He — Benjamin — doesn’t yet possess the weakness that is restraint in accordance with the growth of His flesh and intelligent soul, and as if to prove such to Himself (satisfying ego, in the service of other appetites), He has the thought to step slow, and precise, to avoid problem floorboards, stares at every door drafting the hallway to stairs, stares them shut, wills them asleep until morning. Then, stops, waits at the slightest settle of foundation. Empty, the stomach of floor. Rumbling plank. No snorting snore, no din of dream. Bereft of mucosal stertor, the gunk of Israel’s caffeinated cigar. He stops at the stairs, at their head, the progenitor of descent, if patrilineal then of His God.
Here, stopped at the top of infinite generations of steps, a straightened labyrinth, a ladder filledin, the bottom, if any, seems unattainable: every step as tall as He is, He’ll fall, the fear, paranoia except when He’s justified; with every step He takes another step’ll be added onto the bottom, He’ll descend forever; and then there’s the order of the stepping stairs, which might up and rearrange out of nowhere, reorder themselves in the dead of night: last step to switch itself with the first, twelfth with the second, they aren’t the same after all; to step forever if the order He descends isn’t the same He’d ascended hours ago with finger in palm, Israel dragged higher and higher up to the seat of the Godhead, the footstool and throne of the study adjoining the room of His parents, Aba’s office, keep shish; what if one of the stairing steps gives a noise underfoot it’d never given before, or doesn’t, what if, and all the care’s gone for nothing, needless heedless caution, can’t bear the waste. Benjamin enumerates them, necessary in this dark, one two three steps soft, an interpretation of stealth, always how many four five six then a landing, and then however many more and again, stairs, stops, at the landing, midstairs, to inquire of the photographs hung thereupon — ancestors of those photographed on the wall on the stairs down and up to the basement, which He’s never attempted, hasn’t yet dared. He asks them though in silence, and as if they’re sure to know as they’re native to such steps, and this landing — how many stairs, how many more or much longer — but His forefathers, unknown to Him except through these photographs and in them, as them, not looking too well, complexioned greenish gray, light-bruised, they’ve aged badly, they don’t answer, or can’t, as they’re images only, and so remain impassive, if fading, glassed detached, shoddily framed. Then, that last questioning step to the test of the foot, that’s the stair that’ll snare, the stumblingblock, the trip, has to be. He asks with the rungs of His lips the angels always invisibly ascending and descending for aid, though this isn’t a dream, He doesn’t think, He hopes it’ll turn out to be — trips and falls now, tumbling just short of silent, hauls Himself up with a palm on the newel, standing His knees scraped, winces as He turns to behold the kitchen in the light of the lights on timers outside.
As outside there’s the freeze of the snow to make necessary the shelter of house, in which it’s warm, with heat central, up from the ventings at baseboard; and as there’s a house to make necessary the refrigerator inside, which sustains that that might sustain our own lives, and is the house within the house upon which our world is presently founded (this is how Benjamin thinks when He’s hungry) — how far we have come from the garden! Better to banish the house, go out and greet exposure, scattering the perishables to keep out on the lawn. This refrigerator, the kitchen’s, a rectangular white monolith, set into the wall, doorsurfaced, is kept fresh of new food, right from the supermarket, taken right from the bag and unwrapped only then, to be cooked and consumed — this isn’t the refrigerator He needs. The refrigerator He needs is the downstairs refrigerator, the downstairs-downstairs, in the basement, partially unfinished, meaning wholly; it keeps the leftovers sealed for eternity in their containments of plastic, foiltopped bowls and the trademark of tupperware, the foods best forbidden for better than a moon after their initial cooking and partial consumption, the headless fowl, the frozen appetizers, minipatties and tiny weiners wrapped in pastry, the gallons of a pareve substance marketed as premium tofu dessert, suspected poison. And so choices and decisions; choices, decisions. He can either turn, grope toward the second stairwell, the ignorant steps leading downstairs-downstairs, and maybe further, maybe ever, tenebrously descending; to stalk a walk quietly, meticulously miraculous progress, down to where even Hanna had feared to tread, from the table through the kitchen then walking down the stairs and a right to the fridge of the hemieaten, partidigested foods sealed for storage — as if an offering to the underworld, its famished goddess Wanda, a famous other mother.
And then how she’d return, sacrifice made, with empty hands.
Or, to settle — for the new that is the fresh over the old though untold.
Here, this refrigerator, with its condiments and crisper, twoliter of seltzer lemonlime. Mustard, and syrup. Ingredients and not form.
Snacks sugared in the pantry to the left of the fridge, enough salt to make a decentsized pillar.
To reach for the fridge right here in front of Him, easy — to fingerprint its hum, stroke at its moist gurgle, in the dark to feel for its handle, to open, reveal, tugging with one hand while the other for leverage feels at the rubberized seam. And then there’d be light.
Morning’s night. To let the heated air in. Host of a bulb burning compulsion. Freshkept. And His glasses, too, their fog.
Benjamin stands, feet at the foot of the stairs, gazing from the refrigerator beyond to the steps below, intending thought though drowsy. To risk or not. To decide, it tires. Fate’s for the lazy, dessert as a meal for the toobored to choose. Then, to head the wrong way from everything, into the livingroom, the familyroom, who knows where He lies, atop the sofa of three pillows, as opposed to the two other sofas of four pillows each, then five, He spreads Himself out with the knife of a hand like a condiment, as if buttery marge, to rest His head in the spoon that is His other palm.
A mousy quiescence — and yet, He senses a stirring.
A preparation: thoughts of food digested to fear, an expectancy, and, finally, room for a real hunger — a pregnant yen.