Everything Is Illuminated (29 page)

Lippa R’s were dyed blood red. Pelsa G’s the light green of her eyes. Mica P’s a subtle purple, like the sliver of sky above the Radziwell Forest’s tree line when the sun set for the third Shabbos of that November. No hands or hues were exempt. To be fair, even Herzog J’s were dyed, the pink of a particular Troides helena butterfly that happened to have died on the desk of Dickle D, the chemist who invented the chemical that couldn’t be washed off, but would leave smears on whatever the dyed hands touched.

As it turned out, a simple mouse, may his memory live close to a stinky tuches, had been sneaking away with the rolls, and no colors ever appeared behind the counter.

But they appeared everywhere else.

Shlomo V found silver between the thighs of his wife, Chebra, may her behavior be unique in this and every other world, and said nothing about it until he’d painted her breasts green with his hands and then covered those breasts in white semen. He pulled her naked through the gray moonlit streets, from house to house, bruising his knuckles black-blue on the doors. He forced her to watch as he cut off the testicles of Samuel R, who, with raised silver fingers, pleaded for mercy and cried, ambiguously, There has been a mistake. Colors everywhere. The Eminent Rabbi Fagel F’s indigo fingerprints on the pages of more than one ultrasecular periodical. The cold-lip blue of the grieving widow Shifrah K across her husband’s gravestone in the shtetl cemetery, like the rubbings children do. Everyone was quick to accuse Irwin P of running his brown hands up and down the Dial.

He’s so selfish! they said. He wants everything for himself! But it was their hands, all of their hands, a compressed rainbow of every citizen in the shtetl who had prayed for handsome sons, a few more years of life, protection from lightning, love.

The shtetl was painted with the doings of its citizens, and since every color was used — except for that of the counter, of course — it was impossible to tell what had been touched by human hands and what was as it was because it was as it was. It was rumored that Getzel G had secretly played every fiddler’s fiddle — even though he didn’t play the fiddle! — for the strings were the color of his fingers.

People whispered that Gesha R must have become an acrobat — how else could the Jewish/Human fault line have become as yellow as her palms? And when the blush of a schoolgirl’s cheeks was mistaken for the crimson of a holy man’s fingers, it was the schoolgirl who was called hussy, tramp, slut.

The Problem of Good: Why Unconditionally Good

Things Happen to Unconditionally Bad People

( See God)

Cunnilingus and the Menstruating Woman

The burning bush must not be consumed. (For a complete listing of rules and regulations concerning you know what, see Appendix F-ING.)

The Novel, When Everyone Was Convinced He Had

One in Him

The novel is that art form that burns most easily. It so happened that in the middle of the nineteenth century, all the citizens of our shtetl — every man, woman, and child — was convinced he had at least one novel in him. This period was likely the result of the traveling Gypsy salesman who brought a wagonload of books to the shtetl square on the third Sunday of every other month, advertising them as Worthy would-be worlds of words, whorls of working wonder. What else could come to the lips of a Chosen People but I can do that?

More than seven hundred novels were written between 1850 and 1853. One began: How long it’s been since I last thought of those windswept mornings. Another: They say everyone remembers her first time, but I don’t. Another: Murder is an ugly deed, to be sure, but the murder of a brother is truly the most ghastly crime known to man.

There were 272 thinly veiled memoirs, 66 crime novels, 97 stories of war. A man killed his brother in 107 of the novels. In all but 89 an infidelity was committed. Couples in love wondered what the future would hold in 29; 68 ended with a kiss; all but 35 used the word “shame.” Those who couldn’t read and write made visual novels: collages, etchings, pencil drawings, watercolors. A special room was added to the Yankel and Brod Library for the Trachimbrod novels, although only a handful were read five years after their composi-tion.

Once, almost a century later, a young boy went browsing the aisles.

I’m looking for a book, he told the librarian, who had cared for the Trachimbrod novels since she was a girl, and was the only citizen to have read them all. My great-grandfather wrote it.

What was his name? the librarian asked.

Safranbrod, but I think he wrote it under a pseudonym.

What was the name of his book?

