Everything Is Illuminated

by Jonathan Safran Foer

  But it was a situation without winning. The possibilities were none, between what was possible and what we wanted. And here I have to confer you some terrible news. Grandfather died four days ago. He cut his hands. It was very late in the night and I could not sleep. There was a noise coming from the bath, so I went to investigate it. (Now that I am the man of the house, it is up to me to see that everything works.) I found Grandfather in the bath, which was full of blood. I told him to stop sleeping, because I did not yet understand what was going on. "Wake up!" Then I shook him violently, and then I punched him in the face. It hurt my hand, I punched him so hard. I punched him again. I do not know why, but I did. To tell you the truth, I had never punched anyone before, only been punched. "Wake up!" I shouted at him, and I punched him again, this time the other side of his face. But I knew that he would not wake up. "You sleep too much!" My shouting woke up my mother, and she ran to the bath. She had to forcefully pull me off of Grandfather, and she later told me that she thought I had killed him, the way I was punching so much, and the look in my eyes. We invented a story about an accident with sleeping pills. This is what we told to Little Igor, so that he would never have to know.

  It had been such an evening already. Volumes had happened, just as volumes now happen, just as volumes will happen. For the first time in my life, I told my father exactly what I thought, as I will now tell you, for the first time, exactly what I think. As with him, I ask for your forgiveness.

  Love,

  Alex

  ILLUMINATION

  "HERSCHEL would care for your father when I had to make an errand, or when your grandmother was ill. She was ill all of the time, not only at the end of her life. Herschel would care for the baby, and hold it as if it were his own. He even called him son."

  I told all of this to Jonathan as Grandfather told it to me, and he wrote all of it in his diary. He wrote:

  "Herschel did not possess a family of his own. He was not such a social person. He loved to read very much, and also to write. He was a poet, and he exhibited me many of his poems. I remember many of them. They were silly, you could say, and about love. He was always in his room writing those things, and never with people. I used to tell him, What good is all of that love doing on paper? I said, Let love write on you for a little. But he was so stubborn. Or perhaps he was only timid."

  "You were his friend?" I asked, although he had already said that he was Herschel's friend.

  "We were his only friends, he once told us. Your grandmother and I. He would eat dinner with us, and on occasions remain very tardy. We even made vacations together. When your father was born, the three of us would make walks with the baby. When he needed a thing, he would come to us. When he had a problem, he would come to us. He once asked me if he could kiss your grandmother. Why, I asked him, and it made me an angry person, in truth, very angry, that he should desire to kiss her. Because I am afraid, he said, that I will never kiss a woman. Herschel, I said, it is because you do not try to kiss any."

  (Was he in love with Grandmother?)

  (I do not know.)

  (It was a possibility?)

  (It was a possibility. He would look at her, and also bring her flowers as gifts.)

  (Did this upset you?)

  (I loved them both.)

  "Did he kiss her?"

  "No," he said. (And you will remember, Jonathan, that he laughed here. It was a short, severe laugh.) "He was too timid to ever kiss anyone, even Anna. I do not think that they ever did anything."

  "He was your friend," I said.

  "He was my best friend. It was different then. Jews, not Jews. We were young still, and there was very much life in advance of us. Who knew?" (We did not know, is what I am attempting to say. How could we have known?)

  "Knew what?" I asked.

  "Who knew that we were living on such a needle?"

  "A needle?"

  "One day Herschel is eating dinner with us, and he is singing songs to your father in his arms."

  "Songs?"

  (Here he sang the song, Jonathan, and I know how you relish inserting songs in writing, but you could not require me to write this. I have tried for so long to displace the song from my brain, but it is always there. I hear myself singing it when I walk, and in my courses at university, and before sleep.)

  "But we were very stupid people," he said, and he again examined the photograph and smiled. "So stupid."

  "Why?"

  "Because we believed in things."

  "What things?" I asked, because I did not know. I was not understanding.

  (Why are you asking so many questions?)

  (Because you are not being clear with me.)

  (I am very ashamed.)

  (You do not have to be shamed in my closeness. Family are the people who must never make you feel ashamed.)

  (You are wrong. Family are the people who must make you feel ashamed when you are deserving of shame.)

