The women of the shtetl were happy to see Brod suffer. Even after sixteen years, they still thought of her as a product of that terrible hole, because of which they could never see her all at once, because of which they could never know and mother her, because of which they hated her. Rumors spread that the Kolker beat her because she was cold in bed (only two children to show after three years of marriage!) and couldn't manage a household with any competency.
I would expect black eyes if I pranced around like her!
Have you seen the mess their yard has become? What a pigsty!
It proves, again, that there is some justice in this world!
The Kolker hated himself, or his other self, for it. He would pace the bedroom at night, arguing savagely with his other self at the top of the two lungs they shared, often beating the chest that housed those lungs, or boxing their face. After badly injuring Brod in several night incidents, he decided (against her will) that the doctor with the broken nose was right: they must sleep apart.
I won't.
There's nothing to be said.
Then leave me. I'd rather that than this. Or kill me. That would be even better than your leaving.
You're being ridiculous, Brod. I'm only going to sleep in a different room.
But love is a room, she said. That's what it is.
This is what we have to do.
This is not what we have to do.
It is.
It worked for a few months. They were able to assume a regular daily life with only the occasional outburst of brutality, and would part in the evening to undress and go to bed alone. They would explain their dreams to each other over bread and coffee the next morning and describe the positions of their restlessness. It was an opportunity that their hurried marriage had never allowed for: coyness, slowness, discovering one another from a distance. They had their seventh, eighth, and ninth conversations. The Kolker tried to articulate what he wanted to say, and it always came out wrong. Brod was in love and had a reason to live.
His condition worsened. In time, Brod could expect a sound beating every morning before the Kolker went to work—where he was able, to the bafflement of all doctors, to refrain entirely from outbursts—and every late afternoon before dinner. He beat her in the kitchen in front of the pots and pans, in the living room in front of their two children, and in the pantry in front of the mirror in which they both watched. She never ran from his fists, but took them, went to them, certain that her bruises were not marks of violence, but violent love. The Kolker was trapped in his body—like a love note in an unbreakable bottle, whose script never fades or smudges, and is never read by the eyes of the intended lover—forced to hurt the one with whom he wanted most to be gentle.
Even toward the end, the Kolker had periods of clarity, lasting as long as several days at a time.
I have something for you, he said, leading Brod by the hand through the kitchen and out into the garden.
What is it? she asked, making no effort to keep a safe distance. (There was no such thing as a safe distance, then. Everything was either too close or too far.)
For your birthday. I got you a gift.
It's my birthday?
It's your birthday.
I must be seventeen.
Eighteen.
What's the surprise?
That would ruin the surprise.
I hate surprises, she said.
But I like them.
Whom is this gift for? You or me?
The gift is for you, he said. The surprise is for me.
What if I surprised you and told you to keep the gift? Then the surprise would be for me, and the gift for you.
But you hate surprises.
I know. So give me the gift already.
He handed her a small package. It was wrapped in blue vellum, with a light blue ribbon tied around it.
What is this? she asked.
We've gone over this, he said. It's your surprise gift. Open it.
No, she said, gesturing to the wrapping, this.
What do you mean? That's just wrapping.
She put down the package and began to cry. He had never seen her cry.
What is it, Brod? What? It was supposed to make you happy.
She shook her head. Crying was new to her.
What, Brod. What happened?
She hadn't cried since that Trachimday five years before, when on the way home from the float she was stopped by the mad squire Sofiowka N, who made a woman of her.
I don't love you, she said.
What?
I don't love you, pushing him away. I'm sorry.
Brod, putting his hand on her shoulder.
Get off me! she hollered, pulling herself away from him. Don't touch me! I don't want you touching me ever again! She turned her head to the side and vomited onto the grass.
She ran. He chased her. She ran around the house many times, past the front door, the winding walk, the gate at the back, the pigsty of a yard, the side garden, and back to the front door again. The Kolker kept close behind, and although he was much faster, he decided never to catch up, never to turn around and wait for her lap to bring her to him. So they went around and around: front door, winding walk, pigsty of a yard, side garden, front door, winding walk, pigsty of a yard, side garden. Finally, as the afternoon put on its early-evening dress, Brod collapsed from fatigue in the garden.
I'm tired, she said.
The Kolker sat beside her. Did you ever love me?
She turned her head from him. No. Never.
I've always loved you, he told her.
I'm sorry for you.
You're a terrible person.
I know, she said.
I just wanted you to know that I know that.
Well, know that I do.
He ran the back of his hand up her cheek, with the pretense of wiping away sweat. Do you think you could ever love me?
I don't think so.
Because I'm not good enough.
It's not like that.
Because I'm not smart.
No.
Because you couldn't love me.
Because I couldn't love you.
He walked inside.
