Everything Is Illuminated

by Jonathan Safran Foer

  That was all the talking for the night. We had three vodkas each and watched the weather report that was on the television behind the bar. It said that the weather for the next day would be normal. I was appeased that the weather would be normal. It would make our search cinchier. After the vodka, we went up to our room, which flanked the room of the hero. "I will repose on the bed, and you will repose on the floor," Grandfather said. "Of course," I said. "I will make my alarm for six in the morning." "Six?" I inquired. If you want to know why I inquired, it is because six is not very early in the morning for me, it is tardy in the night. "Six," he said, and I knew that it was the end of the conversation.

  While Grandfather washed his teeth, I went to make certain that everything was acceptable with the hero's room. I listened at the door to detect if he was able to manufacture Z's, and I could not hear anything abnormal, only the wind penetrating the windows and the sound of insects. Good, I said to my brain, he reposes well. He will not be fatigued in the morning. I tried to unclose the door, to make sure it was secured. It opened a percentage, and Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior, who was still conscious, walked in. I watched her lay herself next to the bed, where the hero reposed in peace. This is acceptable, I thought, and closed the door with silence. I walked back to the room of Grandfather and I. The lights were already off, but I could perceive that he was not yet reposing. His body rotated over and over. The bed sheets moved, and the pillow made noises as he rotated over and over, over and then again over. I heard his large breathing. I heard his body move. It was like this all night. I knew why he could not repose. It was the same reason that I would not be able to repose. We were both regarding the same question: what did he do during the war?

  FALLING IN LOVE, 1791–1803

  TRACHIMBROD was somehow different from the nameless shtetl that used to exist in the same place. Business went on as usual. The Uprighters still hollered, hung, and limped, and still looked down on the Slouchers, who still twiddled the fringes at the ends of their shirtsleeves, and still ate cookies and knishes after, but more often during, services. Grieving Shanda still grieved for her deceased philosopher husband, Pinchas, who still played an active role in shtetl politics. Yankel still tried to do right, still told himself again and again that he wasn't sad, and still always ended up sad. The synagogue still rolled, still trying to land itself on the shtetl's wandering Jewish/Human fault line. Sofiowka was as mad as ever, still masturbating a handful, still binding himself in string, using his body to remember his body, and still remembering only the string. But with the name came a new self-consciousness, which often revealed itself in shameful ways.

  The women of the shtetl raised their impressive noses to my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother. They called her dirty river girl and waterbaby under their breath. While they were too superstitious ever to reveal to her the truth of her history, they saw to it that she had no friends her own age (telling their children that she was not as much fun as the fun she had, or as kind as her kind deeds), and that she associated only with Yankel and any man of the shtetl who was brave enough to risk being seen by his wife. Of which there were quite a few. Even the surest gentleman stumbled over himself in her presence. After only ten years of life, she was already the most desired creature in the shtetl, and her reputation had spread like rivulets into the neighboring villages.

  I've imagined her many times. She's a bit short, even for her age—not short in the endearing, childish way, but as a malnourished child might be short. The same is true for how skinny she is. Every night before putting her to sleep, Yankel counts her ribs, as if one might have disappeared in the course of the day and become the seed and soil for some new companion to steal her away from him. She eats well enough and is healthy, insofar as she's never sick, but her body looks like that of a chronically sick girl, a girl squeezed in some biological vise, or a starving girl, a skin-and-bones girl, a girl who is not entirely free. Her hair is thick and black, her lips are thin and bright and white. How else could it be?

  Much to Yankel's dismay, Brod insisted on cutting that thick black hair herself.

  It's not ladylike, he said. You look like a little boy when it's so short.

  Don't be a fool, she told him.

  But doesn't it bother you?

  Of course it bothers me when you're a fool.

  Your hair, he said.

  I think it's very pretty.

  Can it be pretty if no one thinks it's pretty?

  I think it's pretty.

  If you're the only one?

  That's pretty pretty.

  And what about the boys? Don't you want them to think you're pretty?

  I wouldn't want a boy to think I was pretty unless he was the kind of boy who thought I was pretty.

  I think it's pretty, he said. I think it's very beautiful.

  Say it again and I'll grow it long.

  I know, he laughed, kissing her forehead as he pinched her ears between his fingers.

  Her learning to sew (from a book Yankel brought back from Lvov) coincided with her refusal to wear any clothes that she did not make for herself, and when he bought her a book about animal physiology, she held the pictures to his face and said, Don't you think it's strange, Yankel, how we eat them?

  I've never eaten a picture.

  The animals. Don't you find that strange? I can't believe I never found it strange before. It's like your name, how you don't notice it for so long, but when you finally do, you can't help but say it over and over, and wonder why you never thought it was strange that you should have that name, and that everyone has been calling you that name for your whole life.

  Yankel. Yankel. Yankel. Nothing so strange for me.

  I won't eat them, at least not until it doesn't seem strange to me.

  Brod resisted everything, gave in to no one, would not be challenged or not challenged.

  I don't think you're stubborn, Yankel told her one afternoon when she refused to eat dinner before dessert.

