Don’t worry, son, says the bailiff, kindly because old and known this before, escorting B out of the courtroom…it’s not like it’s that hard being a nobody, I’ve been one for years, you’ll get used to it quick. But you’d want the brightside, the halfsized full…it’s not like we’re going to tattoo your forehead or anything. Your mark’s even less subtle, or more: it’s your very existence — escorted out the door, then down the hall down the halls in reverse, dead mensch walking down the ways of the just and the seeking, the urgent emergent and the developing kvetch, past doors behind which lord the courts appellate, lower and lowest, those courting the newest interpretation of the Law, favoring those lately favored by God, over what; linoleum, kitschratty carpeting, cracked tile then again into the processing area with its windows and wait, wending through tangles and fringes of people worried faceless, encampments and strongholds not kept or held themselves together enough to be called lines they’re more like hopes, like pleas or appeals to: the mercy, maybe, of that approved namechange, a conversion meriting an inheritance, perhaps, a reparation or restitution, each to murmur to any teller or most abject glassimprisoned authority their own personal prayer, their own private malediction, united only in their though forbidden, unofficially encouraged, uplifting through sin hatred of Him, as they now spit at His feet, in His face, throw rocks of slipping salt and stones at Him, too, to smash a skull, rip a stomach minding — official implements of ridicule obtainable from a host of utilitarian white urns positioned in only the most wellmarked, heavily lit areas of the Courthouse lobby He’s escorted through, toward the door leading out to the landing below the portico underneath the Decalogue chiseled above as ten clouds upon the sky and there their lightningstruck, thundervoiced commandment to weather, though the wet’s stopped for now, if not just slowed. He’s led out toward the landing, to the top stair of these roundeddown, smoothed marble minyans of them descending in rubble to offer grounding to flood, this bedding of short, narrow streets better alleys turned fluming rivers scummed with junk loosed from neighboring shops and stands rainbowgray, with oil and grease — or, as if an ocean of stair shoring itself endlessly north toward Mitteltown if not further into inscrutable mist (the Upper West Side, Harlem, the Heights), then again and eternally lapping its wake returned to the top of the wide marble stairwell from which He faces the trashdappled dusk; the engorging throat of the crosswalk, the budcutting jut of a traffic meridian opposite; moored carts and boats in from the islands surrounding with their dimdark people stomping their rubbers high through the muck on their ways to prayer and what’s done between prayers, which worship is anyone’s guess. He stands quieted, which for Him now is still, as the bailiff removes the wagonwheels, unlocks the chains that bind Him to Himself and, why not, to any He’s outlived, survived — holding them together tightly and fumbling, swearing throughout in a tongue soon to be legislated forgotten, the key to it all kept between his teeth between locks. A tiddle liddle jiggle, a tug then He’s out, freewheeled, finally. Kneels tush to heels, rubs His wrists back to blood.
B stands between the central columns of the landing’s colonnade, two large and thick, closely spaced hunks of assimilated marble, their twists involved and dizzying around and around the fineness of their flutes, each identical, topped with pediments heavy on the fruit. He puts one hand to each, sets teeth. And strains, again with the neck how He’s exerting Himself, hoping to bring this house, theirs or the Law’s, to ruin, to collapse all around. But no, they won’t be brought down, even moved as the bailiff is here (sniffling into his uniform’s sleeve), won’t be budged despite efforts, won’t give or even lean the merest of falls. His strength fails, is denied Him, and so He gives up, relents if demonstratively, falls His columnar arms to shanks at which they hit limply then hang, useless meat, the soul’s beefy excretions. Exhausted, enough. Hang Him out to die. He turns to nod at the bailiff, then turns again to the open world oceanic, steps out to wander upon it from under the portico, upon which step the sky opens its womb, redoubles its birthing as the bailiff yells after Him though softly and weepily rasping to have a good New Year, a happy and healthy!
Todah Rabah, I think, to you, too.
As for me, I’ll do what I can — the rest is out of my hands.
