The Mathematician’s Shiva Read Online Free PDF

and the stillness all around him as he gasps for air and starts to claw at the dirt above, trying to find light.
    This is my uncle’s will at work even at the age of four. He will somehow manage to dig himself out of the ground by his small fingers, pruney, no doubt, from the moisture in the soil, and find the air to breathe. He will run from this killing field—today covered in chest-high grass in the summers and marked with a single concrete memorial pillar, Soviet in its pragmatism and with a few misspellings—into the surrounding forest and survive by himself for he doesn’t know how many days. A Polish family will find him as they flee, not from the Germans, but rather from Ukrainian fascists practicing their own brand of ethnic cleansing.
    In the hospital, my uncle told the priest a short version of this story. He ended it with a sentiment that I’d heard many times from him. “I’ve already been dead and buried. There is nothing anyone can do that can possibly shock me.” But in my mother’s hospital room, my uncle was undeniably fearful, and he was talking at a fast clip.
    “Have you been to Poland, Father Rudnicki?” my uncle asked.
    “No. I’ve never found the opportunity.”
    “I should take you. I haven’t been in so long. Sasha as well. Maybe even Viktor. My son Bruce. It would be a good idea. Rachela would like it. All of us together.”
    “I would, to tell you the truth,” my mother said.
    “I barely speak a word of Polish, Shlomo,” my father said. “I’m over seventy years old. You want to drag me back to a place where you can still smell horseshit in the streets?”
    “It wouldn’t be so bad,” my mother said. “You’d be a tourist, not a citizen. If Cynthia came with you. Now that would be funny. That I would like to see. I wish I could watch from above. The
lalka
in her high heels trying so artfully to avoid the piles on the cobbles.”
    “Cynthia in Poland,” my uncle said. “That is funny.”
    “You should take her,” my mother said.
    “No. It’s a man’s thing, this trip. But you could go with us, for sure. If I tell you we’ll all go tomorrow, will you let them fill you back up with blood?”
    “It’s not that simple, Shlomo. No. I’m done. This is a good way to go, actually. I have people I love around me. The morphine makes me feel dreamy. Sashaleh, what do the pressure numbers say?”
    “They keep dropping.”
    “I know. You keep looking at them. You think they are going to go higher by some miracle?”
    “I can always hope, Mother.”
    “You’ve been a good son, the numbers can drop. It’s OK.” She looked at the rings on her fingers. “Shlomo, you can take off the jewelry now.”
    My uncle rose out of his chair and kissed his sister on the forehead. My mother loved jewelry. The thicker the gold and the bigger the gem, the better she liked it. It wasn’t so much about display. “Even in this country, you never know,” she said. “You might need to leave in a hurry. Gold is always valuable.”
    I watched my uncle take the heavy gold necklace with its opal pendant from my mother’s neck. My mother lifted up her hands and he began to pull off the rings. She had a small lapis lazuli ring from her childhood, the only piece of jewelry they hadn’t sold during the war. Although it had been stretched, all of her adulthood it had fit snug on her right pinkie. Now it was so loose that it came off without any effort. One finger at a time, the rings were removed, including the gold band and diamond she always wore. My uncle stood up, handed them to me, grabbed me by my shoulders, and sobbed against my shirt.
    My father looked up from his chair. “Shlomo, you’ve been a good brother. You don’t have to cry.”
    I looked at my mother. She had closed her eyes when she lifted up her hands for her brother. That physical act had required one last push, one last use of the mental will and emotional strength for which she was admired and held in awe. She would