I told her to write whatever she wanted to write.
You want a letter from me? she asked.
I told her yes.
Oh, God bless you, she said.
The letter she gave me was sixty-seven pages long. It was the story of her life. She made my request into her own. Listen to me.
I learned so much. She sang in her youth. She had been to America as a girl. I never knew that. She had fallen in love so many times that she began to suspect she was not falling in love at all, but doing something much more ordinary. I learned that she never learned to swim, and for that reason she always loved rivers and lakes. She asked her father, my great-grandfather, your great-great-great-grandfather, to buy her a dove. Instead he bought her a silk scarf. So she thought of the scarf as a dove. She even convinced herself that it contained flight, but did not fly, because it did not want to show anyone what it really was.
That was how much she loved her father.
The letter was destroyed, but its final paragraph is inside of me.
She wrote, I wish I could be a girl again, with the chance to live my life again. I have suffered so much more than I needed to. And the joys I have felt have not always been joyous. I could have lived differently. When I was your age, my grandfather bought me a ruby bracelet. It was too big for me and would slide up and down my arm. It was almost a necklace. He later told me that he had asked the jeweler to make it that way. Its size was supposed to be a symbol of his love. More rubies, more love. But I could not wear it comfortably. I could not wear it at all. So here is the point of everything I have been trying to say. If I were to give a bracelet to you, now, I would measure your wrist twice.
With love,
Your grandmother
I had a letter from everyone I knew. I laid them out on my bedroom floor, and organized them by what they shared. One hundred letters. I was always moving them around, trying to make connections. I wanted to understand.
Seven years later, a childhood friend reappeared at the moment I most needed him. I had been in America for only two months. An agency was supporting me, but soon I would have to support myself. I did not know how to support myself. I read newspapers and magazines all day long. I wanted to learn idioms. I wanted to become a real American. Chew the fat. Blow off some steam. Close but no cigar. Rings a bell. I must have sounded ridiculous. I only wanted to be natural. I gave up on that.
I had not seen him since I lost everything. I had not thought of him. He and my older sister, Anna, were friends. I came upon them kissing one afternoon in the field behind the shed behind our house. It made me so excited. I felt as if I were kissing someone. I had never kissed anyone. I was more excited than if it had been me. Our house was small. Anna and I shared a bed. That night I told her what I had seen. She made me promise never to speak a word about it. I promised her.
She said, Why should I believe you?
I wanted to tell her, Because what I saw would no longer be mine if I talked about it. I said, Because I am your sister.
Thank you.
Can I watch you kiss?
Can you watch us kiss?
You could tell me where you are going to kiss, and I could hide and watch.
She laughed enough to migrate an entire flock of birds. That was how she said yes.
Sometimes it was in the field behind the shed behind our house.
Sometimes it was behind the brick wall in the schoolyard. It was always behind something.
I wondered if she told him. I wondered if she could feel me watching them, if that made it more exciting for her.
Why did I ask to watch? Why did she agree?
I had gone to him when I was trying to learn more about the forced laborer. I had gone to everyone.
To Anna’s sweet little sister,
Here is the letter you asked for. I am almost two meters in height. My eyes are brown. I have been told that my hands are big. I want to be a sculptor, and I want to marry your sister. Those are my only dreams. I could write more, but that is all that matters.
Your friend,
Thomas
I walked into a bakery seven years later and there he was. He had dogs at his feet and a bird in a cage beside him. The seven years were not seven years. They were not seven hundred years. Their length could not be measured in years, just as an ocean could not explain the distance we had traveled, just as the dead can never be counted. I wanted to run away from him, and I wanted to go right up next to him.
I went right up next to him.
Are you Thomas? I asked.
He shook his head no.
You are, I said. I know you are.
He shook his head no.
From Dresden.
He opened his right hand, which had NO tattooed on it.
I remember you. I used to watch you kiss my sister.
He took out a little book and wrote, I don’t speak. I’m sorry.
That made me cry. He wiped away my tears. But he did not admit to being who he was. He never did.
We spent the afternoon together. The whole time I wanted to touch him. I felt so deeply for this person that I had not seen in so long. Seven years before, he had been a giant, and now he seemed small. I wanted to give him the money that the agency had given me. I did not need to tell him my story, but I needed to listen to his. I wanted to protect him, which I was sure I could do, even if I could not protect myself.
I asked, Did you become a sculptor, like you dreamed?
He showed me his right hand and there was silence.
We had everything to say to each other, but no ways to say it.
He wrote, Are you OK?
I told him, My eyes are crummy.
He wrote, But are you OK?
I told him, That’s a very complicated question.
He wrote, That’s a very simple answer.
I asked, Are you OK?
He wrote, Some mornings I wake up feeling grateful.
We talked for hours, but we just kept repeating those same things over and over.
Our cups emptied.
The day emptied.
I was more alone than if I had been alone. We were about to go in different directions. We did not know how to do anything else.
