Here I Am

by Jonathan Safran Foer

But funerals, like airplane turbulence and fortieth birthdays, force the issue of mortality. Had it been another day, she and Jacob would have found ways to continue living inside their purgatory. They would have created errands to run, diversions, emotional escape hatches, fantasies. The funeral made a conversation almost a crime, but it also inspired an unrelenting questioning in Julia. All that could be deferred on any other day was now urgent. She remembered Max’s obsession with time, how little there was. “I’m wasting my life!”

  She went to the bedroom, to the dozens of coats piled on the bed. They looked like dead bodies, like Jewish dead. Those images had imprinted Julia’s childhood, too, and she now found certain resonances impossible to escape. Those images of naked women holding their children to their chests. She hadn’t seen them since she first saw them, but she never stopped seeing them.

  The rabbi had looked across the patiently waiting grave and into Julia. He asked, “But in your experience, do Jews cry silently?” Did he see what no one could hear?

  She found her coat, put it on. The pockets were filled with receipts, and a small arsenal of candies for bribing, and keys, and business cards, and assorted foreign currency from trips she could remember planning and packing for but not taking. In two fistfuls she transferred all this to the garbage, like tashlich.

  She went to the front door without stopping: past the white cabbage salad, black coffee, bluefish, and blondies; past the purple soda and peach schnapps; past the chatter about investments, and Israel, and cancer. She walked past the drone of the Mourner’s Kaddish, past the covered mirrors, past the photos of Isaac on the console: with the Israelis at their last visit; at Julia’s fortieth; on his sofa, looking off into the near distance. When she reached the door, she noticed, for the first time, the sign-in book resting open on an accent table. She flipped through it, looking to see if her boys had written anything.

  Sam: I’m sorry.

  Max: I’m sorry.

  Benjy: I’m sorry.

  She was sorry, too, and she touched the mezuzah as she crossed the threshold, but didn’t kiss her fingers. She remembered when Jacob suggested they select their own text to scroll into the mezuzah of the front door of their home. They chose a line from the Talmud: “Every blade of grass has an angel watching over it, whispering, ‘Grow! Grow!’ ” Would the next family to live in the house even know?

  THE LION’S DEN

  Tamir and Jacob stayed up late that night. Julia was somewhere, but she wasn’t there. Isaac wasn’t there, wasn’t anywhere. The kids were supposed to be asleep in their rooms, but Sam was in Other Life while snapchatting with Billie, and Max was looking up words that he didn’t understand in The Catcher in the Rye—pissed, as Holden had taught him to be, that he had to use a paper dictionary. Barak was in the guest room, asleep and expanding. Downstairs, it was only the two cousins—old friends, middle-aged men, the fathers of still-young children.

  Jacob got some beers from the gently humming fridge, muted the TV, and with a heavy, affected sigh took a seat across the table from Tamir.

  “That was hard today.”

  “He lived a good, long life,” Tamir said, and then took a good, long drink.

  “I suppose so,” Jacob said, “except for the good part.”

  “The great-grandchildren.”

  “Whom he referred to as his ‘revenge against the German people.’ ”

  “Revenge is sweet.”

  “He spent his days clipping coupons for things he would never buy, while telling anyone who would listen that no one listened to him.” A drink. “I once took the kids to a zoo in Berlin—”

  “You’ve been to Berlin?”

  “We were shooting there, and it coincided with a school break.”

  “You’ve taken your children to Berlin and not to Israel?”

  “As I was saying, we went to a zoo in the East, and it was pretty much the most depressing place I’ve ever been. There was a panther, in a habitat the size of a handicapped parking space, with flora about as convincing as a plastic Chinese food display. He was walking figure eights, over and over and over, the exact same path. When he turned, he would jerk his head back and squint. Every time. We were mesmerized. Sam, who was maybe seven, pressed his palms to the glass and asked, ‘When is Great-Grandpa’s birthday?’ Julia and I looked at each other. What kind of seven-year-old asks such a question at such a moment?”

