Everything Is Illuminated Read Free

as always, over the incriminating abacus bead he was forced by shtetl proclamation to wear on a string around his neck.
Stay back from the water! You will get hurt!
    The good gefiltefishmonger Bitzl Bitzl R watched the commotion from his paddleboat, which was fastened with twine to one of his traps.
What's going on over there?
he shouted to shore.
Is that you, Yankel? Is there some sort of trouble?
    It's the Well-Regarded Rabbi's twins,
Yankel called back.
They're playing in the water and I'm afraid someone will get hurt!
    It's turning up the most unusual things!
Chana laughed, splashing at the mass that grew like a garden around her. She picked up the hands of a baby doll, and those of a grandfather clock. Umbrella ribs. A skeleton key. The articles rose on the crowns of bubbles that burst when they reached the surface. The slightly younger and less cautious twin raked her fingers through the water and each time came up with something new: a yellow pinwheel, a muddy hand mirror, the petals of some sunken forget-me-not, silt and cracked black pepper, a packet of seeds...
    But her slightly older and more cautious sister, Hannah—identical in every way save the hairs connecting her eyebrows—watched from shore and cried. The disgraced usurer Yankel D took her into his arms, pressed her head against his chest, murmured,
Here ... here...
, and called to Bitzl Bitzl:
Row to the Well-Regarded Rabbi's and bring him back with you. Also bring Menasha the physician and Isaac the man of law. Quickly!
    The mad squire Sofiowka N, whose name the shtetl would later take for maps and Mormon census records, emerged from behind a tree.
I have seen everything that happened,
he said hysterically.
I witnessed it all. The wagon was moving too fast for this dirt road—the only thing worse than to be late to your own wedding is to be late to the wedding of the girl who should have been your wife—and it suddenly flipped itself, and if that's not exactly the truth, then the wagon didn't flip itself, but was itself flipped by a wind from Kiev or Odessa or wherever, and if that doesn't seem quite correct, then what happened was—and I would swear on my lily-white name to this—an angel with gravestone-feathered wings descended from heaven to take Trachim back with him, for Trachim was too good for this world. Of course, who isn't? We are all too good for each other.
    Trachim?
Yankel asked, allowing Hannah to finger the incriminating bead.
Wasn't Trachim the shoemaker from Lutsk who died half a year ago of pneumonia?
    Look at this!
Chana called, giggling, holding above her head the jack of cunnilingus from a dirty deck of cards.
    No,
Sofiowka said.
That man's name was Trachum with a
u.
This is with an
i.
And that Trachum died in the Night of the Longest Night. No, wait. No, wait. He died from being an artist.
    And this!
Chana shrieked with joy, holding up a faded map of the universe.
    Get out of the water!
Yankel hollered at her, raising his voice louder than he would have wished at the Well-Regarded Rabbi's daughter, or any young girl.
You will get hurt!
    Chana ran to shore. The deep green water obscured the zodiac as the star chart sank to the river's bottom, coming to rest, like a veil, on the horse's face.
    The shutters of the shtetl's windows were opening to the commotion (curiosity being the only thing the citizens shared). The accident had happened by the small falls—the part of shore that marked the current division of the shtetl into its two sections, the Jewish Quarter and the Human Three-Quarters. All so-called sacred activities—religious studies, kosher butchering, bargaining, etc.—were contained within the Jewish Quarter. Those activities concerned with the humdrum of daily existence—secular studies, communal justice, buying and selling, etc.—took place in the Human Three-Quarters. Straddling the two was the Upright Synagogue. (The ark itself was built along the Jewish/Human fault line, such