Nu, Torque, Hamm asks, what’s the plan — was He on one of those transports? is He dead yet? and what about us…he’s futzing with the yarmulke he has to maintain for work purposes, survival, to avoid the Gestapo’s attention.
I don’t know, says Mada, I don’t think we’re that lucky, or not. My guess is He fled here, not expecting this, who would have. And if He did expect, hymn, then He’s dumber than any of us ever thought.
But they wouldn’t kill Him, would they, Hamm takes the pleather disc from his head (this a newly issued operationally commemorative modeclass="underline" it’s white inviting dirt with prussicblau piping, replete with serial number and a litany of daily blessings wrought on its underside in silvery script), spins it supple around in his hands: they wouldn’t, why would they, wouldn’t make any sense…He’s one of them.
Is He? Not anymore, Hamm, my friend, not anymore…or He is and He isn’t, it’s tough to explain, so difficult nowadays with everyone of no extraction, all these late designates of fractional Faith — the questions, is He a Mischling, who knows, and, anyway, are They, Whoever They are, Whoever They ever are (up to you), the type to make such distinctions; it’s up to Him to decide, the chosen now finally choosing. Who are you, that’s never been voluntary before. Freewill and all, freewilled. This time around, martyrdom’s wholly assured. But He’s not on any of the transports (Mada spits on Hamm’s yarmulke, palms it down into his kink), and neither is he dead…Frank Gelt says, having slid downstairs and across the waxed lobby of the Hotel Under the Sign of the Hotel’s newest Polandland franchise, the Hotel Under the Sign of the Sign of the Hotel in the house’s silkslippers, he’s waving in front of him, in their faces, a sheaf of papers that gives the impression at least of being thick, smallprinted, and tiresome if not entirely, unappealably official — still they’ve been religiously stamped and signed, approved like nobody’s business: nothing registered, he says, apparently He has no number, no designation, whispering crisp quickly to Die once they’ve sequestered themselves in their most modest of suites, with all tips paidout, shades drawn, door locked with the radio on, so as to buzz their conference from any who’d pry: He’s wanted dead, Gelt says, but only by authorities on the Most High, orders direct from the Sanhedrin, Shade himself; lowerlevels have instructions only to turn Him over, ascend Him upstairs. An orchestra chokes. And then come the sermons.
Must’ve entered on a false passport, says Die in complimentary smoking-jacket falling open, exposing his hairless, smallnippled chest; he’s lying on his fourposter, canopied in black, originally topped with the taxidermied head of a grandly shot stag whose eyes, which are glass, he’d suspected of hiding surveillance cameras, microphones, or both, and so had the head ripped from the wall, now hugged under an arm, deantlered. Or, he says, maybe He’s paying His way through, if He can afford it, if He isn’t too cheap. How hard is it to be here illegal, unaccounted for, off the books — that’s the question He should be asking Himself. More like: is anything at all illegal here, eins, zwei…and will anyone ever be called to account?
