Everything Is Illuminated (3 page)

Do not ask the girls,
Yankel said.
Leave them alone. They've been through enough.

By now, almost all of the shtetl's three hundred–odd citizens had gathered to debate that about which they knew nothing. The less a citizen knew, the more adamantly he or she argued. There was nothing new in this. A month before there had been the question of whether it might send a better message to the children to plug, finally, the bagel's hole. Two months before there had been the cruel and comic debate over the question of typesetting, and before that the question of Polish identity, which moved many to tears, and many to laughter, and all to more questions. And still to come would be other questions to debate, and others after that. Questions from the beginning of time—whenever that was—to whenever would be the end. From
ashes?
to
ashes?

PERHAPS,
the Well-Regarded Rabbi said, raising his hands even higher, his voice even louder,
WE DO NOT HAVE TO SETTLE THE MATTER AT ALL. WHAT IF WE NEVER FILL OUT A DEATH CERTIFICATE? WHAT IF WE GIVE THE BODY A PROPER BURIAL, BURN ANYTHING THAT WASHES ASHORE, AND ALLOW LIFE TO GO ON IN THE FACE OF THIS DEATH?

But we need a proclamation,
said Froida Y, the candy maker.

Not if the shtetlproclaims otherwise,
corrected Isaac.

Perhaps we should try to contact his wife,
said grieving Shanda.

Perhaps we should begin to gather the remains,
said Eliezar Z, the dentist.

And in the braid of argument, young Hannah's voice almost went unnoticed as she peeked her head from beneath the fringed wing of her father's prayer shawl.

I see something.

WHAT?
her father asked, quieting the others.
WHAT DO YOU SEE?

Over there,
pointing to the frothing water.

In the middle of the string and feathers, surrounded by candles and soaked matches, prawns, pawns, and silk tassels that curtsied like jellyfish, was a baby girl, still mucus-glazed, still pink as the inside of a plum.

The twins hid their bodies under their father's tallis, like ghosts. The horse at the bottom of the river, shrouded by the sunken night sky, closed its heavy eyes. The prehistoric ant in Yankel's ring, which had lain motionless in the honey-colored amber since long before Noah hammered the first plank, hid its head between its many legs, in shame.

B
ITZL
B
ITZL
R was able to recover the wagon a few days later with the help of a group of strong men from Kolki, and his traps saw more action than ever. But sifting through the remains, they didn't find a body. For the next one hundred fifty years, the shtetl would host an annual contest to "find" Trachim, although a shtetl proclamation withdrew the reward in 1793 —on Menasha's counsel that any ordinary corpse would begin to break apart after two years in water, so searching not only would be pointless but could result in rather offensive findings, or even worse, multiple rewards—and the contest became more of a festival, for which the line of short-tempered bakers P would create particular pastry treats, and the girls of the shtetl would dress as the twins dressed on that fateful day: in wool britches with yarn ties, and canvas blouses with blue-fringed butterfly collars. Men came from great distances to dive for the cotton sacks that the Float Queen would throw into the Brod, all but one of which, the golden sack, were filled with earth.

There were those who thought that Trachim would never be found, that the current brushed enough loose sediment over him to properly bury his body. These people laid stones on the shoreside when they made their monthly cemetery rounds, and said things like:

Poor Trachim, I didn't know him well, but I sure could have.

or

I miss you, Trachim. Without having ever met you, I do.

or

Rest, Trachim, rest. And make safe our flour mill.

There were those who suspected that he was not pinned under his wagon but swept out to sea, with the secrets of his life kept forever inside him, like a love note in a bottle, to be found one morning by an unsuspecting couple on a romantic beach stroll. It's possible that he, or some part of him, washed up on the sands of the Black Sea, or in Rio, or that he made it all the way to Ellis Island.

Or perhaps a widow found him and took him in: bought him an easy chair, changed his sweater every morning, shaved his face until the hair stopped growing, took him faithfully to bed with her every night, whispered sweet nothings into what was left of his ear, laughed with him over black coffee, cried with him over yellowing pictures, talked greenly about having kids of her own, began to miss him before she became sick, left him everything in her will, thought of only him as she died, always knew he was a fiction but believed in him anyway.

Some argued that there was never a body at all. Trachim wanted to be dead without being dead, the con artist. He packed a wagon with all of his possessions, rode it into the nondescript, nameless shtetl—which was soon to be known across eastern Poland for its yearly festival, Trachimday, and to carry his name like an orphan baby (except for maps and Mormon census records, for which it would go by Sofiowka)—patted his nameless horse its last pat, and spurred it into the undertow. Was he escaping debt? An unfavorable arranged marriage? Lies that had caught up with him? Was his death an essential stage in the continuation of his life?

Of course there are those who pointed to Sofiowka's madness, how he would sit naked in the fountain of the prostrate mermaid, caressing her scaly tuches like a newborn's fontanel, caressing his own better half as if there were nothing in the world wrong with beating one's boner, wherever, whenever. Or how he was once found on the Well-Regarded Rabbi's front lawn, bound in white string, and said he tied one around his index finger to remember something terribly important, and fearing he would forget the index finger, he tied a string around his pinky, and then one from waist to neck, and fearing he would forget this one, he tied a string from ear to tooth to scrotum to heel, and used his body to remember his body, but in the end could remember only the string. Is this someone to trust for a story?

