Goldenberg snorts, goes to straighten his tie, then remembers he isn’t wearing one, that his collar’s soiled with the blood of yesterday’s shave. A sleep and its assuring visit interrupted by the disturbance of Ben’s nurse, the livein Mary arrived, costumed in crisp clean whites like a sanitary skin, her stockings in candy stripes an alarming red, with a stethoscope nestled snakelike between the fruit of her breasts juiced forbiddingly within a thin peel of laundry’s starch — though He never catches on, won’t, refuses to, why should He, even when she brings Him a smoky bowl of soup ostensibly medicinal (pale chicken, with halved matzahballs not sinking but bobbing), which tastes to His tongue numbed with narc exactly like Hanna’s, though He’d only had that once, too hot. She’d realized the recipe, thanks, about time, how…His mother His nurse, then — after Goldenberg’s slap to her bended knee, prayered to diaper Him at bedside — to leave with him, His lawyer, arm-in-arm the two of them kissing up to each other, abandoning Him to His soup without bread, not even a slice, without even the crust called an endearment left behind to mark; the sun sets, the clock clocks.
Finally, it’s the morning of the first day of the month known as Iyar, which in Babylonian says blossom and means bloom, don’t ask — used to be May, once named for the Greek goddess Maia, the eldest daughter of the seven Pleiades, protectoress of few remember now and no one cares, believes: a season and its star without worship, made subordinate to a maiden moon. Enough to know that today, feeling strong enough, Ben rises, and stands skyward, throws from His face His veil, throws open the shutters to the windows, too, four of them, one to each direction of the earth. He’s shaky, aching; He feels like Adam, mud-wrought and missing rib. To overlook His newest inheritance, God’s contract become flesh and geographic wild, notarized by Goldenberg or by dream…the cold bay with its skaters, lutzbundled into layers of fur and down, with their flippant taps and twirls, slicing into the ice passages of the Law amid intricate glosses, tripleaxles of responsa ending with a flourish in wondrously interpretive figureseight; cutahole fishers perched atop soapboxes, their wives baiting their hooks, kinder baiting their mothers with fishy words and leers and augers; the remains of swans halffrozen, stilled in a momentary flee; a motorcade of sleighs their runners greased with the fat of premium lambs; frozen hard scows and skiffs upended into igloos, beached upon the driftless ice amid barges stuck to hump the freeze as mountains, abandoned tows peaking high and white over tugs as hills overgrown in frost; a glimpse from the other window of industrial Joysey in rigs and joints and scaffold struts, its warehouses propbridged, their elevators imprisoned by the skeletal char of fireescapes, unhinged; fallen powerlines strangling cranes collapsed atop the light rail spurs, across the transit tracks, the Northeast Corridor and the Gladstone Branch, their signs unlooted symbolic of only rust, and the hissing wind, prophetically monauraclass="underline" this is a local train, this is not the Long Branch train, forget Hackettstown damn it we’re bound for Trenton…past lots of lost freight, graveyards of boxcar giving way to a forest’s wisps, the far scrub pine; and then, another window, the madness that Manhattans the skyline: the assjawbone’s teethview, the keyedge view, the serrated knifehorizon, hugely brute and crude, and then — occulted within its midst, jutting up from between the rises of scrapers left abandoned, to reap a whirlwind tenanted only by the sky, with their lights off, their sleek sides wounded with panes shattered or just missing…there’s a glint of dome as if a head risen from the depths, unbowed, unbroken, vaulting as gold as a sun is said to be gold, as silver as the moon can be said to be silver, and iced in fulgent light — the highest hunch of the Temple topped with its rude spire, finished with a star left unfinished with three points only to shine themselves above the Park and the island that spills from its winter.
The House of His Father just north of Israel’s old office stooped in its shadow, along with His house, too, in its mirroring — and Ben, He’s enraptured: by it, and by Himself…His first unveiled glimpse of the dwelling within which He’s been fathered to history and now, to air; leaning out over the sill to the Temple’s great reflecting eye, to behold Himself captured in that dome’s lone sloping facet that is the dome, its reflection of an unguarded face…a moment of silence passing for peace, only of Him made relation to the city beyond, married, mated, Him as Himself the city beyond, and then — the door’s knocked into a flood, watery light like gauze, a rippling welter. A front of journalists with cold cameras porting tripods, pens and pads, microphones and lights, fresnels and pars: they’re here for their publicity shots the less posed the more they’ll appeal to the growing ranks of the righteous, it’s supposed; here, too, for His comments, for any, the hurried documentation of a life lived on the record — then, for analysis and observation, scrutinized on slow; Ben an idol stood upon the Record Itself, or if not on it then altared by it, changed from burn to smoke to air; here for their quotes, their content and bracketfiller; for their whiplashed quips, their bytes off more than an earth would swallow down to molten chew. As if punishment for public living even the famous are given graves, and often those they dig themselves with the sharpness of their tongues. As shallow as the rest.
Sit still, they say in one mouth, within one mouth, massed amid its dim…that’s it, hold it, oneeyed — right there, you blinked, you’re beautiful, you’re perfect.
Maybe He should hold some lilies? Or contemplate some busts? Say AlleGory! emPHAsis on the last sylLAble!
Q. do you really think you’re ready for marriage? don’t slouch — do dodge, evade, and lie: a little to the left, to the right, your other right, I mean, that’s right, now suck it up and in, say Dairy!
What do you think of the policies of your future father-inlaw, the President; with your impending marriage to his daughter, do you think you’ll assume a greater role in the decisions of this Administration? Ben, how much involved, how little — depends on what they say; any names, what about the kinder…over here, over there, chins up, chins down, just be yourself, kid, hold it, that’s it, good — and don’t forget to smile!
And so Introit the fuss, the sinuous us! snaredrum rolllllllllll out the rolodex, flog the flak, riff and stretch, sell your soul for a bowl of lentil’s suppering sung, brassbumbudumbudum…krank up the PR machine, will you, and take a propagander at this: ladies and gentilemen, boychicks and goyls, seniors, and the disabled putupon, unborn kinder of all ages, it’s just about that time again, that’s right, so step right up and claim your place in line, in time, your plotzing platz, no spots will be saved, no reservations will be accepted — aliyah yourselves up off those pews and get your tickets early, Operators are standing by. Or they’re sitting, nevermind.
Why, it’s the wet ’n’ wild millenniawide revival of the Wandering Tour, the Eternal Return Tour eternally wandering return to a town near you, close by, your local dorf or major shtetl, picklebarreling through fifty states’ worth of this here contiguous nowhere, pulling legs for a mere ten handfuls of, nu, maybe not so exclusive engagements, onenight standing room to run only: a packed Radio City Musik Hall, two soldout shows at the Spelt Palace, a near riot at the Fillmore, a melee at the Fill Less, oddstastemachers prophesizing serious profits, prime revenue from merchandising tieins, licensing, subsidiary rights, and subsubsidiary yadda, deals bubbling like the gassiest of concessions, available for purchase in the lobby.