Everything Is Illuminated (32 page)

"Oh my God," he said, and he held the photograph up to the light of the candle. Then he put it down. Then he held it again, and this time put it close to my face so that he could observe both the photograph and my face at the same time. "What is he doing?" Grandfather asked. "What are you doing?" I asked him. Jonathan placed the photograph on the table. "It's you," he said.

I removed my hand from the box.

"Who is me?" "The man in this picture. It's you." He gave me the photograph. This time I examined it with much scrutiny. "What is it?" Grandfather asked. There were four people in the photograph, two men, a woman, and a baby that the woman was holding. "The one on the left," Jonathan said, "here." He put his finger beneath the face of the man, and I must confess, there could be nothing truthful to do but admit, he looked like me. It was as if a mirror. I know that this is an idiom, but I am saying it without any meaning other than the words. It was as if a mirror. "What?" Grandfather asked. "A moment," I said, and held the photograph to the light of the candle. The man even stood in the same potent manner as I stand. His cheeks appeared like mine. His eyes appeared like mine. His hairs, lips, arms, legs, they all appeared like mine. Not even
like mine. They
were
mine. "Tell me," Grandfather said, "what is it?" I presented him the photograph, and to write the rest of this story is the most impossible thing.

At first he examined it to see what it was a photograph of. Because he was looking down to view the photograph, which was on the table, I could not see what his eyes were performing. He looked up from the photograph and viewed Jonathan and me, and he smiled. He even moved his shoulders up, as a child will sometimes do. He made a small laugh and then picked up the photograph. He held it to his face with one hand and held the candle to his face with the other. It made many shadows where his skin had folds, which were many more places than I had before observed. This time I could see his eyes voyage this and that over the photograph. They stopped on each person, and witnessed each person from feet to hairs. Then he looked up again and smiled again at Jonathan and me, and he also moved his shoulders like a child again.

"It looks like me," I said.

"Yes it does," he said.

I did not look at Jonathan, because I was certain that he was looking at me. So I looked at Grandfather, who was investigating the photograph, although I am certain that he could feel that I was viewing him.

"Exactly like me," I said. "He also observed this," I said of Jonathan, because I did not want to be alone in this observation.

(Here it is almost too forbidding to continue. I have written to this point many times, and corrected the parts you would have me correct, and made more funnies, and more inventions, and written as if I were you writing this, but every time I try to persevere, my hand shakes so that I can no longer hold my pen. Do it for me. Please. It is now yours.)

Grandfather concealed his face behind the photograph.

(And this does not seem to me like such a cowardly thing to do, Jonathan. We would also conceal our faces, yes? In truth, I am certain that we would.)

"The world is the smallest thing," he said.

(He laughed at this moment, as you remember, but you cannot include that in the story.)

"It looks so much like me," I said.

(And here he put his hands under the table, you will remember, but
this is a detail which will make him appear weak, and is it not enough that we are writing this at all?)

"Like a combination of your father, your mother, Brezhnev, and yourself."

(It was not wrong to make a funny here. It was the right thing to do.)

I smiled.

"Who do you think it is?" I asked.

"Who do
you
think it is?" he asked.

"I do not know."

"You do not have to present not-truths to me, Sasha. I am not a child."

(But I do. That is what you always fail to understand. I present not-truths in order to protect you. That is also why I try so inflexibly to be a funny person. Everything is to protect you. I exist in case you need to be protected.)

"I do not understand," I said. (I understand.)

"You do not?" he asked. (You do.)

"Where was the photograph made?" I asked. (There must be some explanation.)

"In Kolki."

"Where you were from?" (You always said Odessa ... To fall in love...)

"Yes. Before the war." (This is the way things are. This is, in truth, what it is like.)

"Jonathan's grandmother?"

"I do not know her name, and I do not want to know her name."

(I must inform you, Jonathan, that I am a very sad person. I am always sad, I think. Perhaps this signifies that I am not sad at all, because sadness is something lower than your normal disposition, and I am always the same thing. Perhaps I am the only person in the world, then, who never becomes sad. Perhaps I am lucky.)

"I am not a bad person," he said. "I am a good person who has lived in a bad time."

"I know this," I said. (Even if you were a bad person, I would still know that you are a good person.)

"You must inform all of this to him as I inform it to you," he said, and
this surprised me very much, but I did not ask why, or ask anything. I only did as he commanded. Jonathan opened his diary and commenced to write. He wrote every word that was spoken. Here is what he wrote:

"Everything I did, I did because I thought it was the correct thing to do."

"Everything he did, he did because he thought it was the correct thing to do," I translated.

"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."

T
HE 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.