Everything Is Illuminated

by Jonathan Safran Foer

  Where do you think you'll be in ten years? she asked, raising her head from his chest to address him.

  I don't know.

  Where do you think I'll be? Their sweat had mingled and dried, forming a pasty film between them.

  In ten years?

  Yes.

  I don't know, he said, playing with her hair. Where do you think you'll

  be?

  I don't know.

  Where do you think I'll be?

  I don't know, she said.

  They lay in silence, thinking their own thoughts, each trying to know the other's. They were becoming strangers on top of each other.

  What made you ask?

  I don't know, she said.

  Well, what do we know?

  Not a lot, she said, easing her head back onto his chest.

  They exchanged notes, like children. My grandfather made his out of newspaper clippings and dropped them in her woven baskets, into which he knew only she would dare stick a hand. Meet me under the wooden bridge, and I will show you things you have never, ever seen. The "M " was taken from the army that would take his mother's life: GERMAN FRONT ADVANCES ON SOVIET BORDER; the "eet" from their approaching warships: NAZI FLEET DEFEATS FRENCH AT LESACS; the "me" from the peninsula they were blue-eyeing: GERMANS SURROUND CRIMEA; the "und" from too little, too late: AMERICAN WAR FUNDS REACH ENGLAND; the "er" from the dog of dogs: HITLER RENDERS NONAGGRESSION PACT INOPERATIVE ... and so on, and so on, each note a collage of love that could never be, and war that could.

  The Gypsy girl carved love letters into trees, filling the forest with notes for him. Do not forsake me, she removed from the bark of a tree in whose shade they had once fallen asleep. Honor me, she carved into the trunk of a petrified oak. She was composing a new list of commandments, commandments they could share, that would govern a life together, and not apart. Do not have any other loves before me in your heart. Do not take my name in vain. Do not kill me. Observe me, and keep me holy.

  I'd like to be wherever you are in ten years, he wrote her, gluing clips of newspaper headlines to a piece of yellow paper. Isn't that a nice idea?

  A very nice idea, he found on a tree at the fringe of the forest. And why is it only an idea?

  Because—the print stained his hands; he read himself on himself—ten years is a long time from now.

  We would have to run away, carved in a circle around a maple's trunk. We would have to leave behind everything but each other.

  Which is possible, he composed with fragments of the news of imminent war. It's a nice idea, anyway.

  My grandfather took the Gypsy girl to the Dial and related the story of his great-great-great-grandmother's tragic life, promising to ask for her help when he one day tried to write Trachimbrod's history. He told her the story of Trachim's wagon, when the young W twins were the first to see the curious flotsam rising to the surface: wandering snakes of white string, a crushed-velvet glove with outstretched fingers, barren spools, schmootzy pince-nez, rasp- and boysenberries, feces, frillwork, the shards of a shattered atomizer, the bleeding red-ink script of a resolution: I will ... I will... She spoke honestly of her father's abuses, and showed him the bruises that not even a naked body will reveal. He explained his circumcision, the covenant, the concept of his being of the Chosen People. She told him of the time her uncle forced himself on her, and how she had been capable, for several years now, of having a baby. He told her that he masturbated with his dead hand, because that way he could convince himself that he was making love to someone else. She told him that she had contemplated suicide, as if it were a decision. He told her his darkest secret: that unlike other boys, his love for his mother had never diminished, not even the smallest bit since he was a child, and please don't laugh at me for telling you this, and please don't think any less of me, but I would rather have a kiss from her than anything in this world. The Gypsy girl cried, and when my grandfather asked her what was wrong, she did not say, I am jealous of your mother. I want you to love me like that, but instead said nothing, and laughed as if: how silly. She told him that she wished there were another commandment, an eleventh etched into the tablets: Do not change.

