A Heaven of Others Read online

  Shoes

  Shoes. Shoes. Shoes. And Shoes to pair good measure. There were always shoes. Never shoe. No one in my house (meaning in our apartment on Tchernichovsky Street, which Aba always called The Road That Should Have Been Named After Bialik) had ever said Shoe. Had never said I can’t find a shoe. Had never said I lost my shoe. As in just the word. Like singularly all alone. Or even Where the EXBLEEPLETIVE is my shoe? Asked Have you ever seen, smelled or touched its pleather, tasted your own foot in your mouth and its shoe along with it, heard it sneaker from behind an approach? And never when you’ve decompressed, becalmed yourself enough to ask What have you done with my shoe? Or Where has my shoe walked off to? Ever. Shoes were to be kept together, preferably, to the Queen, to be kept tied together, two shoelaces—or are they four? or one?—left knotted, strangling one another until the morning of our fingers would worry them separate, apart. Loose and achy. Laces to lie exhausted upon the lemonmopped linoleum gasping for air. Limp and then finally—maybe once a season for me when I was living and growing (speaking terrenely), maybe only every five, six or even every ten or so years for Aba and the Queen—when they died they would be tied together again, then bagged to go to the Poor. In bags of plastic brought home from the Mega Hypermarket built atop the grave of Pierre Koenig, I never knew who he was until now though I knew Pierre Koenig Street. A General vs. the Nazis in Africa then the Poor, wherever they were and whoever too, as I never knew the Poor but the Poor knew my shoes. Made for Kazakh feet. For Ethiopian feet on a boy probably three years younger than I, once was. For whom they’d still be small, pinching. A shoe for their foot, the Poor’s: one huge hungry, shoesucking, laceslurping monster with an xillion stomptromping feet.

  My son should study Aba always said My son should study the podiatry of wandering, All of the pedestrian interpretations of Exodus and then laughed until the Queen slapped him on the scapulate, his back as broad as that of an ox. But I at not ten nonyears had had the opportunity to study nothing at all until the first fully naked girl who was also the first totally nude woman I had ever remembered, beheld for the first outside the celestial shoestore stared curiously at my shoes, then knelt down and examined them, sniffed at them and even lightly licked with the quick tip of her tongue engreening in the ether. Then What are they? she asked in a hundredthousand voices all trying to say as One, Whose force measured me, knocked me over with Why? and so I rose and said to her what they were They are shoes I said to her that shoes like these are for feet like these are for walking like this and then to Show not just Tell as Moreh Kulp always said I walked away from her for ten steps and then to her again another six or seven eager step earnest steps as she nodded but obviously could not understand.

  Understand that when Aba had to buy new shoes, was In the market for replacement footwear he’d said that morning, that that was an event of maybe twice a childhood, once in my life. That’s why we were at the site of my death, an event too, once in my life, a tenth birthday as well, not to forget, but before the toy as I’ve said—or would they, could they have been toys?—it was shoes as has been said, because yesterday’s yesterday a nail had come hungry, toothed flesh. Another pair fit for the Poor, which won’t fit. A hundred-hundred shoeboxes upended for my grave, a footstone. Pace through the mourning. But my shoes are still alive Aba had said that morning over coffee for him and tea for the Queen he’d said that his shoes were Still living. A potentiality for resurrection at the very least. Not your shoes the Queen was Always right, had to be, said that his shoes were Sick, terminally. Flatlining, from blip blip bleep to one long sheep. Arches fallen in, not sandstone but Aba’s. And then the sheep, the lamb, the spotless calf that was me, the healthiest one and the whitest. A sheep with an Aba for an Aba who wore dead cows on his feet he walked dead always more.

