Nu, fill in your own personal details, your own private designs — these coincidences have been keeping culture going for ages…it’s a paradox, all of it, it’s easy to think, in that it’s a parable, too, and as such, parabolic: always returning to whence it arose; a parable in that while it might make sense within its own system, which is closed, it won’t be applied outwardly, however you try, nothing corresponds…though how can anything be both paradoxical and, also, something else, in possession of any other quality, hymn, not so simple’s the thought: if it’s paradoxical, it’s only that, and nothing else, only a paradox, and then not even that, too. Kaye knows only this — he wants in. But there’s always a tug, isn’t there, the chain and its decapitated ball with a face, without eyes, without mouth…Faye his fiancée seething but dumpish, petulant, pouting, with the rest of them almost wholly disinterested now, though anyway becoming herded behind him — and so, to narrate themselves on. Kaye steps toward the gate, halfway through it, making it to the middle of the arch, between its archings, just as a mass of people stream out, umbrellasfirst, an even earlier Group or groups nearly impaling then trampling this Group, his, trying to make their way past in orderly file, trying to make their ways through, to insinuate themselves if only halfheartedly — but the other Group’s too strong, too willful, and anyway wanting out of the weather and home, their hotels, the ferrules of their umbrellas too sharp, too accurate, and black with hate, they beat them back, gouge eyes and navel, prick and slash. Finally, the old mensch with the one leg that this time around it’s the other he’s missing, him with the moles and nose and bifid beard, and a crutch stripped from birch, shuts the gate behind the Group just departed, wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, points at Kaye, grins angrily.
You’re late, he says along with the bells of the Church, ringing out in echo Kaye loses count how many tenored times; the mensch winds from them, their toll toll toll, his pocketwatch, chained inconspicuously what with the heady medal and the beard obscuring, setting himself five minutes early just to be sure.
We were here, Kaye yells, nodding fiercely to his fiancée and faithful others, jealous friends, hers, for support.
And then the mensch shakes his watch to his ear, you were early then, he says, whatever makes you feel better.
Kaye throws up his hands, and his fiancée with that earlier episode obviously forgiven places a palm on the back of his neck, which is soaked: he grabs the bars with his fingertips, claws…they’ve been caged in the open, are starving and thirsty again, and afraid, it’s contagious, this fear, this conspiranoia, made animal amid the human surrounding — Kaye shakes the bars and growls like the beast he’s become, aguish, abject, like the creature they’ve made him to be. A mutant, a changeling, a cockroach if insects have hats, if even they might deserve, might merit the commandment of cover. Here’s yours back, the mensch says removing his own, the highpeaked, mothworn relic of a war too anciently besides the point (the thrust finger, whose) to matter which cause he bled for, survived; he throws it up and over the gate.
That’s not mine, Kaye whispers as the hat lands on his head.
Thief! the mensch yells, accusing; he leaps in the air, upon finding ground his crutch snaps in two, into two little limbs, and he steadies himself, leans, waves the amputee splinters at Kaye, wildly, clattering them on the bars, between them.
Two Security scamper over, pat Kaye down with lingering hands.
Your papers, they ask, your passport and visa, your name, date of birth, which would you prefer: cash or credit?
This is preposterous. I have nothing of the sort. You know my identification’s been confiscated.
Is this yours? one Security asks, this the short fat mensch; the other’s as tall as his partner’s wide, thin as he’s short: always, they were hired that way from birth, have been bred for this gig — without culture, tradition’s convention, how would these two ever get work, stay together? He waves around the Room 50 key he’s found in Kaye’s pocket, turned the outsized iron key the onelegged mensch had used to unlock his teeth. How’d he exchange it so well, with such sleight, Kaye thinks: no doubt about it, these are professionals.
A woman handed it to me, a woman who had my hat.
You expect us to believe a woman stole your hat? says the tallskinny, taking the mensch’s from Kaye’s head and snooping his nose around the thin lining.
Not this hat — this one isn’t mine!