I can’t remember the name. He used to talk about it all the time. He’d tell me stories from it to put me to sleep.

What’s it about? she asked.

It’s about love.

She laughed. They’re all about love.

Art

Art is that thing having to do only with itself — the product of a successful attempt to make a work of art. Unfortunately, there are no examples of art, nor good reasons to think that it will ever exist. (Everything that has been made has been made with a purpose, everything with an end that exists outside that thing, i.e., I want to sell this, or I want this to make me famous and loved, or I want this to make me whole, or worse, I want this to make others whole. ) And yet we continue to write, paint, sculpt, and compose. Is this foolish of us?

Ifice

Ifice is that thing with purpose, created for function’s sake, and having to do with the world. Everything is, in some way, an example of ifice.

Ifact

An ifact is a past-tensed fact. For example, many believe that after the destruction of the first Temple, God’s existence became an ifact.

Artifice

Artifice is that thing that was art in its conception and ifice in its execution. Look around. Examples are everywhere.

Artifact

An artifact is the product of a successful attempt to make a purpose-less, useless, beautiful thing out of a past-tensed fact. It can never be art, and it can never be fact. Jews are artifacts of Eden.

Ifactifice

Music is beautiful. Since the beginning of time, we (the Jews) have been looking for a new way of speaking. We often blame our treat-ment throughout history on terrible misunderstandings. (Words never mean what we want them to mean.) If we communicated with something like music, we would never be misunderstood, because there is nothing in music to understand. This was the origin of Torah chanting and, in all likelihood, Yiddish — the most ono-matopoeic of all languages. It is also the reason that the elderly among us, particularly those who survived a pogrom, hum so often, indeed seem unable to stop humming, seem dead set on preventing any silence or linguistic meaning in. But until we find this new way of speaking, until we can find a nonapproximate vocabulary, nonsense words are the best thing we’ve got. Ifactifice is one such word.

The First Rape of Brod D

The first rape of Brod D occurred amid the celebrations following the thirteenth Trachimday festival, March 18, 1804. Brod was walking home from the blue-flowered float — on which she had stood in such austere beauty for so many hours on end, waving her mermaid’s tail only when appropriate, throwing deep into the river of her name those heavy sacks only when the Rabbi gave her the necessary nod —

when she was approached by the mad squire Sofiowka N, whose name our shtetl now uses for maps and Mormon census records.

I have seen everything, he said. I watched the parade, don’t you know, from so high, high, high above the commoners and their common festivities, in which, I must confess, of course I would have liked to partake some bit. I saw you on our float, and oh, you were so uncommon. You were, in the face of such fakery, so natural.

Thank you, she said, and proceeded on, taking to heart Yankel’s warning that Sofiowka could talk your ear off if you gave him a chance.

But where are you going? That’s not all, he said, grabbing her skinny arm. Didn’t your father teach you to listen when you’re being talked at, or to, or under, or around, or even in?

I would like to go home now, Sofiowka. I promised my father that we would eat pineapple together, and I’m going to be late.

No you didn’t, he said, turning Brod to face him. Now you’re lying to me.

But I did. We agreed that after the parade I would come home and eat pineapple with him.

But you said you promised your father, and Brod, maybe you’re using that term loosely, maybe you don’t even know what it means, but if you’re going to stand here and tell me you made a promise to your father, then I am going to stand here and call you a liar.

You’re not making any sense. Brod laughed nervously and again started walking to her house. He followed close behind, stepping on the end of her tail.

Who, I wonder, is not making any sense, Brod?

He stopped her again, and turned her to face him.

My father named me after the river because —

There you go again, he said, moving his fingers up from her shoulder to the base of her hair and into her hair, pushing off the blue Float Queen tiara. Lying is no good way for a little girl to be.

I want to go home now, Sofiowka.

Then go.

But I can’t.

Why not?

Because you’re holding my hair.

Oh, you’re quite right. I am. I hadn’t even noticed. This is your hair, isn’t it? And I am holding it, aren’t I, thereby preventing you from going home, or anywhere else. You could shout, I suppose, but what would that ac-complish? Everyone is doing their own shouting by the banks, shouting out of pleasure. Shout out of pleasure, Brod. Come on, you can do it. One little shout out of pleasure.

