Everything Is Illuminated (33 page)

“I am not a hero, it is true.”

“He is not a hero.”

“But I am not a bad person, either.”

“But he is not a bad person.”

“The woman in the photograph is your grandmother. She is holding your father. The man standing next to me was our best friend, Herschel.”

“The woman in the photograph is my grandmother. She is holding my father. The man standing next to Grandfather was his best friend, Herschel.”

“Herschel is wearing a skullcap in the photograph because he was a Jew.”

“Herschel was a Jew.”

“And he was my best friend.”

“He was his best friend.”

“And I murdered him.”

The final time they made love, seven months before she killed herself and he married someone else, the Gypsy girl asked my grandfather how he arranged his books.

She had been the only one he returned to without having to be asked. They would meet at the bazaar — he would watch, with not only anticipation but pride, as she coaxed snakes from woven baskets with the tipsy music of her recorder. They would meet at the theater or in front of her thatch-roofed shanty in the Gypsy hamlet on the other side of the Brod. (She, of course, could never be seen near his house.) They would meet on the wooden bridge, or beneath the wooden bridge, or by the small falls. But more often than not, they would end up in the petrified corner of Radziwell Forest, exchanging jokes and stories, laughing afternoons into evenings, making love — which might or might not have been love — under stone canopies.

Do you think I’m wonderful? she asked him one day as they leaned against the trunk of a petrified maple.

No, he said.

Why?

Because so many girls are wonderful. I imagine hundreds of men have called their loves wonderful today, and it’s only noon. You couldn’t be something that hundreds of others are.

Are you saying that I am not-wonderful?

Yes, I am.

She fingered his dead arm. Do you think I am not-beautiful?

You are incredibly not-beautiful. You are the farthest possible thing from beautiful.

She unbuttoned his shirt.

Am I smart?

No. Of course not. I would never call you smart.

She kneeled to unbutton his pants.

Am I sexy?

No.

Funny?

You are not-funny.

Does that feel good?

No.

Do you like it?

No.

She unbuttoned her blouse. She leaned in against him.

Should I continue?

She had been to Kiev, he learned, and Odessa, and even Warsaw. She had lived among the Wisps of Ardisht for a year when her mother became deathly ill. She told him of ship voyages she had taken to places he had never heard of, and stories he knew were all untrue, were bad not-truths, even, but he nodded and tried to convince himself to be convinced, tried to believe her, because he knew that the origin of a story is always an absence, and he wanted her to live among presences.

In Siberia, she said, there are couples who make love from hundreds of miles apart, and in Austria there is a princess who tattooed the image of her lover’s body onto her body, so that when she looked in the mirror she would see him, and and and on the other side of the Black Sea is a stone woman — I have never seen it, but my aunt has — who came to life because of her sculptor’s love!

Safran brought the Gypsy girl flowers and chocolates (all gifts from his widows) and composed poems for her, all of which she laughed at.

How stupid could you possibly be! she said.

Why am I stupid?

Because the easiest things for you to give are the hardest things for you to give. Flowers, chocolates, and poems don’t mean anything to me.

You don’t like them?

Not from you.

What would you like from me?

She shrugged her shoulders, not out of puzzlement but embarrassment. (He was the only person on earth who could embarrass her.) Where do you keep your books? she asked.

In my room.

Where in your room?

On shelves.

How are your books arranged?

Why do you care?

Because I want to know.

She was a Gypsy. He was a Jew. When she held his hand in public, something he knew she knew he hated, he created a reason to need it —

to comb his hair, to point at the spot where his great-great-great-grandfather spilt the gold coins onto the shore like golden vomit from the sack — and would then insert it in his pocket, ending the situation.

You know what I need right now, she said, reaching for his dead arm as they walked through the Sunday bazaar.

Tell me and it’s yours. Anything.

I want a kiss.

You can have as many as you want, wherever you want them.

Here, she said, putting her index finger on her lips. Now.

He gestured to a nearby alley.

No, she said. I want a kiss here, she put her finger on her lips, now.

He laughed. Here? He put his finger on his own lips. Now?

Here, she said, putting her finger on her lips. Now.

They laughed together. Nervous laughter. Starting with small giggles. Summing. Louder laughter. Multiplying. Even louder. Squaring.

Laughter between gasps. Uncontrollable laughter. Violent. Infinite.

I can’t.

I know.

My grandfather and the Gypsy girl made love for seven years, at least twice every week. They had confessed every secret; explained, to the best of their abilities, the workings of their bodies, each to the other; been forceful and passive, greedy and giving, wordy and silent.

How do you arrange your books? she asked as they lay naked on a bed of pebbles and hard soil.

I told you, they’re in my bedroom on shelves.

I wonder if you can imagine your life without me.

Sure I can imagine it, but I don’t like to.

It’s not pleasant, is it?

Why are you doing this?

It was just something I was wondering.

Not one of his friends — if it could be said that he had any other friends — knew about the Gypsy girl, and none of his other women knew about the Gypsy girl, and his parents, of course, didn’t know about the Gypsy girl. She was such a tightly kept secret that sometimes he felt that not even he was privy to his relationship with her. She knew of his efforts to conceal her from the rest of his world, to keep her cloistered in a private chamber reachable only by a secret passage, to put her behind a wall.

She knew that even if he thought he loved her, he did not love her.

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 adulter-ous 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, but were proven wrong when he returned home one afternoon from work only to pass her on her way out of his house.