Through the Employees’ Gate, which is less a gate than the secret weedy mouth to an underground tunnel to probable sewers, the catacombs, the basement bodied in the form of the worms that once sustained themselves on their filth — worryingly late in punching in, Peddler and Wife of Peddler make their hurried way through the tunnel to its terminus: a gutter’s cover just beyond, a grating, heft it and descend fast down a ladder then down that passage through to their respective prep areas, there to wash, appropriately dirty and then uniform themselves as quickly as possible, to avoid being reprimanded if not penalized, having any fine deducted from pay. In their personalized lockers, all their worldly possessions — in this world: all the accoutrements of their trade, which is peddling whatever’s to peddle, husband & wifing, they’re peasants, they’ll do what they’re told. In the M’s for Mensch’s area, everyone’s already arrived, prepped and ready to work: boker tov this daily briefing…these rabbis and priests, these lepers, the schnorrer and shylock and solicitous shtadlan, a merchant and shochet, a baker and a candlemacher, this taperer who he’s also a careful eggcandler, the latter three fumbling still with the strings to their aprons. Tie me up, doubleknot, thanks. A calendar’s confirmed by an announcement over the employee PA: Plague’s scheduled for tomorrow at 1400, then a flood, to be followed by famine, next Thursday at 0845; next week, advance notice…gevalt a pogrom — Friday night, you’ve been warned. An old regime, the previous Management, which had been aged, morbidly obese, had fallen, on any last rung or step that itself was a wall, an ironcurtain; they’ve been exiled out, in favor of these pretenders, impersonals, who are only the usurping real, those who hold the true birthright to this nowhere, lately corrupted in the service of money, its pursuit and ambition, we’re just hustling, getting ahead in the newest of worlds spinning around and so fast there’s no ahead, there’s just now: the Peddler’s parents today earning more as farmers who don’t have to grow anything than ever they’d eked out as real, true farmers who really grew, for subsistence, for the good of the State…Peddler’s Wife’s mother lately working nights in a glass factory, huffing souvenirs until her lungs would give out; they once remembered, though only vaguely, and not anymore, a property once owned, that’s still owed them (but how lately they don’t have much to complain about: they’re working, finally free, how life works — made employees of existence, hired merely to be, to breathe their own native air, paid to stand around wherever scheduled and scratch, to putter around plots, to peddle itchy of finger, though stomached with guaranteed salary, door-to-door-to-door through the hotels, around their lobbies and pools). Mayor’s an excellent position, wellpaid, though the Mayor’s also the municipal Treasurer, the Second Assistant Poultry Inspector on alternate Monday afternoons, a Sunday Horse Trader, a Thursday Horse Thief, though during Carnival Time (dates vary, spring) he’s assigned to the rear of the pantomime, the equine tush, you do what you can, all the best. Horses, the real ones, here they’re mostly just showy, they don’t have to work much: they’ve been trained to neigh on demand, and when they drop, and O how decoratively they drop, out of nowhere ride the hostlers and a stable of squiring grooms, many of whom are by now too old for this work (most of the native young have already left, or — disappeared; it’s all about innocence, that of their memories: as youth’s too painful and blushing, it doesn’t reproduce so well in black & white, official colors of the frontoffice); despite their age, then, despite their knees, spines, and their ridiculous shortpants, buckled shoes, tricorner hats and flounced cravats, how they’re uniformly quick to cleanup.
Are you following, the Guide asks, any questions?
How [much is this]?
How [much is] this?
How [much] is this?
As you can imagine, everything’s been thought out well in advance, all problems have been solved for them, already — save that of language, which is unthinkable, which is unsolvable, irresolvable, what, I don’t know the word…
Good Morning/Good Day [afternoon]/Good Evening/Good Night — excuse me, do you observe afternoon…afternoon, can you say afternoon, can we say that — is there even any afternoon here?
No speak __________________
And no light.
