The Last Words on Earth - Story by Nicole Krauss

Dear Readers,

This is an excellent story published in The New Yorker this weekend. Nicole Krauss’ The Last Words on Earth is a stark portrayal of a man, his struggle for survival in his native country Poland during the severity of Second World War, the lost love, and his own child he was never able to tell his true identity to.

An old man’s solitary life as an immigrant in North America, boundless sufferings has caused his sensibilities thickened. Here is a monologue:

“My heart is weak and unreliable. I try to burden it as little as possible. If something is going to have an impact, I direct it elsewhere. My gut, for example, or my lungs. When I pass a mirror and catch a glimpse of myself, or I’m at the bus stop and some kids come up behind me and say, “Who smells shit?”—small daily humiliations that are par for the course—these I take, generally speaking, in my liver. The pancreas I reserve for being struck by all that’s been lost. It’s true that there’s so much, and the organ is so small. But. You would be surprised how much it can take. When I wake up and my fingers are stiff, almost certainly I was dreaming of my childhood. All the times I have suddenly remembered that my parents are dead (even now it still surprises me to exist in the world while those who made me have ceased to exist): my knees. To everything a season; to every time I’ve woken only to make the mistake of believing for a moment that someone is sleeping beside me: a hemorrhoid. Loneliness: there is no organ that can take it all.”

Regards,

Mahbubul Karim (Sohel)
February 8, 2004



THE LAST WORDS ON EARTH
by NICOLE KRAUSS
Issue of 2004-02-09
Posted 2004-02-02
When they write my obituary. Tomorrow. Or the next day. It will say, “Leo Gursky is survived by an apartment full of shit.” I’m surprised I haven’t been buried alive. I have to struggle to keep a path clear between bed and toilet, toilet and kitchen table, table and front door. If I want to get from the toilet to the front door, I have to go by way of the kitchen table. I like to imagine the bed as home plate, the toilet as first, the kitchen table as second, the front door as third: should the doorbell ring while I am lying in bed, I have to round the toilet and the kitchen table in order to arrive at the door. If it happens to be Bruno, I let him in without a word and then jog back to bed, the roar of the invisible crowd ringing in my ears.

I often wonder who will be the last person to see me alive. If I had to bet, I’d bet on the delivery boy from the Chinese takeout. I order in four nights out of seven. Whenever he comes, I make a big production of finding my wallet. He stands at the door holding the greasy bag while I wonder if this is the night I’ll finish off my spring roll, climb into bed, and have a heart attack in my sleep.

I try to make a point of being seen. Often when I’m out I’ll buy a juice, even if I’m not thirsty. If the store is crowded, I’ll sometimes go so far as to drop my change all over the floor, the nickels and dimes skidding in every direction. I’ll go into the Athlete’s Foot and say, “What do you have in sneakers?” The clerk will look me over like the poor schmuck that I am and direct me to the one pair of Rockports they carry, something in spanking white. “Nah,” I’ll say, “I have those already,” and then I’ll make my way over to the Reeboks and pick out something that doesn’t even resemble a shoe, a waterproof bootie, maybe, and ask for it in size 9. The kid will look again, more carefully. “Size 9,” I’ll repeat, holding his gaze while I clutch the webbed shoe. He’ll shake his head and go to the back for them, and by the time he returns I’m peeling off my socks. I’ll roll my pant legs up and look down at those decrepit things my feet, and an awkward minute will pass until it becomes clear that I’m waiting for him to slip the booties onto them. I never actually buy. All I want is not to die on a day when I went unseen.

A few months ago, I saw an ad in the paper. It said, “needed: nude model for drawing class. $15 an hour.” It seemed too good to be true. To have so much looked at. By so many. I called the number. A woman told me to come the following Tuesday. I tried to describe myself, but she wasn’t interested. “Anything will do,” she said.

The days passed slowly. I told Bruno about it, but he misunderstood. He thought I was signing up for a drawing class in order to see nude girls. He didn’t want to be corrected. “Their breasts?”he asked. “They show their boobs?” I shrugged. “And down there?”

After Mrs. Freid on the fourth floor died and it took three days for anyone to find her, Bruno and I got into the habit of checking on each other. We’d make little excuses—“I ran out of toilet paper,” I’d say when Bruno opened his door. A day would pass. There would be a knock on my door. “I lost my TV Guide,” he’d explain, and I’d go and find him mine, even though I knew his was right where it always was, on his couch. Once, he came down on a Sunday afternoon. “I need a cup of flour,” he said. It was clumsy, but I couldn’t help myself. “You don’t know how to cook,” I said. There was a moment of silence. Bruno looked me in the eye. “What do you know,” he said. “I’m baking a cake.”

When I came to America, I knew hardly anyone, only a second cousin who was a locksmith, so I worked for him. If he’d been a shoemaker, I would have been a shoemaker; if he had shovelled shit, I, too, would have shovelled. But he was a locksmith, he taught me the trade, and that’s what I became. We had a little business together, and then one year he got TB. They had to cut his liver out, and he got a 106 temperature and died, so I took it over. I went on sending his wife half the profits, even after she married a doctor and moved to Bayside. I stayed in the business for more than fifty years. It’s not what I would have imagined for myself. And yet. The truth is I came to like it. I helped in those who were locked out; others I helped keep out what shouldn’t be let in, so that they could sleep without nightmares.

Then one day I was looking out the window. Maybe I was contemplating the sky. Put even a fool in front of the window and you’ll get a Spinoza; in the end life makes window-watchers of us all. The afternoon went by; little grains of darkness sifted down. I reached for the chain on the bulb and suddenly it was as if an elephant had stepped on my heart. I fell to my knees. I thought, I didn’t live forever. A minute passed. Another minute. Another. I clawed at the floor, pulling myself along toward the phone.

