And then there are seventytwo, then fifty of them, and then only thirtysix of them left living: it’s that fast, death, and that remorseless…three minyans they make, six menschs just hanging around, wondering what you want with them. Hope not much, may ye expect even less. A legacy: each of the lasting survivors now has effectually unlimited resources, all to themselves…more beds than bedheads than sleeping nights, mattresses numbering into the tens of thousands per survivor, a surplus supplied with hundreds of thousands of pillows, each having been stuffed with the dreams of and fluffed to a head slumbering elsewhere, eternally if they so believe, and they don’t, generally speaking (Garden psychologists have decided not to relocate the FBs any closer to one another, have decided not to allow them to relocate themselves — their beds are their beds, to remain in their areas, disheveled and empty once departed, never remade). As always, routine, the survivors wake to wash in the Shof, in the thousands of sinks made available, under thousands of faucets steeped deep in a million rituals of leak; this perpetual gaseous drip throughout morning and night, its sound the only noising, to be clouded over by a mass of flatulent snoring come Curfew; hundreds of thousands of towels per head hang like flayed skins from their racks, each monogrammed for the Garden, an initial tattoo; then, once showered, groomed and perfumed, it’s out into day: to their meals, if they’re served, activities, if they haven’t been cancelled, to their prayers preempting, which are still foreign to most but becoming less and less fervently doubted with each passing service; thanks to the laundry, clothes are claimed ever newer; never to be caught dead in the same outfit twice, is what; designers are traded, accessories are bargained for, namebrands coveted at premium theft; once neatly arranged, folded and stacked within the cubbies of the departed, any forfeiture’s heaped around the barracks in wrinkling mounds, each article still individually labeled. It’s these labels that prove the most disturbing; names, last name first — as if in answer to the writing on the stalls, the wallscrawl, the questioning messages, disembodied echoes of the graffiti that’d accumulated on their cubbies, also, and on their bedframes, amid the rafters, where not: nicknames, endearments and obscenities dead, Sascha, nie vergessen, demain, Someone wuz here, Someone luvs another, NAC, TAC, AUS, SCH, the initials on excess undergarments, boxerbriefs not quite clean, not quite white, the wrong size; on garments freshly washed and pressed to the unmitigated approval of any mother, though never worn due to lack of proper occasion, or a looting of irregular cut: labels tugged from tags on swimwear elastic, tongued from the mouths of undershirt collars, on bright polyester pullovers, on fleece and flannel, on woolen sweaters infested with moth and lint, elbows as bald as an uncle emeritus, on threadbare cardigans the color of dog vomit, on promotional clothing courtesy of insurance concerns and pharmaceutical companies defunct, their fluorescent logos fading, faded, on pants with bare crotches, suitslacks with frayed cuffs, crusty socks, shoes without soles; these labels personalizing a universe of their private tchotchkes as well, on the little they’ve been allowed to keep, small stakes they’ve managed to secrete and preserve: on the inside covers of books reread and on radios alleared, on cups and mugs and on bowls mouthed and lipped a spoon, on sunscreen, on insect repellent and on medications prescription and non, on lamps lit and unlit and on violins who knows how to play those clarinets, on housekeys, carkeys, on wives’ brooches and breastyjeweled rings — slopped atop to bunk the beds of the departed in vast junked pyramids, falling to the floor overnight, to be scavenged by any who’ll wake to know morning.
Here, in the blocks of barracks, an exhaustion sprawls itself over time, a silence snores oppression…anything uttered, maybe only thought, echoes for what wastes like forever, longer than they’d ever have: maunders and murmurs, invocations and prayers, bargaining begged of rage, incriminations, passing through the emptying wings, the connecting classrooms and clinics, canteen, and mail depot; even the lounges vacant except for the puttering of a mensch his name’s Abe, or so he says, thinlipped, deepdimpled, and grave, he’s in a shiny vest and pants to a powder blue suit never his, a shtikel of black necktie, his hair’s parted in the middle; he’s stacking the roomful of foldingchairs to pass the time, foldingup battered cardtables to while away the hours; never a line anymore for pingpong, never a wait for pinball that’s the line that’s passed around — the other survivors remain in their designated areas, not laughing. And these are those thirtysix that remain: a butcher, who would sell meat to a baker, who would sell two challahs weekly to a chandelier salesmensch who did door-to-door, who was neighbors nextdoor in Forest Hills if you know it with a retired professor of history, who was uncle to nothing more than a pizza deliverer, who was boyfriend though to a daughter of a mailorder magnate, who was brother-inlaw to a woman who was the cousin of a maid to a lighting fixtures wholesaler, who once for fraud had to go in front of a judge here, who had once presided over the proceedings of a plaintiff here and a defendant here, too (though in separate cases), who was a brother to a mensch who he once worked for a producer here, who had an accountant here, whose mother knew a woman who was sister to three menschs here who’re no longer holding out to become accountants, one of whom was the husband of a daughter of a hotelier here, whose other son-inlaw’s friend was an HR representative here, who once had an uncle whose rabbi had fathered three attorneys here, one of whose secretaries had been friends with a maid who’d slept with two doctors here, one of whose mothers had a friend whose son was both a doctor and a lawyer here, his own, whose son’s friend’s friend’s squashpartner here had once failed both the bar and the boards on seven occasions under five identities (not all of them) different, whose uncle’s exwife’s new husband now widowed here was a stayathome father, whose third cousin once removed was roommates in college NYU with the son of the bridgepartner of a mother of a stockbroker broke here, whose proctologist had a dermatologist here, whose lawyer had an accountant here, whose accountant’s brother’s friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s father was a disgraced pharmacist here, who had an acquaintance of his father’s sister’s exhusband’s brother here who’d gone into hock for his numismatic obsession, whose father had grown up with this mensch who once ten years ago now though he doesn’t remember it had Shabbos dinner by the Friedmans the Roslyn Friedmans if you know them with a funeralhome director here, who once buried the sister of a friend of the thirdgrade teacher of a jeweler here, whose cousin’s boss once bought a car off a car dealer who also sold a van to the wife of a mensch whose mistress was also the lover of a realestate agent here, whose brother and sister-inlaw’s travelagent once met at the Mintz wedding the pilot here, whose plane once brought the family of Steinstein here to an uncle’s Panamanian funeral two years ago I think it was on a flight for them complaining blacked out from bereavement fare…Steinstein whose mother’s Hadassah President’s cancer support group leader’s integral yoga instructor’s cousin twice removed had one considered buying either the lot below or house above that Ben here was born into, which was then uprooted and removed here, recreated and kept locked now with Him inside to protect Him from this plague — Ben relieved only by hourly visits by the butcher here, to daub a bit more blood upon the door, until he doesn’t visit one morning with Ben waiting for him inside, and the jamb runs dry, and the stain remains.