And far below a raging helicopter — a robotic locust native to a local military installation who knows behind which stump or sump it’s been hiding, its spindly rotors wild with whirr — rising high then north by northeast again through space amid dark; humbling the supplicant trees, a forest bending from the copter’s cresting rise to bow low as in that dream of Joseph’s — it’s Leeds, hurling at them and God Who hovers above and below them, in every tree, as every leaf fallen and under every rock overturned, a handful of dumb, pathetic stones poached in his progress from river’s bottom and weighing down his vessel, his stolen rental canoe, aluminum and holed, weatherbeaten, shorebattered, snubbowed, which’s rapidly sinking no matter how fast he hurls them up, hurls them out; stones dropping, though, always just short of the airlift. One thrown directly up at the gyred glint above the wink of the moon falls directly down, hits him in the upturned face, knocking him over and out, to hold fast to the lip of the tossing, the rapidly whitewatering teeter, the river widening with the force of the current, if still cold and hazarded frozen, sharded sharply with ice toward the shores. He attempts both those banks at once in a flail, a futile grope, inevitably a doggiepaddle, is swept downstream, and further and brackish, toward the salting, the calming spanse of the ocean ahead — just over, it’s said, your run of the mill Joysey waterfall, this kill fluming logsplit, gaping its taillike spume spread as wide as the day; then over it he goes, hugely, whiskwhipped with a snap beyond the effervescent edge, aired to the rocks that rim the tidalpool below, not whirling but stillgray beneath a white unforgiving…to dash there, going under — then to surface; gasping a grasp at the stones he shrieks out of his own mouth now, as the canoe — turned birdy, as if a helicopter itself of one lone rotary paddle stilled by the gravity of the moon — comes down upon Leeds’ head, emptyfirst.
III
The hall is — what’s that they’re searching for, what is it that they always say—hushed; filled with bodies still alive if kept as cold as the corpses to which they’re related: this mass of firstborns ignobly birthed from one dream into another, huddled to the floor of the Registry for a meeting. They’ve been woken by sirens; sleep’s still in their eyes, night’s sand and damp in their knees and fingers — they’re so naked, they’re not even wearing their watches.
It’s early.
How naked are they? a voice might ask, a little late.
But listen. All time has been confiscated, to be reset to the hour of the Garden, the timeless Edenic. No clock has ever hung here in the Registry, or been set atop the Great Hall, and no clock ever will hang, and none will ever be set. This is an orientation, in the other direction, the direction most opposite — not east by west cardinally but in time, the past, or in the eternity that is tradition kept daily…O think of the opportunity! think of the spoils to be unearthed in such still! And know, too, there’s no further contingency, this couldn’t have been planned for, mapped out, or plotted. Any better than it’s already been. Among this generation, who’s the prophet, tell me, the navi, I want to know, who merits a vision like this. Bring him to me and I’ll cut out my tongue, I promise, I will — I know I will.
Hundreds of thousands of firstborn males have been forced onto this Island — ingathered they called it once, a making of Zion with their brethren left dead — and you thought seven seals and a prancing white horse were too much, nu.
As for me, I wasn’t there — they left me home alone. I was gazing out my parent’s window.
At a reflection, I don’t know what.
Good Morning, & Shalom…eighteen mouths grilled in rust say at once from every recess of the space in a thousand languages, and this one, too, which is God’s.
You are now in the Great Hall. Our program will begin momentarily. Until then, anyone know any jokes?
That’s how you can tell they’re alive — that they finally silence the silence, ask each other in whispers then roars: the Great Hall, what’s so great about it?
Hymn. Allow yourself to be told.
In the beginning, there’s the schedule, which is the Law, they’re inseparable, of tablets — ten hours given down on metro Sinai. Mondays and Thursdays we wake, we wash, we pray and eat, then buss and clean, don’t forget to rag the sponge; Tuesdays, Wednesdays, sweep and mop, sinks and toilets, too. At every eve of the month, which is the new moon with its silver, you disinfect, you polish polish polish every other. Friday is Saturday, is now the Sabbath, which we call Shabbos. Observe it — it’s the only item on the agenda at which attendance is mandatory, wherever you are.
To give you an idea — it’s month the fourth by the civil calendar, month the tenth by God; January’s being forgotten, keeping watch for future north and south, not east and west, and so the flanks are exposed, and the revolution enters through the sidedoor, the porchdoor, the basementdoor, the maid’s…is everyone with me?
And all the heads nod, if only to wake. God, there must be millions of them, heads and necks thick and thin and hairy arms and legs, wandering to the Hall from their muster on the square, to receive the newest of gospels by gossip.
To be precise, this is the Registry, historically the Great Hall’s main room and the Island’s most preserved from its previous function: plasterwalled, roofed with barreling brick; a balcony slithers around to strangle, a knife cutting the inside’s vaulting height. At one of its extremes, the east, which is the front they’re presently facing, there’s a dais, topped with the only podium to be found on the Island, fronted with the seal of this new tenant concern: David’s star revived, encircled with white in a sea of blue, a representation of the land upon which they’re being kept for observation, survival; this podium has to be schlepped from meeting to place, from gathering to session, briefing to conference — another’s in the process of being requisitioned, its sexagrammatic seal’s even now being stamped onto all. At the rear of the hall, westerly toward its door and the massing of those arrived late, laggard, and so not given shelter, made victim to the flog of the weather, a numbed mumbly muddle of disabled or otherwise ailing survivors, the incapacitated with walkers, in wheelchairs; gurneys have been rolled; they’re swarmed by devotedly uniformed, nametagged attendants, essentially strangers, and necessary medical equipment on rental.
All of them, though, they’re naked not to be humiliated, only to be cleansed. To be briefed debriefed, their clothes, underwear and socks have been outsourced to sanitation, offIsland delousing, antiseptic douse; hosed, then machine wash again and tumble dry — how much they miss their maids, their hospice nurses, caregivers, bubbes and sisters, those inlaw, daughters and wives. Garments that require drycleaning have been marked and shipped accordingly. Everything will arrive back this afternoon by barge, it’s promised, unless the water’s frozen: the Hudson’s lower bay at whose Island wharf the last stragglers of the assembled stand, one foot to test the shoring ice. Thousands before them stand and sit and lean, as unhappy and nude as birth, as paled, only to be reborn here, to become initiated into this, the newest order — mourning. Though they could’ve staggered the orientation times, divided then subdivided them into groups, there’s no time, too much work: anyway, the totality’s what interests in this endeavor already failing, failed, the way information passes as rumor, whispers down the mob. And so morning for one’s been consecrated as morning for all — a host of histories lived simultaneously, symbiotically, Creation made coeval with Law. And this despite the cycle of any profaning, daily time — that of this continent or another the same, and, too, that of any family, work, or nightly love; all ingathered to this rationed, ruinous Island and set to an ultimatum’s test: forced union in damp, moldy quarters, early woken solidarity without brunch or even coffee yet, made subject to the life of a single people, its purpose…two clocks received into millions of hands: upon the metal mountaintop, the skyline’s Manhattan beyond — two cycles cast down to asphalt earth. Rain pounds rapt at hilly windows, its rap silenced by snow. All are encouraged to save their questions for later. Don’t waste them. Keep them safe.