Everything Is Illuminated (22 page)

"Here is Herschel," she said, holding a photograph up to the light of the window. "We will go," Grandfather said. "Tell him we are leaving." "Do not go," she said. "Shut up," he told her, and even if she was not Augustine, he still should not have uttered this to her. "I am sorry," I told her, "please continue." "He lived in Kolki, which was a shtetl near to Trachimbrod. Herschel and Eli were best friends, and Eli had to shoot Herschel, because if he did not, they would shoot him." "Shut up," he said again, and this time he also punched the table. But she did not shut up. "Eli did not want to, but he did it." "You are lying about it all." "He does not intend this," I told her, and I could not clutch why he was doing what he was doing. "Grandfather—" "You can keep your not-truths for yourself," he said. "I heard this story," she said, "and I believe it is a truth." I could perceive that he was making her to cry.

"Here is a clip," she said, "that Miriam would keep in her hair so that it would not be in her face. She was always running from here to there. It would kill her to sit down, you know, because she was always loving to do things. I found this under her pillow. It's true. Why was her clip under her pillow, you must want to know. The secret is that she would hold it all night so that she would not suck on her thumb! That was a bad thing
she did for so long, even when she was twelve years old already! Only I know that. She would kill me if she knew I was talking about her thumb, but I'll tell you, if you witnessed close enough, if you gave it attention, you could see that it was always red. She was always ashamed about it." She restored the clip back into
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and excavated another photograph.

"Here, oh, I remember this, this is Kalman and Izzy, they were such jokers." Grandfather did not view at anything except for Augustine. "See how Kalman is holding Izzy's nose! What a joker! They would make so much joking all day, Father called them the clowns of Trachimbrod. He would say, 'They are such clowns that not even a circus would have them!'" "You are from Trachimbrod?" I asked. "She is not from Trachimbrod," Grandfather said, and rotated his head away from her. "I am," she said. "I am the only one remaining." "What do you signify?" I asked, because I just did not know. "They were all killed," she said, and here I commenced to translate for the hero what she was saying, "except for the one or two who were able to escape." "You were the lucky ones," I told her. "We were the not-lucky ones," she said. "It is not true," Grandfather said, although I do not know what part he was saying was not true. "It is. You should never have to be the one remaining." "You should have died with the others," he said. (I will never allow that to remain in the story.)

"Ask her if she knew my grandfather." "Did you know the man in the photograph? He was the boy's grandfather." I presented her the photograph again. "Of course," she said, and again disbursed her eyes to me. "That was Safran. He was the first boy I ever kissed. I am such an old lady that I am too old to be shy anymore. I kissed him when I was only a girl, and he was only a boy. Tell him," she said to me, and she took my hand into her own hand. "Tell him that he was the first boy I ever kissed." "She says that your grandfather was the first boy she ever kissed." "We were very good friends. He lost a wife and two babies, you know, in the war. Does he know that?" "Two babies?" I asked. "Yes," she said. "He knows," I said. She inspected
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excavating photographs and putting them on the table. "How can you do this?" Grandfather asked her.

"Here," she said after a long search. "This is a photograph of Safran
and me." I observed that the hero had small rivers descending his face, and I wanted to put my hand on his face, to be architecture for him. "This is his house we are in front of," she said. "I remember the day very much. My mother made this photograph. She was so fond for Safran. I think she wanted me to marry him, and even told the Rabbi." "Then you would be his grandmother," I told her. She laughed, and this made me feel good. "My mother liked him so much because he was a very polite boy, and very shy, and he would tell her that she was pretty even when she was not pretty." "What was her name?" I asked, and I was attempting to be kind, but the woman rotated her head to tell me, No, I will not ever utter her name. And then I remembered that I did not know this woman's name. I persevered to think of her as Augustine, because like Grandfather, I could not stop desiring that she was Augustine. "I know I have another," she said, and again investigated
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Grandfather would not look at her. "Yes," she said, excavating another yellow photograph, "here is one of Safran and his wife in front of their house after they became married."

I gave the hero each picture as she gave it to me, and he could only with difficulty hold it in his hands that were doing so much shaking. It appeared that a part of him wanted to write everything, every word of what occurred, into his diary. And a part of him refused to write even one word. He opened the diary and closed it, opened it and closed it, and it looked as if it wanted to fly away from his hands. "Tell him I was at the wedding. Tell him." "She was at the wedding of your grandfather and his first wife," I said. "Ask her what it was like," he said. "It was beautiful," she said. "My brother held one of the chuppah poles, I remember. It was a spring day. Zosha was such a pretty girl." "It was so beautiful," I told the hero. "There was white, and flowers, and many children, and the bride in a long dress. Zosha was a beautiful girl, and all of the other men were jealous people." "Ask her if we could see this house," he said, pointing to the photograph. "Could you exhibit us this house?" I asked. "There is nothing," she said. "I already told you. Nothing. It used to be four kilometers distance from here, but everything that still exists from Trachimbrod is in this house." "You say it is four kilometers from here?" "There is no Trachimbrod anymore. It ended fifty years ago." "Take us
there," Grandfather said. "There is nothing to see. It is only a field. I could exhibit you any field and it would be the same as exhibiting you Trachimbrod." "We have come to see Trachimbrod," Grandfather said, "and you will take us to Trachimbrod."

