Читаем Witz полностью

Into the waning of summer, verging on fall. Once the time of deepening leaves, burning piles, needles smoking, a fiery pining away for life without season…an even heavier jacket sprung from the frontcloset, gorgeous autumn to be raked from tablecloth lawns, netted from inground pools leaf by sogheavy, ribweary leaf no more; it’s still snowing, tucking in the ruins of the past, whitely tired. This is Av, still and stilled, the fifth month, or the second to last, depending on conversion, on who you still can believe: this the month of mourning, of introspection and abstinence, of reflection in the ice underfoot — this the moon hosting the anniversary of the Temple’s destruction, the Temple risen again, its heir rebuilt in the city just distant: the anniversary of that destruction being the ninth of the month, the day it’d been destroyed by the Romans, and Jerusalem — left to waste.

This, the appointed day of His ingathering.

Here is His return, a Prodigal Son situation if any we’ve known; how He’d hoped to unlock the city with the key He’d been presented, but the Garden had moons ago grudgingly returned that token to the hands of the Mayor, in one account; in another, how it’d been confiscated, taken away as if from a misbehaving bocher. No matter, it’s not as if He’ll ever find its gate: there’s no secret, no golden door to unlock, slam down without a warrant and torch — only tar, which is impenetrable, unreflective, then the ice above. Despite, He’s having thoughts of a welcome in the grand style, of New York, New York going out of its way for one of its own, though adopted, basketed through bridge and through tunnel, though not yet made good: still, thinking a parade, with every pomp, floats perhaps and tickertape, thousands no millions of them His friends and neighbors how they’re shpritzing themselves all over Him, throwing silken, soweared flowers from the windows, rooftops and terraces, from the highest skyscraping observation decks down to the lowest tenementing fireescapes — Him in a convertible, if any of them they still have, or denting a hardtop, maybe, why not, He’s waving, tophatted, sashwearing, He’s smiling, too, and unforced, with Miss Maydel Whomever beauty queen of the borough of Queens lapping it up from her perch on His lap, there’s Mayor Meir Meyer Himself — Hizzoner, He Who Takeths Away — at the wheel, honking sirens with the songs and shiring along Himself, they all are: offkey brassband music, oompah tubas and tailgate trombones, accompanying the glissy, lispgiddy shrieks of lost happy go lucky went under kinder with their melted popsicles their sticks splintered tongues, everything sticky and shvitzy, schwarmy because now (wishful thinking — with the head of a putz and a stomach in love) it’s summer again, O God it’s an echt real school’s out American summer, but how camp whether day or sleepover hasn’t yet begun amid the mountains Upstate: cityscaped humid bunking with hot, the sun’s out and shining for you…the swirling skirts of the batongirls, baseballbattwirling them flaunting their bloomers kick step kick step along with their ever younger sisters the cheerleaders their skin as pink as that of hotdogs for sale and for kosher, their pompom cotton-candy breasts and their faces seeded with gappy, sappy watermelon grins, the syncopating, offbeat, onbeat, beatenhard lust of the cymbals and drums, Baraabum…becoming forgiven by a choir of angels marching last in His the Grand Marshal’s line, accompanied by a phalanx of miniature harpists, their sheet music fluttering from folders chained to their uniformed halos above; banners, confetti, and streamers, poofs of foam and crepe and bunting shred, and the tricolor, the old flag risen again, all the appurtenances of old glory, of past success and, too, of all the blustery might in the world ever behind it, the power that once preserved every freedom, if only in its assurance (how the parade will end, the floats will become scrap, and then kindling): these tanks in rows and troops, formations of them Avenuewide, in whose treads follow these great foreskinned guns shooting off salutes all around; the eruption of mother’s milk, honeytrailed fireworks foaming, spurt up from the hydrants of Houston Street…then, Him up on high, City Hall’s, atop the Empire State Building’s reviewing platform and there in rainbow ribboned uniform, waving the most demeaning, crapulously beatific acknowledgment to so many little dark subjects of His darkest and littlest whim. Not this month, though. Here He sits amid straw in the back of a cart, jostled and jiggled and pitched this way then that. No more, enough B — this is the month to get real.