Found Life, by Linor Goralik (She Said, He Said)

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For Ira — . . . these aren’t just any old ruins, let me tell you. This is a German airfield, they were flying out of here to defend the city during those very last few days, the hopeless ones. This here is a bomber hangar. And over there, that was the barracks, there’s some stuff written on the walls there. See these concrete slabs, they go all the way down to the water—they’re all broken now, of course, but back then the German “amphibians” would drive out of the hangar on them. Come on, I’ll take you up to the roof, the stairs are fine, there’s just no railing. But the roof holds, just don’t step in any of the holes, otherwise the roof is totally solid. Every year on the twenty-third of February I come out here with this one band I know and we dance barefoot. ɷɸɷ

For S.K. — . . . by the way, last time your phone didn’t turn off and I sat there for five minutes listening to you walking through the snow. Clop, clop, clop. I almost started crying. ɷɸɷ

For Nelly — . . . Ira couldn’t stop sneezing, it was just awful. She was like: “Mama, you’ve lost it, this stuff has probably been in this cupboard

She Said, He Said

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for twenty-five years, it’s practically dust now! It’s not even red anymore, just some kind of sky-blue pink, you can’t even tell whether it’s crepe-de-chine or some old sack! Let’s toss it!” But there’s a lot left! Back then Lena and I sewed so much out of that piece, we sewed and sewed, and, you know, we would walk back and forth, back and forth in front of Dom Knigi, and everyone would look at us. ɷɸɷ

— . . . a little dog running along, very dirty, but with these little pink see-through ears. And right then I thought: God, who knows, maybe I should have had that baby. ɷɸɷ

— . . . where are you all going, come on, don’t walk! Don’t you see the stoplight? It’s a red light and you’re crossing! There was a guy before who tried this. And where do you think you’re going, young man? Don’t cross! They all stopped, but you’re walking, and now the cars on that side are going! They’re going to start turning, and you’ll start walking and you’ll only make it halfway across! There was a guy before who walked on red. Come on, lady, where do you think you’re going? Those cars are about to turn left now, you’ve been waiting all this time, you just have to wait five more seconds! There was a guy before who tried going across and look how that ended! I told her, don’t marry him, he’s an idiot! But she says: “He’s not an idiot!” And I say: “No, he’s an idiot!” And she says: “No, he’s not!” But does anyone listen to me? You’re not listening either, well go ahead, go ahead, you’ll all see each other in hell!

ɷɸɷ

— . . . the worst nightmare of my life. Ever. I almost died. I was an observer, watching everything from the outside, which is obviously even scarier. It wasn’t a cartoon, but you know, a pretty abstract narrative. There was a little girl and boy cutting each other up with knives and eating each other. So fucking terrifying. And plus, that part was totally not abstract—there’s blood, it’s horribly painful, they’re screaming, and I can feel fucking everything. And they’re stuffing pieces into their mouths . . . I mean. And at some point the little girl tears one of the little boy’s eyes out and shoves it in her mouth. Blood, all that. And she can’t swallow it, she’s trying and she can’t, and that eye is rolling around inside her mouth.

Chriiist almighty! And I—I mean, he, but I was like his eye— with this eye of his he can finally see what’s inside her head. And her whole head, it turns out, is stuffed with these . . . like these little bits of paper, totally crammed full. And you know what’s on the bits of paper? “Wilhelmina von Düsseldorf,” “Frederique le Perrois-Roger,” “Jasmine Laclement” . . . And those are all the names she would have had if she were a countess and married to a prince. ɷɸɷ

— . . . because the Lord will make any wish come true, if your intentions are pure. Grandma taught me—you always have to wish good things for people, even if something is going on, no matter what. It works, for real. Like for instance when that bitch said I was pale ’cause I’m a junkie I decided: no, I’m not going to, you know. I’m just not going to. So what did I do? That evening I prayed real hard, I said: “Lord! Grant good health to all my friends and

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acquaintances!” And the next morning that bitch fell down the stairs and kicked the bucket for real. ɷɸɷ

— . . . at first I was ready to kill myself and be done with it, but then more and more time passed, and I figured out so much . . .

