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Your books are arranged by the color of their spines, she said. How stupid.
His mother was in Lutsk, he remembered, as she was every Tuesday at this time of the afternoon, and his father was washing himself outside. Safran went to his room to make sure everything was in order. His diary was still under his mattress. His books were properly stacked, according to color. (He pulled one off the shelf, to have something to hold.) The picture of his mother was at its normal skew on the nightstand next to his bed. There was no reason to think that she had touched a thing. He searched the kitchen, the study, even the bathrooms for any trace she might have left. Nothing. No stray hairs. No fingerprints on the mirror. No notes. Everything was in good order.
He went to his parents' bedroom. The pillows were perfect rectangles. The sheets were as smooth as water, tucked in tightly. The room looked as if it hadn't been touched in years, since a death, perhaps, as if it were being preserved as it once was, a time capsule. He didn't know how many times she had come. He couldn't ask her because he never talked to her anymore, and he couldn't ask his father because he would have to confess everything, and he couldn't ask his mother because, if she were to find out, it would kill her, and that would kill him, and no matter how unlivable his life had become, he was not yet ready to end it.
He ran to the house of Lista P, the only lover to inspire him to bathe. Let me in, he said with his head against the door. It's me, Safran. Let me in.
He could hear shuffling, someone laboring to get to the door.
Safran? It was Lista's mother.
Hello, he said. Is Lista in?
Lista is in her room, she said, thinking what a sweet boy he was. Go on up.
What's wrong? Lista asked, seeing him at the door. She looked so much older than she had only three years before, at the theatre, which made him wonder whether it was she or he who had changed. Come in. Come in. Here, she said, sit down. What's going on?
I'm all alone, he said.
You're not all alone, she said. You only feel alone.
To feel alone is to be alone. That's what it is.
Let me make you something to eat.
I don't want anything to eat.
Then have something to drink.
I don't want anything to drink.
She massaged his dead hand and remembered the last time she had touched it. It was not the death that had so attracted her to it, but the un-knowability. The unattainability. He could never completely love her, not with all of himself. He could never be completely owned, and he could never own completely. Her desire had been sparked by the frustration of her desire.
You're going to be married, Safran. I got the invitation this morning. Is that what's upsetting you?
Yes, he said.
Well, you've got nothing to worry about. Everybody gets nervous before being wed. I did. I know my husband did. But Zosha's such a nice girl.
I've never met her, he said.
Well, she's very nice. And beautiful too.
Do you think I will like her?
I do.
Will I love her?
It's possible. You should never make predictions with love, but it's definitely possible.
Do you love me? he asked. Did you ever? That night with all the coffee.
I don't know, she said.
Do you think it's possible that you did?
He touched the side of her face with his good hand, and moved it down to her neck, and then down under the collar of her shirt.
No, she said, taking his hand out.
No?
No.
But I want to. I really do. This isn't for you.
That's why we can't, she said. I never would have been able to do it if I had thought you wanted to.
He put his head in her lap and fell asleep. Before leaving that evening, he gave Lista the book that he still had with him from his house — Hamlet, with a purple spine — that he had taken from the shelf to have something to hold.
For keeps? she asked.
You'll give it back to me one day.
My grandfather and the Gypsy girl knew none of this as they made love for the last time, as he touched her face and fingered the soft underside of her chin, as he paid her the attention received by a sculptor's wife. Like this? He asked. She brushed her eyelashes against his chest. She moved her butterfly kiss across his torso and up his neck to where his left earlobe connected to his jaw. Like this? she asked. He pulled her blue blouse over her head, he undid her bead necklaces, he licked her smooth and sweaty armpits and ran his finger from her neck to her navel. He drew circles around her caramel areolas with his tongue. Like this? he asked. She nodded and craned her head back. He flicked her nipples with his tongue, and knew that it was all so completely wrong, everything from the moment of his birth to this, everything was coming out the wrong way — not the opposite, but worse: close. She used both hands to undo his belt. He lifted his backside off the ground so she could pull down his slacks and his underpants. She took his penis into her hand. She wanted so badly for him to feel good. She was convinced that he had never felt good. She wanted to be the cause of his first and only pleasure. Like this? He put his hand on top of hers and guided it. She removed her skirt and panties, took his dead hand, pressed it between her legs. Her thick black pubic hair was wound in lose curls, in waves. Like this? he asked, although she was guiding his hand, as if trying to channel a message on a Ouija board. They guided each other over each other's body. She put his dead fingers inside her and felt, for a moment, the numbness and paralysis. She felt the death in and through her. Now? he asked. Now? She rolled onto him and spread her legs around his knees. She reached behind her and used his dead hand to guide his penis into her. Is this good? he asked. Is this good?
Seven months later, June 18, 1941, as the first display of German bombing lit the Trachimbrod skies electric, as my grandfather had his first orgasm (his first and only pleasure, of which she was not the cause), she slit her wrist with a knife that had been made dull carving love letters. But then, there, his sleeping head against her beating chest, she revealed nothing. She didn't say, You are going to marry. And she didn't say, I am going to kill myself. Only: How do you arrange your books?
Excerpted from Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. Copyright 2002 by Jonathan Safran Foer. Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
To read an interview with the author, click here.
To buy Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated, click here.
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