After the bombing was over, the Nazis moved through the shtetl. They lined up everyone who didn't drown in the river. They unrolled a Torah in front of them. "Spit," they said. "Spit, or else." Then they put all of the Jews in the synagogue. (It was the same in every shtetl. It happened hundreds of times. It happened in Kovel only a few hours before, and would happen in Kolki in only a few hours.) A young soldier tossed the nine volumes of The Book of Recurrent Dreams onto the bonfire of Jews, not noticing, in his haste to grab and destroy more, that one of the pages fell out of one of the books and descended, coming to rest like a veil on a child's burnt face:
9:613—The dream of the end of the world. bombs poured down from the sky exploding across trachimbrod in bursts of light and heat those watching the festivities hollered ran frantically they jumped into the bubbling splashing frantically dynamic water not after the sack of gold but to save themselves they stayed under as long as they could they surfaced to seize air and look for loved ones my safran picked up his wife and carried her like a newlywed into the water which seemed amid the falling trees and hackling crackling explosions the safest place hundreds of bodies poured into the brod that river with my name I embraced them with open arms come to me come I wanted to save them all to save everybody from everybody the bombs rained from the sky and it was not the explosions or scattering shrapnel that would be our death not the heckling cinders not the laughing debris but all of the bodies bodies flailing and grabbing hold of one another bodies looking for something to hold on to my safran lost sight of his wife who was carried deeper into me by the pull of the bodies the silent shrieks were carried in bubbles to the surface where they popped PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE the kicking in zosha's belly became more and more PLEASE PLEASE the baby refused to die like this PLEASE the bombs came down cackling smoldering and my safran was able to break free from the human mass and float downstream over the small falls to clearer waters zosha was pulled down PLEASE and the baby refusing to die like this was pulled up and out of her body turning the waters around her red she surfaced like a bubble to the light to oxygen to life to life WAWAWAWAWAWA she cried she was perfectly healthy and she would have lived except for the umbilical cord that pulled her back under toward her mother who was barely conscious but conscious of the cord and tried to break it with her hands and then bite it with her teeth but could not it would not be broken and she died with her perfectly healthy nameless baby in her arms she held it to her chest the crowd pulled itself into itself long after the bombing ceased the confused the frightened the desperate mass of babies children teenagers adults elderly all pulled at each other to survive but pulled each other into me drowning each other killing each other the bodies began to rise one at a time until I couldn't be seen through all of the bodies blue skin open white eyes I was invisible under them I was the carcass they were the butterflies white eyes blue skin this is what we've done we've killed our own babies to save them
22 January 1998
Dear Jonathan,
If you are reading this, it is because Sasha found it and translated it for you. It means that I am dead, and that Sasha is alive.
I do not know if Sasha will tell you what has happened here tonight, and what is about to happen. It is important that you know what kind of man he is, so I will tell you here.
This is what happened. He told his father that he could care for Mother and Little Igor. It took his saying it to make it true. Finally, he was ready. His father could not believe this thing. What? he asked. What? And Sasha told him again that he would take care of the family, that he would understand if his father had to leave and never return, and that it would not even make him less of a father. He told his father that he would forgive. Oh, his father became so angry, so full of wrath, and he told Sasha that he would kill him, and Sasha told his father that he would kill him, and they moved at each other with violence and his father said, Say it to my face, not to the floor, and Sasha said, You are not my father.
His father raised himself and removed a bag from the cabinet under the sink. He filled the bag with things from the kitchen, with bread, bottles of vodka, cheese. Here, Sasha said, and he took from the cookie jar two handfuls of money. His father asked where the money was from and Sasha told him to take it and never return. His father said, I do not need your money. Sasha said, It is not a gift. It is payment for everything that you will leave behind. Take it and never return.
Say it into my eyes and I promise you I will.
Take it, Sasha said, and never return.
Mother and Iggy were so upset. Iggy told Sasha how stupid he was, how he ruined everything. He cried all night, and do you know what it is like to hear Iggy cry all night? But he is so young. I hope that he will one day be able to understand what Sasha did, and forgive him, and also thank him.
I spoke with Sasha tonight, after his father left, and I told him that I was proud of him. I told him that I had never been so proud, or so certain of who he was.
But Father is your son, he said. And he is my father.
I said, You are a good man, and you have done the good thing.
I put my hand on his cheek and remembered when my cheek was like his cheek. I said his name, Alex, which has also been my name for forty years.
I will toil at Heritage Touring, he said. I will fill Father's absence.
No, I told him.
It is a good job, he said, and I can make enough money to care for Mother and Little Igor and you.
No, I said. Make your own life. That is how you can best care for us.
I put him to bed, which I have not done for him since he was a child. I covered him in blankets, and combed his hair with my hand.
Try to live so that you can always tell the truth, I said.
I will, he said, and I believed in him, and that was enough.
Then I went to Iggy's room and he was already sleeping, but I kissed him on his forehead, and I said a blessing for him. I prayed in silence that he should be strong, and know goodness, and never know evil, and never know war.
And then I came here, to the television room, to write you this letter.
All is for Sasha and Iggy, Jonathan. Do you understand? I would give everything for them to live without violence. Peace. That is all that I would ever want for them. Not money and not even love. It is still possible. I know that now, and it is the cause of so much happiness in me. They must begin again. They must cut all of the strings, yes? With you (Sasha told me that you will not write to each other anymore), with their father (who is now gone forever), with everything they have known. Sasha has started it, and now I must finish it.
Everyone in the house is in bed but me. I am writing this in the luminescence of the television, and I am so sorry if this is now difficult to read, Sasha, but my hand is shaking so much, and it is not out of weakness that I will go to the bath when I am sure that you are asleep, and it is not because I cannot endure. Do you understand? I am complete with happiness, and it is what I must do, and I will do it. Do you understand me? I will walk without noise, and I will open the door in darkness, and I will
* Upon hearing that it was a Jew who invented the love poem, the unrequited magistrate Rufkin S, may his name be lost between cushions, rained all fire and broken glass upon our simple shtetl. (It was not the Jew, of course, who invented the love poem, but the other way around.)
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Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated
(Series: # )
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