And then there is One. Me. Who else, who better. Ben, the son of sons. Uniqueness, a quality universally prized…rather, our universal constant itself: one hard breath amid the ether, through laughter or tears, I know, I know. One sun that wakes Him. An alarm, which functions in the time of the Messiah. Ringing. Tell the resurrected it’s time to tick to work. Stillborns off to school. Then, one moon that sleeps Him without dream. Between, one brunchplate, hosting a single bagel of a widening hole. In the afternoon, the larger of the last two knishes He knoshes, knowing his interlocutor’s respectful enough to have selected the smaller one anyway, in anticipation. Are you feeling well, are you feeling. One mountain in the distance, a singular pyramid of stone sheetrocked, it’s said. An oneway track ripped up under the progress of the train relentless, farflung out from behind the rear broughtup, the caboose He’ll hobo on, when soon. Give Him space and time and parents. After all, His people gave such ideas existence. That and the Temple, citybound — hosting one marble pedestal and its frayed vein itself hosting the infinite universe, its vaster gods. They couldn’t be here but they send their regards. And vengeance. One like the nation, under His invisible God indivisible, with liberty and justice for whom. As it’s said and never known. One as in chosen over the other, singled out but by whom and for what. Is the question begged. Because He’s unattached, a singlemon, an eligible match, maybe — meet my son, the Messiah, He’s free most Friday nights. Or, one like the Substance of Spinoza, the nugatorily negating immutable, the ineffably annulling…
Or else, He’s — heresy — just like everyone else…is everyone else. A multitude of mensch, and their achievements: Joseph the dreamer dreaming Joseph the interpreter interpreting Joseph the prophet; the brother who hides the cup, Benjamin fated unconscious to steal it, prophesized together again, reunited forever in Him. Like the chance of that choice, how many lives you’re allotted, how many eyes and mouths and noses — O does He pick! The fraternity’s mascot, the tribal runt. Alone again alone. I sit on my bed and ask it, are you my bed? And because it doesn’t answer me I’ll never know and sleep. A pillow. And its whiter dream. One as in one. One meaning one. One one. It’s you, everyone’s telling me, it’s your life, so many options, and with so much support, what don’t you understand, your problem — I want to say, it’s me. One in the same, as in the emotions of Pain and Hope, as defined by Spinoza; as in the ideas of perfection and reality as Spinoza once set out. As I’ve been told, I’m telling. One as in God Himself. As in His son, but let’s not go there…He remains upstairs. No one does. Upstairs-upstairs. I sit on my floor, a mockery of mourning — its carpet of stains, hall’s wood bemoaning in trodden groans its scratches and the rug. A fundament of doubt. There’s a noise from below, a spirited banging of the ceiling with ladles and with brooms. They say, intensely private. Sequestered, they say. Appreciates His quiet. I say…Alone. An entire house at His disposal. And make no mistake, it is disposal. Unable to leave, He isn’t allowed to, and He doesn’t allow Himself, not even His possessions — to leave an intimacy just lying about. As the only permanent of this exorbitant house — as Mister & Misses Israel Israelien, Homemachers, Copresidents of the Board for life of this singularly shingled siding — this dwelling good for an immodest family of tens, and fine, too, to house at least a hundred others, certainly, in relative comfort, a thousandplus under refugee conditions; as the only survivor of this plot, He still feels like the youngest son and as such, infinitely old in His loneliness, banished to His room, containment policies pursued, to keep His dirt there, never to infiltrate or taint. Their expectations. And their painful hopes. His mess is His, roomed. I sit amid laundry and wrappers and cartons and cans, lightbulbs and hoarded spoons, foreskins shed, tight shoes. I wait until I am called, and when I am called I will call that call temptation, and live out the rest of my days against it, which is only waiting. Or so I say, unsaid. At the door, an official knock, a bell. Downstairs, demons surge. It’s time for Him to wash, to dress. Their whispers jar the window. Into the pockets of the pants He steps into go whatever’s around. Mementos. A pocket is the room of a room. And over that He shrugs on, against all advice, which are orders, a fond found shroud that’d been His mother’s, a blustery blouse, Hanna’s maternity let out in pleats.
At the end of Shiva prolonged twice the traditional span to accommodate the sitting of all these mourners, those who’d known a goy who’d known a goy who’d gotten them a foot in the mouthing door, Jonathans come lately and not come directly without pity wrought across their faces that isn’t merely makeup for the edification of the press over wardrobe, which is black as if the secretion of their nightly and mutual heart, with the Marys as hostesses, sisters and mother appealing, attending to the nervous network of guests, their needs of food, drink, and of memory providing, at the end of eating, drinking, talking, and the occasionally mispronounced prayer — davening — misery commiserated then calmed in that order again reborn, after the last guest leaves, forgets his coat then comes back and retrieves it from a Hanna disapproving with an amusedly severe if distracted glare for whoever at the threshold on the last night of official mourning sat out, it’s this knocking, then a ring on the bell, which sounds one tone long and loud and harsh. As if a final siren. Answered by himself with his own key, it’s Gelt, with a leavened chin and selfmade buzzcut, arrived only to whisk Ben away, in an open sleigh parked at the fence at the foot of the path since slated for preservation (the house registered a landmark, not just to His life or theirs, or as an excellent historical example of high exurbiated living — but to the Garden’s prophetic project, how well and thoroughly they’ve divined, recreated a past into a materiality that is both monument and future), bells a’jingle hollowly, wild dogs frothing a dash down the foamy, toothy spur, their tongues straining over the hillocks of drift and pile, whips of hitched and harnessed tails, up to the Great Hall and therein to Ben’s private wing, quarters established amid the remains of the Registry’s Seder. He shouldn’t be left alone any more than He already is, this on the recommendation of His employer/disciples, His meisterminders and mother. A chandelier weeping crystal. Floors marble, or marbled. Dust mounded against the walls, dereliction, the lapse that makes a Tel — and then the windows, which if undraped would give out onto the further scape of gloss and glass and metaclass="underline" Manhattan; a coming world, beyond.