  A knotting of thought. That the heaven my grandAba would say me about was not truly believed in. Probably not. That it was possibly null, in the realm of the not yet existent. And another—as if a scatter of shots. That my parents needed another child like they would have wanted me to survive, Desperately and themselves too. To pair as if flippers or slippers. They would have saved me if they could but they couldn’t have even themselves. Merely parents. Marriage then mating. Overprotective isn’t how to be God. You have to live I say walk outside your own house (apartment I say), your own street (Tchernichovsky), your own Jerusalem city and the world itself on that wide and open and brightly clear afternoon of summermost waste when Aba said Shoes first, toy later. Have to feel free I say but no there’s always a ritual to be observed, an indebt to honor. A blessing in the waiting, twophrased at the crossroads it lies. Again Shoes Aba said we were In the market for shoes. For him the Queen insisted we had to get shoes for him because Aba Had walked his old shoes out to nail to salted nail because he’d walked his old souls dead and if he wasn’t on his toes then his feet along with them. Soon the son of enough. Sky the toenail under which he walked them to thin at least they’d agree (Aba had to), the sole of the earth—salted so as nothing would ever again grow from its grave. A coffin-less coffin’s nail was what was hurting him in the walk from his bedroom, which was theirs too, through the hallway lined with the photographs—first from the bedroom three black and white, then after the bathroom four more in color who remembers of what besides me or who shot them—and inspect each one, individually, for level hang on his run to the bathroom where he’d spend they’d feel like hours Resting his eyes on the newspaper the Queen’d slipped under the door a moment after its arrival much much much earlier when the large print was understood by her to be explained away to me later after I woke up from school (to which I walked, terribly, next door and encroaching, only ten shoelengths down Tchernichovsky Street), then walked from the bathroom through the hallway back to his bedroom again, which was theirs to dress leaving the bathroom Under the guard of his stench, which the Queen always hated, or else just said she did but which I always found invitingly pleasant, nosewarming, congenially flushing of the congenital sinus, then rushed back from his bedroom to the bathroom for a less timely sitting in his Reek again the Queen always said after which he walked through the hallway again and further now down to the kitchen where he sat for the breakfast the Queen always made at which he ate and drank coffee while he read the black of the paper (the SPORTS, the ARTS, the ARTS again), as the Queen only after serving Aba and me serving herself instant café or tea she read the front of the paper again, which are the HEADLINES, which tell the importance of the day or of yesterday and what will not happen now or cannot ever hope upon hopes happen again to walk through the hallway from the kitchen to the frontdoor where he walked right into his shoes waiting painfully on the mat that said the word SHALOM we’d always wipe our shoes on and just step all over, opened the frontdoor and walked out with a kiss for each of us but the Queen’s on one cheek of two sumptuously risen Sabbath loaves despite the day of the week though mine was always on my forehead, on the head even then growing out of my head and right out the frontdoor but out of which what walking and where I did not know exactly, precisely, not to the step this walking the Queen said All over the whole world Creationdom and Why do you do that to yourself? was what she’d always ask Why don’t you take a staff position at the Symphony Philharmonic Orchestra? or at the Opera? Aba would always answer her by saying that he had enough opera at home Particularly Straussified, Richard and so a Freelancer he was a true Freelancer and to remain a true Freelancer as opposed to a Staff Jobber because he was a tuner, he was a piano tuner Aba always said I don’t want to tune the same pianos month after month, moon in and moon out, I want to tune different pianos, and as many as possible, to redeem, to save as many as possible, pianos, that’s the job of a piano tuner Aba always said meaning he often joked A failed pianist then the Queen would stare him evil then hug him tight (but we didn’t have a piano in our apartment on Tchernichovsky Street because Aba wouldn’t allow a Big black cancer noise to interfere with his life Aba once said and I just now remember that m
