Leonard Michaels
ISAAC
Talmudic scholar, master of cabala, Isaac felt vulnerable
to a thousand misfortunes in New York, slipped on an icy street,
lay on his back and wouldn't reach for his hat. People walked,
traffic screamed, freezing damp sucked through his clothes. He let
his eyes fall shut - no hat, no freezing, no slip, no street, no New
York, no Isaac - and got a knock against the soles of his shoes. It
shook his teeth. His eyes flashed open, darkness spread above him
like a predatory tree, a dozen buttons glared and a sentence flew
out, beak and claws, with a quality of moral sophistication indis–
tinguishable from hatred: "What's-a-matta, fuckhead, too much
vino?" He'd never heard of vino, but had a feeling for syntax–
fuckhead was himself. He said, "Eat pig shit," the cop detected
language, me-it became I-thou and the air between them a warm,
viable medium. He risked English: "I faIled on dot ice, tenk you."
The man in the next bed wasn't alive. Grey as a stone, hanging
over the edge of the mattress, the head was grim to consider. But
only a fool points out the obvious; Isaac wouldn't tell a nurse. Even
so, he couldn't dismiss a head upside down, staring at him, and
found himself crying. He had traveled thousands of miles to fall
down like a fuckhead and lay beside a corpse. Crying loosened
muscles. His shoulders began moving. Shoulders moving, he dis–
covered arms moving, and if arms, why not legs? In his left leg
moved thunder and lightning. But he sat up and shouted, "Sitting!"
A nurse ripped open his pajamas and shoved in a bedpan. "I ap–
preciate," he said, and defecated.
Before dawn he had dressed himself and was in the street.
Stumbling, pressing into the dark as
if
pursued by dogs. More and
more he tilted left and thus, beneath horrible pain, felt horrible
geometry. His left leg was shorter than his right. He pressed into a
phone booth. His sister screamed when she heard his voice. He told
