Читаем Witz полностью

STEINSTEIN:: STINESTINE, STEINSTEIN:: STEENSTEEN,

STEINSTEIN:: STINESTEEN, STEINSTEIN:: STEENSTINE,

STINESTINE:: STINESTINE, STINESTINE:: STEENSTEEN,

STINESTINE:: STINESTEEN, STINESTINE:: STEENSTINE,

STEINSTINE:: STINESTEEN, STEINSTINE:: STEENSTINE,

STINESTEIN:: STINESTEEN, STINESTEIN:: STEENSTINE,

STEINSTINE:: STINESTEEN, STEINSTINE:: STEENSTINE,

STINESTEIN:: STINESTEEN, STINESTEIN:: STEENSTINE…then above everything, at the very fall of the wall, the height of its highest loosening brick leaning to topple atop the slats of the trees roofing the trailer — it’s the head of a dog, killed in attack or that’s just how its expression’s been preserved for the mounting.

And, what’s this is all Benjamin thinks to say, standing naked.

Don’t you know, Leeds says on his way up the stumps to the trailer, figgering I’ll trust you — it’s the plan, understand.

No.

I’m just pulling your putz, son, what’s that they say, pishing buttons, and he gasps, leaning his head out the trailer’s lone window, also its chimney, and puffing smoke — this stuff was here when I moved in, you know, came with the wall…

But you must be freezing, he tries to say, through deeply worrisome coughing: come inside, chow’s almost on.

A trailer little more than an oven, its longways spanned down the middle with a flagpole fallen, suspended from window to window, one of its ends still topped with an eagle melted of wings: stolen from its stand outside the local euthenics school, a State Police outpost abandoned to tragedy and its rampageous dogs, a city hall with no city left to its name once the ironworks went bust, the mill broke down, rolled its stone to seal tight its sepulcher. It’s now the spit for the pig, the leftover half of a whole sow Leeds’d been feeding on the finely mealed remains of minority mutts then slaughtered just last week for his Xmas, since turned, a mite sour: an appreciably fat, devastatingly hairy faygele pinko of a sacrificial animal, an oinker one flank remaining being lashed with thick whips of greasy flame, a conflagration fed halfwise, crosssectioned, with bushels of leaves drifted down on wispy midnight wipings of dreck, then stoked, too, toward its premium rump, with its young — Leeds left its piglets inside as a sweetening. Kill and heat, a recipe as old as fire and death. To improve, he takes what’s left of the apple from his helmet, stuffs it into the mouth of the porker. A locomotive puff: a snout’s two smokestacks, one for you, one for me. Tickled pink, more like gagged. Pig, the food of the Gods, Leeds says as he heaps on it rocksalt that might be nits from his hair, the only white meat for me. Trichinosis, it’s government fearmongering, don’t be fooled, it’s all disinformation…subversion, a repression mentality — afraid of the psychic gifts, keep on giving. Benjamin freezing and unable to breathe. Mind it, will you? It just needs to warm up…and Leeds heads outside, returns up the stumped stoop with a canister of gas, pours it to empty over the spit; it flares, their meal singes; he leans over to savor and so basting the whole dish crude with his beard, then shoves an arm up the animal’s tract — it comes out utterly far from clean, so treyf ’s served.

A table’s outside, one of the portapotties toppled lengthwise, halfway drained, and Benjamin’s sent out to set it.

Plates? He asks again at the doorway and Leeds distractedly hands Him a sheaf of papers that comment last week in obituary, eulogistic columns.