  (And you are deserving of shame?)

  (I am. I am trying to tell you.) "We were stupid," he said, "because we believed in things."

  "Why is this stupid?"

  "Because there are not things to believe in."

  (Love?)

  (There is no love. Only the end of love.)

  (Goodness?)

  (Do not be a fool.)

  (God?)

  (If God exists, He is not to be believed in.)

  "Augustine?" I asked.

  "I dreamed that this might be the thing," he said. "But I was wrong."

  "Perhaps you were not wrong. We could not find her, but that does not signify anything about whether you should believe in her."

  "What is the good of something that you cannot find?"

  (I will tell you, Jonathan, that at this place in the conversation, it was no longer Alex and Alex, grandfather and grandson, talking. We yielded to be two different people, two people who could view one another in the eyes, and utter things that are not uttered. When I listened to him, I did not listen to Grandfather, but to someone else, someone I had never encountered before, but whom I knew better than Grandfather. And the person who was listening to this person was not me but someone else, someone I had never been before but whom I knew better than myself.)

  "Tell me more," I said.

  "More?"

  "Herschel."

  "It was as if he was in our family."

  "Tell me what happened. What happened to him?"

  "To him? To him and me. It happened to everybody, do not make any mistakes. Just because I was not a Jew, it does not mean that it did not happen to me."

  "What is it?"

  "You had to choose, and hope to choose the smaller evil."

  "You had to choose," I told Jonathan, "and hope to choose the smaller evil."

  "And I chose."

  "And he chose."

  "He chose what?"

  "What did you choose?"

  "When they captured our town—"

  "Kolki?"

  "Yes, but do not tell him. There is no reason to tell him."

  "We could go in the morning."

  "No."

  "Perhaps it would be a good thing."

  "No," he said. "My ghosts are not there."

  (You have ghosts?)

  (Of course I have ghosts.)

  (What are your ghosts like?)

  (They are on the insides of the lids of my eyes.)

  (This is also where my ghosts reside.)

  (You have ghosts?)

  (Of course I have ghosts.)

  (But you are a child.)

  (I am not a child.)

  (But you have not known love.)

  (These are my ghosts, the spaces amid love.)

  "You could reveal it to us," I said. "You could take us to where you once lived, and where his grandmother once lived."

  "There is no purpose," he said. "Those people signify nothing to me."

  "His grandmother."

  "I do not want to know her name."

  "He says that there i
s no purpose to return to the town that he came from," I told Jonathan. "It means nothing to him."

  "Why did he leave?"

  "Why did you leave?"

  "Because I did not want your father to grow up so close to death. I did not want him to know of it, and live with it. This is why I never informed him of what occurred. I wanted so much for him to live a good life, without death and without choices and without shame. But I was not a good father, I must inform you. I was the worst father. I desired to remove him from everything that was bad, but instead I gave him badness upon badness. A father is always responsible for how his son is. You must understand."

  "I am not understanding. I am not understanding any of this. I do not understand that you are from Kolki, and why I never knew. I do not understand why you came on this voyage if you knew how close we would be. I do not understand what are your ghosts. I do not understand how a picture of you was in Augustine's box."

