All is clear, or soon will be.
You took quite a beating back there, the mensch says. There’ve been riots. Unrest, with you sleeping. Army went in, the reserves. You’re lucky to still be alive. Let’s just say it was costly, a whole heap of payola. I mortgaged the farm, that and the money I’m making not to raise treyf anymore. But don’t worry about me, I’ll make it back double. There’re people I’m talking to, I’m learning the language. I got me a primer, and me and the wife we’re studying nights with a rav.
I’m your new host, the name’s Adam.
Believe it, I didn’t have to change it or nothing.
Utz all you want that this has been welcomed, deserved, that He’s all this time been asking for it, begging on knees and on the stiff merit of boredom, even that in the end He’s better off bound with gags — slavery’s what He’s in for, to be bargained for, bought and sold, His person possessed. Anyway, the most inclusive of our interpreters offer, slavery means different things to different people, that there are as many slaveries as there are lives, and that bondage can just mean like you know respiring, bound to life, gettingby: Monday morning, Wednesday’s hump upon which the moon was created, then broken for the healing of Friday, the weekend, a job or a spouse. Through the grind. And to be sure, our sages agree, Ben’s isn’t a subservience of the hard labor stripe, which if more slimming is still that much too productive, worthwhile, ensuring the fattened happiness and health of another: owning Him matters more than working Him, which — working — is not quite His shteyger. And so what if it’s not Egypt the real, or Moses with Abraham Lincoln goes south, should that make any difference to us, temper our sympathy for one so abused, ultimately, by Himself? A slave to sciomachy. If not slavery then how else, please, to explicate such a geography of wandering: from family to family, from house to house; nothing this looned’s ever done on your lonesome. Master to host. If not slavery, how to explain such unquestioning surrender to others, their wills, His fate, to a God He doesn’t even believe in (others, wills, fate, God — the same, if only we knew what that was), to a God now — God knows why — Who’s worshipped in every burg Ben’s sold off in, exalted in every dorf He’s auctioned off to?
Might a representative from the midst of the encampment walk a line in the sand, a map to be keyed against the wind effacing everything save the homes that He’s known: Joysey, Island’s Garden, ho and motels, the desert, the Spa, forced home hospitality, revived synagogue poorhouses soon, and then — nothing, with nothing unexplored, nothing else might exist: show them only the stopoffs in a Wander three, ten, twelve unto six thousand jahren, and the people one meets! hands begging shaking, hauling a wilted odd number of flowers to strange, rearranged, reAffiliated houses, logcabins and trailercabs and just for the night, remain vigilant at the threshold, beware the domestic snare (the carpet unfastened, the rug that might catch), the averted clasp of Ben’s welcome…Shalom! this greeting people with a gratitude feigned who wouldn’t have otherwise acknowledged you to spit on you, with their half flung open stabledoors, haylofts, ladders that go up but not down; the lice and ticks of flight through wheres and their afflicting nights that sleep every one of them the same — paltry hours of one shut eye, His shoes still on, still laced up.
Ben’s sold, then resold, sold again, from Adam to eve through to manumit morning. His arms and legs, people own shares. He’s quartered, pulled this way, pushed that. Not that He doesn’t attempt an escape: halfhearted, onefingered dials to reach the Doctors Tweiss fail, please leave a message not returned. Why them? He should collect on His own bounty? Why because He needs some advice is why, is seeking some counseclass="underline" needs an image of Himself that’s true, that’s not as-advertised, featured on dayold breadbins, discounted tuna tins, packets of salmon, on stickers stuck on the peels of desiccated citrus, Missing on the back of cartons of milk, Wanted on jars of honey, Him or alive — and wants, too, a measure of respect if not for His self (loathsome, fatter, uglier), then for an unknowable deity that’s His and His only, altogether some something justificatory of further existence: a company of selfregard, which brands might hock for 19.99 shekels shipping not included, a quality of worth religion lets go for the price of a soul. Ring ring rings but no answer: recovering from the Hymie visit up north, boondocked in the Berkshires, phoning into their answering service, the Doctors think it’s a hoax, a prank hallucination, they’re sure of it, and who can blame them what with all the collaboration conveniently going around; inform on your neighbors, report on the mirror — how Johannine’s flipped, shushingly, only a day after the Vice President went. And know, too, that when He breaks down on a host’s phone and calls into the Garden, it’s just a matter of importance, a mandate of filters, of nonresponse, of who did you say you were, right, uhuh, very funny, you and sixmillion metro area others screenedout, lost in the switchboard…go chop down the phonetree, with which to burn up the fuse, the last line. But I really am, He says and gevalt, get over yourself, sell it and a bridge to a party who’s buying. Apparently, outreach’s gone the way of ways, ingathering initiatives for those misguided, lost, single, divorced or even, gasp, intermarried still as dead and gone as His parents — Hanna’s emergency Development meetings to address yesterday’s slights, Israel’s lawyerly panels of pressing issue; and the sleazy, hogging attention His parents had understood as early as the first trimester (how Hanna’d begun showing immediately after conception, that night even, the flailing prick of fading pleasure, her body without calm) now fails to impress anyone as more than a ritual, another enslavement He has to rage against, freedom from which will require either serious will or further professional help, paid for by the hour meaning fortyfive minutes and no, no personal checks accepted.
And then, for dessert to finish off His final dunch, this family’s farewell — indignity poured atop two scoops of consolatory chocomocha (His tush, amply kicked), He’s freed, physically turned loose from a basementcloset slash guestroom He’s been locked in, below the spring jackets and wardrobe for summer, amid the trashbags of shorts, tshirts, and swimsuits, the unseasonal hold. Ben’s let go, again and again having proved Himself worthless: as friend, enemy, as love, anything but the flesh on His bones. Not even fit for bondage, how low can you stoop before bowed. It’s been enough, I got a better offer. Times are tough. Who asked you. Enslaved to another, chained to the bold, He’s remastered, He’s hosted again.
To serve no one but yourself is to live too freely, among so much Developmental openness, amid so much possible, potential, God how to live up to it, how to live down or at all, how to remember when you’re free to invent? History goes garbled. More libraries’ books burnt in irrelevant fire. Tapes get erased. Herein, His degeneration: Adam the former pigfarmer and futzer of that other Manhattan, a landlocked, hillflinty little apple located in the northeastern negation of Kansas, will sell Ben able to Cain, who would altar Him to Topeka Seth; Methusaleh the goy said his name was of Lawrence to hold onto Him forever. He’s a stooped mensch, caneclawed, from another age: he carries a briefcase wrinkled deeper than his face; to negotiate he sets his hat on the table crown down, as not to destroy the meticulous brim. He’s tired in the eyes though the mouth says froth, medicated excited but worried, too, around the rodential twitch of the nose; he’s splurged his whole pension to acquire our schmuck. He takes Him home, feeds Him until the food runs out, the taps go dry, the breathing becomes labored in vain. In the morning in his waincart he carts himself he hauls Ben out through the flatlands toward the Missouri line, leaves Him there with a sigh and a sandwich not on rye but of it, a nod toward the promise of St. Louis, just now in the process of being renamed (a referendum’s been called, streetside prophets casting their tongues).