And the baby? My great-great-great-great-great-grandmother? This is a more difficult problem, for it's relatively easy to reason how a life could be lost in a river, but for one to arise from it?

Harry V, the shtetl's master logician and resident pervert—who had been working for as many years and with as little success as one could imagine on his magnum opus, "The Host of Hoists," which, he promised, contained the tightest of tight logical proofs that God indiscriminatingly loves the indiscriminate lover—put forth a lengthy argument concerning the presence of another on the ill-starred wagon: Trachim's wife. Perhaps, Harry argued, her water broke while the two were munching deviled eggs in a meadow between shtetls, and perhaps Trachim urged the wagon to dangerous speeds in order to get her to a doctor before the baby squirmed out like a flapping flounder from a fisherman's grip. As the waves of her tidal contractions began to break over her head, Trachim turned to his wife, perhaps put his callused hand on her soft face, perhaps took his eyes off the riddled road, and perhaps inadvertently steered into the river. Perhaps the wagon flipped, the bodies plunged under its weight, and perhaps, sometime between her mother's last breath and her father's final attempt to free himself, the baby was born. Perhaps. But not even Harry could explain the absence of an umbilical cord.

The Wisps of Ardisht—that clan of artisan smokers in Rovno who smoked so much they smoked even when they were not smoking, and were condemned by shtetl proclamation to a life of rooftops as shingle layers and chimney sweeps—believed that my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother was Trachim reborn. In his moment of afterworldly judgment, as his softening body was presented before the Keeper of those glorious and barbed Gates, something went wrong. There was unfinished business. The soul was not ready to transcend, but was sent back, given a chance to right a previous generation's wrong. This, of course, doesn't make any sense. But what does?

More concerned with the baby's future than its past, the Well-Regarded Rabbi offered no official interpretation of her origins for either the shtetl or
The Book of Antecedents,
but took her in as his own responsibility until her final home should be decided. He brought her to the Upright Synagogue—for not even a baby, he swore, should set foot in the Slouching Synagogue (wherever it happened to be on that given day)—and tucked her makeshift crib in the ark while the men in long black suits hollered prayers at the top of their lungs.
HOLY, HOLY, HOLY IS THE LORD OF HOSTS! THE WHOLE WORLD IS FILLED WITH HIS GLORY!

The goers of the Upright Synagogue had been screaming for more than two hundred years, since the Venerable Rabbi enlightened that we are always drowning, and our prayers are nothing less than pleas for rescue from deep under the spiritual waters.
AND IF OUR PLIGHT IS SO DESPERATE,
he said (always starting his sentences with "and," as if what he verbalized were some logical continuation of his innermost thoughts),
SHOULD WE NOT ACT LIKE IT? AND SHOULD WE NOT SOUND LIKE DESPERATE PEOPLE?
So they screamed, and had been screaming for the two hundred years since.

And they screamed now, never allowing the baby a moment of rest, and hung—with one hand on prayer book and one on rope—from the pulleys that clipped to their belts, and kept the crowns of their black hats brushing against the ceiling.
AND IF WE ASPIRE TO BE CLOSER TO GOD,
the Venerable Rabbi had enlightened,
SHOULD WE NOT ACT LIKE IT? AND SHOULD WE NOT MAKE OURSELVES CLOSER?
Which made enough sense. It was on the eve of Yom Kippur, the holiest of holy days, that a fly flew under the door of the synagogue and began to pester the hanging congregants. It flew from face to face, buzzing, landing on long noses, going in and out of hairy ears.
AND IF THIS IS A TEST,
the Venerable Rabbi enlightened, trying to keep his congregation together,
SHOULD WE NOT RISE TO ITS CHALLENGE? AND I URGE YOU: CRASH TO THE GROUND BEFORE YOU RELEASE THE GREAT BOOK!

But how pestering that fly was, tickling some of the most ticklish places.
AND AS GOD ASKED ABRAHAM TO SHOW ISAAC THE KNIFE'S POINT, SO IS HE ASKING US NOT TO SCRATCH OUR ASSES! AND IF WE MUST, BY ALL MEANS WITH THE LEFT HAND!
Half did as the Venerable Rabbi enlightened, and released the rope before the Great Book. These were the ancestors of the Upright Synagogue's congregants, who continued for two hundred years to walk with an affected limp to remind themselves—or, more importantly, to remind others—of their response to The Test: that the Holy Word prevailed. (
EXCUSE ME, RABBI, BUT JUST WHICH WORD IS IT EXACTLY?
The Venerable Rabbi knocked his disciple with the business end of a Torah pointer:
AND IF YOU HAVE TO ASK!...
) Some Uprighters went so far as to refuse to walk at all, signifying an even more dramatic fall. Which meant they couldn't get to synagogue, of course.
WE PRAY BY NOT PRAYING,
they said.
WE FULFILL THE LAW BY TRANSGRESSING IT.