Brod, my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, was left alone in the garden. The wind revealed the undersides of the leaves and made waves of the grass. It rushed across her face, drying the sweat, urging more tears. She opened the package, which she realized she had never put down. Blue ribbon, blue vellum, box. A bottle of perfume. He must have bought it in Lutsk last week. What a sweet gesture. She sprayed a bit on her wrist. It was subtle. Not too pristine. What? she said once to herself, and then once aloud, What? She felt a total displacement, like a spinning globe brought to a sudden halt by the light touch of a finger. How did she end up here, like this? How could there have been so much—so many moments, so many people and things, so many razors and pillows, timepieces and subtle coffins—without her being aware? How did her life live itself without her?
She put the atomizer back in the box, along with the blue vellum and light blue ribbon, and went inside. The Kolker had made a mess of the kitchen. Spices were scattered on the floor. Bent silverware on scratched countertops. Unhinged cabinets, dirt, and broken glass. There were so many things to attend to—so much gathering and throwing away; and after gathering and throwing away, saving what was salvageable; and after saving what was salvageable, cleaning; and after cleaning, washing down with soapy water; and after washing down with soapy water, dusting; and after dusting, something else; and after something else, something else. So many little things to do. Hundreds of millions of them. Everything in the universe felt like something to do. She cleared a spot on the floor, laid herself down, and tried to make a mental list.
It was almost dark when the sound of crickets awoke her. She lit the Shabbos candles, observed the shadows against her hands, covered her eyes and said the blessing, and went up to the Kolker's bed. His face was badly bruised and swollen.
Brod, he said, but she silenced him. She brought up a small block of ice from the cellar and held it against his eye until his face couldn't feel anything, and her hand couldn't feel anything.
I love you, she said. I do.
No you don't, he said.
But I do, she said, touching his hair.
No. It's OK. I know you're much smarter than me, Brod, and that I'm not good enough for you. I was always waiting for you to figure it out. Every day. I felt like the czar's food taster, waiting for the night when the dinner would be poisoned.
Stop, she said. It's not true. I do love you.
You stop.
But I love you.
It's OK I'm OK She touched the puffy blackness around his left eye. The down, which the saw blade had released from the pillow, clung to the tears on their cheeks. Listen, he said, I'll be dead soon.
Stop.
We both know it.
Stop.
There's no use in avoiding it.
Stop.
And I wonder if you could just pretend for a while, if we could pretend to love each other. Until I'm gone.
Silence.
She felt it again, the same as that night when she met him, when he was illuminated at her window, when she let her arms brush down her skin to her sides and turned to face him.
We can do that, she said.
She cut a small hole in the wall to allow him to speak to her from the adjoining bedroom to which he had exiled himself, and a one-way flap was built into the door through which food could be passed. That's how it was for the last year of their marriage. She pushed her bed against the wall so she could hear him mutter his passionate profanity and feel the wiggle of his extended index finger, which could neither hurt nor caress in such a position. When she was brave enough, she would stick one of her own fingers through the hole (like tempting a lion in his cage) and summon her love to the pine divide.
What are you doing? he whispered.
I'm talking to you.
He put his eye to the hole. You look very beautiful.
Thank you, she said. Can I look at you?
He moved away from the hole so she would be able to see at least some of him.
Will you take off your shirt? she asked.
I feel shy. He laughed and took off his shirt. Can you take off yours, so I don't feel so strange standing here?
That would make you feel less strange? She laughed. But she did it, and made sure that she was far enough from the hole so that he could go to it and look at her.
Will you also take off your socks? she asked. And your pants?
Will you take off yours?
I also feel shy, she said, which, in spite of the fact that they had seen each other's naked body hundreds, and probably thousands, of times, was true. They had never seen one another from afar. They had never known the deepest intimacy, that closeness attainable only with distance. She went to the hole and looked at him for several silent minutes. Then she backed away from the hole. He went to it and looked at her for several more silent minutes. In the silence they attained another intimacy, that of words without talking.
Now will you take off your underwear? she asked.
Will you take off yours?
If you'll take off yours.
You will?
Yes.
Do you promise?
They removed their underwear and took turns gazing through the hole, experiencing the sudden and profound joy of discovering each other's body, and the pain of not being able to discover each other at the same time.
Touch yourself as if your hands were mine, she said.
Brod—
Please.
He did it, even though he was embarrassed, even though he was a body's length from the hole. And even though he couldn't see anything more than her eye—a blue marble in the black expanse—she did as he did, used her hands to remember his hands. She leaned back, and with her right forefinger she fingered the hole in the pine divide, and with her left she pressed circles over her greatest secret, which was also a hole, also a negative space, and when is enough proof enough?
Will you come to me? she asked.
I will.
Yes?
I will.
They made love through the hole. The three lovers pressed against one another, but never fully touched. The Kolker kissed the wall, and Brod kissed the wall, but the selfish wall never kissed either back. The Kolker pressed his palms against the wall, and Brod, who turned her back to the wall to accommodate love, pressed the backs of her thighs against the wall, but the wall remained indifferent, never acknowledging what they were trying so hard to do.