Now it seems wrong to even admit it, I know it’s wrong, but I’m telling you: I never really loved her. Don’t look at me like that, I’m drunk, let me talk. I didn’t love her, period. Because love—do you know what it means to love? My dad got hit by a car when I was six. He and my mother used to fight like you wouldn’t believe.

The things he would pull . . . He would throw us out and they would scream and he would make off with our stuff, you name it.

And lay into her sometimes . . . He would drive her to the point of . . . It was awful. So when they carried him in from the street, people standing around, all that—and Mama was screaming: “You finally croaked, asshole! You finally croaked, asshole!” And kicking him, kicking . . . But she’s soooobbing. Just sooobbing. And I understood everything, whatever you might think, I was six, but I understood already. And I’ve never had a love like that. Before all this . . . happened, I didn’t even realize. ɷɸɷ

For S.B. — . . . worse than family. Do you know, for instance, that there are Germans who decided to become Jews? They do the whole giyur wear kippah, the whole nine yards. It’s usually the ones whose grandpas really distinguished themselves. And everyone who knows about this oohs and ahs about how it’s such a complex and delicate

decision, a burden, a partisan-type heroism. But then I heard this one classic story. One of these Germans found out about the Holocaust when he was seventeen, blah blah, his grandpa was a real big shot, Nuremburg was made for guys like him, and so on and so forth. So this German at seventeen got in so deep that he completely stopped talking to his grandparents and basically dropped out of the family entirely, lived somewhere at the ends of the earth, studied the history of the Jewish people, then the Torah, then something else too, so basically he went through the whole giyur. Put on a kippah, got married, had kids. So then his rabbi tells him: move to Jerusalem. Like, acquiring roots, until you’ve moved there, the process can’t be complete. He had wanted to go for a while anyway, he was that deep into it. Took the kids, left, he was so crazy about all of it, wanted to see everything, I mean wanted to sniff every little clod of promised land. He begged his wife and she let him take a week off, so he rode off on his motorcycle, he went all over.

So basically, he rides out into the territories, he doesn’t know the area. And out there you have those young freedom-fighting types with stones. They’re closing in on him, closing in . . . And he realizes that his goose is cooked, ’cause it doesn’t matter how loud he yells, they’ll kill and bury him and sell his motorcycle for parts, no one’ll ever even find his body. He lifts up his visor and says: “I’m not a Jew, I’m a German.” They’re yelling at him, they don’t understand, one of them gets him with a stone in the leg. Then some kind of grownup comes out, seems to speak a little English. And our guy’s like: “I’m a German! German!” But he can’t take off his helmet, he’s got his kippah on. The other guy’s like: take off your helmet right now! And he says: “I can’t, what if one of your kids here throws a rock at my head?” And the guy smirks and says: “No, you’re a Jew. Only Jews are that cowardly.” And lets him go. So he rides off. Fucked up, right?

Wouldn’t want to be that guy. And you go saying there’s nothing worse than family. Ha. She Said, He Said

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ɷɸɷ

— . . . and everything’s so . . . unbearable. Because it all has to do with real people. So, we were at Fanailova’s reading, just sitting there, and then in the middle of everything some guy announces loudly, you know . . . “I’m going outside to smoke!” And the whole room was hissing at him: “Shhhhh! Quiiiieet!” But his wife was like: “Put on your coooat! Put on your cooooat!” ɷɸɷ