  “The kind who worries that his great-grandfather is a depressed panther.”

  “Exactly. And he was right. The same routine, day after day after day: instant black coffee and cantaloupe; crawl through the Jewish Week with that enormous magnifying glass; check the house to make sure all the lights are still off; push a walker on tennis balls to shul to have the same Sad Libs conversations with the same macular degenerates, substituting different names into the news about prognoses and graduations; thaw a brick of chicken soup while flipping through the same photo albums; eat the soup with black bread while advancing through another paragraph of the Jewish Week; take a nap in front of one of the same five movies; walk across the street to confirm Mr. Kowalski’s continued existence; skip dinner; check the house to make sure all the lights are still off; go to bed at seven and have eleven hours of the same nightmares. Is that happiness?”

  “It’s a version.”

  “Not one that anyone would choose.”

  “A lot of people would choose that.”

  Jacob thought of Isaac’s brothers, of hungry refugees, of survivors who didn’t even have family to ignore them—he was ashamed both of the inadequate life he tolerated for his great-grandfather and of judging it inadequate.

  “I can’t believe you took the kids to Berlin,” Tamir said.

  “It’s an incredible city.”

  “But before Israel?”

  Google knew how far Tel Aviv was from Washington, and a tape measure could determine the width of the table, but Jacob couldn’t even approximate his emotional distance from Tamir. He wondered: Do we understand each other? Or are we near-strangers, just assuming and pretending?

  “I regret that we didn’t keep in better touch,” Jacob said.

  “You and Isaac?”

  “No. Us.”

  “I suppose if we’d wanted to, we would have.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Jacob said. “There are a lot of things I wanted to do, but didn’t.”

  “Wanted at the time, or looking back?”

  “Hard to say.”

  “Hard to know? Or hard to say?”

  Jacob swallowed a mouthful of beer and used his palm to dry the ring left on the table, wishing, as he did, that he were the kind of person to let such things go. He thought about all that was happening behind the walls, above the ceiling, and under the floor—how little he understood the workings of his home. What was going on at the outlet when nothing was plugged in? Was there water in the pipes at that moment? There must have been, as it came out as soon as the faucet was opened. So did that mean the house was constantly filled with sitting water? Wouldn’t that weigh an enormous amount? When he’d learned in school that his body was more than sixty percent water, he’d done as his father had taught, and doubted. Water simply wasn’t heavy enough for that to be true. Then he’d done as his father had taught, and sought the truth from his father. Irv filled a trash bin with water and challenged Jacob to lift it. As Jacob struggled, Irv said: “You should feel blood.”

  Jacob brought the beer to his lips. There were images of the Wailing Wall on the TV. He leaned back and said, “Remember when we snuck out of my parents’ house? Years and years ago?”

  “No.”

  “When we went to the National Zoo?”

  “The National Zoo?”

  “Really?” Jacob asked. “A few nights before my bar mitzvah?”

  “Of course I remember. You’re not remembering that I mentioned it in the car on the way from the airport. And it was the night before your bar mitzvah. Not a few nights before.”

  “Right. I k
now. I knew. I don’t know why I changed it like that.”

  “What would your Dr. Silvers say?”

  “I’m impressed you remember his name.”

  “You’ve made it easy.”

  “What would Dr. Silvers say? Probably that I was protecting myself with the vagueness.”

  “How much do you pay this man?”

  “I pay him a preposterous shitload. And insurance pays the other two-thirds.”

  “Protecting yourself from what?”

  “From caring more?”

  “Than I do?”

  “I’m not making an argument for my enlightenment here.”

  And not only behind the walls, above the ceiling, and under the floor—the room itself was filled with activity of which Jacob had only the dimmest awareness: radio broadcasts, TV stations, cell phone conversations, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, leakage from the microwave, radiation from the oven and lightbulbs, solar rays from the biggest oven and lightbulb of them all. All of it constantly passing through the room, some of it cultivating tumors or killing sperm, none of it noticed.

