Everything Is Illuminated (25 page)

The day he made love from behind for the first time: I’ve given much thought to what mother said about watchmakers. She was so persuasive, but I’m not yet sure if I agree. I heard her and father yelling in their bedroom, which kept me awake most of the night, but when I finally did sleep, I slept soundly.

It’s not that he was ashamed, or even that he thought he was doing something wrong, because he knew that what he was doing was right, more right than anything he saw anyone do, and he knew that doing right often means feeling wrong, and if you find yourself feeling wrong, you’re probably doing right. But he also knew that there is an inflation-ary aspect to love, and that should his mother, or Rose, or any of those who loved him find out about each other, they would not be able to help but feel of lesser value. He knew that I love you also means I love you more than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that no one loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that I love no one else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else. He knew that it is, by love’s definition, impossible to love two people. (Alex, this is part of the reason I can’t tell my grandmother about Augustine.)

The second was also a widow. Still ten, he was invited by a schoolmate to a play at the shtetl theater, which also served as dance hall and twice-a-year synagogue. His ticket corresponded to a seat that was already taken by Lista P, whom he recognized as the young widow of the first victim of the Double House. She was small, with wisps of thin brown hair hanging out of her tight ponytail. Her pink skirt was con-spicuously smooth and clean — too smooth, too clean — as if she had washed and ironed it dozens of times. She was beautiful, it’s true, beautiful for the pitiably meticulous care with which she attended to every detail. If one were to say that her husband was immortal, insofar as his cellular energy dissipated into the earth, fed and fertilized the soil, and en-couraged new life to grow, then so did her love go on living, diffused among the thousands of daily things to do — such a magnitude of love that even when divided so many ways, it was still enough to sew buttons onto shirts that would never again be worn, gather fallen twigs from the bases of trees, and wash and iron skirts a dozen times between wearings.

I believe . . . , he began, showing her his ticket.

But if you look, Lista said, showing him her own, which clearly indicated the same seat, it is mine.

But it’s also mine.

She began to mutter about the absurdity of the theater, the mediocrity of its actors, the foolishness of its playwrights, the inherent silli-ness of drama itself, and how it was no surprise to her that those morons should botch up something so simple as providing one seat for each pa-tron. But then she noticed his arm, and was overcome.

It seems we have only two options, she said, sniffling. Either I sit on your lap or we get out of here. As it turned out, they reversed the order and did both.

Do you like coffee? she asked, moving through her immaculate kitchen, touching everything, reorganizing, not looking at him.

Sure.

A lot of younger people don’t care for it.

I do, he said, although in truth he’d never had a cup of coffee.

I’m going to move back in with my mother.

Excuse me?

This house was supposed to be for when I was married, but you know what happened.

Yes. I’m sorry.

Would you like some, then? she asked, fingering a cabinet’s polished handle.

Sure. If you’re going to have some. Don’t make some just for me.

I will. If you want some, she said, and picked up a sponge, and put the sponge down.

But not just for me.

I will.

Two years and sixty-eight lovers later, Safran understood that the tears of blood left on Lista’s sheets were virginal tears. He remembered the circumstances of the death of her soon to be husband: a scaffolding collapse that took his life the morning of the wedding as he walked to kneel before the Dial, making Lista a widow only in spirit, before the marriage could be consummated, before she could bleed for him.

My grandfather was in love with the smell of women. He carried their scents around on his fingers like rings, and on the end of his tongue like words — unfamiliar combinations of familiar odors. In this way, Lista held a special place in his memory — although she was hardly unique in being a virgin, or a one-episode lover — as being the only part-ner to inspire him to bathe.

Went to the theater today. Too bored to stay through the first act. Drank eight cups of coffee. I thought I was going to burst. Didn’t burst.

The third was not a widow but another chance theater encounter.

Again he went on the invitation of a friend — the same one he had deserted for Lista — and again he left without him. This time, Safran was seated between the schoolmate and a young Gypsy girl, whom he recognized as one of the vendors from Lutsk’s Sunday bazaar. He couldn’t believe her audacity: to show up at a shtetl function, to risk the humiliation of being seen by the unpaid and overzealous usher Rubin B and asked to leave, to be a Gypsy among Jews. It demonstrated a quality he was sure he was lacking, and it stirred something in him.

