Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (19 page)

Why didn't he say goodbye?

I gave myself a bruise.

Why didn't he say 'I love you'?

Wednesday was boring.

Thursday was boring.

Friday was also boring, except that it was Friday, which meant it was almost Saturday, which meant I was that much closer to the lock, which was happiness.

WHY I'M NOT WHERE YOU ARE

4/12/78

To my child: I'm writing this from where your mother's father's shed used to stand, the shed is no longer here, no carpets cover no floors, no windows in no walls, everything has been replaced. This is a library now, that would have made your grandfather happy, as if all of his buried books were seeds, from each book came one hundred. I'm sitting at the end of a long table surrounded by encyclopedias, sometimes I take one down and read about other people's lives, kings, actresses, assassins, judges, anthropologists, tennis champions, tycoons, politicians, just because you haven't received any letters from me don't think I haven't written any. Every day I write a letter to you. Sometimes I think if I could tell you what happened to me that night, I could leave that night behind me, maybe I could come home to you, but that night has no beginning or end, it started before I was born and it's still happening. I'm writing in Dresden, and

your mother is writing in the Nothing guest room, or I assume she is, I hope she is, sometimes my hand starts to burn and I am convinced we are writing the same word at the same moment. Anna gave me the typewriter your mother used to write her life story on. She gave it to me only a few weeks before the bombings, I thanked her, she said, 'Why are you thanking me? It's a gift for me.'

'A gift for you?'

'You never write to me.'

'But I'm with you.'

'So?'

'You write to someone you can't be with.'

'You never sculpt me, but at least you could write to me.' It's the tragedy of loving, you can't love anything more than something you miss. I told her, 'You never write to me.' She said, 'You've never given me a typewriter.' I started to invent future homes for us, I'd type through the night and give them to her the next day. I imagined dozens of homes, some were magical (a clock tower with a stopped clock in a city where time stood still), some were mundane (a bourgois estate in the country with rose gardens and peacocks), each felt possible and perfec

t, wonder if your mother ever saw them. 'Dear Anna, We will live in a home built at the top of the world's tallest ladder.'

'Dear Anna, We will live in a cave in a hillside in Turkey.'

'Dear Anna, We will live in a home with no walls, so that everywhere we go will be our home.' I wasn't trying to invent better and better homes, but to show her that homes didn't matter, we could live in any home, in any city, in any country, in any century, and be happy, as if the world were just what we lived in. The night before I lost everything, I typed our last future home: 'Dear Anna, We will live in a series of homes, which will climb the Alps and we'll never sleep in the same one twice. Each morning after breakfast, we'll sled down to the next home. And when we open its front door, the previous home will be destroyed and rebuilt as a new home. When we get to the bottom, we'll take a lift to the top and start again at the beginning.' I went to bring it to her the next day, on my way to your mothers house, I heard a noise from the shed, from where I'm now writing this to you, I suspected it was Simon Goldberg. I knew that Anna's father had been hiding him, I had heard them talking in there some nights when Anna and I tiptoed into the fields, they were always whispering, I had seen his charcoal stained shirt on their clothesline. I didn't want to make myself known, so I quietly slid a book from the wall. Anna's father, your grandfather, was sitting in his chair with his face in his hands, he was my hero. When I think back on that moment, I never see him with his face in his hands, I won't let myself see him that way, I see the book in my hands, it was an illustrated edition of Qvid's Metamorphosis, used to look for the edition in the States, as if by finding it I could slide it back in the shed's wall, block the image of my hero's face in his hands, stop my life and history at that moment, I asked after it in every bookshop in New York, but I never was able to find flight poured into the room through the hole in the wall, your grandfather lifted his head, he came to the shelf and we looked at each other through the missing Metamorphosis, I asked him if something was wrong, he didn't say anything, I could see only a sliver of his face, the spine of a book of his face, looked at each other until it felt like everything would burst into flames,

it was the silence of my life. I found Anna in her room, 'Hi.'

'Hi.'

'I just saw your father?'

'In the shed?'

'He seems upset.'

'He doesn't want to be part of it anymore.' I told her, 'It will all be over soon.'

'How do you know?'

'Everyone says so.'

'Everyone has always been wrong.'

'It will be over, and life will go back to how it was.' She said, 'Don't be a child.'

