Here I Am

by Jonathan Safran Foer

  “You don’t have enough hands, right?”

  “I don’t need any.”

  “Ah, Benjy.”

  “I’m serious,” he said. “Full head of hair.”

  “The doctor warned me, however many years ago, that this would happen: as soon as you stop taking the pill, you lose it all at once. I didn’t believe him. Or I thought I’d be the exception.”

  “How does it feel?”

  “Being able to slice bread with an erection?”

  “I’m eating, Dad.”

  “Being able to do push-ups with my hands behind my back?”

  “Sorry I expressed interest,” he said, unable to pin the corners of his mouth.

  “You know, I needed an egg once.”

  “Did you?” he asked, playing along.

  “Yeah. I was doing some baking—”

  “You often bake.”

  “All the time. I’m surprised I’m not baking as I tell this joke. Anyway, I was doing some baking, and found that I was one egg short. Isn’t that the worst?”

  “There is literally nothing worse.”

  “Right?” We were both starting to simmer in anticipation. “So rather than schlep to the store through the snow to buy eleven eggs I didn’t want, I thought I’d see if I could borrow one.”

  “And that, right there, is why the 1998 National Jewish Book Award hangs in your office.”

  “Yiddishe kop,” I said, tapping my forehead.

  “I wish you were my real dad,” Benjy said, his eyes moistening with suppressed laughter.

  “So I opened the window—” I wasn’t sure I’d make it to the punch line that was still forming as I approached it. “So I opened the window, wrote, directed, and starred in a five-second fantasy for which there aren’t enough Xs, and my tumescent glans rang the doorbell of the neighbor across the street.”

  Almost convulsing with restraint, Benjy asked, “Did she have an egg?”

  “He.”

  “He!”

  “And no, he didn’t.”

  “What an asshole.”

  “And I accidentally blinded him.”

  “Injury to the insult.”

  “No, wait. Wait. Do it again. Ask me if she had an egg.”

  “I have a question.”

  “Let me try to answer it.”

  “Did she have an egg?”

  “Your mom? She did.”

  “Wonder of wonders!”

  “And I accidentally fertilized it.”

  The laughter we’d been containing never came. We sighed, smiled, sat back, and nodded for no reason. Benjy said, “It must be a relief.”

  “What must?”

  “Finally looking like yourself.”

  I looked at “You will travel to many places” and said, “I am not a ghost.”

  Benjy was five when we started Tales from the Odyssey. I’d read it to Sam and Max, and both times, the further we got in, the slower we read, until we were making it through only a page a night. Benjy and I got all the way through the Cyclops that first bedtime. I had a rare instance of recognizing what was happening as it happened—he was my final child, and this was my final reading of the passage. It would not last. “ ‘Why?’ ” I read. “ ‘Why do you break the stillness of the night with your cries?’ ” I gave space to each pause, opening the sentences as far as they would go. “ ‘Who harms you?’ ‘NO ONE!’ Polyphemus shouted, writhing on the floor of his cave. ‘No One tried to kill me! No One blinded me!’ ”

  HOW TO PLAY NO ONE

  I told Julia I didn’t want her to go with us to the airport. I would tuck in the children, like any other night, no overly dramatic goodbyes, let them know I’d FaceTime as often as possible and be back in a week or two with a suitcase of tchotchkes. And then I’d leave while they slept.

  “You can do it however you want,” she said. “But can I ask you—or can you ask yourself—what it is you’re waiting for?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everything is no big deal. You’ve raised your voice once in your entire life, to tell me I was your enemy.”

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  “I know. But you don’t mean the silence, either. If this isn’t a big deal—saying goodbye to your children before going to war—what is? What is the big deal you’re waiting for?”

  My father drove us to MacArthur Airport in Islip, Long Island. I sat in the passenger seat, and Barak moved in and out of sleep against Tamir’s chest in the back. Five hours. On the radio, there was coverage of the first day of Operation Arms of Moses. Reporters were stationed at the designated airfields around the world, but as it was still early, most of the reporting was just speculation about how many would heed the call. It was the opposite of the ride we’d made only a few weeks earlier, from Washington National to the house.

