You came here to save Him for life, and I came here to save you from Him. You have no claim, you have no blood — that is, not after I spill it…and the Austiner Rebbe points a silvery yad at a young, faired mensch who sallies a little too excitable one step over the threshold then into the room he’s already shooting, hitting Hamm through the drapes, staining two to the head, as Mada smashes out of the wardrobe and shouting, a pistol in his hand screaming its rounds, he’s shot dead a step before the Rebbe, to fall at the hem of his uniformed underworn kittel, floored with a thud to writhe, then stiffen; another mensch, this one a pure whitehead with pupils the stings of waylaid wasps, he’s filling in for his friend who he’s not hit mortally only knocked over with a great wind rung at his vest, which has been proofed as if to save him from even the collision of his soul with bad faith — he opens up on the steamertrunk, holes it and Gelt inside and all over, with such a force that the trunk falls over, and with it the lid wounded open with an overflow gush; two additional menschs (who are they, who are any of them, they all look the same, what I’m saying is — who can tell, make up the difference), they do a number of recommended stretching exercises, kneebends, deepdipping, and knucklecracks — consult the manual then your doctor your father before undertaking’s disclaimed — then hand and knee it down to the floor, to drag Die out by the armpits, pinch him up squirming to hold him a shiver at window, in blown snow, an ultimate beam of ultimate sunset, thunder lama lo and with lightning, too, this grossganze Apocalypse shtick…no tragedy this going all out, last rites with all the death-trappings, an honor (for once, the accounts agree, the weather’s never been so benevolent to circumstance — which means either that the divine might approve, or It mightn’t); ices pour in, mount in drafts, swirls, and sinuous whirls; blanking a pile of hotel stationary from atop the desk, as if to sop with its whiteness the bleeding below; have you ever felt such a kaltmachen draft? rattling the Rebbe’s vacated chair. Die restrained, he’s trussed with hands, hogtied with tongues, a snarl of languages ordering him in tones heated, and as angry as fast, to calm down, be a mensch about it, keep still: unable to even reach into his tush, and so disallowed the mercy of a mortuarial stache, knuckled out to pall away nerves with its schmear. The Rebbe unsheathes a chalaf from a scabbard hung on his gartel, approaches, with the blade held out, its crescent aloft. Long on sharp and without serration, an undisturbed stretch of steel, without blemish: he holds this knife to the face of his victim, reflects; lights dusk into their eyes, the burn of disbelieved skies.
Examine it for imperfections, and if we had all of eternity still you’d find none…
But, of course, many hold that the holiness of the sacrifice has nothing to do with its how or intention, technique — that it depends entirely upon the holiness, or the purity, oy, of the sacrificed soul: an inner kashrut, makes you think…though if you follow that interpretation, there’s nothing I can do — except slaughter you according to the Law, it’s a mitzvah: giving you at least one blessing on the curse that is your life, that has been, Shalom. It’s a beginning, think of it as, all over again: call it a circumcision of your head. One slice, just a slice, and it’ll be over — quick, and unangeled…the Rebbe’s son-inlaw approaches, holds Die’s head back by a stray tuft of gray greasily sprouted at the back of his neck from between the fats of his bald, a reverse turkey gullet, this warblingly negative jarble at nape, shakily fearful, imperfect as animalistically ugly — exposing the voice of the front…the core of the goy’s humanhalf, his Adam’s apple whose pluck would leave the rest of him bleak: a fruit that’s halved, too, from the sin of its knowledge offyellowed, straining to speak through its wrinkled, thin peel.
Holding the chalaf high, the Rebbe now, without hesitation, slits down, silently fast — and from blameless steel, the stream of a fountain, a gush of blood wandered with the tread of his boots toward the doorway then through it, life heeled, stepped into stain…a heavythick spurt of ice from outside, the latest sky shot through with stars, freezing on their ways down sodden, and smashing: the flow of the artery Most High severed upon the horizon’s own sharpness, it soaks through the air, its purity pouring to empty the other edge of the night: our vessel lacking a single shard and so leaking through such darkness, light…then, there’s a last clasp of thunder from lightning’s strike at the breast — the Rebbe turns on his heel as Die, limp, falls with the sun.
And the moon with Shabbos now rises.