Twenty-five per cent of my heart muscle died. It took time to recover, and I never went back to work. I stared out the window. I watched fall turn into winter, winter into spring. I dragged myself upstairs to sit with Bruno.



Bruno and I were friends when we were boys. When I came to America, I thought he was dead, and then one day I was walking down East Broadway and I heard his voice. I turned around. He was standing in front of the grocer’s asking the price of some fruit. I thought, You’re hearing things, you’re such a dreamer, what is the likelihood—your boyhood friend? I stood frozen on the sidewalk. He’s in the ground, I told myself. It’s fifty years later, here you are in the United States of America, there’s McDonald’s, get a grip. I waited just to make sure. I wouldn’t have recognized his face. But the way he walked was unmistakable—skipping along like a bird. He was about to pass me. I put my arm out and grabbed his sleeve. “Bruno,” I said. He stopped and turned. At first he seemed scared and then confused. “Bruno,” I said. He looked at me; his eyes filled with tears. He touched his hand to my cheek; with the other he held a bag of plums. “Bruno.”

A couple of years later, his wife died. Living in their apartment without her was too much for him, so when an apartment opened up on the floor above me he moved in. We often sit together at my kitchen table. A whole afternoon can go by without our saying a word. If we do talk, we never speak in Yiddish. The words of our childhood became strangers to us long ago—we couldn’t use them in the same way, and so we chose not to use them at all. Life demanded a new language.



When I was a boy, I liked to write. I wrote three books before I was twenty-one. The first was about S., the village in Poland where I lived. I drew a map of it for the frontispiece, labelling each house and shop: here was Kipnis the butcher, and here Pinsky the tailor, and here lived Fishl Shapiro, who was either a great tzaddik or an idiot, no one could decide, and here the village square and the field where we played, and here where the forest began, and here stood the tree from which Beyla Asch had hanged herself, and here and here. And yet. When I gave it to the only person in S. whose opinion I cared about, she just shrugged and said maybe it would be better if I made things up. So I wrote a second book, and I filled it with men who grew wings, and trees with their roots growing into the sky, and people who forgot their own names, and people who couldn’t forget anything. When it was finished, I ran all the way to her house. I leaned against a wall and watched her face as she read it. It got dark outside, but she kept reading. Hours went by. I slid to the floor. When she finished, she looked up. At first she didn’t speak. Then she said that perhaps 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. I made a book of my love for her. I wrote and I wrote. The pages piled up. I was saying everything for the first time. Even after the only person whose opinion I cared about had left on a boat for America, I continued to fill pages with her name.

Soon after she left, everything fell apart. Hitler invaded Poland. There were rumors of unfathomable things, and because we could not fathom them we failed to believe them—until we had no choice and it was too late. By the time I believed, 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; that was the difference. I knew it would be impossible to find the right words. And because I accepted that what I’d once believed possible was, in fact, impossible, and because I knew that I would never show a page of it to anyone, I wrote a sentence: I fell in love when I was ten.

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 I said, I was doing it for myself.

Once, I said to Bruno, “Take a guess. How many pages do you think I have?” “No idea,” Bruno 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 real number, 301, on my own napkin. We pushed the napkins across the table. I picked up Bruno’s. For reasons I can’t explain, he had written 200,000. He picked up my napkin and turned it over. His face fell.

Sometimes I open my book and read from it at random. There are passages I know by heart. By heart—this is not an expression I use lightly. My heart is weak and unreliable. I try to burden it as little as possible. If something is going to have an impact, I direct it elsewhere. My gut, for example, or my lungs. When I pass a mirror and catch a glimpse of myself, or I’m at the bus stop and some kids come up behind me and say, “Who smells shit?”—small daily humiliations that are par for the course—these I take, generally speaking, in my liver. The pancreas I reserve for being struck by all that’s been lost. It’s true that there’s so much, and the organ is so small. But. You would be surprised how much it can take. When I wake up and my fingers are stiff, almost certainly I was dreaming of my childhood. All the times I have suddenly remembered that my parents are dead (even now it still surprises me to exist in the world while those who made me have ceased to exist): my knees. To everything a season; to every time I’ve woken only to make the mistake of believing for a moment that someone is sleeping beside me: a hemorrhoid. Loneliness: there is no organ that can take it all.



Once upon a time there was a boy. He lived in a village that no longer exists, in a house that no longer exists, on the edge of a field that no longer exists. Once upon a time there was a boy who lived in a house across the field from a girl who no longer exists. They made up a thousand games. They collected the world in small handfuls, and they were never unfair to each other, not once. When the sky grew dark, they parted with burrs in their clothes and leaves in their hair.

When they were ten, he asked her to marry him. When they were eleven, he kissed her for the first time. When they were thirteen, they got into a fight and for three terrible weeks they didn’t talk. When they were fifteen, she showed him the scar on her left breast. Their love was a secret they told no one. He promised her he would never love another girl as long as he lived. “What if I die?” she asked. “Even then,” he said. For her sixteenth birthday, he gave her a Polish-English dictionary and together they studied the words. “What’s this?” he’d ask, tracing his index finger around her ankle, and she’d look it up. “And this?” he’d ask, kissing her elbow. “‘Elbow’! What kind of word is that?” And then he’d lick it, making her giggle. When they were seventeen, they made love for the first time, on a bed of straw in a shed. Later—when things had happened that they never could have imagined—she wrote him a letter that said, “When will you learn that there isn’t a word for everything?”

Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl whose father was shrewd enough to scrounge together all the zlotys he had to send his daughter on a boat to America. At first she refused to go, but the boy also knew enough to insist, swearing on his life that he’d earn some money and find a way to follow her. He got a job as a janitor at a hospital and he saved as much as he could. But, in the summer of 1941, the Einsatzkommandos drove their armies farther east; on a bright, hot day in July, they entered S. At that hour, the boy happened to be lying on his back in the woods, thinking about the girl. You could say it was his love for her that saved him. In the years that followed, the boy became a man who became invisible. In this way, he escaped death.

Once upon a time the man who had become invisible arrived in America. He had spent four years hiding, mostly in trees but also in cellars and holes. Then the Russian tanks rolled in. For five months, he lived in a displaced-persons camp. He got word to his cousin, who was a locksmith in America. In his head, he practiced over and over the only words he knew in English. Knee. Elbow. Ear. Finally, his papers came through. He took a train to a boat, and after a week of passage arrived in New York Harbor. Folded in his hand was the girl’s address. That night, he lay awake on the floor of his cousin’s room. The radiator clanged and hissed, but he was grateful for the warmth. In the morning, his cousin explained to him how to take the subway to Brooklyn. Only as his finger pressed her doorbell did it cross his mind that perhaps he should have called, so as not to give her a heart attack. She opened the door. She wore a blue scarf over her hair. He could hear the broadcast of a ballgame through the neighbor’s wall.

Once upon a time the woman who had been a girl got on a boat to America and threw up all the way there, not because she was seasick but because she was pregnant. When she found out, she wrote to the boy. Every day, she waited for a letter from him, but none came. She got bigger and bigger. She tried to hide it so as not to lose her job at the dress factory. A few weeks before the baby was born, she got a letter from someone who told her what had happened to the town of S. She stopped going to work. She couldn’t bring herself to get out of bed. After a week, the son of her boss came to see her. He brought her food to eat and put a bouquet of flowers in a vase by her bed. When he found out that she was pregnant, he called a midwife. A baby boy was born. One day, the girl sat up in bed and saw the son of her boss rocking the child in a shaft of sunlight. After a year, she agreed to marry him. Two years later, she had another child.

The man who had become invisible stood in her living room, listening to her story. He had changed so much in five years that now part of him wanted to laugh a hard, cold laugh. She gave him a small photograph of the boy, who was now five. Her hand was shaking. She said, “You didn’t write. I thought you were dead.” He looked at the photograph of the boy who, although the man didn’t know it then, would grow up to look like him, go to college, fall in love, fall out of love, become a famous writer. “What’s his name?” he asked. “I called him Isaac,” she said. They stood for a long time in silence as he stared at the picture. At last he managed three words: “Come with me.” The sound of children shouting rose from the street below. She squeezed her eyes shut. “Come with me,” he said, holding out his hand. Tears rolled down her face. She shook her head. “I can’t,” she said. She looked down at the floor. “Please,” she said. And so he did the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life: he picked up his hat and walked away.

And if the man who had once promised that he’d never fall in love with another girl as long as he lived kept his promise, it wasn’t because he was stubborn, or even loyal. It was because he couldn’t help it. And, having already hidden for years, hiding his love for a son who didn’t even know he existed didn’t seem unthinkable. Not if it was what the only woman he would ever love needed him to do. After all, what does it mean for a man to hide one more thing when he has vanished completely?



The morning of the day I was scheduled to model for the art class, I woke in a state of excitement. When I’d waited as long as I could, I took a bus across town. It took me a while to find the right building. I passed it three times before I realized that it had to be the one. It was an old warehouse with some of the windows broken. The front door was rusted and propped open with a cardboard box. For a moment, I let myself imagine that I’d been lured there to be robbed and killed. I pictured my body on the floor in a pool of blood.

The sky had got dark, and it was starting to rain. I stood there, unable to go forward, unable to turn back. Finally, I heard laughter coming from inside. See, you’re being ridiculous, I thought. I reached for the handle on the door and just then it swung open. A girl wearing a sweater that was too big for her came out. She pushed up her sleeves. Her arms were thin and pale. “Do you need help?” she asked. “I’m looking for a drawing class. There was an ad in the paper. Maybe I have the wrong place—” She gestured. “Upstairs. On the second floor, first room on the right. It doesn’t start for another hour.”

There was nothing more to say. There were steps and I went up them. My heart was pounding. What kind of fool was I, to think that they wouldn’t turn away when I took off my shirt and dropped my pants and stood naked before them? To think that they would observe my varicose-veined legs, my hairy, sagging knaidlach, and what—start to sketch? And yet. I didn’t turn back. I gripped the bannister and climbed the stairs. I could hear the rain on the skylight. A dirty light filtered through. At the top of the stairs there was a hallway. The room on the right was empty. There was a block covered with a length of black velvet, and a disorganized circle of folding chairs and easels. I went in and sat down to wait.

After half an hour, people started to wander in. A woman showed me where to undress, a corner where a makeshift curtain had been hung. I stood there and she pulled it around me. A minute passed, and then I removed my shoes. I lined them up neatly. I took off my socks and put them into the shoes. I unbuttoned my shirt and took that off; there was a hanger, so I hung it. I heard chairs scraping and then laughter. Suddenly I didn’t care about being seen. I would have liked to grab my shoes and slip out of the room, down the stairs, and away from there. And yet. I unzipped my pants. Then it occurred to me: What, exactly, did “nude” mean? Did they really mean no underwear? I deliberated. I reached for the ad in the pocket of my pants. “nude model,” it said. Don’t be an idiot, I told myself. These aren’t amateurs. My underwear was down around my knees when the woman’s footsteps returned. “Are you all right in there?” “Fine, fine. I’ll be out in a moment.” I looked down. There was a tiny smear. My bowels. They never cease to appall me. I stepped out of my underwear and crumpled it into a ball.