  What conversations there were in the car were segregated front and back; I could hear little of what passed between Tamir and Barak, and my father, who lacked an indoor voice, found his whisper.

  “Gabe Perelman will be there,” he said. “I spoke to Hersch last night. We’re going to see a lot of people we know.”

  “Probably.”

  “Glenn Mechling. Larry Moverman.”

  “Mom’s OK, right? She was worryingly nonchalant this morning.”

  “She’s a mother. But she’ll be fine.”

  “And you?”

  “What can I say? The price of speaking unpopular truths. I turned the ringer off on the home phone. And D.C.’s finest put a car on the corner. I told them not to. They insisted, told me it wasn’t my choice. It’ll pass.”

  “Not that. I mean with me going.”

  “You read what I wrote. Every part of me wishes you didn’t have to go, but I know you do.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  “That’s because you haven’t been listening to me for the past twenty years.”

  “Longer than that.”

  Eyes on the road, he rested his right hand on my thigh and said, “I can’t believe it, either.”

  We stopped curbside. The airport was closed, save for flights to Israel. There were about two dozen cars unloading men, and no one waving a stumpy lightsaber and saying, “Keep it moving, keep it moving,” but there were two men in army green with machine guns pressed to their chests.

  We took our duffels from the trunk and stood by the car.

  “Barak’s not going to get out?” I asked.

  “He’s asleep,” Tamir said. “We said goodbye in the car. It’s better this way.”

  My father put his hand on Tamir’s shoulder and told him, “You’re brave.”

  Tamir said, “This doesn’t count as bravery.”

  “I loved your father.”

  “He loved you.”

  My father nodded. He put his other hand on Tamir’s other shoulder and said, “Since he’s no longer here—” and that was all that was needed. As if the knowledge of what to do at that moment had been coiled into him at birth, Tamir put down his duffel, let his arms rest at his sides, and bowed slightly. My father placed his hands atop Tamir’s head and said, “Y’varech’cha Adonai v’yishm’recha. May God bless you and guard you. Ya’ar Adonai panav ay’lecha viy’hunecha. May God make His face shine upon you and be gracious unto you. Yisa Adonai panav ay’lecha v’yasaym l’cha shalom. May God turn His face unto you and grant you peace.”

  Tamir thanked my father and told me he’d go for a walk, then meet me inside.

  Once it was just the two of us, my father laughed.

  “What?”

  He said, “You know what Lou Gehrig’s final words were, right?”

  “ ‘I don’t want to die’?”

  “ ‘Damn, Lou Gehrig’s disease, I should have seen that coming.’ ”

  “Funny.”

  “We should have seen this coming,” he said.

  “You did.”

  “No, I just said I did.”

  Barak rose from his sleep, calmly look
ed around, and then, perhaps assuming he was in a dream, closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the window.

  “You’ll go to the house every day, right?”

  “Of course,” my father said.

  “And take the kids out. Give Julia a break every now and then.”

  “Of course, Jacob.”

  “Make sure Mom eats.”

  “You’ve traded places.”

  “A friend at the Times said it’s nowhere near as bad as it sounds. Israel is intentionally making the situation appear worse than it is with the hopes of getting more American support. He said they’re drawing it out to achieve the most propitious peace.”

  “The Times is an anti-Semitic pap smear.”

  “I’m just saying don’t be scared.”

  As if the knowledge of what to do at that moment had been coiled into me at birth, I bowed. My father put his hands atop my head. I waited. As if the knowledge of what to do at that moment had been coiled into him at my birth, his palms began to close, taking my hair into the grip of his fingers, holding me in place. I waited for a blessing that would never come.

  HOW TO PLAY SILENCE

  First ask, “What kind of silence is this?” EMBARRASSED SILENCE is not ASHAMED SILENCE. WORDLESS SILENCE is not SPEECHLESS SILENCE, is not SILENCE OF SUBTLE WITHHOLDING. And so on. And on and on.