  “We were so dumb,” Tamir chuckled.

  “We still are.”

  “But we were even dumber then.”

  “But we were also romantic.”

  “Romantic?”

  “About life. Don’t you remember what that was like? To believe that life itself could be the object of love?”

  While Tamir went for another beer, Jacob texted Julia: where are you? i called maggie and she said you weren’t there.

  “No,” Tamir said into the fridge. “I don’t remember that.”

  Their socks had become sweat sponges at the zoo that morning thirty years before. Everything in D.C. in the summer was a purification ritual. They saw the famous pandas, Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, the elephants and their memories, the porcupines and their shields of writing implements. The parents argued about which city’s weather was less sufferable, D.C.’s or Haifa’s. Each wanted to lose, because losing was how you won. Tamir, who was a highly significant six months older than Jacob, spent most of the time pointing out how little security there was, how easy it would be to sneak in, perhaps not realizing that the zoo was open, and they were there, and it was free.

  After the zoo, they took Connecticut Avenue to Dupont Circle—Irv and Shlomo up front, Adina and Deborah in the back, Jacob and Tamir facing backward in the Volvo’s rear—had sandwiches at an unmemorable café, then spent the afternoon at the National Air and Space Museum waiting in line for the twenty-seven glorious minutes of To Fly!

  To make up for the crappy lunch, they went to Armand’s that evening for “the best Chicago pizza in D.C.,” then had sundaes at Swensen’s, then watched a dull action movie at the Uptown, just to experience the awe of a screen so big it felt like the opposite of being buried, and maybe even the opposite of dying.

  Five hours later, the only light coming from the security system’s keypad, Tamir shook Jacob into wakefulness.

  “What are you doing?” Jacob asked.

  “Let’s go,” Tamir whispered.

  “What?”

  “Come on.”

  “I’m asleep.”

  “Sleeping people don’t talk.”

  “It’s called talking in one’s sleep.”

  “We’re going.”

  “Where?”

  “The zoo.”

  “What zoo?”

  “Come on, shithead.”

  “It’s my bar mitzvah tomorrow.”

  “Today.”

  “Right. And I need to sleep.”

  “Sleep during your bar mitzvah.”

  “Why would we go to the zoo?”

  “To sneak in.”

  “Why would we do that?”

  “Don’t be a pussy.”

  Maybe Jacob’s common sense was still offline, or maybe he actually cared about being a pussy in Tamir’s estimation, but he sat up, rubbed his eyes, and put on his clothes. A phrase formed in his mind—this is so unlike me—that he would find himself repeating throughout the night, until the moment he became his own opposite.

  They walked down Newark in the darkness, took a right at the Cleveland Park branch of the public library. Silently, more like sleepwalkers than Mossad agents, they padded down Connecticut, over the Klingle Valley Bridge (which Jacob was incapable of crossing without imagining jumping), past the Kennedy-Warren apartments. They were awake, but it was a dream. They came to the verdigris lion and the large concrete letters: zoo.

  Tamir had been right: nothing could have been easier than hopping the waist-high concrete barrier. It was so easy as to feel like a trap. Jacob would have been happy enough to cross the border, make the transgression official, and turn right back around, newly acquired trespassing badge in trembling hand. But Tamir wasn’t content with the story.

  Like a tiny commando, Tamir crouched, searched his field of vision, then gave Jacob a quick beckoning gesture to follow. And Jacob followed. Tamir led him past the welcome kiosk, past the orientation map, farther and farther away from the street, until they lost sight of it, as sailors lose sight of the shore. Jacob didn’t know where Tamir was leading him, but he knew that he was being led, and would follow. This is so unlike me.

  The animals, as far as Jacob could tell, were asleep. The only sounds were the wind moving through the copious bamboo, and the ghostly buzzing vending machines. Earlier, the zoo had resembled an arcade on Labor Day. Now it felt like the middle of the ocean.