I stood without moving. I was starting to get cold. I thought, So this is how death takes you. Naked in an abandoned warehouse. Tomorrow Bruno would come downstairs and knock on my door and there would be no answer. Forgive me, Bruno. I would have liked to say goodbye. I’m sorry to have disappointed you with so few pages. Then I thought, My book. Who would find it? And then and there I realized that, even though I thought I’d been writing it for myself, the truth was that I wanted someone to read it.

I pulled back the curtain and stepped forward. Squinting in the light, I stood before them.

There were maybe twelve students, sitting in chairs holding their drawing pads. The girl in the big sweater was there. The woman who’d shown me where to undress pointed to the box draped in velvet. “Stand here. Strike a pose that feels comfortable.” I didn’t know which way to turn. Someone was going to have to face my rectal side no matter which way you cut it. I let my arms hang at my sides and focussed on a spot on the floor. They lifted their pencils.

Nothing happened. I felt the plush cloth under the soles of my feet, the hairs rising on my arms, my fingers like ten small weights pulling downward. I felt my body waking under twelve pairs of eyes. I lifted my head.

“Try to keep still,” the woman said.

I stared at a crack in the concrete floor. I could hear their pencils moving across the pages. I wanted to smile. Already my body was starting to rebel, the knees beginning to shake and the back muscles straining, but I didn’t care. If need be, I would have stood there all day. Fifteen, twenty minutes passed. Then the woman said, “Why don’t we take a quick break and then we’ll start again with a different pose.”

I sat. I stood. I rotated. Pages turned. I cycled from feeling to numbness to feeling to numbness. My eyes watered with pain. I recited the aleph-bet twenty-three times. Somehow I got back into my clothes. I couldn’t find my underwear and was too tired to look. I made it down the stairs, clutching the bannister. The woman came down after me. She said, “Wait, you forgot the fifteen dollars.” I took it, and when I went to put it into my pocket I felt the ball of underwear there.

“Thank you.” I meant that. I was exhausted. But happy.



I want to say somewhere: I’ve tried to be forgiving. And yet. There were times in my life, whole years, when anger got the better of me. Ugliness turned me inside out. There was a certain satisfaction in bitterness. I courted it. I scowled at the world. And the world scowled back. I slammed the door in people’s faces. I farted where I wanted to fart. I accused cashiers of cheating me out of a penny while holding the penny in my hand. And then one day I realized that I was on my way to being the sort of schmuck who poisons pigeons. People crossed the street to avoid me. I was a human cancer. And to be honest: I wasn’t really angry. Not anymore. I had left my anger somewhere long ago. Put it down on a park bench and walked away. And yet. It had been so long, I didn’t know any other way of being. One day I woke up and said to myself, “It’s not too late.” The first days were strange. I had to practice smiling in front of the mirror. But. It came back to me. It was as if a weight had been lifted. I let go, and something let go of me. A couple of months later, I found Bruno.

When I got home from the art class, there was a note from Bruno on my door. It said, “ware are you?”I was too tired to climb the stairs to tell him. I fell into bed still wearing my clothes. It was past midnight when the telephone rang. Bruno, no doubt. I would have ignored it if I hadn’t been afraid he’d call the police. Why couldn’t he just tap on the radiator with his walking stick the way he usually did? (Three taps means “Are you alive?” Two means “Yes,” one “No.”) I threw off the sheets and stumbled across the floor, banging into a table leg. “O.K., O.K.,” I said, picking up the receiver. “No need to wake the whole building.” There was silence on the other end. I said, “Bruno?”

“Is this Leo Gursky?”

The man told me that he’d locked himself out of his house. He’d called information for the number of a locksmith. I said I was retired. The man seemed unable to believe his bad luck. He’d already called three other people, and no one had answered. “It’s pouring out here,” he said.

“Couldn’t you stay somewhere else for the night? In the morning it’ll be easy to find a locksmith. They’re a dime a dozen.”

“No,” he said. “All right, I mean, if it’s too much . . .” He paused, waiting for me to speak up. I didn’t. “O.K., then.” I could hear the disappointment in his voice. “Sorry to have disturbed you.”

And yet. He didn’t hang up and neither did I. I was filled with guilt. I thought, What do I need with sleep? There will be time. Tomorrow. Or the next day. Six feet under.

“O.K., O.K.,” I said, even though I didn’t want to say it. I’d have to dig up my tools. I might as well be looking for a needle in a haystack or a Jew in Poland.

He gave me an address all the way uptown. Only after I hung up did I remember that I could wait forever before a bus came at that hour. I had a card in the kitchen drawer for Goldstar Car Service, not that I’d ever called it. But. You never know. I ordered a car and started digging through the hall closet for my toolbox. I was still looking when the buzzer rang. When your pants are down around your ankles, that’s when everyone arrives. “I’ll be down in a minute,” I shouted into the speaker, and when I turned around the toolbox was there, right under my nose. I grabbed my raincoat off the floor, smoothed down my hair in the mirror, and went out.

A black limousine idled in the street, rain falling in the headlights. Other than that, there were only a few empty cars parked along the curb. I was about to go back into the building, but the limousine driver rolled down the window and called my name. He wore a purple turban. I walked up to the window. “There must be a mistake,” I said. “I ordered a car.”

“O.K.,” he said.

“But this is a limousine,” I pointed out.

“O.K.,” he repeated, motioning me in.

“I can’t pay extra.”

The turban bobbed. He said, “Get in before you get soaking.”

