…of course, both are strictly supervised; we’ve got inspectors working around the clock, mash-giachs they’re called, stick around, you’ll get good with the slang. As most of the survivors, like most of the dead, are unobservant, Kashrut, which as it’s explained again and again and in the deepest of details is the keeping of the dietary laws as given down from a mountain made of earth and so, inedible, will take some getting used to: please, Rabbi Bunkmate — explain to me the lack of brunchmeats, the sausages forbidden, the absence of bacons neither lofat, nor excessively stippled…why O why is brunch always dairy?
Welcome to your tour of the Commissaries…these two long and low, screenseparated, twoentranced rooms, tiled and laid with tables separated by squat columns themselves tiled an institutional white. To the left, where you get your silverware and your fine china, a burning bush of metal. A sign’s lettered italicized, bold — Deposit Trays—And—Dishes Here. To the right, the foods, their lines forever long, lasting throughout the day beginning with night then into the same meal next, all over again: lunkfast, linner, dunch, and on into brunch, how they’re still queued, thousands deep — everyone, to the omelet station! with its migrant who knows and who cares from where chefs flipping the contents of skillets over their hotplates, a freewheeling cheese selection apportioned on translucent plastic cuttingboards, grapestarred and nutted, crumbling gouda, gooey brie; alongside the vegetable offerings: pepperwell giving green, red, sweet, and spicy; imported onions to tear; mushrooms handpicked: a delightful array of mycological oddities imported from Wielkopolska, grown in premium mycelia of don’t want to think about it, its earth, nu, don’t think to ask. I should mention a bit about the eggs, though — they aren’t dairy, and yet neither are they meat. Fleischig’s the term for the flesh. Milchig just as it sounds, for the milk, what a lingo. Rather, eggs are exemplar of that third species they’ll know from now on as Pareve. It’s neutral; gustatorily speaking no mensch’s land. Meaning not this, neither that, here-there, yes-no…I know, it’s tricky. You’ll adjust — that’s a promise.
Their guide’s a guiltless intern in from Bumble, Iowa, here to gain experience in any field that’s not corn. He stops for a breath, savoring the waft of fresh bake…this is the Bread Section, a vast marbleized surface mensched by a skilled cutter of crusts resembling Dad, Aba, whatever you called him even if he was absent, at meetings away, always at work; and we can’t forget the bagels, now, can we? In daily from the yeastiest beaches of Brooklyn, trucked across the ice hot and fresh, crustysoft suns of hole, burnished rings of gold: waterboiled glutinous, everything to plain, toastable in individual toasting units located just across from the containers that safeguard the condiments, that keep and preserve; the oils, vinegars, sweet and salty dressings, and interjacent to extensively sneezeguarded, oftrefreshed troughs of spreads both flavored and plain, butters and buttery marge, jellies, jams, preserves with rind or peel and without: creamedcheeses, schmears plain and whipped, and all those brands that’ve been liberally flecked with tomatoes sundried then shredded, infused with salmon smoked, chopchived, too, mostly for the edification of the adults among them, or that of any kinder preternaturally sophisticated, with according discernment of palate. We aim to please; that’s what we’re here for, what we’re for here. To stuff a nameless napkin into the comments box, the charity of complaint. We Welcome Your Suggestions. We need less, want more. And out. And then further on down the line, the line’s line endless, a waiting wait — to push, to pushshoulder, shoulderelbow with knee and hand shove ahead their trays along runners: beggars can be choosers only here; among these loaves and hairnetted fishes, gravlaxed, herrings sweet and sour, in wine and briny cream. Selection varies. Appetites, too, then tastes. At the far end of the Milk against the screening wall on whose other side is a replica for the service of Meat, the saladbar, administered by women with a tendency to spit: they demand you eat your veggies. A clean plate policy’s in effect, don’t you know, enforced on pain of seconds served up with a side of guilt. These mothers cry, eat up! grow already, will you?