  Then ask, “What kind of suicide or sacrifice is this?”

  HOW TO PLAY RAISED VOICES

  I’ve raised my voice to a human only twice in my entire life. The first time was when Julia confronted me with the texts and, pushed beyond my self-control, into my self, I shouted: “You are my enemy!” She didn’t remember that she had given me that line. When she was in labor with Sam—her only natural childbirth—she traced a forty-hour spiral into deeper and more isolating pain, until, surrounded by the same four walls, we were in different rooms. The doula said something absurd (something that, at any other moment, Julia would have dismissed with a roll of her eyes), and I said something loving (something that, at any other moment, Julia would have teared up about and thanked me for), and Julia moaned like a nonfemale nonhuman, grabbed the bed rail like it was a roller-coaster safety bar, looked at me with eyes more satanic than in any red-pupilled photograph, and snarled, “You are my enemy!” I hadn’t meant to quote her thirteen years later, and it didn’t even occur to me that I’d done so until I wrote about it after. Like so much that happened during labor, Julia seemed to have no memory of it.

  The second time I raised my voice at a human was also at Julia, many years later. I found it so much easier to give what wasn’t asked for or owed. Maybe I learned that from Argus—the only way to get him to drop a fetched ball was to appear indifferent. Maybe Argus learned that from me. Once Julia and I were living separate lives, it was not only possible to push my inner life through our still-shared conduit, I longed to. Because she appeared indifferent to it—appeared, or was.

  Julia and I hadn’t spoken in a long time, but she was the person I wanted to talk to. I called, she answered, we shared, just like old times weren’t. I said, “I guess I wanted proof.” She said, “I’m the gentle soul you called, remember?” I said, “Remember how they say the world is uniquely open?” She asked, “What happened to you?” She wasn’t accusing or challenging me. She said it with the indifference necessary for me to give everything.

  I’ve raised my voice at a human only twice in my entire life. Both times at the same human. Put differently: I’ve known only one human in my life. Put differently: I’ve allowed only one human to know me.

  In a sadness beyond anger, pain, and fear, I screamed at Julia: “Unfair! Unfair! Unfair!”

  HOW TO PLAY THE DEATH OF LANGUAGE

  In the synagogue of my youth—which I left when I went to college and rejoined when Julia became pregnant with Sam—there was a memorial wall with tiny bulbs lit next to the names of those who had died in the given week of the year. As a boy, I rearranged the plastic letters that formed the names into whatever words I could. My father used to tell me that there were no bad words, only bad usage. And then, when I became a father, I told my boys the same thing.

  There were more than fourteen hundred congregants of fighting age. Of the sixty-two who went to fight in Israel, twenty-four died. Two ten-watt, candelabra-base, flame-tip bulbs for each name. Only 480 watts of light. Fewer than in my living room chandelier. No one touched those names. But one day they will be rearranged into words. Or so is the hope.

  It feels like it’s been centuries since I wandered that building. But I can remember the smells: the siddurim like withered flowers, the must of the basket of yarmulkes, the new-car smell of the ark. And I can remember the surfaces: where the broad strips of linen wallpaper met; the Braille-like plaques affixed to the armrests of every velvet chair, immortalizing the largesse of someone unlikely ever to sit there; the cold steel banister of the plush-carpeted stairs. I can remember the heat of those bulbs, and the roughness of the letters. As I sit at a desk filled with thousands of pages, continuing to comment on the commentary, I wonder how one should judge the usage of words made from the dead. And the living. From everyone living and dead.

  HOW TO PLAY NO ONE

  There were several hundred men in the waiting area. Several hundred Jewish men. We were circumcised men, men who shared Jewish genetic markers, men who hummed the same ancient melodies. How many times, as a child, was I told that it didn’t matter whether or not I thought of myself as Jewish, the Germans thought of me as a Jew? In the holding area of that airport, perhaps for the first time in my life, I stopped wondering if I felt Jewish. Not because I had an answer, but because the question stopped mattering.

