To the port then, its pier. There to slip away, stow His flee, wharf a wander — to vag off baggageburdened, though there’s only a single small lawyer’s attaché in His hand, brokenclasped. Thanks to a deal brokered by the proctologist’s jilted daughter and a mensch who’s gone by the name, it’s been said, Laser Wolf (alias Hugh Bris, alias Nicki Noir, alias Anti O’Chus IV, alias Malachy Malachym, AKA Gory ben Davidson), it’s stuffed with the forge of nine nationalities, passports taking Him passage and without reservation under whichever names had been available lastminute — the shorter the better, how long it takes to memorize the newest pronunciations — their photos imaging the face of the most minor god known: a no one with nosehair, an anyone with earhair in the blurry, brutishly lit shots snapped in a booth west off Port Authority; an attaché lined with six diplomas’ worth is what it takes to read them of papers hermetically furled in fists and ribboned don’t forget me fingers: mutiple signatory honors and testaments, letters of attestation, of introduction, recommendation, resumes and titles, citations referenced to curricula vitæ—all dishonorably promoted to the nth degree, beyond credulity to hope. Never such a thing as too prepared’s the ticket, how B’s taking showy, matinee precautions: this false beard slash moustache ensemble, over the top then elasticized around His real, also from Eli, whom He’d contacted by messenger, a singing telegram He’d intended to cheer but had instead settled by cost for a mere note to be brought her by his brother, a quicksilver midget mensch in a red cap whose nose even redder below resembled an infected bell, that and the hands wrung overwrought, to say to her no hard feelings, to go soft and explain Himself, who He was and is, and then how generously she responded, with an uncle’s grandfathered briefcase she’d found in the closet, genuine calfskin as delivered, babied around in a new wardrobe Big & Talled it’s all sewn up, with her stitching into an inseam her best wishes in black thread; she’s helping out with the finances, too, scrimping everything her parents allow her, scrounging prospective dowry downpayments never more than bribes, bridal layaways her suitors hoping; that and any spare she manages to take in from knitting for the neighbors twinned with newborns just downstairs: just enough to tide Him over plus a few days, maybe a week at most from Sabbath to Shabbos then little more — nothing much leftover after paying passage, the grease of gratuities involved, the price of thanks to think, maybe a meal, I hope, a night in a room…
Manhattan’s tip, the prick of its tongue — it wants to say more but can’t because of the ocean, too bitter to speak. B makes it to the edge of the island from which He can’t find His own, disappeared. It’s a cloudy day, caught in overcast nets of smoke. The port, an immense planing of planks terminating in the ice’s horizon — ending as it, clouds tangled in rigging encrusted with barnacles, greenwhite stars, wispy cirri winds. A hawser choking the rust from its bollard — which the raincloud and which the snowcloud who can tell. And then, spearing the clouds, through the smoke, the masts: uprooted trees, made to wander upon the face of the deep. Through a lippy and bristly bustle of fishmongering, fishhandling, fishhaggling, fishy dealmaking, the hazards of floppy, soppy hands, fiddled fingerings, promises, swears and oaths, an immense dingen, all this thinging around, something stinks around here, something rancidly rotten; through a liveliness of livestock herded two by onboard bound for where, chaotic, this loading and unloading of slavish dray, from carts lade with variegate crates, a profusion of boxes stamped in languages as numerous as splinters in the planks, which way up and what’s labeled fragile on both sides of the frenzied line of ice chunked from the surface of the water then hauled handed in from one to another, to keep fresh the catch; bleeding puddles…