And if you’re thirsty, their guide announces, on this tour a mild mestizo Mexican named Fausto, he says, spiffed in yarmulke and tracksuit, and I know I am…laughs ensue, titters — we’re proud to offer only the best in juices, squeezed fresh on our premises from choicest Florida citrus (from concentrate); this served up to their parched from out of great gurgling rubbermade trashcans stirred with oars, then ladled out with plastic pitchers roped and knotted off to handles, each of them the trashes labeled large in yelloworange spraypaint with product, Pulp, A Little Pulp, and Very Very Little, none without. As for wine, it’s served only on Fridays, with Shabbos dinner, which you’ll be eating with your families assigned — red or white, good vintage. All name brands, overstock from California. And Palestein, also. If it’s ever water you want, feel free to find an icicle to suck.
0900 begins the Garden’s School Day, with mandatory enrollment for all no matter their age or education leveclass="underline" the kinder alongside professional professors, doctors, lawyers, and wholesale illiterates in any language known. There’s so much to get caught up on, so little time to care. At this hour, in the windowless rooms of the wings surrounding the Registry, and in a number of outlying units, too, in mismatchedly ramshackle sheds and annexed trailers, temporary structures rental or lastmoment erected slipshod and so soon to be razed to make way for shelters of a more permanent nature, which are expensive and so the financing begins…the latenight, underground audits of firstborn assets, the brunchside, bunkside pledge drives, multiplatform fundraising initiatives implemented for the sake of new beds, chairs, and desks — they’re studying, in rows yeshivish, of learners quick and slow, of Malamuds and Lerners at their markedup, knifed and gummed and grafittied tables creaking under their books omnilingual, books and languages both on permanent loan from recently domained area parochial schools, courtesy of unasked donation, benevolent largesse anonymous only in its receipt, the pitiless ledger lines, page after page flipped foreignly to distract them from, what…Doctor Abuya’s been assigned to the eldest class, invariably the least advanced, difficult to deal with though invaluable in influence; he stands in front of them parsing, glossing, wising up, a foreigner, a usurper, just a lesson ahead of his pupils, middleaged, geriatric and older even, ancient: to study — knowledge never ends, its endeavor never does, only the time in which we have to risk it, is it worth it; if knowledge promises wisdom promises happiness, maybe, and if not, then. To study the value of study. Here they work their mornings in ulpan, crashcoursing the mamalashon: the holy tongue shoved down the hole voweled into their faces, wondrously agape if breathing in snores; the afternoon, though, educates the hours of laziest attention, those of wandering gossip, grabs and gropes, the torpor of distracted flirtation, is given over to the secular, to practical business and communication skills, with pertinent mathematics. If Adam has one apple, and Eve has two, it’s a better investment to buy the tree. Chop it way the hell down. Build a goddamned shopping mart. And plant trees of plastic thereupon. Very good, Avram. Very good. All these lifesized, fully competent and heavily insured adults stuffed behind desks, with their bellies overflowing the swollen wood, squeezed into chairs tight about the thighs. Menschs all, displaced paters familias reduced to immaturity, reverted against their will, ulcerated, idle — insomniac professionals just going out of their futzing minds, if we’re being frank: middle of a perfectly good workday afternoon and you find yourself pacing the hallways, as forlorn as a hospital’s, as spare as a court’s, annex to annex with a class schedule burning in the hands, plodding through every rationale, justification, drivethru philosophy, the selfhelp exhortative; finding safety, solace in the bathrooms, smoking quick cigarettes out windows and cursing teachers, perched on porcelain while they’re expected in class to recite, to approach the intimidating presence of blackboard — how did we get here, what am I going to do. Plot a lawsuit. Hatch an escape. Hang yourself from the fixture in the stall. Above the watery laughter of the tank. Suicide. Many do. The Nachmachen’s is an easier task, and holier: stalking the younger ranks, the choice kindergarten classes, he slaps their faces, tugs hair, makes sure their yarmulkes, which are mandated, stay always on and fastened — prodding, demanding, insistent, imparting to them their own tradition, their only inheritance, despite their resistance to its assumption, despite their unwillingness to take responsibility for its meaning, its future; though tuition’s already been deducted from their accounts, which have been frozen by Garden, Inc. offIsland, in escrow, presently administered by the government and invested in this, its venture, reinvested in life, which is theirs, which is them. No appeal.