'Don't turn away from me.' She wouldn't look at me. I asked, 'What's happened?' I'd never seen her cry before. I told her, 'Don't cry.' She said, 'Don't touch me.' I asked, 'What is it?' She said, 'Will you please shut up!' We sat on her bed in silence. The silence pressed down on us like a hand. I said, 'Whatever it is – ' She said 'I'm pregnant.' I can't write what we said to each other then. Before I left, she said, 'Please be overjoyed.' I told her I was, of course I was, I kissed her, I kissed her stomach, that was the last time I ever saw her. At 9:30 that night, the air-raid sirens sounded, everyone went to the shelters, but no one hurried, we were use to the alarms, we assumed they were false, why would anyone want to bomb Dresden? The families on our street turned off the lights in their houses and filed into the shelter, waited on the steps, I was thinking of Anna. It was silent and still and I couldn't see my own hands in the darkness. One hundred planes flew overhead, massive, heavy planes, pushing through the night like one hundred whales through water, they dropped clusters of red flares to light up the blackness for whatever was to come next, I was alone on the street, the red flares fell around me, thousands of them, knew that something unimaginable was about to happen, was thinking of Anna, I was overjoyed. I ran downstairs four steps at a time, they saw the look on my face, before I had time to say anything – what would I have said? – we heard a horrible noise, rapid, approaching explosions, like an applauding audience running toward us, then they were atop us, we were thrown to the corners, our cellar filled with fire and smoke, more powerful explosions, the walls lifted from the floor and separated just long enough to let light flood in before banging back to the ground, orange and blue explosions, violet and white, I later read that the first bombing lasted less than half an hour, but it felt like days and weeks, like the world was going to end, the bombing stopped as matter of factly as it had

began, ' Are you OK?'

'Are you OK?'