She looked at me, and she put her hand on my face. "Tell him I think about it every day. Tell him." "Think about what?" I asked. "Tell him." "She thinks about it every day," I told the hero. "I think about Trachimbrod, and when we were all so young. We used to run in the streets naked, can you believe it? We were just children, yes. That was how it was. Tell him." "They used to run in the streets naked. They were just children." "I remember Safran so well. He kissed me behind the synagogue, which was a thing to get us murdered, you know. I can still remember just how I felt. It was a little like flying. Tell it to him." "She remembers when your grandfather kissed her. She flew a little." "I also remember Rosh Hashanah, when we would go to the river and throw breadcrumbs in it so our sins would float away from us. Tell him." "She remembers the river and breadcrumbs and her sins." "The Brod?" the hero asked. She moved her head to say, Yes, yes. "Tell him that his grandfather and I and all of the children would jump into the Brod when it was so hot, and our parents would sit on the side of the water and watch and play cards. Tell him." I told him. "Everyone had his own family, but it was something like we were all one big family. People would fight, yes, but it was nothing."

She retrieved her hands from me and put them on her knees. "I am so ashamed," she said. "You had to do anything. You could not allow anyone to see your face after." "You should be ashamed," Grandfather said. "Do not be ashamed," I told her. "Ask her how my grandfather escaped." "He would like to know how his grandfather escaped." "She does not know anything," Grandfather said. "She is a fool." "You do not have to utter anything that you do not want to utter," I told her, and she said, "Then I would never utter another word again." "You do not have to do anything that you do not want to do." "Then I would never do anything again." "She is a liar," Grandfather said, and I could not understand what was forcing him to behave this way.

"Could you please leave us to be in solitude," Augustine said to me,
"for a few moments." "Let us go outside," I told Grandfather. "No," Augustine said, "him." "Him?" I asked. "Please leave us to be in solitude for a few moments." I looked to Grandfather so that he could give me a beacon of what to do, but I could see that his eyes were impending tears, and that he would not look at me. This was my beacon. "We must go outside," I told the hero. "Why?" "They are going to utter things in secrecy." "What kinds of things?" "We cannot be here."

We walked out and closed the door behind us. I yearned to be on the other side of the door, the side on which such momentous truths were being uttered. Or I yearned to press my ear to the door so that I could at minimum hear. But I knew that my side was on the outside with the hero. Part of me hated this, and part of me was grateful, because once you hear something, you can never return to the time before you heard it. "We can remove the skin from the corn for her," I said, and the hero harmonized. It was approximately four o'clock of the afternoon, and the temperature was commencing to become cold. The wind was making the first noises of night.

"I don't know what to do," the hero said.

"I do not know also."

After that there was a famine of words for a long time. We only removed the skin from corn. I was not concerned about what Augustine was saying. It was Grandfather's talking that I desired to hear. Why could he say things to this woman that he had never before encountered when he could not say things to me? Or perhaps he was not saying anything to her. Or perhaps he was lying. This is what I wanted, for him to present not-truths to her. She did not deserve the truth, not as I deserved the truth. Or we both deserved the truth, and the hero, too. All of us.

"What should we converse about?" I asked, because I knew that it was a common decency for us to speak. "I don't know." "There must be a thing." "Do you want to know anything else about America?" he asked. "I cannot think of anything at this moment." "Do you know about Times Square?" "Yes," I said, "Times Square in Manhattan on 42nd Street and Broadway Avenue." "Do you know about people who sit in front of slot machines all day and waste all of the money they have?" "Yes," I said. "Las Vegas, Nevada. I have read an article about this." "What about
skyscrapers?" "Of course. World Trade Center. Empire State Building. Sears Tower." I do not comprehend why, but I was not proud of everything that I knew about America. I was ashamed. "What else?" he said. "Tell me more about your grandmother," I said. "My grandmother?" "Who you spoke of in the car. Your grandmother from Kolki." "You remember." "Yes." "What do you want to know?" "How old is she?" "She's about the age of your grandfather, I suppose, but she looks much older." "What does she look like?" "She's short. She calls herself a shrimp, which is funny. I don't know what color her hair really is, but she dyes it a kind of brown and yellow, sort of like the hairs on this corn. Her eyes are mismatched, one blue and one green. She has terrible varicose veins." "What does it mean varicose veins?" "The veins in her legs, where the blood goes through, they're above the level of her skin and they look kind of weird." "Yes," I said, "Grandfather has these also, because when he worked he would stand for all day, and so this happened to him." "My grandmother got them from the war, because she had to walk across Europe to escape. It was too much for her legs." "She walked across Europe?" "Remember, I told you she left Kolki before the Nazis." "Yes, I remember." He stopped for a moment. I decided to peril everything once again. "Tell me about you and her."

