Everything Is Illuminated Read Free Page A

that one of the two Torah scrolls would exist in each zone.) As the ratio of sacred to secular shifted—usually no more than a hair in this or that direction, save for that exceptional hour in 1764, immediately following the Pogrom of Beaten Chests, when the shtetl was completely secular—so did the fault line, drawn in chalk from Radziwell Forest to the river. And so was the synagogue lifted and moved. It was in 1783 that wheels were attached, making the shtetl's ever-changing negotiation of Jewishness and Humanness less of a schlep.
    I understand there has been an accident,
panted Shloim W, the humble antiques salesman who survived off charity, unable to part with any of his candelabras, figurines, or hourglasses since his wife's untimely death.
    How did you know?
Yankel asked.
    Bitzl Bitzl yelled to me from his boat on his way to the Well-Regarded Rabbi's. I knocked on as many doors as I could on my way here.
    Good,
Yankel said.
We'll need a shtetl proclamation.
    Are we sure he's dead?
someone asked.
    Quite,
Sofiowka assured.
Dead as he was before his parents met. Or deader, maybe, for then he was at least a bullet in his father's cock and an emptiness in his mother's belly.
    Did you try to save him?
Yankel asked.
    No.
    Cover their eyes,
Shloim told Yankel, gesturing at the girls. He quickly undressed himself—revealing a belly larger than most, and a back matted with ringlets of thick black hair—and dove into the water. Feathers washed over him on the wings of water swells. Unstrung pearls and ungummed teeth. Blood clots, Merlot, and splintered chandelier crystal. The rising wreckage became increasingly dense, until he couldn't see his hands in front of him.
Where? Where?
    Did you find him?
the man of law Isaac M asked when Shloim finally surfaced.
Is it clear how long he's been down there?
    Was he alone or with a wife?
asked grieving Shanda T, widow of the deceased philosopher Pinchas T, who, in his only notable paper, "To the Dust: From Man You Came and to Man You Shall Return," argued it would be possible, in theory, for life and art to be reversed.
    A powerful wind swept through the shtetl, making it whistle. Those studying obscure texts in dimly lit rooms looked up. Lovers making amends and promises, amendments and excuses, fell silent. The lonely candle dipper, Mordechai C, submerged his hands in a vat of warm blue wax.
    He did have a wife,
Sofiowka inserted, his left hand diving deep into his trouser pocket.
I remember her well. She had a set of such voluptuous tits. God, she had great tits. Who could forget those? They were, oh God, they were great. I'd trade all of the words I've since learned to be young again, oh yes, yes, getting a good suck on those titties. Yes I would! Yes I would!
    How do you know these things?
someone asked.
    I went to Rovno once, as a child, on an errand for my father. It was to this Trachim's house. His surname escapes my tongue, but I remember quite well that he was Trachim with an
i,
that he had a young wife with a great set of tits, a small apartment with many knickknacks, and a scar from his eye to his mouth, or his mouth to his eye. One or the other.
    YOU WERE ABLE TO SEE HIS FACE AS HE WAGONED BY?
the Well-Regarded Rabbi asked in a holler as his girls ran to hide under opposite ends of his prayer shawl.
THE SCAR?
    And then, ay yay yay, I saw him again when I was a young man applying myself in Lvov. Trachim was making a delivery of peaches, if I remember, or perhaps plums, to a house of schoolgirls across the street. Or was he a postman? Yes, it was love letters.
    Of course he couldn't be alive anymore,
said Menasha the physician, opening his medical bag. He removed several pages of death certificates, which were picked up by another breeze and sent into the trees. Some would fall with the leaves that September. Some would fall with the trees generations later.
    And even if he were alive, we couldn't free him,
said Shloim, drying himself behind a large rock.
It