I ducked inside. It was bigger than I’d imagined. The soft music coming from up front and the gentle rhythm of the windshield wipers barely reached me. The traffic lights bled into the puddles. There was a little jar of peppermints, and I filled my pockets. When the limousine came to a stop, the driver pointed to a town house. It was beautiful, with steps up to the door and leaves carved in stone. “Seventeen dollars,” the driver said. I felt in my pocket for my wallet. No. Other pocket. My underwear, but no wallet. I must have left it at home in the rush. Then I remembered my fee from the art class. I dug past the peppermints and the underwear, and came up with it. “Sorry,” I said. “How embarrassing. All I have on me is fifteen.” I admit I was reluctant to part with those bills; hard-earned wasn’t the word for them but something else, more bittersweet. But, after a brief pause, the turban bobbed and the money was accepted.

The man had been waiting under the cornice. Of course, he hadn’t expected me in a limousine, and out I’d popped like Mr. Locksmith to the Stars. I was humiliated. I wanted to explain, “Believe me, I’d never mistake myself for anyone special.” But it was pouring still, and I thought he needed me more than he needed any explanation of how I’d got there. It was a tricky lock. The man stood above me, holding my flashlight. The rain was running down the back of my neck. I felt how much depended on my unlocking that lock. I tried and failed. Tried and failed. And then, at last, my heart started to race. I turned the handle, and the door slipped open.

He showed me into the living room, where I waited while he went to call me a car and change into dry clothes. I tried to protest, saying I could take the bus or hail a taxi, but he wouldn’t hear of it, what with the rain. The living room was filled with books. I’d never seen so many in one place that wasn’t a library. I, too, like to read. Once a month, I go to the local branch. For myself, I pick a novel and, for Bruno, with his cataracts, a book on tape. At first Bruno was doubtful. “What am I supposed to do with this?” he said, looking at the box set of “Anna Karenina” as if I’d handed him an enema. And yet. A day or two later I was going about my business when a voice from above bellowed, “All happy families resemble one another,” nearly giving me a conniption. After that, he listened to whatever I’d brought him at top volume and then returned it to me without comment. One afternoon, I came back from the library with “Ulysses.” For a month straight he listened. He had a habit of pressing the stopbutton and rewinding when he hadn’t fully grasped something. “Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that.” Pause, rewind. “Ineluctable modality of the.” Pause, rewind. “Ineluctable modality.” Pause. “Ineluct.” When the due date approached, he wanted it renewed. By then I’d had it with his stopping and starting, so I went to the Wiz and got him a Sony Sportsman, and now he schleps it around clipped to his belt. For all I know, he just likes the sound of an Irish accent.

I thought, Poor Bruno. He’s probably called the morgue to find out if anyone has brought in an old man with an index card in his wallet that says, “my name is leo gursky i have no family please call pinelawn cemetery i have a plot there in the jewish part thank you for your consideration.”Or else he thinks I’m wandering in the rain with my head full of dreams. Once Bruno said that if I bought a pigeon, by the time I was halfway down the street it would become a dove; on the bus home, a parrot; and in my apartment, the moment before I took it out of the cage, a phoenix. “That’s you,” he said, brushing some crumbs that weren’t there from the table. “No, it’s not,” I said. He shrugged and looked out the window. “Who ever heard of a phoenix?” I said. “A peacock, maybe. But a phoenix—I don’t think so.” His face was turned away, but I thought I saw his mouth twitch in a smile.

Out of habit, I looked on the man’s shelves to see if there was anything by my Isaac. Sure enough, there was. And not just one book but four. I pulled one out and turned it over to look at Isaac’s photograph. We met once. He was giving a reading at the 92nd Street Y. I bought tickets four months in advance. Many times in my life I’d imagined our meeting. I as his father, he as my son. And yet. I knew that it could never happen that way. I’d accepted that the most I could hope for was a place in the audience. But during the reading something came over me. Afterward, I found myself standing in line, my hands shaking as I pressed into his the scrap of paper on which I’d written my name. He glanced at it and copied it into a book. I tried to say something, but there was no sound. He smiled and thanked me. And yet. I didn’t budge. “Is there something else?” he asked. I flapped my hands. The woman behind me gave me an impatient look and pushed forward to greet him. What could he do? Like a fool, I flapped. He signed the woman’s book. It was uncomfortable for everyone. The line had to move around me. Occasionally, he looked up at me, bewildered. Once, he smiled at me the way you smile at an idiot. But. My hands fought to tell him everything. At least as much as they could before a security guard grasped my elbow and escorted me to the door. It was winter. Fat white flakes fell under the street lamps. I waited for him to come out, but he never did. Maybe there was a back door, I don’t know. I took the bus home. That night, before I went to sleep, I opened the book, which I’d placed on my bedside table. “To Leah Gersky,” it said.

I was still holding the book when the man came up behind me. “You know it?” he asked. I dropped it, and it landed with a thud, my son’s face staring up. I was suddenly tired, more tired than I’d been in years. I tried to explain. “I’m his father,” I said. Or maybe I said, “He’s my son.” Whatever it was, I got the point across, because the man looked shocked, and then he looked surprised, and then he looked like he didn’t believe me. Which was fine with me, because, after all, who did I think I was, showing up in a limousine, picking a lock, and then claiming to be the progenitor of a famous writer?

I leaned over, picked the book up, and put it back on the shelf. The man kept looking at me, but just then the car honked outside, which was lucky because I’d had enough of being looked at for one day. “Well,” I said, making my way toward the front door, “I’d better be going.” The man reached for his wallet, took out a hundred-dollar bill, and handed it to me. “His father?” he asked, unbelieving. I pocketed the money and handed him a complimentary peppermint. I stuffed my feet into my wet shoes. “Not really his father,” I said. And because I didn’t know what else to say, I said, “More like his uncle.” This seemed to confuse him even more, but just in case I added, “Not exactly his uncle.” He raised his eyebrows. I picked up my toolbox and stepped out into the rain. When I got to the car, he was still standing in the doorway, looking out. To prove that I was off my rocker, I gave him the Queen’s wave.



