After the Group’s done with all of the Great Hall above, then the tunnelings of the Great Hall below, they’re led out to the rim of the Island, the Groups, toward the fall of the ice, daily marked at its thinning: there to pay their respects, it’s suggested, to the dead sunk beneath, to their dead beyond death, beyond theirs; which respects, however, and their prayercards and candles, aren’t included in the price of admission: according to their Guides, it’s another ten shekels to visit the Island’s wonderfully dilapidated synagogue, shul (which had never been a synagogue: there’d never been a shul on the Island, or one that ever was used — how they’d davened wherever they stood: in bunks, in clods of snow, amidst whirlwinds); which structure had been merely a trash facility recently redone to meet expectations, anticipatory of its legitimizing appeal…to there mourn reflection, it’s offered, upon the death of their — Ancestors, I’m sorry, slicha: many of them saying a Kaddish they’ve recently memorized, or tried to, whether in the original or translated, whether in transliteration Yisgadal or Yitkadash no matter, as many won’t register the difference, in meaning, in tonguing — to pronounce His Name Magnified and Sanctified, to magnify then sanctify high the Name of He Who Makes Peace a rote Shalom’s Amen. And let us say, you’ve been a wonderful Group. Applause. The best Group I’ve had. Thanks. Yet today, ever. Give yourself a hand. Clap fists all around. Across the Island, a tourist from the next Group — there’s always a next Group or else, there’s always another group of the Group — whichever neophyte ben Avraham with small needly eyes, colder lips marred with eschars, and beginning a beard, he not seeking the merit of any mitzvah, not even thinking that old do unto others: just do — he kicks out a shoe, nudges a pebble from the path up ahead, which is ice…the slate submerged, leading up toward the foundations of B’s house, exposed; so that the kinder coming up from behind won’t trip on their ways to the basement’s exhibit, then fall.
ABOVE IS ABOVE, AND BELOW IS BELOW.
The Rambam says in the name of Rabbi Eliezer: The things in the heavens have been created of the heavens, the things on the earth of the earth…hence reinforcing the doctrine of two Substances, and anticipating an argument v. Spinoza’s interpretation of Aristotle — too long a story, for now.
They’re in the middle, though, the mittel, we’re saying.
Purgatory, if you want, a strange land without land, and without firmament either, domain of a third Substance, don’t ask.
Above is the sky.
Below, it’s the ocean.
The middle of the ocean, the mittel: halfway here, halfway there, maybe this, maybe that, and maybe…maybe yes, maybe no, and perhaps — all up in the air.
Above the ocean, stillnesses, the sun’s twin among waters amid water, fishes, the Leviathan and the whale, kelp and salt — enough salt to keep any Lot in wives for a long lot of hereafter, it’s said.
Below the sky’s waters — the flying thing, a refitted, updated chariot of sorts.
Above the ocean below they’re thousands upon thousands of an archaic measurement above, flying in an aeroplane now but in the wrong direction. Opposite. In return.
As for the aeroplane — it’s old, ancient, it’s losing things, rickety rack. Aisles of desolate plane.
Flappity, flap, flap — it’s shedding wings, the engines might stall at any moment; inquire as to the status of the landing gear, it’s not like it’ll do any good.
To any Omnipresence worth the Name, wandering would seem just like staying put — and, for a moment, a day, a week, a moon…they’re fixed there, they’re frozen, stayed in the sky like the sun of Joshua’s day: and the earth rests its spinning, and the stillwater’s stilled, from floor to surface of the deep nothing’s flowing anywhere, as stilled and as stilling as it’d been the day before the second day, precreationary still, a Sabbath from turbulence, in flight their Shabbos from flight, they’re just, staying, put…and all this Mittel’s dead to them, invisible, clouded and blue and white and wisped, though they peek through their misted windows anyway; they’re fingering rosaries, mumbling their prayers in American, and in infelicitous Latin, too, Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison, Hail Mary Mother of Our Fathers Who Art, but many are Unbelievers, if you can believe, still; some abstain, others drink…all try to understand.
