What’s so interesting? he asks her, on our honeymoon, too, darkened above and in appearance less honeyed than milked of its meaning, more like a coin with which to call home, her family who’d converted, parents, they’re always (worried) awake…but her, she’s already asleep, and he’s exhausted just thinking of waking her: they’ve done so much today, so much more to do, too, not enough, and tomorrow, if that. He kisses her on each eyelid’s veil, lifts the leaflet from her hands, it’s a menu: roomservice, it offers, and him thinking why not, a surprise; he picks up the receiver, dials 0, it’s picked up, put on hold with Mendelssohnian muzak, he’s picked up again then quietly orders a Wedding Night Package, For One, advertised as You’ve Never Known So Romantic A Special—and please, he asks, do me a favor, knock soft. He rises to throw water on his face, on his return to the bedroom goes to make sure his passport’s still with him, in his pants pocket like always, expected, he’s nervous, it isn’t, remembers: how they’d confiscated it earlier, that and their marriage certificate. He sits down in a chair that’s older than wood, Louis the Worst King its style, worries himself removing his shoes amid a sagging of joints. Then, an attendant knocks, opens the door himself, wheels in a live carp in a flute of freshwater set alongside a flask of VSOP, mashke, it’s what they call whiskey, their brand; he raises a finger to his lips as the aged attendant wheels the fish directly to the clubfooted tub, knobs the water on cold then emerges to hand him a knife, handlefirst. Mister Sanderson rises to tip him his ring this time, and their last; the attendant shuts the door slowly as Mister Sanderson turns, trips over the luggagerack, falls over himself toward the wardrobe, opened, his grasping hands falling hangers a heap to floor. Star, how she sleeps through anything. Bless her, he’s crying. He sits in the chair again, straightbacked to attend to the flask, nips this abstainer (fresh habits, fresh fates), shuts his eyes to think of her not lying here but standing alongside him again, though not gowned, unfortunately veiled with his slicker, the ceremony at the aeroport’s chapel and there its bargain chaplain who didn’t know Jesus from the schmuck who’d betrayed: thinking, too, there’ll be other nights, not many of them, they should pray, not if it means waking her, though, and so he goes to turn on the television to maybe divert himself with the image, its mute, haven’t lazed with one of these in a while, and suddenly how there’s this vast mechanized voice, arrived in their room as if an angel unmodulatedly manifest, hearken the shrill revelation of its graceless announcement: Polandland Is Proud To Offer Its Guests Two Wake Up Options Polandland Is Proud To Offer Its Guests Two Wake Up Options Polandland Is Proud To Offer Its Guests Two Wake Up Options Polandland Is; he turns the thing off, picks up the receiver again at 0 and waits through the Purgatory of organswelled Hold to order a rooster for 0700, wondering if it’s early enough; there’s so much to do, so little time, and let us say — Amen…amen.
Tourists are only required to attest to the Land, to acknowledge its place in memory proper, once lost since regained through that loss: destruction destined from the beginning of creation, which itself came from an ever greater destruction…no, what’s only required’s their presence, that and their money, nu, always welcome, admission with interest compounded every hour on the hour after sunset for those who might choose to sample the night-life that only gets going after Curfew (it’s rumored — with appropriate permit, which is unobtainable, that and a notarized letter of transit offering safe conduct to the bureau at which such permit might be denied, if they’re open, if ever), admission advertised to guilt as a reparation, or restitution — this debt owed, snowed collected, their lives, sunk static in sleep, which is white without dream: surveillance’s offering a vision of blue skies over blond. And then — as if on the timer of the divine, here it is, your personal rooster. Cawing crow. A blood dawn — the sun’s desecration of its host, the horizon. As if to remind him, Mister Sanderson checking, consulting the itinerary printed as the front and only page of Polandland’s daily and only newspaper, punctually slipped through the draft of their door: it seems a Libel’s scheduled for 0900, hymn…which well’s long been mapped — they have two hours to kill, if you’ll pardon…though slicha’s what they say, meaning zeyt moychl.
On the Sabbath, no one’s allowed in, and on no day is anyone allowed out.
Take it easy, enough.
