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how would it look for the very source of all advice to be an advice seeker? — because the baby was about life, and was life, he found himself to be quite stuck. THEY’RE ALL DECENT MEN, he thought.
    ALL A LITTLE BELOW AVERAGE, PERHAPS, BUT TOLERABLE AT HEART. WHO IS LEAST UNDESERVING?
    THE BEST DECISION IS NO DECISION, he decided, and put the letters in her crib, vowing to give my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother — and, in a certain sense, me — to the author of the first note she grabbed for. But she didn’t grab for any of them. She paid them no notice at all. For two days she didn’t move a muscle, never crying or opening her mouth for food. The black-hatted men continued to holler prayers from their pulleys ( HOLY, HOLY, HOLY. . . ), continued to sway above the transplanted Brod, continued to hold more tightly to the Great Book than the rope, praying that someone was listening to their prayers, until in the middle of one early late-evening service, the good gefiltefishmonger Bitzl Bitzl R hollered what every man in the congregation had been thinking: THE SMELL IS INTOLERABLE! HOW CAN I ACT CLOSE TO GOD WHEN I FEEL SO CLOSE TO THE SHITTER!
    The Well-Regarded Rabbi, who didn’t disagree, put a halt to the prayers. He lowered himself to the glass floor and opened the ark. A most terrible stench poured forth, an all-encompassing, impossible to overlook, inhuman and inexcusable stink of supreme repugnance. It flooded from the ark, swept through the synagogue, streamed down every street, every alleyway of the shtetl, flowed under every pillow in every bedroom — entering the nostrils of the sleeping for long enough to misdirect their dreams before exiting with the next snore — and drained, finally, into the Brod.
    The baby was still perfectly silent and unmoving. The Well-Regarded Rabbi placed the crib on the floor, removed a single sopping slip of paper, and hollered, IT APPEARS THAT THE BABY HAS CHOSEN YANKEL AS HER FATHER!
    We were to be in good hands.
    20 July 1997
    Dear Jonathan,
    I hanker for this letter to be good. Like you know, I am not first rate with English. In Russian my ideas are asserted abnormally well, but my second tongue is not so premium. I undertaked to input the things you counseled me to, and I fatigued the thesaurus you presented me, as you counseled me to, when my words appeared too petite, or not befitting. If you are not happy with what I have performed, I command you to return it back to me. I will persevere to toil on it until you are appeased.
    I have girdled in the envelope the items you inquired, not withholding postcards of Lutsk, the census ledgers of the six villages from before the war, and the photographs you had me keep for cautious purposes. It was a very, very, very good thing, no? I must eat a slice of humble pie for what occurred to you on the train. I know how momentous the box was for you, for both of us, and how its ingredients were not exchangeable. Stealing is an ignomin-ious thing, but a thing that occurs very repeatedly to people on the train from Ukraine. Since you do not have at the tips of your finger the name of the guard who stole the box, it will be impossible to have it recouped, so you must confess that it is lost to you forever. But please do not let your experience in Ukraine injure the way you perceive Ukraine, which must be as a totally awesome former Soviet republic.
    This is my occasion to utter thank you for being so long-suffering and stoical with me on our voyage. You were perhaps accounting upon a translator with more faculties, but I am certain that I did a mediocre job. I must eat a slice of humble pie for not finding Augustine, but you clutch how rigid it was. Perhaps if we had more days we could have discovered her. We could have investigated the six villages and interrogated many people. We could have lifted every boulder. But we have uttered all of these things so many times.
    Thank you for the reproduction of the photograph of