Everything Is Illuminated

by Jonathan Safran Foer

  I felt many abnormal things, and could not tell what they were. We did not say it, but it was part of our game that you could not view in the box when you were selecting the thing to excavate. Some of the things that my hand touched were smooth, like marble or stones from the beach. Other things that my hand touched were cold, like metal, or warm, like fur. There were many pieces of paper. I could be certain of that without witnessing them. But I could not know if these papers were photographs or notes or pages from a book or magazine. I excavated what I excavated because it was the largest thing in the box. "Here," I said, and removed a piece of paper that was in a coil and fastened with white string. I removed the string and unrolled the paper on the table. Jonathan restrained one end, and I restrained the other. It was marked MAP OF THE WORLD, 1791. Even though the shapes of the land were some amount different, it remained to appear very much like the world as we currently know it. "This is a premium thing," I said. A map such as that one is worth many hundreds, and as luck will have it, thousands of dollars. But more than this, it is a remembrance of that time before our planet was so small. When this map was made, I thought, you could live without knowing where you were not living. This made me think of Trachimbrod, and how Lista, the woman we desired so much to be Augustine, had not ever heard of America. It is possible that she is the last person on earth, I reasoned, who does not know about America. Or it is so nice to think so. "I love it," I told Jonathan, and I must confess that I had no notions when I told him this. It is only that I loved it. "You can have it," he said. "This is not a true thing." "Take it. Enjoy it." "You cannot give this to me. The items must remain together," I told him. "Go on," he said. "It's yours." "Are you certain?" I asked, because I did not desire him to feel burdened to present it to me. "I'm positive. It can be a memento of our trip." "Memento?" "Something to remind you." "No," I said. "I will give it to Little Igor, if that is acceptable with you," because I knew that the map was a thing that Little Igor would love also. "Tell him to enjoy it," Jonathan said. "It can be his memento."

  "You," I told Jonathan, because it was now his opportunity to excavate from IN CASE. He turned his head away from the box and inserted his hand. He did not require a long amount of time. "Here," he said, and removed a book. He placed it on the table. It appeared very old. "What is it?" he asked. I moved the dust off of the cover. I had never previous witnessed a book similar to it. The writing was on both covers, and when I unclosed it, I saw that the writing was also on the insides of both covers, and, of course, on every page. It was as if there was not sufficient room in the book for the book. Along the side was marked in Ukrainian, The Book of Past Occurrences. I told this to Jonathan. "Read me something from it," he said. "The beginning?" "Anywhere, it doesn't matter." I went to a page in the middle and selected a part from the middle of the page to read. It was very difficult, but I translated into English while I read. " 'The shtetl was colorful with the actions of its residents,'" I told him, " 'and because every color was used, it was impossible to perceive what had been handled by humans and what was of nature's hands. Getzel G, there were rumors, must have played everyone's fiddle—even though he did not know how to play the fiddle!—because the strings were the color like his fingers. People whispered that Gesha R was trying to be a gymnast. This is how the Jewish/Human fault line was yellow like her hands. And when the red of a schoolgirl's face was wronged for the red of a holy man's fingers, the schoolgirl was called names.' " He secured the book and examined it while I told Grandfather what I had read. "It's wonderful," Jonathan said, and I must confess that he examined it in a fashion similar to how Grandfather examined the photograph of Augustine.

  (You may understand this as a gift from me to you, Jonathan. And just as I am saving you, so could you save Grandfather. We are merely two paragraphs away. Please, try to find some other option.)

  "Now you," Jonathan said to Grandfather. "He says it is now you," I told him. He turned his head away from the box and inserted his hand. We were similar to three children. "There are so many things," he told me. "I do not know which thing to take." "He does not know which to take," I told Jonathan. "There's time for all of them," Jonathan said. "Perhaps this one," Grandfather said. "No, this one. It feels soft and nice. No, this one. This one has pieces that move." "There is time for all of them," I told him, because remember where we are in our story, Jonathan. We still thought we possessed time. "Here," Grandfather said, and excavated a photograph. "Ah, a simple one. Too unfortunate. I thought it felt like something different."

  He placed the photograph on the table without examining it. Also I did not examine it, because why should I, I reasoned. Grandfather was correct, it appeared very simple, and ordinary. There were likely one hundred photographs of this manner in the box. The rapid view that I presented it showed me nothing abnormal. It was three men, or perhaps four. "Now you," he told me, and I turned my head and inserted my hand. Because my head was turned to not view in the box, I was witnessing Jonathan while my hand investigated. A soft thing. A rough thing. Jonathan moved the photograph to his face, not because he was an interested person, but because there was nothing else to do at the moment while I searched the box. This is what I remember. He ate a hand of peanuts, and let a handful descend to the floor for Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior. He made a petite drink from his vodka. He looked away from the photograph for a moment. I felt a feather and a bone. Then I remember this: he looked at the photograph again. I felt a smooth thing. A petite thing. He looked away from the photograph. He looked at it again. He looked away. A hard thing. A candle. A square thing. A prick from a pin.

  "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."

  FALLING IN LOVE, 1934–1941

  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.