Everything Is Illuminated (27 page)

“He put it in my mother’s mouth, and he said spit or.” “He put it in her mother’s mouth.” “No,” the hero said without volume. “I will kill her here and now if you do not spit, the General said, but he would not spit.”

“And?” Grandfather asked. “And he killed her.” I will tell you that what made this story most scary was how rapid it was moving. I do not mean what happened in the story, but how the story was told. I felt that it could not be stopped. “It is not true,” Grandfather said, but only to himself. “Then the General put the gun in the mouth of my younger sister, who was four years old. She was crying very much. I remember that.

Spit, he said, spit or.” “Did he?” Grandfather asked. “No,” she said. “He did not spit,” I told the hero. “Why didn’t he spit?” “And the General shot my sister. I could not look at her, but I remember the sound of when she hit the ground. I hear that sound when things hit the ground still. Anything.” If I could, I would make it so nothing ever hit the ground again. “I don’t want to hear any more,” the hero said, so it was at this point that I ceased translating. (Jonathan, if you still do not want to know the rest, do not read this. But if you do persevere, do not do so for curiosity. That is not a good enough reason.) “They tore the dress of my older sister. She was pregnant and had a big belly. Her husband stood at the end of the line. They had made a house here.” “Where?” I asked.

“Where we are standing. We are in the bedroom.” “How can you perceive this?” “She was very cold, I remember, even though it was the summer. They pulled down her panties, and one of the men put the end of the gun in her place, and the others laughed so hard, I remember the laughing always. Spit, the General said to my father, spit or no more baby.” “Did he?” Grandfather asked. “No,” she said. “He turned his head, and they shot my sister in her place.” “Why would he not spit?” I asked. “But my sister did not die. So they held the gun in her mouth while she was on the ground crying and screaming, and with her hands on her place, which was making so much blood. Spit, the General said, or we will not shoot her. Please, my father said, not like this. Spit, he said, or we will let her lie here in this pain and die across time.” “Did he?” “No. He did not spit.” “And?” “And they did not shoot her.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why did he not spit? He was so religious?” “No,” she said, “he did not believe in God.” “He was a fool,” Grandfather said.

“You are wrong,” she said. “You are wrong,” Grandfather said. “You are wrong,” she said. “And then?” I asked, and I must confess that I felt shameful about inquiring. “He put the gun against my father’s head.

Spit, the General said, and we will kill you.” “And?” Grandfather asked.

“And he spit.” The hero was several meters distant, placing dirt in a plas-tic bag, which is called a Ziploc. After, he told me that this was for his grandmother, should he ever inform her of his voyage. “What about you?” Grandfather asked. “Where were you?” “I was there.” “Where?

How did you escape?” “My sister, I told you, was not dead. They left her there on the ground after they shot her in her place. She started to crawl away. She could not use her legs, but she pulled herself with her hands and arms. She left a line of blood behind her, and was afraid that they would find her with this.” “Did they kill her?” Grandfather asked. “No.

They stood and laughed while she crawled away. I remember exactly what the laughing sounded like. It was like” — she laughed into the darkness — “HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. All of the Gentiles were watching from their windows, and she called to each, Help me, please help me, I am dying.” “Did they?” Grandfather asked. “No.

They all turned away their faces and hid. I cannot blame them.” “Why not?” I asked. “Because,” Grandfather said, answering for Augustine, “if they had helped, they would have been killed, and so would their families.” “I would still blame them,” I said. “Can you forgive them?”

Grandfather asked Augustine. She closed her eyes to say, No, I cannot forgive them. “I would desire someone to help me,” I said. “But,”

Grandfather said, “you would not help somebody if it signified that you would be murdered and your family would be murdered.” (I thought about this for many moments, and I understood that he was correct. I only had to think about Little Igor to be certain that I would also have turned away and hid my face.) It was so obscure now, because it was late, and because there were no artificial lights for many kilometers, that we could not see one another, but only hear the voices. “You would forgive them?” I asked. “Yes,” Grandfather said. “Yes. I would try to.” “You can only say that because you cannot imagine what it is like,” Augustine said.

“I can.” “It is not a thing that you can imagine. It only is. After that, there can be no imagining.”

