of ponchod employees stream down the steps to haul the sty of piggy pushkes inside — the Courthouse, where everything but everything smells by wet.
An overhanging freeze…a glomming gloom, a second skin, and suffocating. It’s hard to swallow. All that, and He’s getting stares from the guards. And so B goes for further shelter, within the door under the portico and the perilous, dizzying sway of its lamp never lit. He’s soaking, was what Israel would’ve said, Hanna would’ve said, drenched; His heels squishing on the atrium’s tile, don’t ask as to the socks. He sits down on a long stretch of knot, puddles the floor, rising only when a guard officialmouthed — with sadness rung around his eyes like the rings left by mugs, by cups of coffee left to sit atop the table of his face with their marks then traced in sentencing ink, with an angry fist and wagging fingers — motions for Him to rise and that’s right, follow me, sir, leads Him down halls through halls radial each poorer away from the arch of the atrium and its rotunda, tile giving way to linoleum, dustducts, cloudbursts now of exposed wiring, then through a door and into a courtroom, which is empty and cold and barrenly lit, screeching a seat out then leaving Him to decide whether or not He should sit. A straightbacked wooden chair — the chair of the defendant, cobbled together to be the most uncomfortable, the least conducive to shifty slumps, engineered for incrimination, the seat of the client who usually pays the most though gets the least; it holds Him fast, His housecoated fat bulging out the slots of the sides, catching Him unhanded. The guard leaves Him with a pat to the shoulder as what must be His lawyer, His Goldenberg, it’s been a while, too long and yet not enough, enters wet himself, and sloppy, in an untailored, seamstripped suit, and with a clammy palm without calm shakes Him a Shalom.