  (Do you remember what he did next, Jonathan? He examined the photograph again, and then placed it on the table again, and then he said, Herschel was a good person, and so was I, and because of this it is not right what happened, not anything of it. And then I asked him, What, what happened? He returned the photograph to the box, you will remember, and he told us the story. Exactly like that. He placed the photograph in the box, and he told it to us. He did not once avoid our eyes, and he did not once put his hands under the table. I murdered Herschel, he said. Or what I did was as good as murdering him. What do you mean? I asked him, because what he said was such a potent thing to say. No, this is not true. Herschel would have been murdered with or without me, but it is still as if I murdered him. What happened? I asked. They came in the most darkest time of the night. They had just come from another town, and would go to another after. They knew what they were doing, they were so logical. I remember with very much precision the feeling of my bed shaking when the tanks came. What is it? What is it? Grandmother asked. I moved from bed, and I examined out of the window. What did you see? I saw four tanks, and I can remember them in every aspect. There were four green tanks, and men walking along the sides of them. These men had guns, I will tell you, and they were pointing them at our doors and windows in case that someone should try to run. It was dark but I could still see this. Were you scared? I was scared, although I knew that I was not the one they wanted. How did you know? We knew about them. Everyone knew. Herschel knew. We did not think it would happen to us. I told you, we believed in things, we were so foolish. And then? And then I told Grandmother to get the baby, your father, and to take him into the cellar and not to manufacture any noise but also not to become overly afraid because we were not the ones that they wanted. And then? And then they stopped all of the tanks and for a moment I was so foolish to think that it was over, that they had decided to return to Germany and end the war because nobody likes war not even those who survive it, not even the winners. But? But they did not of course they had only stopped the tanks in front of the synagogue and they came out of their tanks and moved into very logical lines. The General who had blond hair put a microphone to his face and spoke in Ukrainian he said that everyone must come to the synagogue everyone with no omissions. The soldiers punched on every door with their guns and investigated the houses to be certain that everyone should be in front of the synagogue I told Grandmother to return upstairs with the baby because I feared that they would discover them in the basement and shoot them because of their hiding. Herschel I thought Herschel must escape how can he escape he must run now run into the darkness perhaps he has already run perhaps he heard the tanks and ran but when we arrived at the synagogue I saw Herschel and he saw me and we stood next to each other because that is what friends do in the presence of evil or love. What is going to happen he asked me and I told him I do not know what is going to happen and the truth is that not one of us knew what was going to happen although every one of us knew that it would be evil. It captured so long for the soldiers to finish their investigating of the houses it was very important to them to be certain that everyone was in front of the synagogue. I am so scared Herschel said I think I am going to cry. Why I asked why there is nothing to cry for there is no reason to cry but I will tell you that I too wanted to cry and I too was afraid but not for myself for Grandmother and for the baby. What did they do? What happened next? They made us stand in lines and I was next to Anna on the one side and Herschel on the other side some of the women were crying and this was because they were very afraid of the guns that the soldiers were holding and they thought that all of us were going to be killed. The General with blue eyes put the microphone to his face. You must listen carefully he said and do everything that is commanded or you will be shot. Herschel whispered to me I am very scared and I wanted to tell him run your chances are better if you run it is dark run you have no chances if you do not but I could not tell him this because I was afraid that I would be shot for speaking and I was also afraid of yielding to Herschel's death by admitting it be brave I said with as little volume as I could manufacture it is necessary that you be brave which I know now was such a stupid thing to utter the stupidest thing I have ever uttered be brave for what? Who is the rabbi the General asked and the rabbi elevated his hand. Two of the guards seized the rabbi and pushed him into the synagogue. Who is the cantor the General asked and the cantor elevated his hand but he was not so quiet about death as the rabbi he was crying and saying no to his wife no no nonono and she lifted her hand to him and two guards seized her and put her in the synagogue also. Who are the Jews the General asked into his microphone all the Jews move forward but not one person moved forward. All of the Jews must move forward he said again and this time he shouted it but again not one person moved forward and I will tell you that if I were a Jew I would also not move forward the General went to the first line and he said into his microphone you will point out a Jew or you will be considered a Jew the first person he went to was a Jew named Abraham. Who is a Jew the General asked him and Abraham trembled Who is a Jew the General asked again and he put his gun to Abraham's head Aaron is a Jew Aaron and he pointed to Aaron who was in the second row which is where we were standing. Two guards seized Aaron and he was resisting very much so they shot him in the head and this is when I felt Herschel's hand touch mine. Do as you are commanded the General with a scar on his face shouted