Everything Is Illuminated (6 page)

"Grandfather," I said, moving his arm to arouse him. "Grandfather, he is here." Grandfather rotated his head from this to that. "He is always reposing," I told the hero, hoping that might make him less distressed. "That must come to hands," the hero said. "What?" I asked. "I said that must come to hands." "What does it mean come to hands?" "To be useful. You know, to be helpful. What about that dog, though?" I use this American idiom very often now. I told a girl at a famous nightclub, "My eyes come to hands when I observe your peerless bosom." I could perceive that she perceived that I was a premium person. Later we became very carnal, and she smelled her knees, and also my knees.

I was able to move Grandfather from his repose. If you want to know how, I fastened his nose with my fingers so that he could not breathe. He did not know where he was. "Anna?" he asked. That was the name of my grandmother who died two years yore. "No, Grandfather," I said, "it is me. Sasha." He was very shamed. I could perceive this because he rotated his face away from me. "I acquired Jon-fen," I said. "Um, that's Jon-a-than," the hero said, who was observing Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior as she licked the windows. "I acquired him. His train arrived." "Oh," Grandfather said, and I perceived that he was still departing from a dream. "We should go forth to Lutsk," I suggested, "as Father ordered." "What?" the hero inquired. "I told him that we should go forth to Lutsk." "Yes, Lutsk. That's where I was told we would go. And from there to Trachimbrod." "What?" I inquired. "Lutsk, then Trachimbrod." "Correct," I said. Grandfather put his hands on the wheel. He looked in front of him for a protracted time. He was breathing very large breaths, and his hands were shaking. "Yes?" I inquired him. "Shut up," he informed me. "Where's the dog going to be?" the hero inquired. "What?" "Where's ... the ... dog ... going ... to ... be?" "I do not understand." "I'm afraid of dogs," he said. "I've had some pretty bad experiences with them." I told this to Grandfather, who was still half of himself in dream. "No one is afraid of dogs," he said. "Grandfather informs me that no one is afraid of dogs." The hero moved his shirt up to exhibit me the remains of a wound. "That's from a dog bite," he said. "What is?" "That." "What?" "This thing." "What thing?" "Here. It looks like two intersecting lines." "I don't see it." "Here," he said. "Where?" "Right here," he said, and I said, "Oh yes," although in truth I still could not witness a thing. "My mother is afraid of dogs." "So?" "So I'm afraid of dogs. I can't help it." I clutched the situation now. "Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior must roost in the front with us," I told Grandfather. "Get in the fucking car," he said, having misplaced all of the patience that he had while snoring. "The bitch and the Jew will share the back seat. It is vast enough for both of them." I did not mention how the back seat was not vast enough for even one of them. "What are we going to do?" the hero asked, afraid to become close to the car, while in the back seat Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior had made her mouth with blood from masticating her own tail.

T
HE NEWS
of his good fortune reached Yankel D as the Slouchers were concluding their weekly service.

It is most important that we remember,
the narcoleptic potato farmer Didl S said to the congregation, which was reclining on pillows around his living room. (The Sloucher congregation was a wandering one, calling home a different congregant's house each Shabbos.)

Remember what?
the schoolteacher Tzadik P asked, expelling yellow chalk with each syllable.

The
what, Didl said,
is not so important, but that we should remember. It is the act of remembering, the process of remembrance, the recognition of our past ... Memories are small prayers to God, if we believed in that sort of thing ... For it says somewhere something about just this, or something just like this ... I had my finger on it a few minutes ago ... I swear, it was right here. Has anyone seen
The Book of Antecedents
around? I had an early volume here just a second ago ... Crap!... Can somebody tell me where I was? Now I'm totally confused, and embarrassed, and I always screw it up when it's at my house—

Memory,
grieving Shanda assisted, but Didl had fallen uncontrollably asleep. She woke him up and whispered,
Memory.

—There we go,
he said, not missing a beat as he riffled through a stack of papers on his pulpit, which was really a chicken coop.
Memory. Memory and reproduction. And dreams, of course. What is being awake if not interpreting our dreams, or dreaming if not interpreting our wake? Circle of circles! Dreams, yes? No? Yes. Yes, it is the first Shabbos. First of the month. And it being the first Shabbos of the month, we must make our additions to
The Book of Recurrent Dreams.
Yes? Someone tell me if I'm fucking this up.