  For all of his liaisons, for all of the women who would undress for him at the show of his dead arm, he had no other friends, and could imagine no loneliness worse than an existence without her. She was the only one who could rightly claim to know him, the only one he missed when she was not there, and missed even before she was absent. She was the only one who wanted more of him than his arm.

  I don't love you, he told her one evening as they lay naked in the grass.

  She kissed his brow and said, I know that. And I'm sure you know that I don't love you.

  Of course, he said, although it came as a great surprise—not that she didn't love him, but that she would say it. In the past seven years of lovemaking he had heard the words so many times: from the mouths of widows and children, from prostitutes, family friends, travelers, and adulterous wives. Women had said I love you without his ever speaking. The more you love someone, he came to think, the harder it is to tell them. It surprised him that strangers didn't stop each other on the street to say I love you.

  My parents have arranged a marriage, he said.

  For you?

  With a girl named Zosha. From my shtetl. I'm seventeen.

  And do you love her? she asked without looking at him.

  He broke his life into its smallest constituent parts, examined each, like a watchmaker, and then reassembled it.

  I hardly know her. He also avoided eye contact, because like Pincher P, who lived in the streets as a charity case, having donated even his last coin to the poor, his eyes would have given away everything.

  Are you going to go through with it? she asked, drawing circles in the earth with her caramel finger.

  I don't have a choice, he said.

  Of course.

  She would not look at him.

  You will have such a happy life, she said. You will always be happy.

  Why are you doing this?

  Because you are so lucky. Real and lasting happiness is within your reach.

  Stop, he said. You're not being fair.

  I would like to meet her.

  No you wouldn't.

  Yes I would. What's her name? Zosha? I would like very much to meet Zosha and tell her how happy she will be. What a lucky girl. She must be very beautiful.

  I don't know.

  You've seen her, haven't you?

  Yes.

  Then you know if she's beautiful. Is she beautiful?

  I guess.

  More beautiful than I am?

  Stop.

  I would like to attend the wedding, to see for myself. Well, not the wedding, of course. A Gypsy girl couldn't enter the synagogue. The reception, though. You are going to invite me, aren't you?

  You know that isn't possible, he said, turning away.

  I know it isn't possible, she said, knowing that she had pushed it too far, been too cruel.

  It isn't possible.

  I told you: I know.

  But you have to believe me.

  I do.

  They made love for the last time, unaware that the next seven months would pass without any words between them. He would see her many times, and she him—they had come to haunt the same places, to walk the same paths, to fall asleep in the shade of the same trees—but they would never acknowledge each other's existence. They both wanted badly to go back seven years to their first encounter, at the theater, and do it all again, but this time not to notice each other, not to talk, not to leave the theater, she leading him by his dead right arm through a maze of muddy alleys, past the confectioners' stands by the old cemetery, down the Jewish/Human fault line, and so on and so on into the blackness. For seven months they would ignore each other at the bazaar, at the Dial, and at the fountain of the prostrate mermaid, and they were sure they could ignore each other anywhere and always, sure they could be complete strangers, bu
t were proven wrong when he returned home one afternoon from work only to pass her on her way out of his house.

  What are you doing here? he asked, more afraid that she had revealed their relationship—to his father, who would surely beat him, or his mother, who would be so disappointed—than curious as to why she was there.

  Your books are arranged by the color of their spines, she said. How stupid.

  His mother was in Lutsk, he remembered, as she was every Tuesday at this time of the afternoon, and his father was washing himself outside. Safran went to his room to make sure everything was in order. His diary was still under his mattress. His books were properly stacked, according to color. (He pulled one off the shelf, to have something to hold.) The picture of his mother was at its normal skew on the nightstand next to his bed. There was no reason to think that she had touched a thing. He searched the kitchen, the study, even the bathrooms for any trace she might have left. Nothing. No stray hairs. No fingerprints on the mirror. No notes. Everything was in good order.

