Everything Is Illuminated

Jonathan Safran Foer

• Publisher: Mariner Books Classics
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780547523781
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. Jonathan Safran Foer's debut—"a funny, moving...deeply felt novel about the dangers of confronting the past and the redemption that comes with laughing at it, even when that seems all but impossible." ( Time ) With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man—also named Jonathan Safran Foer—sets out to find the woman who might or might not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war, an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior, and the unforgettable Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in a sublimely butchered English, Jonathan is led on a quixotic journey over a devastated landscape and into an unexpected past. As their adventure unfolds, Jonathan imagines the history of his grandfather's village, conjuring a magical fable of startling symmetries that unite generations across time. As his search moves back in time, the fantastical history moves forward, until reality collides with fiction in a heart-stopping scene of extraordinary power. "Imagine a novel as verbally cunning as A Clockwork Orange, as harrowing as The Painted Bird, as exuberant and twee as Candide, and you have Everything Is Illuminated... Read it, and you'll feel altered, chastened—seared in the fire of something new." — Washington Post "A rambunctious tour de force of inventive and intelligent storytelling... Foer can place his reader's hand on the heart of human experience, the transcendent beauty of human connections. Read, you can feel the life beating." — Philadelphia Inquirer

SHE USED HER THUMBS to pull the lace panties from her waist, allowing her engorged genitalia the teasing satisfaction of the humid summer updrafts, which brought with them the smells of burdock, birch, burning rubber, and beef broth, and would now pass on her particular animal scent to northward noses, like a message transmitted through a line of schoolchildren in a childish game, so that the final one to smell might lift his head and say, Borsht? She eased them off her ankles with extraordinary deliberateness, as if that action alone could have justified her birth, every hour of her parents’ labors, and the oxygen she consumed with every breath. As if it could have justified the tears that her children would have shed at her proper death, had she not died in the water with the rest of the shtetl—too young, like the rest of the shtetl—before having children. She folded the panties over themselves six times into a teardrop shape and slid them into the pocket of his black nuptial suit, halfway under the lapel, blossoming in petal folds at the top like a good kerchief should.

This is so you will think about me, she said, until—

I don’t need reminders, he said, kissing the moist divot above her upper lip.

Hurry, she giggled, straightening his tie with one hand and the rope between his legs with the other. You’ll be late. Now run to the Dial.

She silenced with a kiss whatever he was about to say, and pushed him to go.

It was summer already. The ivy that clung to the synagogue’s crumbling portico was darkening at the lobes. The soil had recovered its rich coffee blush, and was again soft enough for tomatoes and mint. The lilac bushes had flirted halfway up the veranda railings, the railings were beginning to splinter, and the splinters were chipping off into the summer breezes. The shtetl men were already crowded around the Dial when my grandfather arrived, panting and damp with sweat.

Safran is here! the Upright Rabbi announced, to the cheers of those packed in the square. The bridegroom has arrived! A septet of violins began the traditional Dial Waltz, with the elders of the shtetl clapping their hands on every downbeat and the children whistling every ta-ta.

THE CHORUS OF THE DIAL WALTZ SONG

FOR SOON-TO-BE-MARRIED MEN

Ohhhhhhh, gather group, [insert groom’s name]’s here,
Well groomed he’d better be, his wedding’s near.
One great hand he’s been dealt,
[insert bride’s name]’s a girl to make you loosen your belt.
Sooooooo kiss his lips, smell his knees,
Beg please for prolific birds and bees.
May you be happily
Wed, then off to bed, for ohhhhhhh . . .

[Repeat from beginning, indefinitely]

My grandfather regained his composure, felt to make sure the zipper of his slacks was indeed zippered, and marched into the Dial’s long shadow. He was to fulfill the sacred ritual that had been fulfilled by every married man in Trachimbrod since his great-great-great-grandfather’s tragic flour mill accident. He was about to throw his bachelorhood and, in theory, his sexual exploits to the wind. But what struck him as he approached the Dial (with long, deliberate steps) was not the beauty of ceremony, or the inherent insincerity of organized rites of passage, or even how much he wished the Gypsy girl could be with him now so his true love could experience his wedding with him, but that he was no longer a boy. He was growing older, had begun to look like his great-great-great-grandfather: the furrowed brow shadowing his delicate, softly feminine eyes, the similar protrusion at the bridge of his nose, the way his lips met in a sideways U at one end and in a V at the other. Safety and profound sadness: he was growing into his place in the family; he looked unmistakably like his father’s father’s father’s father’s father, and because of that, because his cleft chin spoke of the same mongrel gene-stew (stirred by the chefs of war, disease, opportunity, love, and false love), he was granted a place in a long line—certain assurances of being and permanence, but also a burdensome restriction of movement. He was not altogether free.

He was also aware of his place among married men, all of whom had given their vows of fidelity with their knees planted on the same ground on which his now were. Each had prayed for the blessings of sound mind, good health, handsome sons, inflated wages, and deflated libido. Each had been told a thousand times the story of the Dial, the tragic circumstances of its creation and the magnitude of its power. Each knew of how his great-great-great-grandmother Brod had said Don’t go to her new husband, too familiar with the flour mill’s curse of taking without warning the lives of its young workers. Please, find another job or don’t work at all. But promise me you won’t go.