Please, she began to whimper. Sofiowka, please. I just want to go home, and I know that my father is waiting —

There you go again, you lying cunt! he hollered. Haven’t we had enough lying for one night already!

What do you want? Brod cried.

He took a knife from his pocket and cut the shoulder straps of her mermaid suit.

She pulled the suit down around her ankles and off her feet, and then removed her panties. She made sure, with the arm that wasn’t held behind her back, that the tail didn’t get muddy.

Later that night, after she returned home and discovered Yankel’s dead body, the Kolker was illuminated at her window by a wink of lightning.

Go away! she cried, covering her bare chest with her arms and turning back toward Yankel, protecting their bodies from the Kolker’s gaze. But he did not leave.

Go away!

I won’t go without you, he called to her through the window.

Go away! Go away!

The rain dripped from his upper lip. Not without you.

I’ll kill myself! she hollered.

Then I’ll take your body with me, he said, palms against the glass.

Go away!

I won’t!

Yankel jerked in rigor mortis, knocking over the oil lamp, which blew itself out on its way to the floor, leaving the room completely dark. His cheeks pulled into a tight smile, revealing, to the banished shadows, a contentedness. Brod let her arms brush down her skin to her sides and turned to face the Kolker — the second time she’d shown her naked body in thirteen years of life.

Then you must do something for me, she said.

Sofiowka was found the next morning, swinging by the neck from the wooden bridge. His severed hands were hanging from strings tied to his feet, and across his chest was written, in Brod’s red lipstick: animal.

What Jacob R Ate for Breakfast on the Morning of February 21, 1877

Fried potatoes with onion. Two slices of black bread.

Plagiarism

Cain killed his brother for plagiarizing one of his favorite little poems, which went like this:

Willows whiten, aspens quiver,

Little breezes dusk and shiver

Through the wave that runs for ever

By the island in the river.

Unable to thwart the fury of a poet scorned, unable to continue writing as long as he knew that the pirates pens-sans would reap the booty of his industry, unable to suppress the question If iambs not for me, what will be for me?, he, unable Cain, put an end to literary larceny forever. Or so he thought.

But much to his surprise, it was Cain who was caned, Cain who was cursed to labor the earth, Cain who was forced to wear that terrible mark, Cain who, for all of his sad and witty verse, could get laid every night, but didn’t know anyone who had read a page of his magnum opus.

Why?

God loves the plagiarist. And so it is written, “God created hu-mankind in His image, in the image of God He created them.” God is the original plagiarizer. With a lack of reasonable sources from which to filch — man created in the image of what? the animals? —

the creation of man was an act of reflexive plagiarizing; God looted the mirror. When we plagiarize, we are likewise creating in the image and participating in the completion of Creation.

Am I my brother’s material?

Of course, Cain. Of course.

The Dial

( See False Idols)

The Human Whole

The Pogrom of Beaten Chests (1764) was bad, but it was not the worst, and there still are, no doubt, worse to come. They moved through on horses. They raped our pregnant women and cut down our strongest men with sickles. They beat our children to death.

They made us curse our most holy texts. (It was impossible to distinguish the cries of babies and adults.) Immediately after they left, the Uprighters and Slouchers joined together to lift and move the synagogue all the way into the Human Three-Quarters, making it, if for only one hour, the Human Whole. Without knowing why, we beat our own chests, as we do when seeking atonement on Yom Kippur.

Were we praying, Forgive our oppressors for what they have done? Or, Forgive us for what has been done to us? Or, Forgive You for Your in-scrutability? ( See Appendix G: Untimely Deaths.) Us, the Jews

Jews are those things that God loves. Since roses are beautiful, we must assume that God loves them. Therefore, roses are Jewish. By the same reasoning, the stars and planets are Jewish, all children are Jewish, pretty “art” is Jewish (Shakespeare wasn’t Jewish, but Hamlet was), and sex, when practiced between husband and wife in a good and suitable position, is Jewish. Is the Sistine Chapel Jewish?