  He went to his parents' bedroom. The pillows were perfect rectangles. The sheets were as smooth as water, tucked in tightly. The room looked as if it hadn't been touched in years, since a death, perhaps, as if it were being preserved as it once was, a time capsule. He didn't know how many times she had come. He couldn't ask her because he never talked to her anymore, and he couldn't ask his father because he would have had to confess everything, and he couldn't ask his mother because, if she were to find out, it would kill her, and that would kill him, and no matter how unlivable his life had become, he was not yet ready to end it.

  He ran to the house of Lista P, the only lover to inspire him to bathe. Let me in, he said with his head against the door. It's me, Safran. Let me in.

  He could hear shuffling, someone laboring to get to the door.

  Safran? It was Lista's mother.

  Hello, he said. Is Lista in?

  Lista's in her room, she said, thinking what a sweet boy he was. Go on up.

  What's wrong? Lista asked, seeing him at the door. She looked so much older than she had only three years before, at the theater, which made him wonder whether it was she or he who had changed. Come in. Come in. Here, she said, sit down. What's going on?

  I'm all alone, he said.

  You're not alone, she said, taking his head to her chest.

  I am.

  You're not alone, she said. You only feel alone.

  To feel alone is to be alone. That's what it is.

  Let me make you something to eat.

  I don't want anything to eat.

  Then have something to drink.

  I don't want anything to drink.

  She massaged his dead hand and remembered the last time she had touched it. It was not the death that had so attracted her to it, but the unknowability. The unattainability. He could never completely love her, not with all of himself. He could never be completely owned, and he could never own completely. Her desire had been sparked by the frustration of her desire.

  You're going to be married, Safran. I got the invitation this morning. Is that what's upsetting you?

  Yes, he said.

  Well, you've got nothing to worry about. Everybody gets nervous before being wed. I did. I know my husband did. But Zosha"s such a nice girl.

  I've never met her, he said.

  Well, she's very nice. And beautiful, too.

  Do you think I will like her?

  I do.

  Will I love her?

  It's possible. You should never make predictions with love, but it's definitely possible.

  Do you love me? he asked. Did you ever? That night with all the coffee.

  I don't know, she said.

  Do you think it's possible that you did?

  He touched the side of her face with his good hand, and moved it down to her neck, and then down under the collar of her shirt.

  No, she said, taking his hand out.

  No?

  No.

  But I want to. I really do. This isn't for you.

  That's why we can't, she said. I never would have been able to do it if I had thought that you wanted to.

  He put his head in her lap and fell asleep. Before leaving that evening, he gave Lista the book that he still had with him from his house—Hamlet, with a purple spine—that he had taken from the shelf to have something to hold.

  For keeps? she asked.

  You'll give it back to me one day.

  My grandfather and the Gypsy girl knew none of this as they made love for the last time, as he touched her face and fingered the soft underside of her chin, as he paid her the attention received by a sculptor's wife. Like this? he asked. She brushed her eyelashes against his chest. She moved her butterfly kiss across his torso and up his neck to where his left earlobe connected to his jaw. Like this? she asked. He pulled her blue blouse over her head, he undid her bead necklaces, he licked her smooth and sweaty armpits and ran his finger from her neck to her navel. He drew circles around her caramel areolas with his tongue. Like this? he asked. She nodded and craned her head back. He flicked her nipples with his tongue, and knew that it was all so completely wrong, everything, from the moment of his birth to this, everything was coming out the wrong way—not the opposite, but worse: close. She used both hands to undo his belt. He lifted his backside off the ground so she could pull down his slacks and underpants. She took his penis into her hand. She wanted so badly for him to feel good. She was convinced that he had never felt good. She wanted to be the cause of his first and only pleasure. Like this? He put his hand on top of hers and guided it. She removed her skirt and panties, took his dead hand, pressed it between her legs. Her thick black pubic hair was wound in loose curls, in waves. Like this? he asked, although she was guiding his hand, as if trying to channel a message on a Ouija board. They guided each other over each other's body. She put his dead fingers inside her and felt, for a moment, the numbness and paralysis. She felt the death in and through her. Now? he asked. Now? She rolled onto him and spread her legs around his knees. She reached behind her and used his dead hand to guide his penis into her. Is this good? he asked. Is this good?

