A Heaven of Others

by Cohen, Joshua

  How does he know a voice said.

  It was a gust.

  And know this too. He was scrutinized by the sun. Light and warmth despite day or night were denied him, then granted in showers, in snows the color of ash burnt in ovens. As it is said. And that the sand preserved his tracks as it preserved the trail of no other.

  To be here as him is to be hated by even the wind. It is said. Listen to it. Hear it listening. It has been said that in this strangest land he is as much a stranger as It tells him he is.

  Still as the Queen always said It helps to prepare. And so if ever he would find this man named Mohammed he was to say Salaam. And then he was to say his name. Not that the man named Mohammed didn’t know his name but that this ritual was to serve as both a Sign and a Wonder, respectfully speaking, a submission implying in no way the ultimate submission, which is forbidden to him though only by himself and his kind, and that only after this Salaam My Name Is the man named Mohammed would be obliged to rectify any unmistaken mistake all in a matter of immediacy and without further questions neither answers whether they be Of the Above or telluric (such as reincarnation, resurrection and terrestrially yadda)—how he rehearsed the voice saying through him Salaam my name is Jonathan son of Saul A. Schwarzstein he said into pools reflecting his mouth (thinking praise Allah how awesome it is that in heaven you don’t have to brush teeth), the words rippling out, bulls’eyes circling the swell of his Salaam he said my name is Jonathan son of Saul A. is for Aba Schwarzstein, Yoni to my Aba he said who’s As dead as the rocks that shine his mouth with macle as if the stones themselves were the very perspirant tears of an elemental hardness, the swirling water the very sweat of the words Salaam my name is Jonathan son of Saul Aba Schwarzstein and I live at 37 Tchernichovsky Street, apartment number (#) 3, Jerusalem, was how the Queen had taught him to get home when he didn’t know how he was getting there or from where and my Aba’s telephone number it’s # 717736 7-1-seventyseven-3-6 was how he dressrehearsed the undressedness of the audience like he did with his role as Pan Janusz Korczak the lead in last spring’s school play to the terraced tiers of scrubby crevices and crags, the stadiumed shrubbery that horizoned the All: the wrinkly knotted limbs of the putrescent trees topping the murderous cliffs with their sharply cleaved cavelike mouths echoing in return if not his voice then the voice of another he followed as if such horrible pain were his own—a man with a face hanged spreadeagled, nailed thrice to a severe flank of mountain not his.

  Who are you? I asked the man and the man said Salaam.

  And so I said to the man Alaikum to you and then the man asked me Who are you?

  Jonathan son of Saul Schwarzstein and I live at 37 Tchernichovsky Street, Jerusalem, but you can call me Yoni I said to the man Do you know where the Two Mountains are? Where are the Two Mountains? Do you know the man named Mohammed? Where would I find the man named Mohammed? as I answered him with my story and the millennia behind it.

  And so you understand I am a stranger here in your heaven I said to the man. And so you understand a mistake has been made I said to the man. And so you understand I am walking to the Valley between the Two Mountains to make an appeal. That I am seeking rectification is what. Restitution to the Eden of my however inherited however believed belief. Why not. But mostly I just want my parents I said to the man whom I almost do not now remember as anyone other than me.

  It is good I am still able to see you said the man.

  And it is good you are able still to be seen.

  I asked the man what he meant by that and the man said he had been hanging there thrice nailed to the flank forever and so I asked the man Why? and the man said as if in answer that one empty serving of the golden plate a raven he liked to think was Noah’s—though he said he knew no other—had descended from the knife’s edge of the horizon, had plucked out his right eyeball and then flew away. Beaked it up and out with it, so I asked the man Why? and the man said You have a pleasant face, then I asked the man what had he done to incur such a punishment (Alive I had tried to gaze into the future, he said), this Ravenous wrath and the man said Now I am waiting for the distant relative of the raven by whom I mean to accuse the dove to fly down and pluck out my other ball for an eye on the day on which I will see no longer. And then the man said to me nothing, merely opened toothlessness, revealed to me the moons of his tonsils as I left him in the direction of the golden plate, which was yet again serving up nothing at all.

