Everything Is Illuminated (29 page)

T
HE
F
IRST
R
APE OF
B
ROD
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 accomplish? 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
.

W
HAT
J
ACOB
R A
TE FOR
B
REAKFAST ON THE
M
ORNING OF
F
EBRUARY
21, 1877

Fried potatoes with onion. Two slices of black bread.

P
LAGIARISM

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 humankind 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.

T
HE
D
IAL

(
See
F
ALSE
I
DOLS
)

T
HE
H
UMAN
W
HOLE

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 inscrutability? (See
A
PPENDIX
G: U
NTIMELY
D
EATHS
.)

U
S, THE
J
EWS

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? You'd better believe it.

T
HE
A
NIMALS

The animals are those things that God likes but doesn't love.

O
BJECTS
T
HAT
E
XIST

Objects that exist are those things that God doesn't even like.

O
BJECTS
T
HAT
D
ON'T
E
XIST

Objects that don't exist don't exist. If we were to imagine such a thing as an object that didn't exist, it would be that thing that God hated. This is the strongest argument against the nonbeliever. If God didn't exist, he would have to hate himself, and that is obviously nonsense.

T
HE
120 M
ARRIAGES OF
J
OSEPH AND
S
ARAH
L

The young couple first married on August 5, 1744, when Joseph was eight, and Sarah six, and first ended their marriage six days later, when Joseph refused to believe, to Sarah's frustration, that the stars were silver nails in the sky, pinning up the black nightscape. They remarried four days later, when Joseph left a note under the door of Sarah's parents' house:
I have considered everything you told me, and I do believe that the stars are silver nails.
They ended their marriage again a year later, when Joseph was nine and Sarah seven, over a quarrel about the nature of the bottom of the Brod. A week later, they were remarried, including this time in their vows that they should love each other until death, regardless of the existence of a bottom of the Brod, the temperature of this bottom (should it exist), and the possible existence of starfish on the possibly existing riverbed. They ended their marriage thirty-seven times in the next seven years, and each time remarried with a longer list of vows. They divorced twice when Joseph was twenty-two and Sarah twenty, four times when they were twenty-five and twenty-three, respectively, and eight times, the most for one year, when they were thirty and twenty-eight. They were sixty and fifty-eight at their last marriage, only three weeks before Sarah died of heart failure and Joseph drowned himself in the bath. Their marriage contract still hangs over the door of the house they on-and-off shared—nailed to the top post and brushing against the
SHALOM
welcome mat:

It is with everlasting devotion that we, Joseph and Sarah L, reunite in the indestructible union of matrimony, promising love until death, with the understanding that the stars are silver nails in the sky, regardless of the existence of a bottom of the Brod, the temperature of this bottom (should it exist), and the possible existence of starfish on the possibly existing riverbed, overlooking what may or may not have been accidental grape juice spills, agreeing to forget that Joseph played sticks and balls with his friends when he promised he would help Sarah thread the needle for the quilt she was sewing, and that Sarah was supposed to give the quilt to Joseph, not his buddy, deeming irrelevant certain details about the story of Trachim's wagon, such as whether it was Chana or Hannah who first saw the curious flotsam, ignoring the simple fact that Joseph snores like a pig, and that Sarah is no great treat to sleep with either, letting slide certain tendencies of both parties to look too long at members of the opposite sex, not making a fuss over why Joseph is such a slob, leaving his clothes wherever he feels like taking them off, expecting Sarah to pick them up, clean them, and put them in their proper place as he should have, or why Sarah has to be such a fucking pain in the ass about the smallest things, such as which way the toilet paper unrolls, or when dinner is five minutes later than she was planning, because, let's face it, it's Joseph who's putting that paper on the roll and dinner on the table, disregarding whether the beet is a better vegetable than the cabbage, putting aside the problems of being fat-headed and chronically unreasonable, trying to erase the memory of a long since expired rose bush that a certain someone was supposed to remember to water when his wife was visiting family in Rovno, accepting the compromise of the way we have been, the way we are, and the way we will likely be ... may we live together in unwavering love and good health, amen.

T
HE
B
OOK OF
R
EVELATIONS

(For a complete listing of revelations,
see
A
PPENDIX
Z32. For a complete listing of genesises,
see
A
PPENDIX
Z33.)

The end of the world has come often, and continues to often come. Unforgiving, unrelenting, bringing darkness upon darkness, the end of the world is something we have become well acquainted with, habitualized, made into a ritual. It is our religion to try to forget it in its absence, make peace with it when it is undeniable, and return its embrace when it finally comes for us, as it always does.

There has yet to be a human to survive a span of history without at least one end of the world. It is the subject of extensive scholarly debate whether stillborn babies are subject to the same revelations—if we could say that they have lived without endings. This debate, of course, demands a close examination of that more profound question:
Was the world first created or ended?
When the Lord our God breathed on the universe, was that a genesis or a revelation? Should we count those seven days forward or backward? How did the apple taste, Adam? And the half a worm you discovered in that sweet and bitter pulp: was that the head or the tail?

J
UST
W
HAT
I
T
W
AS
, E
XACTLY
, T
HAT
Y
ANKEL
D D
ID