Everything Is Illuminated Read online

  Hannah wailed. Chana waded into the cold water, pulling up above her knees the yarn ties at the ends of her britches, sweeping the rising life-debris to her sides as she waded farther. What are you doing over there! the disgraced usurer Yankel D called, kicking up shoreline mud as he hobbled toward the girls. He extended one hand to Chana and held the other, as always, over the incriminating abacus bead he was forced by shtetl proclamation to wear on a string around his neck. Stay back from the water! You will get hurt!

  The good gefiltefishmonger Bitzl Bitzl R watched the commotion from his paddleboat, which was fastened with twine to one of his traps. What's going on over there? he shouted to shore. Is that you, Yankel? Is there some sort of trouble?

  It's the Well-Regarded Rabbi's twins, Yankel called back. They're playing in the water and I'm afraid someone will get hurt!

  It's turning up the most unusual things! Chana laughed, splashing at the mass that grew like a garden around her. She picked up the hands of a baby doll, and those of a grandfather clock. Umbrella ribs. A skeleton key. The articles rose on the crowns of bubbles that burst when they reached the surface. The slightly younger and less cautious twin raked her fingers through the water and each time came up with something new: a yellow pinwheel, a muddy hand mirror, the petals of some sunken forget-me-not, silt and cracked black pepper, a packet of seeds...

  But her slightly older and more cautious sister, Hannah—identical in every way save the hairs connecting her eyebrows—watched from shore and cried. The disgraced usurer Yankel D took her into his arms, pressed her head against his chest, murmured, Here ... here..., and called to Bitzl Bitzl: Row to the Well-Regarded Rabbi's and bring him back with you. Also bring Menasha the physician and Isaac the man of law. Quickly!

  The mad squire Sofiowka N, whose name the shtetl would later take for maps and Mormon census records, emerged from behind a tree. I have seen everything that happened, he said hysterically. I witnessed it all. The wagon was moving too fast for this dirt road—the only thing worse than to be late to your own wedding is to be late to the wedding of the girl who should have been your wife—and it suddenly flipped itself, and if that's not exactly the truth, then the wagon didn't flip itself, but was itself flipped by a wind from Kiev or Odessa or wherever, and if that doesn't seem quite correct, then what happened was—and I would swear on my lily-white name to this—an angel with gravestone-feathered wings descended from heaven to take Trachim back with him, for Trachim was too good for this world. Of course, who isn't? We are all too good for each other.

  Trachim? Yankel asked, allowing Hannah to finger the incriminating bead. Wasn't Trachim the shoemaker from Lutsk who died half a year ago of pneumonia?

  Look at this! Chana called, giggling, holding above her head the jack of cunnilingus from a dirty deck of cards.

  No, Sofiowka said. That man's name was Trachum with a u. This is with an i. And that Trachum died in the Night of the Longest Night. No, wait. No, wait. He died from being an artist.

  And this! Chana shrieked with joy, holding up a faded map of the universe.

  Get out of the water! Yankel hollered at her, raising his voice louder than he would have wished at the Well-Regarded Rabbi's daughter, or any young girl. You will get hurt!

  Chana ran to shore. The deep green water obscured the zodiac as the star chart sank to the river's bottom, coming to rest, like a veil, on the horse's face.

  The shutters of the shtetl's windows were opening to the commotion (curiosity being the only thing the citizens shared). The accident had happened by the small falls—the part of shore that marked the current division of the shtetl into its two sections, the Jewish Quarter and the Human Three-Quarters. All so-called sacred activities—religious studies, kosher butchering, bargaining, etc.—were contained within the Jewish Quarter. Those activities concerned with the humdrum of daily existence—secular studies, communal justice, buying and selling, etc.—took place in the Human Three-Quarters. Straddling the two was the Upright Synagogue. (The ark itself was built along the Jewish/Human fault line, such that one of the two Torah scrolls would exist in each zone.) As the ratio of sacred to secular shifted—usually no more than a hair in this or that direction, save for that exceptional hour in 1764, immediately following the Pogrom of Beaten Chests, when the shtetl was completely secular—so did the fault line, drawn in chalk from Radziwell Forest to the river. And so was the synagogue lifted and moved. It was in 1783 that wheels were attached, making the shtetl's ever-changing negotiation of Jewishness and Humanness less of a schlep.