  I saw a few people I knew: old friends, familiar faces from the synagogue, some public figures. I didn’t see Gabe Perelman or Larry Moverman, but Glenn Mechling was there. We nodded at each other across the enormous room. There was little interacting. Some sat in silence, or talked on their cell phones—presumably to their families. There were outbursts of singing: “Yerushalayim Shel Zachav”…“Hatikva”…It was emotional, but what was the it? The camaraderie? The most extreme version of the recognition I felt with the deaf father at the convention? The shared devotion? The sudden awareness of history, how small and big it is, how impotent and omnipotent an individual is inside it? The fear?

  I had written books and screenplays my entire adult life, but it was the first time I’d felt like a character inside one—that the scale of my tchotchke existence, the drama of living, finally befitted the privilege of being alive.

  No, it was the second time. The first time was in the lion’s den.

  Tamir was right: my problems were small. I’d spent so much of my finite time on earth thinking small thoughts, feeling small feelings, walking under doors into unoccupied rooms. How many hours did I spend online, rewatching inane videos, scrutinizing listings for houses I would never buy, clicking over to check for hasty e-mails from people I didn’t care about? How much of myself, how many words, feelings, and actions, had I forcefully contained? I’d angled myself away from myself, by a fraction of a degree, but after so many years, finding my way back to myself required a plane.

  They were singing, and I knew the song, but not how to join them.

  HOW TO PLAY THE ITCH OF HOPE

  I always believed that all it would take to completely change my life would be a complete change of personhood.

  HOW TO PLAY HOME

  The completion of Tales from the Odyssey left Max bereft.

  “Why?” he asked, spinning to face his pillow. “Why did it have to end?”

  I rubbed his back, told him, “But you wouldn’t want Odysseus wandering forever, would you?”

  “Well, then why did he have to leave home at all?”

  The next morning, I took him to the farmer’s market with the hope of finding some consolation in baked goods. Every other Sunday, a mobile pet rescue stationed itself by the main entrance, and we’d often stop and admire the animals. Max wa
s drawn that morning to a golden retriever named Stan. We’d never spoken about getting a dog, and I certainly hadn’t intended to get a dog, and I don’t even know if he wanted that particular dog, but I told him, “If you would like to take Stan home, we can.”

  Everyone but me bounded into the house. Julia was furious, but didn’t show it until we were alone at the top of the stairs. She said, “Again, you’ve put me in the position of either having to go along with a bad idea or be the bad guy.”

  Downstairs, the boys were calling: “Stan! Here, Stan! Come on, now!”

  I had asked the woman running the pet rescue how he got the name Stan—it struck me as an odd choice for a dog. She said the dogs were given retired names of Atlantic storms. With so many dogs moving through the facility, it made things easy simply to use a list.

  “Sorry, a retired name of what?”

  “You know how storms get names? There’s something like a hundred that are cycled through. But if a storm is especially costly or deadly, they retire the name—to be sensitive. There will never be another Sandy.”

  Just as there will never be another Isaac.

  We don’t know the name of my grandfather’s grandfather.

  When my grandfather came to America, he changed his name from Blumenberg to Bloch.

  My father was the first person in our family to have an “English name” and a “Hebrew name.”

  When I became a writer, I experimented with different versions of my name: various uses of initials, the insertion of my middle name, pseudonyms.

  The farther we got from Europe, the more identities we had to choose between.

  “No One tried to kill me! No One blinded me!”

  It was Max’s idea to rename Stan. I said it might confuse him. Max said, “But we need to make him ours.”

  HOW TO PLAY NO ONE

  We were given some simple forms to fill out, and an announcement was made that we were to pass, single file, in front of a middle-aged man in a white lab coat. He gave each person a quick visual inspection and pointed toward one of about a dozen long lines, which began to roughly correspond to age. The resonance with the selections upon entering the concentration camps was so explicit and undeniable, it was hard to imagine it wasn’t intentional.