Everything Is Illuminated Read Online Free PDF Page A

BLESSED REJOICED IN THE PAIN OF THE CONDEMNED, AND THEIR JOY BECAME THAT MUCH GREATER IN THE FACE OF SORROW. AND THE CONDEMNED SAW THE BLESSED, SAW THEIR LOBSTER TAILS AND PROSCIUTTO, SAW WHAT THEY PUT IN THE TUCHESES OF MENSTRUATING SHIKSAS, AND FELT THAT MUCH WORSE FOR THEMSELVES. AND GOD SAW THAT IT WAS GOODER. AND BUT THE APPEAL OF THE WINDOW BECAME TOO STRONG. AND RATHER THAN ENJOY THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, THE BLESSED WERE FASCINATED BY THE CRUELTIES OF HELL. AND RATHER THAN SUFFER THOSE CRUELTIES, THE CONDEMNED ENJOYED THE VI-CARIOUS PLEASURES OF HEAVEN. AND OVER TIME, THE TWO REACHED AN EQUILIBRIUM, STARING AT THE OTHER, STARING AT THEMSELVES. AND THE WINDOW BECAME A MIRROR, FROM WHICH NEITHER THE BLESSED NOR THE CONDEMNED COULD, OR WOULD, LEAVE. AND SO GOD DROPPED THE SHADE, FOREVER CLOSING OFF THE PORTAL BETWEEN KINGDOMS, AND SO MUST WE, IN THE FACE OF OUR TOO TEMPTING WINDOW, DROP THE SHADE BETWEEN THE KINGDOMS OF MAN AND WOMAN.
    The cellar was filled with runoff from the Brod, and an egg-sized hole was cut out of the synagogue’s back wall, through which one woman at a time could see only the ark and the feet of the dangling men, some of which, to add insult to insult, were caked with shit.
    It was through this hole that the women of the shtetl took turns viewing my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother. Many were convinced, perhaps because of the new baby’s perfectly adult features, that she was of an evil nature — a sign from the devil himself. But more likely their mixed feelings were inspired by the hole. From such a distance — palms pressed against the partition, an eye in an absent egg —
    they couldn’t satisfy any of their mothering instincts. The hole wasn’t even large enough to show all of the baby at once, and they had to piece together mental collages of her from each of the fragmented views — the fingers connected to the palm, which was attached to the wrist, which was at the end of the arm, which fit into the shoulder socket . . . They learned to hate her unknowability, her untouchability, the collage of her.
    On the seventh day, the Well-Regarded Rabbi paid four quarter-chickens and a handful of blue cat’s-eye marbles for the following announcement to be printed in Shimon T’s weekly newsletter: that without precise knowledge of the cause, a baby was delivered to the shtetl, that it was quite beautiful, well behaved, and not at all stinky, and that he was resolved, out of consideration for the baby and himself, to give it to any righteous man who would be willing to call it daughter.
    The next morning, he found fifty-two notes fanned like a peacock’s plumage under the Upright Synagogue’s front door.
    From the maker of copper-wire knickknacks Peshel S, who had lost a wife of only two months in the Pogrom of Torn Garments: If not for the girl, then for me. I am a righteous person, and there are things that I deserve.
    From the lonely candle dipper Mordechai C, whose hands were en-cased in gloves of wax that could never be washed off: I am so alone in my workshop all day. There will be no candle dippers after me. Doesn’t it make a kind of sense?
    From the unemployed Sloucher Lumpl W, who reclined on Passover not because it was religious custom but because why should that night be different from all others?: I’m not the greatest person that ever lived, but I would be a good father, and you know it.
    From the deceased philosopher Pinchas T, who was struck on the head by a falling beam at the flour mill: Put her back in the water and let her be with me.
    The Well-Regarded Rabbi was exceedingly knowledgeable about the large, extra-large, and extra-extra-large matters of the Jewish faith, and was able to draw upon the most obscure and indecipherable texts to reason seemingly impossible religious quandaries, but he knew hardly anything about life itself, and for this reason, because the baby’s birth had no textual precedents, because he couldn’t ask for anyone’s advice because