Forget the forgetting, though, the Garden directives say, there’s only one way to settle the mind. It’s Him, and if they don’t find Him, don’t produce Him right quick, gevalt — they don’t want to think…Doctor Abuya proposing B’s sacrifice, if ever He’s found, maintaining that His blood must be spilled, to quell the masses, and the restlessness, also, of an Administration increasingly hostile. At the Temple, which up and having passed inspection is, without Him, functional for nothing: an eidolon’s idol with no one to worship it or at it, within it, the same — with His name devalued to inexistence, His image forbidden soon forgotten among even those who’d like to remember, their own craziness, betrayaclass="underline" as fallen as the gates of the Temple stand tall, stilled in ice as weather itself — and so the New Year opening’s postponed, is rescheduled tentatively for the Anniversary upcoming in what’d once been December, the yahrezeit next, what would’ve been Xmas Eve, which we’d do better to forget, as well, burn that tinseltime wreathe. And so for those ten days between the New Year, which is called Rosh Hashana, which means, literally, as the billboards explain up and down the pitstopped coasts, The Head of the Year, the Garden, if quietly, puts the word out for His own lesser head, names the price: with the Temple ready for patrons and pilgrims, visitors and press, sheep, goats, and cattle are out of the question, they’re not big enough draws; what’s required for us to stay relevant is Him, fattened for the slaughter already, you with me? We shouldn’t be doing this, I know…Die’s saying to Mada over the phone, longdistance from the warmth of Palestein as an honored guest of its ruling family, the venerable Abulafias. Superstition, keep up. But it’s not like we have a choice. You think I haven’t thought this through? It has to be done, though. I love the schmuck, me more than anyone. Believe me. But this is the way it’s supposed to happen, even if it’s wrong (they’ve got the replenished ranks of Saperstein & Saperstein going over the particulars; as for the priests necessary to this procedure, with its intricacy of knife and neck and slitting prayer — they’re still in training Uptown, urge patience). All I’m hearing is they don’t want it, but I’m saying they don’t know that they do — they’re afraid of themselves, of their power: we’re talking old instincts, dormant, slow to revive; they regress, I’m sure, on their own time…we’ve taken a loss, no doubt about it, our numbers are down, people’ve lost confidence, interest, they’ve been told to lose interest, grown bored beards and dulled. As the lions pace the grounds of the Park, nervous and idle, paws sliding klutz across the Reservoir frozen, Mada and Gelt are occupied rehearsing a processional plan, its vast decoded scroll unfurling their steps down the stairs of the Temple’s ascent through the Park then out and into the streets — that’s if they can meet deadline still alive: a procession replete, they plan, with salaried hecklers and pelters, trash, too, and unsavory stuffed vegetables (the vendor menus include holishkes, or golubtsy — cabbageleaves seeded with triple paprika to spite with their spice); a slow ascent up the steps, one ritual or another now, this they’re still working out, then the slicing itself in fullview: the Mayor himself to serve his city as the day’s ceremonial High Priest with a rubbery gag knife to B’s throat, painless, humane, that’s the idea. They’ll never accept immortality, whether it be corporeal or that of His reputation, and with the favor they’re in, they can’t afford to, either. But to find Him first, that’s no question of spectacle or public, of Parkside ingathering, a herding in of the flock you’ve been fleecing: no, that’s kept low, underground and there inquired of in only a whisper, a flutter of the moneytongue, refused…this hushed informality of information exchange, humbly but casually asked — it’s personal, a question of honor…Mada, Die says over the phone, I want you to deal with this. We have just over a month, if we’re lucky, until the Administration gets involved — I’m sure of it, Shade that gonif, ungrateful, he’d just love to shut us, whether up or down…I’ll let you know which, I’ll call back in the morning.
An hour reneging on the wager of light at the down of sun, Die accompanied by Hamm exits the lobby of the Q’asino here in Hebron, Palestein — the Vault it’s called, a complex erected around a famous cave at middle, the grave of the Patriarchs and the burial of their promise, in that its entrance’s now atriumed in an arch of bombproof, bulletproof glass — and is valeted in a stretch of limo through the desert toward a distant glint, this rising, shining orbicular track: the Drom Dome, tenthousand seats stadiumed under a retractable roof under the immaculate sky, if the weather holds; he makes Abulafia I’s private box in time for the first card. A beastly silence shot fatally by gunfire — a ring, they’re dashing to track in bobs up down up and down again; two of them, breaking fast a length or two now three ahead right from out of the gate; this team of dromedaries racing ridiculously with knees held high like risen mountains. Twotoed hard, and lately shaved of their shag to decrease resistance to the wind they’re faster than, they turn turns around and around, with their necks outstretched, their mouths agape, spitting forward, a gleet fleet with tongues like flags, loose and flapping lips and nostrils flaring. The leaning might of these racers, these small dark smokes, cameljockeys they’re called, enslaved short and skinny kinder, rationed by their sheikhs to keep down their times — they’re slumped low atop the naked fat of the hump, stripped to the waist, pithhelmeted. To ride against that wind, its speed and force, their records: history, too, is racing tonight, and the principals, they’re just trying to hold on…and, to broadcast this race: an ancient vulture trained by its forefeatheredfathers to fly with an antenna in its talons, transmitting Image.