  I understand there has been an accident, panted Shloim W, the humble antiques salesman who survived off charity, unable to part with any of his candelabras, figurines, or hourglasses since his wife's untimely death.

  How did you know? Yankel asked.

  Bitzl Bitzl yelled to me from his boat on his way to the Well-Regarded Rabbi's. I knocked on as many doors as I could on my way here.

  Good, Yankel said. We'll need a shtetl proclamation.

  Are we sure he's dead? someone asked.

  Quite, Sofiowka assured. Dead as he was before his parents met. Or deader, maybe, for then he was at least a bullet in his father's cock and an emptiness in his mother's belly.

  Did you try to save him? Yankel asked.

  No.

  Cover their eyes, Shloim told Yankel, gesturing at the girls. He quickly undressed himself—revealing a belly larger than most, and a back matted with ringlets of thick black hair—and dove into the water. Feathers washed over him on the wings of water swells. Unstrung pearls and ungummed teeth. Blood clots, Merlot, and splintered chandelier crystal. The rising wreckage became increasingly dense, until he couldn't see his hands in front of him. Where? Where?

  Did you find him? the man of law Isaac M asked when Shloim finally surfaced. Is it clear how long he's been down there?

  Was he alone or with a wife? asked grieving Shanda T, widow of the deceased philosopher Pinchas T, who, in his only notable paper, "To the Dust: From Man You Came and to Man You Shall Return," argued it would be possible, in theory, for life and art to be reversed.

  A powerful wind swept through the shtetl, making it whistle. Those studying obscure texts in dimly lit rooms looked up. Lovers making amends and promises, amendments and excuses, fell silent. The lonely candle dipper, Mordechai C, submerged his hands in a vat of warm blue wax.

  He did have a wife, Sofiowka inserted, his left hand diving deep into his trouser pocket. I remember her well. She had a set of such voluptuous tits. God, she had great tits. Who could forget those? They were, oh God, they were great. I'd trade all of the words I've since learned to be young again, oh yes, yes, getting a good suck on those titties. Yes I would! Yes I would!

  How do you know these things? someone asked.

  I went to Rovno once, as a child, on an errand for my father. It was to this Trachim's house. His surname escapes my tongue, but I remember quite well that he was Trachim with an i, that he had a young wife with a great set of tits, a small apartment with many knickknacks, and a scar from his eye to his mouth, or his mouth to his eye. One or the other.

  YOU WERE ABLE TO SEE HIS FACE AS HE WAGONED BY? the Well-Regarded Rabbi asked in a holler as his girls ran to hide under opposite ends of his prayer shawl. THE SCAR?

  And then, ay yay yay, I saw him again when I was a young man applying myself in Lvov. Trachim was making a delivery of peaches, if I remember, or perhaps plums, to a house of schoolgirls across the street. Or was he a postman? Yes, it was love letters.

  Of course he couldn't be alive anymore, said Menasha the physician, opening his medical bag. He removed several pages of death certificates, which were picked up by another breeze and sent into the trees. Some would fall with the leaves that September. Some would fall with the trees generations later.

  And even if he were alive, we couldn't free him, said Shloim, drying himself behind a large rock. It won't be possible to get to the wagon until all of its contents have risen.

  WE MUST MAKE A SH
TETL PROCLAMATION, proclaimed the Well-Regarded Rabbi, mustering a more authoritative holler.

  Now what was his name, exactly? Menasha asked, touching quill to tongue.

  Can we say for sure that he had a wife? grieving Shanda asked, touching hand to heart.

  Did the girls see anything? asked Avrum R, the lapidary, who wore no rings himself (although the Well-Regarded Rabbi had promised he knew of a young woman in Lodz who could make him happy [forever]).

  The girls saw nothing, Sofiowka said. I saw that they saw nothing.

  And the twins, this time both of them, began to cry.

  But we can't leave the matter entirely to his word, Shloim said, gesturing at Sofiowka, who returned the favor with a gesture of his own.

