Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(72)
When it was time for me to move, I lingered at this threshold. The doorframe was the only thing I couldn’t let go of. Forget the Papa Bear Chair and forget its ottoman. Forget the candlesticks and lamps. Forget Blind Botanist, the drawing we bought together, attributed to one of my heroes, Ben Shahn, lacking any provenance. Forget the moody orchid. While Julia was out one afternoon, I jimmied the doorframe loose from the wall with the aid of a flathead screwdriver, slid it down the length of the Subaru (one end against the glass of the hatchback, the other touching the windshield), and drove the record of my children’s growth to a new house. Two weeks later, a house-painter painted over it. I redid the lines to the best of my sorry memory.
—and most ambitiously (or neurotically, or pathetically): the notes to the actors, striving to convey what the scripts on their own could not, because more words were needed: HOW TO PLAY LATE LAUGHTER; HOW TO PLAY “WHAT IS YOUR NAME?”; HOW TO PLAY SUICIDE GROWTH RINGS…Each episode was only twenty-seven pages, give or take. Each season only ten episodes. There was room for a little background, a few flashbacks and tangents and clumsy insertions of information that didn’t drive the plot but filled out the motivation. So many more words were needed: HOW TO PLAY THE NEED FOR DISSATISFACTION; HOW TO PLAY LOVE; HOW TO PLAY THE DEATH OF LANGUAGE…The notes were Jewish-motherly in their irrepressibly naggy didacticism, Jewish-fatherly in their need to obscure every emotion in metaphor and deflection. HOW TO PLAY AMERICAN; HOW TO PLAY THE GOOD BOY; HOW TO PLAY THE SOUND OF TIME…The bible quickly surpassed the scripts themselves in length and depth—the explanatory material overwhelmed what it attempted to explain. So Jewish. Jacob wanted to make something that would redeem everything, and instead he was explaining, explaining, explaining…
HOW TO PLAY THE SOUND OF TIME
The morning Julia found the phone, my parents were over for brunch. Everything was falling apart around Benjy, although I’ll never know what he knew at the time, and neither will he. The adults were talking when he reentered the kitchen and said, “The sound of time. What happened to it?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know,” he said, waving his tiny hand about, “the sound of time.”
It took time—about five frustrating minutes—to figure out what he was getting at. Our refrigerator was being repaired, so the kitchen lacked its omnipresent, nearly imperceptible buzzing sound. He spent virtually all his home life within reach of that sound, and so had come to associate it with life happening.
I loved his misunderstanding, because it wasn’t a misunderstanding.
My grandfather heard the cries of his dead brothers. That was the sound of his time.
My father heard attacks.
Julia heard the boys’ voices.
I heard silences.
Sam heard betrayals and the sounds of Apple products turning on.
Max heard Argus’s whining.
Benjy was the only one still young enough to hear home.
Irv lowered all four windows and told Jacob, “You lack strength.”
“And you lack intelligence. Together we make a fully incomplete person.”
“Seriously, Jacob. What is the ravenous need for love?”
“Seriously, Dad. What is the ravenous need for that diagnosis?”
“I’m not diagnosing you. I’m explaining yourself to you.”
“And you don’t need love?”
“As a grandfather, yes. As a father and son, yes. As a Jew? No. So some fifth-tier British university won’t let us participate in their ridiculous conference on recent advances in marine biology? Who cares? Stephen Hawking won’t come to Israel? I’m not one to punch a quadriplegic with glasses, but I’m sure he won’t mind if we ask for his voice back—you know, the one that was created by Israeli engineers. And while we’re at it, I’ll happily lose my seat at the United-Against-Israel Nations if it means I can keep my ass. Jews have become the smartest weakest people in the history of the world. Look, I’m not always right. I realize that. But I’m always strong. And if our history has taught us anything, it’s that it’s more important to be strong than right. Or good, for that matter. I would rather be alive and wrong and evil. I don’t need Bishop Wears-a-Tutu, or that hydrocephalic peanut farmer president, or the backseat-driving pseudo-sociologist eunichs from the New York Times op-ed page, or anyone, to give me their blessing. I don’t need to be a Light unto the Nations; I need to not be on fire. Life is long when you’re alive, and history has a short memory. America had its way with the Indians. Australia and Germany and Spain…They did what had to be done. And what was the big deal? Their history books have a few regrettable pages? They have to issue weak-tea apologies once a year and pay out some reparations to the unfinished parts of the job? They did what had to be done, and life went on.”
“What are you saying?”
“Nothing. I’m just saying.”
“What? That Israel should commit genocide?”
“That word is yours.”
“It’s what you meant.”
“I said, and meant, that Israel should be a self-respecting, self-defending country like any other.”
“Like Nazi Germany.”
“Like Germany. Like Iceland. Like America. Like every country that’s ever existed and not stopped existing.”