y Aba he once also told me that When two strings are mathematically perfectly in tune they actually sound discordant. And that The job of a piano tuner is to tune a piano, Aba once said, the strings of a piano, Aba once said, intentionally discordant, knowledgeably dissonant, slightly Aba once said ever so slightly and that only then will all the strings sound as they should—when the hammers come crashpedaling down—In perfect, total harmony Aba once said Which Aba then added is of course only our perception of—), but after the Queen had enabled his enabling then let him go, hugged him only to let him loose for a kiss once again on the other loaved cheek as if to demonstrate her sympathy with his empathy and the both of their last, I did not know where he went (and whether or not the Queen’s cheeks were lonely without him, as I’d always leave for school alongside my Aba who’d leave me at the school halfway down Tchernichovsky Street on his way off to wherever), rather I knew that he went to the Symphony Philharmonic Orchestra and to piano showrooms and musicstores throughout Jerusalem and even greater Tel Aviv and to grandQueens’ attics and basements and cellars and to hospitals and schools and theaters and fancy Frenchtalian restaurants and also though not as much as I think he wanted to to the Opera and the Ballet and to the Conservatory or Conservatories, but I had never been to any of those places, not to the Philharmonic neither to piano showrooms nor to musicstores and all my grandQueens all my grandQueens were As dead as music as my Aba used to say and our apartment on Tchernichovsky Street though it had a garden and tree did not have an attic or a basement or even a cellar and thank God I’ve never been in the hospital (though school is school and next door at that, five shoe-lengths away if I didn’t do my homework), but then neither have I ever been to the theater not Yiddish nor Shakespearean nor to fancy Frenchtalian restaurants as starry as the skies of al-Khwarizmi let’s say or the Strauss Opera or the Stravinsky-Tchaikovsky Ballet, or the Conservatory of Conservatories there to clapclap Concertvatories because Aba he wanted me to be a lawyer or a professor of History, Semantics or and to speak his parent’s language, which was German at the University Aba also walked to to tune—walking himself like a tuned string Aba once said he Walked around loosening, slackening throughout the day then tightening up to pure gut again nearer to home, to his truest pitch at the corner of Tchernichovsky &—then walked from the University to the shvitz and then after, walked to his friend Tannenbaum’s house, which was a real house and not just an apartment three floors, three bedrooms and two bathrooms with An open kitchen the Queen would always say when she was jealous for A moment of peace, a cup of coffeetea or maybe a nip of vodka with slivovitz after which he’d walk back home to Tchernichovsky Street and our apartment building outside of which I’d wait in the doorway and always impatiently for him to pick me up for our every Sunday afternoon walk into the Old City of Jerusalem, which was entered always through the Jaffa Gate past David the King about whom Aba once told me that in 1889 he said I think it was once in 1898 I think that’s when this rampart was demolished, it was destroyed and the moat that used to poison around it filled up to prepare for the arrival For the triumphant arrival Aba once said of Kaiser Wilhelm II as a guest of the Sultan of Turkey And so that’s the huge hole in the wall Aba had said as we walked into the Old City, the huge gaping void in the high sun of wall all about Herod and the three towers of Phasael, Mariamne and Hippicus Aba said as we walked in deeper into the Old City went farther, into the spiced hustle, the huddled dealdoing, zoom in on the seesighting, but then instead of further history, which is further explanation further enlightenment or illumination abruptly Aba said this once to Ignore all that trash (though he used a much stronger word), Ignore all this rubble, these names and their dates that are only the many other names we use to individuate indivisible Time, Yoni, save them for later, which is never, If not now, when, my little Rav Hillel today (which was the first day before the shoestore and so the last day before the last Monday of life for me, for him and for his shoes as the nail was even then gnawing up) I want you Aba said wincing To observe all these tourists and only the tourists as we walked as Aba talked Observe all these tourists but don’t sit in judgment of them just you remove yourself, he said Stand still at a distance that comes from being native to a world this FOUL LANGUAGE wonderful, Yon, and take all of it in: The French and the German, Yon, always the youngest Germans Germany can afford to export, two rows of ten each with matching yellowtrimmed totebags, The umbrellawielding Italianevs with their compact designer umbrellas for their umbrellas and then you have the Polishers, Just look at that group of tiny Polisher nuns being shepherded past, this herd of miniature nundonkeys, Parvenu parvum don’t you think, Yo? all these donkeys being ridden by all these midgetized, glandular problem nuns as if in A defensive maneuver against this oncoming phalanx of teenage Greekskis, Mind your step, each face of theirs as if the floor of an obsolete oil