  Do not ask the girls, Yankel said. Leave them alone. They've been through enough.

  By now, almost all of the shtetl's three hundred–odd citizens had gathered to debate that about which they knew nothing. The less a citizen knew, the more adamantly he or she argued. There was nothing new in this. A month before there had been the question of whether it might send a better message to the children to plug, finally, the bagel's hole. Two months before there had been the cruel and comic debate over the question of typesetting, and before that the question of Polish identity, which moved many to tears, and many to laughter, and all to more questions. And still to come would be other questions to debate, and others after that. Questions from the beginning of time—whenever that was—to whenever would be the end. From ashes? to ashes?

  PERHAPS, the Well-Regarded Rabbi said, raising his hands even higher, his voice even louder, WE DO NOT HAVE TO SETTLE THE MATTER AT ALL. WHAT IF WE NEVER FILL OUT A DEATH CERTIFICATE? WHAT IF WE GIVE THE BODY A PROPER BURIAL, BURN ANYTHING THAT WASHES ASHORE, AND ALLOW LIFE TO GO ON IN THE FACE OF THIS DEATH?

  But we need a proclamation, said Froida Y, the candy maker.

  Not if the shtetlproclaims otherwise, corrected Isaac.

  Perhaps we should try to contact his wife, said grieving Shanda.

  Perhaps we should begin to gather the remains, said Eliezar Z, the dentist.

  And in the braid of argument, young Hannah's voice almost went unnoticed as she peeked her head from beneath the fringed wing of her father's prayer shawl.

  I see something.

  WHAT? her father asked, quieting the others. WHAT DO YOU SEE?

  Over there, pointing to the frothing water.

  In the middle of the string and feathers, surrounded by candles and soaked matches, prawns, pawns, and silk tassels that curtsied like jellyfish, was a baby girl, still mucus-glazed, still pink as the inside of a plum.

  The twins hid their bodies under their father's tallis, like ghosts. The horse at the bottom of the river, shrouded by the sunken night sky, closed its heavy eyes. The prehistoric ant in Yankel's ring, which had lain motionless in the honey-colored amber since long before Noah hammered the first plank, hid its head between its many legs, in shame.

  THE LOTTERY, 1791

  BITZL BITZL R was able to recover the wagon a few days later with the help of a group of strong men from Kolki, and his traps saw more action than ever. But sifting through the remains, they didn't find a body. For the next one hundred fifty years, the shtetl would host an annual contest to "find" Trachim, although a shtetl proclamation withdrew the reward in 1793 —on Menasha's counsel that any ordinary corpse would begin to break apart after two years in water, so searching not only would be pointless but could result in rather offensive findings, or even worse, multiple rewards—and the contest became more of a festival, for which the line of short-tempered bakers P would create particular pastry treats, and the girls of the shtetl would dress as the twins dressed on that fateful day: in wool britches with yarn ties, and canvas blouses with blue-fringed butterfly collars. Men came from great distances to dive for the cotton sacks that the Float Queen would throw into the Brod, all but one of which, the golden sack, were filled with earth.

  There were those who thought that Trachim would never be found, that the current brushed enough loose sediment over him to properly bury his body. These people laid stones on the shoreside when they made their monthly cemetery rounds, and said things like:

  Poor Trachim, I didn't know him well, but I sure could have.

  or

  I miss you, Trachim. Without having ever met you, I do.

  or

  Rest, Trachim, rest. And make safe our flour mill.

  There were those who suspected that he was not pinned under his wagon but swept out to sea, with the secrets of his life kept forever inside him, like a love note in a bottle, to be found one morning by an unsuspecting couple on a romantic beach stroll. It's possible that he, or some part of him, washed up on the sands of the Black Sea, or in Rio, or that he made it all the way to Ellis Island.

  Or perhaps a widow found him and took him in: bought him an easy chair, changed his sweater every morning, shaved his face until the hair stopped growing, took him faithfully to bed with her every night, whispered sweet nothings into what was left of his ear, laughed with him over black coffee, cried with him over yellowing pictures, talked greenly about having kids of her own, began to miss him before she became sick, left him everything in her will, thought of only him as she died, always knew he was a fiction but believed in him anyway.

