As the show ends, the service is what they say now, Ma’ariv it’s usually transliterated as, the rabbi exits stageright, the cantor the chazzan stageleft, Amen, they return along with the entire supporting cast to receive flowers under the proscenium arch, holding aside the petals and those of the ark’s curtain and gushing red, davening still duchening even and everything intensely meant and from the waist and kissing air then waving; the velveteen falls and rises, another round of applause, the velveteen falling, then rising again, a third and final round its applause scattered, Diasporated how they’re just standing around now they’re waving goodbye, then the velveteen falling again this time the last, the house lights go up for a finale as exit music swells from their mouths, zmirot: the players exit stage everywhere, wash, dress, and shave to shuckle through the stagedoor to the street, its grabbing hordes and their faithful hounds…down Prinz, sit.
The Rosenkrantzes and the Singer family rise and Misses Rosenkrantz searches around her seat if she’s dropped or left anything behind, and she hasn’t so she waddles out the row to the aisle to meet her husband who’s halfway already to the arch shining exit, quickly, her fat wobbles; as she reaches Rosenkrantz, there’s lightning, thunder, the house lights go out. A son, the ben Anybody to be made barmitzvah tomorrow if only, he emerges holding a long, thick, threewicked taper, thricebraided then those braids braided, its unified flame illuminating a knot that can only be undone through its melting; wax dribbles, scorches the hand. All stumble toward the arch out, step on each other, essentially trample one another, but politely, exceedingly viciously kind — a friendship’s tumult, unreal, as if faked; how the shul’s shrunk, it’s behind them now, and now the arch seems further, seems larger — as the shul backdrop’s withdrawn into the greater wings; an earthen set, perhaps, or a stage deserted, without fictive ornament or division, barren as if brokendown for the kindling — the deepest pit to be found through a hidden trapdoor…and the group, they find themselves in a field, empty — a nowhere. A sudden abandonment, but with the arch still ahead, and them standing facing.
A lone arch, standing free, with nothing on either side or above them; an arch, which enters and exits onto nothing, Niemandsland never fulfilled. Though it only appears to them far and large, huge from here, it’s a low arch, its opening’s small: to enter, they’ll have to suck and stoop, must become humbled, be made modest again; they usher themselves still in seating order, roughly, elbowing, pushing, it’s madness, keep forward. It’s suddenly hot (it’d been winter): hell if they believe in it should be this hot, that’s how, though they don’t believe, they’re living it here and now, shanking, shouldering, angrily pleasant — and not hot exactly but fevered, a delirium through which they’re wandering, exhausted, heads shvitzing, and pits…sucking under their tongues: a bottle’s cloth teat; a railway ticket used once but unpunched; an edge of ex libris marked with a temperature number.
An arch, pushed up, it stands atop a mound, a hill, a high mountain — the pressure of the arch, the pull and push the very source of its support, and how a force is pulling and pushing them, too: Singer struggling up against his attacking heart, what’s called a preexisting condition; the Feigenbaums, the Rosenkrantzs, Singers, and Tannenbaums, stepping intrados to extrados and all that pagan parsing, the watchwords of idols: the archivolt with its inscription we’re too distant from, too far to read, the soffit, it’s unreadable, also…the vaulted above with its ogive, as sharp as a knife, murderous, then toward the middle of the arch, the hole, the drop, machicolation’s the term, from where the oil or boilingwater would be poured upon any enemy advancing, invading; progress in its deathmarch, slowed as their feet are made shoes themselves through procedures of callus, brass tacks, and metal — and how that wound opens: widens to the dip of the moon that’s only the sweep of a spotlight’s escape, and everything wanders: they grovel before the steps that lead toward it, up, the winding aisles and pillowed stones; stepping high over these hazards, as some are path slates, while others are as snares and barbs, bombs and mines, and how you never know which unless you step, or until. Know this, though: that upon passage through the arch, there’s no mezuzah to forget without kiss — if ever we arrive, and with our mouths survived.
An arch: stones go up then stones go down. Without mortar, it’s pressure alone that holds this thing up.