into his microphone or. He went to the second person in the line who was a friend of mine Leo and he said who is a Jew and Leo pointed to Abraham and he said that man is a Jew I am sorry Abraham two guards secured Abraham into the synagogue a woman in the fourth row tried to run away with her baby in her arms but the General shouted something in German that most terrible horrible ugly disgusting vile monstrous language and one of the guards shot her in the back of the head and they pulled her and her baby who was still alive into the synagogue. The General went to the next man in line and the next and everyone was pointing at a Jew because nobody wanted to be killed one Jew pointed at his cousin and one pointed at himself because he would not point at another. They secured Daniel into the synagogue and also Talia and Louis and every Jew there was but for some reason that I will never know Herschel was never pointed to perhaps this is because I was his only friend and he was not so social and many people did not even know he existed I was the only one who would know to point at him or perhaps it was because it was so dark that he could not be seen anymore. It was not forever before he was the only Jew remaining outside of the synagogue the General was now in the second row and said to a man because he only asked men I do not know why who is a Jew and the man said they are all in the synagogue because he did not know Herschel or did not know that Herschel was a Jew the General shotthismaninthehead and I could feel Herschel's hand touching mine very lightly and I made certain not to look at him the General went to the next person who is a Jew he asked and this person said they are all in the synagogue you must believe me I am not lying why would I lie you can kill them all I do not care but please spare me please do not kill me please and th
en the General shothiminthehead and said I am becoming tired of this and he went to the next man in line and that was me who is a Jew he asked and I felt Herschel's hand again and I know that his hand was saying pleaseplease Eli please I do not want to die please do not point at me you know what is going to happen to me if you point at me do not point at me I am afraid of dying I am so afraid of dying I am soafraidofdying Iamsoafraidofdying who is a Jew the General asked me again and I felt on my other hand the hand of Grandmother and I knew that she was holding your father and that he was holding you and that you were holding your children I am so afraid of dying I am soafraidofdying Iamsoafraidofdying Iamsoafraidofdying and I said he is a Jew who is a Jew the General asked and Herschel embraced my hand with much strength and he was my friend he was my best friend I would have let him kiss Anna and even make love to her but I am I and my wife is my wife and my baby is my baby do you understand what I am telling you I pointed at Herschel and said he is a Jew this man is a Jew please Herschel said to me and he was crying tell them it is nottrue please Eli please two guards seized him and he did not resist but he did cry more and harder and he shouted tell them that there are no more Jews nomoreJews and you only said that I was a Jew so that you would not be killed I am begging you Eli youaremyfriend do not let me die I am so afraid of dying Iamsoafraid it will be OK I told him it will be OK do not do this he said do something do something dosomething dosomething it will be OK it will beOK who was I saying that to do something Eli dosomething I am soafraidofdying I am soafraid you know what they are going to do youaremyfriend I told him although I do not know why I said that at that moment and the guards put him in the synagogue with the rest of the Jews and everyone else was remaining outside to hear the cryingofthebabies and the cryingoftheadults and to see the black spark when the first match was lit by a youngman who could not have been any older than I was or Herschel was or you are it illuminated those who were not in the synagogue those who were not going to die and he cast it on the branches that were pushed against the synagogue what made it so awful was how it was soslow and how the fire made itself deadmanytimes and had to be remade I looked at Grandmother and shekissedmeontheforehead and I kissedheronthemouth and our tearsmixedonourlips and then I kissedyourfather many times I secured him from Grandmother's arms and Iheldhimwithmuchforce so much that he started crying I said I love you I love you I love you I love you I loveyou I loveyou I loveyou I loveyou Iloveyou Iloveyou Iloveyou Iloveyou Iloveyou IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou and I knew that I had to change everything to leave everything behind and I knew that I could never allow him to learn of whoIwas or whatIdid because it was for him that I didwhatIdid it was for him that I pointed and for him that Herschel was murdered that I murdered Herschel and this is why he is how he is he is how is he because a father is always responsible for his son and I am I and Iamresponsible not for Herschel but for my son because I held him with somuchforcethathecried because I loved him so much that I madeloveimpossible and I am sorry for you and sorry for Iggy and it is you who must forgive me he said these things to us and Jonathan where do we go now what do we do with what we know Grandfather said that I am I but this could not be true the truth is that I also pointedatHerschel and I also said heisaJew and I will tell you that you also pointedatHerschel and you also said heisaJew and more than that Grandfather also pointedatme and said heisaJew and you also pointedathim and said heisaJew and your grandmother and Little Igor and we all pointedateachother so what is it he should have done hewouldhavebeenafooltodoanythingelse but is it forgivable what he did canheeverbeforgiven for his finger for whathisfingerdid for whathepointedto and didnotpointto for whathetouchedinhislife and whathedidnottouch he is stillguilty I am I am Iam IamI?)