  In heaven, even—dusk, the arrival of night.

  I walked. Thanking all the while I had thought to take a pair of new shoes with me upon my ascent, and thinking that if I had ascended up here wearing my old shoes—which, nonetheless, weren’t really that old—I would have been walking around unshod now or at least in destroyed shoes for a parent’s lifetime (have I neglected to mention I, nu, “redeemed” a new pair and just my size just prior to my ascension, my meeting and greeting of Houri? if so, I repent—if it makes any difference, I tried to grab the least expensive, grub those that would be the least missed). (Not that I needed shoes for this earth or rather it’s that the earth of this heaven is incredibly soft, tender, in feeling much like laying hands upon the stomach of a living human as fat as Uncle Alex in respiration and perhaps perspiring lightly after a full dinner of the Queen’s because the Queen always said he was Too fat to have a Queen of his own. Which was mean. She was his sister.)

  However my new shoes did prove useful—and, at the same time, met their end—as I approached what appeared to be a stream of last light. A dying ray I walked toward, as there did not seem any way or route around it or over. Indeed it was a stream and a stream that had to be crossed, waded through. Dipping my hands in to drink I understood it was honey, which was refreshing to both hunger and thirst, but extremely difficult to pass over or through. And so I stepped in because there was no other way. No bridge whether of wood, iron or human laid out across the flow foot to head. And so I stepped down because there was no other way to step but down and my stepping foot, my left in its new left shoe, became stuck in the honey. Unable to lift my foot there was nothing I could do but step my other right new foot down into the honey as well. Which I did and now both feet in their shoes were stuck fast. Mire and I. But the honey wasn’t flowing but hardening. Amberizing. And quickly. I nearly lost myself and fell but as I spread my hands wide as if to protest my innocence with wings two eagles descended and each took a forefinger into its beak, pulling all of me out but my shoes. A sacrifice but in the air the eagles began to dogfight with one another or maybe not fight but I would say Will: rather one wanted to fly me one way and the other wanted to fly me another and they made this quite evident as they pulled me apart (as if asking me to decide for them and so for me but if I would how would I communicate that decision? I son of Saul, no son of Solomon)—one away to one edge of the golden plate and the other away to the other edge of the golden plate that is edgeless, but not wanting in the least to displease, to disappoint either and so get myself ripped into two living halves who would probably, that far apart, never meet again and join together in famished Farmisht fraternity for the meal once known as Time For Dinner I kept myself as still as inhumanly possible and allowed them to tug me zigzaggingly Zephyrusly though never quite gently east to westward all over the sky and its vault until I had had enough of what I say was indescribable pain and so wrenched them hard both down to the ground, pointing my forefingers as if the accusations of the two witnesses that are required by the Talmud Aba always invoked to two far and high dunes and there willing strength to my arms to hurl them both down even unto the two dunes, one eagle to each with me nested in the valley between where I landed unharmed though they were killed by the impact.

  Brushing sand from himself he gathered the eagles to walk on a wick of smoke to its source, which he sensed originating “within walking distance.” It was a fire in a pit bound by tires and at it there was a boy reclining relaxed.

  He offered the boy his eagles to eat as a meal and the boy wrappe
d the eagles in his headdress that would not burn and buried it under the sand under the fire that required no logs or sticks or twigs nor the tinder of HEADLINES.

  Our meal will be ready soon the boy said.

  I asked the boy Who are you?

  I’m hungry.

  Let me introduce you to starving.

  And then the boy said he was a boy who had died.

  I asked the boy how he had died and the boy asked me the same Who are you?