  Some argued that there was never a body at all. Trachim wanted to be dead without being dead, the con artist. He packed a wagon with all of his possessions, rode it into the nondescript, nameless shtetl—which was soon to be known across eastern Poland for its yearly festival, Trachimday, and to carry his name like an orphan baby (except for maps and Mormon census records, for which it would go by Sofiowka)—patted his nameless horse its last pat, and spurred it into the undertow. Was he escaping debt? An unfavorable arranged marriage? Lies that had caught up with him? Was his death an essential stage in the continuation of his life?

  Of course there are those who pointed to Sofiowka's madness, how he would sit naked in the fountain of the prostrate mermaid, caressing her scaly tuches like a newborn's fontanel, caressing his own better half as if there were nothing in the world wrong with beating one's boner, wherever, whenever. Or how he was once found on the Well-Regarded Rabbi's front lawn, bound in white string, and said he tied one around his index finger to remember something terribly important, and fearing he would forget the index finger, he tied a string around his pinky, and then one from waist to neck, and fearing he would forget this one, he tied a string from ear to tooth to scrotum to heel, and used his body to remember his body, but in the end could remember only the string. Is this someone to trust for a story?

  And the baby? My great-great-great-great-great-grandmother? This is a more difficult problem, for it's relatively easy to reason how a life could be lost in a river, but for one to arise from it?

  Harry V, the shtetl's master logician and resident pervert—who had been working for as many years and with as little success as one could imagine on his magnum opus, "The Host of Hoists," which, he promised, contained the tightest of tight logical proofs that God indiscriminatingly loves the indiscriminate lover—put forth a lengthy argument concerning the presence of another on the ill-starred wagon: Trachim's wife. Perhaps, Harry argued, her water broke while the two were munching deviled eggs in a meadow between shtetls, and perhaps Trachim urged the wagon to dangerous speeds in order to get her to a doctor before the baby squirmed out like a flapping flounder from a fisherman's grip. As the waves of her tidal contractions began to break over her head, Trachim turned to his wife, perhaps put his callused hand on her soft face, perhaps took his eyes off the riddled road, and perhaps inadvertently steered into the river. Perhaps the wagon flipped, the bodies plunged under its weight, and perhaps, sometime between her mother's last breath and her father's final attempt to free himself, the baby was born. Perhaps. But not even Harry could explain the absence of an umbilical cord.

  The Wisps of Ardisht—that clan of artisan smokers in Rovno who smoked so much the
y smoked even when they were not smoking, and were condemned by shtetl proclamation to a life of rooftops as shingle layers and chimney sweeps—believed that my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother was Trachim reborn. In his moment of afterworldly judgment, as his softening body was presented before the Keeper of those glorious and barbed Gates, something went wrong. There was unfinished business. The soul was not ready to transcend, but was sent back, given a chance to right a previous generation's wrong. This, of course, doesn't make any sense. But what does?

  More concerned with the baby's future than its past, the Well-Regarded Rabbi offered no official interpretation of her origins for either the shtetl or The Book of Antecedents, but took her in as his own responsibility until her final home should be decided. He brought her to the Upright Synagogue—for not even a baby, he swore, should set foot in the Slouching Synagogue (wherever it happened to be on that given day)—and tucked her makeshift crib in the ark while the men in long black suits hollered prayers at the top of their lungs. HOLY, HOLY, HOLY IS THE LORD OF HOSTS! THE WHOLE WORLD IS FILLED WITH HIS GLORY!

  The goers of the Upright Synagogue had been screaming for more than two hundred years, since the Venerable Rabbi enlightened that we are always drowning, and our prayers are nothing less than pleas for rescue from deep under the spiritual waters. AND IF OUR PLIGHT IS SO DESPERATE, he said (always starting his sentences with "and," as if what he verbalized were some logical continuation of his innermost thoughts), SHOULD WE NOT ACT LIKE IT? AND SHOULD WE NOT SOUND LIKE DESPERATE PEOPLE? So they screamed, and had been screaming for the two hundred years since.