"What do you mean me and her?" "I only want to listen." "I don't know what to say." "Tell me about when you were young, and how it was with her then." He made a laugh. "When I was young?" "Tell me anything." "When I was young," he said, "I used to sit under her dress at family dinners. That's something I remember." "Tell me." "I haven't thought about this in a really long time." I did not utter a thing, so that he would persevere. This was so difficult at times, because there existed so much silence. But I
understanded
understood that the silence was necessary for him to talk. "I'd run my hands up and down her varicose veins. I don't know why, or how I started doing it. It was just something I did. I was a kid, and kids do things like that, I guess. I remembered that because I mentioned her legs." I refused to utter even one word. "It was like sucking your thumb. I did it, and it felt good, and that was it." Be silent, Alex. You do not have to speak. "I would watch the world through her dresses. I could see everything, but no one could see me. Like a fort,
a
hiding place under the covers. I was just a kid. Four. Five. I don't know." With my silence, I gave him a space to fill. "I felt safety and peace. You know, real safety and real peace. I felt it." "Safety and peace from what?" "I don't know. Safety and peace from not-safety and not-peace." "This is a nice story." "It's true. I'm not making it up." "Of course. I know that you are faithful." "It's just that sometimes we make things up, just to talk. But this really happened." "I know." "Really." "I believe you." There was a silence. This silence was so heavy, and so long, that I was coerced to speak. "When did you stop hiding under her dress?" "I don't know. Maybe I was five or six. Maybe a bit later. I just got too old for it, I guess. Someone must have told me it was no longer appropriate." "What else do you remember?" "What do you mean?" "About her. About you and her." "Why are you so curious?" "What are you so ashamed?" "I remember those veins of hers, and I remember the smell of my secret hiding place, that's how I used to think of it, I remember, like a secret, and I remember when my grandmother once told me that I'm lucky because I'm funny." "You are very funny, Jonathan." "No. That's the last thing I want to be." "Why? To be funny is a great thing." "No it's not." "Why is this?" "I used to think that humor was the only way to appreciate how wonderful and terrible the world is, to celebrate how big life is. You know what I mean?" "Yes, of course." "But now I think it's the opposite. Humor is a way of shrinking from that wonderful and terrible world." "Inform me more about when you were young, Jonathan." He made more laughing. "Why do you laugh?" He laughed again. "Inform me." "When I was a boy, I would spend Friday nights at my grandmother's house. Not every Friday, but most. On the way in, she would lift me from the ground with one of her wonderful terrifying hugs. And on the way out the next afternoon, I was again taken into the air with her love. I'm laughing because it wasn't until years later that I realized she was weighing me." "Weighing you?" "When she was our age, she was feeding from waste while walking across Europe barefoot. It was important to her—more important than that I had a good time—that I gained weight whenever I visited. I think she wanted the fattest grandchildren in the world." "Tell me more about these Fridays. Tell me about measuring and humor and hiding beneath her dress." "I think I'm done
talking." "You must talk." Did you feel sorry for me? Is that why you persevered? "My grandmother and I used to scream words off her back porch at night, when I would stay over. That's something I remember. We screamed the longest words we could think of. 'Phantasmagoria!' I screamed." He laughed. "I remember that one. And then she would scream a Yiddish word I didn't understand. Then I would scream. 'Antediluvian!'" He screamed the word into the street, and this would have been an embarrassment except that there was no one in the street. "And then I would watch the veins in her neck bulge as she screamed some Yiddish word. We were both secretly in love with words, I guess." "And you were both secretly in love with each other." He laughed again. "What were the words that she would scream?" "I don't know. I never knew what they meant. I can still hear her." He screamed a Yiddish word into the street. "Why did you not ask her what the words meant?" "I was afraid." "Of what were you afraid?" "I don't know. I was just too afraid. I knew I wasn't supposed to ask, so I didn't." "Perhaps she desired for you to ask." "No." "Perhaps she needed you to ask, because if you didn't ask, she could not tell you." "No." "Perhaps she was shouting, Ask me! Ask me what I'm shouting!"