They lived with the hole. The absence that defined it became a presence that defined them. Life was a small negative space cut out of the eternal solidity, and for the first time, it felt precious—not like all of the words that had come to mean nothing, but like the last breath of a drowning victim.
Without being able to examine the Kolker's body, the doctor offered a diagnosis of consumption—little more than a guess for the sake of some dotted line. Brod watched through the hole in the black wall as her still-young husband withered away. The strong, treelike man who had been illuminated by a wink of lightning that night of Yankel's death, who had explained to her the nature of her first period, who had awoken early and returned late only to provide for her, who wouldn't lay a finger on her but would too often impart the might of his fist, now looked eighty. His hair had grayed around the ears and fallen out on top. Pulsing veins had risen to the surface of his prematurely wrinkled hands. His stomach had dropped. His breasts were larger than her own, which is to say little of their size, but volumes of how much it hurt Brod to see them.
She persuaded him to change his name for the second time. Perhaps this would confuse the Angel of Death when He came to take the Kolker away. (The inevitable is, after all, inevitable.) Perhaps He could be tricked into thinking the Kolker was someone he was not, just as the Kolker himself was tricked. So Brod named him Safran, after a lipstick passage she remembered with longing from her father's ceiling. (And it was this Safran for whom my grandfather, the kneeling groom, was named.) But it didn't work. Shalom-then-Kolker-now-Safran's condition worsened, the years continued to pass in days, and his grief left him too weak even to rub his wrist with enough strength over the blade in his head to end his own life.
Not long after their exile to the rooftops, the Wisps of Ardisht realized that they would soon run out of matches to light their beloved cigarettes. They kept a chalk-line count on the side of the tallest chimney. Five hundred. The next day three hundred. The next day one hundred. They rationed them, burned them down to the striker's fingers, trying to light at least thirty cigarettes with each. When they were down to twenty matches, lighting became a ceremony. By ten, the women were crying. Nine. Eight. The clan leader dropped the seventh off the roof by accident, and proceeded to throw his own body after it in shame. Six. Five. It was inevitable. The fourth match was blown out by a breeze—a gross oversight by the new clan leader, who also plunged to his death, although his nosedive was not of his own choosing. Three: We will die without them. Two: It's too painful to go on. And then, in the moment of deepest desperation, a grand idea emerged, devised by a child, no less: simply make sure that there is always someone smoking. Each cigarette can be lit from the previous one. As long as there is a lit cigarette, there is the promise of another. The glowing ash end is the seed of continuity! Schedules were drawn up: dawn duty, morning smoke, lunchtime puffer, midafternoon and late-afternoon assignments, crepuscular puller, lonely midnight sentinel. The sky was always lit with at least one cigarette, the candle of hope.
So it was with Brod, who knew that the Kolker's days were numbered, and so began her grieving long before he died. She wore rent black clothes and sat close to the ground on a wooden stool. She even recited the Mourner's Kaddish loud enough for Safran to hear. There are only weeks left, she thought. Days. Although she never cried tears, she wailed and wail
ed in dry heaves. (Which could not have been good for my great-great-great-great-grandfather—conceived through the hole—who was eight months heavy in her stomach.) And then, in one of his moments of mental clarity, Shalom-then-Kolker-now-Safran called to her through the wall: I'm still here, you know. You promised you'd pretend to love me until I died, and instead you're pretending I'm dead.
It's true, Brod thought. I'm breaking my promise.
So they strung their minutes like pearls on an hour-string. Neither slept. They stood vigil with their cheeks against the pine divide, passing notes through the hole like schoolchildren, passing vulgarities, blown kisses, blasphemous hollers and songs.
Weep not, my love,
Weep not, my love,
Your heart is close to me.
You fucking bitch,
Ungrateful cunt,
Your heart is close to me.
Oh, do not fear,
I'm nearer than near,
Your heart is close to me.
I'll gouge out your eyes
And pound in your fucking head,
You fucking bitch whore,
Your heart is close to me.
Their final conversations (ninety-eight, ninety-nine, and one hundred) consisted of exchanged vows, which took the form of sonnets Brod would read from one of Yankel's favorite books—a loose scrap descended to the floor: I had to do it for myself—and of Shalom-then-Kolker-now-Safran's most loathsome obscenities, which didn't mean what they said, but spoke in harmonics that could be heard only by his wife: I'm sorry that this has been your life. Thank you for pretending with me.
You are dying, Brod said, because it was the truth, the all-consuming and unacknowledged truth, and she was tired of saying things that weren't the truth.
I am, he said.
What does it feel like?
I don't know, through the hole. I'm scared.
You don't have to be scared, she said. It's going to be OK.
How is it going to be OK?
It's not going to hurt.
I don't think that's what I'm afraid of.
What are you afraid of?
I'm afraid of not being alive.
You don't have to be afraid, she said again.