Those who dropped the prayer book rather than fall were the ancestors of the Slouching Synagogue's congregants—so named by the Uprighters. They twiddled with the fringes sewn to the ends of their shirtsleeves, which they put there to remind themselves—or, more importantly, to remind others—of their response to The Test: that the strings are carried around with you, that the
spirit
of the Holy Word should always prevail. (
Excuse me, but does anyone know what that thing about the Holy Word means?
The others shrugged and went back to their argument about how best to divide thirteen knishes among forty-three people.) It was the Slouchers' customs that changed: the pulleys were traded in for pillows, the Hebrew prayer book for a more understandable Yiddish one, and the Rabbi for a group-led service and discussion, followed, but more often interrupted, by food, drink, and gossip. The Upright congregants looked down on the Slouchers, who seemed willing to sacrifice any Jewish law for the sake of what they feebly termed
the great and necessary reconciliation of religion with life.
The Uprighters called them names and promised them an eternity of agony in the next world for their eagerness to be comfortable in this one. But like Shmul S, the intestine-tied milkman, the Slouchers couldn't give a shit. Save for those rare occasions when Uprighters and Slouchers pushed at the synagogue from opposite sides, trying to make the shtetl more sacred or secular, they learned to ignore each other.

For six days the citizens of the shtetl, Uprighters and Slouchers alike, stood in lines outside the Upright Synagogue to get their chance to view my very-great-grandmother. Many returned many times. Men could examine the baby, touch it, talk to it, even hold it. Women were not allowed inside the Upright Synagogue, of course, for as the Venerable Rabbi so long ago enlightened,
AND HOW CAN WE BE EXPECTED TO KEEP OUR MINDS AND HEARTS WITH GOD WHEN THAT OTHER PART IS POINTING US TOWARD IMPURE THOUGHTS OF YOU KNOW WHAT?

What seemed like a reasonable compromise was reached when, in 1763, the women were allowed to pray in a dank and cramped room beneath a specially installed glass floor. But it wasn't long before the dangling men took their eyes from the Great Book to partake in the chorus of cleavages below. Black pants became form-fitting, there was more bumping and swaying than ever as those
other parts
protruded in fantasies of
you know what,
and an extra hole was unknowingly inserted in the holiest of prayers:
HOLY, HOLY, HOLY,
HOLEY
IS THE LORD OF HOSTS! THE WHOLE WORLD IS FILLED WITH HIS GLORY!

The Venerable Rabbi addressed the disconcerting matter in one of his many midafternoon sermons.
AND WE MUST ALL BE FAMILIAR WITH THAT MOST PORTENTOUS OF BIBLICAL PARABLES, THE PERFECTION OF HEAVEN AND HELL. AND AS WE ALL DO OR SHOULD KNOW, IT WAS ON THE SECOND DAY THAT THE LORD OUR GOD CREATED THE OPPOSING REGIONS OF HEAVEN AND HELL, TO WHICH WE AND THE SLOUCHERS, MAY THEY PACK ONLY SWEATERS, WILL BE SENT, RESPECTIVELY. AND BUT WE MUST NOT FORGET THAT THIRD AND NEXT DAY, WHEN GOD SAW THAT HEAVEN WAS NOT AS MUCH LIKE HEAVEN AS HE WOULD HAVE PRAYED, AND HELL NOT AS MUCH LIKE HELL. AND SO, THE LESSER AND HARDER-TO-FIND TEXTS TELL US, HE, FATHER OF FATHER OF FATHERS, RAISED THE SHADE BETWEEN THE OPPOSING REGIONS, ALLOWING THE BLESSED AND THE CONDEMNED TO SEE ONE ANOTHER. AND AS WAS HIS HOPE, THE BLESSED REJOICED IN THE PAIN OF THE CONDEMNED, AND THEIR JOY BECAME THAT MUCH GREATER IN THE FACE OF SORROW AND THE CONDEMNED SAW THE BLESSED, SAW THEIR LOBSTER TAILS AND PROSCIUTTO, SAW WHAT THEY PUT IN THE TUCHESES OF MENSTRUATING SHIK
SAS, AND FELT THAT MUCH WORSE FOR THEMSELVES. AND GOD SAW THAT IT WAS GOODER. AND BUT THE APPEAL OF THE WINDOW BECAME TOO STRONG. AND RATHER THAN ENJOY THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, THE BLESSED WERE FASCINATED BY THE CRUELTIES OF HELL. AND RATHER THAN SUFFER THOSE CRUELTIES, THE CONDEMNED ENJOYED THE VICARIOUS PLEASURES OF HEAVEN. AND OVER TIME, THE TWO REACHED AN EQUILIBRIUM, STARING AT THE OTHER, STARING AT THEMSELVES. AND THE WINDOW BECAME A MIRROR, FROM WHICH NEITHER THE BLESSED NOR THE CONDEMNED COULD, OR WOULD, LEAVE. AND SO GOD DROPPED THE SHADE, FOREVER CLOSING OFF THE PORTAL BETWEEN KINGDOMS, AND SO MUST WE, IN THE FACE OF OUR TOO TEMPTING WINDOW, DROP THE SHADE BETWEEN THE KINGDOMS OF MAN AND WOMAN.