It’s getting late, I said.
He showed me his left hand, which had YES tattooed on it.
I said, I should probably go home.
He flipped back through his book and pointed at, Are you OK?
I nodded yes.
I started to walk off. I was going to walk to the Hudson River and keep walking. I would carry the biggest stone I could bear and let my lungs fill with water.
But then I heard him clapping his hands behind me.
I turned around and he motioned for me to come to him.
I wanted to run away from him, and I wanted to go to him.
I went to him.
He asked if I would pose for him. He wrote his question in German, and it wasn’t until then that I realized he had been writing in English all afternoon, and that I had been speaking English. Yes, I said in German. Yes. We made arrangements for the next day.
His apartment was like a zoo. There were animals everywhere. Dogs and cats. A dozen birdcages. Fish tanks. Glass boxes with snakes and lizards and insects. Mice in cages, so the cats wouldn’t get them. Like Noah’s ark. But he kept one corner clean and bright.
He said he was saving the space.
For what?
For sculptures.
I wanted to know from what, or from whom, but I did not ask.
He led me by the hand. We talked for half an hour about what he wanted to make. I told him I would do whatever he needed.
We drank coffee.
He wrote that he had not made a sculpture in America.
Why not?
I haven’t been able to.
Why not?
We never talked about the past.
He opened the flue, although I didn’t know why.
Birds sang in the other roo
m.
I took off my clothes.
I went onto the couch.
He stared at me. It was the first time I had ever been naked in front of a man. I wondered if he knew that.
He came over and moved my body like I was a doll. He put my hands behind my head. He bent my right leg a little. I assumed his hands were so rough from all of the sculptures he used to make. He lowered my chin. He turned my palms up. His attention filled the hole in the middle of me.
I went back the next day. And the next day. I stopped looking for a job. All that mattered was him looking at me. I was prepared to fall apart if it came to that.
Each time it was the same.
He would talk about what he wanted to make.
I would tell him I would do whatever he needed.
We would drink coffee.
We would never talk about the past.
He would open the flue.
The birds would sing in the other room.
I would undress.
He would position me.
He would sculpt me.
Sometimes I would think about those hundred letters laid across my bedroom floor. If I hadn’t collected them, would our house have burned less brightly?
I looked at the sculpture after every session. He went to feed the animals. He let me be alone with it, although I never asked him for privacy. He understood.
After only a few sessions it became clear that he was sculpting Anna. He was trying to remake the girl he knew seven years before. He looked at me as he sculpted, but he saw her.
The positioning took longer and longer. He touched more of me. He moved me around more. He spent ten full minutes bending and unbending my knee. He closed and unclosed my hands.
I hope this doesn’t embarrass you, he wrote in German in his little book.
No, I said in German. No.
He folded one of my arms. He straightened one of my arms. The next week he touched my hair for what might have been five or fifty minutes.
He wrote, I am looking for an acceptable compromise.
I wanted to know how he lived through that night.
He touched my breasts, easing them apart.
I think this will be good, he wrote.
I wanted to know what will be good. How will it be good?
He touched me all over. I can tell you these things because I am not ashamed of them, because I learned from them. And I trust you to understand me. You are the only one I trust, Oskar.
The positioning was the sculpting. He was sculpting me. He was trying to make me so he could fall in love with me.
He spread my legs. His palms pressed gently at the insides of my thighs. My thighs pressed back. His palms pressed out.
Birds were singing in the other room.
We were looking for an acceptable compromise.
The next week he held the backs of my legs, and the next week he was behind me. It was the first time I had ever made love. I wondered if he knew that. It felt like crying. I wondered, Why does anyone ever make love?
I looked at the unfinished sculpture of my sister, and the unfinished girl looked back at me.
Why does anyone ever make love?
We walked together to the bakery where we first met.
Together and separately.
We sat at a table. On the same side, facing the windows.
I did not need to know if he could love me.
I needed to know if he could need me.
I flipped to the next blank page of his little book and wrote, Please marry me.
He looked at his hands.
YES and NO.
Why does anyone ever make love?
He took his pen and wrote on the next and last page, No children.
That was our first rule.
I understand, I told him in English.
We never used German again.
The next day, your grandfather and I were married.