'Are you OK?' We ran out of the cellar, which was flooded with yellow-gray smoke, we didn't recognize anything, I had been on the stoop just half an hour before, and now there was no stoop in front of no house on no street, only fire in every direction, all that remained of our house was a patch of the facade that stubbornly held up the front door, a horse on fire galloped past, there were burning vehicles and carts with burning refugies, people were screaming, I told my parents I had to go find Anna, my mother told me to stay with them, I said I would meet them back at our front door, my father begged me to stay, I grabbed the doorknob and it took the skin off my hand, I saw the muscles of my palm, red and pulsing, why did I grab it with my other hand? My father shouted at me, it was the first time he had ever shouted at me, I can't write what he shouted, I told them I would meet them back at our door, he struck me across the face, it was the first time he had ever struck me, that was the last time I saw my parents. On my way to Anna's house, the second raid began, threw myself into the nearest cellar, it was hit, it filled with pink smoke and gold flames, so I fled into the next cellar, caught fire, I ran from cellar to cellar as each previous cellar was destroyed, burning monkeys screamed from the trees, birds with their wings on fire sang from the telephone wires over which desperate calls traveled, found another shelter, it was filled to the walls, brown smoke pressed down from the ceiling like a hand, became more and more difficult to breathe, my lungs were trying to pull the room in through my mouth, there was a silver explosion, all of us tried to leave the cellar at once, dead and dying people were trampled, I walked over an old man, I walked over children, everyone was losing everyone, the bombs were like a waterfall, I ran through the streets, from cellar to cellar, and saw terrible things: legs and necks, I saw a woman whose blond hair and green dress were on fire, running with a silent baby in her arms, I saw humans melted into thick pools of liquid, three or four feet deep in places, I saw bodies crackling like embers, laughing, and the remains of masses of people who had tried to escape the firestorm by jumping head first into the lakes and ponds, the parts of their bodies that were submerged in the water were still intact, while the parts that protruded above water were charred beyond recognition, the bombs kept falling, purple, orange and white, I kept running, my hands kept bleeding, through the sounds of collapsing buildings I heard the roar of that baby's silence. I passed the zoo, the cages had been ripped open, everything was everywhere, dazed animals cried in pain and confusion, one of the keepers was calling out for help, he was a strong man, his eyes had been burnt closed, he grabbed my arm and asked me if I knew how to fire a gun, I told him I had to get to someone, he handed me his rifle and said, 'You've got to find the carnivores,' I told him I wasn't a good shot, I told him I didn't know which were carnivores and which weren't, he said, 'Shoot everything,' I don't know how many animals I killed, I killed an elephant, it had been thrown twenty yards from its cage, I pressed the rifle to the back of its head and wondered, as I squeezed the trigger, Is it necessary to kill this animal? I killed an ape that was perched on the stump of a fallen tree, pulling its hair as it surveyed the destruction, I killed two lions, they were standing side by side facing west, were they related, were they friends, mates, can lions love? I killed a cub that was climbing atop a massive dead bear, as it climbing atop its parent? I killed a camel with twelve bullets, I suspected it wasn't a carnivore, but I was killing everything, everything had to be killed, a rhinoceros was banging its head against a rock, again and again, as if to put itself out of its suffering, or to make itself suffer, I fired at it, it kept banging its head, I fired again, it banged harder, I walked up to it and pressed the gun between its eyes, I killed it, I killed a zebra, I killed a giraffe, I turned the water of the sea lion's tank red, an ape approached me, it was the ape I had shot before, I'd thought I'd killed it, it walked up to me slowly, its hands covering its ears, what did it want from me, I screamed, 'What do you want from me?' I shot it again, where I thought its heart was, it looked at me, in its eyes I was sure I saw some form of understandings, but I didn't see forgiveness, I tried to shoot the vultures, but I wasn't a good enough shot, later I saw vultures fattening themselves on the human carnage, and I blamed myself for everything. The second bombing halted as suddenly and totally as it had began, with burnt hair, with black arms and black fingers, I walked, dazed, to the base of the Loschwitz Bridge, I submerged my black hands in the black water and saw my reflection, I was terrified of my own image, my blood-matted hair, my split and bleeding lips, my red, pulsing palms, which, even as I write this, thirty-five years later, don't look like they should be at the ends of my arms. I remember losing my balance, I remember a single thought in my head:
Keep thinking
. As long as I am thinking, I am alive, but at some point I stopped thinking,, the next thing I remember is feeling terribly cold, I realized I was lying on the ground, the pain was complete, it let me know I hadn't died, started moving my legs and arms, my movements must have been noticed by one of the soldiers that had been put into action all over the city, looking for survivors, I later learned that there had been more than 220 bodies taken from the foot of the bridge, and 4 came back to life, I was one of them. They loaded us onto trucks and took us out of Dresden, I looked out from the flaps of canvas that covered the sides of the truck, the buildings were burning, the trees burning, the asphalt, I saw and heard humans trapped, I smelled them, standing in the moltin, burning streets like living torches, screaming for help that was impossible to give, the air itself was burning, the truck had to make a number of detours to get beyond the chaos, planes bore down on us once more, we were pulled off the truck and placed under it, the planes dove, more machine guns, more bombs, yellow, red, green, blue, brown, I lost consciousness again, when I awoke I was in a white hospital bed, I couldn't move my arms or legs, I wondered if I had lost them, but I couldn't summon the energy to look for myself, hours passed, or days, when I finally looked down, I saw that I was strapped to the bed, a nurse was standing beside me, I asked, 'Why have you done this to me?' She told me I had been trying to hurt myself, I asked her to free me, she said she couldn't, she said I would hurt myself, I begged her to free me, I told her I wouldn't hurt myself, I promised, she apologized and touched me, doctors operated on me, they gave me injections and bandaged my body, but it was her touching that saved my life. In the days and weeks after my release, I looked for my parents and for Anna and for you. Everyone was looking for everyone in the rubble of every building, but all of the searching was in vain, I found our old house, the door was still stubbornly standing, a few of our belongings survived, the typewriter survived, I carried it in my arms like a baby,, before I was evacuated I wrote on the door that I was alive, and the address of the refugee camp in Oschatz, I waited for a letter, but no letter ever came. Because there were so many bodies, and because so many of the bodies had been destroyed there was never a list of the dead, thousands of people were left to suffer hope. When I had thought I was dying at the base of the Loschwitz Bridge, there was a single thought in my head:
Keep thinking
. Thinking would keep me alive. But now I am alive, and thinking is killing me. I think and think and think. I can't stop thinking about that night, the clusters of red flares, the sky that was like black water, and how only hours before I lost everything, I had everything. Your aunt had told me she was pregnant, I was overjoyed, I should have known not to trust it, one hundred years joy can be erased in one second, I kissed her belly, even though there was nothing yet to kiss, told her, 'I love our baby.' That made her laugh, I hadn't heard her laugh like that since the day we walked into each other halfway between our houses, she said,