ABSOLUTION Today there are “reconciliation camps.”

1. ABSOLUTION Today there are “reconciliation camps.” The LORD is long-suffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons to the third and fourth generation. NUMBERS 14

2. The Jewish Ending

3. [pp. 272-273] 9:613—The dream of the end of the world. bombs poured down from the sky exploding across trachimbrod in bursts of light and heat those watching the festivities hollered ran frantically they jumped into the bubbling splashing frantically dynamic water not after the sack of gold but to save themselves they stayed under as long as they could they surfaced to seize air and look for loved ones my safran picked up his wife and carried her like a newlywed into the water which seemed amid the falling trees and hackling crackling explosions the safest place hundreds of bodies poured into the brod that river with my name I embraced them with open arms come to me come I wanted to save them all to save everybody from everybody the bombs rained from the sky and it was not the explosions or scattering shrapnel that would be our death not the heckling cinders not the laughing debris but all of the bodies bodies flailing and grabbing hold of one another bodies looking for something to hold on to my safran lost sight of his wife who was carried deeper into me by the pull of the bodies the silent shrieks were carried in bubbles to the surface where they popped PLEASE PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE the kicking in zosha's belly became more and more PLEASE PLEASE the baby refused to die like this PLEASE the bombs came down cackling smoldering and my safran was able to break free from the human mass and float downstream over the small falls to clearer waters zosha was pulled down PLEASE and the baby

4. refusing to die like this was pulled up and out of her body turning the waters around her red she surfaced like a bubble to the light to oxygen to life to life WAWAWAWAWAWA she cried she was perfectly healthy and she would have lived except for the umbilical cord that pulled her back under toward her mother who was barely conscious but conscious of the cord and tried to break it with her hands and then bite it with her teeth but could not it would not be broken and she died with her perfectly healthy nameless baby in her arms she held it to her chest the crowd pulled itself into itself long after the bombing ceased the confused the frightened the desperate mass of babies children teenagers adults elderly all pulled at each other to survive but pulled each other into me drowning each other killing each other the bodies began to rise one at a time until I couldn't be seen through all of the bodies blue skin open white eyes I was invisible under them I was the carcass they were the butterflies white eyes blue skin this is what we've done we've killed our own babies to save them

5. The Ukrainian Ending

6. [p. 160] • "What do you write in your diary?" "I take notes." "About what?" "For the book I'm working on. Little things that I want to remember." "About Trachimbrod?" "Right." "It is a good book?" "I've only written pieces. I wrote a few pages before I came this summer, a few on the plane to Prague, a few on the train to Lvov, a few last night." "Read to me from it." "It's embarrassing." "It is not like this. It is not embarrassing." "It is." "Not if you recount it for me. I will relish it, I promise you. I am very simple to enchant." "No," he said, so I did what I thought was the OK and even funny thing. I took his diary and opened it. He did not say that I could read it, but nor did he ask for it back. This is what I read: • He told his father that he could care for Mother and Little Igor. It took his saying it to make it true. Finally, he was ready. His father could not believe this thing. What? he asked. What? And Sasha told him again that he would take care of the family, that he would understand if his father had to leave and never return, and that it would not even make him less of a father. He told his father that he would forgive. Oh, his father became so angry, so full of wrath, and he told Sasha that he would kill him, and Sasha told his father that he would kill him, and they moved at each other with violence and his father said, Say it to my face, not to the floor, and Sasha said, You are not my father.

7. [p. 274] I do not know if Sasha will tell you what has happened here tonight, and what is about to happen. It is important that you know what kind of man he is, so I will tell you here. This is what happened. He told his father that he could care for Mother and Little Igor. It took his saying it to make it true. Finally, he was ready. His father could not believe this thing. What? he asked. What? And Sasha told him again that he would take care of the family, that he would understand if his father had to leave and never return, and that it would not even make him less of a father. He told his father that he would forgive. Oh, his father became so angry, so full of wrath, and he told Sasha that he would kill him, and Sasha told his father that he would kill him, and they moved at each other with violence and his father said, Say it to my face, not to the floor, and Sasha said, You are not my father. [p. 275] All is for Sasha and Iggy, Jonathan. Do you understand? I would give everything for them to live without violence. Peace. That is all that I would ever want for them. Not money and not even love. It is still possible. I know that now, and it is the cause of so much happiness in me. They must begin again. They must cut all of the strings, yes? With you (Sasha told me that you will not write to each other anymore), with their father (who is now gone forever), with everything they have known. Sasha has started it, and now I must finish it.

8. [p. 15] Of course there are those who pointed to Sofiowka's madness, how he would sit naked in the fountain of the prostrate mermaid, caressing her scaly tuches like a newborn's fontanel, caressing his own better half as if there were nothing in the world wrong with beating one's boner, wherever, whenever. Or how he was once found on the Well-Regarded Rabbi's front lawn, bound in white string, and said he tied one around his index finger to remember something terribly important, and fearing he would forget the index finger, he tied a string around his pinky, and then one from waist to neck, and fearing he would forget this one, he tied a string from ear to tooth to scrotum to heel, and used his body to remember his body, but in the end could remember only the string. Is this someone to trust for a story?

9. [p. 258] Memory. Everything reminded everyone of something, which seemed winsome at first—when early birthdays could be recalled by the smell of an extinguished match, or the feeling of one's first kiss by sweat in the palm—but quickly became devitalizing. Memory begat memory begat memory. Villagers became embodiments of that legend they had been told so many times, of mad Sofiowka, swaddled in white string, using memory to remember memory, bound in an order of remembrance, struggling in vain to remember a beginning or end. Men set up flow charts (which were themselves memories of family trees) in an attempt to make sense of their memories. They tried to follow the line back, like Theseus out of the labyrinth, but only went in deeper, farther. [p. 260] But children had it worst of all, for although it would seem that they had fewer memories to haunt them, they still had the itch of memory as strong as the elders of the shtetl. Their strings were not even their own, but tied around them by parents and grandparents—strings not fastened to anything, but hanging loosely from the darkness. The only thing more painful than being an active forgetter is to be an inert rememberer. Safran lay in bed trying to string the events of his seventeen years into a coherent narrative, something that he could understand, with an order of imagery, an intelligibility of symbolism.

10. Is “You are not my father” meant to be a strange, tricksy statement – coupled with the fact that the character Jonathan wrote this passage in his “diary” earlier in the novel – that Jonathan (author) is Alex’s “father,” that Jonathan (author) begat Alex – a character who represents the descendant of a Ukrainian who betrayed his Jewish ancestors – and has given him a compassionate, forgiven past, and a hopeful future, in spite of everything. Maybe even made Grandfather an honorary Jew (Eli) to show that we are all capable of betrayal and all have been betrayed? Despite Grandfather’s suicide, then, the book would end on an up note, or at least a generous one, as Jonathan (author) absolves Alex from the sins of his father(s) against Jonathan’s forefathers. All history must be forgotten, so that the Jews don’t “kill” their own children with their bitterness and fear, and the Gentiles can make a better future without suffering for the sins of their fathers.