  Animals were always mysteries to Jacob, but never more than when they slept. It felt possible to outline—if only a crude, gross approximation—the consciousness of a waking animal. But what does a rhinoceros dream about? Does a rhinoceros dream? A waking animal never startled into sleep—it happened slowly, peacefully. But a sleeping animal seemed always on the verge of startling into wakefulness, into violence.

  They reached the lion enclosure and Tamir stopped. “I haven’t stopped thinking about this since we were here this morning.”

  “About what?”

  He put his hands on the rail and said, “I want to touch the ground.”

  “You are touching the ground.”

  “In there.”

  “What?”

  “For a second.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “Yes. I am.”

  “Then you’re fucking crazy.”

  “Yes. But I’m also fucking serious.”

  Tamir had taken them, Jacob then realized, to the only part of the enclosure where the wall was short enough for some DSM-5 exemplar to be able to climb back out. He’d obviously found it earlier in the day, maybe even measured it with his eyes, maybe—certainly—played out the scene in his mind.

  “Don’t,” Jacob said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you know why not.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Because you will be eaten by a lion, Tamir. Jesus fucking Christ.”

  “They’re asleep,” he said.

  “They?”

  “There’s three of them.”

  “You counted?”

  “Yes. And it also says so on the plaque.”

  “They’re asleep because nobody is invading their territory.”

  “And they’re not even out here. They’re inside.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Do you see them?”

  “I’m not a fucking zoologist. Of all the things that are going on right now, I probably see about none of them.”

  “They’re asleep inside.”

  “Let’s go home. I’ll tell everyone you jumped in. I’ll tell them you killed a lion, or got a blowjob from a lion, or whatever will make you feel like a hero, but let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  “Nothing I want here has to do with anyone else.”

  Tamir had already begun to hoist himself over.

  “You’re going to die,” Jacob said.

  “So are you,”
Tamir responded.

  “What am I supposed to do if a lion wakes up and starts running for you?”

  “What are you supposed to do?”

  That made Jacob laugh. And his laughter made Tamir laugh. With his small joke, the tension eased. With his small joke, the stupidest of all ideas became reasonable, even almost sensible, maybe even genius. The alternative—sanity—became insane. Because they were young. Because one is young only once in a life lived only once. Because recklessness is the only fist to throw at nothingness. How much aliveness can one bear?

  It happened so quickly, and took forever. Tamir jumped down, landing with a thud he obviously didn’t anticipate, because his eyes met Jacob’s with a flash of terror. And as if the ground were lava, he tried to get off it. He wasn’t quite able to reach the rail on his first jump, but the second try looked easy. He pulled himself up, Jacob hoisted him over the glass, and together they fell onto the pavement, laughing.

  What did Jacob feel, laughing with his cousin? He was laughing at life. Laughing at himself. Even a thirteen-year-old knows the thrill and terror of his own insignificance. Especially a thirteen-year-old.

  “Now you,” Tamir said as they picked themselves up and brushed themselves off.

  “No fucking way.”

  This is so unlike me.

  “Come on.”

  “I’d rather die.”

  “You can have it both ways. Come on, you have to.”

  “Because you did it?”

  “Because you want to do it.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Come on,” he said. “You’ll be so happy. For years you’ll be happy.”

  “Happiness isn’t that important to me.”

  And then, firmly: “Now, Jacob.”

  Jacob tried to laugh off Tamir’s flash of aggressiveness.

  “My parents would kill me if I died before my bar mitzvah.”

  “This will be your bar mitzvah.”

  “No way.”

  And then Tamir got up in Jacob’s face. “I’m going to punch you if you don’t do it.”

  “Give me a break.”

  “I am literally going to punch you.”

  “But I have glasses and acne.”

  That small joke diffused nothing, made nothing almost sensible. Tamir punched Jacob in the chest, hard enough to send him into the railing. It was the first time Jacob had ever been punched.