It was three in the morning when I got home. But I couldn’t sleep. I lay on my back, listening to the rain. Then I got out of bed and went to the kitchen. I keep my manuscript in a box in the oven. I took it out, set it on the kitchen table. I put the water on to boil. The rain was tapering off. A pigeon cooed on the windowsill. It puffed up its body, strutted back and forth, and took flight. Free as a bird, so to speak. I rolled a sheet of paper into my typewriter and, with two fingers, I picked out a title: “Words for Everything.”

Before I could change my mind, I rolled it out, laid it on top of the stack of pages in the box, and closed the lid. I found some brown paper and wrapped it up. On the front I wrote Isaac’s address, which I knew by heart.

Nothing happened. No wind to sweep everything away. No heart attack. No angel at the door. Outside, the sky lightened. I ate a Metamucil bar and gave myself a sponge bath. I dressed. I spat into my palm and tried to force my hair into submission. I sat with the brown paper package on my lap. At eight-forty-five, I put my raincoat on and tucked the package under my arm. Then I went out the door and into the morning.



I don’t know what I expected, but I expected something. My fingers shook whenever I went to unlock the mailbox. I went Monday. Nothing. I went Tuesday and Wednesday. There was nothing on Thursday, either. Friday, as I sat dozing in my chair, the telephone rang. I was sure it was my son. But. It was only the teacher from the art class saying that she was looking for people for a project she was doing at a gallery, and she’d thought of me, because of my compelling presence. Naturally, I was flattered. At any other time, it would have been reason enough to splurge on spare ribs. And yet. “What kind of project?” I asked. She said that all I had to do was sit naked on a metal stool in the middle of the room, and then, if I felt like it, which she was hoping I would, dip my body into a vat of kosher cow’s blood and roll on the large white sheets of paper provided.

I may be a fool but I’m not desperate. I thanked her very much for the offer, but said that I was going to have to turn it down since I was already scheduled to sit on my thumb and rotate in accordance with the movements of the earth around the sun. She was disappointed. But she seemed to understand. She said that if I wanted to see the drawings the class had done of me I could come to the show they were putting up in a month. I wrote down the date and hung up the phone.

I’d been in the apartment all day, so I decided to go out for a walk. I’m an old man. But I can still get around. It started to get dark, but I persevered. I didn’t have any destination in mind. When I saw a Starbucks, I went in and bought a coffee, because I felt like a coffee, not because I wanted anyone to notice me. Normally I would have made a big production—“Give me a Grande Venti, I mean a Tall Grande, give me a Chai Super Venti Grande, or do I want a Short Frappe?”—and then, for punctuation, I would’ve had a small mishap at the milk station. Not this time. I poured the milk like a regular citizen of the world and sat down in an easy chair across from a man reading the newspaper. I wrapped my hands around the coffee. The warmth felt good. At the next table there was a girl with blue hair leaning over a notebook and chewing on a ballpoint, and at the table next to her was a little boy in a soccer uniform sitting with his mother, who told him, “The plural of ‘elf’ is ‘elves.’” A wave of happiness came over me. I felt giddy to be part of it all. To be drinking a cup of coffee like a normal person. I wanted to shout out, “The plural of ‘elf’ is ‘elves’! What a language! What a world!”

There was a pay phone by the rest room. I felt in my pocket for a quarter and dialled Bruno’s number. It rang nine times. The girl with blue hair passed me on the way to the rest room. I smiled at her. Amazing! She smiled back. On the tenth ring he picked up.

“Bruno?”

“Yes?”

“Isn’t it good to be alive?”

“No, thank you, I don’t want to buy anything.”

“I’m not trying to sell you anything! It’s Leo. Listen. I was sitting here drinking a coffee and suddenly it hit me.”

“Who hit you?”

“Ach, listen! It hit me how good it is to be alive. Alive! And I wanted to tell you. Do you understand what I’m saying? I’m saying life is a thing of beauty, Bruno. A thing of beauty and a joy forever.”

There was a pause.

“Sure, whatever you say, Leo. Life is a beauty.”

“And a joy forever,” I said.

“All right,” Bruno said. “And a joy.”

I waited.

“Forever.”

I was about to hang up when Bruno said, “Leo?”

“Yes?”

“Did you mean human life?”

I worked on my coffee for half an hour, making the most of it. The girl closed her notebook and got up to leave. The man neared the end of his newspaper. I read the headlines. I was a small part of something larger than myself. Yes, human life. Human! Life! Then the man turned the page and my heart stopped.

It was a picture of Isaac. I collect all his clippings, and I thought I’d seen every picture of him. I’ve studied them all a thousand times. And yet. This one was new to me. He was standing in front of a window, his chin down, head tilted slightly to the side. He might have been thinking. But his eyes were looking up, as if someone had called his name right before the shutter clicked. I wanted to call out to him. It was only a newspaper, but I wanted to holler it at the top of my lungs. “Isaac! Here I am! Can you hear me, my little Isaac?” I wanted him to turn his eyes to me just as he had to whoever had shaken him from his thoughts. But. He couldn’t.

The headline said: “isaac moritz, novelist, dead at 60.”

