I’m going to go with guilty, then, twelve times over — as if I don’t already feel that way myself. But the trial, if you can call this that, hasn’t even begun, is what I note without tongue. It comes out like choking. Restrain yourself, will you, to your representation — the Judge overrules all, even rule itself. He then asks, will counsel please approach the bench? and the prosecutor goes and first approaches the Goldenberg next to Him, wakes him up with a fraternal slap to the head, a light greasing of recently moisturized palm and the two lawyers one dazed and dozy approach the dais, a hunk of beaten, comingapart plywood at which they stand silently, then wink at one another, both eyes, now turn around, each to his own table, His shorter and narrower and, as it’s missing a leg, as tipsy and unevenly spoken as this Goldenberg here — guess which one of them puts his head down again and is soon lightly snoring. And so we’ll proceed directly to sentencing…what can I say: my representation’s beginning to drool. Still, I gargle and fume, spume air from my mouth, a throaty objection. Stumped. Strike that. Jury, I’ll instruct you to ignore that — whatever that was or wind, but they’re still dead, with fattish flies gathering at the wet under their eyes, wallows freezing fast…until another bailiff, this the first’s son or his brother, maybe, enters from their door and with a beaten, lipbloodied wheelbarrow, into which he begins loading their weight one by arm and leg, the courtroom clearing.
Will the defendant please rise, and I can’t pretend I’m deaf, too, so I rise to the voice, its occasion: case or docket number, does it really matter, the People v. Israelien — let it be known that this court has upheld the rulings of the lower temporal courts, nu, remember those: we are, Mister Israelien, not under anyone’s jurisdiction…the Judge of Judges, is how the whole spiel goes on, with the Judge’s face if angels or dreams or else experiential hallucinations, hymn, who knows whether from bad blood or its loss ever have faces with eyes to see one truth and ears to hear another truth and then a witnessing mouth through which to speak up for them both becoming puffy and flushed, with bulging nose and wings slowly but viciously ripping their sharp ways through his robes to spread themselves over the dais, shadowing the entire proceedings — the Judge of Judges, this is what the voice’s calling himself, demands as protocol, perhaps, to be called to what account: a self-promotion, flown upstairs…having long known of the evil opinions and acts of Benjamin Ben Israel Israelien; that’s you, son — hereby tells you to get lost; consider yourself unconsidered…what I’m saying is, as good as dead; as of today, you have been excommunicated, anathematized, made an example of…as a warning to others, what not to be or ever to become, what not to make of your life, or ever allow to have made of it, I’m saying: as such, no one is to talk to you, with you, or of you; no one’s to even acknowledge your existence, loan you a shekel, help your corpse to cross the street; more: castigated are you as you are cursed, and cursed are you as you are damned — you following; cursed are you by day, and cursed are you by night — stay with me here; cursed are you when you lie down, and cursed are you when you rise up; cursed are you when you go, and cursed are you when you come — and when neither, and, also, wherever…cursed are you with all the curses of the Law — as of tonight, I’m talking. As long as we’re at it, even your curses they should be cursed, the Judge of Judges says, tell me why not, that the Lord of Hosts Blessed Be He shall blot out thy name from under Heaven, so there…and he pauses for a moment, hacks a storm into the flightsliced tatters of his robes then nods to the bailiff whose son or brother’s just left carting the last of the corpses and asks him, would you please remand whoever that is, I’m not sure, to Himself? And so the bailiff approaches Him, who for a mensch just fated worse than dead’s rather angry, struggling out of His seat to stand a hollow holed into His face, then takes His arms at wrists and applies to them shackles, which aren’t shackles as who has them so large — what restraints, tell me, come in my size — but are wheels off wagons once towed, never claimed from the lot of municipal impound.
