The History of Love
by Nicole Krauss
THE LAST WORDS ON EARTH
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. The place isn't big. I have to
struggle
to keep a path clear between bed and toilet, toilet and kitchen
table,
kitchen table and front door. If I want to get from the toilet
to the front
door, impossible, 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 take-out. I
order in four
nights out of seven. Whenever he comes I make a big production
of finding
my wallet. He stands in 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. Sometimes when I'm out,
I'll buy
a juice even though I'm not thirsty. If the store is crowded
I'll even go so
far as dropping my change all over the floor, the nickels and
dimes skidding
in every direction. I'll get down on my knees. It's a big effort
for me
to get down on my knees, and an even bigger effort to get up.
And yet.
Maybe I look like a fool. 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 over 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. He'll look at me long
and hard.
Size 9, I'll
repeat 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 pants 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/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
and thought I was signing up for a drawing class in order to see
nude
girls. He didn't want to be corrected.
They show their boobs?
he asked. I
shrugged. And
down there?
After Mrs. Freid on the fourth floor died, and it took three
days
before anyone found 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 the 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 there 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.
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 had been a
shoemaker I
would have become a shoemaker; if he had shoveled shit I, too,
would
have shoveled. 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 sent his wife half the profits, even
after she got
married to a doctor and moved to Bay Side. I stayed in the
business for
over fifty years. It's not what I would have imagined for
myself. And yet.
The truth is I came to like it. I helped those in who were
locked out, others
I helped keep out what couldn'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. The afternoon passed, 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 percent of my heart muscle died. It took time to
recover
and I never went back to work. A year went by. I was aware of
time passing
for the sake of itself. I stared out the window. I watched fall
turn into
winter. Winter into spring. Some days Bruno came downstairs to
sit with
me. We've known each other since we were boys; we went to school
together. He was one of my closest friends, with thick glasses,
reddish
hair that he hated, and a voice that cracked when he was
emotional. I didn't
know he was still alive and then one day I was walking down East
Broadway
and I heard his voice. I turned around. His back was to me, he
was
standing in front of the grocer's asking for 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. 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. He
was
about to pass me, I put my arm out. I didn't know what I was
doing,
maybe I was seeing things, I grabbed his sleeve.
Bruno,
I said. He stopped
and turned. At first he seemed scared and then confused.
Bruno.
He
looked at me, his eyes began to fill with tears. I grabbed his
other hand,
I had one sleeve and one hand.
Bruno.
He started to shake. He touched
his hand to my cheek. We were in the middle of the sidewalk,
people were
hurrying past, it was a warm day in June. His hair was thin and
white. He
dropped the fruit.
Bruno.
A couple of years later his wife died. It was too much to live
in the
apartment without her, everything reminded him, so when an
apartment
opened up in the floor above me he moved in. We often sit
together at
my kitchen table. The whole afternoon might 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—we couldn't use them in the same way and
so we chose not to use them at all. Life demanded a new
language.
Bruno, my old faithful. I haven't sufficiently described him. Is
it
enough to say he is indescribable? No. Better to try and fail
than not to
try at all. The soft down of your white hair lightly playing
about your
scalp like a half-blown dandelion. Many times, Bruno, I have
been tempted
to blow on your head and make a wish. Only a last scrap of
decorum
keeps me from it. Or perhaps I should begin with your height,
which is
very short. On a good day you barely reach my chest. Or shall I
start with
the eyeglasses you fished out of a box and claimed as your own,
enormous
round things that magnify your eyes so that your permanent
response
appears to be a 4.5 on the Richter? They're women's glasses,
Bruno! I've
never had the heart to tell you. Many times I've tried. And
something
else. When we were boys you were the greater writer. I had too
much
pride to tell you then. But. I knew. Believe me when I say, I
knew it then
as I know it now. It pains me to think how I never told you, and
also to
think of all you could have been. Forgive me, Bruno. My oldest
friend.
My best. I haven't done you justice. You have given me such
company at
the end of my life. You, especially you, who might have found
the words
for it all.
Once, it was a long time ago, I found Bruno lying in the middle
of
the living room floor next to an empty bottle of pills. He'd had
enough.
All he wanted was to sleep forever. Taped to his chest was a
note with
three words:
GOODBYE, MY LOVES. I shouted
out. NO, BRUNO, NO, NO,
NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!
I slapped his face. At last his eyes
fluttered open. His
gaze was blank and dull.
WAKE UP, YOU DUMKOP!
I shouted.
LISTEN TO
ME NOW: YOU HAVE TO WAKE UP!
His eyes drifted closed again. I dialed
911. I filled a bowl with cold water and threw it on him. I put
my ear to
his heart. Far off, a vague rustle. The ambulance came. At the
hospital
they pumped his stomach.
Why did you take all those pills?
the doctor asked.
Bruno, sick, exhausted, coolly raised his eyes.
WHY DO YOU THINK I
TOOK ALL THOSE PILLS?
he shrieked. The recovery room turned
silent;
everyone stared. Bruno groaned and turned toward the wall. That
night
I put him to bed.
Bruno,
I said.
So sorry,
he said.
So selfish.
I sighed and
turned to go.
Stay with me! he cried.
We never spoke of it after that. Just as we never spoke of our
childhoods,
of the dreams we shared and lost, of everything that happened
and
didn't happen. Once we were sitting silently together. Suddenly
one of us
began to laugh. It was contagious. There was no reason for our
laughter,
but we began to giggle and the next thing we were rocking in our
seats
and howling,
howling with laughter, tears
streaming down our cheeks. A
wet spot bloomed in my crotch and that made us laugh harder, I
was
banging the table and fighting for air, I thought: Maybe this is
how I'll
go, in a fit of laughter, what could be better, laughing and
crying, laughing
and singing, laughing so as not to forget that I am alone, that
it is the
end of my life, that death is waiting outside the door for me.
When I was a boy I liked to write. It was the only thing I
wanted to
do with my life. I invented imaginary people and filled
notebooks with
their stories. I wrote about a boy who grew up and got so hairy
people
hunted him for his fur. He had to hide in the trees, and he fell
in love
with a bird who thought she was a three-hundred-pound gorilla. I
wrote
about Siamese twins, one of which was in love with me. I thought
the sex
scenes were purely original. And yet. When I got older I decided
I
wanted to be a real writer. I tried to write about real things.
I wanted to
describe the world, 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.
From The History of Love by Nicole Krauss. Copyright Nicole Krauss 2005. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of the WW.Norton. No part of this book maybe reproduced without written permission from the publisher.
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