“It is so dark,” I said, which sounded queer, but sometimes it is better to say something queer than not to say anything. “Yes,” Augustine said. “It is so dark,” I told the hero, who had returned with his bags of dirt. “It is,” he said, “very dark. I’m not used to being so far from artificial lights.” “This is true,” I said. “What happened to her?” Grandfather asked. “She escaped, yes?” “Yes.” “Someone saved her?” “No. She knocked on one hundred doors, and not one of them opened. She pulled herself into the forest where she became asleep from spilling blood. She woke up that night, and the blood had dried, and even though she felt like she was dead, it was only the baby that was dead. The baby accepted the bullet and saved its mother. A miracle.” It was now happening too rapidly for me to understand. I wanted to understand it completely, but it would have required a year for each word. “She was able to walk very slowly. So she went back to Trachimbrod, following the line of her blood.” “Why did she go back?” “Because she was young and very stupid.” (Is this why we went back, Jonathan?) “She was afraid of becoming killed, yes?” “She was not afraid of this at all.” “And what occurred?”

“It was very dark, and all of the neighbors were sleeping. The Germans were already at Kolki, so she was not afraid of them. Although she would not have been afraid even if. She went through the Jewish houses with silence, and gathered everything, all of the books, and clothing, and everything.” “Why?” “So that they would not take it.” “The Nazis?” “No,”

she said, “the neighbors.” “No,” Grandfather said. “Yes,” Augustine said.

“No.” “Yes.” “No.” “She went to the bodies, which were in a hole in front of the synagogue, and removed the gold fillings, and cut the hairs as much as she could, even her own mother’s, even her husband’s, even her own.” “Why? How?” “Then?” “She hid these things in the forest so that she could find them when she returned, and then she went forth.”

“Where?” “Places.” “Where?” “Russia. Other places.” “Then?” “Then she returned.” “Why?” “To gather the things she had hidden, and to discover what remained. Everyone who went back was certain that she would discover her house and her friends and even the relatives that she saw killed. It is said that the Messiah will come at the end of the world.”

“But it was not the end of the world,” Grandfather said. “It was. He just did not come.” “Why did he not come?” “This was the lesson we learned from everything that happened — there is no God. It took all of the hidden faces for Him to prove this to us.” “What if it was a challenge of your faith?” I said. “I could not believe in a God that would challenge faith like this.” “What if it was not in His power?” “I could not believe in a God that could not stop what happened.” “What if it was man and not God that did all of this?” “I do not believe in man, either.”

“What did she discover when she returned the second time?”

Grandfather asked. “This,” she said, and moved her finger over the mural of darkness. “Nothing. It has not altered at all since she returned.

They took everything that the Germans left, and then they went to other shtetls.” “Did she go forth when she saw this?” I asked. “No, she remained. She discovered the house most proximal to Trachimbrod, all of the ones that weren’t destroyed were empty, and she promised herself to live there until she died. She secured all of the things that she had hidden, and she brought them to her house. It was her punishment.” “For what?” “For surviving,” she said.

Before we departed, Augustine guided us to the monument for Trachimbrod. It was a piece of stone, approximately of the size of the hero, placed in the middle of the field, so much in the middle that it was very impossible to find at night. The stone said in Russian, Ukrainian, Hebrew, Polish, Yiddish, English, and German:

this monument stands in memory of the 1,204 trachimbroders killed at the hands of german fascism on march 18, 1942.

Dedicated March 18, 1992.

Yitzhak Shamir, Prime Minister of the State of Israel I stood with the hero in front of this monument for many minutes while Augustine and Grandfather walked off into the darkness. We did not speak. It would have been a common indecency to speak. I looked at him once while he was writing the monument’s information in his diary, and I could perceive that he looked at me once while I was viewing it. He roosted in the grass, and I roosted next to him. We roosted for several moments, and then we both laid on our backs, and the grass was like a bed. Because it was so dark, we could see many of the stars. It was as if we were under a large umbrella, or under a dress. (I am not only writing this for you, Jonathan. This is truly what it was like for me.) We talked for many minutes, about many things, but in truth I was not listening to him, and he was not listening to me, and I was not listening to myself, and he was not listening to himself. We were on the grass, under the stars, and that is what we were doing.