  And so I said to the boy I am a stranger here, a stranger to you in a heaven not mine and the boy asked me How did you come to be here? and so I said to the boy I had been exploded and the boy asked me Who exploded you and why? and so I said to the boy that a boy exploded me, a boy about my same age and yours too, who had hugged me then exploded me outside of a shoestore located on Tchernichovsky Street in Jerusalem the Third City of at least one Empire and the boy said to me he had once—embraced and—exploded someone or other himself, indeed that that’s how he had merited here, by martyring himself he’d earned for his death this life after life and a death that was glorious and so I asked the boy Who? and the boy said to me I don’t know and so I asked him again Who was it? and the boy said all he knew was that it was a boy about his own age and mine too, outside of a shoestore on a street named for a Russian of sorts, he remembered, maybe a Finn the boy said in Jerusalem I’m not sure, though he called it Al Quds (Abul Ala al-Maari Way, he said, maybe it was, a writer, I’m feeling a poet), which is home to Quabbat As-Sakhrah and Al Aqsa meaning the Furthest have I ever been there That far, I asked the boy why as in Why did you do it? and the boy said to me He was not you, do not worry—And he was not you either was what I said to the boy who said to me that our meal was ready and that We should wash before we eat but there was no water to be found, only smoke and a tire.

  They ate (in heaven, no food is forbidden), though neither would fill.

  As I turned to take leave of the boy the boy said to me Wait a sec.

  I asked the boy Why? and the boy said to me You must wait here until I’ll return momentarily and so again I asked the boy Why?

  And the boy said to me You have provided the meal of the two quailing eagles and so I must provide in return. Understand. Please and thank you. That you have given me a gift and so in return a gift from me is required. You get it. My man. Understand was what the boy said to me and so I said to the boy it’s not necessary and what’s more it’s not even wanted I said Don’t get angry with me because a wait and a return and its gift however required or merited will only delay me and I must not delay instead I must seek the Two Mountains and I must find the Two Mountains and the Valley between in which I must seek the man named Mohammed and in which I must find the man named Mohammed so as to set everything but everything right, please understand and yes thank you no you. Slap me one. All I have. But by the time I’d finished saying my meaning to him the boy had risen like smoke and was gone and many multitudinously beastly creatures, jackals, had surrounded the fire and prevented my leaving—they were jackals, but were odd, emaciated, crescentshaped and up on the hindmost legs of their twelve: they opened their great alabaster jaws to slash me to my stand, circling they were closing in on me constantly nearer and tighter, furling always as if a scroll of living, sinewy parchment on which was written I would say inscrutable laws (an alphabet of rips, slashmarks, selfinflicted bites, cuts and ingrammatical tears), coming closer ever closer just to smother me into sustenance, theirs, until I could stand just in the fire itself and atop its very flame, which I did knowing I could survive the fire longer if not by that much than I could survive, have survived the fifty it seemed jackals they seemed that they were constantly circling me and closing in on me and so I stood in the fire that instead of burning me or further charring the exploded and so already burnt, died underneath me to a pillar then an ashy wisp in the air and all was again dark and only the sound, the smacking screech of the jackals, which were manifestations of their hunger as insatiable as Time, said to me the jackals still were, where they were still and that I was not theirs, I mean yet.

  I stood in the pit ringed with a tire and there awaited the return of the boy.

  But just as boys lack so does heaven.

  Heaven has no continuity. After before. Heaven has no consequence. No cause of causality. Without let’s say Æffect. A covenant broken. An upheaval, overturned twice. For one: After living a life of morality an eternity is necessary in which to become accustomed to amorality. This is why many of the righteous become many of the wicked in heaven and why they are punished there. Here is why hell, which is as amoral as heaven, hosts more of the righteous than he will encounter anywhere ever.

  Morning if you will, the golden plate returned but empty as always.