The Only Animal
I read the first chapter of A Brief History of Time when Dad was still alive, and I got incredibly heavy boots about how relatively insignificant life is, and how, compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn’t even matter if I existed at all. When Dad was tucking me in that night and we were talking about the book, I asked if he could think of a solution to that problem. “Which problem?” “The problem of how relatively insignificant we are.” He said, “Well, what would happen if a plane dropped you in the middle of the Sahara Desert and you picked up a single grain of sand with tweezers and moved it one millimeter?” I said, “I’d probably die of dehydration.” He said, “I just mean right then, when you moved that single grain of sand. What would that mean?” I said, “I dunno, what?” He said, “Think about it.” I thought about it. “I guess I would have moved a grain of sand.” “Which would mean?” “Which would mean I moved a grain of sand?” “Which would mean you changed the Sahara.” “So?” “So? So the Sahara is a vast desert. And it has existed for millions of years. And you changed it!” “That’s true!” I said, sitting up. “I changed the Sahara!” “Which means?” he said. “What? Tell me.” “Well, I’m not talking about painting the Mona Lisa or curing cancer. I’m just talking about moving that one grain of sand one millimeter.” “Yeah?” “If you hadn’t done it, human history would have been one way…” “Uh-huh?” “But you did do it, so… ?” I stood on the bed, pointed my fingers at the fake stars, and screamed: “I changed the course of human history!” “That’s right.” “I changed the universe!” “You did.” “I’m God!” “You’re an atheist.” “I don’t exist!” I fell back onto the bed, into his arms, and we cracked up together.
That was kind of how I felt when I decided that I would meet every person in New York with the last name Black. Even if it was relatively insignificant, it was something, and I needed to do something, like sharks, who die if they don’t swim, which I know about.
Anyway.
I decided that I would go through the names alphabetically, from Aaron to Zyna, even though it would have been a more efficient method to do it by geographical zones. Another thing I decided was that I would be as secretive about my mission as I could at home, and as honest about it as I could outside home, because that’s what was necessary. So if Mom asked me, “Where are you going and when will you be back?” I would tell her, “Out, later.” But if one of the Blacks wanted to know something, I would tell everything. My other rules were that I wouldn’t be sexist again, or racist, or ageist, or homophobic, or overly wimpy, or discriminatory to handicapped people or mental retards, and also that I wouldn’t lie unless I absolutely had to, which I did a lot. I put together a special field kit with some of the things I was going to need, like a Magnum flashlight, ChapStick, some Fig Newtons, plastic bags for important evidence and litter, my cell phone, the script for Hamlet (so I could memorize my stage directions while I was going from one place to another, because I didn’t have any lines to memorize), a topographical map of New York, iodine pills in case of a dirty bomb, my white gloves, obviously, a couple of boxes of Juicy Juice, a magnifying glass, my Larousse Pocket Dictionary, and a bunch of other useful stuff. I was ready to go.
On my way out, Stan said, “What a day!” I said, “Yeah.” He asked, “What’s on the menu?” I showed him the key. He said, “Lox?” I said, “Hilarious, but I don’t eat anything with parents.” He shook his head and said, “I couldn’t help myself. So what’s on the menu?” “Queens and Greenwich Village.” “You mean Gren-ich Village?” That was my first disappointment of the expedition, because I thought it was pronounced phonetically, which would have been a fascinating clue. “Anyway.”
It took me three hours and forty-one minutes to walk to Aaron Black, because public transportation makes me panicky, even though walking over bridges also makes me panicky. Dad used to say that sometimes you have to put your fears in order, and that was one of those times. I walked across Amsterdam Avenue, and Columbus Avenue, and Central Park, and Fifth Avenue, and Madison Avenue, and Park Avenue,
and Lexington Avenue, and Third Avenue, and Second Avenue. When I was exactly halfway across the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, I thought about how a millimeter behind me was Manhattan and a millimeter in front of me was Queens. So what’s the name of the parts of New York—exactly halfway through the Midtown Tunnel, exactly halfway over the Brooklyn Bridge, the exact middle of the Staten Island Ferry when it’s exactly halfway between Manhattan and Staten Island— that aren’t in any borough?
I took a step forward, and it was my first time in Queens.
I walked through Long Island City, Woodside, Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights. I shook my tambourine the whole time, because it helped me remember that even though I was going through different neighborhoods, I was still me. When I finally got to the building, I couldn’t figure out where the doorman was. At first I thought maybe he was just getting some coffee, but I waited around for a few minutes and he didn’t come. I looked through the door and saw that there was no desk for him. I thought, Weird.
I tried my key in the lock, but it didn’t go in past the tip. I saw a device with a button for each apartment, so I pressed the button for A. Black’s apartment, which was 9E. No one answered. I pressed it again. Nothing. I held down the buzzer for fifteen seconds. Still nothing. I sat down on the ground and wondered if it would be overly wimpy to cry in the lobby of an apartment building in Corona.
“All right, all right,” a voice said from the speaker. “Take it easy.” I jumped up. “Hello,” I said, “my name is Oskar Schell.” “What do you want?” His voice sounded mad, but I hadn’t done anything wrong. “Did you know Thomas Schell?” “No.” “Are you sure?” “Yes.” “Do you know anything about a key?” “What do you want?” “I didn’t do anything wrong.” “What do you want?” “I found a key,” I said, “and it was in an envelope with your name on it.” “Aaron Black?” “No, just Black.” “It’s a common name.” “I know.” “And a color.” “Obviously.” “Goodbye,” the voice said. “But I’m just trying to find out about this key.” “Goodbye.” “But—” “Goodbye.” Disappointment #2.