Everything Is Illuminated

Safran, at the age of 10, is seduced by a widow and becomes a regular visitor to her house. In the end, he is paid to visit her and other widows by the Slouchers, who do not know that sex is part of these visits. Although Safran keeps a journal, he never writes about his affairs. The second woman he has sex with is also a widow, but a young one who was not yet married when her fiancée died and is a virgin. They only have sex once. The third woman he sleeps with is a Romani girl at the theater.

Alex writes Jonathan to tell him that Igor and his mother are doing well, but Grandfather cannot look him in the eye anymore. Alex discusses the events of their trip to Trachimbrod and Grandfather’s revelations in general terms. He knows he has to deal with something he has been avoiding, something about his grandfather pointing at Herschel in the photograph. In reference to Jonathan’s story, he wonders how Jonathan can write such terrible things about Safran. He questions Jonathan about being honest in his writing, asking how he can be brutally truthful about Safran while asking Alex to remove passages he wrote about Jonathan’s grandmother. Alex argues that Jonathan is making the story worse than it was. He theorizes that they could fix the story by having Alex’s grandfather save Jonathan’s grandfather.

Augustine is taking them to Trachimbrod but cannot ride in the car. She walks with the dog and they drive the car behind her for many hours. On a break, she asks them all if they have children. Alex asks if she has children and she replies that she has a baby girl. They follow her for hours over all kinds of terrain until it is almost too dark to see. Finally, they arrive, but there is no sign of a town, just a bare, empty field. Grandfather tells her to tell them what happened.

She says that when the Nazis came to Trachimbrod, they ordered the men to desecrate the Torah or they would kill their families. When they got to her father, he refused. They shot her mother and her sister. At this point in the story, Alex stops translating for Jonathan, who says he does not want to hear anymore, but he and Grandfather continue to listen. The Nazis continued to threaten her father, who again refused to desecrate the Torah. They shot her pregnant sister, not killing her but allowing her to suffer. Even so, he would not spit on the Torah. Finally, they put the gun to his own head, and he spit on the Torah. The pregnant sister, injured but alive, crawled away from the square. The gentiles watched from their windows. The sister made it to the forest and lived, but her baby died. She returned to Trachimbrod after the Germans left and gathered all the items from the Jewish houses so that the neighbors couldn’t take them. She hid everything in the woods and escaped Ukraine. Many years later, she returned and there was no sign of Trachimbrod. She found a house nearby and brought all the things she had saved out of the forest and into the house. It becomes clear through the course of this story that she is the pregnant sister.

There is a monument at the site. Alex and Jonathan spend time there while the woman and Grandfather go off somewhere else, then they all return to her house. This woman does not know what happened to Augustine, but she knows Safran escaped because she saw him once when he came back to Trachimbrod a few years later. They spent the afternoon together, and that was the last she saw of him. There are a few people still in the area from that time, but they are so old she doubts they will be of any help. She gives Jonathan her old friend Rivka’s wedding ring and a box labeled IN CASE. At the end of the visit, they learn that her name is Lista. She begins to say something else, but Grandfather kisses her and stops her. She turns and goes inside, saying her baby needs her.