B makes the end of the pier, to a gangplank of sorts, wood flimsy and narrow, makeshift, which is the pier further, just lain. He lifts His head to the good glaciate ship. The MS Yachtsmann, it’s been called; most pronounce it guttural. It’s white, and hugely hulled; a ship heated from within: by its heaving stow of bodies, its own human cargo, the lives of those escaping, inescapable — immigrating, emigrating, depends who you ask and when…their bilged warmth to knife the ship, slicing it through the ice to an outermost flow, cleaving toward the open ocean, in which the waters once divided mingle, flow freely. Or else, such warmth’s from the engines rumbling the moods of every sinner, their appetites, too. Because He can’t seem to find anyone else, though, He stands out on deck alone. To board this boat bound for Polandland, over His family left sunk without wave — His people who were once as plentiful as the waters of the ocean, sandsleeping as dead as the stars whose light’s aged the sky, these however many thousands of years. And, to cross the ocean of our Columbus, you know him: a landsmann of His, landsleit removed, that crypto converso, Saint Marrano he was of the stilled, stilling depths; to travel his ocean in reverse, discovering all that’s to be discovered in the direction opposite, windopposed, the other wayfaring around — having had enough of this exploration, having been barbarized and conquered and settled and exploited enough, enslaved for too long, His life, and yet only now to give His testimony against it, through living against it: to be called to the stand, which is the mast, as a witness bound at the bow. And then, to shriek into the mouth of the wind…what would you say, B, if chanced with the choice; how living against Himself is to prophesize, if only unconsciously, what’s to come, what’s to be. He ships past the smoke clearing, a cloud lifting the clouds, and only because He’s going through the smoke, then through the clouds of the cloud and then — past the ruins of His house out on the Island to be spied land ho off starboard, off port, I don’t know but how could I, left from right from my, Liberty in her soiled robe with her burnt and waterlogged book, what surviving pages stuck fast, her Messianic sandals down below, doesn’t she ever get cold — and up above the scrapers and City Hall, her torch held heavenly and shuddering, a beacon of compromise, perhaps: not sun, not moon, but what; only pointing Him out, directing Him away, a semaphore’s banishing…brandishing that snuffready flame as if to hasten His shipping’s slog — the vessel’s stubborn stub atop and through the Hudson’s ice loosened to melt beneath its progress, toward the verge of frost, the drifty shuga, then a creaking crash to the waters finally unbound, crystalline. And beyond, distancing as far as can be sensed by wind: a lulling swell; as far out as can be imagined and, go further — amid the ocean, the true ocean, not frozen but merely thickened, slushed, an expanse of slowgoing swelclass="underline" monstrous floes floating elementally in white, bergs hazard blue and serene.
Icesick soon, seablued, seagreened, tempest tost a stomach up through His throat, this vomit’s tongue, I’m feeling. He’s a Lazarus, a wretch risen only to Himself, through Himself, heaving up His resurrection; pacing the deck alone, swabbing the slabs with this tossing, hurling His throw into vacancies available: bulwarks, portholes, lifeboats topside readied to evacuate all of no one. And the ship itself seems alone, as the only vessel to the only horizon, buoyant to bob a rippling shadow, the ocean’s only; any other passenger, B thinks, must be a refugee, too, how they’re staying so low, hidden, out of mind, out of time; no manifest’s survived, to be logged with our losses, such records have been wetted to smudge…and then the crew, a thirdmate, a bosun, a captain, He gets only shades of them, flickers: scuds of mist huddling around corners, puffs gathered at the capstan, the babble of voices always a deck above or below — not a crew it feels but a force ruddering, steering, what power plotting the plod of His course through the cold. The weather, then this sickness, the hollowed throat, that and the stomach an empty purse contained in indigestible coin: a miracle, He doesn’t even showup to meals, if meals are part of His package, part of anyone’s package, if they even are. For the first week until the next Shabbos, He stays berthed in His cabin, rousing only to pace the deck late, drymouthed on water, and knotted in nerves, venous strands of them: salty ties bent to ends loose and capsized, bloodied bit bights with the remains of His frenulum and anything else sublingually left, tangled intricately, mucosal, scarstitched, hanging a fraylach from the stump of His face. The wind echoes in the bell of His mouth, then resounds in the clap of His tonsils. That Friday late, He bows over the railing, over the side. A Kiddush’s sip, why can’t I, only a sip.