I've had a most interesting dream for the past two weeks,
said Lilla F, descendant of the first Sloucher to drop the Great Book.

Excellent,
Didl said, pulling Volume IV of
The Book of Recurrent Dreams
from the makeshift ark, which was really his wood-burning oven.

As did I,
Shloim added.
Several of them.

I, too, had a recurrent dream,
Yankel said.

Excellent,
Didl said.
Most excellent. It won't be long before another volume is complete!

But first,
Shanda whispered,
we must review last month's entries.

But first,
Didl said, assuming the authority of a rabbi,
we must review last month's entries. We must go backward in order to go forward.

But don't take too long,
Shloim said,
or I'll forget. It's amazing I've been able to remember it this long.

He'll take exactly as long as it takes,
Lilla said.

I'll take exactly as long as it takes,
Didl said, and blackened his hand with the ash that had collected on the cover of the heavy leather-bound book. He opened it to a page near the end, picked up the silver pointer, which was really a tin knife, and began to chant, following the slice of the blade through the heart of Sloucher dream life:

4:512
—The dream of sex without pain.
I dreamt four nights ago of clock hands descending from the universe like rain, of the moon as a green eye, of mirrors and insects, of a love that never withdrew. It was not the feeling of completeness that I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty. This dream ended when I felt my husband enter me. 4:513—
The dream of angels dreaming of men.
It was during an afternoon nap that I dreamt of a ladder. Angels were sleepwalking up and down the rungs, their eyes closed, their breath heavy and dull, their wings hanging limp at the sides. I bumped into an old angel as I passed him, waking and startling him. He looked like my grandfather did before he passed away last year, when he would pray each night to die in his sleep. Oh, the angel said to me, I was just dreaming of you. 4:514—
The dream of, as silly as it sounds, flight.
4:515—
The dream of the waltz of feast, famine, and feast.
4:516—
The dream of disembodied birds (46).
I'm not sure if you would consider this a dream or a memory, because it actually happened, but when I fall asleep I see the room in which I mourned the death of my son. For those of you who were there, you will remember how we sat without speaking, eating only as much as we had to. You will remember when a bird crashed through the window and fell to the floor. You will remember, those of you who were there, how it jerked its wings before dying, and left a spot of blood on the floor after it was removed. But who among you was first to notice the negative bird it left in the window? Who first saw the shadow that the bird left behind, the shadow that drew blood from any finger that dared to trace it, the shadow that was better proof of the bird's existence than the bird ever was? Who was with me when I mourned the death of my son, when I excused myself to bury that bird with my own hands? 4:517—
The dream of falling in love, marriage, death, love.
This dream seems as if it lasts for hours, although it always takes place in the five minutes between my returning from the field and being woken for dinner. I dream of when I met my wife, fifty years ago, and it's exactly as it happened. I dream of our marriage, and I can even see my father's tears of pride. It's all there, just as it was. But then I dream of my own death, which I have heard is impossible to do, but you must believe me. I dream of my wife telling me on my deathbed that she loves me, and even though she thinks I can't hear her, I can, and she says she wouldn't have changed anything. It feels like a moment I've lived a thousand times before, as if everything is familiar, right up to the moment of my death, that it will happen again an infinite number of times, that we will meet, marry, have our children, succeed in the ways we have, fail in the ways we have, all exactly the same, always unable to change a thing. I am again at the bottom of an unstoppable wheel, and when I feel my eyes close for death, as they have and will a thousand times, I awake. 4:518 —
The dream of perpetual motion.
4:519—
The dream of low windows.
4:520
—The dream of safety and peace.
I dreamt that I was born from a stranger's body. She gave birth to me in a secret dwelling, far away from everything that I would grow to know. Immediately after I was born, she handed me to my mother, for the sake of appearances, and my mother said, Thank you. You have given me a son, the gift of life. And for this reason, because I was of a stranger's body, I did not fear the body of my mother, and I could embrace it without shame, with only love. Because I was not from my mother's body, my desire to go home never led back to her, and I was free to say Mother, and mean only Mother. 4:521—
The dream of disembodied birds (47).
It's dusk in this dream that I have every night, and I'm making love to my wife, my real wife, I mean, to whom I've been married for thirty years, and you all know how I love her, I love her so much. I massage her thighs in my hands, and I move my hands up her waist and belly, and touch her breasts. My wife is such a beautiful woman, you all know that, and in the dream she's the same, just as beautiful. I look down at my hands on her breasts—callused, worn things, a man's hands, veiny, shaky, fluttering—and I remember, I don't know why, but it's this way every night, I remember two white birds that my mother brought back for me from Warsaw when I was only a child. We let them fly around the house and perch wherever they wanted to. I remember seeing my mother's back as she cooked eggs for me, and I remember the birds perching on her shoulders, with their beaks up next to her ears, as if they were about to tell her a secret. She reached her right hand up into the cupboard, searching without looking for some spice on a high shelf, grasping at something elusive, fluttering, not letting my food burn. 4:522—
The dream of meeting your younger self.
4:523
—The dream of animals, two by two.
4:524—
The dream of I won't be ashamed.
4:525
—The dream that we are our fathers.
I walked to the Brod, without knowing why, and looked into my reflection in the water. I couldn't look away. What was the image that pulled me in after it? What was it that I loved? And then I recognized it. So simple. In the water I saw my father's face, and that face saw the face of its father, and so on, and so on, reflecting backward to the beginning of time, to the face of God, in whose image we were created. We burned with love for ourselves, all of us, starters of the fire we suffered—our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure...

