Alexander Stessin
Translated by the author
***
She says, "It's bad, I know, but for him it's worse,"
talking about her husband while they wait
for the attending oncologist. She rehearses
her complaints. And the nurse, grumbling at fate,
brings him a pillow, a drink, a magazine.
He's in his eighties. A kidney cancer patient.
Thin as a rail, but his wife is thinner.
The dark, the camps, they are both survivors
of Treblinka or Dachau.
Doubtful, they look
at the medical student - one of ours, or not?
Yes, I say, I'm Jewish. And then they start up
about those goyim ("the other doctors")...Next spring
they will have been married for sixty years exactly.
She points at her husband and proudly tells me,"Back then
he looked just like you... except he was better-looking".
The loyal husband retreats, always letting her speak.
She's saying now, "We fasted on Yom Kippur
even when we were there, we would stash away our bread,
always fasted... But not this year, just don't have the strength..."
She says, "When it's his time to go, it'll be my time, too."
He's always freezing; always remembering by heart:
"Mortals see only the hinderparts of the Lord," -
rolls up in his blanket and says, as he's falling asleep -
"Next year in Jerusalem. Everyone will be saved."
NOW
1. The last phone sex industry worker in the middle of nowhere possibly in Ohio caters to the needs of her only remaining client - not for money, for old time's sake, during afterhours. In the age of online sex chats and triple X websites the two of them find themselves on the outskirts of life. The fervor's not what it used to be though it seems the voice ages somewhat slower than does the body. And the body they've never seen: for all these years their passion's been blind, their closeness has kept a long distance. One could say they're purists, still managing to stay true to the rules of a dying genre. At eight PM she takes the call, begins with a "what's your name, baby?", lights up a cig, hears his familiar voice, and responds with tenderness: "Nice to meet you, Ricardo..." 2. One day before the projected end of the world (as predicted by the Mayan calendar) in the pedestrian stream of pre-Christmas Manhattan you turn your head to the sound of Russian speech. A middle-aged woman is talking into her cell phone in that official, iron-clad tone of voice. This is the tone you hear in crowded consulates where the visa-seekers form an impatient line, come to a boil, fan themselves with the filled out forms, while behind the glass shield two female employees chuckle, discussing some gossip, pay no attention to the ticking clock, then finally turning their gaze to those waiting, proceed to answer with some annoyance: "Processing requires eight to ten business days ". It is all routine, and as she presses her cell phone between shoulder and cheek, she repeats machine-like: "Yes, I know you were told to come back tomorrow. But tomorrow's the end of the world. Please, come on Monday". *** Across the Bering strait all winters come in crossing light with particles of powder too stark to see and little in the way of localizing any higher power. Through the blank language of the Moscow snow with quicklime-speckled faces in the clear, each day, like a mass transit passenger, starts in the front progressing to the rear. So goes the tune that someone else records among brick college buildings and impasses, contrived designs, unevenly lit words, white nights, black mountains, everything that passes.