And each knew of how the Kolker had responded, Don’t be silly, Brod, patting her belly, which after seven months could still be concealed under a baggy dress. It’s a very good job, and I’ll be very careful, and that’ll be all.

And each bridegroom knew of how Brod had wept, and hid his work clothes the previous night, and shook him from sleep every few minutes so that he would be too exhausted to leave the house the next day, and refused to make his coffee in the morning, and even tried ordering him.

This is love, she thought, isn’t it? When you notice someone’s absence and hate that absence more than anything? More, even, than you love his presence? Each knew of how she had waited for the Kolker by the window every day, how she became acquainted with its surface, learned where it had melted slightly, where it was slightly discolored, where it was opaque. She felt its tiny wrinkles and bubbles. Like a blind woman learning language, she moved her fingers over the window, and like a blind woman learning language, she felt liberated. The frame of the window was the walls of the prison that set her free. She loved what it felt like to wait for the Kolker, to be entirely dependent on him for her happiness, to be, as ridiculous as she had always thought it sounded, someone’s wife. She loved her new vocabulary of simply loving something more than she loved her love for that thing, and the vulnerability that went along with living in the primary world. Finally, she thought, finally. I only wish Yankel could know how happy I am.

When she woke up crying from one of her nightmares, the Kolker would stay with her, brush her hair with his hands, collect her tears in thimbles for her to drink the next morning (The only way to overcome sadness is to consume it, he said), and more than that: once her eyes closed and she fell back asleep, he was left to bear the insomnia. There was a complete transfer, like a speeding billiard ball colliding with a resting one. Should Brod feel depressed—she was always depressed—the Kolker would sit with her until he could convince her that it’s OK. It is. Really. And when she would move on with her day, he would stay behind, paralyzed with a grief he couldn’t name and that wasn’t his. Should Brod become sick, it was the Kolker who would be bedridden by week’s end. Should Brod feel bored, knowing too many languages, too many facts, with too much knowledge to be happy, the Kolker would stay up all night studying her books, studying the pictures, so the next day he could try to make the kind of small talk that would please his young wife.

Brod, isn’t it strange how some mathematical phrases can have a lot on one side and just a little on the other? Isn’t that fascinating! And what does it say about life! . . . Brod, you’re making that face again, the one like the man who plays that musical instrument that is all wound up in a big coil . . . Brod, he would say, pointing to Castor as they lay on their backs on the tin-shingled roof of their small house, that, over there, is a star. So is that one, pointing to Pollux. I’m sure of it. Those are as well. Yes, those are very familiar stars. The rest I can’t be one hundred percent sure of. I’m not familiar with them.

She always saw through him, as if he were just another window. She always felt that she knew everything about him that could be known—not that he was simple, but that he was knowable, like a list of errands, like an encyclopedia. He had a birthmark on the third toe of his left foot. He wasn’t able to urinate if someone could hear him. He thought cucumbers were good enough, but pickles were delicious—so absolutely delicious, in fact, that he questioned whether they were, indeed, made from cucumbers, which were only good enough. He hadn’t heard of Shakespeare, but Hamlet sounded familiar. He liked making love from behind. That, he thought, was about as nice as it gets. He had never kissed anyone besides his mother and her. He had dived for the golden sack only because he wanted to impress her. He sometimes looked in the mirror for hours at a time, making faces, tensing muscles, winking, smiling, puckering. He had never seen another man naked, and so had no idea if his body was normal. The word “butterfly” made him blush, although he didn’t know why. He had never been out of the Ukraine. He once thought that the earth was the center of the universe, but learned better. He admired magicians more after learning the secrets of their tricks.

You are such a sweet husband, she told him when he brought her gifts.

I just want to be good to you.

I know, she said, and you are.

But there are so many things I can’t give you.

But there are so many things you can.

I’m not a smart man—

Stop, she said, just stop. Smart was the last thing she ever wanted the Kolker to be. That, she knew, would ruin everything. She wanted nothing more than someone to miss, to touch, with whom to speak like a child, with whom to be a child. He was very good for that. And she was in love.

I’m the one who isn’t smart, she said.

That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, Brod.

Exactly, she said, putting his arm around her and nestling her face in his chest.

Brod, I’m trying to have a serious talk with you. Sometimes I just feel like everything I want to say will come out wrong.

So what do you do?

I don’t say it.

Well, that’s smart of you, she said, playing with the loose skin under his chin.

Brod, backing away, you’re not taking me seriously. She nestled deeper into him and closed her eyes like a cat. I’ve kept a list, you know, he said, taking back his arms.

That’s wonderful, honey.

Aren’t you going to ask what kind of list?

I figured you’d have told me if you wanted me to know. When you didn’t, I just assumed it was none of my business. Do you want me to ask you?

Ask me.

OK. What kind of list have you been keeping so secretly?

I’ve kept a list of the number of conversations we’ve had since we’ve been married. Would you like to guess how many?

Is this really necessary?

We’ve only had six conversations, Brod. Six in almost three years.

Are you counting this one?

You never take me seriously.

Of course I do.

No, you always joke, or cut our talking short before we e...