At first glance, the long braid that hung over her shoulder and spilled onto her lap looked to my grandfather like the serpent she would make dance from one tall woven basket to the next at the Sunday bazaar, and at second glance it looked the same. As the lights went down, he used his left arm to plop the dead one onto the rest between himself and the girl.

He made sure that she noticed it — observing with pleasure the transfor-mation of loose pitying lips to tight erotic grin — and when the heavy curtains parted, he was certain he would part her thin skirt that night.

It was March 18, 1791, echoed an authoritative voice from offstage, when Trachim B’s double-axle wagon pinned him against the bottom of the Brod River. The young W twins were the first to see the curious flotsam rising to the surface . . .

(The curtain opens to reveal a provincial setting: a babbling brook running from upstage left to downstage right, many trees and fallen leaves, and two girls, twins, approximately six years old, wearing wool britches with yarn ties and blouses with blue-fringed butterfly collars.) authoritative voice . . . three empty pockets, postage stamps from faraway places, pins and needles, swatches of crimson fabric, the first and only words of a last will and testament: “To my love I leave everything.”

hannah

(Deafening wail.)

( chana wades into cold water, pulling up above her knees the yarn ties at the ends of her britches, sweeping trachim’ s rising life-debris to her sides as she wades farther.)

the disgraced usurer yankel d

(Kicking up shoreline mud as he hobbles to the girls.) I ask, what are you doing over there, fatuous girls? The water? The water? But lo, there is nothing to see! It is only a liquidy thing. Stay back! Don’t be so dumb as I once was. Life is no fair payment for idiocy.

bitzl bitzl r

(Watching the commotion from his paddleboat, which is fastened with twine to one of his traps.) I say, what is going on over there? Bad Yankel, step away from the Rabbi’s twin female daughters!

safran

(Into gypsy girl ’s ear, under a blanket of muted yellow stage lighting.) Do you like music?

chana

(Laughing, splashing at the mass forming like a garden around her.) It’s bringing forth the most whimsical objects!

gypsy girl

(In the shadows cast by the two-dimensional trees, very close to safran’ s ear.) What did you say?

safran

(Using his shoulder to push his dead arm onto the gypsy girl ’s lap.) I was curious as to whether or not you liked music.

sofiowka n

(Coming out from behind a tree.) I have seen everything that happened. I was witness to it all.

gypsy girl

(Squeezing safran ’s dead arm between her thighs.) No, I do not like music. (But what she was really trying to say was this: I like music better than anything in the world, after you.)

the disgraced usurer yankel d

Trachim?

safran

(With dust descending from the rafters, with lips probing to find gypsy girl ’s caramel ear in the dark.) You probably don’t have time for music. (But what he was really trying to say was: I’m not at all stupid, you know.) shloim w

I ask, I ask, who is Trachim? Some mortal curlicue?

(The playwright smiles in the cheap seats. He tries to gauge the audience’s reac-tion.)

the disgraced usurer yankel d

We don’t so fully fathom anything yet. Let’s not be hasty.

peanut gallery

(An impossible-to-place whisper.) This is so unbelievable. Not at all like it was.

gypsy girl

(Kneading safran ’s dead arm between her thighs, tracing the bend of his unfeeling elbow with her finger, pinching it.) Don’t you think it’s hot in here?

shloim w

(Quickly undressing himself, revealing a belly larger than most and a back matted with ringlets of thick black hair.) Cover their eyes. (Not for them. For me.

I’m ashamed.)

safran

Very hot.

grieving shanda

(To shloim , as he emerges from the water.) Was he in solitude or with a wife of many years? (But what she was really trying to say was this: After everything that’s happened, I still have hope. If not for myself, then for Trachim.) gypsy girl

(Intertwining her fingers with safran ’s dead ones.) Can’t we leave?

safran

Please.

sofiowka n

Yes, it was love letters.

gypsy girl

(With anticipation, with wetness between her legs.) Let’s leave.

the upright rabbi

And allow life to go on in the face of this death.

safran

Yes.