Hours passed. Finally a Starbucks employee with a ring in his eyebrow came up to me. “We’re closing,” he said. I looked around. It was true. Everyone was gone. A girl with painted nails was dragging a broom across the floor. I got up. Or. I tried to get up but my legs wanted nothing to do with me. The Starbucks employee looked at me as if I were a cockroach in the brownie mix. The paper cup I held was crushed to a damp pulp in my palm. I handed it to him and started to make my way across the floor. Then I remembered the newspaper. The employee had already thrown it into the trash bin he was rolling across the floor. I fished it out while he looked on.

I don’t know how I got home. Bruno must have heard me unlock the door, because a minute later he came downstairs and knocked. I didn’t answer. I was sitting in the dark in the chair by the window. He kept knocking. Finally, I heard him go back upstairs. An hour or more went by, and then I heard him on the stairs again. He slid a piece of paper under the door. It said, “life is butiful.” I pushed it back out. He pushed it back in. I pushed it out, he pushed it in. Out, in, out, in. I stared at it. “life is butiful.” I thought, Perhaps it is. Perhaps that is the word for life. I heard Bruno breathing on the other side of the door. I found a pencil. I scrawled, “and a joke forever.”I pushed it back under the door. A pause while he read it. Then, satisfied, he made his way up the stairs.

It’s possible I cried. What’s the difference.

Then I picked up the newspaper, cut out the photograph of Isaac, and put it in my wallet, in the plastic part made for a photo. I opened and closed the Velcro a few times to look at his face. Then I noticed that, underneath where I had cut out the picture, the paper said, “A memorial service will be held tomorrow at 10 a.m. at Central Synagogue.”



I took out the wrinkled schmatte I call a suit. I sat at the kitchen table and made a single rip in the collar. I would have liked to shred the whole thing. But. I restrained myself. Fishl the tzaddik who might have been an idiot once said, A single rip is harder to bear than a hundred rips. I bathed myself. I dressed, and brought the vodka down off the shelf. I took a drink, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, repeating the gesture that had been made a hundred times by my father and his father and his father’s father, eyes half closed as the sharpness of alcohol replaced the sharpness of grief.

I woke up on the floor to the sound of pigeons ruffling their feathers on the windowsill. When I looked at the clock, it was already quarter past ten. I like to think that the world wasn’t ready for me, but maybe the truth is that I wasn’t ready for the world. I’ve always arrived too late for my life. I ran to the bus stop. I use “ran” as a shorthand for hobbled, did a little skip, scampered, stopped and panted, then hobbled again. Like so, I made my way. I caught the bus uptown. I use “caught” here equally metaphorically, because the bus was moving at a snail’s pace and you can’t catch something that lacks all momentum. We sat in traffic. “Doesn’t this thing go any faster?” I said loudly. The woman next to me got up and moved to another seat.

By the time I got to the shul the service was already over, but the place was still crowded with people. A man in a yellow bow tie and a white suit, what was left of his hair lacquered across his scalp, said, “Of course we knew, but when it finally happened none of us were ready,” to which a woman standing next to him replied, “Who can be ready?” I stood alone by a large potted plant. My palms were damp. I felt myself getting dizzy. Perhaps it had been a mistake to come.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Bernard, Isaac’s half brother. A huge oaf, the spitting image of his father, may his memory be a blessing—yes, even his. He’s been in the ground three years. I consider it a small victory that he kicked the bucket before me. And yet. When I remember, I light a yahrzeit candle for him. If not me, who? She died two years earlier. I saw her one more time, at the very end. There was a nurse at the hospital, a young girl, and I told her . . . not the truth but a story not unlike the truth. This nurse let me come in one night after hours, when there was no chance of my running into anyone. She was hooked to life support, tubes up her nose, one foot in the other world. She was tiny and wrinkled and deaf as a doorknob. And yet. I told her jokes. I was a regular Jackie Mason. I tried to keep things light. I said, “Would you believe, this thing here where your arm bends, this they call an elbow.” Many things I did not say. Example. “I waited so long.” Other example. “And were you happy? With that nebbish, that clod, that numbskull, that schlemiel you call a husband?” The truth was I’d given up waiting long before. The moment had passed; the door between the lives we could have led and the lives we came to call our own had shut.

“Are you all right? You’re looking pale.” It was the man in the yellow bow tie.

I tried to steady myself against the potted plant. “Fine, fine,” I said.

“How did you know him?” he asked suspiciously.

“We were . . . related,” I said.

“Family! So sorry, forgive me. I thought I’d met all the mishpocheh!” The way he pronounced it was “mishpoky.” “Of course, I should have guessed.” He looked me up and down, running a palm over his hair to make sure that it was securely positioned. “I was his editor,” he said. “I thought you were one of the fans.” He gestured toward the thinning crowd. “Which side, then?”

A wave of nausea came over me, and I tried to focus on the man’s bow tie while the room around me swayed. “Both,” I said.

“Both,” he repeated, incredulous.

A moment later, I was standing face to face with Bernard. “Look what I rustled up,” the man with the bow tie said. “Says he’s mishpoky.”

Bernard smiled politely as he eyed the rip in my collar. “Forgive me,” he said. “I don’t remember you. Have we met?”

I glanced at the sign marked “Exit.” I opened my mouth. And yet.

“Did you know Isaac?” my son’s brother persisted. The man in the bow tie was hanging on every word. I found it difficult to breathe.

Bernard waited. “Well,” he said finally. “Thank you for coming. It’s been moving to see how many people have come out. Isaac would have been pleased.” He took my hand between his and shook it. He turned to go.

“S.,” I said. I hadn’t planned on it.

Bernard turned back. “Pardon?”

“I come from S.,” I said.

“You come from S.?” he repeated.

I nodded.

Something broke on his face. “She used to tell us about it,” he said.

