Here I Am

by Jonathan Safran Foer

  He turned to face the immensity, and only then did it occur to him, or only then was he forced to acknowledge what he’d forced himself not to: He was standing among suicides. He was in the ghetto for those unfit to be buried with the rest. This corner was where the shame was cordoned off. This was where the unspeakable shame was put beneath the ground. Milk on one set of plates, meat on the other: never the two should meet.

  Miriam Apfel, Shaindel Potash, Beryl Dressler…

  He had some vague awareness of the prohibition against taking one’s own life, and the price—beyond death—for having done so. The punishment wasn’t for the criminal, but the victims: those left behind and now forced to bury their dead in the other-earth. He remembered it like he remembered the prohibition against tattoos—something about desecrating the body—which would also land you in the other-earth. And—less spiritual, but every bit as religious—the prohibition against drinking Pepsi, because Pepsi chose to market to Arab countries and not Israel. And the prohibition against touching a shiksa in any of the ways one was dying to, because it was a shanda. And the prohibition against resisting when elders touched any part of your body they wanted, in any way they wanted, because they were dying, perpetually dying, and it was a mitzvah.

  Standing in that unwalled ghetto, he thought about eruvs—a wonderfully Jewish loophole that Julia had shared, before he even knew the prohibition it was circumventing. She’d learned about them not in the context of a Jewish education, but in architecture school: an example of a “magical structure.”

  Jews can’t “carry” on Shabbat: no keys, no money, no tissues or medicine, no strollers or canes, not even children who can’t yet walk. The prohibition against carrying is technically against carrying from private to public domains. But what if large areas were made to be private? What if an entire neighborhood were a private domain? A city? An eruv is a string or wire that encloses an area, making it private, and thus permitting carrying. Jerusalem is enclosed by an eruv. Virtually all of Manhattan is enclosed by an eruv. There is an eruv in nearly every Jewish community in the world.

  “In D.C.?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ve never seen it.”

  “You’ve never looked for it.”

  She took him to the intersection of Reno and Davenport, where the eruv turned a corner and was most easy to see. There it was, like dental floss. They followed it down Davenport to Linnean, and Brandywine, and Broad Branch. They walked beneath the string as it ran from street sign to lamppost to power pole to telephone pole.

  As he stood among the suicides, his pockets were full: a paper clip that Sam had somehow bent into an airplane, a crumpled twenty, Max’s yarmulke from the funeral (apparently acquired at the wedding of two people Jacob had never heard of), the dry-cleaning ticket for the pants he was wearing, a pebble Benjy had taken from a grave and asked Jacob to hold, more keys than there were locks in his life. The older he got, the more he carried, the stronger it should have made him.

  Isaac was buried in a pocketless shroud, six hundred yards from his wife of two hundred thousand hours.

  Seymour Kaiser: loving brother, loving son; head in the oven. Shoshanna Ostrov: loving wife; wrists slit in the bath. Elsa Glaser: loving mother and grandmother; hanging from the ceiling fan. Sura Needleman: loving wife, mother, and sister; walked into a river, pockets full of stones. Hymie Rattner: loving son; wrists slit over the bathroom sink. Simcha Tisch: loving father, loving brother; steak knife in the gut. Dinah Perlman: loving grandmother, mother, and sister; leaped from the top of the stairs. Ruchel Neustadt: loving wife and mother; letter opener in the neck. Izzie Reinhardt: loving father, husband, and brother; jumped from Memorial Bridge. Ruben Fischman: loving husband; drove his car into a tree at one hundred miles per hour. Hindel Schulz: loving mother; serrated bread knife across the wrist. Isaac Bloch: loving brother, husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather; hanging by a belt in his kitchen.

  Jacob wanted to pull the thread from his black suit, tie it around the tree in the corner, and walk the perimeter of the suicide ghetto, enclosing it as he unraveled. And then, when the public had been made private, he would carry away the shame. But to where?