The chanting was interrupted by a pounding at the door. Two men in black hats limped in before any of the congregants had time to get up.

WE ARE HERE ON BEHALF OF THE UPRIGHT CONGREGATION!
hollered the taller of the two.

THE UPRIGHT CONGREGATION!
echoed the short and squat one.

Shush!
Shanda said.

IS YANKEL PRESENT?
hollered the taller of the two, as if in response to her request.

YEAH, IS YANKEL PRESENT?
echoed the short, squat one.

Here. I am here,
Yankel said, rising from his pillow. He assumed the Well-Regarded Rabbi was requesting his financial services, as had happened so many times in the past, piety being as expensive as it was those days.
What can I do for you?

YOU WILL BE THE FATHER OF THE BABY FROM THE RIVER!
hollered the taller.

YOU WILL BE THE FATHER!
echoed the short, squat one.

Excellent!
Didl said, closing Volume IV of
The Book of Recurrent Dreams,
which released a cloud of dust as the covers clapped.
This is most excellent! Yankel will be the father!

Mazel tov!
the congregants began to sing.
Mazel tov!

Suddenly Yankel was overcome with a fear of dying, stronger than he felt when his parents passed of natural causes, stronger than when his only brother was killed in the flour mill or when his children died, stronger even than when he was a child and it first occurred to him that he must try to understand what it could mean not to be alive—to be not in darkness, not in unfeeling—to be not being, not to be.

Slouchers congratulated him, failing to notice as they patted him on the back that he was crying.
Thank you,
he said, and said again, without once wondering just whom he was thanking.
Thank you so much.
He had been given a baby, and I a great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather.

T
HE DISGRACED USURER
Yankel D took the baby girl home that evening.
Here we go,
he said,
up the front step. Here we are. This is your door. And here, this is your doorknob I am opening. And here, this is where we put the shoes when we come in. And here is where we hang the jackets.
He spoke to her as if she could understand him, never in a high pitch or in monosyllables, and never in nonsense words.
This is milk that I am feeding you. It comes from Mordechai the milkman, whom you will meet one day. He gets the milk from a cow, which is a very strange and troubling thing if you think about it, so don't think about it ... This is my hand that is petting your face. Some people are left-handed and some are right-handed. We don't know which you are yet, because you just sit there and let me do the handling ... This is a kiss. It is what happens when lips are puckered and pressed against something, sometimes other lips, sometimes a cheek, sometimes something else. It depends ... This is my heart. You are touching it with your left hand, not because you are left-handed, although you might be, but because I am holding it against my heart. What you are feeling is the beating of my heart. It is what keeps me alive.