  He walked long and unshod to the Two Mountains to their Valley and so to the man named Mohammed. As he had nothing left of the supplies packed for him by Queen Houri (scavenged willowpills, gnawable hides, scraps of bark, dried beetles and a small sackling of orificial lint), he was again hungry, thirsty and exhausted now too, despite passing wonderments on his way that he had never once before wondered, and that (and the hunger and thirst) (and the exhaustion as well) might have been why they did him nothing at all: For one, the calves that dwelt in the abandoned enormously abaloneous shells of extinct snails enriched him to nihil. For another, neither the rams trumptrumpeting his arrival (rams that to communicate blow and intake through their own horns as their sole means of respiring, horns that in this heaven are attached to these rams, which are so breathing and so communicating understandably endangered, in the reverse of their terrestrial disposition). Nor the fallen brigade of just pubescent boys with wicks set into their nipples, waxen wicks dribbling a sexual sebum from the dead middles of their intumesced areolæ, the wicks fuselike, first pubes first braided then lit—or else the ancient people desiccated to the ostensibly leprous, stuffed with earth (heaven’s provision being the opposite of terra’s: instead of burying a person in the ground heaven burying the ground inside of a person), their arms out legs spread, leaking earth and spitting worms through green mucous reddening membranes while shouting to him screaming at once in a vomitus of that fishbowl gravel and routedirt, Salaam Salaaam Salaaaam—all this rendering him no whys, maybe also because his eyes were fixed as ahead as ahead can ever hope to become fixed in a desert: he had sought and he had found the Valley of Nails.

  This was the Valley between the Two Mountains that had been going to him as he had been coming to it.

  Dwellingplace of Mohammed, who would right wrong, who would left right. Place of Mohammed who would map the nonexistent. Ruled by Allah the inextant, who would teach the dead.

  But was heaven, was the true heaven if it even existed, worth this descent, such a fall through the Valley of Nails, of rusty, bent battered nails, of all these old oxidized, dead senseless, headhammered to wilting nails bloodcaked, dripping remnants, the remains of all flesh, their iron lengths tapering violently to the dullest point possible that still would pierce skin if with the most martyring of pain, points dappled with manifold shards of rust, strands of sinew, hunks of tendon smeared with yellowish and oily fat, spiraled serpentine in intricate nearly King Solomonaic ornaments of hair in many hues: a lightly spread carpet hovering just above the slumberous bed, a netting of heads’ hair and toupees’ and wigs’ meshing in a rumor of transparency, in the sheerest shades of black, lightest gold, gingy red and gray to smoke’s white floating just atop these nails pointing every which way as if in the shock of total accusation, the sting of absolute blame?

  He stood at the lip of the Valley of Nails and said his Salaam then was quiet. We are all the saying of Allah in the voice of the man named Mohammed and so when I say my Salaam to the man named Mohammed I am saying it in his voice and It is Allah that is saying It, through me, for me and as me as well. However I must say it too. My mouth must submit. And so then he said his name on his own. And his address. His Aba’s telephone number, his Queen’s maiden name,
which had been Federman, and that of his Queen’s mother, his Queen’s Queen’s (Smilowitz), the half he remembered of the many digited identification number of the MERKAVA Mk. 4 V-12 diesel 48 round he remembered, for such was the tank that his Uncle Alex known as Sasha to everyone but him had half driven through the streets of Gaza at night (before he’d been fully desked) and around its fences around and around them all over again, his tank itself a fence, a fence of one plank in the morning merging into a fence of all tanks and again, Salaam Salaam Salaam Salaam and Salaam to which there was no answer but wind.

  A stirring in the Valley, a living presence that then incredibly without disturbing the nails, their disposition and without, either, the warning of a rattle, the dull clinkclank of slimy chains—enormously a serpent slithers out of the Valley its naildark tail’s forever length scraped and sliced both by the nails it lived among and by the nail it was, rendering its skin always in a state of shed, always in many states of many sheds no longer. The snake hisses me in, intimates I would say that it would guide me in and through, would lead me to the Valley’s other lip and so to my salvation. I say Yes I say and as the serpent hurls itself at me (as if it’s a great effort to strangle me in), as it lunges directly at me on its one good hind leg—upon its vertiginous volutinous treetrunk that also resembled the corkscrewily coiled pod of a carob wilted—I jump away, I turn and run as if it’s not heaven but the weekend and I’m still in sneakers not schoolshoes or those shoplifted and naked now, turning again to face the snake from atop a promontory of salt excommunicated from heaven’s face where I’m standing, panting, only to behold it fallen limply to the ground, its tongue hanging out in a vicious fork fading from pigpink to darkness distended from the lip of the Valley, as dead as I stand.