For Sasha Barash — . . . it seemed like a bad idea from the very beginning, but the package said: “remove the animal out and take further action at your discretion.” I hadn’t even thought about my discretion. Well, I’ll just let it go, for instance. If I was living by myself, I’d just live and let live, but when your kid’s a year old, and they’re running around, the food, etc. So we bought it. It’s like this box, inside it’s all sticky, like flypaper, that paper that catches flies, anti-fly paper—but thicker. I touched it. Lena said, “Don’t stick your finger in”—and I really did have a hard time unsticking it. Really strong stuff. And so put it out for the night, went to bed. I think Lena was sleeping, but I couldn’t sleep for some reason. I was thinking—there are apples in the kitchen, it’s hot, I should put the apples in the fridge or there’ll be kvetching in the morning. So I get up and even had forgotten about that thing, and then I hear this—“Eeeee! Eeeeee! Eeee!” And I stand there like in the movies, by the wall, my heart’s going boom-boom! and I’m afraid to turn the corner. Like who knows what might be there.

I’m standing there wet as a drowned rat. What is this, I’m thinking, I’m forty years old! I go in and there it is. It had this cardboard lid, I lift it and there it is, backed up against the side, one paw lifted and

three stuck to the floor. And everything inside is covered in fur and blood, and it’s all bloody too. I started screaming. Then Lena came running and I said: “I can’t pick it up,” and she picked it up, said: hold the bag. We put it into a garbage bag, a white bag, and I carried it out to the garbage bin. And you know how it is in Jerusalem? They keep the garbage bins in this special enclosure, behind a grate. It’s kept locked, so I’m carrying this garbage bag with my arm outstretched and it’s inside there and . . . It’s screeching. And then I dropped my keys. It stinks to high heaven. I start looking for them but I can’t put the bag down, I’m groping around on the ground with my right hand, and it really smells bad. And suddenly there are headlights on me and a megaphone voice says: “Sir! Don’t move.” I get up really slowly and it’s in there twitching! I move my hand away and they say: “Hands on your head!” Well, this is it, I think, what can I do.

I lift the bag over my head, and the mouse rips through it! And falls onto my neck, and then runs down my whole body! I screamed and jumped like you wouldn’t believe! And then behind me: bam-bambam! The cop had shot into the air. I kept standing there, she came up behind me and said: “What’s in the bag?” I said: “Nothing, nothing, just blood.” Well, and . . . What difference does it make how it all ended? The important thing is how it started, you know? Plus, that I dropped those keys . . . The next morning in the car Lena said to me: “By the way, pigeons have started building nests on the balcony, we have to do something about it.” You see what I mean? You can save that natural selection stuff for your students, I don’t need to hear it. ɷɸɷ

— . . . one of my patients, a cultured woman. I ask her, “You haven’t skipped any doses? You’re certain?” Of course not, she says, I’m completely certain. Then I ask her, “And you didn’t have any additional exposure?” She thinks for a while and then asks, “How is it She Said, He Said

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PRAISE FOR FOUND LIFE “Linor Goralik is a Renaissance woman of our own day, writing (and drawing!) in a wide range of genres, all with sharp intelligence. Her writing is fresh and thought-provoking, with both profound insight and deadpan humor. The numerous translators allow exploration of different aspects of Goralik’s voice, so that this selection of work offers the reader a wonderful variety and versatility. A beautiful and important book!”— S I B E L AN FO R R E S TE R, Swarthmore College “Linor Goralik has a perfect ear for the wander and wonder of ordinary speech, for the way the weirdness of human language conveys the weirdness of human experience. In turn hilarious and heart-rending, her fictions and poems bristle with epiphanies, with jolts of comprehension and, just as commonly, of vertiginous incomprehension. A literary descendant of Daniil Kharms, the conceptualists, and Chekhov, this transnational writer-ventriloquist describes a world of multiple realities, including that of the supernatural, but she is also painstakingly precise in her depictions of male and female behavior in post-Soviet space. The editors and translators are to be praised for, among many other things, finding the idiomatic and colloquial American English to convincingly express the alive Russian of the original.”— E U G E NE O S TAS HE VS KY, author of The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi Columbia University Press New York cup.columbia.edu Printed in the U.S.A. ISBN: 978-0-231-18350-5