“Who’s she?” the man with the bow tie demanded.

“My mother. He comes from the same village as my mother,” Bernard said. “So many stories. When we were kids. About the river where she swam.”

I nodded. The water was freezing. We would undress and jump off the footbridge screaming. Our hearts would stop. For a moment, we felt as if we were drowning. When we scrambled back onto the bank, gasping for air, our legs were heavy, pain shooting up the ankles. Your mother was tall and skinny, with small, pale breasts. I would fall asleep drying in the sun, and wake to the shock of ice-cold water on my back. And her laughter.

“Her father’s shoe shop,” Bernard said. “She told us all about it. The bakery she used to pass on the way to school, with the smell of fresh bread.”

Except for the three weeks when we weren’t speaking to each other, hardly a day passed that we didn’t walk to school together. In the cold her wet hair would freeze into icicles. In the spring I used to pick a daisy and she would put it behind her ear.

“The little pond she skated on in the winter. The wild blackberries behind her father’s shed. The field where she used to play.”

“Yes,” I said. “The field.”



Fifteen minutes later, I was sandwiched between Isaac’s editor and a young woman in the back of a stretch limousine. You would think I was making a habit of it. We were going to Bernard’s house for a small gathering of family and friends. Bernard lived somewhere on Long Island, in a house surrounded by trees. I’d never seen such beautiful trees, great canopies of shadow and light.

Inside the house, people stood around a table piled with bagels, lox, and whitefish and talked about Isaac. I knew I didn’t belong there. I felt like a fool and an impostor. I stood by the window, making myself invisible. I hadn’t thought it would be so painful. To hear people talk about the son I could only imagine as if he were as familiar to them as a garden potato was almost too much to bear. So I slipped away and wandered through the rooms of the house. I thought, My son walked on this carpet. I came to a guest bedroom. I thought, From time to time, he slept in this bed. This very bed! His head on these pillows. I lay down—I was tired, I couldn’t help myself. The pillow sank under my cheek. And as he lay here, I thought, he looked out this very window, at that very tree.

“You’re such a dreamer,” Bruno says, and maybe I am. Maybe I was also dreaming this. In a moment the doorbell would ring, I’d open my eyes, and Bruno would be standing there asking if I had a roll of toilet paper.

I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew Bernard was standing above me.

“Sorry! I didn’t realize anyone was in here. Are you sick?”

I sprang up. If the word “spring” can be used in reference to my movements at all, this was the moment. And that’s when I saw it. It was on a shelf right behind his shoulder. In a silver picture frame.

Bernard turned. “Oh, that,” he said, taking it down off the shelf. “This is my mother when she was a girl. Did you know her then?”

Let’s stand under a tree, she said. Why? Because it’s nicer. Maybe you should sit on a chair, and I’ll stand above you, like they always do with husbands and wives. That’s stupid. Why? Because we’re not married. Should we hold hands? We can’t. Why not? Because people will know. Know what? About us. So what if they know? It’s better when it’s a secret. Why? So no one can take it from us.

“I found it in her things after she died,” Bernard said. “It’s a beautiful photograph, isn’t it? She didn’t have much from over there. A couple of photos of her parents and her sisters, that’s all. Of course, she had no idea she would never see them again, so she didn’t bring much. But I never saw this one. Don’t know who he is. Friend of hers, I guess. It was in an envelope with some papers in Yiddish.”

If I had a camera, I said, I’d take a picture of you every day. That way I’d remember how you looked every single day of your life. I look the same. No, you don’t. You’re changing all the time. Every day a tiny bit. If I could, I’d keep a record of it all. If you’re so smart, how did I change today? You got a fraction of a millimeter taller, for one thing. Your hair grew a fraction of a millimeter longer. And your breasts grew a fraction of a— They did not! Yes, they did. What else, you big pig? You got a little happier and also a little sadder. How do you know? Think about it. Have you ever been happier than right now? I guess not. And have you ever been sadder than right now? No. It isn’t like that for everyone. Some people just get happier and happier. And some people, like Beyla Asch, get sadder and sadder. What about you? Are you the happiest and saddest right now that you’ve ever been? Of course I am. Why? Because nothing makes me happier and nothing makes me sadder than you.

We stood together looking at the photograph. Bernard patted my back. “I’d love to stay here reminiscing,” he said, “but I really should go. All those people out there.” He gestured. “Let me know if you need anything.” He closed the door behind him, and then, God help me, I took the photograph and shoved it in my pants. Down the stairs I went, and out the door. In the driveway, I knocked on the window of one of the limousines. The driver roused himself from sleep.

“I’m ready to go back now,” I said.

To my surprise, he got out, opened the door, and helped me in.



When I got home, I thought I’d been robbed. The furniture was overturned, and the floor was dusted with white powder. I grabbed the baseball bat I keep in the umbrella stand and followed the trail of footsteps to the kitchen. Every surface was covered with pots and pans and dirty bowls. It seemed that whoever had broken in to rob me had taken his time and made himself a meal. On the kitchen table, next to my typewriter, was a large cake, sunk in the middle. Standing, nonetheless. It was frosted with yellow icing, and across the top, in sloppy pink letters, it read “look who baked a cake.” On the other side of my typewriter was a note: “waited all day.”

I couldn’t help it, I smiled. I put the baseball bat away, picked up the pots and pans, took out the picture, breathed on the glass, rubbed it with my shirt, and set it down on my night table. It had been a long time since anyone had given me a gift. A feeling of happiness nudged my heart. That I could wake up each morning and warm my hands on a hot cup of tea. That I could watch the pigeons fly. That at the end of my life Bruno had not forgotten me.

http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fiction/040209fi_fiction