  Every landmass is surrounded by water. Was every coast an eruv?

  Was the equator an eruv around the earth?

  Did Pluto’s orbit enclose the solar system?

  And the wedding ring still on his finger?

  REINCARNATION

  > So what’s new?

  > You’re the one in the middle of a crisis.

  > That isn’t new.

  > Everything’s the same here, except my great-grandfather is dead.

  > Your family is OK?

  > Yeah. I think my dad is pretty upset, but it’s hard to tell, because he always seems a bit upset.

  > Right.

  > And it’s not like it was his dad, anyway. Just his grandfather. Which is still sad, but less sad. Far less sad.

  > Right.

  > I really do like it when people repeat bits of language. Why is that?

  > I don’t know.

  > Your dad and brother seem to be having a good time. They’re worried about you, obviously. They talk about you constantly. But if they can’t be there, it’s good that they’re here.

  > Have they found anything?

  > What do you mean?

  > A house.

  > For what?

  > To buy.

  > Why would they buy a house here?

  > My father hasn’t mentioned it?

  > Mentioned what?

  > Maybe to your dad?

  > You guys are moving?

  > He’s been talking about it for a few years, but when it was time for me to join the army, he started looking. Just on websites, and maybe with the help of some brokers over there. I thought it was just talk, but when I was deployed to the West Bank, he started searching more seriously. I think he found a few places that seemed promising, and that’s why he’s over there now. To see them in person.

  > I thought it was for my bar mitzvah.

  > That’s why he’s staying more than a few days.

  > I had no idea.

  > He might be embarrassed.

  > I didn’t know he was capable of feeling embarrassment.

  > Feeling it, yes. Showing it, no.

  > Your mom wants to move?

  > I don’t know.

  > Do you want to move?

  > I doubt I’ll live with my parents again. After the army, school. After school, life. I hope.

  > But what do you think about it?

  > I try not to.

  > Do you find it embarrassing?

  > No. That’s not the right word.

  > Do you think your dad cheats on your mom?

  > That’s a strange question.

  > Is it?

  > Yes.

  > Yes, it’s a strange question? Or yes, you think your dad cheats on your mom?

  > Both.

  > Jesus. Really?

  > Someone who asks that question shouldn’t be so surprised by the answer.

  > What makes you think he cheats on her?

  > What makes you ask the question?

  > I don’t know.

  > So ask yourself.

  > What makes me ask the question?

  He was not asking for no reason. He was asking because he’d found his dad’s second phone a day before his mom had. Found is probably not the right word, as coming upon it was the result of snooping through his dad’s favorite hiding places—beneath a pile of socks in the dresser, in a box in the back of the “gift closet,” atop the grandfather clock his grandfather had given them on the occasion of Benjy’s birth. The loot was never anything more salacious than a porno—“Why,” he wanted to ask but could never ask, “why would anyone with a desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone pay for pornography?”

  He had found a stack of fifties, presumably for some indulgence his dad didn’t want his mom to know about—something perfec
tly innocent like a power tool he was afraid his mom would point out he would never actually use. He had found a tiny bag of pot, which never, in the year and a half that he would check on it, diminished in size. He’d found a stash of Halloween candy—just sad. He’d found a stack of papers with a cover sheet labeled “Bible for Ever-Dying People”—

  HOW TO PLAY DESIRE

  Don’t. You have everything you could ever need or want. You are healthy (for now) and it’s great. Do you have any idea how much suffering and toil was necessary to make this moment possible? Possible for you? Reflect on how great it is, how lucky and fully satisfied you are.

  —too boring to investigate further.