(Musicians prepare for climax. Four violins are tuned. A harp is breathed on.

The trumpeter, who is really an oboist, cracks his knuckles. The hammers of the piano know what happens next. The baton, which is really a butter knife, is lifted like a surgical instrument.)

the disgraced usurer yankel d

(With hands raised to the heavens, to the men who aim the spotlights.) Perhaps we should begin to harvest the remains.

safran

Yes.

(Enter music. Beautiful music. Hushed at first. Whispering. No pins are dropped. Only music. Music swelling imperceptibly. Pulling itself out of its grave of silence. The orchestra pit fills with sweat. Expectancy. Enter gentle rumble of timpani. Enter piccolo and viola. Intimations of crescendo. Ascent of adrenaline, even after so many performances. It still feels new. The music is building, bloom-ing.)

authoritative voice

(With passion.) The twins covered their eyes with their father’s tallis.

( chana and hannah cover eyes with tallis.) Their father chanted a long and intelligent prayer for the baby and its parents. ( upright rabbi looks at his palms, nods his head up and down, gesturing prayer.) Yankel’s face was veiled in the tears of his sobbing. ( yankel gestures sobbing.) Unto us a child was born!

(Blackout. Curtains wed. gypsy girl spreads her thighs. Applause mingled with hushed chatting. Players prepare stage for the next scene. The music is still building. gypsy girl leads safran by his dead right arm out of the theater, through a maze of muddy alleys, past the confectioners’ stands by the old cemetery, under the hanging vines of the synagogue’s crumbling portico, through the shtetl square — the two separated for a moment by the Dial’s final casting of the day — along the Brod’s loose bank, down the Jewish/Human fault line, beneath the dangling palm fronds, bravely through the shadows of the crag, across the wooden bridge — )

gypsy girl

Would you like to see something you’ve never seen before?

safran

(With an honesty previously unknown to him.) I would. I would.

( — over the black- and blueberry brambles, into a petrified forest that safran has never before seen. gypsy girl stands safran under the rock canopy of a giant maple, takes his dead arm into hers, allowing the shadows cast by the stone branches to consume her with nostalgia for everything, whispers something in his ear [to which no one other than my grandfather is privileged], eases his dead hand under the hem of her thin skirt, says) Please (bends at the knees), please (lowers herself onto his dead index finger), yes (crescendo), yes (puts her caramel hand on the top button of his dress shirt, sways at the waist), please (trumpet flourish, violin flourish, timpani flourish, cymbal flourish), yes (dusk spills across the nightscape, the night sky blots up the darkness like a sponge, heads crane), yes (eyes close), please (lips part), yes. (The conductor drops his baton, his butter knife, his scalpel, his Torah pointer, the universe, blackness.) 12 December 1997

Dear Jonathan,

Salutations from Ukraine. I just received your letter and read it many times, notwithstanding parts that I read aloud to Little Igor. (Did I tell you that he is reading your novel as I read it? I translate it for him, and I am also your editor.) I will utter no more than that we are both anticipating the remnants. It is a thing that we can think about and converse about. It is also a thing that we can laugh about, which is something we require.

There is so much that I want to inform you, Jonathan, but I cannot fathom the manner. I want to inform you about Little Igor, and how he is such a premium brother, and also about Mother, who is very, very humble, as I remark to you often, but nonetheless a good person, and nonetheless My Mother. Perhaps I did not paint her with the colors that I should have. She is good to me, and never bad to me, and this is how you must see her. I want to inform you about Grandfather, and how he views television for many hours, and how he cannot witness my eyes anymore, but must be attentive to something behind me. I want to inform you about Father, and how I am not being a caricature when I tell you that I would remove him from my life if I was not such a coward. I want to inform you about what it is like to be me, which is a thing that you still do not possess a single whisper of. Perhaps when you read the next division of my story, you will comprehend. It was the most difficult division that I have yet composed, but I am certain not nearly so difficult as what is still to come. I have been putting on a high shelf what I know I must do, which is point a finger at Grandfather pointing at Herschel. You have without doubts observed this.