Finally, Grandfather and Augustine returned.

It captured us only 50 percent of the time to travel back that it captured us to travel there. I do not know why this was, but I have a notion.

Augustine did not invite us into her house when we returned. “It is so late,” she said. “You must be fatigued,” Grandfather said. She smiled halfly. “I am not so good at making sleep.” “Ask her about Augustine,”

the hero said. “And Augustine, the woman in the photograph, do you know anything of her or how we could find her?” “No,” she said, and she looked only at me when she said this. “I know that his grandfather escaped, because I saw him once, maybe a year later, maybe two.” She gave me a moment to translate. “He returned to Trachimbrod to see if the Messiah had come. We ate a meal in my house. I cooked him the little things that I had, and I gave him a bath. We were trying to make ourselves clean. He had experienced very much, I could see, but we knew not to ask each other anything.” “Ask her what they talked about.” “He wants to know what you talked about.” “Nothing, in truth. Feather-weight things. We talked about Shakespeare, I remember, a play we had both read. They had them in Yiddish, you know, and he once gave me one of them to read. I am sure I still have it here. I could find it and give it to you.” “And what happened then?” I asked. “We had a fight about Ophelia. A very bad fight. He made me cry, and I made him cry. We did not talk about anything. We were too afraid.” “Had he met my grandmother yet?” “Had he met his second wife yet?” “I do not know. He did not mention it once, and I would think that he would have mentioned it.

But maybe not. It was such a difficult time with talking. You were always afraid of saying the wrong thing, and usually it felt befitting not to say anything at all.” “Ask her for how long he stayed in Trachimbrod.” “He wants to know how long his grandfather stayed in Trachimbrod.” “Only for the afternoon. Lunch and a bath and a fight,” she said, “and I think that was longer than he desired. He only needed to see if the Messiah had come.” “What did he look like?” “He wants to know what his grandfather looked like.” She smiled and put her hands in the pockets of her dress. “He had a rough face and thick brown hairs. Tell him.” “He had a rough face and thick brown hairs.” “He was not very tall. Maybe as tall like you. Tell him.” “He was not very tall. Maybe as tall like you.” “So much had been taken from him. I saw him once and he was a boy, and in two years he had become an old man.” I told this to the hero and then asked, “Does he appear like his grandfather?” “Before everything, yes.

But Safran changed so much. Tell him that he should never change like that.” “She says he looked like you once, but then he changed. She says that you should never change.” “Ask her if there are any other survivors in the area.” “He wants to know if there are any Jews in the remnants.”

“No,” Augustine said. “There is a Jew in Kivertsy who brings me food sometimes. He says that he knew my brother from business in Lutsk, but I did not have a brother. There is another Jew from Sokeretchy who builds fires for me in the winter. It is so difficult in the winter for me, because I am an old woman, and I cannot cut wood anymore.” I told this to the hero. “Ask her if she thinks they might know about Augustine.”

“Would they know anything about Augustine?” “No,” she said. “They are so old. They do not remember anything. I know that a few Jews survived from Trachimbrod, but I do not know where they are. People moved so much. I knew a man from Kolki who escaped and never said another word. It was like his lips were sewn shut with a needle and string.

Just like that.” I told this to the hero. “Will you come back with us?”

Grandfather asked. “We will take care of you, and make fires in the winter.” “No,” Augustine said. “Come with us,” he said. “You cannot live like this.” “I know,” she said, “but.” “But you.” “No.” “Then.” “No.”

“Could.” “Cannot.” Silence. “Remain a moment,” she said. “I would like to present him something.” It then materialized to me that just as we did not know her name, also she did not know the name of Grandfather, or the hero. Only my name. “She is going inside to retrieve a thing for you,” I told the hero. “She does not know what is good for her,” Grandfather said. “She did not survive in order to be like this. If she has sub-mitted, she should kill herself.” “Perhaps she is happy on occasions,” I said. “We do not know. I think that she was happy today.” “She does not desire happiness,” Grandfather said. “The only way she can live is if she is melancholy. She wants us to feel remorseful for her. She wants us to grieve her, not the others.”