Jonathan Foer - Here I Am

I remember the albumin archipelago on the salmon. I remember how the singer smudged ve-nismecha in “Hava Nagila,” like a kid singing the alphabet, believing that l-m-n-o is one letter. I remember being lifted in the chair, high above the Jewish masses, the coronation of the One-Eyed Man. Back on the parquet, my father told me to go spend a few minutes with my grandfather. I venerated him, as I was taught to, but it was never not a chore.

“Hi, Grandpa,” I said, offering the top of my head for his kiss.

“I put some money into your college account,” he said, patting the empty chair beside him.

“Thank you.”

“Did Dad tell you how much?”

“No.”

He looked to both sides, beckoned my ear to his lips, and whispered, “One thousand four hundred forty dollars.”

“Wow,” I said, reestablishing a comfortable distance. I had no idea if that many dollars justified that presentation, but I knew what was expected of me: “That’s so incredibly generous. Thank you.”

“But also this,” he said, straining to get a grocery bag from the ground. He placed it on the table and removed something wrapped in a napkin. I assumed it was a roll — he often stashed rolls in napkins in bags — but then I felt its weight. “Go on,” he said. Inside was a camera, a Leica.

“Thank you,” I said, thinking the gift was a camera.

“Benny and I went back after the war, in 1946. We thought maybe our family had found a way to survive. At least someone. But there was no one. A neighbor, one of my father’s friends, saw us and brought us to his house. He had kept some of our things, in case we ever came back. He told us that even though the war was over, it wasn’t safe, and that we had to go. So we went. I only took a few things, and this was one of them.”

“Thank you.”

“I sewed money and photographs into the lining of the jacket I wore on the boat. I was so worried that someone would try to steal my things. I promised myself I wouldn’t take it off, but it was so hot, too hot. I slept with it in my arms, and one morning when I woke up, my suitcase was still at my side, but the jacket was gone. That’s why I don’t blame the person who took it. If he’d been a thief, he would have taken the suitcase. He was just cold.”

“But you said it was hot.”

“It was hot for me.” He rested his finger on the shutter release as if it were the trigger of a land mine. “I have only one picture from Europe. It’s of me. It was marking my place in my diary in my suitcase. The pictures of my brothers and parents were sewn into that jacket. Gone. But this is the camera that took them.”

“Where’s your diary?”

“I let it go.”

What would I have seen in those lost pictures? What would I have seen in the diary? Benjy didn’t recognize himself in his school portrait, but what did I see when I looked at it? And what did I see when I looked at the sonogram of Sam? An idea? A human? My human? Myself? An idea of myself? I had to believe in him, and I did. I never stopped believing in him, only in myself.

In his bar mitzvah speech, Sam said, “We didn’t ask for a nuclear weapon, and didn’t want a nuclear weapon, and nuclear weapons are, in pretty much every way, horrible. But there’s a reason people have them, and it’s to never have to use them.”

Billie shouted something I didn’t understand, but I understood the flicker of happiness in Sam’s eyes. The tension in the room flowed to the corners; Sam’s speech divided and redivided into small talk. I brought him some food and told him, “You’re so much better than I was at your age. Or am now.”

“It’s not a competition,” he said.

“No, it’s progress. Come with me for a second.”

“Where?”

“What do you mean, where? Mount Moriah, of course.”

I led him upstairs, to my dresser, and took the Leica from the bottom drawer.

“This was your great-grandpa’s. He brought it over from Europe. He gave it to me on my bar mitzvah and told me that he had no pictures of his brothers or parents, but that this camera had taken pictures of them. I know he wanted you to have it.”

“He told you that?”

“No. But I know that—”

“So you’re the one who wants me to have it.”

Who was leading whom?

“I do,” I said.

He held it in his hands, turned it around a few times. “Does it work?”

“Gosh, I don’t know. I’m not sure that’s the point.”

He said, “Shouldn’t it be?”

Sam had the Leica refurbished; he brought it into the world and it brought him out of Other Life.

He studied philosophy in college, but only in college.

He left the Leica on a train in Peru on his honeymoon with his first wife.

At thirty-eight, he became the youngest judge ever appointed to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit.

The boys took me to Great Wall Szechuan House for my sixty-fifth birthday. Sam raised his bottle of Tsingtao and gave a beautiful toast, ending with “Dad, you’re always looking.” I didn’t know whether he meant searching or seeing .

Tamir was sitting on the terminal’s floor, his back against the wall, his eyes on the phone in his hands. I went and sat beside him.

“I’m having second thoughts,” I said.

He smiled, nodded.

“Tamir?”

He nodded again.

“Can you stop texting for a second and listen?”

“I’m not texting,” he said, and turned his phone to face me: a grid of thumbnails of family photos.

“I’m having second thoughts.”

“Only second?”

“Could you talk this through with me?”

“What is there to talk through?”

“You’re returning to your family,” I said. “I would be leaving mine.”

“Would be?”

“Don’t do that. I’m asking for your help.”

“I don’t think you are. I think you’re asking for forgiveness.”

“For what? I haven’t even done anything.”

“Every thought after the first thought will lead you back to Newark Street.”

“That’s not necessarily true.”

“Not necessarily?”

“I’m here. I said goodbye to my children.”

“You don’t owe me an apology,” he said. “It’s not your country.”

“Maybe I’ve been wrong about that.”

“Apparently you were right.”

“And like you said, even if it isn’t my home, it’s yours.”

“Who are you, Jacob?”

For three consecutive years, Max’s eyes were closed in his school portrait. The first time, it was a small disappointment, but mostly funny. The second year, it was harder to excuse as an accident. We talked about why such photos are nice to have, how much his grandparents and great-grandfather cherished them, how it was a waste of money to spoil them on purpose. The morning of picture day that third year, we asked Max to look us in the eye and promise to keep his eyes open. “I’ll try,” he said, his eyes blinking wildly, as if to flush out a fly. “Don’t try,” Julia said, “do it.” When the photos came back, all three boys had closed their eyes. But I’ve never seen more genuine smiles.

“Maybe this is who I am,” I said to Tamir.

“You say that as if you couldn’t choose to be who you wanted to be.”

“Maybe I choose this.”

“Maybe?”

“I don’t know what I should do, and I’m asking you to talk this through with me.”

“So let’s talk it through. Who are you?”

“What?”

“You said, ‘Maybe this is who I am.’ So who, maybe, are you?”

“Come on, Tamir.”

“What? I’m asking you to explain what you meant. Who are you?”

“It’s not the kind of thing that can be articulated like that.”