press being rolled Their eyes the stomping of grapes, Yon, and Don’t forget to bow to the Britishate with their cement teeth and concrete molars being guided past us by an American as we walked Aba and I holding hands with the Australians and the Japanese, the Koreans (God, what ideas do they have? Aba asked) and the Americans, yes, God, look at the Americans as we walked Aba and I with my face tunneling into his armpit, soaking up the Tannenbaum’s vodka with a W on its label Aba was sweating the smell of rotting prehistoric Aba said Pleistocene fish the street always paved our tongues with to lick at our lips, yes, the American, Yoni, Observe the Americans was what Aba then said: for example, Their fat, it simply obliterates any waist, it quite simply absolves the figure of the human of form And then their intentions, for instance, which are as immaculate as their collective and yet anonymous conscience, which is unconscionable, Aba said, Like just see how many Tshirts they buy, Yoni! Enumerate them! Tshirt after Tshirt, after shirt after cruciform tee all in the shape of that Jew we once crucified up on that hill at which Aba pointed a finger as if accusing the very set of the sun All for them and for all their relations all their unshapely fat actually unshaped at all Aba said Flabelliform bodies, the Father, the Son and the Globoid God! how many bodies do Americans have? how many bodies does it take to make one American? Aba asked, while the one body here is out touring Jerusalem, the Cardo, the Armenian Quarter, the Holy Sepulcher and its Church, another body’s left back home building missiles and some other body’s lined up at the local kindergarten to vote and yet another body’s stuck in neutral in the drive-in-and-see-thru, or out basking on the southernmost beach in central Florida or else pressed up against Minnie Mouse’s plasticine nipplessness Aba said That must be why they need so many Tshirts, this must be what they need them for all of these bodies, for all of their bodies All of them going every which way all at once, That’s why they hoard them then compliment each other on them the shirts in an America in which it’s not polite to compliment a fellow American on his or especially her body or bodies on threat of let’s say prosecution incarceration Corporal slash Capital Punishment Aba said Mister Jonathan Pollard but in which it’s more than permissible to compliment them on their Tshirt or shirts Aba said And just hear them, Yoni, will you? just listen to them and you, Yon, can save yourself all the money in the universe on all of those Hollywood movies, you can pick up on All that dialogue the ropes knotted off to the tropes just by listening in and then smell them, Yo: smellessness, deodorized, they have no whiff whatsoever, they’re without any scent at all as if they’re not merely animals just like everyone else, like me Aba said or like you Or else as if the season—second—of spring If you can imagine it Aba asked lasting a whole year and around again into yet another spring Aba said They smell like a thousand months of a million moons of the month of Adar six months ago and its Purim until the world just pops fat out of its box on the calendar on the wall in the kitchen Aba said to me As if all the days of Nisan and their Aba said Pesadich nights had been sent spinning down into his mouth for him to laugh them down into himself Aba laughed his laugh again and again until we had reached the Kotel at which my Aba’s laugh became a light hack
(despite the walk he always smoked, NOBLESSE AMERICAN BLUES and the occasional occasionally stinky cheroot when not in the presence of the Queen), then became his deep wheeze I thought it was until I realized his laugh had turned in his gut to spring up through his throat into a seriousness I’d never previously known Aba hazarded with the heaviest of lips, until his Laugh Laugh and Laugh had turned and almost imperceptibly into the word MA-A-RAV was what Aba said in the language we used to speak together whenever we spoke Aba said MA-A-RAV ever so faintly again and again he said MA-A-RAV, which means in every language WEST Aba said WEST WEST WEST WEST WEST.

  Nakedness

  Nakedness is the formlessness of the void. In the Genesis of the Torah, in the first chapter of the first book of the first and only Torah (if only in the second “sentence,” perhaps), existence is described as being without form and void. And yet as beingness still. This means that existence before Creation was naked. And that Creation was a covering of this nakedness. Modesty, only. I say this because here where I find myself is naked. Here there is totally nude. Though I would like to think I share not much with those I encounter here I must admit we are all formless voids too. O naked us. Pity the nude, though I’m shod and selfpitied. Why we are all formless voids is because we have all long since surrendered—whether willingly or not—any pretense toward individuality. Freeing our souls has meant losing them. Forever, I mean.