  Well I am!

  And she was loved for it. Loved by everyone, even those who hated her. The curious circumstances of her creation lit the men's intrigue, but it was her clever manipulations, her coy gestures and pivots of phrase, her refusal to acknowledge or ignore their existence that made them follow her through the streets, gaze at her from their windows, dream of her—not their wives, not even themselves—at night.

  Yes, Yoske. The men in the flour mill are so strong and brave.

  Yes, Feivel. Yes, I am a good girl.

  Yes, Saul. Yes, yes, I love sweets.

  Yes, oh yes, Itzik. Oh yes.

  Yankel didn't have the heart to tell her that he was not her father, that she was the Float Queen of Trachimday not only because she was, without question, the most loved young girl in the shtetl, but because it was her real father at the bottom of the river with her name, her papa the hardy men dove for. So he created more stories—wild stories, with undomesticated imagery and flamboyant characters. He invented stories so fantastic that she had to believe. Of course, she was only a child, still removing the dust from her first death. What else could she do? And he was already accumulating the dust of his second death. What else could he do?

  With the help of the shtetl's desirous men and hateful women, my very-great-grandmother grew into herself, cultivating private interests: weaving, gardening, reading anything she could get her hands on—which was just about anything in Yankel's prodigious library, a room filled from floor to ceiling with books, which would one day serve as Trachimbrod's first public library. Not only was she the smartest citizen in Trachimbrod, called upon to solve difficult problems of mathematics or logic—THE HOLY WORD, the Well-Regarded Rabbi once asked her in the dark, WHICH IS IT, BROD?—she was also the most lonely and sad. She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.

  Are you sad, Yankel? she asked one morning o
ver breakfast.

  Of course, he said, feeding melon slices into her mouth with a shaking spoon.

  Why?

  Because you are talking instead of eating your breakfast.

  Were you sad before that?

  Of course.

  Why?

  Because you were eating then, instead of talking, and I become sad when I don't hear your voice.

  When you watch people dance, does that make you sad?

  Of course.

  It also makes me sad. Why do you think it does that?

  He kissed her on the forehead, put his hand under her chin. You really must eat, he said. It's getting late.

  Do you think Bitzl Bitzl is a particularly sad person?

  I don't know.

  What about grieving Shanda?

  Oh yes, she's particularly sad.

  That's an obvious one, isn't it? Is Shloim sad?

  Who knows?

  The twins?

  Maybe. It's none of our business.

  Is God sad?

  He would have to exist to be sad, wouldn't He?

  I know, she said, giving his shoulder a little slap. That's why I was asking, so I might finally know if you believed!

  Well, let me leave it at this: if God does exist, He would have a great deal to be sad about. And if He doesn't exist, then that too would make Him quite sad, I imagine. So to answer your question, God must be sad.

  Yankel! She wrapped her arms around his neck, as if trying to pull herself into him, or him into her.

  Brod discovered 613 sadnesses, each perfectly unique, each a singular emotion, no more similar to any other sadness than to anger, ecstasy, guilt, or frustration. Mirror Sadness. Sadness of Domesticated Birds. Sadness of Being Sad in Front of One's Parent. Humor Sadness. Sadness of Love Without Release.

  She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life. She learned impossibly difficult songs on her violin, songs outside of what she thought she could know, and would each time come crying to Yankel, I have learned to play this one too! It's so terrible! I must write something that not even I can play! She spent evenings with the art books Yankel had bought for her in Lutsk, and each morning sulked over breakfast, They were good and fine, but not beautiful. No, not if I'm being honest with myself. They are only the best of what exists. She spent an afternoon staring at their front door.

  Waiting for someone? Yankel asked.

  What color is this?

  He stood very close to the door, letting the end of his nose touch the peephole. He licked the wood and joked, It certainly tastes like red.

  Yes, it is red, isn't it?

  Seems so.

  She buried her head in her hands. But couldn't it be just a bit more red?

  Brod's life was a slow realization that the world was not for her, and that for whatever reason, she would never be happy and honest at the same time. She felt as if she were brimming, always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release. Table, ivory elephant charm, rainbow, onion, hairdo, mollusk, Shabbos, violence, cuticle, melodrama, ditch, honey, doily ... None of it moved her. She addressed her world honestly, searching for something deserving of the volumes of love she knew she had within her, but to each she would have to say, I don't love you. Bark-brown fence post: I don't love you. Poem too long: I don't love you. Lunch in a bowl: I don't love you. Physics, the idea of you, the laws of you: I don't love you. Nothing felt like anything more than what it actually was. Everything was just a thing, mired completely in its thingness.

  If we were to open to a random page in her journal—which she must have kept and kept with her at all times, not fearing that it would be lost, or discovered and read, but that she would one day stumble upon that thing which was finally worth writing about and remembering, only to find that she had no place to write it—we would find some rendering of the following sentiment: I am not in love.