  But then, while nosing around in the drawer of his dad’s bedside table, Sam found a phone. His dad’s phone was an iPhone. Everyone knew that, because everyone suffered his endless complaints about how amazing it was, and how dependent he was on it. (“This is literally ruining my life,” he would say as he performed some utterly unnecessary function, like checking the weather three days out. “Chance of rain. Interesting.”) This was a generic smartphone, the kind they give you for free with a criminally overpriced plan. Maybe a relic that his dad was too nostalgic to throw out? Maybe it was filled with photos of Sam and his brothers, and his dad wasn’t smart enough to transfer them to his iPhone (despite feeling too smart to ask for help at a phone store, or even from his technologically proficient son), so he saved it, and over time the drawer would probably fill with phones filled with photos.

  Nothing could have been easier than figuring out how to unlock it—his dad cycled through the same three lamely predictable variations of the family password for all his security needs.

  Generic wallpaper: a sunset.

  No games. No apps cooler than a calculator. Why even have a smartphone?

  It was a mom phone. A private phone between them. It was hard to understand the need for it, but maybe the lack of need was the point. It was actually kind of sweet. Kind of lame, but kind of romantic, which was kind of gross. Unless it had some sort of straightforward justification, as it now-that-he-thought-about-it probably did, like being the phone they took on trips, with prepaid international minutes.

  As he scrolled through the messages, it became clear that those explanations were wrong, extremely wrong, and that either his parents weren’t who he thought they were, not even close, or there was more than one Julia in the world, because the Julia that was his mom would never—no, never—move her thumbs in such a way as to form the words take the wetness from my pussy and use it to get my asshole ready for you.

  He took the phone to the bathroom, locked the door, and scrolled.

  i want two of your fingers in each of my holes

  What, like Spock? What the fuck was going on?

  on your stomach, legs spread to the corners, your hands behind you, opening your ass as wide as it will go, your pussy dripping onto the sheets…

  What the fuck was going on?

  But before Sam could ask the question a third time, the front door opened, the phone dropped behind the toilet, his mom said, “I’m home,” and he tried to beat the footsteps on the stairs to his room.

  He’d never met Dr. Silvers, but he knew what Dr. Silvers would have said: he left the phone on purpose. Like everyone in the family who wasn’t his dad, Sam loathed Dr. Silvers and was jealous of his dad for having such a confidant, and was jealous of Dr. Silvers for having his dad. What good, of any kind, could come, for anyone, from the discovery of the phone?

  > Is your dad cheating on your mom, or something?

  Suddenly, back in real unreal life, Eyesick stumbled away a few yards. He limped a bit, walked with a stutter. After making circles around nothing—like a planet around no sun, or a bride around no groom—he picked up the fossil of a bird from one of the earliest generations of Other Life, maybe three years before: the Twitter logo. Eyesick looked at the rock dumbly, then put it down, then picked it up again, then motioned as if to throw it, then tapped it against his head, as if testing his own ripeness.

  > Are you seeing this glitch?

  > No glitch. I started the transfer.

  > Of what?

  > Resilience fruit.

  > I told you not to.

  > You didn’t. And if you had, I would have ignored you.

  A flood of digital images, each blooming on the screen and then receding as soon as it could be processed: some were stored moments from Samanta’s other life, conversations she’d had, experiences; others were more impressionistic. He saw screens that he’d looked at, mixed with screens Noam must have looked at: a contrail in a blue sky; crocheted rainbows on Etsy; the shovel of a bulldozer making contact with an old woman; cunnilingus, from behind, in a changing room; a thrashing lab monkey; conjoined twins (one laughing, one crying); satellite photos of the Sinai; unconscious football players; nail polish color wheels; Evander Holyfield’s ear; a dog being euthanized.

  > How many are you transferring?

  > All of them.

  > What?

  > 1,738,341.

  > HOLY FUCKING SHIT! You have that many banked?

  > I’m giving you a total transfusion.

  > What?

  > Listen, I have to get myself ready to go.

  > Where?

  > Jerusalem. My unit was mobilized. But don’t tell my father, OK?

  > Why not?

  > He’ll worry.

  > But he should worry.

  > But his worrying won’t help him, and it won’t help me.

  > I don’t even need all of this. I only had 45,000 when my dad killed me.