  Seven months later, June 18, 1941, as the first display of German bombing lit the Trachimbrod skies electric, as my grandfather had his first orgasm (his first and only pleasure, of which she was not the cause), she slit her wrist with a knife that had been made dull carving love letters. But then, there, his sleeping head against her beating chest, she revealed nothing. She didn't say, You are going to marry. And she didn't say, I am going to kill myself. Only: How do you arrange your books?

  26 January, 1998

  Dear Jonathan,

  I promised that I would never mention writing again, because I thought that we were beyond that. But I must break my promise.

  I could hate you! Why will you not permit your grandfather to be in love with the Gypsy girl, and show her his love? Who is ordering you to write in such a manner? We have such chances to do good, and yet again and again you insist on evil. I would not read this most contemporary division to Little Igor, because I did not appraise it worthy of his ears. No, this division I presented to Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior, who acted faithfully with it.

  I must make a simple question, which is what is wrong with you? If your grandfather loves the Gypsy girl, and I am certain that he does, why does he not leave with her? She could make him so happy. And yet he declines happiness. This is not reasonable, Jonathan, and it is not good. If I were the writer, I would have Safran show his love to the Gypsy girl, and take her to Greenwich Shtetl in New York City. Or I would have Safran kill himself, which is the only other truthful thing to perform, although then you would not be born, which would signify that this story could not be written.

  You are a coward, Jonathan, and you have disappointed me. I would never command you to write a story that is as it occurred in the actual, but I would command you to make your story faithful. You are a coward for the same explanation that Brod is a cowar
d, and Yankel is a coward, and Safran is a coward—all of your relatives are cowards! You are all cowards because you live in a world that is "once-removed," if I may excerpt you. I do not have any homage for anyone in your family, with exceptions of your grandmother, because you are all in the proximity of love, and all disavow love. I have enclosed the currency that you most recently posted.

  Of course, I understand, in some manners, what you are attempting to perform. There is such a thing as love that cannot be, for certain. If I were to inform Father, for example, about how I comprehend love, and who I desire to love, he would kill me, and this is no idiom. We all choose things, and we also all choose against things. I want to be the kind of person who chooses for more than chooses against, but like Safran, and like you, I discover myself choosing this time and the next time against what I am certain is good and correct, and against what I am certain is worthy. I choose that I will not, instead of that I will. None of this is effortless to say.

  I did not give Grandfather the money, but it was for very different reasons than you suggested. He was not surprised when I told him. "I am proud of you," he said.

  "But you wanted me to give it to you?" I said.

  "Very much," he said. "I am sure that I could find her."

  "How can you be proud, then?"

  "I am proud of you, not me."

  "You are not angry with me?"

  "No."

  "I do not want to disappoint you."

  "I am not angry or disappointed," he said.

  "Does it make you sad that I am not giving you the money?"

  "No. You are a good person, doing the good and right thing. It makes me content."

  Why, then, did I feel that it was the pathetic, cowardly action, and that I was the pathetic coward? Let me explain why I did not give Grandfather my money. It is not because I am saving it for myself to go to America. That is a dream that I have woken up from. I will never see America, and neither will Little Igor, and I understand that now. I did not give Grandfather the money because I do not believe in Augustine. No, that is not what I mean. I do not believe in the Augustine that Grandfather was searching for. The woman in the photograph is alive. I am sure she is. But I am also sure that she is not Herschel, as Grandfather wanted her to be, and she is not my grandmother, as he wanted her to be, and she is not Father, as he wanted her to be. If I gave him the money, he would have found her, and he would have seen who she really is, and this would have killed him. I am not saying this metaphorically. It would have killed him.