A Heaven of Others by Joshua Cohen

I’d laid out and some even felt it necessary to leave early and others to go to sleep to take a nap on the couch by the time the third mohel he showed up the son of the second mohel and the grandson of the first his grandAba who finally did it and did it well though he and despite his having been brought up as a Kotzker a Gerer anyway insisted on sucking away in surprise Aba said I was nervous it being the third mohel’s first bris yours I mean being the first er um putz the Rav ever cut though all turned out fine better for you than for me I mean what with the amount of drinking I did even after it all was over and you were back to bed sleeping soundly Aba said as you should be sleeping right now it’s so late and so instead tonight that night I mean to say he my Aba told me no story at all not the Polisher Rebbe story and not the story of Lebanon Aba said it was after all Altogether too late and said further that if I was good and went to sleep right away meaning not much later than now then he would owe me not one but amazingly two stories for tomorrow night we had begun bargaining haggling handling like this was the Shuk as if this were a table I had had in a past life in the marketsquare at Peshischa and not my very own bedroom in which Aba would be beholden to me for both the story set in Poland and the Lebanon story and so I said to him Aba OK which is an American word we liked to say to one another I said 10-4 B.ravo C.harlie Fine by the movies agreed to his terms You’re the boss I said which we liked to say too because what else could I do besides what I did which was to try to get to sleep right away because now at least it felt like I had something to think about something to remember to preserve like pickled pomegranate or like the jellies the preserves and spreads that downstairs Misses Soloff flecked with the rusty rind of the etrog both sour and sweetened them the many versions of these manifold stories I remembered or tried to remember To compare and contrast them as my teacher Moreh Kulp at the school terribly next door on Tchernichovsky Street always said to hold them both up as if the two tablets of the Ten Commandments to smash against Aba’s fivefold versions on the night that would begin not tomorrow but the day after that hasn’t yet dawned but when Aba he said the Shema O Israel the Adonai our Elohaynu the Adonai is One both Adonai and Elohaynu and many other names just as much I didn’t know as he kissed me goodnight Laila Tov Yom Huledet Sameach as he turned out the light I found much to my astonishment dismay mystification perplexity too all at once I couldn’t just then remember any version of either of the two stories he my Aba most often told whether it be the Poland story or the Lebanon story or even the occasional Time the Taxi got me Lost in Queens and I Missed your Cousins’ Wedding story I couldn’t remember any of them that night not even my favorite which was the Polisher Rebbe story my favorites which could have been on any one occasion any one of three Polisher Rebbe stories none of which I could remember that night that in one of them the Polisher Rebbe was asked by a Prominent Gentile though it’s not known as the Prominent Gentile Story “Do gentiles have souls?” and the Polisher Rebbe answered him “that since you a gentile and a Prominent Gentile at that asked that question that that question must then stand as your proof and as ours that Yes you indeed do have a soul” while in another a man he’s a Jewish man and he’s dying an Old Poor Jewish Man he’s dying as usual and the Polisher Rebbe he tells him to go to the Polisher Priest and convert to have himself converted to Christianity Catholicism whatever it is that they believe in the Popes and so the poor old Jewish man goes to the Polishist Priest and converts and lives In fact he lives only because he converts but when the next New Year comes around Rosh Hashanah meaning the Head of the Year how he heads to