  So she had to satisfy herself with the idea of love—loving the loving of things whose existence she didn't care at all about. Love itself became the object of her love. She loved herself in love, she loved loving love, as love loves loving, and was able, in that way, to reconcile herself with a world that fell so short of what she would have hoped for. It was not the world that was the great and saving lie, but her willingness to make it beautiful and fair, to live a once-removed life, in a world once-removed from the one in which everyone else seemed to exist.

  The boys, young men, men, and elderly of the shtetl would sit vigil outside her window at all hours of the day and night, asking if they could assist her with her studies (with which she needed no help, of course, with which they couldn't possibly help her even if she let them try), or in the garden (which grew as if charmed, which bloomed red tulips and roses, orange and restless impatiens), or if perhaps Brod would like to go for a stroll to the river (to which she was perfectly able to stroll on her own, thank you). She never said no and never said yes, but pulled, slackened, pulled her strings of control.

  Pull: What would be nicest, she would say, is if I had a tall glass of iced tea. What happened next: the men raced to get one for her. The first to return might get a peck on the forehead (slacken), or (pull) a promised walk (to be granted at a later date), or (slacken) a simple Thank you, good-bye. She maintained a careful balance by her window, never allowing the men to come too close, never allowing them to stray too far. She needed them desperately, not only for the favors, not only for the things that they could get for Yankel and her that Yankel couldn't afford, but because they were a few more fingers to plug the dike that held back what she knew to be true: she didn't love life. There was no convincing reason to live.

  Yankel was already seventy-two years old when the wagon went into the river, his house more ready for a funeral than a birth. Brod read under the muted canary light of oil lamps covered with lace shawls, and bathed in a tub lined with sandpaper to prevent slipping. He tutored her in literature and simple mathematics until she had far surpassed his knowledge, laughed with her even when there was nothing funny, read to her before watching her fall asleep, and was the only person she could consider a friend. She acquired his uneven walk, spoke with his old man's inflections, even rubbed at a five-o'clock shadow that was never, at any time of any day of her life, there.

  I bought you some books in Lutsk, he told her, shutting the door on the early evening and the rest of the world.

  We can't afford these, she said, taking the heavy bag. I'll have to return them tomorrow.

  But we can't afford not to have them. Which can we not afford more, having them or not having them? As I see it, we lose either way. My way, we lose with the books.

  You're ridiculous, Yankel.

  I know, he said, because I also bought you a compass from my architect friend and several books of French poetry.

  But I don't speak French.

  What could be a better occasion to learn?

  Having a French language textbook.

  Ah yes, I knew there was a reason I bought this! he said, removing a thick brown book from the bottom of the bag.

  You're impossible, Yankel!

  I'm possibly possible.

  Thank you, she said, and kissed him on the forehead, which was the only place she had ever kissed or been kissed, and would have been, if not for all the novels she had read, the only place she thought people ever kissed.

  She had to secretly return so many of the things that Yankel bought for her. He never noticed, because he couldn't remember ever having bought them. It was Brod's idea to make their personal library a public one, and to charge a small fee to take out books. It was with this money, along with what she was able to secure from the men who loved her, that they were able to survive.

  Yankel made every effort to prevent Brod from feeling like a stranger, from being aware of their age difference, their genders. He would leave the door open when he urinated (always sitting down, always wiping
himself after), and would sometimes spill water on his pants and say, Look, it also happens to me, unaware that it was Brod who spilled water on her pants to comfort him. When Brod fell from the swing in the park, Yankel scraped his own knees against the sandpaper floor of his bathtub and said, I too have fallen. When she started to grow breasts, he pulled up his shirt to reveal his old, dropped chest and said, It's not only you.

  This was the world in which she grew and he aged. They made for themselves a sanctuary from Trachimbrod, a habitat completely unlike the rest of the world. No hateful words were ever spoken, and no hands raised. More than that, no angry words were ever spoken, and nothing was denied. But more than that, no unloving words were ever spoken, and everything was held up as another small piece of proof that it can be this way, it doesn't have to be that way; if there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it heavy walls, and we will furnish it with soft red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker that resonates like a diamond falling to a jeweler's felt so that we should never hear it. Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does.

  But my very-great-and-lonely-grandmother didn't love Yankel, not in the simple and impossible sense of the word. In reality she hardly knew him. And he hardly knew her. They knew intimately the aspects of themselves in the other, but never the other. Could Yankel have guessed what Brod dreamed of? Could Brod have guessed, could she have cared to guess, where Yankel traveled at night? They were strangers, like my grandmother and me.

  But...

  But each was the closest thing to a deserving recipient of love that the other would find. So they gave each other all of it. He scraped his knee and said, I too have fallen. She spilled water on her pants so he wouldn't feel alone. He gave her that bead. She wore it. And when Yankel said he would die for Brod, he certainly meant it, but that thing he would die for was not Brod, exactly, but his love for her. And when she said, Father, I love you, she was neither naïve nor dishonest, but the opposite: she was wise and truthful enough to lie. They reciprocated the great and saving lie—that our love for things is greater than our love for our love for things—willfully playing the parts they wrote for themselves, willfully creating and believing fictions necessary for life.