The History of Love Read Free Page B

because to live in an undescribed world was too lonely. I wrote three books before I was twenty-one, who knows what happened to them. The first was about Slonim, the town where I lived which was sometimes Poland and sometimes Russia. I drew a map of it for the frontispiece, labeling the houses and shops, here was Kipnis the butcher, and here Grodzenski the tailor, and here lived Fishl Shapiro who was either a great tzaddik or an idiot, no one could decide, and here the square and the field where we played, and here was where the river got wide and here narrow, and here the forest began, and here stood the tree from which Beyla Asch hanged herself, and here and here. And yet. When I gave it to the only person in Slonim whose opinion I cared about, she just shrugged and said she liked it better when I made things up. So I wrote a second book, and I made up everything. I filled it with men who grew wings, and trees with their roots growing into the sky, people who forgot their own names and people who couldn’t forget anything; I even made up words. When it was finished I ran all the way to her house. I raced through the door, up the stairs, and handed it to the only person in Slonim whose opinion I cared about. I leaned against the wall and watched her face as she read. It grew dark out, but she kept reading. Hours went by. I slid to the floor. She read and read. When she finished she looked up. For a long time she didn’t speak. Then she said maybe I shouldn’t make up everything , because that made it hard to believe anything .
    Another person might have given up. I started again. This time I didn’t write about real things and I didn’t write about imaginary things. I wrote about the only thing I knew. The pages piled up. Even after the only person whose opinion I cared about left on a boat for America, I continued to fill pages with her name.
    After she left, everything fell apart. No Jew was safe. There were rumors of unfathomable things, and because we couldn’t fathom them we failed to believe them, until we had no choice and it was too late. I was working in Minsk, but I lost my job and went home to Slonim. The Germans pushed east. They got closer and closer. The morning we heard their tanks approaching, my mother told me to hide in the woods. I wanted to take my youngest brother, he was only thirteen, but she said she would take him herself. Why did I listen? Because it was easier? I ran out to the woods. I lay still on the ground. Dogs barked in the distance. Hours went by. And then the shots. So many shots. For some reason, they didn’t scream. Or maybe I couldn’t hear their screams. Afterwards, only silence. My body was numb, I remember I tasted blood in my mouth. I don’t know how much time passed. Days. I never went back. When I got up again, I’d shed the only part of me that had ever thought I’d find words for even the smallest bit of life.
    And yet.
    A couple of months after my heart attack, fifty-seven years after I’d given it up, I started to write again. I did it for myself alone, not for anyone else, and that was the difference. It didn’t matter if I found the words, and more than that, I knew it would be impossible to find the right ones. And because I accepted that what I’d once believed was possible was in fact impossible, and because I knew I would never show a word of it to anyone, I wrote a sentence:
    Once upon a time there was a boy.
    It remained there, staring up from the otherwise blank page for days. The next week I added another. Soon there was a whole page. It made me happy, like talking aloud to myself, which I sometimes do.
    Once I said to Bruno, Take a guess, how many pages do you think I have?
    No idea, he said.
    Write a number , I said, and slip it across the table . He shrugged and took a pen out of his pocket. He thought for a minute or two, studying my face. A ballpark guess, I said. He hunched over his napkin, scrawled a number, and turned it over. I wrote down the