Witz полностью

Unprompted, then, they follow the script, though entrance is becoming easier and easier, easier than ever these days, especially once you’re inside…in the earliest days of the first transport, the initial experiments, how Polandland had tried to micromanage, age and height and health requirements strictly enforced; for certain attractions, that is, but not anymore — what’s the use? Lately, all are welcome to everywhere, whether they’re ready or not, preparation or no, they’re forced to a welcome — and now, it’s become not program but pilgrimage, is how it’s put, now that they’re not scheduled but punctually leisured to death, that’s how we like to think of it, anyway; the Gates swung open, rustily, perfectly, perfect in their rust and swing, and everything’s available, save exit, of course. They’ve paid their entrance in eyeteeth, fees in wives and daughters, in family, in fingers and toes; reduced admission for students, and seniors, too, with presentation of proper ID. Many have been wheeled through the eminently accessible Handicapped Gate, steeply ramped. Most are happy to walk. To pay extras, miscellaneous surcharges, the price of exorbitant whim. To sign those waivers, initial here here and here the disclaimers — there’s my X, cross me off, black me out. They replace their wallets under their layers, larval, their varval strata, these personal rings…stuff their documents, too many documents, too much paper, into their shoes for warmth, too many seals, too many approvals. They’re lined through the turnstiles just past the Gate, a distracting concession to the modern; despite the ceremony, an accounting must strictly be made. A record, is meant. A son, too short, underneath the metal arm and so, unregistered; despite, even he won’t survive. Clock strikes Bell, the nest of a cock whose comb is a bejeweled caparison. Crowing. It’s never closingtime. Until. There’s so little of it, time, and O their God there’s so much to do!

In the Cemetery

Here is the Cemetery…a field circumscribed by walls, which are a fence, shot through with gates of its own. The field’s a sharp rise, a precipitous mound, almost a grave itself, unmarked and yet mounting against that anonymity, a natural monument to its own forgottenness, a mess of enclosed earth overgrown not made of layers poured upon layers, which would be like the turned and turning pages of a book, or like consecutive, linear, narrative time, but more like a book whose pages are inseparable from one another, its covers, more like a time that doesn’t proceed forward or back but that stands still subsuming every moment, past, present, and future. Atop this hunch, within it, of and below it, it itself, are its tombstones, the topmost of them lately pulled up straight to stand, reset, like starved teeth, like cuticle parchment, the exposed bones of eggs…becoming pushed in, out, clustered, crowded, dirt-dense, rockthick, stonetight, as if the most impermeable efflorescences of the mound itself, forget weather; of the same material, only its most exterior, and so necessarily hardest, manifestation, that with the most edges, the sharpest against the shaped, shaping wind. Overgrown with grass, weathered to pale, this small parcel of fenced land, this earthen scar allotted for burial — a hump’s wound wanting for raum, for its healing. There will be no further exhumation; it’s not allowed. For them, it’s only the transience of this one walk through, a quick cursory circuit, twisting left, winding right, their eyes trying to take everything in — to mouth to themselves, each other, these names, which are halfheard, which are mispronounced, between their tongue and these teeth: to see the, which is the sound the tongue makes clucked between the teeth; to inscribe them upon their pupils, too, to make gravestones, tombstones, headstones out of their very own heads: stonestones, markers made of wood and of rock, of all different ages and eras leaning on each other, falling for one another, and over, huddled to keep warm in the freeze.

This is one of the very few cemeteries to be found inside walled cities, or so the Guide says.

Most are outside, says the Guide, most were forced outside, had been granted outside: begrudged to them nearby sites of execution, adjacent to carrion pits.

Everyone with me?

Here’s where you wash your hands clean, called the lavabo; don’t worry, we’ll be passing another.

Here’s where you purify, where you ritually guard the body, the corpse, keep watch over and yadda.

Here’s the shed for the funeral coach, the caravanserai’s the term, if you will.

Here the bier, here the common coffin for transport, because…

There, the loom of the shrouds; they’re woven from eyelash, you know…the Guide points with her umbrella, she’s poking.