  > Make yourself great.

  > My avatar.

  > Your great-grandfather.

  > This is too much.

  > I should let it rot? Make resilience cider?

  > You should use it.

  > But I won’t. And you will.

  The images came more quickly, so quick they could enter only subliminally; they overlapped, blended, and from the corner a light, bleeding from a few pixels to stain the screen, and spreading, a light like the darkness a broken pipe leaves on the ceiling, a light flooding the perpetually refreshing images, and then more light than image, and then an almost entirely white screen, but brighter than white, vague images as if seen through an avalanche.

  In perhaps the purest moment of empathy of Sam’s life, he tried to imagine what Noam was seeing on his screen at that moment. Was a darkness like light spreading? Was he receiving warnings about low levels of vitality? Sam imagined Noam clicking IGNORE to those warnings, over and over, and ignoring the annoying alerts, and clicking CONFIRM when finally prompted to confirm his ultimate choice.

  The lion walked to the old man, knelt beside him, laid his immense and proud paws on Eyesick’s stooped shoulders, licked at whatever one calls a white five o’clock shadow (a five o’clock brightness?), licked him over and over, as if to will Eyesick back to life, when in fact he was willing himself back to what comes before life.

  > Look at you, Bar Mitzvah.

  He rested his massive head on Eyesick’s sunken chest. Eyesick hid his fingers in the lion’s streaming mane.

  In the middle of his great-grandfather’s funeral reception, Sam started to cry. He didn’t cry often. He hadn’t cried since Argus returned from his second hip replacement, two years before, his back half shaved to reveal Frankenstein stitches, his eyes lowered in his lowered head.

  “It’s just what getting better looks like,” Jacob had said. “In a month, he’ll be his old self.”

  “A month?”

  “It’ll pass quickly.”

  “Not for Argus, it won’t.”

  “We’ll spoil him.”

  “He can barely walk.”

  “And he shouldn’t walk any more than is necessary. The vet said that’s the most important thing for his recovery, to keep him off his leg as much as possible. All walks have to be on-leash. And no stairs. We have to keep him on the first floor.”

  “But how wil
l he come up to bed?”

  “He’s going to have to sleep down here.”

  “But he’ll go up.”

  “I don’t think so. He knows how weak his leg is.”

  “He’ll go up.”

  “I’ll put some books on the stairs to block the way.”

  Sam set his alarm for 2:00 a.m., to go down and check on Argus. He snoozed once, and then again, but with the third buzz, his guilt was awakened. He plodded down the stairs, only half aware of being out of bed, nearly paralyzed himself with the help of the stacked Grove Encyclopedia of Art, and found his father on top of a sleeping bag, spooning Argus. That’s when he cried. Not because he loved his dad—although in that moment he certainly did—but because, of the two animals on the floor, it was his dad he felt more sorry for.

  > Look at you, Bar Mitzvah.

  He was by the window. The cousins were on PlayStation, killing representations. The adults were upstairs, eating the disgusting, smelly, smoked, and gelatinous foods Jews suddenly need in times of reflection. No one noticed him, which was what he wanted, even if it wasn’t what he needed.

  He wasn’t crying about anything in front of him—not the death of his great-grandfather or the death of Noam’s avatar, not the collapse of his parents’ marriage, or the collapse of his bar mitzvah, or the collapsed buildings in Israel. His tears were reaching back. It took Noam’s moment of kindness to reveal the yawning absence of kindness. His dad had slept on the floor for thirty-eight days. (The extra week to play it safe.) Was it easier to extend such kindness to a dog because it didn’t risk rejection? Or because the needs of animals are so animalistic, whereas the needs of humans are so human?

  He might never become a man, but crying at that window—his great-grandfather completely alone in the earth twenty minutes away; an avatar returning to pixelated dust in some refrigerated data storage center somewhere near nothing; his parents just on the other side of the ceiling, but a ceiling without edges—Sam was reborn.