First thing’s first, though; He’ll be dealt with later, needs be. In order to Polish them off, they all have to be first trained, fistragged then spit: chugged over the landscape, locomotived with cause on back to their old homes, belated, the Kowalskys returned to Polandland as the Kowalksis, neighbors there as they’d been Over Here to the Wisnowskis late of North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, what’d been Illinois, now once again Wiś nowski, you know them, moved back into their houses, their perpetually disarrayed modest flats located in the quote old historic centers unquote, packed in a million tight along with the families that’d usurped them; others, and don’t ask how, we have our methods, their addresses, yours, know from whence everyone came…what’d you think the Library’d been for, goes the thought, such intensive genealogical genius — sent, shipped as damage refused back to the graze of their lamed horses, their stables, their sootdarkened woodenshacks ever further east, further paled, empty for generations it’s been; fires in the hearth, eternal flames, as if history’s been waiting all this time for return, for itself. A facility sprung up outside Camden, Joysey, a magnet for the Tristate, then they’re packed off to the Continent aboard an ancient fallingdown skyshort aeroplane struggling for lift out of Newark. And from there, no one survived. Others soon sprang up everywhere, Canada, Mexico, Americas Central and South, and every flight landed Here, lands — this whole land, its lands, their hemisphere entire, made an enormous, ostensibly infinite Whereverwitz, a Whywald, Nohausen. How, it’s too hard. How, the corrupt, corrupting, commentary, I’m sure. The best and the brightest newly Affiliated lawyers in the world, hard-tushed hardballers all, are initially consulted for free, then retained at cost, to make sure everything’s kosher, that all the ink’s pure and that each binding letter bears its proper ornamentation. Menschs of the conscienced Cloth are rolled back into bolts, stored to mold until the paperwork comes through; their mouths shut with red tape, fingers and hands, too, needle and thread, warehoused for another yet another delay, which has first been scheduled, then rewarehoused, only to be rescheduled again: They the newly Affiliated go and rekindle the whole of the old Garment District to shvitz out the uniforms, largely piecemeal patternwork except for those of the Elite, you know who you are, Singers spooling overtime into night, the darkening lapels of sky collaring closed, silver pips, litzen and ribbons, badges and trim the red of their blood. After they come for the merely clothed, those who are housed, too, they can’t be too far behind: when the hotels go overbooked, Affiliated architects, contractors unto subcontractors, lowly subsubs owing favors to it seems every zoning board president brother-inlaw to ever deface with concrete and cement the turned cheek of the planet, they’re drafted to salary, set to work on the barracks; with layout wall-to-wall, mounted multiunit entertainment systems, hometheaters sounding in surround, minibars, minifridges, the ganze amenities, for the money that is, everything they’d ever expect and at the bare minimum, at least for those traveling Class, every solace basely afforded; lonely housewives/parttime interiordecorators do up even the No Class barracks in differently attractive combinations of mocha, peachish, and a very bright teal; newly landscaped oaks line every perimeter…
Thanks, but how’s the question, how are they killed, that’s what we want to know. For the record, I mean, for the books, History 101—not that we get off on that stuff…but there’s no need to whitewash, delouse, purify, there’s been no call to talk down, we’re all adults here — all the Unaffiliated, those who didn’t voluntarily, of their own accord, up and Affiliate, too?
Oy, you didn’t hear it from me.
There are drownings of aeroplanes downed is how, no way out north or south, east or lost, Ost. There’s only up in the air, then down in the ground.
How they’re immersed in their own blood’s how — that of the youngest saved up, stored in gigantic underground tankards for use in Passovers to come.
How, the ten plagues litany how; they’d cut open bodies still living, then stuff a live frog (alternatively: locusts, or a bevy of firstborn mammalian male beasts), down into the innards, stitch up the poor schmucks again, cauterize, burn, the frog to hop around under the skin, it’d rot then, and soon the patient would rot, too, patience, right in the arms of the greatest Affiliated doctors the world has to offer, ordered, then paid, to withhold treatment. Research. Observe. Or else — experiment your hearts out, or theirs; sphacelate, necrose; do what you will, you’re the professional…
How, too, the methods of an older age have been proven, still are: gas and ovens and air and less air then lack of air, fire. Smoke billows from the chimneys of the Unleavened Bakery — and then, the ash snows, the winter of winter. And the transports, they keep coming and coming, only coming — all day everyday, except the Sabbath, which they’re all ordered to understand as Saturday, is Saturday, are conditioned to the calm of its Shabbos, upon which even the mass death would rest for a light’s worth of life, to be spent sanctified at what has to pass for their leisure: Friday nights roasting Hebrew Nationals® (sponsoring) over the open fire, wieners stuck on a stick wrapped in pareve marshmallows, too, they’re holding shiralongs, swapping ghosts, reminiscing themselves unto morning, free from muster. As the sun would set the next day they’d make lineup, to make their weekly payments: room & board, the last installments on their life insurance, extending their policies through next Shabbos with money their Guards would shylock them at an interest that’s damn near fascistic.